Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE FIRST REVOLUTION IN CHINA 1911-12 " When disaster comes, there will be omens." Confucius. Few people in this country realized when the brief telegrams reported the occurrence of a strike on August 24, 1911, at Chengtu in Szechouan, that the beginning of the end of the Manchu dynasty had arrived. Even in China itself acute foreign and Chinese observers were uncertain whether this was the great revolution, which had been brewing since the Russo-Japanese War or merely a local outbreak of petulance against Peking. More interesting still, the Japanese, than whom no foreigners were better informed of the subterranean happenings in China, were sublimely ignorant that the spark had been applied to the tinder, which every one had watched being laid during many years. So intently were eyes focused on the building of the funeral pile of the Manchus that few saw the first spark catch. The proxima causa of the Chengtu strike was the Peking policy of railroad nationalization. This policy was in direct opposition to the "rights-recovery " movement, for it meant the granting of more and more concessions to foreigners for the exploitation of Chinese resources. Also it meant a curtailment of provincial autonomy and provincial revenue, whilst the authority and revenue of Peking were correspondingly increased. In Szechouan the exasperation was particularly acute, because in that province the people had organized to build their own railway, and at great sacrifice had found the necessary funds amongst themselves. The strike was a passive resistance movement which, excellently organized by the Tung Chi Huei, quickly spread over the province. There is a point to be carefully observed in connection with the strike. It was an Anti-Foreign Loan movement, not anti-foreign. V...