Читать книгу China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War онлайн

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It was not until long after the month of October, however, that men were able accurately to ascertain how the Revolution broke. Newspaper men with special passes, and on the scent for news, each buttonholed their man, hoping to get the story of why the revolt occurred so long before the appointed time. Every intelligent onlooker saw that sooner or later a great upheaval would come to China—some even got to know that it could not take a very great time before the extensive plans were fully matured—and then the blow would be struck, and China, tottering against forces far too strong for her, would be shaken to her very vitals. But when the signal for the military to rise was actually given, and when the whole of Hupeh's Army did rise, almost as one man, the newspaper men and those who thought they had been watching closely were lifted off their feet. And then there started throughout the world a long string of newspaper hazards as to who was responsible and how the thing had been done. But the story did not leak through. The most careful guesswork failed to get anywhere near the truth, for the correspondents of American and European newspapers had not been behind the scenes, and knew little of what was passing in the early days of October, They knew nothing of the little affair that had happened in the Russian Concession of Hankow. Europeans in Hankow, as a matter of fact, knew nothing about the affair until the newspapers wrote up a short story of it, and on the morning it appeared no one seemed to attach any great importance to what they read. They did not realise that what the Revolutionary party of China had been planning had prematurely fused, and that now there was nothing to do but for the leaders of the movement to take the plunge—hit or miss, as might be. The short newspaper report read as follows, and was printed modestly alongside other general matter:—