We shall strive to elevate the people to secure peace and to legislate for prosperity.

Manchus who abide peacefully in the limits of our jurisdiction will be accorded equality, and given protection.
"We will remodel the laws, revise the civil, criminal, commercial, and mining codes, reform the finances, abolish restrictions on trade and commerce, and ensure religious toleration and the cultivation of better relations with foreign peoples and governments than have ever been maintained before.

It is our earnest hope that those foreign nationals who have been steadfast in their sympathy will bind more firmly the bonds of friendship between us, and will bear in patience with us the period of trial confronting us and our reconstruction work, and will aid the consummation of the far-reaching plans, which we are about to undertake, and which they have long vainly been urging upon our people and our country.
"With this message of peace and good-will the republic cherishes the hope of being admitted into the family of nations, not merely to share its rights and privileges, but to co-operate in the great and noble task of building up the civilization of the world.
"Sun Yat-sen, _President_." The next step was to displace the three-cornered Dragon flag, itself of quite modern origin, in favour of a new republican emblem.

For this purpose was designed a flag of five stripes,--yellow, red, blue, white, black,--arranged at right angles to the flagstaff in the above order, and intended to represent the five races--Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetan, Mussulmans--gathered together under one rule.
On February 12, three important edicts were issued.

In the first, the baby-emperor renounces the throne, and approves the establishment of a provisional republican government, under the direction of Yuean Shih-k`ai, in conjunction with the existing provisional government at Nanking.