What the author has set out to do in this volume is to tell of what he saw and understood, and then to put into print carefully considered opinion on the general situation and a historical survey of revolutions and main events in China that have led up to the Revolution of last October. This Revolution, although outbreaking prematurely, was all wonderfully planned. "The movement began to take definite shape about fifteen or sixteen years ago," says Sun Yat Sen, the greatest of Chinese revolutionists, though he had been interested in the movement for a longer time than that. "Three years ago we were ready to take over Wuchang, Canton, and Nanking, but we were waiting to gain control of the Peking soldiers. We had been working for some time through the students. Following the war with Japan, the Peking Government began to organise its new army, sending students abroad to be trained to take charge of the army. It was at once seen that if the Manchus were able to organise and control a modern army it would greatly strengthen their position, and the Revolutionary {16} party set to work to counteract their efforts. They worked through the students, so that when they returned to China to take positions as officers in the army they came as revolutionists. The outbreak could not have been postponed for more than a few months, but it did occur before it was expected. We knew that we had Wuchang, Nanking, and Canton, but there was a preliminary outbreak at Canton, then another one last summer. Then when the outbreak at Wuchang occurred it was no longer possible to postpone action, for the Government would have begun to disarm the soldiers who sympathised with us. At Canton they scattered our sympathisers over the province, so that it was very difficult to concentrate them. If our original plan had been carried out, there would have been very little fighting. Canton, Nanking, and Wuchang would have quietly gone over to us, and then all the troops could have marched on Peking if necessary. We have always had half of the Peking troops with us." Thus declared Sun Yat Sen--and there is little doubt he was right. The hitherto irremediable suppression of the individual qualities and national aspirations of the people arrested the intellectual, the moral, and the material development of China. The aid of revolution was invoked to extirpate the primary cause, and China now proclaimed the resultant overthrow of the despotic sway wielded by the Manchu Dynasty and the establishment of a Republic. The substitution of a Republic for a Monarchical form of government was not the fruit of a transient passion; it was the natural outcome of a long-cherished desire for broad-based freedom, making for permanent contentment and uninterrupted advancement. It was the formal declaration of the will of the Chinese nation.