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Kong and the British Consul to act as arbitrators.”
The Governor could not conceal his excitement. To persuade London to accept this proposal, the Governor quoted from earlier information that he received from someone he believed to be very close to President Yuan:
[The President said] as the state of things in Canton was so desperate, the only course open was for the Canton Government to ask for foreign intervention and to get the Canton province run as the customs are run: for a limited period of 20 to 30 years.
To help this proposal to get through in London and Beijing, the Governor of Hong Kong telegraphed his British colleagues in the treaty ports for assistance. Sir Jordan recorded that his part in this scheme was "to induce President [Yuan] to accept this principle and instruct Canton accordingly". This scheme, however, failed to materialize because the influence of Liang Shiyi in Beijing declined suddenly in face of his political competition with the Anhui military men, another group of supporters of Yuan. To save its decline, the Communication Clique was driven to support Yuan's monarchical movement, a move which proved to be a political disaster for the Communication Clique. The majority of them had a narrow escape to Japan or Hong Kong after the fall of Yuan.
The worse for the Cantonese was yet to come. After the death of Yuan, Sun Yat-sen, together with Wu Tingfang returned to Canton from Shanghai and declared a new constitutional government in the South. Without an army under his control, he brought with him a guest army from Guangxi. I quote from a memoir of a Guangxi general that:
They really look awful! This same uniform had been worn through a war and a hot summer & in most cases had been worn to rags. Without needle or thread, many soldiers simply used grass to fasten the torn [pieces] together; the entire army was in a state of near-starvation...
He explained the difficulty of his army and how the army was formed:
When the anti-Yuan movement had started, local armies were