ABSTRACT
The civilian wing of the young officers’ plot was a gang called the Blood Brotherhood (Ketsumeidan, literally the Blood Oath Band). Some of them were vicious youths, living on the borderland where patriotism and crime meet; others were idle, fanatical students. All of them were idealists, in their way. They were willing instruments, but they had hypnotized themselves with slogans and they regarded themselves as more than tools. The prospect that the army would become the active force of revolution had stimulated the patriots all along the line, and many currents met in the movement which culminated on May 15. Before their story is told spend a moment with a little naval commander, now dead and forgotten, who sowed the dragon’s teeth in the Naval Academy and who finally, before a Chinese bullet killed him, prepared the crime of May 15 by bringing together the young officers and the professional patriots.
