Yuan's striking personality, his military genius, his character, the magnetic attraction he has for the foreigners around him, must have had much to do in shaping the end of recent events. But how much so, and the whole truth concerning the part he has played in this Revolution yet remains to be told in a volume that will reveal the inwardness of the motives and ambitions and achievements of H.E. Yuan Shih K'ai, perhaps the greatest man in the Chinese Empire of to-day. How to read the riddle of his recent diplomatic moves is beyond the powers of the Occidental. When Admiral Sah fired his few effectual rounds at Kilometre Ten, and retired down-river instead of annihilating the routed Republicans, was he acting under Yuan Shih K'ai's express orders? When later on Hankow was taken and Admiral Sah decided to bombard Wuchang and thus bring the campaign to a close, who prevented him carrying out his effectual proposals? Was it Yuan? And then, on November 27th, when Hanyang fell and Wuchang seemed at the mercy of the Imperialists, who was it that stayed the forward move and gave General Li Yuan Hung an opportunity to reconstruct his plan of campaign? Was Yuan even then drawing his net more closely round his Manchu enemies. And did he, too, cause the evacuation of the Wuhan centre, leaving it to the Revolutionists to reoccupy the hardly-won positions without the firing of a shot or the loss of a single life? The future still holds the solution of these riddles. There are those, however, who see in all these moves the hand of a statesman, eager and able to hold together his country and at the same time revenge himself on his enemies in the corrupt Manchu Court. {235} CHAPTER XVII THE SZECHUEN REVOLT It was long before the outbreak of the Revolution that Szechuen was in the throes of a revolt that threatened early to spread to most dangerous limits from every aspect. The cause of the trouble was the building of railroads. Szechuen demanded exclusion from the scheme for the nationalisation of the railways. The literati and the students took the matter in hand, declared determinedly that the province should build its own railways, and in a very short time the province was in an uproar. We have but little space to deal with the history of the disturbances, but seeing that when it was at its worst there existed a serious anti-foreign spirit, it will be well to give a brief review on the affair.