Chapter XXXI: Awakened Interest in America 567 (4)

2. I have taken an oath to establish a republic in China, and if I consented to the proposal laid down by Yuan (to resign and put him in charge) I would be foresworn. I am convinced that a republic is not only practicable, but that it would be the best thing for China. Those (monarchical nations and syndicates) asserting otherwise know nothing about the Chinese. This republic is now an established fact. Nothing can swerve me from what I consider my duty to my fellow countrymen. Undoubtedly the best thought unanimously supports the republic.

3. China can not allow outsiders to dictate as to her form of government.

4. There is no question of North and South China; it must be One China.

5. We are confident of the righteousness of our cause and the superiority of the military strength of the republicans. If Yuan Shih Kai persists in obstructing, our armies will be instructed to march northward.

On January 21st the Manchus persisted in not abdicating, and contemplated appointing the minister of war, Yin Tchang, and the president of the War Board, Tieh Liang, both Manchus of the ultra type, as dictators over Yuan. This was in contravention of the agreement of Nineteen Constitutional Articles between the Manchus and the old National Assembly, pressed by the soldiers of the Lanchow camp in October, 1911, that no Manchus were to be placed in authority until a constitutional government was established.

While the world was watching the camps of war, where the men stamped eager for blood, two million women and children, in three other parts of the land were starving from flood, famine and the absence of their bread providers. Look on the map at the old bed of the Yellow River across the middle of Kiangsu province; the valley of the Hwei River across northern Nganhwei province, emptying into Lake Hangsu; and Wuhu, on the Yangtze, where the flooded river tried to break east across the flat country to Shanghai, instead of arching north to Nanking. Not since 1906 have crops or homes been long above water in these crowded districts. What the missionaries mainly, and others (native and foreign) of the Central China Relief Committee, with headquarters at Shanghai, have done, a library of books could not adequately tell. Part of the story would be the relief trains of gift flour which left Minneapolis and was transported free across the Pacific by the United States army transport _Buford_; and more of the story would be the work of the American Red Cross; the grand missionary periodicals of America; and the Pacific Coast Chambers of Commerce, which put business aside for philanthropy. Their altruism, their manly effectiveness, their human kindness that has been so deeply Christian and Confucian (as you look at it from both an Occidental and an Oriental standpoint) has been moving beyond words, and it is largely owing to this action on the part of America that the hand of the war-inflamed Chinese was stayed against foreigners in this campaign. Their women said: “Don’t strike the white physicians and bread-givers; the men who speak in mercy and are clothed in altruism.” The soldiers of the Eighth Division of Hupeh men, under General Li, at Wuchang, in bidding the American Episcopal missionaries good-by, cheered them with these words: “Americans are our brothers.” Never had such a scene of suppressed emotion and earnestness occurred in China. I have already recited General Li’s manifesto to his men concerning the treatment of missionaries. None was more surprised than the good missionaries themselves. From their experience in the “Boxer” campaign of 1900, the missionaries expected unflinching loyalty from their converts, but they did not look for the highest Geneva Convention amenities from the new levies of the revolutionary soldiers. It was really astonishingly delightful. But on second thought, it might have been seen that it was only the first fruits of the seed sown long ago by the missionaries themselves, and now being garnered after many days when the sowing had been almost forgotten.

Reports came from Peking that the boy emperor, Pu Yi, was utterly unconscious of trouble and the tottering of the oldest and widest throne on earth, in all this ebb and flow of war and intrigue. Deserted by his guardians, parent and tutors, he was left most of the time in the Forbidden City with eunuchs, who humored his every whim, with the result that his temper took on true Manchu characteristics. When opposed, he threw the first thing at hand at those near him. When the food displeased him, he cracked the dishes over the heads of his kneeling servitors. The _Break-Up of China_ indeed, but by another author than Lord Charles Beresford!

On January 26, 1912, the armies got in motion again, one corps leaving Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, to checkmate the republican expedition which had landed at Chifu. Up the Nanking-Tientsin railway, General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, and General Hsu met in an engagement at Kucheng, in northern Nganhwei province, and the former was defeated. At Wuchang, General Li’s Hupeh forces, reinforced with Cantonese troops, got in motion to meet General Feng’s imperialists up the Peking-Hankau railway. Large consignments of Mauser and Krag rifles and ammunition for Krupp guns, ordered from German firms for the imperialists, on this day passed through St. Petersburg on their way to Peking by the Siberian railway. On January 28th, the provisional republican Senate of forty-two members (three each from fourteen rebel provinces) convened at Nanking in foreign clothing and without queues. A remarkably enthusiastic scene occurred at the close of President Sun’s address, which address urged unity. The members all rose and cheered for the republic, while a modern band played martial music. The republicans for the first time in modern history instituted the use of a remarkable regiment of bomb-throwers. They went to the front with large canvas bags of dynamite bombs hanging from their shoulders. It required exceptional bravery to enlist in such a corps, as when a bag was hit by an imperialist’s bullet, the explosion not only shattered the bomb-thrower, but detonated the bags of his fellows if they were near. This corps was uniformed in the British military peaked cap, and they wore tunics and puttees, and had no queues.

By February 3, 1912, the Manchus had fully discussed abdication. It was proposed that the sacerdotal succession should be maintained, thus continuing the famous Chou and Confucian sacrifices and ancestor worship among the Manchus. This would reduce the Manchu emperor to a Confucian pope, similar to the Mikado before he conquered the Shoguns, and similar to the Taoist pope at Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi province, and the Buddhist popes at Urga, in Mongolia, and Lhasa, in Tibet. The Manchus also stipulated that their hereditary titles should remain. This was a foolish move, as it removed them more than ever from participation and influence in the social body, just as the private retention of titles keeps the descendants of the old French nobility hopelessly divorced from power in republican France. The republicans again offered Yuan Shih Kai the presidency, with Sun Yat Sen as premier, this being a union of the democratic principles in the American and British systems. Yuan was inclined to insist on a dual republic, but the Nanking republicans insisted that Yuan should come to Nanking. The republicans under Generals Hsu and Ling now advanced their right wing, striking General Chung Fung of the imperialists, at Siuchow, in northern Kiangsu province, and winning a great victory.

I have said that the most brilliant diplomatic move of the republicans was that by Wu Ting Fang, who announced in December, 1911, that if any foreign syndicate or nation made loans to the Manchus, the republicans, if successful, would repudiate those loans. The most brilliant strategic move of the republicans was made in November, 1911, when General Li induced Admiral Sah’s navy to join the republican cause. This enabled the republicans to hold the large commercial fleet of the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, and it was on this latter fleet that the republicans were able to raise a loan in February, 1912, from Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, when they were at their wits’ end where to find money to balance the subscriptions which the Manchus had made from their hoards, and the money which they were drawing from the cash tills of the rich imperial railways of North China. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha tried to buy out the China Merchants’ Steamship Company so as to give Japan dominance in the China coastal trade, but Britain interposed. The republicans had only one little railway from Shanghai to Hangchow, 104 miles, whose surplus earnings could help them, as compared with the 4,000 miles of successful railway in the territory controlled by the Manchus.

As neither Manchu nor Yuan could hold Manchuria, Japan now advanced a battalion to Mukden, a measure pregnant with precedents and controversy in the future. America maintained her reputation for altruism, Secretary Knox, on February 3rd, addressing the German ambassador a note to the effect that America’s idea was that all the powers should restrain their nationals from interfering with loans as much as with arms in China. The powers which were inclined to break leash were Japan, Russia and Belgium. The southern republican navy found the international forces and legations a bar in the way of the capture of Peking. The navy was off Chin-wang-tao, the only open port on the Liaotung Gulf, in February, 1912, and was ready to transfer the fifth republican army from Chifu. As long as Peking was dignified with the legation staffs of foreigners, the prestige of the foreigner supported to that extent the cause, or rather the integrity of the imperial north, and the rebels hesitated to send their attack home on account of international complications. Again and again the republicans asked for recognition and the transfer of the legations to Nanking. America only gave any attention to this request, sending Doctor Tenny, of the Peking legation staff, to pay an unofficial call on and make unofficial inspection of the republican government at Nanking. Japan and Russia closed their fists tighter on South and North Manchuria, respectively, lending money right and left to industrials and mines and thus establishing a mortgage and excuse for remaining in case of a break-up.

Wherever the capital is to be, whichever faction is to control, whatever style of government is to win, it does not seem impossible that the free China of the future will have fewer internecine conflicts and rows than the England, America or France of history. Liberty goes through about the same birth pangs whether she is born white, brown, black or yellow! On February 11, 1912, (probably at Yuan’s private suggestion), forty-eight generals of the imperial army wired Yuan that they would fight no more for the Manchus, so that the seed of the Lanchow camp had finally spread into a whole forest. The official birth of the Chinese republic came on Lincoln’s birthday (think of it, America!), February 12, 1912, the abdication decree of the Manchus including the following sentence: “Let Yuan organize to the full the powers of the provisional republican government, forming a great republic with the union of Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans and Tibetans.” President Sun Yat Sen telegraphed Canton in particular to accept Yuan, and another telegram instructed all Chinese consuls abroad to adopt foreign dress. The United States at once arranged to recognize unofficially both the northern and southern provisional Chinese republics under Presidents Yuan and Sun respectively, until a national assembly could form a united government.

On February 15th, the Christian Chinese provisional president, Sun Yat Sen, performed a remarkable act of self-sacrifice to win the north for republicanism and induce Yuan to join the great cause. He also was able to induce the vehement south to accept the former reactionary Yuan. Doctor Sun resigned as provisional president in favor of Yuan. The National Assembly at Nanking paid him this tribute: “Such an example of purity of purpose is unparalleled in history. It was solely due to your magnanimity and modesty, Doctor Sun, that northern China was won over to republicanism.” Here was the man who had achieved republicanism, laying by all its honors in favor of the man who had longest and most powerfully withstood republicanism. Yet Sun was happy. China was happy. Yuan and his aide Tang were happy. The Chinese republican navy at Chifu, Shanghai and Nanking saluted the republic with a broadside, and the Chinese legations throughout the world hoisted the new sun flag. With the least bloodshed ever known, Sun and his cabinet had achieved the greatest revolution ever known, and had established a republic of twenty-one republics, four times the population of America. They will be managed by a combination of the British and American systems, as their bulk is too great for the strong centralization which is now becoming popular in America to correct certain corporation evils. The provincial republics will develop largely as units, until the individual is educated sufficiently for greater cohesion. Sun Yat Sen will go down to history as the greatest dreamer, prophet, organizer, altruist and political philosopher the modern world has known, not that he is brainier than the white man, but being a yellow man, he has been able to accomplish more than any white man. His reception, certainly the reception of his cause, by the hearts of men should be enthusiastic. He stands not alone. The scores of idealists and fighters of his cabinet made the way for the constructive men who will now take hold. Above all, he converted Yuan by his self-obliteration, and Yuan converted the obstructionist north. What if the Honanese Yuan is at the head of affairs for a while instead of the Kwangtungese Sun? They are both Chinese and both republicans. China now has the center of the world’s stage, and America has built the Panama canal to reach quickly a front seat at the stage. The actors will have long and strenuous parts, and the house is filling up rapidly to hear, and see, and applaud, if all is done well, as it should be. Doctor Sun has done the most for a republic. Long years ago he planned it, and he has been persecuted most by the Manchus for opinion’s sake. When the assemblies succeed each other, his turn as president or premier will doubtless come.

Kang Wu Wei had dropped into astonishing silence during all these strenuous days, but on February 18, 1912, he suddenly and insanely (allow the emphasis) burst out in rebellion against the republic in Manchuria. Yuan he opposed; Sun he opposed. Did he, and the rebelling governor, Chao Ehr Sun, plot then for the Manchus or the Japanese in Manchuria? Why did not this first reformer Kang repress himself? Why did not Yuan and Sun repress themselves somewhat and win him? _A bas_, personal jealousies, antipathies or overleaping ambitions! Surely there is room for all in twenty-one republics, which are to be bound as one commonwealth. The Chinese are intense in feeling and clannish in spirit, and they often turn vehemently on one another; their Tong wars in New York and San Francisco for instance. Thus Yuan might hate Kang, and Kang have none of Yuan, whereas, according to Macaulay, “both should serve the state”. It is this repression of individual resentment and ambition which has made England and America so governable, and it is something China will learn as the years of stress surge about the ship of state. The title of captain or president amounts to very little in the light of patriotism; all are equal when it comes to manning the pumps and shortening or letting out sail according to the winds that blow. Parties will arise; provincial feeling will be assertive; leaders and their followings will clash, but the Chinese must learn, as we all have to learn, that the striving must be one way o’ the rope and not a tug against each other because of personal greed, low ambition or unruliness. In hundreds of documents issued during the rebellion, the republicans held up two men, Washington and Napoleon, as representing successful protest against tyrant kings. But Washington laid the sword by the minute statesmanship could win. Napoleon used his sword to advance himself and crush every will except his own; the way of an egotist. If China needs a foreign model to look at occasionally, let it be that of Washington, with his moderation, his unselfishness, his charity, his honor, his true republicanism, which sees in every citizen (man or woman) a king equal to himself, for the ballot and tax receipt have made all men equal kings!

I have pointed out the inconsistencies of character in Yuan and Kang. They may develop in other leaders from whom we expect much. It will be recalled that the great Empress Tse Hsi alternated “Boxer” and reform edicts; the lopping off of heads, and unbinding of women’s feet; the composing of poems on gentleness, and teaching her sleeve dogs to run at foreigners. The greatest viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, wrote books recommending modern gun foundries and steel mills one day, and the compulsory enthronement of worn-out Confucianism the next day, in the land which had always declared that any man could perform all religious rites. The genial Manchu Tsai princes who were the most affable of men when the Army, Navy and Constitutional Commissions visited England and America in recent years, were the irreconcilable Ruperts who insisted on the slaughter of foreigners and non-combatants in the northern provinces during the rebellion. The venerable and cultured viceroy of Nanking, Chang, who was the first official to open a modern exposition in China, was the very man who helped to hurl that awful slaughter on the innocents, with the ruthless division of Shangtung troops on November 10, 1911, at Nanking. The reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, the father of the immortal progressive edicts of 1898 in the _Peking Gazette_, the possessor of the sweetest face that ever graced a Chinese, was known to beat his waiters over the head with dishes, and his aunt, the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi, whose private ambition was to be the best painter of plum blossoms in the land, was known, according to Ching Shan, the comptroller of her household, to dance in rage that was awful to behold, and which left its wake in broken crockery and clocks. They have not as yet “lunacy commissions of three” in China, whose infallible tests are walking the chalk-line without a corkscrew motion, record of screaming and throwing vases, talking to one’s self and having wigglety eyes at times, or men of tawny color might have been incarcerated long before fame came to them! In the same inconsistent way the Japanese Prince Ito was a constitutionalist when a student in England, and a red imperialist as a statesman in Japan and Korea. With the Oriental it often is, “who pays for my ration, his is the flag I fly”. The larger sentimentality and altruism of republicanism will doubtless equip the new Chinese with deeper conviction and more enduring sentiment and devotion to ideals. We call a man who is not a good republican out of office, or a good Liberal on the left side of the speaker’s desk at Westminster, not much of a patriot in America or England, and China and Japan must learn the Pauline admonition to Timothy regarding manliness: “Be instant in season and out of season.”

Owing to deferred pay, some of General Li’s republican troops at Wuchang, and General Wu’s republican troops at Canton mutinied in the middle of February, and on February 29, 1912, regiments of the notorious Third Division of Yuan’s northern troops mutinied at Peking, partly for the same reason, partly because they did not want Yuan to go to Nanking; but mainly all this was a recrudescence of the tricks of the Manchus to bring in foreign interference. The Manchus had received part of their pension from the foreign loans and were illegally using it to stir up sedition. The mutineers burned a mile of houses, stretching from the Manchu’s Forbidden City to the new Wai Wu Pu Building, which is Yuan’s headquarters, and millions of dollars of treasures were destroyed, including the historic Wu Men gate leading to the imperial purple and yellow city. Many shopkeepers hung out signs, “Already looted; now empty” in an effort to save their buildings. The houses occupied by Mr. Straight, the representative of the Morgan Syndicate, and by Mr. Menocal, of the American International Bank, were looted, as were other foreign houses, but personal affront was not offered to foreigners. The quarters occupied by the delegates from the Union Assemblies of the south, who came from Nanking, were fired. The reactionary troops of Yuan showed their hate of the southerners on every possible occasion. This was his punishment for raising an army mainly in the two Manchu provinces, instead of generally enrolling it throughout the country. These troops wanted to support the rule of the nation by an unconstitutional Privileged Minority. It would be folly to agree with their politics, and it would mean terrible bloodshed to disagree with them.

The question they have raised is far from settled. One shell was dropped into the American legation compound. For strategic purposes, American soldiers took possession of the Chien Men gate and pagoda tower, and the German troops occupied the Hatamen gate and pagoda tower, both of which overlooked the legation and Methodist Mission quarters. One thousand more foreign troops were brought up from Tientsin to guard the legations. During the burning the Manchu eunuchs, who had witnessed the 1900 siege, could be seen in the moonlight gathered on the glistening yellow roofs of the imperial palaces. It will be recalled that this Imperial Third Division under General Feng, committed the uncalled-for and awful arson of Hankau in November, 1911. The _Muse of History_ will in vain turn the pages of her index to find a record in her volumes of incendiaries who surpass the reactionary Third Division, whom Yuan now locked up in their barracks. He then called upon the old-style Chang Ku turbaned troops to defend the city. Yuan was continually showing distrust and fear of his troops; neither would he permit the southern delegates to bring up southern troops to defend the constitution and their liberty, nor would he permit the empress dowager and the emperor to retire from the imperial city to the summer palace, some twelve miles distant, or to Jehol:--he said he feared to arouse the northern troops. The southern delegates replied: “It is too bad that we deferred thoroughly whipping these northerners while we were at it.”

On February 29, 1912, the first partial recognition of the republican government was made by the American House of Representatives, unanimously passing the Sulzer resolution congratulating the “people” of China on assuming the responsibilities of self-government. All throughout Pechili, at Paoting, where the Anglican missionary, Mr. F. Day, was killed by a mob which was looting with the Sixth Division, at Tientsin, and throughout Shangtung province, the revolt spread, as a recrudescence of the Manchuized anti-foreign or “Boxer” movement. Native Christians were assassinated or had their eyes put out. Doctor Sun, at Nanking was distressed, and promised to stand by Yuan and republicanism. He sent telegrams to all the assemblies requesting them to be steady, and generously saying that Yuan had rendered a service by inducing the Manchus to abdicate. The situation reminded one of Burke’s description of the French revolution: “The National Assembly is surrounded by an army not raised either by the authority of their crown or by their command, and which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them.” The new Tientsin mint was looted. Doctor Schreyer, an eminent German physician of Tientsin, was assassinated. The American legation guard got through to Peking to the delight of the foreigners. Foolishly none of the foreign guards brought artillery, and the legations were therefore at the mercy of any artillery attack that the northern troops might direct against them. At Fengtai, the British Somerset regiment was on guard when 1,500 Chinese modern soldiers stopped the eastbound train. The Somersets, with the traditional bravery of the British, gave the Chinese troops one hour to clear out. By that time the 700 British Inniskilling Fusiliers, under command of the soldierly Colonel Hancock, were brought west, detrained quickly, and with the Somersets, marched at once on the positions of the obstructionist Chinese troops, who found discretion to be the better part of valor. Then the freed train started for Tientsin. There were now 3,000 foreign troops in Peking, and on March 3rd the Fifteenth American Infantry, under Major Arrasmith, led a grand march of the quarter to show Yuan’s rebelling troops that order at last could be sustained, and Japan was called upon, as in 1900, for 5,000 troops. Hongkong and Manila were also wired to send reinforcements. The troops of the north who had fought against the republic for four months, were now showing themselves to be a disgusting set of “Boxer” looters, incendiaries, murderers and “_agents provocateurs_” for intervention. The outcome of the whole matter might be the bringing of the remobilized southern forces north and the immediate unification of nationalism at Peking under Sun, Yuan and General Li; although the south at heart desires Nanking to be the capital, as it is removed from Russian influence and northern sectionalism.

Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.

Military company of St. John’s American Episcopal University,
Shanghai. Numbers of these young men took part in the revolution,
and they are leaders in the New China.
]

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The bund, Tientsin, where the Legation Guards disembarked during the revolution of 1911–12.]

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The heart of religious China, the only reservation made by the
abdicating Manchu emperor; the chaste, blue-roofed Temple of
Heaven, Peking. The beautiful proportions of this building have
been widely praised by foreigners. The three galleries are of
marble.
]

Amid all the disturbance, another cloud, the size of a man’s hand, loomed up on the horizon. The Marquis Chu Cheng Yu, a lineal descendant of the Chinese Ming kings, began to canvass the rioting army for adherents. Two hundred American marines were rushed from Shanghai to Tientsin on the collier _Abarenda_, and the American fleet left the southern ports for Taku. The transport _Warren_ sailed from Manila with another battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry and marines. The four-nation bankers, with the approval of six powers, came to Yuan’s help with $1,000,000 loans on nine months’ warrants, to aid him in putting down mobbing and mutiny by paying off soldiers, who, however, used the money as fuel for more mutiny. It was decided to loan the dual republican governments at Peking and Nanking about $5,000,000 a month. Some of the old-style troops were more loyal to Yuan than were the notorious Third Division at Peking, the Sixth Division at Paoting, in Pechili province, the Second Division in Honan, and the Fifth Division, in Shangtung province, which were loyal to no cause or person. At the same time the preliminary contract of February twenty-first, by which the Russo-Asiatic Bank independently was to advance Sun and the Nanking republican organization $7,000,000, was canceled, and the four banking powers advanced Sun, at Nanking, $1,500,000 to pay off Cantonese troops and hire police. The rebellion of Yuan’s troops made many confess that the southern republicans had probably made a mistake in not following Chang the Second’s imperial forces of northern troops north in January, 1912, and giving the northern army several sound thrashings until the organization was broken up.

On March 9, 1912, the irreconcilable imperial governor of Shansi and Shensi provinces, General Sheng Yun, a Mongol by blood, still had 15,000 troops (many of them Mohammedans) fomenting Manchu propaganda and slaying everywhere, while General Yin Tchang, at Japanese Dalny, Governor Chao Ehr Hsun, at Mukden, and Prince Su, at Jehol and Kalgan, were doing the same thing. What a confused state of affairs existed in the mutinous army, of the north, which was divided into five corps. General Sheng’s Mohammedans were setting Shansi and Shensi provinces on fire. The corps of Imperial Guards and Manchu divisions at Peking were at heart of course for the deposed Manchu dynasty. The Mongol divisions in northern Pechili looted and decapitated and laughed at President Yuan’s orders. The old-style turbaned troops of Yuan’s were loyal one day and disloyal another, and the same thing was true of divisions of territorial Shangtung, Pechili and Honan troops of Yuan’s modern army. In the southern provinces the republicans had a little more cohesion in the five armies of their recruited corps and their two territorial armies. In Yunnan province an entirely isolated army was marking time and had done nothing for either southern or northern cause of late. Oh! for a strong hand to weave and hold all these cords in one cable of some strength.

On March 10th, amid the crashing of walls and institutions, a pathetic but inspiring scene occurred in the modern Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Office) at Peking. Yuan Shih Kai, dressed in military uniform, was formally inaugurated provisional president of the republic of China, in the presence of the Nanking assembly delegates, military and naval officers, provincial envoys, and many foreigners. Of course, legation staffs and missionary bodies did not attend officially. Yuan read a declaration promising progress, to observe the constitution, and retire when the National Assembly appointed a permanent president for the decided term, if he himself was not chosen. Two yellow robed Lamas from the Buddhist temple stepped up, presented Yuan with two honorary scarfs and called him, in Pekingese, “Da Dsoong Toong” (in Cantonese, Ta Tsung Tung),--the great president. It was a businesslike military scene, there being very little of Oriental display or the gorgeous robes of old. Tang Shao Yi was named premier. President Yuan signalized his assumption of office by pardoning all prisoners, except murderers and robbers, remitting all overdue land taxes and announcing that for the present the old laws would stand, except where they were obviously contrary to the spirit of republicanism.

The new constitution provided that the supreme power was in the hands of the National Assembly; that all acts of the president required the approval of the assembly, that the cabinet was answerable to the assembly; and that the assembly was to elect the president and vice-president, and have power to pass laws over the executive veto. This was vastly different from Japan’s stultified parliamentarism, and was a union of the American system of the lower house being supreme, and of the British executive efficiency obtainable from a small cabinet. Doctor Sun promised to turn over the great seal of his office. Disorder ruled throughout the armed north, where a republic was unpopular with the mercenary troops. Republican flags were torn down wherever the merchants of Peking put them up. The rebelling troops decapitated the crowd by thousands at Peking, Tientsin, Kalgan, Paoting, and throughout Shansi, Shensi and Pechili provinces. So many heads and bodies lay on the street that the donkeys and mules refused to pass the heaps. Yuan himself had to add the head of the headtaker to the pile. He sent the tall, venerable General Chiang Kwei Tai with old-style turbaned Nganhwei troops, who mowed off heads right and left through the streets of old Peking. The famous Tongkwan pass, at the heel of the Yellow River, commanding Shensi and Honan provinces, was seized by the reactionary troops of General Sheng Yun, who compelled the merchant guilds to pay blackmail or have their stores looted. Clearly Pechili province, with its hosts of irreconcilable mercenary troops, was the rock on which the ship of republicanism was now stranded. Yuan had to change his body-guard from day to day, one day old-style troops, another day Manchu troops, and again the champion looters of the Third Division, but the real hand which afforded what little steadiness there was, was the magnificent body of foreign troops which amounted to 3,000 picked men.

On March 12th, Provincial President Wu Hon Man and Governor Chan Kwang Ming, at Canton, were harassed by the notorious pirate chief, Luk, who was remarkably successful. Luk, through the mutiny of the soldiers, gained the historic Bogue, Yuchu, Whampoa and Fumen forts, and the arsenal and admiralty buildings. All the foreign navies, led by the United States gunboat _Wilmington_ and the British fleet under Commander Eyres, anchored off Shameen Island, cleared for action, and the passenger steamers, on which probably every world tourist has probably been, the _Fatshan_ and _Honan_, sailed from Canton for Hongkong with two thousand passengers each. The famous old shallow draft British gunboat _Moorhen_, the hero of a thousand pirate chases in intricate Kwangtung province waters, had her awnings and spars torn by bullets during the night, as she protected the electric station, so that the pirates could not strike Canton into midnight, and in the dark massacre along the narrow streets, the maloos and the bund. Eight hundred British and French troops patrolled the little foreign island of Shameen.

Before the days of direct primary nominations in America we suffered from the machine system, which advanced the incompetent and debarred the eminent and efficient from service in the state. A saloon-keeper who brought 2,000 votes would demand, for instance, the position of secretary of state. “But you’re not fitted for it; you’re a hoodlum.” The ward-heeler would answer: “I must have it; I have to pay my 2,000 brigands the ‘graft’ which we claim is ours; otherwise, remember our revenge next election.” One Shek Kam Chuen, a young stone-cutter and human hair hawker of Canton, was very successful in smuggling arms for the revolution, and on the declaration of independence, he led a following of 2,000 nondescript men, who did effective work in fighting. They were men who loved a fight more than liberty, not liberty more than life. When the republic was victorious and his troops, after being paid, were disbanded, Shek was unsatisfied. He, a hawker, wanted high office, when even President Sun turned his brother down from politics to business in Canton because he was not eminent for political ability. Shek made demands for his men that the state could not consistently grant. He smuggled arms to take up piracy in reprisal on the harassed state. The way the governor of Canton treated Shek and his legal adviser, Chang Han Hing, was, under the constitutional pressure of public opinion, to capture them at their headquarters, and under military law, or the application of the popular “recall”, have them both shot, to the great rejoicing of good citizens and taxpayers. That ended one instance of heelerism, bossism, packed primary, professional office holding, “public office a private graft”, piracy, or whatever you like to call it, in modern China! The “Popular Recall” was a success, despite the cynicism of the standpatters in Canton, and one of those standpatters was Shek’s lawyer, Chang, who shared his client’s fate, much to his disgusted surprise. I am sorry William Dean Howells was not in Canton at that time to write _A Modern Instance_!

General Wu Sum, with 2,000 republican provincial troops, left Canton for Swatow to put down pirates operating around that noted old city, and the famous General Ling, and General Ho came down from Nanking to assist. On March 14th the irreconcilable “Boxer” Manchu leader, Prince Tuan, exiled in Kansu province, raised the standard of revolt, with his son Ku Kwei, as a pretender to the throne. He had not the moral support of all of the imperial clan, because he had in 1900 plotted to displace Prince Chun’s emperor son, “Pu Yi”. Tuan is a shrewd, able and persistent leader. If he had not been a reactionary in 1900, he might have preserved to the Manchus a longer lease of power.

The battles of the international financiers still went on at Peking, Premier Tang Shao Yi’s action in raising $5,000,000 from a Russian-Belgian syndicate on the Chinese-built Peking-Kalgan railway, incensing the international group. Tang gave a laconic interview, merely saying: “China need not necessarily put herself forever in the hands of four nations; we can deal with independents where we are able to find any. The loan was first offered to American bankers, but those American bankers who are now in the Far East would not act independently of the four nations.” Russian, Japanese and Belgian bankers seemed to fall in with Russia’s plans, as in 1896, to put China under a financial thraldom. Russia did not want a loan given to China for her army, as Russia and Japan both desire a weak army in China. The four-nation bankers now offered China $300,000,000, of which $60,000,000 was to be for army purposes. If Japan joins in this loan, it will be because she does not want to be shut out of a share in controlling China’s finances, and an apportionment of the concessions. The _National Review_ of Shanghai published at this time a caricature, showing Russia pushing old China, and “Foreign Grafter” pushing New China, out of the way, while North China, a clam, had shut its shell on the beak of South China, a heron. The Chinese fable of the bird and the shellfish was quoted as follows: “A bird attacked an open shellfish on the beach; but the shellfish closed his shell with a snap, and the bird was caught. Both were then helpless, and fell an easy prey to some covetous fishermen.” Nearly all the Japanese papers, including the influential Tokio _Nichi_ and _Jiji_, and the Osaka _Mainichi_, came out attacking Yuan, and endeavoring to stir up differences between North and South China. If Japan could prove that Chinese conditions were unstable, there evidently would be more plausibility for Japan’s possible intervention in Manchuria! On March 16th, Premier Tang Shao Yi announced a provisional northern cabinet as follows, until the National Assembly of seven delegates to a province could meet. None of the appointees is a Manchu.

President, Yuan Shih Kai, a Honan man.

Premier, Tang Shao Yi, Cantonese, educated at Yale University, America.

Army, General Tuan Chi Jui, Nganhwei man, once viceroy of Hunan, active in revolution.

Navy, Admiral Lin Kwan Hsung, a man of considerable experience in the old and new navies, at Canton, along the Yangtze, etc.

Foreign Affairs, Lou Tseng Tsiang, Minister to Russia, Netherlands, etc. In this appointment Yuan shows how natural it is for him to favor Russia, whom he fears.

Interior, Cheo Ping Chun, a native of Hunan.

Education, Tsai Yuan Pei.

Railways, Posts, etc., Liang Ju Hao, Cantonese.

Commerce and Labor, Chen Chi Mei.

Agriculture, Sung Chiao Fen.

Justice, Wong Chun Hui, American educated, very able.

Finance, Hsiung Hsi Ling, Hunan man, once in Exterior Department of Hupeh province.

Most of these are southern men, some of whom replied that they did not see how they could come without a southern army to protect their lives from the loosely-held northern troops, who had no idea what constitutional honor or promises meant. The whole of the American Pacific Navy, including the fine cruisers _California_, _South Dakota_ and _Colorado_, left Honolulu for the Far East, and the United States steamer _Monterey_, on the same day, landed one hundred men at Swatow to preserve order and the tanks of the Standard Oil Company. On March 19th the republican troops at Canton and Swatow gained back after severe engagements the forts that the mutinous troops and pirates had taken. The government at Canton bought up all the food in the shops so as to starve out Luk’s pirates. Amid all the conflict of accusation and denial, it is fitting that Yuan Shih Kai should speak for himself, and therefore I quote parts from his long address to the old conservatives and to the provincial governors shortly after the abdication of the dynasty, which abdication he adroitly and successfully urged when, to use his own words, “it was well nigh impossible to make stand against the republicans.”

“From the time when I again led the troops and later when I came to court, I was animated with the purpose of establishing a constitutional monarchy, but the state of the country changed. The National Assembly and the provincial assemblies all fathered the policy of not using military force to put down the disturbances. When Hankau was regained, the naval forces were lost. The moment Hanyang was reconquered, Nanking fell. The power of the government over the waterways and the sea was gone, and the sources of revenue were cut off. Although in various ways I encouraged the military to greater effort, secured the revocation of Shangtung’s declaration of independence, subdued the capitals of Shansi and Manchuria, and did all in my power to prop up the North, yet the tide was too strong and swept every locality. Revolutionary societies among the people were scattered everywhere. At this time there was international intervention and it was requested that in the interests of humanity a truce be declared and negotiations undertaken. Foreigners continually uttered reproof on the scores of commercial interests and the indemnity. Because the country was in such a chaotic state politically, it was difficult to restore order. Within there was ruin; without there was furnished the possibility of foreign intervention. The revolutionary forces were coming by various routes to attack the North. The spirit of the army was shaken. Had the strife been continued, in a very short time the revolutionary army would have come north, and in that case it would have been impossible either to fight or to negotiate for peace. What of the imperial family and the livelihood of the bannermen? Recently the ministers of foreign nations, the commercial associations at the ports, the different conferences, the various troops and the provincial viceroys and governors have sent telegrams, all stating that the will of the people is bent on a republic, and that it would be well-nigh impossible to make stand against it. Should the enemy arrive at the walls of the capital, the disasters resulting would be unimaginable. How much better for the throne, of its own grace, to proclaim the republic at an early date. There was condemnation of the policy of staking the fate of their imperial majesties and the lives and property of the North on a single throw, trusting to luck in a single battle. An edict was issued by her Imperial Majesty directing me first to settle with the revolutionary army regarding the especial consideration to be accorded the imperial family and the treatment of the Manchus, Mongolians, Mohammedans, and Tibetans. If an agreement could be reached by the two sides, then the imperial family might enjoy glory, and the hereditary nobility among the Manchus, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans, as well as the allowances of the bannermen, might continue without interruption. An agreement was made, resulting in the present state of affairs.”

Neither Yuan nor the north has yet explained to the world the reason why the nobility of the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, etc., expect titles and pensions, unless it be the argument that is now wearing out over the world, in nation after nation, that it is constitutional to maintain rule by a Privileged Minority over a taxed majority! Yuan says: “An agreement was made resulting in the present state of affairs,” but the “present state of affairs” is not entirely satisfactory. At times, it seems in China that Confucius has abdicated to Confusion. The solution lies in three things: railways, education, and a real republican congress, none of the three to be interfered with by either a riotous or office-greedy army, but rather dutifully served by a patriotic army. There can be no doubt that the action of the ninety generals of the northern army in forcing the National Assembly at Peking, in July, 1912, at the sword’s point, to accept against their will the second cabinet which Yuan Shih Kai had selected, and some of his foreign-advised measures, was inimical to the vitality of constitutionalism in China. The result was the forming of a constitutional party in the Yangtze and southern provinces by Doctor Sun Yat Sen and his friends, called the Tung Men Hwei (Sworn Brother Society), some of whose measures were the supervision of Chinese finances, and railway and industrial development, largely by Chinese, and the discharge of more regiments of northern troops. The National Assembly and cabinet have recently put in Sunyacius’ charge the formation of a central railway board to arrange for the extension of railways.

II

WIT AND HUMOR IN CHINA

In his book _Alone in China_, Julian Ralph, the New Yorker, wrote in 1898 the following sentence:

“The men and women of China will live in my mind forever, here and in heaven, as the jolliest, kindest, most sympathetic and generous souls I ever found in such profusion anywhere in my roving.”

I have lived and traveled three years in China, and have found that the Chinese influence the foreigners and that the foreigners influence the Chinese, sharpening each other’s wit, and smoothing each other’s kindly humor. The jewel has many facets of view, depending on the angle of vision, and in the following I shall attempt to recall many of the angles.

Regarding the foreign custom, written of by Kipling and others, of the troubled or exiled ones of the treaty ports taking copiously to liquor for consolation, a wit remarked: “A corkscrew will never pull a man out of sorrow.”

The Manchu soldiers read little, and have been under the impression that others are like them. The “braves” on guard at the Ta Ping gate of Canton had been in the habit of extorting many a “cumshaw” from humble-looking citizens before they were allowed to go on their business. They caught a Tartar in 1910, when they seized a modern editor, who aired his complaint in his newspaper, which was read in due time by the Military Prefect Lo. What occurred between Lo and his old-fashioned braves was not reported, but the braves for many months before the revolution of 1911 saw in every passer-by an editor. Up to the time of free types, complaint had been smothered at the yamens.

Revolutionary spies had gone ahead of new appointees to distant provinces and impersonated them with a recitation of their record. In August, 1911, the Peking _Gazette_ recited that the cabinet would in future despatch a photograph in a sealed envelope to the governors, so that “they could pick out the man who fitted the record by physiognomy as well as memory”.

Back in the 80’s the famous Szechuen pioneer, Archibald Little, dunned the ears of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) at Peking for permission to open the whole Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chungking to steamer service. “Yes,” said the humorously evasive board at last, “you may run your steamer, but you know that a modern steamer will cut the unwieldy junks down. Therefore all sailing craft will tie up to the bank of the great river two days of each week, and give the terrible Fung-kwei (foreign) steamer full reign on the Yangtze, but on those two days of the week only. For five days of the week the steam craft must in reciprocation, tie up to the bank.” This would require weeks longer to ascend the river than could be done by tracking and sail, and Mr. Little’s plan for fast steamer service was effectually disposed of by the wily Manchu Board, which boasted that it “never denied a foreign request”.

Two trains of coolies meet, and words or a jostle precipitate a combat. After it is all over, and your men take up again the arms of your chair, you remark that although your leader’s clothes are nearly ripped off, he is laughing about it. In astonishment, you ask him why, and he replies: “You should see the fellow I tackled; he hasn’t any left.”

In the country parts, if you hand a cigar to a man at an inn, he thinks it is proper manners to pass it to every one, to take a puff, just as he would do with a pipe.

The _Chi Feng Pao_, a native paper of Peking, reported that in the month preceding the great 1911 revolution, even the house servants of the Court had not received their wages for months, and that one morning this anonymous placard was found placed on the comptroller’s door: “Not even a shadow of our pay to be seen yet. Why?”

A Chinese merchant, who was disgusted that all his heirs died upon birth, called at a life insurance office at Tientsin, and asked if “they could insure a well and proper birth”, for if so, he would gladly take out a policy. He supposed that was what the new American life insurance meant.

A Hakka woman of the south was seldom given chicken by her husband, who complained of the expense. She obtained his permission, however, to purchase a fowl for the god in the Taoist temple. The husband came home, found his wife eagerly eating the bird, and shrieked out: “How is this? I bought it for the god, not for you.” She replied: “I offered it to the god, who ate all he could of it. I am only eating the remainder, thanks to the god, and not to you, for that.”

It is the custom for the mandarins who go into a country inn, to hang out a red card, stating that “This inn is full”. A rejected guide replied: “Rather the mandarin is full.”

I have seen a humorous drawing on a screen, which shows a cat chasing a mouse. The cat has only been able to catch a hind foot of the mouse, which keeps running, the foot lengthening in a most comical way, judging by the disgust on the face of the cat, and the laugh on the face of the mouse, which says: “That is all you get, anyway.”

“How is it that there are no one-legged men to be seen in China; do you have no accidents?” an intelligent official was asked, and he replied humorously: “Oh, yes, but as we know nothing of surgery, when a man’s leg gets in trouble, we bury the whole man.”

Some of their merry proverbs are:

“If you must beat the priest, wait till he has ended the prayer for you.”

“It’s all very well to tell the priest that you are penitent, but prove it by pennies.”

“A wheelbarrow ahead means a trail behind.”

“Man’s mouth is wider than a volcano when it comes to words.”

A sick man, sleeping fitfully, is said to be having a “raw sleep”, and correspondingly a tired or a drunken man, enjoying deep rest, is said to be having a “ripe sleep”.

It has been the custom of the French and Germans, when a missionary or an ambassador has been unfortunately assassinated, to compel the Chinese government to erect a stone arch or pailoo, with the intent of warning the nation of the wrath of the foreigner. When you ask the common people, who can not read, if the arch is “in memory of Ambassador So-and-So” they generally reply: “Oh, no, it’s to the other fellow. It’s in memory of patriot So-and-So who was executed by a coerced government for killing a forward foreigner.”

Beheading, outside of Kwangtung province, which has recently adopted modern methods, is the punishment for far too many crimes. Scores of prisoners are often beheaded together, as they kneel in a row. The Chinese loathe this method of punishment, as no good Confucian can appear in the next world with a headless body to be worshiped as a god by his descendants. They overcome the difficulty by having the head sewed on the body before it is buried. There is little to identify the almost unclothed bodies, and the Doms or coolies who are hired to perform the gruesome task sometimes get the bodies and heads mixed up, delivering the right body but the wrong head to the surprised though mourning family, which stands ready with the coffin and the identifiers. The Chinese are so possessed of humor that it is not unknown for retainers to burst out laughing at the incongruous spectacle.

“The American cost of living is nothing compared to the Chinese cost of loving,” said the demure mandarin, as he pointed to his five wives, et cetera!