Chapter 174 Chapter 14 Died at the hands of the Japanese

On this day, a local newspaper in Wuchang reported a strange incident. It said that in Zhaoxian Town, Dongxiang, someone saw a dragon with his own eyes, weak and falling into the lake. Angry eyes and strong claws.The next day, nothing was seen, except that the water of the lake was dark black. Yuan Shikai's life had entered a countdown and he was unable to get out of bed.The third daughter-in-law cut a piece of meat from her own thigh, made soup, and served it to her husband.It is also a relatively long historical tradition in China to cut meat and make soup, but Yuan Shikai clearly noticed it, pushed the bowl of soup away, and said repeatedly: "Don't drink, don't drink."

Then he sat up and sighed: I don't feel sorry for the emperor, I feel sorry for the hearts of the people in this world. Knowing that his life was not long, Yuan Shikai summoned the person who took care of his property, picked up a list of property on his desk, and said: "All my property is here." Yuan Shikai's deposits and stocks totaled about two million yuan. If he had the slightest intention of corruption, he would definitely not only have this little money.What's more, Yuan Shikai has more than 30 children. If the two million yuan is distributed, within ten years at most, some unlucky child will starve.

On June 5, Xu Shichang arrived in Beijing to see Yuan Shikai for the last time. On that day, Yuan Shikai's condition deteriorated, and after he regained consciousness, he handed over the presidential seal to Xu Shichang, saying: "The president should belong to Li Yuanhong. I'm fine, and I'm ready to go back to Zhangde." At about 10:45 am the next day, Yuan Shikai died. After his death, his secretary Zhang Yiling found Yuan Shikai's own elegiac couplet in his drawer: Going to be a big enemy for Japan, and watching China rebuild the republic. Mr. Wang Zhonghe said: Before his death, Yuan Shikai babbled that he would turn into a ghost after his death and cause trouble for Japan.

Yuan Shikai, he knows better than anyone else that he did not die from Cai E's National Defense Army, Sun Wen's Chinese Revolutionary Party, the betrayal of those around him, or even the monarchy. He died at the hands of the Japanese. As early as his boyhood expedition to North Korea, Yuan Shikai had feuded with the Japanese.Since then, he has become a thorn in the side of the Japanese vowed to get rid of.Leaving aside, let’s just say that since the founding of the Republic of China, first the Japanese Mitsui consortium urged Sun Wen to set off a second revolution, then the Japanese supported Cai E’s National Defense Army, and then Japanese soldiers rushed out of Qingdao, pretending to be the Chinese Revolutionary Party During the bombing of Jinan City, in this series of events, Yuan Shikai confronted only the Japanese desire to establish hegemony in China.

He blocked the way of the Japanese, and paid the price of ruin. Yuan Shikai, he is the most likely candidate to become China's Washington, but the Japanese will not allow this to happen. A China that enjoys normative and open social rules and is therefore powerful is not in the interest of the Japanese. Yuan Shikai has always been committed to maintaining an effective and standardized social law, and he has achieved it within Beiyang.In the eighth year after his death, Beiyang Qi Xieyuan and Lu Yongxiang competed for Shanghai, and both sides dug trenches to defend themselves.Every day at dawn, as usual, one side first fires a row of artillery, and then the other side fires back. You come and go. The artillery battle lasted until about ten o'clock, and then the flags died down. .When it was dark, the morning rhythm was repeated. The artillery battle continued until eight or nine o'clock at night, and then both sides blew out the lights and went to sleep.

This is a war situation unfamiliar to the Chinese since then, but it was the normal state of war in China before the Spring and Autumn Period. It was called watching soldiers in history, and it was also a war model respected by Western developed countries.In this kind of war, there is no exaggeration of hatred, no cruelty of violence, and no evil and insidiousness that involves innocent people in it.Such wars do not aim at the killing of innocent lives, but are only an extreme form of political settlement. But the Japanese cannot tolerate this concept being accepted by the Chinese. Once this humanistic concept is accepted, people are not filled with hatred or bloody slaughter, but seek common ground while reserving differences, accept each other, and everyone respects the opponent's political stance and life value, as well as their own personality and dignity.The result of continuing is that every Chinese will treat themselves with a serious attitude, paying more attention to the process than to the result, and to the means and even the purpose.Unscrupulousness will be rejected as demeaning.

Dignity, what is dignity?Dignity is a norm that cannot lose its principle, and it is a value choice of means.Unscrupulous means loss of dignity. Yuan Shikai didn't know these theories, he only knew that it had to be done. But the Japanese will never allow him to do this. As I said, a China that values ​​its own personality and dignity is not what the Japanese expect. Yuan Shikai's crime is not the fault of the monarchy. As early as 1748, Montesquieu's "On the Spirit of Law" mentioned that there are three types of regimes in the world, namely republic, monarchy and autocracy.The educational law of a monarchy should be honor, the educational law of a republic should be morality, and the educational law of a despotism should be terror.

It is obvious that there is no original sin in the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy, and there is nothing wrong with the road to a constitutional monarchy.Yuan Shikai's only mistake was that he gave the Japanese an excuse to openly support others to mess with him.Just as Zigong said: If a gentleman is evil and lives in the low class, all the evil in the world will belong to him. Yuan Shikai made a mistake, and his mistake was that he should not have offended the Japanese. If we have to give Yuan Shikai an evaluation, this is it.