Meanwhile the general situation throughout the country only slowly ameliorated. The Northern Military party, determined to prevent political power from passing solely into the hands of the Southern Radicals, bitterly opposed the revival of the Nanking Provisional Constitution, and denounced the re-convocation of the old Parliament of 1913, which had already assembled in Shanghai, preparatory to coming up to the capital. It needed a sharp manoeuvre to bring them to their senses. The Chinese Navy, assembled in the waters near Shanghai, took action; and in an ultimatum communicated to Peking by their Admiral, declared that so long as the government in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui refused to conform to popular wishes by reviving the Nanking Provisional Constitution and resummoning the old Parliament, so long would the Navy refuse to recognize the authority of the Central Government. With the fleet in the hands of the Southern Confederacy, which had not yet been formally dissolved, the Peking Government was powerless in the whole region of the Yangtsze; consequently, after many vain manoeuvres to avoid this reasonable and proper solution, it was at last agreed that things should be brought back precisely where they had been before the coup d'etat of the 4th November, 1913--the Peking Government being reconstituted by means of a coalition cabinet in which there would be both nominees of the North and South--the premiership remaining in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui. On the 28th June a long funeral procession wended its way from the Presidential Palace to the railway station; it was the remains of the great dictator being taken to their last resting-place in Honan. Conspicuous in this cortege was the magnificent stagecoach which had been designed to bear the founder of the new dynasty to his throne but which only accompanied him to his grave. The detached attitude of the crowds and the studied simplicity of the procession, which was designed to be republican, proved more clearly than reams of arguments that China--despite herself perhaps--had become somewhat modernized, the oldest country in the world being now the youngest republic and timidly trying to learn the lessons of youth.