I doubt if any Chinese monarch has ever had a more far-reaching influence over the minds of the young men of the empire than Kuang Hsu had from 1895 till 1898. The preparation for this influence had been going on for twenty or thirty years previously in the educational institutions established by the missions and the government. From these schools there had gone out a great number of young men who had taken positions in all departments of business, and many of the state, and revealed to the officials as well as to many of the people the power of foreign education. An imperial college had been established by the customs service for the special education of young men for diplomatic and other positions, from which there had gone out young men who were the representatives of the government as consuls or ministers in the various countries of Europe and America. The fever for reading the same books that Kuang Hsu had read was so great as to tax to the utmost the presses of the port cities to supply the demand, and the leaders of some of the publication societies feared that a condition had arisen for which they were unprepared. Books written by such men as Drs. Allen, Mateer, Martin, Williams and Legge were brought out in pirated photographic reproductions by the bookshops of Shanghai and sold for one-tenth the cost of the original work. Authors, to protect themselves, compelled the pirates to deliver over the stereotype plates they had made on penalty of being brought before the officials in litigation if they refused. But during the three years the Emperor had been studying these foreign books, hundreds of thousands of young scholars all over the empire had been doing the same, preparing themselves for whatever emergency the studies of the young Emperor might bring about. One day during the early spring a young Chinese reformer came to me to get a list of the best newspapers and periodicals published in both England and America. I inquired the reason for this strange move, and he said: "The young Chinese reformers in Peking have organized a Reform Club. Some of them read and speak English, others French, others German and still others Russian, and we are providing ourselves with all the leading periodicals of these various countries that we may read and study them. We have rented a building, prepared rooms, and propose to have a club where we can assemble whenever we have leisure, for conversation, discussion, reading, lectures or whatever will best contribute to the ends we have in view." "And what are those ends?" I inquired. "The bringing about of a new regime in China," he answered. "Our recent defeat by the Japanese has shown us that unless some radical changes are made we must take a second place among the peoples of the Orient." "This is a new move in Peking, is it not?"