[3] A very interesting proof--and one that has never been properly exposed--of the astoundingly rationalistic principles on which the Chinese polity is founded is to be seen in the position of priesthoods in China. Unlike every other civilization in the world, at no stage of the development of the State has it been necessary for religion in China to intervene between the rulers and the ruled, saving the people from oppression. In Europe without the supernatural barrier of the Church, the position of the common people in the Middle Ages would have been intolerable, and life, and virtue totally unprotected. Buckle, in his "History of Civilization," like other extreme radicals, has failed to understand that established religions have paradoxically been most valuable because of their vast secular powers, exercised under the mask of spiritual authority. Without this ghostly restraint rulers would have been so oppressive as to have destroyed their peoples. The two greatest monuments to Chinese civilization, then consist of these twin facts; first, that the Chinese have never had the need for such supernatural restraints exercised by a privileged body, and secondly, that they are absolutely without any feeling of class or caste--prince and pauper meeting on terms of frank and humorous equality--the race thus being the only pure and untinctured democracy the world has ever known. [4] (a) This loan was the so-called 7 per cent. Silver loan of 1894 for Shanghai Taels 10,000,000 negotiated by the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank. It was followed in 1895 by a £3,000,000 Gold 6 per cent. Loan, then by two more 6 per cent. loans for a million each in the same year, making a total of £6,635,000 sterling for the bare war-expenses. The Japanese war indemnity raised in three successive issues--from 1895 to 1898--of £16,000,000 each, added £48,000,000. Thus the Korean imbroglio cost China nearly 55 millions sterling. As the purchasing power of the sovereign is eight times larger in China than in Europe, this debt economically would mean 440 millions in England--say nearly double what the ruinous South African war cost. It is by such methods of comparison that the vital nature of the economic factor in recent Chinese history is made clear. [5] There is no doubt that the so-called Belgian loan, £1,800,000 of which was paid over in cash at the beginning of 1912, was the instrument which brought every one to terms. CHAPTER II THE ENIGMA OF YUAN SHIH-KAI THE HISTORY OF THE MAN FROM THE OPENING OF HIS CAREER IN KOREA IN 1882 TO THE END OF THE REVOLUTION, 12TH FEBRUARY, 1912