Now, Mr. Hu Ying, this same man, some years ago narrowly escaped losing his head for being mixed up in an alleged Revolutionary escapade that cost his more enthusiastic confederate his head. He was the President of the Foreign Office of the Hupeh Government when I interviewed him. He was a man who to a very large extent had been the prime mover in the Republican dream of the future. For many years a strong Revolutionist, he had, however, been called upon to study the arts of Revolutionism in prison. For when the Revolution broke out he was still behind the prison bars in Wuchang, and under normal conditions would have passed the remainder of a miserable life dreaming of the great reforms he now hoped to help forward. He was a man who incontestably had the confidence of Li Yuan Hung. Mr. Hu was only one of a number of delegates sent down to join with Dr. Wu Ting Fang in upholding the Republican side of the argument against Tang Shao Yi and his assistants. They all represented General Li Yuan Hung and thoroughly understood his ideas. Mr. Hu and another of the {178} delegates--a Mr. C. T. Wang, who was a graduate of an American University and in China held the responsible position of the National Secretaryship of the Y.M.C.A. in China--were chosen to assist Dr. Wu by representatives of the various Revolutionary provinces represented at Wuchang. Hu Ying was a short, rather stout Chinese, who told me frankly that he felt fearfully out of it because he could not speak my foreign words, and a man who would never be taken seriously at first sight as one capable of shaping the foreign policy of the Chinese Empire. As a matter of fact, he was nervous with foreigners--it may be, of course, that his long term in prison had made him so--and looked up rather timidly over the steel rims of his glasses as he spoke. He laughed with buoyant candour over his own jokes, and was somewhat of a caricature in his foreign felt hat that was the only sign about him that he had ambitions for Occidentalising his country.