The story of the great Chinese Revolution of 1911-12 will probably never be told fully or accurately. China is a continent in its vast area. Its population is one-fourth of the whole human race. The country is not opened up by roads or railways and travel generally is arduous and slow; exaggeration among the people, as among all Orientals, is second nature. And so it would be at once impossible for any one man closely to follow up and widely and accurately to write of the Revolution which broke out at Wuchang last year, tracing it up to the present moment and getting a clean political and international outlook whilst doing so. Although I have endeavoured by careful study to get into focus with doings all over the Empire, I confess that I have been unable to secure unimpeachable information on any part of China other than that in which I was living (I speak of the interior of China, for it was easy enough to be kept informed in the main centres and the treaty ports whilst the telegraph lines were intact). Had there been roads and railways and communication of a kind to render it physically possible to move about, even then this would {14} have been impossible; for soon after the Revolution broke the anti-foreign spirit and the outlawry shown in many parts of the country forbade any European going far from the treaty ports--and, of course, practically all foreigners were ordered to the coast by their consuls. Had a man a workable knowledge of the Chinese language in character, it would have been foolish to form one's opinions from the rumours that were printed everywhere in the Chinese Press. And so it comes about that only upon those things which one saw and did is a man justified to write.