In a manifesto issued to all friendly nations from the Republic of China, when Sun Yat Sen was appointed Provisional President, it was declared that "we, the Chinese people, are peaceful and law-abiding. We {17} have waged no war except in self-defence. We have borne our grievances during two hundred and sixty-seven years of Manchu misrule with patience and forbearance. We have by peaceful means endeavoured to redress our wrongs, secure our liberty, and ensure our progress, but we have failed. Oppressed beyond human endurance we deemed it our inalienable right as well as our sacred duty to appeal to arms to deliver ourselves and our posterity from the yoke to which we have so long been subjected, and for the first time in our history inglorious bondage has been transformed to an inspiring freedom splendid with a lustrous light of opportunity. The policy of the Manchu Dynasty has been one of unequivocal seclusion and unyielding tyranny. Beneath it we have bitterly suffered, and we now submit to the free peoples of the world the reasons justifying the Revolution and the inauguration of our present government. Prior to the usurpation of the Throne by the Manchus, the land was open to foreign intercourse, and religious tolerance existed, as is evidenced by the writings of Marco Polo and the inscription on the Nestorian Tablet of Sian-fu. Dominated by ignorance and selfishness, the Manchus closed the land to the outer world, and plunged the Chinese people into a state of benighted mentality, calculated to operate inversely to their natural talents and capabilities, thus committing a crime against humanity and the civilised nations almost impossible of expiation." [Illustration: WHERE CHINA'S REVOLUTION STARTED. This picture of Wuchang gives a good idea of the type of buildings seen in a Chinese city. Six hundred Manchus perished in Wuchang during the early days of the slaughter.]