London Observer Quotes
The Chinese Republic stands upon a base of sand, that the moderate men are looking forward to the re-establishment of a monarchy, the army to a military despotism or extended anarchy, the provinces to autonomy, and the robber Powers around China to spoliation on a scale even bigger than has hitherto been possible. Young China's friends have served the honest members of the party badly, by persuading Europe and America to accept as genuine the elaborate sham which has been erected, by talking of the solidity of the Republic and the acquiescence of the people.
London Observer, Editorial Describing China after the revolution of Sun Yat Sen and the Young China Party, December 8, 1912
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
China, after overthrowing the Manchu Dynasty was struggling among many factions for control of the government.
Young China had toppled the Manchu Dynasty, but once in power, they found it much harder to govern—a common happening after revolution.
With the successful Chinese Communist Revolution, the Nationalists were driven off the mainland of China and occupied the island of Formosa (Taiwan) and had a small garrison of soldier on two tiny islands off the Chinese Coast, Quemoy and Matsu. The communist Chinese government wanted control of all three of the Nationalist held islands. It became a campaign issue or whether or not the United States should go to war to protect the two tiny islands from the communists even though there were no civilians on them and they had virtually no value other than symbolic. Nixon, took the position that the Chinese Communists must be stopped as they had world conquest as their objective. Philosophically, many Communists of the time, following Marxist theory, actually believed that Capitalism would crumble and communism would take its place. In that sense many felt that the world would be communist. China, as we now know, was more concerned with counterrevolution by the nationalists, expansionism and growth of Vietnam (her ancient enemy), the rise of Japan, border wars with India, and constant threats from Russia and China had no military plans for world conquest.
Porfirio Diaz - the longtime dictator of Mexico stole the election of 1910 and had his opponent Francisco Madero arrested and imprisoned. Madero got out, crossed the border to San Antonio, and issued this declaration which started the Mexican Revolution.
There had been a revolution against the Qing Dynasty and an attempt to establish a republic. Wang, the spokesperson, quickly wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly one of the most prestigious American publications. He minimized the degree of bloodshed, but by Chinese standards of civil unrest where over 20 million people had been killed in previous discords, this was relatively benign. It was a de facto military coup which also involved political assassinations which he carefully avoided mentioning, and just a few months after the publication of this article a second revolution broke out and this version of the Chinese Republic was very short lived.
Babeuf led a faction of French revolutionists who thought that the revolution had become to hierarchical and had substituted a dictatorship of certain citizens for the dictatorship of the King. He was arrested and executed by the hierarchy he was trying to replace in what has become known as the “conspiracy of the equals.”
The organization sent 2,100 volunteers to fight for South American independence from Spain.
This famous quotation has been attributed to Voltaire, 1694-1778, and French Philosopher, Denis Diderot, 1713-1784. Most quotation collections erroneously attribute it to Diderot in the version “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Both Voltaire and Diderot used the quotation as did many others opposed to monarchy and the then repressive church hierarchies. But the origin of the famous phrase was with Meslier. When the priest died, three handwritten manuscripts were found written and signed by him in which he attacked religion in general and the church and the Bible in particular. His Testament was read by Voltaire and Denis Diderot among others and he was very influential in their development as opponents of organized religion.
The Observer is a British newspaper published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its sister papers The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly, whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993, it takes a social liberal or social democratic line on most issues. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.
