In his desperation Sun managed to bribe an English servant to carry a message, telling of his plight, to a Dr. Cantlie, one of his friends. Dr. Cantlie laid the matter before the Government, which took immediate action. The building was hedged about by detectives and policemen so closely that the prisoner could not be smuggled out to a steamer. Finally, seeing the {209} futility of longer holding him, the Chinese Minister turned Sun loose. The nervy little doctor went right back to the Far East and began to hatch another Revolution against his enemies. This time it was from Japan that he operated. But because he was not thoroughly wise in the matter of some Japanese business policies he was swindled out of all the funds he had raised to buy arms by one Nakimura. He left Japan and went to live in Singapore. He slipped into China again and started another uprising. This, too, was ill-timed, and many patriots lost their heads under the executioner's heavy blade. Dr. Sun managed to slip across the lower border into Annam disguised as a blind beggar. No sooner was he across the border than he began again, wandering from one Chinese colony to another in Annam, in Tongkin, down in the Straits Settlements, over in the Philippines--always preaching revolution. In 1898 K'ang Yu-wei, one of the reformers whom Sun had been allied with, travelled too fast in his efforts to win the ear of the puppet Emperor, was betrayed by Yuan Shih K'ai, so it was said, and had to flee to save his head. Then the Empress-Dowager laid a heavy hand upon all reformers within reach. Once more Sun escaped. After the Boxer uprising, which was not at all of Sun's doing and was entirely out of sympathy with his schemes, the Empress-Dowager seemed to be bitten by the general sentiment for reform and she promised much for China that raised the hopes of the new element. But like most Manchu promises, they were not to be depended on. DRILLED IN THE UNITED STATES. Back Sun went to America, and he added a new detail to his propaganda. He found a young graduate {210} of Leland Stanford University, Homer Lee, who was military mad and incidentally an enthusiast on the subject of freedom for China. Lee was made General of the Reform Cadets, who were Chinese youths of San Francisco, fitted out with uniforms and guns and taught to do the hay foot, straw foot in hired halls night after night. The idea spread to other cities in the United States and to Manila. The Reform Cadets became a wide-spread organisation. American drillmasters were hired to coach them; they had target practice and they gave exhibition drills. Out in San Francisco the agents of the Chinese Government once tried to prevail upon the city and State authorities to break up the organisation because it was technically an armed band of aliens on American soil. The effort failed.