CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED

Copyright, 1913. The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The Honorable Yuan Shih Kai, confirmed as president of China by the National Assembly, January, 1913. A middle province type (Honan). He is wearing the uniform of the General-in-Chief of the northern army. A forceful progressive leader of the New China.

CHINA
REVOLUTIONIZED

By
JOHN STUART THOMSON

AUTHOR OF
The Chinese, Bud and Bamboo, Etc.

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND MAPS

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, April, 1913
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

DEDICATED TO MOTHER

CONTENTS

CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED

I
THE GENESIS OF THE REVOLUTION IN CHINA AND ITS HISTORY From October 10, 1911, to Yuan Shih Kai’s Acceptance of the Provisional Presidency

A republic in place of the oldest monarchy! Preposterous. It would involve making a yellow man think as a white man, and that had never occurred, not even in the case of the prodigy, Japan. It would involve free intercourse with the whole wide world, and China had opposed such an innovation stubbornly for 400 years. It meant that the proudest and most self-contained nation should treat others as equals and interchange with them. It involved throwing 4,000 years of continuous history and agglomerated pride and precedent to the winds, and humbly beginning anew as a tyro for a while. It meant the dealing with 400,000,000 kings, instead of one, and asking: “My lord, what is your will?” An educational system 2,000 years old to be forgotten at once! A religion 5,000 years old at least, whereby every man had his own god (his father), to be made as cheap as the paltry sacrifices of wine, rice and the painted stick of Confucianism were in reality! The taking up of individual and national responsibility for 400,000,000 people, and entrance upon a wide path of world-influence, with its divided shame and fame! The taking and giving of blows for wrong and right! The giving up of the triple eternal Nirvana of father, self and son, in exchange for an exciting rôle limited to fifty-five crowded years in the individual! The scale of action! A land as large as all Europe, and a people as numerous as the Caucasic race! The thunderous knock on the long-locked doors of science and medicine by 400,000,000 people who had bowed to idol and charm alone! It shook the world. It was pregnant with paradisal possibilities for mankind, because of the vastness of the movement and the depth of its well-spring. The launching of this new leviathan ship of state could not but raise a wave that would lift the already floating hulks of Europe and America, and give them added impetus, though temporary alarm. The rearrangement of commerce, manufacture, labor, finance, taxation, learning, agriculture, art and possibly religion for the whole world. The adding of the most difficult language to the tongues and pens of men, and the call on the English speech to rise once more greater than the mighty stranger, or die. The challenge to Palestine’s Bible to conquer by truth, or retreat with half a world lost. The uprising again of the yellow ghosts of Kublai Khan, Batu, Timurlane, and the Khans of the Golden Horde. What would be the Caucasian’s answer to Emperor William’s question: “The Yellow Peril”? It will be remembered that the kaiser once painted a picture showing the nations of Europe gathering to defend the cross and civilization against an incendiary Buddha lowering in the eastern sky. Would the stranger within the gates be protected even while republican and imperialist fought out their argument? Would leadership arise, and would the great Mongolian mass be intellectualized now that it was energized? Since the vast body was suddenly displaced, would it henceforward move by mere gravity, or sympathetic volition? Could it collectivize and not disintegrate? What would be the effect on the scores of trembling thrones, where Rominoff, Hapsburg, Savoy, Hohenzollern, Ottoman, Mikado, Billiken, etc., said they ruled by “divine right”, which is quite a different thing from noble England’s “constitutional right”? Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese republicans sent out this challenge: “Tien ming wu chang” (the divine right lasts not forever).

All these questions presented themselves when the reformers startled the world with the announcement that there was to be a republic in China. It was to be a republic—not a monarchy—said even those Chinese who had been educated in Japan, where lately a Japanese editor educated in America and ten others had been tried and executed in secret, the papers sealed, and the press censored. They wanted pitiless publicity in the new republican China. Had there been no abatement of the opium habit through America’s leadership of sentiment, and Britain’s sacrifice of revenue from 1909 to 1911, there could have been no rebellion in 1911. The reform cleared the befogged heads of the nation, added a million men to agitation, and furnished a hundred million dollars directly and indirectly toward the independence of the agitators. How great a stone America and Britain set rolling in that Opium Conference of 1909 at Shanghai!

The great revolution of October, 1911, did not drop as a bolt from a clear sky. The clouds had been gathering, though many at home and abroad did not, or would not see them. In September, 1911, the imperial viceroy of Canton, Chang Ming Chi, sent spies along the new Canton-Hongkong railway to apprehend smugglers of arms. In the same month troops under the command of Marshal Lung Chai Kwong, suddenly surrounded the office of the Shat Pat Po newspaper, at Canton, and arrested several reformers. General Luk Wing Ting, of Kwangsi province, came down the Si Kiang (West River) in September, 1911, in the gunboat Po Pik to Canton and took back with him from the Canton arsenal, machine guns and ammunition to attack the “anarchists”, as the Manchus persistently called all reformers. In the month previous, the Ministry of Posts and Communications at Peking stopped the use of private codes, so as to censor messages to the reformers. Several viceroys, in secret sympathy with the reformers, had as early as August, 1911, wired for gunboats, so as to disperse the fleet from the Yangtze basin, where the revolution was to strike, and the largest cruiser, the splendid Hai Chi, well-known in New York, these viceroys suggested should be sent to King George’s coronation review at Spithead. Even as far back as July, 1907, the Chinese government approached the powers, requesting that they make espionage on arms consigned to South China. Rather to our amusement, they used to arrive at Hongkong as boxed pipes, condensers, bar iron, crockery, etc.—anything but guns, but that was the humor of the freight classification which the shippers used! In December, 1906, the scholars of the middle class in Wuchow, Kwangsi province, at the head of navigation on the West River, decided to cut off their queues, and adopted khaki uniform, military drill and track races. They were independently preparing for strenuous times five years before the outbreak, and these boys were found in the first line of the attack in October, 1911, up at Hankau, led by the Chinese Colonel Wen, who had graduated from West Point Military Academy, in America, in 1909. In August, 1911, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation reported that a large part of its $9,000,000 gold note issue was being held, instead of circulated by the Chinese of Kwangtung and other southern provinces. This hoarding of safe securities always indicates lack of faith as to the business and political future.

The celebrated Manchu, Tuan Fang, director-general of railways, was ordered by the Ministry of Communications to proceed to Canton and Kung Yik, the new town of the Americanized Chinese, in August, 1911, to “pacify the people”. Tuan replied that he would not go, and gave as his excuse: “Canton is infested with anarchism”. In the same month the regent, Prince Chun, asked Prince Ching to recommend an energetic general to be sent to quell disturbances in Kwangtung province, and the Tartar general, Fung Shan, was sent. Spying was not uncommon, impersonators going to a province ahead of new appointees and reciting a record at the yamen which seemed to identify them. In August, 1911, the cabinet at Peking decided to send photographs of new officials in a sealed envelope, so as to prevent this impersonating.

As an indication of the new spirit which was moving among the Chinese of Canton for better things at this time, take the inception of the model town of Heungchow. Chinese returned from America, Singapore and Hongkong could not bear the municipal restraint of the old city. They chose a site ten miles up the inner harbor of Macao. Dredging and a breakwater were begun for a harbor. Broad streets, drains, fine stores, temples, police and fire stations and equipment, water-works, libraries, parks, reforestation, chamber of commerce, tramways, electricity and gas, hospitals, schools, theaters, detached homes with gardens, launch and steamer lines, and a free port,—all were in the scheme. When a government permits monopoly of food, and riots result because of justice ineffectually exerted, history shows that the government is about to fall. I instance the fierce Hangchow rice riots of July, 1906, under the leadership of the Hung Pang (Red Association), and the Changsha rice riots of 1910, when Yale College, in China, was barely saved from the conflagration in the very district which in 1911 was swept by the high tide of the revolution. In 1906 text-books were issued to the modern schools (Hok Tongs) which contained a caricature of China, not as the “Middle Kingdom” of old, but as a morsel from which all the nations took a bite. The intent, of course, was to arouse resentful patriotism in place of the old inert pride. Many of these schoolboys enlisted in the two bravest corps of the republicans, the “Dare to Die” band, and the “Bomb Throwers” regiment. In April, 1911, the rebels, under two of Sun Yat Sen’s lieutenants, Hu Wai Sang and Wu Sum, operating in Kwangtung province, issued to the world almost the identical manifesto that President Sun and Foreign Secretary Wu Ting Fang issued in January, 1912, covering the following points:

1. Ousting the Manchu.

2. Friendly intercourse with foreigners and protection of foreign property and person.

3. All foreign treaties now in force to be allowed to run their course.

4. Foreign loans and indemnities contracted by Manchus to date to be paid.

5. Concessions contracted to date to be binding.

Desperate fighting took place, and had the rebels been sufficiently supplied with money and arms, the republic would have been declared at Canton in April instead of at Wuchang and Nanking in November. The United States gunboat Wilmington and British gunboats were rushed to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect foreigners. Admiral Li, who was killed in the October revolution, was barely able to conquer this April revolution in Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. For centuries the Chinese women would not associate with the Manchus, whom they called “tent women”. All through Turkestan the Chinese walled off their section of the city from the Mongolian settlements, though after the conquest the Manchu troops displaced the Chinese.

Nearly all the missions were informed by students and friends many months previous to the revolution that serious and continued disturbances would occur. The Chinese saw that individualism had arisen in America and England and was battling with the privileged. Individualism arose at last in China and resented in this rebellion the quietism taught by the superstition of Taoism, the resignation of Buddhism and the obedience of Confucianism. “I am not a clan; I am a man,” said the ambitious Chinese as he saw the new ray of hope. American diplomacy was not altogether uninformed or unprepared. The American fleet was made the largest foreign fleet in Chinese waters in the first month of the revolution, Admiral Murdock having the cruisers Saratoga (the converted New York of Spanish War fame), Albany, New Orleans, Wilmington; the gunboats Helena, El Cano, Villalobos, Samar; the monitor Monterey; and the destroyers Barry and Decatur.

As far back as June 3, 1910, a year and four months before the revolution, the Shanghai News printed the following article: “All the legations and consuls have received anonymous letters from friendly revolutionaries in Shanghai containing the warning that an extensive anti-dynastic uprising is imminent. If they do not assist the Manchus, foreigners are not to be harmed.” In August, 1911, a rebellion broke out at Sining, in far western Kansu province. The stores were raided for every bolt of foreign cotton to make uniforms. A boy of fifteen was named leader and he was given the significantly fanciful name of “Savior of his country” (Chiu Shih Wang). Rich men cornered the rice supply in the flooded Yangtze valley, and food riots broke out all along the river in August, 1911. On August 23, 1911, rebels boarded a Chinese gunboat on the romantic Si Kiang (West River) near Canton, shooting the commander and seizing the arms and ammunition. On September first the Navy Department strengthened the patrol of Kwangtung province waters so as to stop the smuggling of arms, and the army board required miners to get permits to import dynamite, as they feared that the “anarchists” were importing the explosive. The awful floods and famines of 1910–11 in the basins of the Yangtze River, the Hwei River and Grand Canal had created much criticism of the government, which failed to alleviate suffering; and the famine-stricken were willing to fight, because an army has a commissariat, at least. “Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, escaped to the cave of Adullam.” Newspapers, such as the oldest reform journal, the Shen Pao, of Shanghai, related horrible illegal tortures of the “third degree” used by Manchuized officials, which I have quoted in the chapter on “Legal Practise.”

Tin was largely financing the propaganda, the 400,000 Chinese tin merchants and miners of Singapore and Penang in the Straits Settlements being the largest contributors. Following them came the 100,000 American Chinese and the 50,000 Australian Chinese. Even in 1898, Li Hung Chang was known to declare, at Canton, that it was not impossible that the spread of the proposed new education of the foreigners would overturn the Manchu dynasty, of which he, a Chinese from Hofei, in Nganhwei province, had been the strongest prop among the viceroys for forty-five years. Superstition was not inactive. Halley’s comet flared in the sky. It had shone when Cæsar fell; when Jerusalem fell; when Italy fell before Attila; when English Harold fell before William the Conqueror; when Rome fell in England; when Quebec fell before Wolfe; and now its awful flame must surely prophesy the fall of the Manchu dynasty. Omens were recited that red snow (snow and loess) had fallen in Honan province, and that the Hangchow tidal bore had risen twenty feet, broke over the bank and poured water into the first gallery of the Haining pagoda. This always meant the fall of the dynasty, for had it not happened on the night the beloved Mings fell, and when the scholarly Sungs fell?

As with civil servants in some other countries, the Manchuized civil service (mandarins) acted as though they were the governors and not the servants of the people by allotting to themselves high salaries and peculations. The year before the revolution the land tax yielded about $150,000,000. Only $30,000,000 reached the government exchequer. The Chinese held the Manchus responsible for this criminal neglect of audit, for at least $100,000,000 should have reached the imperial and provincial exchequers. That would have allowed $50,000,000 for the expected peculation of that kind of office holders who believe that “public office is a private graft”. In September, 1911, the month preceding the great revolution, the Chi Feng Po, a native paper of Peking, reported that all wages were in arrears and that even the tea coolies had humorously pasted an anonymous sheet on the imperial controller’s door: “Not even a shadow of our wages yet; WHY! WHY!” Taxes were increased on long-suffering Kwangtung province in the south, the brick kilns of Kochau, the silk sheds of Namhoi, the tea houses, and even the temple keepers being assessed “all the taxed would bear”. I shall instance a representative revolt. On September 6, 1911, the bonze at Shek Lung, near Canton, organized a revolt among the worshipers at his temple. The mob demolished the municipal yamen, the police station, the government distilleries, abattoir and fish market. As far back as 1898 the emperor, Kwang Hsu, by edict declared that the lottery at Canton should pay one-third of the upkeep of the far-away Peking University. I have related in the chapter on “Chinese Daily Life” the incident of a unique statue of a kneeling figure erected in the Kwan clan temple at San Wui, near Canton, in August, 1911, which is whipped by the worshipers to commemorate the defection of a member to the government’s railway and tax program. There was always ill feeling between Peking and Kwangtung provinces, the Manchu and Manchuized viceroys joking at Peking when they were ordered to assume charge at the yamen at Canton: “Well, I’m off to boss Miaotszes (barbarians),” which the refined and commercial Cantonese certainly were not. This superciliousness was deeply resented.

Repeated complaint had been made that an unrepresentative Manchu government gave away concessions right and left to foreigners, and that when these concessions were recalled or bought out, owing to outraged patriotic feeling in the southern and central provinces, the foreigner in instances charged immense sums for good will and franchise in addition to his outlay and interest. I shall not recite instances, as it is the system that I am denouncing, not the persons. The Chinese rightly said, if we look at the matter with his eyes, that he was not going to pay vast sums for the retrocession of his own franchise, which was in some instances coerced from, or wheedled out of, an effete, governing, unrepresentative clique, the members of which never consulted the provinces that were concerned. “Taxation without representation” again. It was not like the repudiation of the bonds of the southern states, for no money had been paid. “Compensation” and “indemnity” are two words the Chinese have learned to hate, and some day they mean to build an immense navy and equip a large army to interpret these words in the way the Occident interprets them, when they are synonymous with injustice and “grab”. Bitter complaint has continually been made since 1898 that Germany monopolized the mining and railway franchises of the rich province of Shangtung.

On the subject of railways, concessions, etc., the following remarks will be recalled in the American General J. H. Wilson’s book, China (1887): “The Chinese will build railroads, open mines, etc., whenever they can be shown that this can be done with their own money, obtained at first by private subscription, and by their own labor, under the direction of foreign experts who will treat them fairly and honestly. They will not for the present grant concessions or subsidies to foreigners. They will not even take money from any syndicate by mortgage.” Complaint was also made that the Ming dynasty, 268 years ago, left as a heritage to the Manchu dynasty, a land full of public works, bridges, roads, temples, pagodas, canals, and that while the Manchu collected large taxes, he seldom or never repaired a temple, canal or road, so that China is now desolate. Objection was also made that the government shipyards, like the Kiangnan, at Shanghai, were building luxurious ocean steam yachts for Prince Tsui and others of the imperial clan, an expense which the nation could not afford.

Two years before the famous revolution of October 10, 1911, the author, in his book, The Chinese, picked out five men as the leaders of changing China: Sun Yat Sen, as the anti-Manchu rebel, who would take up arms in the endeavor to establish a republic; Kang Yu Wei, who would go almost as far in reform, but would retain the Manchu dynasty under a strict constitutional monarchy; Liang Chi Chao, as the translator of reform books and a probable secretary of a reformed state; Wu Ting Fang, as a secret reformer at heart, “who would bear sympathetic watching”, and Yuan Shih Kai, to a degree an Occidentalized opportunist of great ability, who was most favored by the Peking and Tientsin foreigners, though distrusted by the Chinese and foreigners in the south and Yangtze valley of China. The revolution was in full sway by November, 1911, with Sun Yat Sen named as probable president of a Chinese republic (Republic of Han); Kang in the exact place prophesied; Liang as secretary of justice of Yuan’s first trial cabinet of a constitutional monarchy; Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of a provisional republic at Shanghai; and Yuan called from his two years’ exile at Chang Te in Honan province to be the first minister of the reformed constitutional monarchy.

This most wonderful of revolutions seemed to break as a bolt from a clear sky on October 10, 1911, at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, in the center of the land, under the very guns of the United States gunboats Helena and Villalobos which were steaming by. It was, as I have attempted to show, rather a carefully planned matter, the propaganda going on abroad and at home under bands and leaders, all of whose views did not stop at the same place, but whose opinions had one source in patriotic reform. Kang, the oldest and first of the reformers, commenced in 1897 by winning with his book, Japan’s Reform, the emotional Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu. But when the emperor fell in 1898 before the reactionary dowager, Tse Hsi, Kang, the Cantonese with a Hongkong education, was driven to British Singapore and Penang, from which places he has planned his travels and propaganda of the “Pao Huang Hwei” (Empire Reform Association), which contemplated a revolution of reform, but the retention of the Manchu dynasty as constitutional monarchs for the time being. This association was quite different from the Kao-lao-hwei, “Ko Ming” and “Sia Hwei” (reform associations) of Sun Yat Sen, which aimed at a republic. In other words Kang was a Taft “standpatter” medium reformer, and Sun a thorough-going advanced reformer of the Roosevelt type. Kang’s associations grew up in China, America and England, and Kang visited them, recommending the drilling of companies to attack the troops of the reactionary literati of the Hanlin academy.

Liang Chi Chao, the writer and translator, went first to the Straits Settlements and then to Kobe and Yokohama, Japan, where he edited the reform Chinese papers, the Hsi Pao (Western paper), and the Ming Pao, and flooded his country with translations of parts of the great books of British and American liberty. Liang, too, tolerated the retention of the Manchu monarchs for the time being. Doctor Macklin, an American missionary of Nanking had translated Henry George’s Progress and Poverty into Chinese, and this book was in the hands of the reformers, and particularly appreciated by Sun Yat Sen. Chang Yuan Chi’s Commercial Press of Honan Road, Shanghai, had, since 1898, been translating a million dollars a year of Western text-books for Chinese schools. The American Presbyterian Press at Suchow, and at 18 Peking Road, Shanghai, the American Episcopal Press, the presses of the other American and British missions and Bible societies, had for years been issuing telling books of truth in Chinese. Rich compradores of foreign houses at Hongkong, like Ma Ying Pui, presented $1,000 to patriotic lecturing societies like the “Wan Yung.” Hæmon’s argument with his father, King Creon, in Sophocles’ Antigone, brilliantly denouncing absolute rule as only fitted for the monarch of a desert, was recited by the foreign-trained students.

Yuan Shih Kai was deposed by the regent, Prince Chun, in 1909, but from his exile at Chang Te in Honan province, he kept in dignified touch with the formation of the new forces of opinion and arms, and with his backers, the northern foreigners. Yuan is a mighty man, quite on the style of Li Hung Chang, his preceptor, whom we of the West knew so well. At Tientsin, the foreigners assisted Yuan, previous to 1909, with instruction in Occidental organization, and the best troops of the empire, as well as the best schools, and almost the best mills, were organized by Yuan. The reformers who dare the most, however, look upon Yuan by his past, as a temporizer, opportunist and dictator largely under foreign influence; too much Occidentalized, and out of touch with the spirit of “China for the Chinese”, and the “Sia Hwei” (reform associations). They look upon him as, in the past, a Manchuized Chinese who fears to work for himself as a republican, but must have an employer like a Manchu emperor or some other head; great as a Richelieu is great, but not as a Washington is great. They say that while he is thorough of mind, he is not yet vehemently sincere in heart. They fear that Yuan, if left to himself, would concede too much to foreign concession seekers. They bitterly recall that but for Yuan, the reformers of 1897–8 would have swept the kingdom peacefully. Yuan is the most popular Chinese with foreigners at Peking, Tientsin, Chifu, Newchwang, Tsingtau and other ports of the north. He is not so much in touch with the heart of the reform spirit in Western, Central or Southern China, nor with the foreigners of the great educational treaty ports of those sections, and of the brilliant British colony of Hongkong in South China, which, with British and American Shanghai, has done most for a reformed China. Yuan’s only experience outside of China proper was when as a youth he served twelve years with the army in Korea. Yuan’s temperament is cold. A noted southern statesman, referring to him, said: “What can you expect of a man who is so cold that he has to carry three braziers up his sleeve?” In the Korean campaign of 1884 against Japan, Yuan is said to have objected to Red Cross operations, jesting that the surgeons didn’t need to take the trouble, for “while they had remade the man, they hadn’t remade the soldier”. Yuan was a ruthless decapitator in that and other campaigns. However, “to err is human, and to forgive, divine”, and if Yuan serves a united republican China with full heart in the future, the mistakes of the past will be forgotten in the joys of the glorious deeds that are possible.

Doctor Sun Yat Sen (let us Latinize him as Sunyacius) is a Hongkong product, and has been a revolutionist and a republican from the beginning. As a boy he was fed on thrilling stories of the Taiping rebellion by his uncle, who had served as an officer in that rebellion. He was born at Fatshan, seven miles west of Canton, in 1866. From 1884–87 he was assisted by Doctor Kerr, of the Anglo-American Mission, Canton, in whose office he studied medicine and English. He studied medicine and surgery under Doctor Cantlie at Hongkong, of which colony he became a citizen (that is, a British citizen), though of course, he has now returned to his Chinese citizenship. Doctor Cantlie was then teaching in the Hongkong School of Medicine, which is now a part of the Hongkong University. In 1892 Sun became the first Chinese practising physician at Macao, and met with great opposition from the Portuguese doctors, who, in 1894, drove him to Canton. His father was a Chinese Christian evangelist, a Congregationalist (London Mission) by denomination, and Sunyacius looks upon the study of the Christian Bible as the greatest necessity in China’s education. Even two years before Kang’s work at Peking, Doctor Sunyacius, in 1895, smuggled arms into Canton, got his revolutionary forces at work, and received his first baptism of fire, in which he showed, as on subsequent occasions, absolute fearlessness regarding his life. Sunyacius also lived for a while with his brother and sympathizers in Honolulu, and his studies in Hawaii and in America committed him to the republican form of government. Owing to the Swatow men not meeting the Hongkong men at Canton, Sunyacius’ plans collapsed in 1895. By the advice of Mr. Dennis, a prominent solicitor of Hongkong, Sunyacius fled to Kobe, Japan; to Honolulu and to San Francisco. This incisive, good-looking little man of about five feet five inches in height, who dresses and looks like an American or a Briton, has for years been traveling incognito in America, England and Japan, organizing drill, educational and contributing corps of the “Kao Lao Hwei” (reform associations), the money and men going to Canton, Shanghai and Wuchang, where the main revolution broke out on that memorable day, October 10, 1911. General Hwang Hing was Sunyacius’ representative in China in receiving this aid. All of Sunyacius’ helpers proved loyal to their trust in handling this money, except one, and of him Sunyacius himself writes: “He will meet with his due reward.”

Sunyacius’ head carried a price (the modern blacklist) and only his insistence on British citizenship saved him from being kidnapped as a lunatic (no less) by the yellow and white detectives of the Manchus, to have his ankles crushed under the hammer and his body cut into a thousand pieces (lin chee) slowly at Peking. He was seized on Portland Street in London, in 1896, and hurried to the Chinese Legation. Sunyacius’ rescue came about in this dramatic way: His Hongkong teacher, Doctor Cantlie, was then practising in London. Sunyacius gave to a British secretary in the Chinese Legation a note addressed to Doctor Cantlie, to whom it was fortunately delivered in the British spirit of fair play and through the pleas of a woman, the Briton’s wife counseling her husband to deliver the letter in “noble scorn of consequence”. The heroic Doctor Cantlie at once took it to Lord Salisbury and the British Foreign Office, which intervened, surrounding the Chinese Legation with officers (a new siege of Peking). Sunyacius was reluctantly given his freedom by the Manchuized Chinese. Only for Britain, therefore, Sunyacius would never have lived to strike the tocsin of a republican revolution. But then, Britain has been the mother and teacher of reformers since Cromwell’s day.

Sunyacius’ headquarters have been at British Singapore and at Hongkong, but he is as well known at San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, Vancouver and Yokohama. He has walked into dormitories of Columbia College, New York, and talked revolution and reform with some of the students under the unconscious eye of so prominent a conservative as President Butler. One of his student protégés was Wellington Koo, now the Chinese secretary to Yuan Shih Kai. Sunyacius is a thorough-going scholar, propagandist, organizer and republican, like the book he carried, a man of “Progress and Poverty”. The world’s great bankers, especially two London firms long connected with Chinese progress, knew him, his disguises as a salesman, etc., and his careful plans of government and finance, and he has not been timid in America, or in London, Hongkong and the Straits Settlements in asking for loans for his propaganda and revolution. He has handled a million dollars honestly, and lived most frugally. The greatest luxury he ever allowed himself was a “Prince Albert” coat and a rose-bouttonière, but that was so that he might appear acceptably before an audience of Occidentals! When in Singapore, Doctor Sun had his picture taken in white ducks and a topey hat, so that he is a modern in tonsorial as well as other matters! “This conference must be secret and our correspondence must be anonymous, and upon receipt, burned,” said Sun to the bankers. “Why?” they asked. “Because I am shadowed night and day. Look across the way when I suddenly lift the curtain.” He raised the curtain, and the bankers saw two “sleuths” in the cowardly shadow, one of them a Chinese, lurking in a recess of a money capital of the Occident, many thousand miles from the Manchu cabal in Peking, who had Oriental and Occidental detective agencies in their blacklisting pay.

Dr. Sun is a brilliant and enthusiastic speaker in Chinese and in English. His speeches to the Chinese often extend into hours. His small copper-plate handwriting in English is better than his Chinese chirography. He is a polished writer, having published in 1904 in London a book on “The Chinese Question”. The Manchus have kept Doctor Sun out of China, and he is therefore not yet thoroughly known to the Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who fired the first successful shot, but he is the pick of the southern and the alien Chinese, who are the best educated of their race, and have largely financed reform: the Chinese of Canton, Singapore, Penang, noble Hongkong, Macao, America, England, Japan, Australia, and brilliant Shanghai. He has never held office under the Manchus at home or abroad, and is therefore not well known to foreigners in the salons of diplomats, in the capitals of the Caucasic race, or to the masses of the Chinese in the north and west provinces, but he is a coming man, and perhaps the most consistent and steady of the reformers, as he is certainly the most promising, intellectual and coolly daring. Sun Yat Sen’s name may some day be Latinized into Sunyacius, just as Kung Fut Tse’s name became popular as Confucius. Why not also Latinize Yuan Shih Kai’s name into the more popular Yuanshius? The following incident will throw a light on Sun’s character: On February 22nd his elder brother, Sun Mei, a man ordinary in equipment, was almost elected governor of the great province of Kwangtung as a popular tribute to Sun Yat Sen. The latter wired from Nanking, disapproving of the choice for the province’s good, and urging “brother Mei” to confine himself to business, for which he was more fitted. Such frankness in family relations when public preferment is at stake, is scarcely common.

Wu Ting Fang, a Cantonese trained at Hongkong, London and Washington, blossomed out suddenly at Shanghai in November, 1911, as foreign minister of the provisional Chinese republican government of the fourteen central, eastern and southern rebel provinces. The western world stopped its breath in tremendous astonishment. Wu! the brilliant, fashionable and evasive Chinese minister at Washington, who would put you off on politics to discuss vegetarianism, a rebel! He was secretive beyond parallel, and had never talked revolution. The writer tried to get him to talk reform in 1909 in connection with the reform prophecies in his book, The Chinese, and though Wu had then fully decided on the part he would take in the coming revolution, he would only repeat what the writer said, and would express absolutely no opinion of his own. I have known writers who have flayed him for this abrupt evasion, calling him a “rice Christian” of yore, a temporizer, etc., but I admire him for his calmness, fixed resolves, and patience in waiting for the prodigious hour to strike. Wu knew what was coming, and was heartily, though secretly, in favor of it. He was the first of the rebels to insist on foreign acknowledgment of the rebel government, and he formulated the most brilliant move of the revolution—the announcement that if foreigners advanced money to the imperialists, and the republicans won, the latter would repudiate such loans. This really won the revolution, for numbers of the foreign syndicates, especially the Russian, were at first heartily in favor of the Manchu status quo. Wu has already codified the reform and penal laws of China, and is prepared to enter upon that difficult question, extraterritoriality. Watch Wu; he is not afraid to take the side of “China for the Chinese”, although he is the most polished in western culture of all Chinese officials. He aims to interpret the East to the West. Wu risked vast preferment, and therefore he is a more sincere man than doughty Yuan, and he will grow in power with the masses of the Chinese nation. His brother-in-law is the exceedingly able Doctor Ho Kai, Commander of the Order of Michael and George, the Chinese member of the Legislative Council of the royal colony of Hongkong Island, a thorough legislator, a lovable and brilliant man. Wu is a member of a worthy Canton family. He is a graduate of the Middle Temple, London; has practised before the Hongkong bar; and he served Li Hung Chang for many years as legal adviser at Tientsin and Peking, in drawing up foreign treaties, etc.

There were other reformers in China and abroad at work from 1898 to 1911, although the western press gave no attention to the really astonishing matter. The bitter Hunanese republican rebel, the irrepressible Hwang Hing, was also exiled by the empress dowager, Tse Hsi, in 1898. He fled to Japan, with a price on his head also, and could hardly be restrained from calling the psychic moment for a revolution into immediate declaration. He was a fast organizer, and being nearer the ground, was in close enough touch with the Chinese of the central provinces to be at Wuchang in October, 1911, shortly after the first blow was struck. He had much to do with the gentry of the Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who largely financed and precipitated the main revolution. Hwang is considered by the extremists of his party as presidential timber. He is a fervent talker, and like Sun, the last man in the world to be an opportunist, which is the great Yuan’s one fault in the minds of many of the Chinese people. Hwang Hing is the one reformer who has some Japanese sympathies, on account of his education in Japan. He was born at Changsha in Hunan, where Yale College has a branch.

In America the editors of the Chung Sai Yat Po, the Chinese World, and Free Press in San Francisco; the Chinese Students’ Club in New York (225 East Thirty-first Street), which publishes a journal, and the Chinese Reform News in New York, often visited by Sun Yat Sen’s American representative, Wong Man Su, ably took up the propaganda, which was carried on in their own way by a thousand newspapers which arose throughout China from 1906 onward, first in the treaty ports, and later in Chinese cities, especially Canton, Hankau and Shanghai. Much reference was made to the fact that while China, the largest Oriental country, was without a real parliament, other Oriental countries had successfully overthrown despotism and oligarchism, and had popular assemblies, which granted some representation in return for the privilege of taxation. Japan had a Diet; even black Russia had a Duma; the Filipinos had an Assembly; Turkey had an Assembly; little Persia had a representative Mejliss; native members had at last been admitted into the Viceroy’s Council in India; and Hongkong, with its 500,000 Chinese had long had two Chinese as brilliant members of the Legislative Council.

Viceroy Seu Ki Yu’s essay of 1866, praising Washington and republicanism as ideal, was reissued and distributed, and had great influence. By 1909 and 1910 the reformers had compelled the Manchus to heed the howling of the wind, and see the shadow of a cloud, at least as big as a man’s hand, on the horizon of internal politics. The dowager empress, Tse Hsi, and later, Prince Ching, and the regent, Prince Chun—all Manchus—granted provincial and national assemblies; but they were called and considered only “Tsecheng Yuan” (advice boards), and not legislative bodies in the free and full sense of the word. The pensions of the Manchus and bannermen in the various Chinese cities were decreased, and land was offered them so that they might enter the industrial body. Many Manchus rebelled, as at Chingtu City in September, 1911. Argument increased. The cloud on the horizon grew larger. Objection was made to the court’s monopoly of the rich copper mines of Yunnan province, and complaint was reiterated that while the southern provinces mainly supported the imperial authority in taxes paid, these provinces were the least consulted, and the weakest in representation in any governmental consultations that were held at Peking. The government developed the armies and schools of the three northern provinces of Pechili, Shangtung and Shansi with taxes collected mainly in the southern provinces, where the government neglected schools, police and army divisions. It was hard to get the Stuart kings to call Parliaments, and when at a belated date they did, complaint was louder than ever, for there was something to complain of, and at last a constitutional place to complain in.

These Chinese assemblies gave little representation directly to the masses, a high property or high tax qualification debarring them as in Japan; but the gentry of the guilds, in many cases, espoused the reform sentiment of the masses, exactly as the Stuart Parliaments did to the disgust of the Stuarts who hoped for monarchic support, and as the barons of the “Magna Charta” did at Runnymede to the disgust of Plantagenet John. One provincial assembly president we must note at this point. He is Tang Hua Lung, of the Hupeh Assembly. When Hankau was taken on October 10, 1911, Tang jumped to the front as organizer of the first rebel provincial government; the “province of Hupeh of the Republic of Han”, with headquarters at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, the ancient viceregal capital of the illustrious Chang Chih Tung. With Tang Hua, Sun Yu, brother of Sun Yat Sen, came into prominence. In the mother province of reform, the most progressive province politically of all the twenty-one, Kwangtung, Wu Hon Man agitated in his assembly for reform, and when the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming Chi, fled to Hongkong, because he could find no other refuge, Wu Hon Man rushed into the yamen at Canton with the rebelling Sixteenth, and other regiments, and took charge of that great province for the republican rebels. In its nationalization-of-railways scheme, the Manchus confiscated the Kwangtung railways, promising to pay the owners only sixty per cent. of their investment. Title deeds of mines in Kwangtung and other provinces were also confiscated by the tyrannical Manchu government.

China’s army was a territorial one. Troops raised in this way are hard to control in local emergencies, but they are easier to recruit, mobilize, drill and discipline at the beginning than mixed corps. Among the Generals of Divisions, transferred from the Navy Department, was Li Yuan Heng, on whom the revolutionaries largely fixed their hopes as the man trained and true for the real deeds of deadly arms, which make new governments possible. Propaganda and patience are all right in their places, but powder needs a special man of a stern mold, fit to deal with merciless and terrible enemies. General Li was one of these men, and General Hwang, Sun Yat Sen’s special representative at the Hankau and Hanyang battles, was another. General Ling, on the rebels’ right wing and the republican commander-in-chief, General Hsu Shao Ching, at Shanghai, were others. General Li’s proclamation of the “Republic of Han”, with military headquarters at Wuchang, covered the following points:

• 1. Expulsion of the Manchu dynasty.
  
• PROHIBITED ON PAIN OF DEATH
  
• 2. Injuring foreigners.
  
• 3. Injuring business by taking advantage of war.
  
• 4. Rapine, arson and adultery.
  
• 5. Mobbing.
  
• 6. Preventing recruiting.
  
• 7. Withstanding commissariat.
  
• TO BE REWARDED HIGHLY
  
• 8. Supplying commissariat.
  
• 9. Supplying ammunition.
  
• 10. Protecting foreign concessions.
  
• 11. Protecting foreign missions.
  
• 12. Spreading republican and reform (Sia Hwei) propaganda.
  
• 13. Facilitating restoration of business and commerce.

General Li, a Hupeh man, was the Marlborough of the revolution, a young, dashing, Christian soldier, used to courts, fine-looking, full of humor, traveled, approachable. General Hsu, as the successful siege of Nanking was later to prove, was the Grant of the revolution, steady, reasonable, persistent, a spender of men, a strategist and a pounder. General Li was educated at the Pei Yang naval colleges at Tientsin and Chifu, and at Japanese military and naval schools at Tokio, Kure and Yokosuka, where the name of China’s one naval hero of the China-Japan War, Admiral Ting, of the famous battleships Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen, is held in considerable respect. Li passed through the terrific fire of the naval engagements of the Yalu and Wei Hai Wei in 1894. He is a Protestant Episcopalian. He traveled round the world with Li Hung Chang in 1896, so that America and Britain were then entertaining unawares one of the Washingtons of republican China.

As general of the Twentieth Division of the northern army, camped at Lanchow, just east of Peking, was General Chang Shao Tsen (we shall call him Chang the First to distinguish him from two other generals Chang of the Manchu camp at Nanking and elsewhere in the northeastern provinces). Chang the First was well trained by the revolutionists in their doctrines of liberty, and was told to watch two camps, the so-called People’s National Assembly at Peking and the Manchu Court at Peking. Chang the First was trained in war by Yuan Shih Kai and the Manchu general-in-chief, Yin Tchang, both of whom were effective men, the former schooled by Tientsin and Peking foreigners, the latter well trained in the Austrian ranks and before the line of guards at Berlin. In old Canton, the mighty stanch Wu Hon Man was president of the provincial assembly of Kwangtung province. He, too, was ready to declare for rebellion, despite the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming, and the loyal Tartar general, who were quartered on his province. In the north, Governor Sun Hao Chi, of classic old Shangtung province (the home of Confucius), was ready to go over. In the province where Shanghai is located, the president of the assembly, Chang Chien, who proposes to visit American chambers of commerce, and who is well known as the host in China of visiting Pacific coast chambers of commerce, was more than ready to declare for reform. He, with Wu Ting Fang, was insistent on the abdication of the Manchu dynasty and the declaration of a republic.

At Lhasa, in far-away Tibet, was an imperial resident who had been trained in reform at Shanghai and in law at Yale College, in America. He was the eminent Wen Tsung Yao, destined to be the assistant foreign minister of the first rebel government, and whose son (a West Point graduate) was slated to lead the most daring charges at Hankau and Nanking. Even in the home of the Manchus, at Mukden, Wu Yun Lien, a Chinese immigrant, president of the Manchuria Assembly, was filled with the doctrine and ready to declare for reform. Great viceroys, who had served China long in official positions under the Manchus, were ready to go over, but for the most part the radical reformers were new men, unknown to the world, as the Manchus had naturally never given office to them.

Many causes, all important, helped to precipitate the crisis. Sheng Kung Pao and others at Peking, Tientsin and Hankau, both Chinese and Manchus whom foreigners know well, had, partly under foreign advice and Japan’s example, planned to compel the provinces and the gentry of the guilds to sell out their many little railroads, a number of which were paying well, to the central government, which intended to nationalize the railroads quickly under immense loans from the banking nations of the Occident and Japan. These loans meant to the local gentry the extinction of distributed small fortunes and opportunities; concessions of mines to foreigners, such as the immense gifts of franchises to the British “Peking Syndicate” in Shansi province, to the London and China syndicate in Hupeh province, to Belgian, German, French, Italian and other syndicates; heavy interest; continuation of the unscientific Likin system of customs as a security, and payment of obnoxious bonuses, as when Hupeh province, under Chang Chih Tung, in 1904, had to pay a bonus to buy back a Chinese railway concession; and in 1911, when China had to buy the bonds which represented by an excess payment of $3,750,000 a Chinese railroad which existed only on paper; and as Professor Ross points out in The Changing Chinese, when Shansi province had to pay a syndicate over two millions to relinquish an undeveloped concession in China which cost them almost nothing. The bitter complaint, written in blood, of the Hunanese of Changsha City on this subject is quoted in the New York Railway-Age Gazette of October 13, 1911, and includes this sentence: “When a piece of meat is in the traitorous railway thief’s mouth, it is hard to take it out.” All may not agree with the Chinese position, but all should duly consider the Chinese side of the question as expressed in their words. “Peking has betrayed Wuchang,” cried the Hupeh men.

There were many more instances from the Sungari to the Yangtze basins, yea, to the Mekong basin, through 2,500 miles of mine and men, traffic and trade, of the hard bargain driven by the foreign lender, generally under bad foreign advice.

No foreign house should ever send a representative to China unless it is willing to send an enlightened and humane man, who intellectually appreciates the able Chinese as much as he appreciates the foreigner, and whose sympathies are equally divided between Cathay and his own nation. Only such a man can deal fairly and give impartial advice, which alone in the end will win for the foreigner what properly is his of the profit and prestige. “Why should we, with the richest mines on earth; the richest passenger, freight and labor field; with lands plethoric of water power and grain; and the lowest debt, if unjust coerced indemnities were wiped out, pay foreigners such immense bonuses, interest and concessions, discounts and profits to go out of our country”; rang the cry, not only in Hupeh, Hunan, Szechuen, Shansi and Kwangtung provinces, but even in native papers printed under the shadow of the foreign banks on the bund at Tientsin in the north.

There was one large meeting of protest held by the Chinese of British Hongkong in the Chui Yin Hotel on September 3, 1911, delegates attending even from distant Szechuen province. Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan’s memorial was recalled: “The wealth of the country is being monopolized by foreigners”. The Railroad Protective Association, of Chingtu City, in August, 1911, issued a famous placard in which the four banking nations in caricature were made to say: “The wealth of the four provinces of Szechuen, Kwangtung, Hunan and Hupeh, all is given to us four foreign nations to swallow down at one gulp”. Chinese men, women and children, bound together before the ancestral graves, are made to say: “Bound helplessly; it is unbearable. We are bound in one bunch to be given to foreigners. Come quickly, friends of the Railroad Protective Association, and deliver us.” The loot, lying ready for the syndicates of the four nations to take away, is pictured as cash money, bullion sycee, bank bills, and books of China’s Confucian classics and history. Other caricatures were prepared so as to inflame patriotism in the breasts of the new students, the foreigner being made to say cynically: “The venal students only want their up-keep, purchased diplomas, political office, four chair bearers, free theatricals and they’ll hush up. The mask may be brave as a dragon’s head, but the tail is cowardly as a crawling snake.”

Remembering that Russia and Japan, in 1896, etc., first sought for railway control and then practically occupied the three Manchurian provinces, we can understand the patriot’s side of the following article objecting to the three nations’ railway loan, published in Chinese in a Hankau paper: “The merchants of Hupeh urge the people to take shares in the Szechuen, Canton and Hankau railways. The people of China are in a sad plight. Why is China so poor that every foreigner is eager to come to her aid? You Chinese say you have plenty of money, but you are unwilling to loan it. Why do you not use your money to construct these railway lines? If you do not, the foreigners will come under false pretenses, destroy your nationality, and cut off your supplies. England has used this diabolical system to obliterate Egypt; otherwise how could she have got it?” Even if a foreign banker, statesman or merchant does not fully agree with the local feeling of the Chinese, it is wise to look frankly at their side of the argument in making educational, financial and political plans in the future.

There was much complaint also of the private hoards of the Manchu princes, both in strong-boxes and in foreign banks. The taxes levied in the southern provinces mainly supported the empire, and these taxes were increased. Something then was brewing, especially in the southern and central provinces. The word went forth, “We are not Boxer murderers if we cry China for the Chinese, and it is not fair to put a stone around China’s neck with indemnities just because you are ahead of us in possessing fleets. We love the American and British peoples, and their glorious books on Liberty, even if we do not love some of your unregulated trusts any more than you and your Supreme Court’s decisions do! We are willing to pay a fair rate of interest. Not a hair of a foreigner is to be touched. We appreciate the education and lovable alienation of the missionaries, and especially the miracle of Occidental medicine and surgery.”

Here is the guarantee of the “Sia Hwei” (reform association), of Fuchau, to the Methodist and other missionaries of Fukien province. “We have just heard that the missionaries, on account of the uprising of the New China revolutionary associations, with their just cause, have been requested by your foreign consuls to go to the provincial capital, Fuchau, to be protected. The Chinese people have become very much enlightened and their old customs have changed. The Chinese people and the missionaries’ church are at peace, because your church has opened schools, hospitals, orphanages and similar good institutions. Not one of these but is held deep in the hearts of the Chinese people. Although we are a humble folk, still we have seen and appreciated these things. This reform association requests that you missionaries remain at your posts throughout the province. Should anything unforeseen occur, we should, of course, exert ourselves to protect you and your property. We are quite sure that we can afford efficient protection from mobs and imperialists.” These Fukien people were as good as their word, for besides sending levies to the revolution, the “hsiang lao” (head men) of the villages organized home guards for the protection of both foreigners and natives. When the revolution broke out at Wuchang, the soldiers of the thirtieth regiment escorted the American missionaries out of the line of fire from Serpent Hill. The American Episcopal missionaries crowded aboard the German freighter Belgravia, bound for Shanghai, the American gunboat Helena, Commander Knepper, standing by. The revolutionary soldiers of Generals Li and Hwang shouted a peace message: “American republicans are brothers of ours; good-by!”

A cry went through the vast nation that the Manchu dynasty of usurpers was signing away the land with hardly a struggle: Tonquin to France; Formosa and vast Korea to Japan; rich Manchuria, and possibly Jungaria, to Russia; Kiaochou to Germany; and so on, even little Portugal wanting more of Heungshan Peninsula; the effete nations of Europe, with only paper ships, “bluffing” like the monster nations, all demanding “your provinces or your life”, and getting the provinces. The articles in the independent press in America were translated in many instances into Chinese, and the spirit of protest in America, Britain and Germany was emulated in awakened China. The minority Manchus could not be trusted to control the Chinese, and “pack” boards (Pus), ministries, and even assemblies, to suit themselves. Government by “privileged minority” was being called in question throughout the earth as unconstitutional; why not in China? There must be true popular government, which the Manchus postponed from month to month with “standpat” doctrines, and while a deliberative body was formed at Peking, the ministries, boards and the majority of the National Assembly were appointed in “machine” style by the Manchus from their set, which, of course, included many of the Manchuized Chinese, as well as Manchus and Mongols. The Chinese officials—the old literati—are the viceroys, ministers and members of the governing boards, whom we foreigners best know. Many of them are very able, and some of them love reform, but few of them dared anything for the revolution except Wu Ting Fang. Give him that credit as often as possible.

The heavy indemnities, amounting to the awful sum of $250,000,000, for the massacres of 1900, which the “Boxer” empress dowager, Tse Hsi, a Manchu, approved, have been a heavy load upon the Chinese people of the southern and central provinces, who had nothing to do with the persecution of foreigners. The Chinese of the taxed south greatly appreciated, therefore, American and British action in returning part of their indemnities. But other nations should do likewise. The Westminster Gazette, of London, now supports this position.

Histories of peoples, not dynasties and oligarchies, such as John Richard Green’s History of the English People; books which helped to bring about the American revolution; the American missionary, Doctor Macklin’s, Chinese translation of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty; great pæans of liberty and political pain the world over; editorials from the progressive American press; chapters from American and English books which sympathized with the Chinese, were translated and read. The notable book Service was re-read. It was written in 1897 by Tan Sze Tung, the son of a governor of Hupeh province. Tan was one of the martyrs of 1898 who were beheaded by the dowager, Tse Hsi. Tan’s book criticized absolute monarchy and recommended reform in politics and commerce. Sin Chin Nan, by translating parts of Dickens, had shown the Chinese people that the common man endured wrongs that should be righted. Thomas Paine’s The Crisis, which was read before the American regiments of 1776, was translated to be read to revolutionary societies like Sun Yat Sen’s “Ka Ming Tang” and the “Sia Hwei.” Special note was taken of the establishment of a Duma even in oligarchic Russia; the success of the Young Turk party in even such a terrific oligarchy as Turkey; the successful revolt in Mexico, where a practical oligarchy gave lands to favorites and would not grant real popular government; and the representation of the Oriental race in the legislative bodies of Hongkong, India, Straits Settlements and the Philippines.

The preliminary dance was opened in September, 1911, by far western Szechuen province, Peking issuing this edict in the yellow Peking Gazette: “Whoever shall serve us by killing rebels or by capturing and binding members of the rebellion party, shall be rewarded regardless of rules.” The Peking government had practically confiscated the railways of the Szechuenese, as the paper which they were given in exchange bore no guarantee of interest, and no reliance was put upon the value of the security by the provincial gentry, bankers and farmers. When provinces and states lose confidence in the sincerity of a fixed central government that is not run by parties, that government totters to its fall. A national anthem was given to the nation to sing:

“May China be preserved!
In this time of the Manchu dynasty,
We are fortunate to see real splendor;
May the heavens protect the imperial family.”

The south only sang it in parodies. The railway board (Yuchuan Pu) was putting through its nationalization-of-railways scheme, in accordance with the $50,000,000 gold loan from the syndicates of four of the banking nations. To back up arguments, troops were increased under the various generals, Tartar and Manchuized Chinese. Some of these troops were from the federal army, northern divisions, and had been trained by Yuan and General Yin Tchang. Some were provincial viceroys’ troops, trained both under foreign and native systems, like the splendid army of the Yunnan viceroy, Li Chin Hsi. The small railway owners, the small mine owners, the contractors of man-transportation, the noted farmers and river men of Szechuen province, were ordered to consent to the new scheme of a national railway to break across Szechuen province from Ichang to Chingtu, and for other railways in the province. The terms of the foreign loan, the price at which the bankrupt federal government would pretend to buy out the provincial gentry and guilds, the heavy new taxes on the west and south, were all partly explained, and the men of Szechuen (by blood largely Hupeh and Hunan provinces’ emigrants) rebelled and “fired the shot that was heard around the world”.

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

The Assembly Hall at Wuchang, where the Eighth Hupeh Division under General Li Yuan Heng fired the volley that was heard round the world, and ushered in republican China. In the background is Serpent Hill.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The high tide of the revolution; Nanking’s walls; the crowded boat life of China.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The Honorable Doctor Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese republic, Director-General of the National Railway development; leader of the Tung Men Hwai, the advanced party in China. By birth, a Southern Chinese (Kwangtung province), the type best known to foreigners.

A noted, partially loyal Chinese general was shortly put in command of the imperial troops in the ancient capital, Chingtu. His name was General Chao Ehr Feng, the famous commander who did the astonishing thing, both from a religious and military point of view, in 1910, of driving the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa and Tibet into Darjeeling, in India, and thus putting Buddhism and its pope at the feet of Confucian China. China also brought up her bloodiest general, Tsen Chun Hsuan, infamous for putting out the last terrific Mohammedan rebellion in mountainous Yunnan province of the clouds, in unnecessary rivers of blood. Foreigners scowled at the employment of this man, and Manchu China was a little uncertain. Promises meant nothing to Tsen. He was a man-eating tiger, the bloodiest man in the world, who pretended and looked to be nothing else, and was descended from as bloody generals. Peking meant business, and the railway policy, which was as much a war policy, seemed to be going through.

It was not long, however, before General Chao’s forces were cooped up in Chingtu, which was besieged by the rebelling province of Szechuen under the leadership of the president of assembly, Pu Tien Chun, and in the engagements General Chao was captured and decapitated. The strategic importance of the railways already built then appeared like the flash of a saber at the bare neck of the victim. Modern troops were hurried down to Hankau by rail in twenty-four hours and up the river to Ichang by steamer, in the rear and on the flank of the besiegers. Then something like thunder happened among the divisions which had been mobilized at the triple cities of Wuchang, Hanyang and Hankau. The Eighth Division, under General Li Yuan Heng, territorial troops of the modern army, hoisted the rebel tri-color sun flag of red, white and blue over the yellow dragon of the Manchus, put white bands on their arms and rebelled for the new-born republic of Han. They captured the leading arsenal, steel and coal plant at Hanyang, the populous commercial city of Hankau, and the luxurious viceregal capital of Wuchang on October 13, 1911. This put a high standard on the rebellion, for Li was a young well-trained general of the new school, a diplomat, a sturdy man in the field, a patriot who could not be bought and who was organizer enough to see that his men were not bought. Admiral Sah, with a fleet of gunboats and small cruisers, aided the imperial divisions under the bloody general, Chang Piao Tuan, which tried to retake the native city of Hankau. Li’s troops, especially his “Dare to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) Brigade of shaven round-heads, fought bravely, although their artillery was only equipped with percussion shells, as compared with the time-fuse shells brought down from Peking, Tientsin and Kiaochou to supply the imperial troops. When ammunition ran out, the rebel troops used the bayonet charge with reckless daring. It was a new era in fighting in China when yellow men would charge, with only cold steel, across an area swept by machine guns. On October 21st, Generals Li and Hwang, with 15,000 ill-equipped rebels, won the battle of Kwang Shili in Hupeh against General Yin Tchang, the Manchu minister of war and commander-in-chief, with 20,000 finely equipped loyalists. Part of General Li’s force was a section of an army division which had gone over. Others of his new troops were recruited from the most famous boatmen of the world, the Szechuen trackers of the wild rapids and sublime gorges of the glorious Yangtze River, and from the indefatigable, cheerful mountain coolies of Hupeh province, who are as agile as a chamois.

The propaganda of the rebels now bore fruit in rapid succession. On October 22nd the rebels, under the leadership of Tan Yen Kai, president of the Hunan Assembly, took Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. Yale College has a branch in this long forbidden city. Hunan has always been notable for honest, sturdy, independent men. It is the proudest province and the sternest in China. “What way Hunan goes, that way goes China.” It was the last province to permit missionary activity. Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi province, the land of pottery, was taken on the same day, completing the occupation of the four adjoining central Yangtze provinces, which was all that Sun (Sunyacius) first planned to do, as a beginning and a basis on which to solicit foreign loans. It was rebellion indeed, and not a riot. The Tartars, Manchus and loyalists fled. New provincial governments were set up, each with a popular assembly. Peking was desperate, for China was almost split in half by the political earthquake. Peking felt sure that she held the north, however, with a well-equipped army of about twenty divisions. The reformers, however, had breathed into the ear of the troops, and pay was overdue in the impoverished condition of the central government.

On October 24th, ancient Singan, the capital of the north-western province of Shensi, the original capital of China, where the empress dowager, Tse Hsi, fled in 1900, went over to the rebels, despite the threats of the bloody Mongol governor, General Sheng Yun. This really meant a fifth seceding province, as far as the populace was concerned. On the same day, Kowkiang on the Yangtze went over. Then Kweilin, the capital of Kwangsi province, went over on October 25th. This was the first of the southern provinces to join the movement openly. On October 25th noble Fuchau, the famous seaport capital of old Fukien province, went over, and we have already quoted a wonderful message to the white man from their “Sia Hwei” (reform association). On October 26th, Ngan-king, capital of Nganhwei province, declared for the rebels, and on the same day General Li was suggested as provisional president of the forming republic of Han, with six of China’s twenty-one provinces already seceding. Reform was as hot as a prairie fire, and almost as hard to manage.

On October 29th a remarkable thing occurred among the divisions being massed for an attack on the rebels’ capital at Wuchang. The Twentieth Division was at Lanchow camp, east of Peking, under General Chang Shao Teng. They formed the famous Army League, and made reform demands on the packed National Assembly at Peking, just as Cæsar’s immortal Thirteenth Legion, before the rebellion, sent demands to the Roman Senate, whose orders they were supposed to take. In consternation, the packed National Assembly granted the Nineteen Constitutional Articles, and the Manchu regent, Prince Chun, an able and traveled man (he went to Germany in 1901) daily issued edicts and yellow Peking Gazettes, full of tearful promises, in which, however, the central and southern rebellious provinces had no confidence. They said: “Edicts are like the wings of day and night; it all depends on which side the sun is.” This action of the Twentieth Division halted the government’s war measures, and plans were laid to get loyal divisions near the Lanchow camp, and get rid of General Chang the First. This general was not strong enough to attack Peking on his own account, for there were imperial divisions between him and Generals Li and Hwang of the revolutionists. But he was strong enough to be stubborn, and not move forward. Peking was largely in panic. The railroad station was piled high with household goods, and excursion trains for the flight of the Manchus were running to Tientsin as fast as they could be switched. The streets of Peking were crowded with mule carts, bearing bullion sycee and coins to be stored in the vaults of foreign banks in the legation quarter. No one half guessed before the wealth which the pensioned and privileged Manchus had in cache. Proud princes of the blood were even willing to stand up all the way to Tientsin in open coal cars. Foreigners, legations, railways and banks were popular as never before in the north, as a very present refuge in time of trouble! Marvelous treasures of vases, tapestries, and jade were entrusted to foreigners for safe-keeping, and the treasures of the Mukden and Peking palaces were sacrificed, foreign agents taking advantage of the opportunity. Where could a Manchu take them: to Jehol, to Kalgan where the Russ waited, to Mukden where the Japanese waited? That was only like running from the door to be caught on the roof. Before long, treasures next in wonder to those looted at Peking in 1900 will find their way into the palaces, mansions and museums of the Occident, and artistic China will be robbed bare as a bone; for Peking has long been robbing China of art. The hotels and khans of Peking were crowded to the roofs, and the refugees overflowed into the cellars and stables and moats. Merchantmen were chartered, and held with steam up at Tientsin, ready to afford a refuge for panic-stricken Manchu princes, or disgraced Chinese officials like Sheng. Missionaries in the outskirts trusted the promises of the “Sia Hwei”, and stayed at their posts. Alarmed consuls arrested them in order to bring them into the capital, and the Chinese forgot the dignity due to their arms and laughed at the humorously incongruous situation!

On November 3rd, the Imperial Third Division under General Wong Chou Yuen, with the assistance of Admiral Sah’s fleet, attacked the rebels in native Hankau City. The vast flat city is not adapted for defense, and the loyalists were infinitely better equipped. General Li was short of ammunition. His troops, however, put up a brave fight, time and again charging hopelessly with cold steel against machine guns, and eliciting the unqualified admiration of the foreigners. On that day the Imperial Third Division made a bloody name for itself in the respect of massacre of non-combatants and arson. A prosperous city of nearly a million was reduced to the appearance of nearly a wrecked village. Both rebels and loyalists saved the foreign quarter along the Yangtze Bund, with its palatial consulates and business houses, and the American Episcopal St. Paul’s cathedral and St. Peter’s church, which were turned into hospitals by Doctors Glenton and MacWillie, and nurse Miss Clark of the Red Cross. Across the river at Wuchang, the buildings of the American Episcopal Boone University were turned into a hospital by Doctors Merrins, Paterson and others of the brave. Heroic missionaries held up their hands against the Third Division, and pleaded the rules of the Red Cross, but the Manchus, especially Prince Tsai Tao and others of the Tsai princes, desired by a massacre to induce the rebels to massacre the first time they had a victory, and thus bring on foreign intervention to save the dynasty. A dynasty that can not stand without foreign intervention will never stand, for true strength is in the hearts of the people alone. It was the old Boxer trick of the dowager empress, Tse Hsi, in 1900.

The rebels, however, meant to keep their heads, even under such terrific provocation as that bloody Race Track field of Hankau, over which the machine guns of the Imperial Third Division swept, and those bloody streets, maloos and walls where non-combatants were butchered if they wore a piece of white, or had their queues severed, both of which were hated rebel signs. To and fro the tide of war surged. On November 3rd, a great change occurred, for on that day the rebels’ great misfortune in having no fleet, was to a large degree nullified. Shanghai arsenal, which supplied Admiral Sah’s fleet, and Shanghai’s native walled city, went over to the revolutionists. This was the second great step forward. The rebels secured the well-known Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of the republic of Han, and their organization spread and strengthened in everything except money and a modern equipped force.

On the same day, the far southwestern capital and province, Yunnan, with its splendid army and police, declared for the red, white and blue sun flag of the republic. Two days after, on November 5th, the famous bore-city, Hangchow, the center of culture, and capital of the coast province of Chekiang, was captured by assault, the Manchu general putting up a strong defense in the Tartar walled section of the city. Ningpo, in the same province, and Suchow, another ancient capital of culture in Kiangsu province, went over on the same day.

On November 6th, Admiral Sah’s sailors handed part of the imperial fleet over to the rebels at Shanghai, and the rebels were now able to reform their center line. This also gave the republicans their first nucleus of a navy. Admiral Sah Chen Ping received his baptism of fire in the battle of the Yalu, under the brave Admiral Ting and Commander Teng. He commanded in suppressing riots at Changsha in 1910, when Yale College branch was barely saved, and he is well known as the host of Admiral Emery’s American fleet at Amoy, when the white squadron was girdling the world under the surprised eyes of Japan, whose mixed-school and emigration “bluffs” were called by President Roosevelt in this significant but quiet way. It was most important to win Kiangsu province, and Chinkiang City was therefore talked over on November 6th. The same day, in the far north, the coaling city and naval base of Chifu in Shangtung province, declared for reform.

Up to this time the cultured old Ming capital of Nanking, the most beloved city in China, had held out under a concentrated force of 12,000 imperialists, who were unusually well equipped. After Wuchang, Hanyang and Shanghai, it was next in importance to capture Nanking on the right wing of the rebels. The imperialists knew that to hold Nanking was worth an army of 200,000 men, and General Chang Hsun (we will call him Chang the Second) was in equipment and temper a man to their minds. His second in command was General Chao, and it was rumored that bloody General Chang Piao was within the walls. The civil viceroy of Nanking was the well known Chang Jen Chung, who instituted the first Chinese industrial exhibition at Nanking in 1910. On the northeast of the walled city are the peaks of Purple Mountain, 1,400 feet high, dominating with its huge Armstrong and Krupp guns the north gate, Ta Ping Men, and the east gate, Chao Yang Men, and the great capital, around which the mighty Yangtze flows, yellow flooded to the brim. This hill, and the Tartar section of the city, Chang the Second fortified, so that it would take a hundred to one to drive him out. On November 8th, the dauntless rebels, led by General Ling, under the protection of fire from the Canton artillery, took the armory, arsenal and powder mills outside the south wall, rushed the outworks, and held part of the southern city with insufficient force. One of the cannon balls went crashing through the “North Pole” pagoda in the Tartar City. On November 9th, the imperialists at the strong south fort (Nan Men) hoisted a white flag of apparent surrender, and as the republicans came up, “near enough to see the white of their eyes,” they opened a treacherous fire upon them. The Manchu troops, under General Tieh Liang, looted their own fine military school in the city. There let us leave the rebel lines and pickets for a few days, while General Li and General Hwang on the far left wing were being appealed to for men, and above all, for siege and machine guns and ammunition.

On November 9th, Fuchau had to be stormed again, for the imperialists had been reinforced. On that same day, Canton, always stanch for a modern China, and mother of nearly all the reformers, went over to the rebels under President of Assembly Wu Hon Man, General Chan Kwang Ming, and Wong Ching Wai, and drove the imperial viceroy to Hongkong near by, where the British government pleaded with the great Chinese body to spare their unwelcome hostage, who had fled in Chinese custom “to a city of refuge”. All over China, as in the Palestine of the Bible, are towers of refuge for this very purpose. The American cruiser New Orleans, Captain Miller, had steamed up to Nanking and taken on board hundreds of foreigners, including seventy-five Americans, and records. On November 10th, bloody Chang the Second gave orders, in the old “Boxer” trick plan, for the awful massacre of Nanking. The aim was first to incite the imperial soldiery with the sight of blood, as tigers baited. On the lovely bright afternoon, the prison was opened and 200 prisoners were sent into the yamen courtyard, “to their freedom,” as they thought. There they were made to kneel in a row, while their necks were stretched out by the queue. An executioner, with a mercury weighted Taifo shortsword, hurried along the long line, using only one practised blow to sever each head. The heads were elevated on bamboo poles. The Manchu troops then tasted the blood in the belief that human blood would make them brave and invulnerable. They even dipped their coarse biscuits in the gory pools. They were then ready for anything that was merciless.

In force, Chang’s trained troops, with machine guns, swept down from Purple Mountain, Tiger fort, Lion fort and the Tartar section of the city, on the small force of republicans, and the innocent population of Nanking the Refined. Shame on the Ninth Division of Shangtung territorial troops and the old-style turbaned “braves”. Every man who had no queue; every woman who had the rebel sign of white in her apparel or hair; every man, woman or child who was a Nankingese was slaughtered without opposition, and the odious Ninth Division waded back to Tiger, Lion and Purple Hills through the bloody shambles. This was not war; not even hell; this was an insane massacre of the innocents. The few republican troops under the indomitable General Ling fought until their ammunition was spent, and then with cold steel set, they awaited the rain of bullets from machine guns across the lead swept spaces of the immense, half-built-up city. It availed nothing. Peking breathed with hope. Chang the Second was a general after the “Boxer” Manchu heart. Manchu princes—yea, even those who had visited America and England, like the dashing Prince Tsai Tao and Prince Tsai Chun, and who should have known better—had been urging massacres, and Chang the Second had apparently understood them. General Chang the Second was heartily backed up by the merciless Tartar general, Tieh Liang.

On November 11th, Amoy, the famous port of Fukien province, where American officers have been so often entertained by Admiral Sah and other Chinese admirals, was taken, the American cruiser Saratoga (the old New York of Santiago fame) and the American gunboat Quiros steaming out of the harbor so as to be non-combatants in fact and in influence. The American monitor Monterey, so as to protect foreigners, later steamed into the harbor, where she was often struck by stray bullets. On November 13th, the most remarkable thing thus far in the revolution occurred, though the impulse was not permanently fixed. Mukden, the home capital of the Manchu race, the mausoleum of their founder, and of many of their dead emperors, under the influence of Chinese immigrants, declared its independence under General Wuh Hsiang Chen, and the reform speaker of the Mukden Assembly, Wu Lun Lien. During all this turmoil, Pechili, Shansi, and Honan provinces were strongly held by Manchu and Mongol “banner” troops, but Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang of the republicans got a note through to the American minister at Peking, asking him to deliver it to the Manchu regent, Prince Chun. The note requested the Court to abdicate, and retire to Jehol, 200 miles northeast of Peking, where they were promised positive protection, and liberal pensions. In the meantime Yuan Shih Kai returned from exile at Chang Te in Honan province to Peking, and took up the reins of power as provisional premier of a limited Manchu monarchy; began treating with the republicans, solidifying the Manchu army, and soliciting foreign loans, as the empress dowager’s strong-box no longer furnished funds. Only three out of twenty-one provinces, and three territories, were now remitting to Peking, but Peking had the mighty northern army.

On November 17th, the revolutionists under Generals Li and Hwang attacked the imperial lines at Hankau, and despite their poor equipment in machine guns and artillery, led by a regiment of Roundheads called “Dare to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) men, commanded by Colonel Wen, who graduated from West Point in 1909, they took three of the four parallels by cold steel charges, sapper work and bomb throwing. One of the rebel shells from Wuchang punched a hole in a 2,000,000-gallon tank of oil in Hankau, and the streets were flooded two feet deep with kerosene. It was the first time that Chinese had met Chinese in scientific modern war, and it marked the entrance of China into the modern arena, where Might strikes for Right, instead of only arguing for it. China had begun to find herself. Meanwhile there was distress in Singan in the north, which city had declared for reform on October 24th. The Manchus had retaken the suburbs of the city, for it was in their sphere of control, and had begun, with their mobs, to massacre missionaries, as was expected. The China Inland Mission outside the city was attacked, and the English Baptist, Scandinavian and American missions throughout the province were struck at. Blame was put on the Mohammedans wherever possible.

Let us go down to Nanking for a moment, to see how the war is progressing. To keep Nanking and Shanghai in touch, the Americans had brought up their beautiful cruisers New Orleans and Albany, for the American Vice-consul Gilbert and the intrepid American missionaries, Doctor Macklin, President Bowen, Mr. Blackstone, Mr. Garrett and others were in the city. General Hsu of the imperialists, with the Thirty-fifth Regiment of Infantry, on November 21st, hoisted the red, white and blue flag and left the strong lines of Purple Mountain and the Tartar city to join the rebel ranks, which were being reinforced from Canton and other directions also. Bloody General Chang the Second, the imperial commander, immediately had all General Hsu’s relatives in Nanking murdered in revenge.

In far-away London, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, with an American adviser and friend, “General” Homer Lea, set sail for Shanghai on the same day. He first went to Paris, and then took the liner Martha at Marseilles for Hongkong, from which place he planned safely to reach Shanghai to complete the rebel government. On November 22nd, when the imperialists with all their foreign friendships were unable to consummate their loans, the rebels at Shanghai opened a Republic of Han Central Bank, with a capital of 5,000,000 taels. The title of the bank was the “Chung Hua”, and the first notes were dated in the 4609th year of Huang Ti (august sovereign), he being the mythical first emperor of China, and the inventor of the Chinese ideograph. The notes were printed in English on one side and entitled “The Republican China Military Bank Note”. Other notes were issued by the provincial rebels and read as follows in English and Chinese: “The Chinese Revolutionary Government promises to pay the bearer —— dollars after one year of its establishment in China on demand at the Treasury of the said government in Canton, or its agents abroad. 1st January, 1911. For President (sd.) Sun Wen.” It will be noted that the Christian calendar had now come into effect. The shops immediately took the notes at a premium, something unique in China, the land of financial discounts and chaotic exchange. Enthusiasm grew. For the first time in the history of modern China, a company of women took up arms and advanced with the lines. There were also many Red Cross corps of women, from Canton, Fuchau, Wuchang, Shanghai, etc.

We shall return to Nanking. On November 25th, by hard scraping at Canton, the rebels under General Ling brought up twelve field guns for six hours and fired on the imperial position on Tiger Hill and Lion Hill on the northwest, near the famous Ming tombs, which are outside the walls of Nanking (not to be confounded with the remainder of the Ming dynasty tombs which are at Nankou, northwest of Peking). Then 1,500 troops, led as usual by companies of queueless “Dare to Die” boys, many of whom were students in Nanking Protestant University (American), charged, and drove twice their number of imperialists from the strong lines, which were supplied with heavy Armstrong and Krupp four-point-seven and six-inch guns. Unfortunately, many shots struck the gate of the tombs, behind which the imperialists had also fortified themselves. The rebel navy now came nearer, despite the fire of Lion Hill, and prepared for the attack, as the rebel infantry drew their lines closer around the largest walled city of China. Guns were immediately brought up to breach the heavy walls and high gates and train on the Lion Hill and Tiger forts, which were within the Tartar city, and keeping the navy back.

On the left wing at Hankau the rebels were gaining successes. At an armistice, on November 24th, Yuan Shih Kai’s representatives told General Li (whom they met at the British consulate on the bund) that he had better trust the Manchus, as they could secure the hated Russian or Japanese intervention as in the old notorious days of 1896 and 1900. Li replied that the republicans had no trust any more in Manchu promises of reform or real permanent constitutionalism; that the usual relapse of the “Boxer sickness” would come! At Manila, Hongkong and Singapore, the Americans and British were preparing troops to be ready, as in 1900, to rush them to Tientsin to save the Peking legations and missionaries, if the Manchus, or Hunghutz, or Mongol brigands brought on a massacre to secure foreign intervention. Though America and Britain emphatically stand for non-intervention and non-partition of China, both these nations feared Russia and other powers which were hard to restrain. Britain’s action at this time in restraining ambitious Japan (greedy with the taste of Formosa, Korea and South Manchuria) can not be praised too highly. Wu Ting Fang, Doctor Sun and General Li of the republicans, from Shanghai, London and Wuchang respectively, issued proclamations that foreigners and missionaries were to be respected highly as the best friends of New China. In Shansi province the republicans, separated from their base, were having a hard time against the Imperial Sixth Division under General Sheng Yun, which had every advantage of succor by railway from Peking and the junction at Ching Ting. The imperialists bribed soldiers to assassinate General Wu of the republican forces operating in these northwest provinces. This was a terrible blow to reform.

On November 26th, the rebels, under General Ling Chang, attacked the strong hill forts above Nanking with determination. There was much firing of heavy guns from the river also, as the new navy of fifteen small vessels came up. Dogged charges were made across the open and up the zigzag of Purple Hill. The rebel losses were tremendous, and Chang the Second, of the imperialists, proved himself as grim a defense fighter as he was a ruthless leader of massacre. The rebel attack under General Ling Chang was brilliant and reckless. Who will sing the feats of the new Chinese arms,—yes, the Chinese, who the world said would never make soldiers, even if they had a great cause at heart. The fighting was not as magnificently solid and desperate as Pickett’s gray charge at Gettysburg, the Cuirassiers’ wild ride into the valley of death at Waterloo, Linievitch’s grim defense of Putiloff Hill, the shouting sweep of Oku’s dwarf Japanese up Nanshan Heights, or the silent plunge of Oyama’s ranks into the Liaoyang valley, or against the black Mukden lines. It was as determined, daring and brilliant, however, as any land engagement in the South African or Spanish-American Wars, and far braver and stronger than the theatrical engagements, with air-ship accessories, of the Italy-Tripoli War. The world’s critics must now change their criterions. A strong cause WILL make a strong battle anywhere the world over, no matter what the color of the soldier, or the cut or tint of his battle flag. The fighting now closed in on Nanking, the old capital of the Mings, the high-water city of the Taiping rebellion, and the rebels had a great deal to avenge, and a great deal to gain. To fail in the attack on Nanking meant a tremendous setback to the rebellion. Few reinforcements could come, for the fighting was in half a dozen provinces, and along a broken front extending from Chingtu to Hankau and Nanking, 1,000 miles, with railway transport service, foreign ammunition, money and sympathy, favoring the imperialists; and sea and river transport, and the sympathy of the British and American peoples favoring the rebels, who, of course, had no navy worth counting as yet.

The alarmed Manchu regent, Prince Chun, at Peking, now gave out his oath, in the name of the child emperor, Pu Yi (throne name, Hsuan Tung), sworn before the open heaven to God (Tien), before the Confucian ancestral tablets, and before Buddha’s image, as follows: “My policy and choice of officials have not been wise; hence the recent troubles. Fearing the fall of the sacred Manchu dynasty, I accept the advice of the National Assembly. I swear to uphold the Nineteen Constitutional Articles (demanded by the 20th Army Division at Lanchow) and organize a parliament, excluding the Manchu and Mongol nobles from administrative posts. The heavenly spirits of your forefathers will see and understand.” They understood! The educated Chinese of the central and southern provinces laughed; they had heard the like before, and besides, this oath was taken under compulsion of the Army League. The new rebel government in Kwangtung province, under Wu Hon Man, its president, was as yet unable to police the notorious pirate waters of the Si Kiang (West River), running far up country from Canton, and the large British tonnage, though armed, suffered. Chief Officer Nicholson, of the steamer Shui On, was killed in a private attack at Junction Creek on November 30th, which infuriated British Hongkong, which was holding its gunboats in leash. The large Chinese tonnage in fear tied up to the wharves and bund of Canton and the riverine ports. A trick of the West River pirates was to anchor a deserted stoneboat across the channel, and as the steamer slowed up, the snake boats and motor launches of the pirates dashed alongside from the creeks and cane-brakes. The most daring of these brigand chiefs was the notorious Luk, from whom we shall hear later. Everywhere else, however, as we have shown, for instance at Fuchau, the republicans were splendidly protecting foreign traders and missionaries.

I have said that the revolutionists’ line was too long to defend, with two principal sieges taking place three hundred miles apart. Peking understood this, and while the rebels reinforced their attack on the right flank at Nanking, the imperialists brought down reinforcements by railway to General Feng Kwo Chang, at Hankau, who at once attacked the rebel left flank in force, aiming to cripple the rebels by taking back the essential Hanyang arsenal. Hei Shan, Meit Zu and Tortoise forts were taken by machine and field gun fire and charges, and General Li’s rebel ranks fell back under severe loss. The retreating ranks didn’t carry their bird cages with them as the gentlemen soldiers of Chifu did in the China-Japan War of 1894! General Feng’s and General Wong’s imperialist troops, after breaking through the Tung Chi (East Messenger) gate and looting, now put the torch to the rest of Hankau, destroying the homes of a million people, and burning a hundred million dollars’ worth of property. Such an uncalled for, accursed outrage, such an unjustifiable act of wholesale arson against non-combatants has never been known. What would history have said had the Germans burned Paris, the British, Pretoria or the Americans, Manila? What should be said when the Manchu imperialists burned Hankau? Why didn’t they rather sell its tiles, its silk, its oils, its mountains of tea? They admitted that they needed money. At least there would have been no world’s loss of property. Hankau belonged to the world as much as to China. The Manchu must yet answer for this arson, for arson and murder are unjustifiable world crimes. Arson makes it harder and costlier for an American, a Briton, a German, a Frenchman, to live, as the wave of cost rolls on, as much as it makes it harder for the Chinese to live. In these days of world conservation, no nation should be allowed to put the firebrand to property because men are fighting or arguing over an idea. Shame on the sack and burning of Hankau by the Manchus. The British, Americans, volunteers and jackies, and other foreigners on the long bund, heaped up breastworks of even rice bags, and swept the riverside and race track on either flank in defense of the palatial foreign concessions. Here a blue-jacket, there a marine, and between an ununiformed volunteer clerk, the boys shouldered their Springfields, Lee-Enfields and Mausers, and held brave guard at the thinnest part of the long-stretched line of the white man’s empire of influence and trade.

On the same day the rebels were doing better on the right flank at Nanking, despite their long front of fifteen miles wide. The Ta Ping Men (North) gate of the city, and Tiger Hill fort within the walls were bombarded, and General Ling brought up the rebel guns to bombard General Chang the Second, who had contracted his lines to Purple, Lion, Tiger and Pei Che Kao forts in the northeast of the city, as far away as possible from the rebel fleet, part of which had to be recalled to Wuchang to assist General Li in his extremity. The imperialists held the strong Nan Men gate in the south of the city, and the Chao Yang fort at the east gate, which was fortified with two six-inch, two four-point-seven, and two three-inch guns, as well as Maxims, surely a deadly armament. In wise patience America and Britain still held their troops at Manila and Hongkong, respectively, but Japan was allowed, on the 26th of November, to rush 1,000 more legation and railway guards to Tientsin, and the railway guards along the Japanese railways in Manchuria were reinforced far beyond international conventions. Captain Sowerby, with the newly organized Foreign Frontier Guards, started from Peking to help the harassed missionaries who were being murdered in Singan and Taiyuen in the north. This astonishing expedition was remarkable for its intrepidity and its success. Within a month and a half Captain Sowerby’s men had gone from Taiyuen to Singan, gathered together forty missionaries, and following the course of the Wei and Yellow Rivers through the famous Tongkwan pass, brought his charges safely to Honan City on the Honan railway, from which place they could easily reach Tientsin. Lies began to spread like wildfire. Pirates committed atrocities along the West River section of Kwangtung province, and the Manchus and their sympathizers blamed it on the ineffective rebel organization of Canton. In the north, Hunghutz, Mongol and Boxer brigands murdered missionaries, rebels and non-combatants, and the republican sympathizers blamed it on the ineffective Manchu government. This is certain: the rebels desperately disliked foreign intervention, and only pleaded for time to win and organize, while the Manchus saw that, if driven to the last wall, massacre and lawlessness would help the retention of the dynasty by causing foreign interventions; and the Manchus were willing to lose all Manchuria to Japan and all Mongolia and Turkestan to Russia, to bring this about. The reader will note that none of the many old generals has appeared on the imperial side, as the battles narrowed down to engagements with modern weapons of precision and power, requiring generals trained in modern war. Generals Li and Hwang, of the rebels, opposed Generals Feng and Wong at Hankau, and Generals Ling and Hsu opposed Generals Chang and Tieh of the imperialists at Nanking. More foreign officers, especially Japanese and Germans incognito, served in the loyalist ranks than in the rebel ranks, and German ammunition and guns were freely served to the imperialists. After the battle of Hanyang, two Germans were found among the imperialists’ dead, and two of the imperialists’ wounded were Germans, one of them a colonel in the German army. The Japanese trusts, the princes of the Choshiu and Satsuma clans, who control the House of Peers and the Genro Council, and thus run the government by veto, did not want a republic in China. They feared it would bring about the control of the budget by the House of Representatives and real popular government in Japan, which country is now absolutely controlled by the aristocracy; for the Japanese Diet is no more representative of the overtaxed people than is the Russian Duma. They feared also that if the Chinese pope-emperor could fall, so could the Japanese pope-emperor who was no more holy. The German syndicates were also anxious to maintain their confiscatory privileges in Shangtung province, which were obtained from the Manchus. Dictator Yuan always preferred German instructors in his Pechili, Honan and Shangtung armies.

On November 27th, Yuan Shih Kai, the premier-dictator at Peking, had poured out the treasures of the Manchu empress dowager’s private chest, and well paid and well armed troops were rushed to Hankau. Generals Feng and Wong Chou Yuen had 30,000 modern drilled and equipped men, and the divisions were heavily supplied with precise artillery. Hankau City and Hanyang arsenal across the river were bombarded mercilessly, and the imperialists of Wong’s bloody third division, under cover of this artillery practise, crossed the Han River thirty miles up and flanked the left wing of the rebels, whose old Armstrong artillery, using percussion shells, was no match for the modern three and four-inch guns of the imperialists, who had the arsenals of the north and the Germans at Kiaochou to draw on. Neither was the rebel infantry equal, as half of their regiments had been drawn back to Nanking, 400 miles away, by river. The best the rebels could do was to oppose 15,000 men, with weak artillery, to 30,000 excellently equipped imperialists. The result was that the all-important Hanyang arsenal and world-wide known iron works were lost, and Generals Li and Hwang Hing had to retreat to Wuchang, the rebel capital across the Yangtze River, which is a difficult place to defend, as its flanks and rear are vulnerable. The result of this great reverse was that the lukewarm viceroys in the northern provinces, who had gone over to the rebels’ cause in the first flush of success, began to declare again for the Manchus. Shangtung province went back, and Yuan Shih Kai by the telegraph on this day got his own province of Honan to return to the imperial fold. Both of these are northern provinces. Premier Yuan now began rushing reinforcements down the Grand Canal and railway to Yangchow and Pukow, nearly opposite Nanking, so as to succor redoubtable General Chang the Second at Nanking, and enable him to again occupy Tiger fort. General Feng came over from Hankau to advise Chang. The plan was, by taking back the Hankau cities and Nanking, to turn both the left and right flanks of the revolutionists, rush their capital of Wuchang, and crumple up the rebellion in Shanghai. Everything in equipment, transportation, foreign men, money and artillery favored the imperialists. Everything in daring and enthusiasm favored the rebels, whose American-trained students recited the dictum of Herodotus on republicanism: “The Athenians, when governed by tyrants, were superior in war to none of their neighbors, but when freed from tyrants, became by far the first. This then shows that as long as they were oppressed they purposely acted as cowards, as laboring for a master, but when they were free every man was zealous to labor for the State.”

There was one thing the rebels were weak or uncertain in. If they destroyed China’s religion of aristocracy and king worship, what would they give in its place? Would they give Christianity (their leaders, Doctor Sun and General Li, being Christians), and a permanent satisfaction with the rule of a native president and congress over twenty-one provincial presidents and assemblies? It was a mighty task,—the greatest the world has known,—and few of the old viceroys and Manchuized Chinese literati of the Hanlin were at heart prepared for its radical solution. True, the rebels could staff the twenty-one provinces with advanced Kwangtung, Szechuen, Hupeh, Hunan and Kiangsu province men, but that was not republican home rule.

The aim and difficulty of the rebels was to maintain the new ideas against reverses in the provinces, which had developed few modern thinkers among the officials, who, like the troops, were looking for salary first and country afterward. Yuan, the premier-dictator, who had weighed it all up in Honan, said to himself, according to some southern critics: “Give me money enough for 100,000 splendid, modern-drilled northern men, and give me trunk railways. I’ll find men who will fight for whichever side pays their wages; we must have order, which is civilization’s first law.” Yuan was a believer in that truism that the radical reformers do all the work, and bear all the risk of reform, and that the “standpatters”, the moderate progressives and reactionaries, enjoy all the fruit and political offices. Differently from Sun, Yuan wanted office first and influence afterward. He was now active in soliciting foreign loans, securing $1,000,000 from Russia and Belgium, and the promise of $30,000,000 from Russia, Belgium and Japan, these being the pro-Manchu powers, while America and Britain represented pro-Chinese sympathies. The rebels were just as active in soliciting private subscriptions in America and the Straits Settlements, and 70 per cent. of the Chinese abroad sent a quarter of their fortunes to Sun Yat Sen and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai for the republican cause.

However, it must be admitted that when the Manchus recruited Yuan Shih Kai, the Honanese, they secured a tower of strength, another Li Hung Chang, to a large degree a dictator, a believer in money, troops, quick trial by drumhead, and decapitation, a good servant of any master who would steadily employ him; a believer in dynasties more than peoples, a modern progressive but not an idealist or natural republican, a man who hated the words “turbulent liberty”, but who loved the word “order”; a statesman more like Diaz, Bismarck or Richelieu than like Washington or Lincoln. He had never traveled abroad like thousands of other Chinese officials. He could not speak or read English, and so knew little of the great documents of liberty and idealism in their first fire of the original. He knew that he was smashing rapid progress for the second time, just as he had gone against the reform Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu, and the palace reformers from Canton: Kang Yu Wei, Liang Chi Choa, etc., in 1898, and joined the reactionary “Boxer” dowager empress, Tse Hsi. He feared the rebel sympathizers might assassinate him, and he rode as dictator about Peking with a cavalry escort. His headquarters were in the modern Wai Wu Pu Building, which is fitted with steam heat, elevators, electric light, etc. There he gave regular interviews to the foreign press representatives, in emulation of the methods long practised by Sunyacius and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai. He made the Manchus weak, too, for he matched their troops at Peking with his old Shangtung and Honan territorial troops, man for man. He also sent the turbulent, stubborn twentieth division, shorn of its commander, Chang, far to the eastward. The majority of the National Assembly had fled, and the Manchu princes would not come out of their bedrooms. If the rebels were to win now, they must produce even a stronger man than Yuan. Who was that man; where was he in the making?

It is quite orthodox not to despair ever of immemorial China, and to expect a great man to arise when politics is at its worst, for Confucius arose from the rivalry of sixteen states, and he formulated his political philosophy when he was a persecuted exile from his own state of Lu. When the republicans were most dejected, that great republican, the American Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, in season and out of season, unofficially beseeched them to quit themselves like men. So large-hearted a man could not stand by and see men who were fighting for liberty droop at their guns. He cheered them; he talked to their students; he gave megaphone interviews to the world press and supported the discouraged propaganda, fearing naught the criticism which arose. He was a missionary, but more than that, he was a man, and an American. Some British missionaries, too, came in for criticism because they could not refrain from whispering in the ear of liberty the Cromwellian encouragement: “Be of good cheer.”

By November 29th the lack of money was thinning the lines of the rebel forces, and Dictator Yuan, at Peking, was growing in strength with small foreign loans and arms from Russia, Japan and Germany. The rebels, at Wu Ting Fang’s suggestion, in desperation, threatened to boycott the commerce of any nation making loans to the Manchu government, and a German compradore was shot down at Hankau as he was in the act of delivering arms over to the imperialists. The Manchu Tsai princes sold their art treasures for arms. The rebels melted the idols of the nation to make coin. In accord with the protocol of 1901, America now formally offered the Peking government 2,500 troops to assist in keeping the railway from Peking to Tientsin open to the sea. The Japanese had already landed their quota of this foreign force. Naturally the rebels looked on this landing of foreign troops in the Manchu section of the country as, to a degree, foreign aid to the Manchus, as it increased their prestige and sources of advice in the north. More subtle forces than those of arms began to work now on some of the rebel leaders, and the cause lapsed into darker days because of the lack of money. Dictator Yuan, in Peking, was exultant, and said to one member of the legations: “I give the rebellion eight more days to live; I expect to have 100,000 modern troops and a railway.” Professor E. H. Parker, the eminent sinologue, now of Manchester University, England, when a British consul in Korea, wrote of “Yuan’s Machiavellian character” in his book, John Chinaman. Even some of the Manchus agreed in the cry of the rebels: “Yuan is making himself dictator; he may seek the throne; he may split off Northern China; Peking is too near Russian Siberia.” He had sent the Manchu troops away from Peking, and gathered his old divisions (like Cæsar with his Thirteenth Legion) of Shangtung and Honan troops around him.

Yuan appealed to the provinces to send delegates to Peking to discuss a constitution, but the rebel provinces replied: “No National Assembly can discuss constitutional government with freedom while your troops, pounding their rifle stocks, stand at the door; remember the Parliaments of King Charles.” The rebels cried: “If Yuan and the Manchus win now, it is foreign money that does it. Why can’t we get foreign money; we’re the overwhelming majority of the people.” Some of the foreign governments replied: “We are only interested in trade and order; we can’t wait for you to fight this out, and possibly kill some of our missionaries; you must win quickly or we’ll stand by the powers that be.” The rebels replied: “Cromwell and Washington, Thiers and Grant didn’t win quickly, and if you let us lose now, we’ll fight it out again. You can’t withstand the constitutional rights of 400 million people for the sake of a dynasty of raiders, who seized and entrenched their throne with five million subsidized cavalrymen, who have now grown effete by subsidy. We are opposed to entrenched privilege just as much as you are. In Roosevelt’s words: ‘The land has got to be as good for all of us as it is for some of us.’ These minority Manchus must cease to usurp office, pensions, privileges and concession granting. We of the south are taxed without representation. If America could go to war with this as a cause, why can’t we?”

Yuan, under certain foreign advice, planned to throw a bridge across the Yangtze River at Hankau, and get his railway down into the heart of the southern rebel provinces. He believed in quick facilities for throwing his modern troops against uprisings, for his railway from Peking to Hankau had won him the present turn in the tide of affairs by enabling him to flank the long rebel lines. Oh! at this time, some cried, for an emperor warrior of the real Chinese, a descendant of the Mings; a descendant of the house of Confucius (the Duke Kungs); or a Washington-like president of a Chinese republic, who could get foreign loans. This was the cry that was arising against the return of the Manchu ghost, and the ominous shadow of a dictator. However, something had been won. The agitation and the battles had taught the sweet themes of deathless liberty and a new Chinese nationalism to thousands who had been supine, provincial, or anarchistic in their despair. It was recalled that Tau Sze Tung, the reformer and son of a Hupeh governor, who was beheaded in 1898, said on his way to the place of execution: “Martyrdom must always precede revolution; shall I not be the first martyr?” Liberty is never defeated, for each time she falls she makes her conqueror concede something, for she only falls to her knees and rises again. The reactionary empress dowager, Tse Hsi, after her victory in 1898, conceded reforms from 1900 to 1908, and it would be so with her successors, perhaps, after this lesson of protest. A plan was laid by some foreign bankers, and some Chinese, that if the republican government was not a success, a direct descendant of Confucius, one Kung, an American Presbyterian Christian of Shangtung province, would be backed for the throne in the hope that the Chinese race would flock to his banner.

On November 28th, 29th and 30th, the rebels, under Generals Hsu and Ling, made a master effort on their right wing, for which purpose they had weakened their left wing, allowing the two Hankau cities to go. The Canton bomb throwing levies and artillerymen went into battle singing this new hymn to Liberty, which is certainly rugged poetry of merit:

“Freedom will work on this earth,
Great as a giant rising to the skies,
Come, Liberty, because of the black hell of our slavery,
Come enlighten us with a ray of thy sun.

“Behold the woes of our fatherland.
Other men are becoming all kings.
Can we forget what our people are suffering?
China the Great is as an immense desert.

“We are working to open a new age in China;
All real men are calling for a new heaven and a new earth.
May the soul of the people rise as high as Kwangtung’s highest peak (Nan Mountain);
Spirit of Freedom, lead, protect us.”

Nanking was attached in force. The American navy withdrew, while the small rebel navy of fifteen vessels, under the protection of captured forts holding back free play of the Lion fort guns, moved up within range to support the wide rebel attack of fifteen miles frontage. It will be remembered that General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, held some of the peaks of Purple Hill outside the northeast walls, and Yuwatei fort on the south, and nearly all the city. The rebels took the Tiger Hill fort and four of the northwest gates and forts, after bombardment by the Cantonese, sapping, and a spirited rush. Then Purple Hill and Yuwatei forts were bombarded and rushed after a terrific engagement, the imperialists, under Generals Chang and Tieh, making a last stubborn stand behind the ninety-foot high and thirty-foot thick walls of the vast city. The scene was terrible to view. Clouds of cannon smoke, lighted by terrific flashes of gun fire, made the night of November 30th memorable. The revolutionists, practising Wolfe’s strategy before Quebec was taken, by a secret path, rushed up a peak of Purple Mountain, above the imperial position, and shelled the imperial park of guns. Then in the night a charge, led by Colonel Wen, was made by the “Dare to Die” picked brigade, who carried hand bombs and swords. A wild retreat followed down the mountain. Even boys fought with the greatest bravery. The dying down of the terrific cannonade in the south meant that the republicans had rushed the Nan Men fort, and an explosion showed that they had successfully blown it up. Just as daylight broke, the strong Chao Yang, Tiger and Lion forts were again rushed and taken. The rebels were bitter, and there was great slaughter of the imperialists in revenge for General Chang’s merciless massacre of innocents when he declared a state of war at the beginning of the month. Great lawlessness overspread the land, the rebels as well as the imperialists being unable to establish a police force, while they fought out the reform questions. Even in British Hongkong, where 500,000 Chinese are ruled by 5,000 British, the authorities had to institute the public whipping of offenders, so as to keep disorder on the part of the lawless intimidated. Complaint increased along the Yangtze valley that the Germans were supplying arms to the imperialists at Hankau, as well as in the northern provinces, from their colony base of Kiaochou. Bitter complaint was also made that Baron Cottu was the go-between in asking Russia, France and Belgium for a $30,000,000 loan for the Manchus and Yuan Shih Kai, which would give the Russo-Asiatique Bank the same intrusive excuses that Russia availed of in 1898. The rebels were weak in Shensi province, and American missionaries were killed by the mob in Singan. Dictator Yuan threw the Sixth Division from Honan into Shensi to take the province back.

On Saturday, December 2nd, at ten o’clock, a memorable scene occurred at Nanking. General Chang the Second escaped across the Yangtze River through the Ta Ping gate on the morning of December 1st to Pukow, the northern railway terminus, after planting a mine under the Tartar General’s yamen, which was to be blown when the rebel General Hsu was caught in the trap at the capitulation. He also secreted eighteen other mines in the Tartar city, which had therefore to be burned so as to make the explosion safe. General Chao succeeded in command of the imperialists. The investiture was complete, and the situation was now hopeless for the defenders. Twelve brave Americans had remained on the scene, the great missionaries, Doctor Macklin, Mr. Garrett, Doctor Blackstone, President A. J. Bowen, of Nanking University, and others, and the vice-consul, Mr. Gilbert, who dramatically, with field glasses, watched the bombardment from a high graveyard within the city. They believed in saving blood (“Chiu Ming,” as the Chinese say), much provocation for revenge as there was on the side of General Hsu’s victorious men. They pleaded with Hsu for the first humanitarian surrender in Chinese civil war, as a thrilling example for all time that Chinese revolutionists, like George Washington’s and Oliver Cromwell’s men, were patriots and gentlemen at heart, and not mere feudists fighting under the name of a great cause.

General Hsu, with the advice of Generals Ling, Li and Hwang, and Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang, rose to the high level. He agreed to a surrender with honors, even guaranteeing the life of the notorious murderer of non-combatants, General Chang the Second. The negotiations took place under the guns of historic Purple Hill, while the panting troops held enthusiasm in control. Behind the walls the imperialists breathed hard, and the great populace of shopkeepers eagerly waited and watched the republican sun flags on Purple Mountain. Hurrah! a shout went up that lives would be guaranteed (“Chiu Ming”); yes, honor, too! Fling open the pounded, riddled iron “Great Peace” gate! The steel muzzles of the hot Armstrongs, the deadly four-point-sevens, the spitting Rexer rapid fire and three-inch Krupp guns on Purple, Lion and Tiger Hills, held their smoky breath like good hounds in leash, but straining. The generals and captains marked time; the troops craned their heads; the Cantonese artillery hitched up the limbers to the gun carriages. The American missionaries thanked God and led on the way of peace for a China that would never forget the moving scene, where forgiveness towered over revenge. Here they come, General Chao riding ahead of the doughty Shangtung territorials with their yellow dragon flags flying for the last time, and the bloody turbaned men of escaped Chang’s army. Ground arms and mark time! The victorious rebels kept their places, and under the fluttering red, white and blue sun flags of the new republic, looked on at the impressive acts. The great column of imperialists deployed with music playing, saluted and piled their arms before the feet of the victors, General Hsu sitting on horseback where the pacificators stood. Sun flags and white flags fluttered everywhere as the sign of rebel dominance. Who are these who now come up with reversed arms? They do not wear the German peaked caps, and the khaki uniform of modern troops, but the old turban and slovenly blue uniform of the ancient troops of China. They are Chang’s bloody old-style warriors, 1,000 of them, wearing white bands in deep contrition and as a seal of their lives from massacre. They, too, salute Hsu, the giver of their lives, some of them giving the unmilitary kotow instead of the modern salute. A cheer went up, the bands playing with greater spirit. Hold open the “Great Peace” gate! Victorious Generals Hsu and Ling, and their men, they of a hundred cold steel and bomb charges, blowing hot the trumpets of victory, and led by the shaven heroes, the “Dare to Die” regiment of immortal night charges, are on the ringing, clanging march for the ancient Ming city, which they have conquered, Nanking the cultured; Nanking the proud capital of capitals; Nanking where was the yamen of the illustrious Viceroy Liu Kun Yih; Nanking of the Taipings, and Nanking of the world’s widest republic! A friendly hand had touched off the mine under the Tartar general’s yamen, and the eighteen other dastardly mines, so that the victors should not be blown up treacherously in the crowning hour of their rejoicing. White flags flutter everywhere. Once the sign of death in China, they are now the sign of peace in China, as well as in the rest of the world. A shout of welcome goes up from the populace, who from the beginning, like all the rest of the central and southern provinces, have been in sympathy with the revolution. Generals Hsu, Ling and Hwang at Nanking then have indeed balanced for the rebels the imperialist victory at Hanyang won by General Feng. The rebels lost their left wing, which was turned. The imperialists have also now lost their left wing, which has been thus crumpled up at Nanking. New moves must now be made on the checker-board by Dictator Yuan at Peking.

Governor Chan Kwang Ming and President Wu Hon Man, of the Canton Assembly, sent out their torpedo-destroyers Wu Ying and Wupang, and with the British gunboats Robin, Sandpiper and Moorhen from Hongkong, and the American gunboat Callao, attacked the West River pirates, and patrolled that romantic river as far as the shadow of Wuchow Pagoda, 220 miles of varied temples, islands, gorges, reaches and river peaks. Mercantile vessels steamed up two by two, their wheel-houses sheathed with steel, their gun racks full, the barred hatches, which let air in but no smuggled pirates out, nailed down on the ’tween decks, a guard at each hatch and over each port, and double quartermasters manning the wheel. Commerce had gone back to medieval conditions, and it was exciting. Rich compradores of Hongkong, like Chan Kang Yu, of Douglas, Lapraik and Company, contributed 2,000 uniforms and outfits to equip a regiment of President Wu’s provincial troops. Part of the rebel navy now made a four-hundred-mile dash at forced draught to Wuchang and Hanyang, from Shanghai, to try to keep the successful right wing of the imperialists from crossing to the rebels’ temporary capital. If the gunboats could keep the loyalists engaged at Hanyang, it was not impossible that the rebels, if greatly reinforced from Canton, could turn the flank and strike the loyalists’ supply railway in the rear.

On December 5, 1911, new moves were made at Peking. Prince Chun, the regent father of the baby Emperor Pu Yi (his real and not his throne name), resigned in favor of two co-regents, one a Manchu, Prince Tsai Su, and the other a Chinese, Hsu Shao Ching. This was a buffer move to save the throne from the republican demands. For the first time in the three hundred years’ history of the Manchu dynasty, a Chinese was thus brought to share the regent’s power. Prince Tsai Su had been a grand councilor in the old days; and when a national assembly was granted he was put in as its president by Manchu power. Later he was president of the Navy Board, and president of the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board). He is a moderate progressive, a Manchu of the Manchus and related to the emperor. Hsu Shao Ching, a Pechili Chinese, is well known as a former minister to Russia and Germany, and the first president of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He was a grand councilor in the old days, a viceroy of Manchuria, and president of the Railway Board (Yu Chuan Pu) in charge of loans. He has visited America. The appointment of this republican general-in-chief was, of course, mere flattery, and he did not serve.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Mortuary statues near tombs of the last native Chinese dynasty, the Ming, near Nanking. The crowning battle of the revolution swept over this hillside.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

American, French and British gunboats protecting foreigners at Shameen Island, Canton, during revolution, 1911–12. In foreground, wupan, or boat of “five boards.” Note wide awnings required on gunboats. The awnings on second gunboat (British) were riddled by bullets of contesting forces.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The famous gate giving entrance to the native city, Tientsin. Reform in schools, industries and army really started in this city under the viceroyships of Li Hung Chang and Yuan Shih Kai, and the taotaiship of Tang Shao Yi.

These moves on the recommendation of Dictator Yuan, who was an old enemy of Regent Chun, who exiled him, did not satisfy the rebels, who named Nanking as their permanent capital, called for delegates from all the rebel provinces, and pressed on the war. “The name is changed at Peking, but it is the same old game,” they said. A republican loan of ten million taels, bearing twelve per cent. interest, and sold at about eighty per cent. of face value, was sought at Shanghai, Wu Ting Fang seeking American subscriptions especially, for he kept reminding Americans: “You are the mother of republics; the greatest republic, as we will be the largest republic.” Wu also wired prominent American and British financiers and their governments, pleading that loans should not be made to the Manchu government, and respectfully warning that: “The republican rebels would remember if loans were made to fight their cause.” This really had a deterrent influence, for Americans and Britons were able to influence France to suspend financial action for a while. The American-educated Tang Shao Yi, Dictator Yuan’s chief assistant, now went to the rebel headquarters at Wuchang and Shanghai to interview General Li, Minister Wu and General Hsu regarding peace, and the rebels held sessions of delegates from the Yangtze, southern and western provinces. Kwangtung province began its republican organization, and sent up another quota of 3,000 modern troops from Canton, added to 10,000 previously sent, to reinforce General Li, who stood marking time at Wuchang against General Feng of the imperialists at Hanyang.

By this time the fine Tyne-built, gray Chinese cruiser Hai Chi, which sailed from New York in October, arrived at Shanghai, and amid wild rejoicing, such as only the southern Chinese can express, ran down the triangular yellow dragon and hoisted the square tri-color sun flag of the republican revolution. She was at once ordered to report at the arsenal with her heavy load of ammunition, which was a godsend to the revolutionists. This cruiser was the best known abroad of Chinese war vessels, and at once became the flagship of the rebel navy. She is armed with two eight-inch, and ten four-point-seven guns. On December 14th, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius), with the American, Homer Lea, arrived safely at Penang, Straits Settlements, a hotbed of Chinese reform, which has from time to time sheltered all the reformers like Sun, Kang, etc., since the coup d’état in 1898. The rich foreignized Cantonese owners of tin mines have been loyal to reform from the beginning. When Sun arrived at Singapore on December 16th, a band of Chinese girls met him, each waving the tri-color of the revolution and of the emancipation of Chinese womanhood, and singing the Chinese Marseillaise, Chung Kwan. The Chinese wore no queues, and the caricatures which they distributed showed the pig, the dog, the monkey and the Manchu as all belonging to the races which wear queues! Who will say that the Chinese are not distinguished for humor! I have for years been trying to point out this quality in them.

The first wave of the revolution, which had died down somewhat by the Hankau defeat, had rolled on even into far mountainous Tibet, and Gyangze, a walled and fortified town on the trade route between Lhasa and Darjeeling, fell before the revolutionists on December 14th. Gyangze will be remembered for the stand it made against Sir Francis Younghusband’s brilliant campaign in 1904 to open up the way from India to Lhasa, and also for the operations in its neighborhood by General Chao Ehr Feng, who drove the sacred plotting Dalai Lama for the first time out of China into India in the startling campaign of 1910.

During this week the Yangtze River for six hundred miles presented a remarkable scene, as Tang Shao Yi, the emissary of Dictator Yuan, sailed down to Shanghai to discuss peace terms with the revolutionists at the Town Hall at Shanghai, which was guarded by British, Sikh and other troops of the international settlement. At Hankau the last yellow dragon flag of the imperialists was seen, as the imperial legates, Tang Shao Yi, Yen Shih Si and Yang Shih Chih, on the steamer Tung Ting, sailed between the new navy of the rebels on patrol of the great river, which was now their six hundred miles of front. The fine cruiser Hai Chi, with New York Chinese among the crew, the companion cruisers Hai Yung and Hai Sun, the gunboats Kwang Kang, Kwang Poa, On Nam, etc., headed the republican fleet, which flew the red, white and blue sun flag. The armistice was not kept in Shansi or Shensi provinces by the imperialist general, Sheng Yun. When the pourparler opened, the six powers, at America’s suggestion, informed Wu and Tang that they would appreciate a settlement, because neither side seemed to be able to keep down piracy, it being as bad along the Liao River in the north as along the Si valley in the distant south. It will be recalled that the Manchus of Shansi province early in the campaign assassinated the great rebel general, Wu Lu Cheng. It was now rumored that the Chinese had induced Tuan Fang’s troops in the same province to murder that noble Manchu, who was the greatest friend the foreigners had among the Manchu officials in the dark “Boxer” days of 1900. Tuan had been governor of Pechili and Szechuen provinces, head of the railway development in the Yangtze basin, and above all head of the famous constitutional committee (Hsien Cheng Pien Cha Kuan), which, in 1906, went abroad to study foreign parliaments and congresses. He was the noblest of the Manchus, a repetition in character of Prince Kung of Victorian days, and he died like a modern hero. “Kneel and be decapitated,” his troops demanded. “You’ll shoot or cut me down where I stand,” he declared. Individual virtue does not belong exclusively to any organization.

The rebels went on with their work in calling up troops from Premier Wu Hon Man at Canton, and in equipping aeroplanes, run by Americanized Chinese, for a possible air attack on Peking, if the peace conference should break up in failure, and Hankau could be won back. The missionaries agreed to flee to the Methodist compound which adjoined the legation quarter in the Tartar city of Peking, on a signal being given by rocket. The foreigners in the northern provinces were dubious that a republican government could be established, but it must be remembered that many of these foreigners were more surprised than the rest of the world that the reformers ever shouldered arms for reform and declared for a republic on October 10, 1911. The foreigners of the northern provinces were accordingly at first largely in sympathy with the retention of the Manchu, under a limited monarchy system, and the election of Yuan as premier. Many of the foreigners of Peking and Tientsin tried to impose their views upon the foreigners of Shanghai and Hongkong, who naturally knew more about the reform and republican movement in China, for the initial reformers of China all came from Canton, Penang, Manila and Shanghai, where they were influenced by British Hongkong, Singapore and America. The income of the imperial authority had been levied mainly on the southern provinces, which had least representation on the Peking Boards (Pus) since the coup d’état of 1898. Taxation again without representation! The doubt in the minds of the reformers was that if the Manchu was retained, he might revert to his old faults of by turns oppressing China, and by turns looting it, for certain foreign concessionaires. True, said some, peace could be fixed up now, and matters fought out again, if faith was not kept. But, said others, by that time certain foreigners will have given Yuan Shih Kai an army of forty divisions with a fortified base at Peking in touch with the Russian railway, a navy of battleships, 2,500 miles of new flanking railways down into the south, and a full exchequer box, while the new parliaments may be without a Cromwell, a Pym, a Hampden, a Jefferson, a Franklin, a Lincoln. It was a great question, the largest any nation has ever handled, and the one answer was: “Well, then, develop your Cromwells, Pyms, Hampdens, Jeffersons, Franklins, Lincolns, out of such timber as you have in Sun, Wu, Kang, Li, etc., and let us have peace.”

There are two things that the writer believes and prays for, viz.: that China will remain a republic, and will become a republic based on the worship of Christ and the study of the Christian’s Bible. Such a wonderful nation of four hundred millions, preserved from the immemorial past as one people, must have been preserved for some providential purpose, to put irresistible might behind certain altruistic world ideas. Are those ideas the giving of a truer republicanism, and a more unselfish Christianity than we have exemplified, to mankind? Japan made one irremediable and lamentable mistake; she has ignored the fact that the strength of the West is not in fleets, but in Bible knowledge, certain trusts and occasional wars notwithstanding. It will be remembered that the secretary of the Board of Rites, Wang Chao, recommended to the reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, in 1898, that Christianity should be named as the state religion. President Sun and General Li of the republicans are, as I have said before, a Congregationalist and an Episcopalian.

As the friendly note from the six powers to the imperialists and revolutionists at Shanghai was, at America’s and Britain’s suggestion, identical, it was virtually a tentative recognition by the powers of the belligerents, which happy result the latter had been trying to obtain at Minister Wu’s urgency for over two months. Yuan threatened to fight if a republic was insisted on, and he seized a great part of the Manchu hoards at Peking and Tientsin, under the name of a forced loan. He needed two million dollars a month to pay the Manchu and northern bannermen. Four of the powers were in favor of lending Yuan money, but the rebels said, if you don’t also lend us money, we will boycott your trade in the central and southern provinces, and you know that most of the foreign trade emanates from Southern China, that is, your tea and silk come from that section, and your exports go there in exchange. If you want to know what a trade boycott by us means, ask the Japanese, who will recall the “Tatsu Maru” incident. The rebels also threatened that if loans were made by foreigners to the imperialists, and the rebels were successful, the latter would repudiate these loans. This was the most brilliant move to date of the republican diplomacy. The rebels now made a surprising and broad-minded move. They wanted to save bloodshed. They knew that a Paul converted had been made out of a stubborn Saul unconverted; that some reformers were in their day stanch “standpat machine” men! They offered Yuan the presidency of a republic, with Sunyacius as vice-president possibly, and Wu as a possible foreign minister, until real elective assemblies could form parties, and elect their nominees. Yuan’s emissary at the Shanghai Conference, Tang Shao Yi, was impressed with the fact that Yuan and others in North China had no idea how strongly the republican idea had seized on the rebel provinces. Tang, it will be remembered, is a graduate of an American university, and he is even more progressive than his patron, Yuan. In making overtures to Yuan, Sunyacius and Wu of the rebels were showing that they were strong and calm diplomats, who could waive a detail to win a general cause. Recent Occidental politics exhibit no such example of the suppression of factiousness. Wu, however, did not hesitate a minute to tell the six powers that if they loaned money to the north, or interfered, they would only prolong the war indefinitely.

On December 21, 1911, the line-up was as follows. Yuan, three of the powers and some of the world’s financial syndicates, in favor of a monarchy or war, with a loan to the north, arrayed against the republicans. Wu, ever persistent in demanding a republic, or renewing the war, with a trade boycott in the southern and central provinces, against any foreign nation that loaned the north money. Some of the American journals, surprisingly, opposed the republic. For instance, on the very day that Doctor Sunyacius was named president, the New York Outlook (December 30, 1911), with snap judgment, stated that a Chinese republic could, would and should not be set up at present, and further that “Americans would do well to throw all their influence on the side of a constitutional monarchy”. Nine-tenths of the Outlook’s readers doubtless thought that if Homer could sometimes nod, such surprising retrogressive words as these might be forgiven the generally progressive Outlook. Similarly in England, the large London house of Montagu, which has been prominent in very profitable railway loans to China under the Manchu régime, issued a circular stating its “satisfaction” when the republicans lost Hankau to General Feng, under atrocious circumstances of unforgivable massacre and unnecessary arson. Memoria longa, lingua brevis! Some of Britain’s diplomatic force, arguing like the reactionaries of George the Third’s day, said that they favored a monarchy because India might want a greater share in self-government than she had, forgetting that a wide-awake and fully developed India meant greater trade for Britain. Three monarchical nations said that they would favor destroying the American doctrine of the “non-partition of China” and splitting the four dependencies and the eight provinces north of the Yellow River from the rebel provinces.

Now, if ever, was the time for America to act, to give the largest and oldest nation on earth true freedom, and stop massacre and the sowing of eternal hate between the yellow and the white races. If the republican idea was decapitated by three of the monarchical nations willingly, and two of the constitutional nations unwillingly, revulsion would sweep through the camp of the republicans, and foreigners and missionaries would be slain by the mobs, who always act before they think the important second time. This was just what the plotting Manchus had been endeavoring to bring about since October 10, 1911. “Make the republicans, or the mob in their provinces, massacre; that will bring in foreign interference, which will save the Manchu dynasty.” In return, the Manchus promised certain foreign interests almost any concessions which they might ask for. They could loot China, the mineral Eldorado of the ages, and exploit the labor host of a new Goshen. Perfide! ye who are retroactive at this late day after all the lessons of the crowded past, and who love Money more than Man. Hail! American republic, the mother of republics, and hail, too, the germinating Chinese republic! Even Count Okuma, the most liberal of the Japanese, the founder of the enlightened Waseda University, of whom most sympathy was expected with China’s effort for freedom, came out with a pessimistic article at this time, prophesying the “failure of the republic, years of degeneration, and an inevitable new dynasty”. Did he mean that Japan would supply one, after first absorbing two provinces of Manchuria?

Yuan, the dictator, began moving his divisions, the Twentieth, now rid of its reform general, Chang Shao Tsen, being sent from the Lanchow camp to a point north of Tientsin, to split the republicans of the three provinces of Manchuria from joining the republicans of Shangtung. Sunyacius, with Premier Wu Hon Man, of Canton, now left Hongkong for Shanghai, and the world stood back and waited for the lightning to come out of the clouds. The half million Chinese of British Hongkong gave them a rousing send-off, which was at heart approved by the five thousand British merchants and troops of Hongkong, for Hongkong knew what a trade boycott in the southern provinces meant. Canton had now struck a swinging pace, and Premier Wu had sent bodies of troops, particularly his fine artillery and bomb-throwers, to strengthen the two wings of the rebels under Generals Li, Ling and Hsu at Wuchang and Nanking, respectively. Among these troops were one thousand students recruited by the Fong Yuen College at Canton. God send great things to earth! God save liberty for China, and keep progress from slipping back a thousand years!

So far, the strongest move in the rebellion was the declaration of Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang that if Britain joined the three monarchical powers in loaning Yuan money, a trade boycott would be instituted in the southern and central provinces against foreign trade, of which Britain held the largest share. This won Hongkong, and Hongkong was able to hold British diplomacy on Downing Street, London, and indirectly on Legation Street, Peking. It was a master move, as brilliantly effective as Napoleon’s Berlin Decree of November 21, 1806, blockading British commerce, and only for it the rebellion would have been swamped by four of the six nations arming and provisioning Yuan, the Manchu and the north. Whatever comes in the next few years, this cry surely is forever in the heart of Lincoln’s and Washington’s America: “Long live the republican idea of distributed wealth and distributed liberty in good old China, America’s yellow brother across the narrowing purple Pacific.” On Christmas day, 1911, the steamship Cleveland, from New York and San Francisco, with five hundred American world tourists, arrived at Hongkong. The republican army immediately invited them to Canton to see their barracks at the Five Hundred Genii Temple and elsewhere, the resolution saying: “as America was the first country to become a republic.” Auspiciously on December 26th, Sun Yat Sen arrived at Shanghai, two war-ships escorting his launch up the river from the Wusung bar. He immediately took an automobile at the bund wharf and proceeded to Wu’s residence, where conferences were held, and Nanking decided on as the provisional capital of the fighting republic. The republican Chinese were delighted that the Americans had eleven war-ships at Shanghai.

On December 26th, Yuan and the Manchu princes wired Tang Shao Yi from Peking that they would leave the decision as to a form of government to a national convention of the twenty-one provinces, the delegates to meet as soon as possible. The harmony which prevailed in the conferences at Shanghai between Sun, Wu and Li’s representatives was delightful to those interested in Chinese progress. The harmony which prevailed between the missionaries and the revolutionists was also inspiring. In a village of Hupeh province (Taiping) the people insisted that Mr. Landahl, of the Netherlands Mission, should head the local Safety League which was maintaining order, and they pushed that astonished gentleman to the head in the successful pursuit of notorious pirates who were injuring the causes of both revolutionists and imperialists. One notorious brigand of Honan province, named Wang, collected a band of 2,000 robbers, and at Harbin in Manchuria a band of Hunghutz captured an imperial treasure train with half a million of money. Vast preparations should now have been made to protect Chinese and foreigners in the north from massacre, if the National Assembly should on convening declare for a republic. There could not but be bitterness when only 17 million Manchus abdicated the rule of 400 millions Chinese, and the widest and most absolute throne the earth has known, wider than Pharaoh’s, Alexander’s, Xerxes’, Cæsar’s, Charlemagne’s, Baber Mogul’s, or Tsar’s. The problem of ruling 17 million Manchu discontents was a greater one than the long dominion which the subsidized Manchus had enjoyed over 400 millions of disunited and supine Chinese. The republic of China has mighty problems before it. Let all the world help her; above all, let education, hope and creature comforts be bestowed as quickly as possible. There is glorious altruistic work ahead of everybody for the whole of one’s life.

As the republicans solidified their government about Nanking, the enemies of China—the land-grabbing nations—who forgot their old antipathies and quarrels and acted in accord in their scheme of aggrandizement, prepared to strip her of her vast dependencies, Russia towering over Turkestan, Mongolia and Northern Manchuria, and Japan gathering about Lower Manchuria, a secret treaty between the two having been effected. No place was to be reserved for the great Chinese people to accommodate their emigration, as the size of farms should be necessarily increased throughout the land. The American and British doctrine of the “non-partition of China” was to be struck down. America, Britain and China will remember, for a Chinese republic can yet gather an army of millions to take these provinces back, and American and British naval forces, as a world’s altruistic police, can, if necessary, stand at the doors of the Baltic and Black Seas and remind Russia of her broken promises and greed. What a conflict there will yet be, won either by a swamping emigration, or by an engulfing army, as Russia, Japan and China come nearer together in the old Chinese dependencies of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. Mongolia, with her capital at Urga, and Turkestan, with her capital at Kashgar, practically seceded on December 29th under Russian intrigue. Religious Khans and Lamas, named by Russia, drove the Chinese ambans out and took charge, a Russian railway policy to break across country and control Peking being at once planned. The Manchu dynasty, with a following of from ten to seventeen million Manchus, sheltered in either Mongolia, Pechili province, Shangtung or Manchuria, under the egis of either Russia, Japan, or other nations, will always be a covert weapon for intrigue, which the bureaucrats of those nations can use against a Chinese republic.

On December 29th, the military convention at Nanking—one vote to a province—voted unanimously for Sun Yat Sen as the first president of the provisional republic, until elective assemblies could meet. The civil delegates from fourteen of the provinces, meeting at Shanghai, also agreed on Sun Yat Sen as provisional president. The armistice was now extended, President Sun calling upon the imperialists to respect the neutral zone between the opposing armies. The rise of President Sun was astounding and his task immense. From an impoverished propagandist and exile, wandering over the earth for a whole lifetime, with the Bible in one hand and Progress and Poverty in the other, he suddenly became the head of the largest nation upon the earth, and the government of that nation he was expected to change from being the most absolute monarchy into the freest of republics. His career is the most inspiring example that was ever presented to reformers in the world’s history. They say of typhoons and of troubles, that when things are at their worst, only a change for the better can be looked for, and so it has been with President Sun’s career.

At the peace conferences at Shanghai, the imperialists pressed for some northern city as the venue of the convention of provincial delegates, and the republicans pressed as strongly for Shanghai, because in distinction from Peking, it was removed from Russian influence. Yuan refused to disband his army and gave notice that if the republicans advanced, he would order an attack. The imperialists then tried to get the republicans to agree to pay the northern troops a sum of money in return for laying down their arms, but the republicans wisely refused to provision the imperialists in this way for a continuance of the fighting. They did, however, offer to pay for the surrender of artillery and ammunition. Yuan held many fruitless conferences with the Manchu princes and dowager, offering to continue the war if they would give up their hoards, but of the hundreds of millions of dollars of their wealth, all he could get was a subscription of $100,000 from the old lion, Prince Ching, who has been the mentor of the Manchus since Prince Kung died in the 60’s. The whole of the south, in emulation of the Christian president, Doctor Sun (Sunyacius), began cutting off their queues and wearing khaki, as a sign that servility to the Manchus was ended. Committees of persuasion, the members of which carried shears, operated even in Yaumati and Kowloon (mainland sections of Hongkong colony). The Chinese were approached and asked to go to the barbers. If they refused, shears were drawn and the ancient badge of servitude to the Manchu, the queue, was severed. The Chinese of Bangkok, Siam, were humorous in their methods. The republican tri-color was hoisted to the peak, and two hundred sheared queues were hoisted under it, up the flagpole! Doctor Sun, president, named the following as his provisional cabinet:

Vice-President, General Li Yuen Heng, commander of the republican left wing;

Premier, Hwang Hing, organizer in Japan of the rebellion;

Minister of Justice, Wu Ting Fang, formerly Minister to the United States, and reformer of the Chinese penal code;

Minister of Communications, Posts and Commerce, Wen Tsung Yao, American educated, formerly Amban in Tibet, unusually able official;

Colonial Secretary, Fung Chi Yueh, represented Sun in the United States;

Secretary of State, Wu Hon Man, President Canton Assembly;

Ministers of Finance, Chin Tao Chen, and M. Y. Sung, Manager Chung Hua rebel bank. I know both well.

Minister of Navy and Marine, General Hwang Hing, second in command at Hankau, and Sun’s personal representative while he was absent in America and England;

Foreign Minister, Wang Chung Wei, American educated;

Chief of Staff, General Hsu, the victor of Nanking.

The subject of adopting the Christian calendar was discussed and decided on, though it was decided to please Chinese pride by letting the republican bank-notes, issued in December, stand. These notes went back to mythological times, and named 1911 as the 4609th year since the first Emperor Huang Ti! The custom of dating the year with each Manchu emperor’s succession was of course at once discarded in fourteen of the rebelling provinces. President Sun assumed charge at Nanking and immediately collected a strong garrison in the old capital of China. In his former work, The Chinese, the author strongly recommended the change of the capital of China farther south so as to be nearer the center of China, closer in touch with the majority of the people who popularly desire the change, and safely removed from Russian influence and possibility of attack by Mongolian railway. Preparations were at once made to bring finance, education, army, navy and a federal government under the control of the coming parliament, the provincial parliaments already being in tentative operation in half of the provinces. We have already quoted the text of notes issued by the republican government of Kwangtung province. Dictator Yuan, at Peking, in a temporary huff, wired that he would not recognize Tang Shao Yi as his representative any more at the Shanghai and Nanking conferences, and that he would only confer by telegram. He demanded that Peking, and not Nanking, should be named as the meeting place of the proposed national assembly, which was to select the form of government. This really broke up the peace conferences, and Wu Ting Fang so informed the foreign governments.

Yuan then called upon the Manchu princes and royalty for money, saying that if they would draw two millions a month for six months from their foreign banks, he could carry on the war. Fearing that the republicans would send an army by sea from Shanghai to Chin Wang Tao (where the Great Wall and Peking railway meet the sea, and the only ice free port in the north) to break Manchuria from the north, and march on Peking, Yuan sent an army to Chin Wang Tao, but several of the Chinese regiments rebelled. The republicans had arranged for such a transport service, as they had seized the ships of the government steamship line, the China Merchants’ Steamship Company. At the Lanchow camp east of Peking, several Chinese regiments also rebelled, and there was much bloodshed in putting down the riots. Yuan had five strong northern armies, one under General Feng at Hanyang, one under Chang the Second north of Nanking on the railway, one under Sheng Yun operating in Shensi and Shansi provinces, and an army in both Shangtung and Honan provinces. It looked as though the war would continue, the republican strength being mainly in that they threatened, if successful, to repudiate any loans made after January 1, 1912, by foreigners to the Manchus. Hongkong now sent the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Indian Regiment of Baluchis, a battalion of the Yorkshires and a battery of English garrison artillery to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect the famous foreign settlement and assist President Wu, of Canton, in maintaining order. The island was fortified with sand-bags and barbed wire entanglements. The Hongkong Chinese were enthusiastic for a republic, and the British government did not prohibit their rejoicing. Their processions included the use of automobiles and brass bands. What a changed Hongkong, which used to hide its head in a monster dragon and parade the streets!

President Sun now informed foreigners that while he could employ them in all the remainder of China’s development, he could not do so in the republican army, as the republicans desired to be free of suspicion, and did not want to create foreign entanglements or embarrassments. The foreign nations divided up the Tientsin-Peking railway, and foreign men of war, independent of the republican navy, patrolled the whole rebel front from Shanghai to Hankau. Germany despatched another full regiment to Tsingtau in addition to the large garrison already there, America alone up to January 7, 1912, had held her troops at Manila. When the imperialists were evacuating Hanyang on January 4th, a regiment broke parole, necessitating an attack by General Li’s republicans, which attack was promptly and effectively sent in. On the right wing the republicans advanced up the Nanking-Tientsin railway, forcing General Chang the Second to withdraw to the north. President Sun was now active in appeals to the foreigners for recognition of the republic, his manifesto of January 5th, reading as follows:

1. Treaties of Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be observed.

2. Concessions granted by Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be respected.

3. Foreign loans and indemnities incurred by Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be recognized.

4. Foreigners and their property will be protected by the republic.

5. Manchus and their property will be protected by the republic.

6. We will remodel laws; revise civic, criminal, commercial and mining codes; reform finances; abolish restrictions on trade and commerce; insure religious toleration; and cultivate better relations with foreign peoples and governments.

It will be noted that President Sun does not here take up that difficult question, the nationalization of railways, the premature forcing of which by the five banking nations on the Manchus largely precipitated the preliminary revolution in Szechuen province in September, 1911. When the republican finances will permit just compensation of provincial owners of railways, the nationalization of trunk railways will be a proper and opportune project, but confiscation of railways by a promissory note at sixty per cent. of investment, as was offered by the Manchus to the Kwangtung province owners, can only bring revolt. By the end of the first week in January, 1912, certain of the banking groups and powers, fearing that there would be a long civil strife, attacked the American doctrine of the “non-partition of China” and canvassed for two Chinas, the northern section to be retained by the Manchu monarchy, or a republic with Yuan at the head. Even this would bring its difficulties. To mention one of a thousand, where would the dividing line be, the Yellow River or the Yangtze River? The feeling of the republicans on this division can be gaged by asking what was the feeling of the Americans on the subject of secession. On January 8th the republicans approved a heavy bond issue, based on internal revenue (the customs being already pledged by the Manchus for foreign loans made before October 13, 1911, which loans the republicans recognized), and bearing eight per cent. It was also decided to put the currency on a gold basis, and though one-dollar, fifty-cent and subsidiary silver coins would be issued, they were to be only tokens, and their face value was to be secured by a gold reserve, as in the case of America’s and Japan’s silver coinage, which is only a token system.

On January 12, 1912, Major-General Franklin Bell despatched on the transport Logan from Manila the First Battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry, under Major Arrasmith, to take care of that part of the Peking-to-the-coast railway allotted to the Americans. This was a confession of two things: first, that the Manchus might not be able to restrain the “Boxer” mobs in the north, and second, that it was expected that the republicans would be able to come north with their three old and two new armies when hostilities should be opened. Part of General Bell’s thrilling and characteristic American speech to the troops should be quoted: “The Chinese are worthy of a square deal. Treat them in a worthy way.” The expedition was a trying one, and was provided with cords of fire-wood. The enervated troops left the hot humid climate of Manila for the cold windy climate of North China. The news that came from the Lanchow camp at this time was most distressing, to the effect that Yuan’s imperialists were massacring and torturing republicans by the fiendish lin chee (cutting into a thousand pieces, the victim being placed in a cage). Men who had adopted the republican badge of the New China by cutting off their queues were being slain. Even the Red Cross attendants were attacked. Clearly the Manchu troops at Lanchow had gone out of hand and become a mob. The American Bishop Bashford now telegraphed from Shanghai to Dictator Yuan, urging the Manchus to abdicate for humanity’s sake. General Hwang Hing, minister of war, was now arranging for five republican armies to march north and converge on Peking. These armies were:

General Li, with the left wing, from Hankau to Peking, through Honan province.

Generals Hsu and Ling, with the right wing, from Nanking, through Kiangsu and Shangtung provinces, along the railway.

A new army, by transport and cruisers, from Shanghai to Chifu, or some northern port.

A new army of Canton and Hupeh troops to march north in General Li’s rear.

The combined republican forces of Shensi and Shansi provinces to march northeast.

The Chinese are exceedingly excitable when aroused from their usually placid state. This is because their experience is limited, and they have not yet learned to adapt themselves rapidly to new conditions. They therefore commit suicide in surprising numbers under the sudden pressure of anger, shame, poverty, trouble, uncertainty and fear. At this time of revolution, especially in the northern provinces of Shensi and Shansi where the republicans were strongly opposed, many officials, widows of soldiers and the poor, jumped into wells, swallowed balls of opium, or begged their friends to strangle them.

On January 15th, the republicans sent three cruisers and three transports, with three battalions, machine and mountain guns, from Shanghai to Chifu, in preparation for a converging attack on Peking, America sent in the cruiser Cincinnati, and the Japanese sent in two cruisers to watch proceedings and protect the foreign colony, which, however, was not menaced. On January 19th, Foreign Minister Wang Chung Wei sent a despatch to the powers, requesting recognition of the republic “to avoid a disastrous interregnum”. On the same day the republic from Shanghai sent the following drastic demand to Yuan and the Manchus:

1. Abdicate.

2. No Manchu to participate in the provisional government until the country is quiet.

3. The provisional capital can not be Peking.

4. Yuan can not participate in the provisional government until the republic has been recognized.

President Sun gave the Associated Press this statement:

1. I have taken an oath to oust the Manchu rulers and restore peace to the country before resigning.

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!

Here is a story that went the rounds of Peking, regarding the equipping of the First Division. A sum exactly sufficient had been allotted by the Ping Pu (War Board). The first prince was too good a worshiper of his ancestors to let such a sum of money pass through his hands without giving the tablets their share, and he loved his women folk too much not to give them a present, and then there was his own “cumshaw” or commission, patriotism being a theory and “graft” a fact. The second prince would be quite lacking in the Li code of manners if he failed to copy the elder first prince, and so the money dwindled down the line, until the Ordnance Department was supplying wooden shells to field guns and wooden cannon to ramparts. The First Division personnel was on the list all right, but there was no money to uniform or arm them. By and by a beggar was found in tatters by the wall. An orderly hurried up, shouted, “You’re the First Division, go and sew some of your patches together, and defend Peking from the enemy; here’s your ammunition.” He handed the beggar the last penny of the appropriation. The beggar grasped the penny, ran off to the first cake stand, and as he swallowed the rice, exclaimed: “Hunger is the enemy, and I’m going to buy him off, for did not Confucius teach that diplomacy always could defeat arms?” Such then was the famous equipping of the First Division. A traveled Manchu who heard this said: “How about your American Manchus? We read your newspapers. Why don’t you foreigners make jokes about the Quay ring of Philadelphia, and the Tammany ring of old New York, when you supplied your courts with everything but justice, even to triplicate bills for undiscoverable fixtures, and quadruplicate pay-rolls for undiscovered appointees? How about that story of the lighting of the streets of your Darktown, each official taking his perquisite, so that when the last penny reached the solitary lamplighter, that worthy concluded that it was so near morning that he would go in a saloon opposite the unlit lamp, and drink up the money, letting nature furnish daylight to atone for the weaknesses of her children of the West?”

Here is a story altered to suit any circuit in China. A stern mandarin got the name of the “Old Devil”. One day, ahead of his escort, he reached his inn, where quarters had been engaged for him. On attempting to walk into the best room, the inn-keeper, who did not know him, strenuously objected, explaining that the room was reserved for “the Old Devil himself”, and woe betide them all if the engagement was not respected. When his escort came up, the mandarin had the inn-keeper flogged for daring to speak disrespectfully of a judge who was a dignified “father and mother” of the people, and at the same time handed the man a handful of coins as a reward for keeping faith with the said mandarin.

The coolies take some of their metaphors from their dirty inns. When a fellow acts impulsively they say: “A louse is loose in his thoughts” or “a flea has found his brain.”

A conductor of a Chinese railway running out of Canton had his difficulties both with the English language, and possibly with certain English or American sailors on a holiday. He pasted up this notice in his coach: “Small piecee bags onlee. Shaky head, shaky tongue, crazee men, no can attain. Dirtee men must not smelee. Sick men more better die, and go freight. Onlee Number One passenger can attain this car.”

Quick transportation is not appreciated in every guild in China. In Ichang the “loata” (captain) of a Yangtze gorge junk objected to the proposed railway to Wan Hsien. As an object lesson he was asked how long it took him to take a cargo to Chungking, and he replied twenty days. When he was told that a railway could deliver it in a day, he asked with a grimace, half between a sneer and a smile: “What would my men and I do with the other nineteen days?”

Yunnan, the capital of the great southwest province, was the first city of China, under the progressive Viceroy Li Chin Hsi, to erect a sanitary modern prison, with workshops, commissary, etc. Yunnan, though an extremely rich province in minerals, is so mountainous that the people, who live on agriculture, are reduced to great poverty, and are in constant slavery to oppressive landlords who are really foray chiefs. Now that the comparatively palatial prison has been erected, there is a rush to commit life-sentence crimes, so that the boarders may be sure of a fine bed, good food, medical care, personal security, and interesting work in the various workshops for the rest of their happy lives, as compared with the unbearable penury and danger of their lives among the hills. The Miaos, Lolos, Shans, and Chinese of Yunnan know a good thing when they see it, and penology is a fad which is spreading like a fire among their mountain terraces at present.

Here is a story of merry days at Peking. The legation ladies had informed the Manchu princess that she must be modern since the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi had decreed it; that she must learn English, music and dancing. As it was the trend of the hour, the suggestion was accepted. The Manchu learned various things. It came to be her duty in time to receive a delegation of earnest missionary ladies, to whom she was ready to prove that she was modern, and had received the foreign branding. “I know modern American hymn; national anthem of great flowery flag country; hail to America. I will sing it and I will dance it.” She danced it and she sang it, and here is what the horrified missionary ladies heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill: Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.

“With butter at fifty cents a pound and eggs at fifty cents a dozen in your honorable country, I should think you’d move the piano out, and move the cow and hens into your best room so as to be sure of the precious creatures,” said a Chinese economist, who was reading the last American paper at the Hankau guild, and who was satisfied with three cents a dozen for his eggs.

The tea-tasters employed are all foreigners, and it is essential that the taster shall abstain from liquors and tobacco. When the first man among them is seen at the bar in a foreign club at Canton or Hankau, it is a surer sign than the calendar that July 1st is around again.

Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations until he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him short; that as he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not know any other way in which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland were living he might say that this Chinese was the first attorney for the tariff, and its progeny.

The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of the waves to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies its strange actions because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah, a swift snake boat pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing junk, which was boarded. After robbing the crew, the pirates battened them down beneath secured hatches, and made good their escape, smiling at their aptitude in carpentry.

It is well known that Chinese doctors are only rewarded for cures and for keeping their patients well. A physician was called in to see a sick tax-collector (yamen runner). “You’ll have to call in another doctor,” said the physician. “Am I so bad that you must have a consultation?” inquired the alarmed patient. “No. You will remember, however, if you have as good a memory as I, that last week you searched high and low and taxed me the last cash on the limit of my property and maximum income. I have too much conscience to kill you, but I’m honest enough to say that I want as little as possible to do with curing you, so good-by.”

There are more Chinese Macks and Mc’s in Canton and Hongkong than in all Argyleshire, Scotland. I recall a particularly droll character, Mak, who was our godown-man at West Point, Hongkong. Mak (we never called him his personal name, which was Fun) was in full charge of the warehouse, and came to the office twice a month with proper accounts, which always checked up with the yearly inventory. When, by appointment, I went down to supervise that inventory, all was as it should be. Mak had a clean warehouse, in which neither rats nor coolies were tenants, and his wharf was kept free of junks and sanpans. I returned unexpectedly one day and found Mak collecting wharfage for himself from junks which he had allowed to tie up at the wharf, and rent from coolie families whom he had allowed to camp, with possibly their plague Bacillariaceæ, between the aisles of gunny bales in the godown. Longfellow speaks of “folding their tents like the Arabs and silently stealing away,” but on this occasion, the retreat of the enemy with their camp paraphernalia was accomplished with both confusion and noise, because of the haste involved. “How is this, Mak?” I shouted as a stern typan should. “Oh, cousins overnight, you sabee; plenty bobbery, but Confucius says, shelter your kin,” Mak blandly replied. I made him assure me that they were all sailing for parts known or unknown on the morrow, but I knew that if I caught them there again, they would be “other cousins” who had claimed hasty hospitality under the same law and the same necessity. There was only one way to match the blandness of Mak Fun, or any other godown-man, and that was to move in myself. As Mak was in other respects a good godown-man, I was blind in the port eye thereafter to this adaptation of the “cumshaw” by the clan of Chinese Macks, though as I passed, to quote from the same verse of Longfellow’s poem, “the night was filled with music” in Chinese Mak’s direction.

The Chinese accept the saddest thing in the world in a droll cheerful manner. A son, who had grown prosperous in Hongkong, sent his father, who lived in the silk district outside of Canton, a splendid lacquered coffin, which he was to keep before him in the best room for friends to see. The son’s letter said: “Here is something gorgeous for The Event” (that is, his father’s death).

The North China Herald gives the following as a sample of a Chinese boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the services, was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and makes private of anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts as a rascal. He discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you lost things which are determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request of Missy (the employer’s wife) which as possible as you can. But I am unliking at there Master to do anythings, I am much obliged to come to my new place under of your charges (recommendation) and beg you to bless me as boy or coolie business for my content at all, or please you to commence the any other places you know of. So I hope you to grant me a good report, for I am beg it to you on knees. Shall be much obediently and obliged. Address me to here as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain, Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.”

For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you do not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief, or Chief of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you from loss and annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that he is earning his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know where the watchman is, so that he may operate in safety if the owner has not taken out the usual insurance.

A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him the dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of going to the inferior regions. In ignorantia salus!

On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s fear, not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said the Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and they are as strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in a retreat before many claimants?”

There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets. The Hongkong Telegraph writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel door, desiring to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper, with its usual wit, suggests that an officer of the law should peer into the fakir’s immediate future!

The same paper coins this aphorism: “We never know how many friends we have till we don’t need them; or how few friends we have till we need them.”

A motor truck was rushing by with a load of empty barrels. “Nothing can stop them,” suggested the admiring Chan. “Nothing but corks,” replied the punnist Choi.

The Oriental has seized on Billiken, with the exaggerated mosquito-bite on his bald head, his elongated cranium, his wolf’s ears, comedian’s smile like DeWolf Hopper’s or Coquelin’s, his elephant’s feet, Buddha’s barrel-stomach, and monkey’s arms, as the god of western wealth, humor, or what-not. The idiot idol, warming his enormous feet, is installed before many a footlight of burning tapers and punk-sticks in the shrines of eclecticism in both Taoist and Buddhist China.

To show that hygiene is not fully understood yet in China, which is so anxious to learn, they tell this story. A European passenger in a coast-wise steamship, who had to share his room with an Oriental who had been modernized too quickly, found the latter using his tooth-brush in the morning ablutions. “You blankety son of the sun, that’s MY tooth-brush,” exclaimed the disgusted Occidental. “Me bow low for pardons; me thought it was ship’s tooth-brush,” apologized the Oriental.

The witty Hongkong Mail (was the veteran Murray Bain or the scholarly Reed the author?) explained to the fellow into whose nog glass an ancient egg was deposited by the Chinese boy that it wasn’t the fault of the Cathayan hen, but the fault of the administrators of her estate.

A visitor chided a Hongkong volunteer with the sounds of revelry which proceeded from one quarter of the camp, and a wit connected with the local Press shot out this repartee: “Oh, I know Ancient and Honorable Military Companies where you come from, whose strategy is greatest on the canteen, whose night attacks are mostly on the bottle, and whose field-glass is a wine glass.”

The Happy Valley Cemetery trustees at Hongkong were arguing over the prices of graves. One wit defended the resolution before the board by saying: “A man only dies once in the East, and surely can afford the luxury of a high-priced grave.”

The astrologer complained of thieves robbing his house. “You’re an infallible astrologer, aren’t you?” inquired the judge. “Yes, indeed,” replied the soothsayer. “Well, why didn’t you foretell the advent of the thieves?” remarked the droll mandarin. Tableau!

Said the ignorant but successful man of enormous paunch to the caustic wit: “I have no use for a man whose head is so big that he has to scratch his hair away out here.” “Nor I,” said the wit, “for the little-brained hog who has to button his vest away out here.”

The Chinese poor sleep in the open—the Great Unroofed—generally on their backs against a pillar or wall, with their knees drawn up. A new mission hospital gathered in the sick, the lame and the blind, who were sweetly tucked in soft clean beds, under sheets, and commended to their lullabies. In the morning the staff came upon an amusing sight. Every patient had dropped out of bed, and was sleeping in the tried and true, good old fashion against the bed post on the floor. All they would say was: “Me no sabee new fashion.”

The patient missionary at last reminded John that it was all right to eat rice “on him” and get hospital treatment, but that there was a little card which he had signed promising to be a regular contributor as well as a benefiting member of the organization. John wrote: “My venerable Rev.: Blushed am I to have been reminded of my forget in worshipping and offering. Here I enclose my apology and the sum you like if I am right in making out your multiply. Your spoiled lamb.”

Many nations have been credited with this witty repartee, and the Chinese are included in the list. The Hongkong merchant prince was showing his mountain palace, his tennis courts, his stable, his automobile, possibly his flying machine, his billiard table, his bowling alley, etc., to the Solon from Canton. “You see that when we British devote ourselves to pleasure, we do it regardless of expense.” “Rather,” replied the Chinese, whose relaxation was of a gentler kind, such as walking in gardens, and flying birds and kites, “I should say you devote yourself to expense regardless of pleasure.”

Solomon came to humorous judgment when two women of First Kings brought their case before him, and Lord Kitchener is credited with a grim humor in dealing with the Arab sheiks who wanted to enlist in the war against Italy. Here is Chinese humor of the same sort. All of the mandarin’s staff at his new station thought they would embarrass him by applying for promotions. Granted with gusto! Every one’s position was advanced one grade, but the salaries were all reduced one grade at the same time owing to retrenchments needed.

A freshman of Queen’s College, writing of the popularity of Sir Matthew Nathan, the indefatigable British governor of Hongkong, who died from exposure in the 1900 typhoon, said: “He is a very common man.” He, however, meant common in the Scriptural sense that the heroic governor’s fame was common to all.

Chinese women are short and soft as compared with the larger and stronger foreign women seen in the treaty ports. A Chinese student satirist, who had served as a house boy in San Francisco, thus described in an essay his former American mistress and her daughters: “The Americaness is open air breather, consequently her meat is harder than Chinese (he meant her muscle). In a dangerous melancholy acting, the young Americaness quickly traps her sorrow husband who comes to pity, but soon runs to grieve in divorce when loving voice of Americaness recovers from coyness. Bud of romance early frosted makes scandal column of paper, which is best advertising much sought and read like dog in manger by all actress without job. Cold ethics of Chinese woman in comparison sprouts not too quick ruin, consequently wears better. Americaness system much exciting is open-air theater for all to laugh and read as run. Americaness never reaches next birthday, consequently always fresh and sweet like comquat in syrup; but American poet says: ‘Beware, some sweets do cloy, but food is good each day.’ I think then China wife is like food, if plain, always satisfying, and fills the bill, as American Zoo keepers say. American man and Chinese man believe womans should go slow; consequently Americaness wear hobble skirt like lasso on ankle, and Chinese woman bind foot. Both mens take no chances, and exchange mutual wink. However, Chinese woman and Americaness woman, is both queenesses of talk—when once begun then heroes run. Talk then is kingdom of womens called Suffragetia, where mans sees finish and casts his weapons in humble dust.”

Describing life among his friends, the bell-boys at the Shanghai hotels who have frequently to answer calls for a B. & S. after a bath, another wit said: “The guests are ringing (wringing) wet in two spellings.”

Was this Oriental a flatterer of womankind, or a droll cynic regarding mankind? The wife of the missionary asked the native pupil to translate our maxim: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and he rendered it into these characters: “Your husband is insane when he is away from you.” Another boy wrote it: “The angels are crazy.”

At the Chinese Club a scholarly Chinese traveler warned me to follow the Royal Hongkong Golf Club’s motto, “Festina lente” (make haste slowly), in dwelling upon the wonderful traits of the Chinese, and he related the following humorous story: “In your country an enthusiastic missionary, daringly stimulated by the applause of his audience, put wonder upon wonder, Pelion on Ossa piled, in describing the vicarious virtues of the Chinese, by saying: ‘Yes, dear children, lives are cheap in China. I knew a man there who made his living by selling himself to the executioners to take the place of those condemned to death.’”

Here is a tale of facetiousness and evasion. A wag, whose appearance was against him, called at a prison, and held this dialogue with the clerk: “Is the mandarin in?” “No.” “Is the deputy in?” “No.” “Is the jailer in?” “No.” “Is the bamboo-wielder in?” “No.” “Oh, say, are the prisoners in, Mr. No-No-No?”

One of the modernized officials labeled his friend’s book of personal press flatteries, “The Pursuit of Egotism.”

The well-known Bankers’ Association of Tokio is called the “Eel Society”. I asked my Chinese friend for his interpretation of this, and he explained: “Because they are as slippery in the grasp of their Diet as is your Money Trust in the hands of Congress.” He further told me that they call the administration papers which say that “everything is lovely and the goose hangs high”, “official frogs”, because they only know one note, and one sets the others going on the same old thing.

Two wags met on the street of the Shansi Bankers’ Guild, Peking. One wore a sour and the other a comical expression. The cynic clenched his fist at the teak-barred windows of one bank, and with a wry face exclaimed, “I don’t know how he’s giving it away, but I do know how he got it.” The other, holding out the hush-money of a silver sycee bar, and pointing to a banker’s residence across the road, answered: “I don’t know how he got it, but I happen to know how he’s giving it away.”

A popular Chinese restaurant bears the legend of “The Quiet Woman”, and the caricature shows a standing woman, whose decapitated head lies at her feet, and wears at last, before her triumphant husband, a defeated expression. The double humor is that henpecked men may safely come to this restaurant, and enjoy that quiet and retirement which home does not afford.

The humorist tells of a stutterer who held up an old friend, and clinging to his pajama-frog (for pajamas are outside and not inside clothes in old-style China), said: “If-f-f-f-f y-y-you h-have an hour I’d l-l-like to h-have a m-m-minute’s c-conversation with you.”

Athletics of all sorts, except Rugby football, are popular at China’s best technical school, Pei Yang University at Tientsin. English is used for all lectures except, of course, Chinese classics. The subject of establishing a debating class or a Rugby football team came up, and a professor who defended the former said that “he preferred a man who could stand on his feet and make his head work to one who could stand on his head and make his feet work”.

A rich brute went to meet his victim whom he had impoverished. He jeered, so as to break his spirit as he had done to his estate: “My! what a come down; what poor clothes.” Quick as a flash from the never-say-die man came the repartee: “Yes, I expected to meet you, but you should see me on ordinary days.”

The practical joker has visited romantic Macao. They tell this story of the Portuguese Sé Mission Cathedral. The Macao women are short, and the fonts of holy water are placed too high on the wall for them to look into. The devil was put into the sacred waters by the bad boy, the devil this time being crabs, which unseen, nipped the fingers of the superstitious women as they searched high up for the soothing blessing.

The naming of the Chinese servants on board ship, in mess, hong, office or godown, has presented many a difficulty, and the civilian is more inconsiderately humorous than the missionary, especially when his help changes often, as is the case in Hongkong. Numbers instead of names are generally used. “Number Two piecee cook” is what you would say if you desired the second cook called. “Number One piecee topside boy” is what your wife would say if she desired the first up-stairs chamber boy called. There are no chambermaids. Where a woman is employed, she serves only as an amah; that is, mother-nurse, or mother-maid. In the irreverent messes and barracks, some of the men name their servants after some personal distinction or appearance, such as “The Tall One”; “One Eye”; “Melica”, because he told you that he had once sailed on a ship for America; “Jesus man”, because he told you he got converted at a mission school and preferred the name; “Governor boy”, because he was once a servant in the governor’s yamen. Sometimes the messes christen their servants according to their favorite political leaders in America or England: “Loosy Velly” is, of course, Roosevelt; “Blyan” is Bryan; “Wheel Sun” is Wilson; “Salls Belly” is Salisbury; “Loy Jo” is Lloyd George, and one boy rejoiced in the name of “Jimmy de Blaney” (Blaine). Hundreds of these silent servants are moving about the dining-room of the palatial Hongkong Club at tiffin (lunch) time, yet you will not hear a footfall, as they wear felt-soled shoes. Perhaps they are as silently giving you and me numbers, instead of names, in Chinese. Indeed, I know they do, and would be ashamed to tell my tourist friends that some of them are soon known as “Wigglety Walk”; “Always Shout”; “Fool Laugh”; “Pig Eye”; “Wine Face”; “Wine Whiskers” (red beard); “Buddha’s Belly” (stout); and when women attract them, “Tea Flower” (pale one); “Buddha’s Mother” (a sweet matron); “Flowery Flag” (American); “British Queen”; “Snow Flower” (Canadian), etc.

Kipling, Archibald Little, Price Collier and others have written that some men sometimes drink hard east of Suez. The writer himself in a former book related the bravery of a famous 11 A. M. Cocktail Brotherhood in the blazing stifling Orient, and two world-known knights of the pen took him to tournament to break a lance because of it. One witty evening an old hand on the club veranda admitted the soft impeachment, and gave himself and some others medals for the dangers he had passed in these words of Cicero in the immortal “Murena” oration: “If Asia does carry with it a suspicion of luxury, surely it is a praise-worthy thing, not never to have seen Asia, but to have lived temperately in Asia.” Ah! we who had weathered many a storm, sighed, and in bravery ordered one more, drinking not to the habit, but to the wit. As Archibald Little, veteran of the East, said, the tea-tasting season was over, and a mile-stone should be set to mark it!

A droll Chinese boy brought his fast running watch to Gaupp’s jewelry store on Queen’s Road, Hongkong. On being asked to explain as best he could what seemed to be the trouble, the Celestial rolled up those expressive eyes of his, which must move the gods, as they always do men, to laughter: “Oh, he too muchee to-mollow (to-morrow); you jerk back to to-day.”