All through this important period of Chinese history one has the impression that one is in dreamland and that fleeting emotions take the place of more solid things. Plot and counter-plot follow one another so rapidly that an accurate record of them all would be as wearisome as the Book of Chronicles itself; whilst the amazing web of financial intrigue which binds the whole together is so complex--and at the same time so ant.i.thetical to the political struggle--that the two stories seem to run counter to one another, although they are as closely united as two a.s.sa.s.sins pledged to carry through in common a dread adventure. A huge agglomeration of people estimated to number four hundred millions, being left without qualified leaders and told that the system of government, which had been laid down by the Nanking Provisional Const.i.tution and endorsed by the Abdication Edicts, was a system in which every man was as good as neighbour, swayed meaninglessly to and fro, vainly seeking to regain the equilibrium which had been so sensationally lost. A litigious spirit became so universal that all authority was openly derided, crimes of every description being so common as to force most respectable men to withdraw from public affairs and leave a bare rump of desperadoes in power.

Long embarra.s.sed by the struggle to pay her foreign loans and indemnities, China was also virtually penniless. The impossibility of arranging large borrowings on foreign markets without the open support of foreign governments--a support which was hedged round with conditions--made necessary a system of petty expedients under which practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid a.s.set it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the market was flooded with a worthless currency which it was unable to absorb. The Provincial leaders, being powerless to introduce improvement, exclaimed that it was the business of the Central Government as representative of the sovereign people to find solutions; and so long as they maintained themselves in office they went their respective ways with a sublime contempt for the chaos around them.

What was this Central Government? In order successfully to understand an unparalleled situation we must indicate its nature.

The manoeuvres to which Yuan Shih-kai had so astutely lent himself from the outbreak of the Revolution had left him at its official close supreme in name. Not only had he secured an Imperial Commission from the abdicating Dynasty to organize a popular Government in obedience to the national wish, but having brought to Peking the Delegates of the Nanking Revolutionary Body he had received from them the formal offer of the Presidency.

These arrangements had, of course, been secretly agreed to _en bloc_ before the fighting had been stopped and the abdication proclaimed, and were part and parcel of the elaborate scenery which officialdom always employs in Asia even when it is dealing with matters within the purview of the ma.s.ses. They had been made possible by the so-called "Article of Favourable Treatment" drawn-up by Yuan Shih-kai himself, after consultation with the rebellious South. In these Capitulations it had been clearly stipulated that the Manchu Imperial Family should receive in perpetuity a Civil List of $4,000,000 Mexican a year, retaining all their t.i.tles as a return for the surrender of their political power, the bitter pill being gilded in such fashion as to hide its real meaning, which alone was a grave political error.

In spite of this agreement, however, great mutual suspicion existed between North and South China. Yuan Shih-kai himself was unable to forget that the bold attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate him in the Peking streets on the 17th January, when he was actually engaged in negotiating these very terms of the Abdication, had been apparently inspired from Nanking; whilst the Southern leaders were daily reminded by the vernacular press that the man who held the balance of power had always played the part of traitor in the past and would certainly do the same again in the near future.

When the Delegates came to Peking in February, by far the most important matter which was still in dispute was the question of the oath of office which Yuan Shih-kai was called upon to take to insure that he would be faithful to the Republic. The Delegates had been charged specifically to demand on behalf of the seceding provinces that Yuan Shih-kai should proceed with them to Nanking to take that oath, a course of action which would have been held tantamount by the nation to surrender on his part to those who had been unable to vanquish him in the field. It must also not be forgotten that from the very beginning a sharp and dangerous cleavage of opinion existed as to the manner in which the powers of the new government had been derived. South and Central China claimed, and claimed rightly, that the Nanking Provincial Const.i.tution was the Instrument on which the Republic was based: Yuan Shih-kai declared that the Abdication Edicts, and not the Nanking Instrument had established the Republic, and that therefore it lay within his competence to organize the new government in the way which he considered most fit.

The discussion which raged was suddenly terminated on the night of the 29th February (1912) when without any warning there occurred the extraordinary revolt of the 3rd Division, a picked Northern corps who for forty-eight hours plundered and burnt portions of the capital without any attempts at interference, there being little doubt to-day that this manoeuvre was deliberately arranged as a means of intimidation by Yuan Shih-kai himself. Although the disorders a.s.sumed such dimensions that foreign intervention was narrowly escaped, the upshot was that the Nanking Delegates were completely cowed and willing to forget all about forcing the despot of Peking to proceed to the Southern capital. Yuan Shih-kai as the man of the hour was enabled on the 10th March, 1912, to take his oath in Peking as he had wished thus securing full freedom of action during the succeeding years.[6]

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Encampment of "The Punitive Expedition" of 1910 on the Upper Yangtsze.

_By courtesy of Major Isaac Newell, U.S. Military Attache_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Revival of the Imperialistic Worship of Heaven by Yuan Shih-kai in 1914: Scene on the Altar of Heaven, with Sacrificial Officers clothed in costumes dating from 2,000 years ago.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Manchu Country Fair: The figures in the foreground are all Manchu women and girls.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Manchu Woman grinding Grain.]

It was on this astounding basis--by means of an organized revolt--that the Central Government was reorganized; and every act that followed bears the mark of its tainted parentage. Accepting readily as his Ministers in the more unimportant government Departments the nominees of the Southern Confederacy (which was now formally dissolved), Yuan Shih-kai was careful to reserve for his own men everything that concerned the control of the army and the police, as well as the all-important ministry of finance. The framework having been thus erected, attention was almost immediately concentrated on the problem of finding money, an amazing matter which would weary the stoutest reader if given in all its detail but which being part and parcel of the general problem must be referred to.

Certain essential features can be very rapidly exposed. We have already made clear the purely economic nature of the forces which had sapped the foundations of Chinese society. Primarily it had been the disastrous nature of Chinese gold-indebtedness which had given the new ideas the force they required to work their will on the nation. And just because the question of this gold-indebtedness had become so serious and such a drain on the nation, some months before the outbreak of the Revolution an arrangement had been entered into with the bankers of four nations for a Currency Loan of 10,000,000 with which to make an organized effort to re-establish internal credit. But this loan had never actually been floated, as a six months' safety clause had permitted a delay during which the Revolution had come. It was therefore necessary to begin the negotiations anew; and as the rich prizes to be won in the Chinese lottery had attracted general attention in the European financial world through the advertis.e.m.e.nt which the Revolution had given the country, a host of alternative loan proposals now lay at the disposal of Peking.

Consequently an extraordinary chapter of bargaining commenced. Warned that an International Debt Commission was the goal aimed at by official finance, Yuan Shih-kai and the various parties who made up the Government of the day, though disagreeing on almost every other question, were agreed that this danger must be fought as a common enemy.

Though the Four-Power group alleged that they held the first option on all Chinese loans, money had already been advanced by a Franco-Belgian Syndicate to the amount of nearly two million pounds during the critical days of the Abdication. Furious at the prospect of losing their percentages, the Four Power group made the confusion worse confounded by blocking all competing proposals and closing every possible door. Russia and j.a.pan, who had hitherto not been parties to the official consortium, perceiving that partic.i.p.ation had become a political necessity, now demanded a place which was grudgingly accorded them; and it was in this way that the celebrated six-power Group arose.

It was round this group and the proposed issue of a 60,000,000 loan to reorganize Chinese finance that the central battle raged. The Belgian Syndicate, having been driven out of business by the financial boycott which the official group was strong enough to organize on the European bourses, it remained for China to see whether she could not find some combination or some man who would be bold enough to ignore all governments.

Her search was not in vain. In September (1912) a London stockbroker, Mr. Birch Crisp, determined to risk a brilliant coup by negotiating by himself a Loan of 10,000,000; and the world woke up one morning to learn that one man was successfully opposing six governments. The recollection of the storm raised in financial circles by this bold attempt will be fresh in many minds. Every possible weapon was brought into play by international finance to secure that the impudence of financial independence should be properly checked; and so it happened that although 5,000,000 was secured after an intense struggle it was soon plain that the large requirements of a derelict government could not be satisfied in this Quixotic manner. Two important points had, however, been attained; first, China was kept financially afloat during the year 1912 by the independence of a single member of the London Stock Exchange; secondly, using this coup as a lever the Peking Government secured better terms than otherwise would have been possible from the official consortium.

Meanwhile the general internal situation remained deplorable. Nothing was done for the provinces whose paper currency was depreciating from month to month in an alarming manner; whilst the rivalries between the various leaders instead of diminishing seemed to be increasing. The Tutuhs, or Military Governors, acting precisely as they saw fit, derided the authority of Peking and sought to strengthen their old position by adding to their armed forces. In the capital the old Manchu court, safely entrenched in the vast Winter Palace from which it has not even to-day been ejected (1917) published daily the Imperial Gazette, bestowing honours and decorations on courtiers and clansmen and preserving all the old etiquette. In the North-western provinces, and in Manchuria and Mongolia, the so-called Tsung She Tang, or Imperial Clan Society, intrigued perpetually to create risings which would hasten the restoration of the fallen House; and although these intrigues never rose to the rank of a real menace to the country, the fact that they were surrept.i.tiously supported by the j.a.panese secret service was a continual source of anxiety. The question of Outer Mongolia was also hara.s.sing the Central Government. The Hutuktu or Living Buddha of Urga--the chief city of Outer Mongolia--had utilized the revolution to throw off his allegiance to Peking; and the whole of this vast region had been thrown into complete disorder--which was still further accentuated when Russia on the 21st October (1912) recognized its independence. It was known that as a pendent to this Great Britain was about to insist on the autonomy of Tibet,--a development which greatly hurt Chinese pride.

On the 15th August, 1912, the deplorable situation was well-epitomised by an extraordinary act in Peking, when General Chang Cheng-wu, one of the "heroes" of the original Wuchang rising, who had been enticed to the capital, was suddenly seized after a banquet in his honour and shot without trial at midnight.

This event, trivial in itself during times when judicial murders were common, would have excited nothing more than pa.s.sing interest had not the national sentiment been so aroused by the chaotic conditions. As it was it served to focus attention on the general mal-administration over which Yuan Shih-kai ruled as provisional President. "What is my crime?"

had shrieked the unhappy revolutionist as he had been shot and then bayonetted to death. That query was most easily answered. His crime was that he was not strong enough or big enough to compete against more sanguinary men, his disappearance being consequently in obedience to an universal law of nature. Yuan Shih-kai was determined to a.s.sert his mastery by any and every means; and as this man had flouted him he must die.

The uproar which this crime aroused was, however, not easily appeased; and the Advisory Council, which was sitting in Peking pending the a.s.sembling of the first Parliament, denounced the Provisional President so bitterly that to show that these reproaches were ill-deserved he invited Dr. Sun Yat-sen to the capital treating him with unparalleled honours and requesting him to act as intermediary between the rival factions. All such manoeuvres, however, were inspired with one object,--namely to prove how n.o.body but the master of Peking could regulate the affairs of the country.

Still no Parliament was a.s.sembled. Although the Nanking Provisional Const.i.tution had stipulated that one was to meet within ten months _i.e._ before 1st November, 1912, the elections were purposely delayed, the attention of the Central Government being concentrated on the problem of destroying all rivals, and everything being subordinate to this war on persons. Rascals, getting daily more and more out of hand, worked their will on rich and poor alike, discrediting by their actions the name of republicanism and destroying public confidence--which was precisely what suited Yuan Shih-kai. Dramatic and extraordinary incidents continually inflamed the public mind, nothing being too singular for those remarkable days.

Very slowly the problem developed, with everyone exclaiming that foreign intervention was becoming inevitable. With the beginning of 1913, being unable to delay the matter any longer, Yuan Shih-kai allowed elections to be held in the provinces. He was so badly beaten at the polls that it seemed in spite of his military power that he would be outvoted and outmanoeuvred in the new National a.s.sembly and his authority undermined.

To prevent this a fresh a.s.sa.s.sination was decided upon. The ablest Southern leader, Sung Chiao-jen, just as he was entraining for Peking with a number of Parliamentarians at Shanghai, was coolly shot in a crowded railway station by a desperado who admitted under trial that he had been paid 200 for the job by the highest authority in the land, the evidence produced in court including telegrams from Peking which left no doubt as to who had instigated the murder.

The storm raised by this evil measure made it appear as if no parliament could ever a.s.semble in Peking. But the feeling had become general that the situation was so desperate that action had to be taken. Not only was their reputation at stake, but the Kuomingtang or Revolutionary Party now knew that the future of their country was involved just as much as the safety of their own lives; and so after a rapid consultation they determined that they would beard the lion in his den. Rather unexpectedly on the 7th April (1913) Parliament was opened in Peking with a huge Southern majority and the benediction of all Radicals.[7]

Hopes rose with mercurial rapidity as a solution at last seemed in sight. But hardly had the first formalities been completed and Speakers been elected to both Houses, than by a single dramatic stroke Yuan Shih-kai reduced to nought these labours by stabbing in the back the whole theory and practice of popular government.

The method he employed was simplicity itself, and it is peculiarly characteristic of the man that he should have been so bluntly cynical.

Though the Provisional Nanking Const.i.tution, which was the "law" of China so far as there was any law at all, had laid down specifically in article XIX that all measures affecting the National Treasury must receive the a.s.sent of Parliament, Yuan Shih-kai, pretending that the small Advisory Council which had a.s.sisted him during the previous year and which had only just been dissolved, had sanctioned a foreign loan, peremptorily ordered the signature of the great Reorganization Loan of 25,000,000 which had been secretly under negotiation all winter with the financial agents of six Powers[8], although the rupture which had come in the previous June as a forerunner to the Crisp loan had caused the general public to lose sight of the supreme importance of the financial factor. Parliament, seeing that apart from the possibility of a Foreign Debt Commission being created something after the Turkish and Egyptian models, a direct challenge to its existence had been offered, raged and stormed and did its utmost to delay the question; but the Chief Executive having made up his mind shut himself up in his Palace and absolutely refused to see any Parliamentary representatives.

Although the Minister of Finance himself hesitated to complete the transaction in the face of the rising storm and actually fled the capital, he was brought back by special train and forced to complete the agreement. At four o'clock in the morning on the 25th April the last doc.u.ments were signed in the building of a foreign bank and the Finance Minister, galloping his carriage suddenly out of the compound to avoid possible bombs, reported to his master that at last--in spite of the nominal foreign control which was to govern the disburs.e.m.e.nt--a vast sum was at his disposal to further his own ends.

Safe in the knowledge that possession is nine points of the law, Yuan Shih-kai now treated with derision the resolutions which Parliament pa.s.sed that the transaction was illegal and the loan agreement null and void. Being openly backed by the agents of the Foreign Powers, he immediately received large cash advances which enabled him to extend his power in so many directions that further argument with him seemed useless. It is necessary to record that the Parliamentary leaders had almost gone down on their knees to certain of the foreign Ministers in Peking in a vain attempt to persuade them to delay--as they could very well have done--the signature of this vital Agreement for forty-eight hours so that it could be formally pa.s.sed by the National a.s.sembly, and thus save the vital portion of the sovereignty of the country from pa.s.sing under the heel of one man. But Peking diplomacy is a perverse and disagreeable thing; and the Foreign Ministers of those days, although accredited to a government which while it had not then been formally recognized as a Republic by any Power save the United States, was bound to be so very shortly, were determined to be reactionary and were at heart delighted to find things running back normally to absolutism[9]. High finance had at last got hold of everything it required from China and was in no mood to relax the monopoly of the salt administration which the Loan Agreement conferred. Nor must the fact be lost sight of that of the nominal amount of 25,000,000 which had been borrowed, fully half consisted of repayments to foreign Banks and never left Europe. According to the schedules attached to the Agreement, Annex A, comprising the Boxer arrears and bank advances, absorbed 4,317,778: Annex B, being so-called provincial loans, absorbed a further 2,870,000: Annex C, being liabilities shortly maturing, amounted to 3,592,263: Annex D, for disbandment of troops, amounted to 3,000,000: Annex C, to cover current administrative expenses totalled 5,500,000: whilst Annex E which covered the reorganization of the Salt Administration, absorbed the last 2,000,000; The bank profits on this loan alone amounted to 1 million pounds; whilst Yuan Shih-kai himself was placed in possession by a system of weekly disburs.e.m.e.nts of a sum roughly amounting to ten million sterling, which was amply sufficient to allow him to wreak his will on his fellow-countrymen.

Exasperated to the pitch of despair by this new development, the Central and Southern provinces, after a couple of months' vain argument, began openly to arm. On the 10th July in Kiangse province on the river Yangtsze the Northern garrisons were fired upon from the Hukow forts by the provincial troops under General Li Lieh-chun and the so-called Second Revolution commenced.

The campaign was short and inglorious. The South, ill-furnished with munitions and practically penniless, and always confronted by the same well-trained Northern Divisions who had proved themselves invincible only eighteen months before fought hard for a while, but never became a serious menace to the Central Government owing to the lack of co-operation between the various Rebel forces in the field. The Kiangse troops under General Li Lieh-chun, who numbered at most 20,000 men, fought stiffly, it is true, for a while but were unable to strike with any success and were gradually driven far back from the river into the mountains of Kiangse where their numbers rapidly melted away. The redoubtable revolutionary Huang Hsin, who had proved useful as a propagandist and a bomb-thrower in earlier days, but who was useless in serious warfare, although he a.s.sumed command of the Nanking garrison which had revolted to a man, and attempted a march up the Pukow railway in the direction of Tientsin, found his effort break down almost immediately from lack of organization and fled to j.a.pan. The Nanking troops, although deserted by their leader, offered a strenuous resistance to the capture of the southern capital which was finally effected by the old reactionary General Chang Hsun operating in conjunction with General Feng Kuo-chang who had been dispatched from Peking with a picked force. The attack on the Shanghai a.r.s.enal which had been quietly occupied by a small Northern Garrison during the months succeeding the great loan transaction, although pushed with vigour by the South, likewise ultimately collapsed through lack of artillery and proper leadership. The navy, which was wholly Southern in its sympathies and which had been counted upon as a valuable weapon in cutting off the whole Yangtsze Valley, was at the last moment purchased to neutrality by a liberal use of money obtained from the foreign banks, under, it is said, the heading of administrative expenses! The turbulent city of Canton, although it also rose against the authority of Peking, had been well provided for by Yuan Shih-kai. A border General, named Lung Chi-kw.a.n.g, with 20,000 semi-savage Kw.a.n.gsi troops had been moved near the city and at once attacked and overawed the garrison. Appointed Military Governor of the province in return for his services, this Lung Chi-kw.a.n.g, who was an infamous brute, for three years ruled the South with heartless barbarity, until he was finally ejected by the great rising of 1916. Thoroughly disappointed in this and many other directions the Southern Party was now emasculated; for the moneyed cla.s.ses had withheld their support to the end, and without money nothing is possible in China. The 1913 outbreak, after lasting a bare two months, ignominiously collapsed with the flight of every one of the leaders on whose heads prices were put. The road was now left open for the last step Yuan Shih-kai had in mind, the coup against Parliament itself, which although una.s.sociated in any direct way with the rising, had undoubtedly maintained secret relations with the rebellious generals in the field.

Parliament had further sinned by appointing a Special Const.i.tutional Drafting Committee which had held its sittings behind closed doors at the Temple of Heaven. During this drafting of the Permanent Const.i.tution, admittance had been absolutely refused to Yuan Shih-kai's delegates who had been sent to urge a modification of the decentralization which had been such a characteristic of the Nanking Instrument. Such details as transpired showed that the principle of absolute money-control was not only to be the dominant note in the Permanent Const.i.tution, but that a new and startling innovation was being included to secure that a _de facto_ Dictatorship should be rendered impossible. Briefly, it was proposed that when Parliament was not actually in session there should be left in Peking a special Parliamentary Committee, charged with supervising and controlling the Executive, and checking any usurpation of power.

This was enough for Yuan Shih-kai: he felt that he was not only an object of general suspicion but that he was being treated with contempt.

He determined to finish with it all. He was as yet, however, only provisional President and it was necessary to show cunning. Once more he set to work in a characteristic way. By a liberal use of money Parliament was induced to pa.s.s in advance of the main body of articles the Chapter of the Const.i.tution dealing with the election and term of office of the President. When that had been done the two Chambers sitting as an Electoral College, after the model of the French Parliament, being partly bribed and partly terrorised by a military display, were induced to elect him full President.

On the 10th October he took his final oath of office as President for a term of five years before a great gathering of officials and the whole diplomatic body in the magnificent Throne Room of the Winter Palace.

Safe now in his Const.i.tutional position nothing remained for him but to strike. On the 4th November he issued an arbitrary Mandate, which received the counter-signature of the whole Cabinet, ordering the unseating of all the so-called Kuomingtang or Radical Senators and Representatives on the counts of conspiracy and secret complicity with the July rising and vaguely referring to the filling of the vacancies thus created by new elections.[10] The Metropolitan Police rigorously carried out the order and although no brutality was shown, it was made clear that if any of the indicted men remained in Peking their lives would be at stake. Having made it impossible for Parliament to sit owing to the lack of quorums, Yuan Shih-kai was able to proceed with his work of reorganization in the way that best suited him; and the novel spectacle was offered of a truly Mexican situation created in the Far East by and with the a.s.sent of the Powers. It is significant that the day succeeding this _coup d'etat_ of the 4th November the agreement conceding autonomy to Outer Mongolia was signed with Russia, China simply retaining the right to station a diplomatic representative at Urga.[11]

In spite of his undisputed power, matters however did not improve. The police-control, judiciously mingled with a.s.sa.s.sinations, which was now put in full vigour was hardly the administration to make room for which the Manchus had been expelled; and the country secretly chafed and cursed. But the disillusionment of the people was complete. Revolt had been tried in vain; and as the support which the Powers were affording to this regime was well understood there was nothing to do but to wait, safe in the knowledge that such a situation possessed no elements of permanency.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The defective nature of this oath of office will be patent at a glance:

"At the beginning of the Republic there are many things to be taken care of. I, Yuan Shih-kai, sincerely wish to exert my utmost to promote the democratic spirit, to remove the dark blots of despotism, to obey strictly the Const.i.tution, and to abide by the wish of the people, so as to place the country in a safe, united, strong, and firm position, and to effect the happiness and welfare of the divisions of the Chinese race. All these wishes I will fulfil without fail. As soon as a new President is elected by the National a.s.sembly I shall at once vacate my present position. With all sincerity I take this oath before the people of China.

"Dated the tenth day of March in the First Year of the Republic of China (1912)."

(Signed) Yuan Shih-kai.

[7] The Parliament of China is composed of a House of Representatives numbering 596 members and a Senate of 274. The Representatives are elected by means of a property and educational franchise which is estimated to give about four million voters (1 per cent of the population) although in practice relatively few vote. The Senate is elected by the Provincial a.s.semblies by direct ballot. In the opinion of the writer, the Chinese Parliament in spite of obvious shortcoming, is representative of the country in its present transitional stage.

[8] The American Group at the last moment dropped out of the s.e.xtuple combination (prior to the signature of the contract) after President Wilson had made his well-known p.r.o.nouncement deprecating the a.s.sociation of Americans in any financial undertakings which impinged upon the rights of sovereignty of a friendly Power,--which was his considered view of the manner in which foreign governments were a.s.sisting their nationals to gain control of the Salt Administration The exact language the President used was that the conditions of the loan seemed "to touch very nearly the administrative independence of China itself," and that a loan thus obtained was "obnoxious" to the principles upon which the American government rests. It is to be hoped that President Wilson's dictum will be universally accepted after the war and that meddling in Chinese affairs will cease.

[9] The United States accorded formal recognition to the Republic on the election of the Speakers of the two Houses of Parliament: the other Treaty Powers delayed recognition until Yuan Shih-kai had been elected full President in October. It has been very generally held that the long delay in foreign recognition of the Republic contributed greatly to its internal troubles by making every one doubt the reality of the Nanking transaction. Most important, however, is the historical fact that a group of Powers numbering the two great leaders of democracy in Europe--England and France--did everything they could in Peking to enthrone Yuan Shih-kai as dictator.

[10] According to the official lists published subsequent to the coup d'etat, 98 Senators and 252 Members of the House of Representatives had their Parliamentary Certificates impounded by the police as a result of the Mandates of the 4th November, and were ordered to leave the Capital.

In addition 34 Senators and 54 Members of the Lower House fled from Peking before their Certificates could be seized. Therefore the total number affected by the proscription was 132 Senators and 306 Representatives. As the quorums in the case of both Houses are half the total membership, any further sittings were thus made impossible.

[11] A full copy of this agreement will be found in the appendix.

CHAPTER IV