Whatever they may have thought they could do, however, military experts declared that the Revolutionists had no position at all as long as the Imperial guns at Hanyang were able to pour shrapnel into them. With the railway cut off, the supplies of the Imperial forces would of course be cut off too, and in that way the Revolutionists would perhaps have been able to besiege them at Hanyang; but it would have been infinitely tedious. The cruisers, even if they had had ammunition, would under existing circumstances have been of little use. The four-point-seven guns at Hanyang would, with such decided advantage in being able to bang at them from a point where their own guns could not even been seen, have been able to silence them in a very short time. The damage that the Revolutionary guns would have caused to Hanyang would have been infinitesimal, and altogether the Imperial army would have held the trump card all the way along. On the face of things, it appeared little short of sheer madness for the Revolutionists to think of fighting so long as Hanyang were made the main Imperial base. But the Revolutionists themselves did not think so lightly of their chances. They were determined, and among the rank and file the war fever blinded the sight to all possibilities of defeat. Sufficient has been said, perhaps, to show that further fighting would only take place to gratify the lust for blood of some of the grossly misguided leaders of the rival armies. Among the Republican leaders--General Li Yuan Hung and his party, as distinct from the military officers--the desire that war should forthwith cease was, I believe, absolutely sincere. General Li Yuan Hung had shown the world that what he said he meant: one could not point to a single public utterance from him and find that he had not done all that lay in his power consistently towards working out his promises. Li Yuan Hung was a man of political solidarity--not brilliant, but solid, sound, having an opinion {171} and fearing no one in stating clearly and openly that opinion. Not in one thing, but in dozens throughout this dreadful season of disturbance he had shown that if he failed in carrying out what he said he meant to carry out, it had not been because of any inconsistency of his own so much as of treachery among his army and instability among members of his party. He had announced frankly all along what he wanted, and what he would be prepared to pay for realising sooner or later.