"Peace, peace; at all costs let us have peace." So, sincerely as it seemed, cried both parties. That both sides were in earnest there is every reason to believe. Those who knew General Li Yuan Hung, the youngest hero of the world, were able more and more to testify with increasing knowledge of the man that he wished nothing more than that China should be freed from the Manchu yoke. All else he would forego to establish peace that should bring prosperity, a peace that should be permanent and knit the whole Empire together as nothing else could. Those who knew Dr. Wu Ting Fang realised that, as an able leader of {174} modern thought and that party whose aim is progress, he was sincere in all that he did to bring about a China enlightened and able to stand in line with nations of the East and West. Tang Shao-yi was a man whose innate sincerity and true humility in high places had won the confidence of all who knew him. He was, as always he had been, veritably a political prince of peace. He loved his country. And finally Yuan Shih K'ai. All knew him or of him. Some praised him, but it was a penalty of his greatness that some anathematised him. China to him also was as dear as his fame or his life. There were two pictures: a dawn of peace and tranquillity, a China freed from all racial bitterness, a China plunging manfully out and in her plunge being assisted by all the Powers of the world; the other picture shows a China going down to the deeps of internal despair, renewed hostilities, further bloodshed. And all those who knew what the war had been, those who had seen those twelve thousand mothers' sons hacked and hewn and blown into eternity by infuriated members of their own great race entertained merely one common hope. I went down to Shanghai and remained in that city whilst the Peace Conference was in progress. To go from the scene of action in Central China to Shanghai was to pass at one stroke from the din of war to the tranquillity of peace and undisturbed civilisation. Hard indeed was it for any one who had been through the crisis in Hankow actually to realise the peace of China's great metropolis--the contrast was so enormous as to force it upon one's imagination that the war was over, that peace assuredly had come. One missed the cannonading, the utter devastation and universal suffering, the burnt-out hamlets and the homeless thousands all over the countryside.