General surprise has been expressed at the comparative ease and speed with which the revolutionary movement has attained success in driving the Manchus from power and in founding a republican _régime_. The factor which chiefly contributed to this success was undoubtedly the weakness of the Manchu dynasty and of the Imperial Clan, who, hated by the Chinese and without sufficient resources of their own, were utterly unable to offer any real resistance to the rebellious provinces of the south, the loyalty of their troops being uncertain, and any spirit or gift of leadership among themselves having disappeared with the passing of the great Tzu Hsi in 1908. But it is a mistake to imagine that the idea of a republican form of government in place of the centuries-old, autocratic, semi-divine monarchy, was something that had never been mooted before and was entirely unknown to the Chinese. To the great majority, no doubt, it was, if known at all, something strange and hardly intelligible, as it still is. But in the south, especially on and near the coast, it has been familiar for some time; among the possibilities of the future it was not unknown even to the "Throne." Fourteen years ago, after the _coup d'état_ by which Tzu Hsi smashed the reform movement that had been patronized by the Emperor Kuang Hsu, the then Viceroy of Canton stated in a memorial to her that among some treasonable papers found at the birthplace of Kang Yu-wei, the leading reformer of the time, a document had been discovered which not only spoke of substituting a republic for the monarchy, but actually named as its first president one of the reformers she had caused to be executed. It must be admitted, on the other hand, that the idea has been imported into China comparatively recently; the Chinese language contains no word for republic, but one has been coined by putting together the words for self and government; it must be many years before the masses of the Chinese--the "rubbish people," as Lo Feng-lu, a former minister to England, used to call them--have any genuine understanding of what a republic means.