Within an hour of the death of Yuan Shih-kai, the veteran General Tuan Chi-jui, in his capacity of Secretary of State, had called on Vice-President Li Yuan-hung—the man whom years before he had been sent to the Yangtsze to bring captive to Peking—and welcomed him as President of the Republic. At one o'clock on the same day the Ministers of the Allied Powers who had hastily assembled at the Waichiaopu (Foreign Office), were informed that General Li Yuan-hung had duly assumed office and that the peace and security of the capital were fully guaranteed. No unrest of any sort need be apprehended; for whilst rumours would no doubt circulate wildly as soon as the populace realized the tragic nature of the climax which had come, the Gendarmerie Corps and the Metropolitan Police —two forces that numbered 18,000 armed men—were taking every possible precaution.
In spite of these assurances great uneasiness was felt. The foreign Legations, which are very imperfectly informed regarding Chinese affairs although living in the midst of them, could not be convinced that internal peace could be so suddenly attained after five years of such fierce rivalries. Among the many gloomy predictions made at the time, the most common to fall from the lips of Foreign Plenipotentiaries was the remark that the Japanese would be in full occupation of the country within three months— the one effective barrier to their advance having been removed. No better illustration could be given of the inadequate grasp of politics possessed by those whose peculiar business it should be to become expert in the science of cause and effect. In China, as in the Balkans, professional diplomacy errs so constantly because it has in the main neither the desire nor the training to study dispassionately from day to day all those complex phenomena which go to make up modern nationalism. Guided in its conduct almost entirely by a policy of personal predilections, which is fitfully reinforced by the recollection of precedents, it is small wonder if such mountains of mistakes choke every Legation dossier. Determined to having nothing whatever to do, save in the last resort, with anything that savours of Radicalism, and inclining naturally towards ideals which have long been abandoned in the workaday world, diplomacy is the instinctive lover of obscurantism and the furtive enemy of progress. Distrusting all those generous movements which spring from the popular desire to benefit by change, it follows from this that the diplomatic brotherhood inclines towards those truly detestable things—secret compacts. In the present instance, having been bitterly disappointed by the complete collapse of the strong man theory, it was only natural that consolation should be sought by casting doubt on the future. Never have sensible men been so absurd. The life-story of Yuan Shih-kai, and the part European and Japanese diplomacy played in that story, form a chapter which should be taught as a warning to all who enter politics as a career, since there is exhibited in this history a complete compendium of all the more vicious traits of Byzantinism.
The first acts of President Li Yuan-hung rapidly restored confidence and advertised to the keen-eyed that the end of the long drawn-out Revolution had come. Calling before him all the generals in the capital, he told them with sincerity and simplicity that their country's fortunes rested in their hands; and he asked them to take such steps as would be in the nature of a permanent insurance against foreign interference in the affairs of the Republic. He was at once given fervent support. A mass meeting of the military was followed by the whole body of commissioned men volunteering to hold themselves personally responsible for the maintenance of peace and order in the capital. The dreadful disorders which had ushered in the Yuan Shih-kai regime were thus made impossible; and almost at once men went about their business as usual.
The financial wreckage left by the mad monarchy adventure was, however, appalling. Not only was there no money in the capital but hardly any food as well; for since the suspension of specie payments country supplies had ceased entering the city as farmers refused to accept inconvertible paper in payment for their produce. It became necessary for the government to sell at a nominal price the enormous quantities of grain which had been accumulated for the army and the punitive expedition against the South; and for many days a familiar sight was the endless blue- coated queues waiting patiently to receive as in war-time their stipulated pittance.
Meanwhile, although the troops remained loyal to the new regime, not so the monarchist politicians. Seeing that their hour of obliteration had come, they spared no effort to sow secret dissensions and prevent the provinces from uniting again with Peking. It would be wearisome to give in full detail the innumerable schemes which were now hourly formulated, to secure that the control of the country should not be exercised in a lawful way. Finding that it was impossible to conquer the general detestation felt for them, the monarchists, led by Liang Shih-yi, changed their tactics and exhausted themselves in attempting to secure the issue of a general annesty decree. But in spite of every argument President Li Yuan-hung remained unmoved and refused absolutely to consider their pardon. A just and merciful man, it was his intention to allow the nation to speak its mind before issuing orders on the subject; but to show that he was no advocate of the terrorist methods practised by his predecessor, he now issued a Mandate summarily abolishing the infamous Chih Fa Chu, or Military Court, which Yuan Shih-kai had turned into an engine of judicial assassination, and within whose gloomy precincts many thousands of unfortunate men had perished practically untried in the period 1911-1916.
Meanwhile the general situation throughout the country only slowly ameliorated. The Northern Military party, determined to prevent political power from passing solely into the hands of the Southern Radicals, bitterly opposed the revival of the Nanking Provisional Constitution, and denounced the re-convocation of the old Parliament of 1913, which had already assembled in Shanghai, preparatory to coming up to the capital. It needed a sharp manoeuvre to bring them to their senses. The Chinese Navy, assembled in the waters near Shanghai, took action; and in an ultimatum communicated to Peking by their Admiral, declared that so long as the government in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui refused to conform to popular wishes by reviving the Nanking Provisional Constitution and resummoning the old Parliament, so long would the Navy refuse to recognize the authority of the Central Government. With the fleet in the hands of the Southern Confederacy, which had not yet been formally dissolved, the Peking Government was powerless in the whole region of the Yangtsze; consequently, after many vain manoeuvres to avoid this reasonable and proper solution, it was at last agreed that things should be brought back precisely where they had been before the coup d'etat of the 4th November, 1913—the Peking Government being reconstituted by means of a coalition cabinet in which there would be both nominees of the North and South—the premiership remaining in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui.
On the 28th June a long funeral procession wended its way from the Presidential Palace to the railway station; it was the remains of the great dictator being taken to their last resting-place in Honan. Conspicuous in this cortege was the magnificent stagecoach which had been designed to bear the founder of the new dynasty to his throne but which only accompanied him to his grave. The detached attitude of the crowds and the studied simplicity of the procession, which was designed to be republican, proved more clearly than reams of arguments that China—despite herself perhaps—had become somewhat modernized, the oldest country in the world being now the youngest republic and timidly trying to learn the lessons of youth.
Once Yuan Shih-kai had been buried, a Mandate ordering the summary arrest of all the chief monarchist plotters was issued; but the gang of corrupt men had already sought safety in ignominious flight; and it was understood that so long as they remained on soil under foreign jurisdiction, no attempt would be made even to confiscate their goods and chattels as would certainly have been done under former governments. The days of treachery and double- dealing and cowardly revenge were indeed passing away and the new regime was committed to decency and fairplay. The task of the new President was no mean one, and in all the circumstances if he managed to steer a safe middle course and avoid both Caesarism and complete effacement, that is a tribute to his training. Born in 1864 in Hupeh, one of the most important mid-Yangtsze provinces, President Li Yuan-hung was now fifty-two years old, and in the prime of life; but although he had been accustomed to a military atmosphere from his earliest youth his policy had never been militaristic. His father having been in command of a force in North China for many years, rising from the ranks to the post of tsan chiang (Lieutenant-Colonel), had been constrained to give him the advantage of a thoroughly modern training. At the age of 20 he had entered the Naval School at Tientsin; whence six years later he had graduated, seeing service in the navy as an engineer officer during the Chino-Japanese war of 1894. After that campaign he had been invited by Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, then one of the most distinguished of the older viceroys, to join his staff at Nanking, and had been entrusted with the supervision of the construction of the modern forts at the old Southern capital, which played such a notable part in the Revolution. When Chang Chih-tung was transferred to the Wuchang viceroyalty, General Li Yuan-hung had accompanied him, actively participating in the training of the new Hupeh army, and being assisted in that work by German instructors. In 1897 he had gone to Japan to study educational, military and administrative methods, returning to China after a short stay, but again proceeding to Tokyo in 1897 as an officer attached to the Imperial Guards. In the autumn of the following year he had returned to Wuchang and been appointed Commander of the Cavalry. Yet another visit was paid by him to Japan in 1902 to attend the grand military manoeuvres, these journeys giving him a good working knowledge of Japanese, in addition to the English which had been an important item in the curriculum of the Naval School, and which he understands moderately well. In 1903 he was promoted Brigadier General, being subsequently gazetted as the Commander of the 2nd Division of Regulars (Chang Pei Chun) of Hupeh. He also constantly held various subsidiary posts, in addition to his substantive appointment, connected with educational and administrative work of various kinds, and has therefore a sound grasp of provincial government. He was Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Division during the famous military manoeuvres of 1906 at Changtehfu in Honan province, which are said to have been given birth to the idea of a universal revolt against the Manchus by using the army as the chief instrument.
On the memorable day of October 11, 1911, when the standard of revolt was raised at Wuchang, somewhat against his will as he was a loyal officer, he was elected military Governor, thus becoming the first real leader of the Republic. Within the space of ten days his leadership had secured the adhesion of fourteen provinces to the Republican cause; and though confronted by grave difficulties owing to insufficiency of equipment and military supplies, he fought the Northern soldiery for two months around Wuchang with varying success. He it was, when the Republic had been formally established and the Manchu regime made a thing of the past, who worked earnestly to bring about better relations between the armies of North and South China which had been arrayed against one another during many bitter weeks. It was he, also, who was the first to advocate the complete separation of the civil and military administration—the administrative powers in the early days of the Republic being entirely in the hands of the military governors of the provinces who recruited soldiery in total disregard to the wishes of the Central Government. Although this reform has even today only been partially successful, there is no reason to doubt that before the Republic is many years older the idea of the military dictating the policy and administration of the country will pass away. The so-called Second Revolution of 1913 awakened no sympathy in General Li Yuan-hung, because he was opposed to internal strife and held that all Chinese should work for unity and concerted reform rather than indulge in fruitless dissensions. His disapproval of the monarchy movement had been equally emphatic in the face of an ugly outlook. He was repeatedly approached by the highest personages to give in his adhesion to Yuan Shih-kai becoming emperor, but he persistently refused although grave fears were publicly expressed that he would be assassinated. Upon the formal acceptance of the Throne by Yuan Shih-kai, he had had conferred on him a princedom which he steadfastly refused to accept; and when the allowances of a prince were brought to him from the Palace he returned them with the statement that as he had not accepted the title the money was not his. Every effort to break his will proved unavailing, his patience and calmness contributing very materially to the vast moral opposition which finally destroyed Yuan Shih-kai.
Such was the man who was called upon to preside over the new government and parliament which was now assembling in Peking; and certainly it may be counted as an evidence of China's traditional luck which brought him to the helm. General Li Yuan Hung knew well that the cool and singular plan which had been pursued to forge a national mandate for a revival of the empire would take years completely to obliterate, and that the octopus-hold of the Military Party—the army being the one effective organization which had survived the Revolution—could not be loosened in a day,—in fact would have to be tolerated until the nation asserted itself and showed that it could and would be master. In the circumstances his authority could not but be very limited, disclosing itself in passive rather than in active ways. Wishing to be above all a constitutional President, he quickly saw that an interregnum must be philosophically accepted during which the Permanent Constitution would be worked out and the various parties forced to a general agreement; and thanks to this decision the year which has now elapsed since Yuan Shih-kai's death has been almost entirely eventless, with the exception of the crisis which arose over the war-issue, a matter which is fully discussed elsewhere.
Meanwhile, in the closing months of 1916, the position was not a little singular. Two great political parties had arisen through the Revolution—the Kuo Ming Tang or Nationalists, who included all the Radical elements, and the Chinputang or Progressives, whose adherents were mainly men of the older official classes, and therefore conservative. The Yunnan movement, which had led to the overthrow of Yuan Shih-kai, had been inspired and very largely directed by the scholar Liang Ch'i-chao, a leader of the Chinputang. To this party, then, though numerically inferior to the Kuo Ming Tang, was due the honour and credit of re- establishing the Republic, the Kuo Ming Tang being under a cloud owing to the failure of the Second Revolution of 1913 which it had engineered. Nevertheless, owing to the Kuo Ming Tang being more genuinely republican, since it was mainly composed of younger and more modern minds, it was from its ranks that the greatest check to militarism sprang; and therefore although its work was necessarily confined to the Council-chamber, its moral influence was very great and constantly representative of the civilian element as opposed to the militarist. By staking everything on the necessity of adhering to the Nanking Provisional Constitution until a permanent instrument was drawn up, the Kuo Ming Tang rapidly established an ascendancy; for although the Nanking Constitution had admittedly failed to bring representative government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a way as to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least established as a basic principle that China could no longer be ruled as a family possession, which in itself marked a great advance on all previous conceptions. President Li Yuan-hung's policy, in the circumstances, was to play the part of a moderator and to seek to bring harmony to a mass of heterogeneous elements that had to carry out the practical work of government over four hundred millions of people.
His success was at the outset hampered by the appeal the military were quick in making to a new method—to offset the power of Parliament in Peking. We have already dealt with the evils of the circular telegram in China—surely one of the most unexpected results of adapting foreign inventions to native life. By means of these telegraphic campaigns a rapid exchange of views is made possible among the provincial governors; and consequently in the autumn of 1916, inspired by the Military Party, a wholly illegal Conference of generals was organized by the redoubtable old General Chang Hsun on the Pukow railway for the purpose of overawing parliament, and securing that the Military Party retained a controlling hand behind the scenes. It is perhaps unnecessary today to do more than note the fact that the peace of the country was badly strained by this procedure; but thanks to moderate counsels and the wisdom of the President no open breach occurred and there is reason to believe that this experiment will not be repeated,—at least not in the same way. [Footnote: Although the events dealt with in Chapter XVI have brought China face to face with a new crisis the force of the arguments used here is in no wise weakened.]
The difficulty to be solved is of an unique nature. It is not that the generals and the Military Party are necessarily reactionary: it is that, not belonging to the intellectual-literary portion of the ruling elements, they are less advanced and less accustomed to foreign ways, and therefore more in touch with the older China which lingers on in the vast agricultural districts, and in all those myriad of townships which are dotted far and wide across the provinces to the confines of Central Asia. Naturally it is hard for a class of men who hold the balance of power and carry on much of the actual work of governing to submit to the paper decrees of an institution they do not accept as being responsible and representative: but many indications are available that when a Permanent Constitution has been promulgated, and made an article of faith in all the schools, a change for the better will come and the old antagonisms gradually disappear.
It is on this Constitution that Parliament has been at work ever since it re-assembled in August, 1916, and which is now practically completed. Sitting together three times a week as a National Convention, the two Houses have subjected the Draft Constitution (which was prepared by a Special Parliamentary Drafting Committee) to a very exhaustive examination and discussion. Many violent scenes have naturally marked the progress of this important work, the two great parties, the Kuo Ming Tang and the Chinputang, coming to loggerheads again and again. But in the main the debates and the decisions arrived at have been satisfactory and important, because they have tended to express in a concrete and indisputable form the present state of the Chinese mind and its immense underlying commonsense. Remarkable discussions and fierce enmities, for instance, marked the final decision not to make the Confucian cult the State Religion; but there is not the slightest doubt that in formally registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing for many months to agree on the so-called Provincial system, and then fighting a battle A OUTRANCE on the question of whether this body of law should form a chapter in the Constitution or be simply an annexure to the main instrument. The agreement which was finally arrived at—to make it part and parcel of the Constitution—was masterly in that it has secured that the sovereignty of the people will not tend to be expressed in the provincial dietines which have now been re-erected (after having been summarily destroyed by Yuan Shih-kai) the Central Parliament being left the absolute master. This for a number of years will no doubt be more of a theory than a practice; but there is every indication that parliamentary government will within a limited period be more successful in China than in some European countries; and that the Chinese with their love of well- established procedure and cautious action, will select open debate as the best method of sifting the grain from the chaff and deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority. Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than justified its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch Committee. Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been constant and frequent; fierce verbal assaults are delivered on Cabinet Ministers; and slowly but inexorably a real sense of Ministerial responsibility is being created, the fear of having to run the gauntlet of Parliament abating, if it has not yet entirely destroyed, many malpractices. In the opinion of the writer in less than ten years Parliament will have succeeded in coalescing the country into an organic whole, and will have placed the Cabinet in such close daily relations with it that something very similar to the Anglo-Saxon theory of government will be impregnably entrenched in Peking. That such a miracle should be possible in extreme Eastern Asia is one more proof that there are no victories beyond the capacity of the human mind.
Meanwhile, for the time being, in China as in countries ten thousand miles away, ministerial irresponsibility is the enemy; that is to say that so-called Cabinet-rule, with the effacement of the Chief Executive, has tended to make Cabinet Ministers removed from effective daily control. All sorts of things are done which should not be done and men are still in charge of portfolios who should be summarily expelled from the capital for malpractices. [Footnote: Since this was written two Cabinet Ministers have been summarily arrested.] But although Chinese are slow to take action and prefer to delay all decisions until they have about them the inexorable quality which is associated with Fate, there is not the slightest doubt that in the long run the dishonest suffer, and an increasingly efficient body of men take their place. From every point of view then there is reason for congratulation in the present position, and every hope that the future will unroll peacefully.
A visit to Parliament under the new regime is a revelation to most men: the candid come away with an impression which is never effaced from their minds. There is a peculiar suggestiveness even in the location of the Houses of the National Assembly. They are tucked away in the distant Western city immediately under the shadow of the vast Tartar Wall as if it had been fully expected when they were called into being that they would never justify their existence, and that the crushing weight of the great bastion of brick and stone surrounding the capital would soon prove to them how futile it was for such palpable intruders to aspire to national control. Under Yuan Shih-kai, as under the Manchus, they were an exercise in the arm of government, something which was never to be allowed to harden into a settled practice. They were first cousins to railways, to electrical power, to metalled roadways and all those other modern instances beginning to modify an ancient civilization entirely based on agriculture; and because they were so distantly related to the real China of the farm-yard it was thought that they would always stand outside the national life.
That was what the fools believed. Yet in a copy of the rules of procedure of the old Imperial Senate (Tzuchengyuan) the writer finds this note written in 1910: "The Debates of this body have been remarkable during the very first session. They make it seem clear that the first National Parliament of 1913 will seize control of China and nullify the power of the Throne. Result, revolution—" Though the dating is a little confused, the prophecy is worthy of record.
The watchfulness of the special police surrounding the Parliament of 1916-1917 and the great number of these men also tells a story as eloquent as the location of the building. It is not so much that any contemplated violence sets these guardians here as the necessity to advertise that there has been unconstitutional violence in the past which, if possible, will be rigidly defeated in the future. Probably no National Assembly in the world has been held up to greater contempt than the Parliament of Peking and probably no body deserves it less. An afternoon spent in the House of Representatives would certainly surprise most open-minded men who have been content to believe that the Chinese experiment was what some critics have alleged it to be. The Chinese as a people, being used to guild-house proceedings, debates, in which the welfare of the majority is decided after an examination of the principles at stake, are a very old and well-established custom; and though at present there are awkwardnesses and gaucheries to be noted, when practice has become better fixed, the common sense of the race will abundantly disclose itself and make a lasting mark on contemporary history. There can be no doubt about this at all. Take your seat in the gallery and see for yourself. The first question which rises to the lips is—where are the young men, those crude and callow youths masquerading as legislators which the vernacular press has so excessively lampooned? The majority of the members, so far from being young, are men of thirty or forty, or even fifty, with intelligent and tired faces that have lost the Spring of youth. Here and there you will even see venerable greybeards suffering from rheumy coughs who ought to be at home; and though occasionally there is a lithe youngster in European clothes with the veneer he acquired abroad not yet completely rubbed off, the total impression is that of oldish men who have reached years of maturity and who are as representative of the country and as good as the country is in a position today to provide. No one who knows the real China can deny that.
The Continental arrangement of the Members' desks and the raised tribune of the Speaker, with its rows of clerks and recorders, make an impression of orderliness, tinged nevertheless with a faint revolutionary flavour. Perhaps it is the straight black Chinese hair and the rich silk clothing, set on a very plain and unadorned background, which recall the pictures of the French Revolution. It is somehow natural in such circumstances that there should occasionally be dramatic outbursts with the blood of offenders bitterly demanded as though we were not living in the Twentieth Century when blood alone is admittedly no satisfaction. The presence of armed House police at every door, and in the front rows of the strangers' gallery as well, contributes to this impression which has certain qualities of the theatre about it and is oddly stimulating. China at work legislating has already created her first traditions: she is proceeding deliberately armed—with the lessons of the immediate past fully noted.
This being the home of a literary race, papers and notebooks are on most Members' desks. As the electric bells ring sharply an unending procession of men file in to take their seats, for there has been a recess and the House has been only half-filled. Nearly every one is in Chinese dress (pien-yi) with the Member's badge pinned conspicuously on the breast. The idea speedily becomes a conviction that this after all is not extraneous to the nation but actually of the living flesh, a vital and imperative thing. The vastness and audacity of it all cannot fail to strike the imaginative mind, for the four or five hundred men who are gathered here typify, if they do not yet represent, the four or five hundred millions who make up the country. You see as it were the nation in profile, a ponderous, slow-moving mass, quickly responsive to curious subconscious influences—suddenly angry and suddenly calm again because Reason has after all always been the great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim figures speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It would be interesting to write the story of China from a study of the hands.
Each man goes to the rostrum to speak, and each has much to say. Soon another impression deepens—that the Northerners with their clear-cut speech and their fuller voices have an advantage over the Southerners of the kind that all public performers know. The mandarin language of Peking is after all the mother-language of officialdom, the madre linqua, less nervous and more precise than any other dialect and invested with a certain air of authority which cannot be denied. The sharp-sounding, high-pitched Southern voice, though it may argue very acutely and rapidly, appears at an increasing disadvantage. There seems to be a tendency inherent in it to become querulous, to make its pleading sound specious because of over-much speech. These are curious little things which have been not without influence in other regions of the world.
The applause when it comes proves the same thing as applause does everywhere; that if you want to drive home your points in a large assembly you must be condensed and simple, using broad, slashing arguments. This is precisely what distinguishes melodrama from drama, and which explains why excessive analysis is no argument in the popular mind. Generally, however, there is not much applause and the voice of the speaker wanders through the hall uninterrupted by signs of content or discontent. Sometimes, although rather rarely, there is a gust of laughter as a point is scored against a hated rival. But it dies away as suddenly as it arose—almost before you have noted it, as if it were superfluous and must make room for more serious things.
With the closing of a debate there is the vote. An electric bell rings again, and with a rough hand the House police close all the exits. The clerks come down into the aisles. They seem to move listlessly and indifferently; yet very quickly they have checked the membership to insure that the excessively large quorum requisite is present. Now the Speaker calls for the vote. Massively and stiffly, as at a word of command the "ayes" rise in their seats. There is a round of applause; the bill has been carried almost unanimously. That, however, is not always so. When there is an obstreperous mood abroad, the House will decline to proceed with the agenda, and a dozen men will rise at a time and speak from behind their desks, trying to talk each other down. The Speaker stands patiently wrestling with the problem of procedure— and often failing since practice is still in process of being formed. Years must elapse before absolutely hard-and-fast rules are established. Still the progress already made since August, 1916, is remarkable, and something is being learned every day. The business of a Parliament is after all to debate—to give voice to the uppermost thoughts in the nation's mind; and how those thoughts are expressed is a continual exposition of the real state of the nation's political beliefs. Parliament is—or should be—a microcosm of the race; parliament is never any better or any worse than the mass of the people. The rule of the majority as expressed in the voting of the National Assembly must be taken as a fundamental thing; China is no exception to the rule—the rule of the majority must be decisive.
But here another complexity of the new Chinese political life enters into the problem. The existence of a responsible Cabinet, which is not yet linked to the Legislative body in any well- understood way, and which furthermore has frequently acted in opposition to the President's office, makes for a daily struggle in the administration of the country which is strongly to be condemned and which has already led to some ugly clashes. But nevertheless there are increasing indications that parliamentary government is making steady headway and that when both the Permanent Constitution and the Local Government system have been enforced, a new note will be struck. No doubt it will need a younger generation in office to secure a complete abandonment of all the old ways, but the writer has noted with astonishment during the past twelve-month how eager even viceroys belonging to the old Manchu regime have become to fall in with the new order and to lend their help, a sharp competition to obtain ministerial posts being evident in spite of the fact that the gauntlet of Parliament has to be run and a majority vote recorded before any appointment is valid.
One last anomaly has, however, yet to be done away with in Peking. The deposed boy Emperor still resides in the Winter Palace surrounded by a miniature court,—a state of affairs which should not be tolerated any longer as it no doubt tends to assist the rumours which every now and again are mysteriously spread by interested parties that a Restoration is imminent. The time has arrived when not only must the Manchu Imperial Family be removed far from the capital but a scheme worked out for commuting the pension-system of so-called Bannerman families who still draw their monthly allowances as under the Manchus, thanks to the articles of Favourable Treatment signed at the time of abdication of 1912. When these two important questions have been settled, imperialism in China will tend rapidly to fade into complete oblivion.
Such, then, were the internal conditions which the new administration was called upon to face with the death of Yuan Shih-kai. With very little money in the National Treasury and with the provinces unable or unwilling to remit to the capital a single dollar, it was fortunate that at least one public service, erected under foreign pressure, should be brilliantly justifying its existence. The Salt Administration, efficiently reorganized in the space of three years by the great Indian authority, Sir Richard Dane, was now providing a monthly surplus of nearly five million dollars; and it was this revenue which kept China alive during a troubled transitional period when every one was declaring that she must die. By husbanding this hard cash and mixing it liberally with paper money, the Central Government has been able since June, 1916, to meet its current obligations and to keep the general machinery from breaking down.
But in a country such as China new dangers have to be constantly faced and smoothed away—the interests of the outer world pressing on the country and conflicting with the native interest at a myriad points. And in order to illustrate and make clear the sort of daily exacerbation which the nation must endure because of the vastness of its territory and the octopus-hold of the foreigner we give two typical cases of international trouble which have occurred since Yuan Shih-kai's death. The first is the well-known Chengchiatun incident which occurred in Manchuria in August, 1916: the second is the Laohsikai affair which took place in Tientsin in November of the same year and created a storm of rage against France throughout North China which, at the moment of writing has not yet abated.
The facts about the Chengchiatun incident are incredibly simple and merit being properly told. Chengchiatun is a small Mongol- Manchurian market-down lying some sixty miles west of the South Manchurian railway by the ordinary cart-roads, though as the crow flies the distance is much less. The country round about is "new country," the prefecture in which Chengchiatun lies being originally purely Mongol territory on which Chinese squatted in such numbers that it was necessary to erect the ordinary Chinese civil administration. Thirty or forty miles due west of the town cultivation practically ceases; and then nothing meets the eye but the rolling grasslands of Mongolia, with their sparse encampments of nomad horsemen and shepherds which stretch so monotonously into the infinities of High Asia.
The region is strategically important because the trade-routes converge there from the growing marts of the Taonanfu administration, which is the extreme westernly limit of Chinese authority in the Mongolian borderland. A rich exchange in hides, furs, skins, cattle and foodstuffs has given this frontier-town from year to year an increasing importance in the eyes of the Chinese who are fully aware of the dangers of a laissez aller policy and are determined to protect the rights they have acquired by pre-emption. The fact that notorious Mongol brigand-chiefs, such as the famous Babachapu who was allied to the Manchu Restoration Party and who was said to have been subsidized by the Japanese Military Party, had been making Chengchiatun one of their objectives, brought concern early in 1916 to the Moukden Governor, the energetic General Chang Tso-lin, who in order to cope with the danger promptly established a military cordon round the district, with a relatively large reserve based on Chengchiatun, drawn from the 28th Army Division. A certain amount of desultory fighting months before any one had heard of the town had given Chengchiatun the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the Japanese began military manoeuvres in the district with various scattered detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway zone where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty to be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent that dangerous developments might be expected—particularly as a body of Japanese infantry was billeted right in the centre of the town.
On the 13th August a Japanese civilian at Chengchiatun—there is a small Japanese trading community there—approached a Chinese boy who was selling fish. On the boy refusing to sell at the price offered him, the Japanese caught hold of him and started beating him. A Chinese soldier of the 28th Division who was passing intervened; and a scuffle commenced in which other Chinese soldiers joined and which resulted in the Japanese being severely handled. After the Chinese had left him, the man betook himself to the nearest Japanese post and reported that he had been grievously assaulted by Chinese soldiers for no reason whatsoever. A Japanese gensdarme made a preliminary investigation in company with the man; then returning to the Japanese barracks, declared that he could find no one in authority; that his attempts at discovering the culprits had been resisted; and that he must have help. The Japanese officer in command, who was a captain, detailed a lieutenant and twenty men to proceed to the Chinese barracks to obtain satisfaction from the Chinese Commander—using force if necessary. It was precisely in this way that the play was set in motion.
The detachment marched off to the headquarters of the offending Chinese detachment, which was billeted in a pawnshop, and tried to force their way past a sentry who stood his ground, into the inner courtyards. A long parley ensued with lowered bayonets; and at last on the Chinese soldier absolutely refusing to give way, the lieutenant gave orders to cut him down. There appears to be no doubt about these important facts—that is to say, that the act of war was the deliberate attack by a Japanese armed detachment on a Chinese sentry who was guarding the quarters of his Commander.
A frightful scene followed. It appears that scattered groups of Chinese soldiers, some with their arms, and some without, had collected during this crisis and point-blank firing at once commenced. The first shots appear to have been fired—though this was never proved—by a Chinese regimental groom, who was standing with some horses some distance away in the gateway of some stabling and who is said to have killed or wounded the largest number of Japanese. In any case seven Japanese soldiers were killed outright, five more mortally wounded and four severely so, the Chinese themselves losing four killed, besides a number of wounded. The remnant of the Japanese detachment after this rude reverse managed to retreat with their wounded officer to their own barracks where the whole detachment barricaded themselves in, firing for many hours at everything that moved on the roads though absolutely no attempt was made by the Chinese soldiery to advance against them.
The sound of this heavy firing, and the wild report that many Japanese had been killed, had meanwhile spread panic throughout the town, and there was a general sauve qui pent, a terrible retribution being feared. The local Magistrate finally restored some semblance of order; and after dark proceeded in person with some notables of the town to the Japanese barracks to tender his regrets and to arrange for the removal of the Japanese corpses which were lying just as they had fallen, and which Chinese custom demanded should be decently cared for, though they constituted important and irrefragible evidence of the armed invasion which had been practised. The Japanese Commander, instead of meeting these conciliatory attempts half-way, thereupon illegally arrested the Magistrate and locked him up, being impelled to this action by the general fear among his men that a mass attack would be made in the night by the Chinese troops in garrison and the whole command wiped out. Nothing, however, occurred and on the 14th instant the Magistrate was duly released on his sending for his son to take his place as hostage. On the 16th the Magistrate had successfully arranged the withdrawal of all Chinese troops five miles outside the town to prevent further clashes. On the 15th Japanese cavalry and infantry began to arrive in large numbers from the South Manchuria railway zone (where they alone have the Treaty right to be) and the town of Chengchiatun was arbitrarily placed by them in a state of siege.
Here is the stuff of which the whole incident was made: there is nothing material beyond the facts stated which illustrate very glaringly the manner in which a strong Power acts towards a weak one.
Meanwhile the effect in Tokyo of these happenings had been electrical. Relying on the well-known Japanese police axiom, that the man who gets in his story first is the prosecutor and the accused the guilty party, irrespective of what the evidence may be, the newspapers all came out with the same account of a calculated attack by "ferocious Chinese soldiers" on a Japanese detachment and the general public were asked to believe that a number of their enlisted nationals had been deliberately and brutally murdered. It was not, however, until more than a week after the incident that an official report was published by the Tokyo Foreign Office, when the following garbled account was distributed far and wide as the Japanese case:—
"When one Kiyokishy Yoshimoto, aged 27, an employee of a Japanese apothecary at Chengchiatun, was passing the headquarters of the Chinese troops on the 13th instant, a Chinese soldier stopped him, and, with some remarks, which were unintelligible to the Japanese, suddenly struck him on the head. Yoshimoto became enraged, but was soon surrounded by a large number of Chinese soldiers and others, who subjected him to all kind of humiliation. As a result of this lawlessness on the part of the Chinese, the Japanese sustained injuries in seven or eight places, but somehow he managed to break away and reach a Japanese police box, where he applied for help. On receipt of this news, a policeman, named Kowase, hastened to the spot, but by the time he arrived there all the offenders had fled. He therefore repaired to the headquarters of the Chinese to lay a complaint, but the sentry stopped him, and presented a pistol at him, and under these circumstances he was obliged to apply to the Japanese Garrison headquarters, where Captain Inone instructed Lieutenant Matsuo with twenty men to escort the policeman to the Chinese headquarters. When the party approached the Chinese headquarters, Chinese troops began to fire, and the policemen and others were either killed or wounded. Despite the fact that the Japanese troops retired, the Chinese troops did not give up firing, but besieged the Japanese garrison, delivering several severe attacks. Soon after the fighting ceased, the Chinese authorities visited the Japanese barracks, and expressed the desire that the affair be settled amicably. It was the original intention of the Japanese troops to fight it out, but they were completely out-numbered, and lest the safety of the Japanese residents be endangered, they stopped fighting. On examination of the dead bodies of seven Japanese soldiers, who were attacked outside the barracks, it was discovered that they had been all slain by the Chinese troops, the bodies bearing marks of violence."
Without entering again into the merits of the case, we would ask those who are acquainted with recent history whether it is likely that Chinese soldiers, knowing all the pains and penalties attaching to such action, would deliberately attack a body of twenty armed Japanese under an officer as the Japanese official account states? We believe that no impartial tribunal, investigating the matter on the spot, could fail to point out the real aggressors and withal lay bare the web of a most amazing state of affairs. For in order to understand what occurred, on the 13th August, 1916, it is necessary to turn far away from Chengchiatun and see what lies behind it all.
At the back of the brain of the Japanese Military Party, which by no means represents the Japanese nation or the Japanese Government although it exercises a powerful influence on both, is the fixed idea that South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia must be turned into a strongly held and fortified Japanese ENCLAVE, if the balance of power in Eastern Asia is to be maintained. Pursuant to this idea, Japanese diplomacy was induced many months ago to concentrate its efforts on winning—if not wringing—from Russia the strategically important strip of railway south of the Sungari River, because (and this should be carefully noted) with the Sungari as the undisputed dividing-line between the Russian and Japanese spheres in Manchuria, and with Japanese shallow-draft gun-boats navigating that waterway and entering the Nonni river, it would be easily possible for Japan to complete a "Continental quadrilateral" which would include Korea, South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, the extreme western barrier of which would be the new system of Inner Mongolian railways centring round Taonanfu and terminating at Jehol, for which Japan already holds the building rights. [Footnote: Russian diplomats now deny that the Japanese proposals regarding the cession of the railway south of the Sungari river have ever been formally agreed to.] policing rights —in the outer zone of this enclave,—with a total exclusion of all Chinese garrisons, is the preliminary goal towards which the Japanese Military Party has been long plainly marching; and long before anybody had heard of Chengchiatun, a scheme of reconnoitring detachments had been put in force to spy out the land and form working alliances with the Mongol bands in order to harass and drive away all the representatives of Chinese authority. What occurred, then, at Chengchiatun might have taken place at any one of half-a-dozen other places in this vast and little-known region whither Japanese detachments have silently gone; and if Chinese diplomacy in the month of August, 1916, was faced with a rude surprise, it was only what political students had long been expecting. For though Japan should be the real defender of Chinese liberties, it is a fact that in Chinese affairs Japanese diplomacy has been too long dictated to by the Military Party in Tokio and attempts nothing save when violence allows it to tear from China some fresh portion of her independence.
And here we reach the crux of the matter. One of the little known peculiarities of the day lies in the fact that Japan is the land of political inaction because there is no tradition of action save that which has been built up by the military and naval chiefs since the Chinese war of 1894-95. Having only visualized the world in international terms during two short decades, there has been no time for a proper tradition to be created by the civil government of Japan; and because there is no such tradition, the island empire of the East has no true foreign policy and is at the mercy of manufactured crises, being too often committed to petty adventures which really range her on the side of those in Europe the Allies have set themselves to destroy. It is for this reason that the Chinese are consistently treated as though they were hewers of wood and drawers of water, helots who are occasionally flattered in the columns of the daily press and yet are secretly looked upon as men who have been born merely to be cuffed and conquered. The Moukden Governor, General Chang Tso-ling, discussing the Chengchiatun affair with the writer, put the matter in a nutshell. Striking the table he exclaimed: "After all we are not made of wood like this, we too are flesh and blood and must defend our own people. A dozen times I have said, 'Let them come and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let them cease their childish intrigues.' Why do they not do so? Because they are not sure they can swallow us—not at all sure. Do you understand? We are weak, we are stupid, we are divided, but we are innumerable, and in the end, if they persist, China will burst the Japanese stomach."
Such passionate periods are all very well, but when it comes to the sober business of the council chamber it is a regrettable fact that Chinese, although foreign friends implore them to do so, do not properly use the many weapons in their armoury. Thus in this particular case, instead of at once hurrying to Chengchiatun some of the many foreign advisers who sit kicking their heels in Peking from one end of the year to the other and who number competent jurisconsults, China did next to nothing. No proper report was drawn up on the spot; sworn statements were not gathered, nor were witnesses brought to Peking; and it therefore happened that when Japan filed her demands for redress, China had not in her possession anything save an utterly inadequate defence. Mainly because of this she was forced to agree to foregoing any direct discussion of the rights and wrongs of the case, proceeding directly to negotiations based on the various claims which Japan filed and which were as follows:—
1. Punishment of the General commanding the 28th Division.
2. The dismissal of officers at Chengchiatun responsible for the occurrence as well as the severe punishment of those who took direct part in the fracas.
3. Proclamations to be posted ordering all Chinese soldiers and civilians in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia to refrain from any act calculated to provoke a breach of the peace with Japanese soldiers or civilians.
4. China to agree to the stationing of Japanese police officers in places in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia where their presence was considered necessary for the protection of Japanese subjects. China also to agree to the engagement by the officials of South Manchuria of Japanese police advisers.
And in addition:—
1. Chinese troops stationed in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia to employ a certain number of Japanese Military officers as advisers.
2. Chinese Military Cadet schools to employ a certain number of Japanese Military officers as instructors.
3. The Military Governor of Moukden to proceed personally to Port Arthur to the Japanese Military Governor of Kwantung to apologize for the occurrence and to tender similar personal apologies to the Japanese Consul General in Moukden.
4. Adequate compensation to be paid by China to the Japanese sufferers and to the families of those killed.
The merest tyro will see at once that so far from caring very much about the killing of her soldiery, Japan was bent on utilizing the opportunity to gain a certain number of new rights and privileges in the zone of Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia— notably an extension of her police and military-supervision rights. In spite, however, of the faulty procedure to which she had consented, China showed considerable tenacity in the course of negotiations which lasted nearly half a year, and by the end of January, 1917, had whittled down the question of Japanese compensation to fairly meagre proportions. To be precise the two governments agreed to embody by the exchange of Notes the five following stipulations:
1. The General commanding the 28th Division to be reprimanded.
2. Officers responsible to be punished according to law. If the law provides for severe punishment, such punishment will be inflicted.
3. Proclamations to be issued enjoining Chinese soldiers and civilians in the districts where there is mixed residence to accord considerate treatment to Japanese soldiers and civilians.
4. The Military Governor of Moukden to send a representative to Port Arthur to convey his regret when the Military Governor of Kwantung and Japanese Consul General at Moukden are there together,
5. A solatium of $500 (Five Hundred Dollars) to be given to the Japanese merchant Yoshimoto.
But though the incident was thus nominally closed, and amicable relations restored, the most important point—the question of Japanese police-rights in Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia—was left precisely where it had been before, the most vigorous Chinese protests not having induced Japan to abate in the slightest her pretensions. During previous years a number of Japanese police-stations and police-boxes had been established in defiance of the local authorities in these regions, and although China in these negotiations recorded her strongest possible objection to their presence as being the principal cause of the continual friction between Chinese and Japanese, Japan refused to withdraw from her contention that they did not constitute any extension of the principle of extraterritoriality, and that indeed Japanese police, distributed at such points as the Japanese consular authorities considered necessary, must be permanently accepted. Here then is a matter which will require careful consideration when the Powers meet to revise their Chinese Treaties as they must revise them after the world-war; for Japan in Manchuria is fundamentally in no different a position from England in the Yangtsze Valley and what applies to one must apply to the other. The new Chinese police which are being distributed in ever greater numbers throughout China form an admirable force and are superior to Japanese police in the performance of nearly all their duties. It is monstrous that Japan, as well as other Powers, should act in such a reprehensible manner when the Chinese administration is doing all it can to provide efficient guardians of the peace.
The second case was one in which French officialdom by a curious act of folly gravely alienated Chinese sympathies and gave a powerful weapon to the German propaganda in China at the end of 1916. The Lao-hsi-kai dispute, which involved a bare 333 acres of land in Tientsin, has now taken its place beside the Chengchiatun affair, and has become a leading case in that great dossier of griefs which many Chinese declare make up the corpus of Euro- Chinese relations. Here again the facts are absolutely simple and absolutely undisputed. In 1902 the French consular authorities in Tientsin filed a request to have their Concession extended on the ground that they were becoming cramped. The Chinese authorities, although not wishing to grant the request and indeed ignoring it for a long time, were finally induced to begin fitful negotiations; and in October, 1916, after having passed through various processes of alteration, reduction, and re-statement during the interval of fourteen years, the issue had been so fined down that a virtual agreement regarding the administration of the new area had been reached—an agreement which the Peking Government was prepared to put into force subject to one reasonable stipulation, that the local opposition to the new grant of territory which was very real, as Chinese feel passionately on the subject of the police-control of their land-acreage, was first overcome. The whole essence or soul of the disputes lay therein: that the lords of the soil, the people of China, and in this case more particularly the population of Tientsin, should accept the decision arrived at which was that a joint Franco-Chinese administration be established under a Chinese Chairman.
When the terms of this proposed agreement were communicated to the Tientsin Consulate by the French Legation the arrangement did not please the French Consul-General, who was under transfer to Shanghai and who proposed to settle the case to the satisfaction of his nationals before he left. There is absolutely no dispute about this fact either—namely that the main pre-occupation of a consular officer, charged primarily under the Treaties with the simple preservation of law and order among his nationals, was the closing-up of a vexatious outstanding case, by force if necessary, before he handed over his office to his successor. It was with this idea that an ultimatum was drawn up by the French Consul General and, having been weakly approved by the French Legation, was handed to the Chinese local authorities. It gave them a time- limit of twenty-four hours in which to effect the complete police evacuation of the coveted strip of territory on the ground that the delay in the signature of a formal Protocol had been wilful and deliberate and had closed the door to further negotiations; and as no response came at the end of the time-limit, an open invasion of Chinese territory was practised by an armed French detachment; nine uniformed Chinese constables on duty being forcibly removed and locked up in French barracks and French sentries posted on the disputed boundary.
The result of this misguided action was an enormous Chinese outcry and the beginning of a boycott of the French in North China,—and this in the middle of a war when France has acted with inspiring nobility. Some 2,000 native police, servants and employes promptly deserted the French Concession en masse; popular unions were formed to keep alive resentment; and although in the end the arrested police were set at liberty, the friendly intervention of the Allies proved unable to effect a settlement of the case which at the moment of writing remains precisely where it was a year ago. [Footnote: A further illustration of the action of French diplomacy in China has just been provided (April, 1917) in the protest lodged by France against the building of a railway in Kwangsi Province by American engineers with American capital,— France claiming exclusive rights in Kwangsi by virtue of a letter sent by the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French Legation in 1914 as settlement for a frontier dispute in that year. The text of the letter is as follows:
"The dispute that rose in consequence of the disturbance at the border of Annam and Kwangsi has been examined into by the Joint Committee detailed by both parties concerned, and a conclusion has been reached to the effect that all matters relating to the solution of the case would be carried out in accordance with the request of Your Excellency.
"In order to demonstrate the especially good friendly relations existing between the two countries, the Republican Government assures Your Excellency that in case a railway construction or a mining enterprise being undertaken in Kwangsi Province in the future, for which foreign capital is required, France would first be consulted for a loan of the necessary capital. On such an occasion, the Governor of Kwangsi will directly negotiate with a French syndicate and report to the Government." It is high time that the United States raises the whole question of the open door in China again, and refuses to tolerate any longer the old disruptive and dog-in-the-manger policy of the Powers. America is now happily in a position to inaugurate a new era in the Far East as in the Far West and to stop exploitation.]
Here you have the matter of foreign interests in China explained in the sense that they appear to Chinese. It is not too much to say that this illustration of the deliberate lawlessness, which has too often been practised in the past by consuls who are simply Justices of the Peace, would be incredible elsewhere; and yet it is this lawlessness which has come to be accepted as part and parcel of what is called "policy" in China because in the fifty years preceding the establishment of the Republic a weak and effeminate mandarinate consistently sought safety in surrenders. It is this lawlessness which must at all costs be suppressed if we are to have a happy future. The Chinese people have so far contented themselves by pacific retaliation and have not exploded into rage; but those who see in the gospel of boycott an ugly manifestation of what lies slumbering should give thanks nightly that they live in a land where reason is so supreme. Think of what might not happen in China if the people were not wholly reasonable! Throughout the length and breadth of the land you have small communities of foreigners, mere drops in a mighty ocean of four hundred millions, living absolutely secure although absolutely at the mercy of their huge swarms of neighbours. All such foreigners—or nearly all—have come to China for purposes of profit; they depend for their livelihood on co-operation with the Chinese; and once that co-operation ceases they might as well be dead and buried for all the good residence will do them. In such circumstances it would be reasonable to suppose that a certain decency would inspire their attitude, and that a policy of give- and-take would always be sedulously practised; and we are happy to say that there is more of this than there used to be. It is only when incidents such as the Chengchiatun and Laihsikai affairs occur that the placid population is stirred to action. Even then, instead of turning and rending the many little defenceless communities—as European mobs would certainly do—they simply confine themselves to boycotting the offenders and hoping that this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the world to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment. The Chinese as a people may be very irritating in the slowness with which they do certain things—though they are as quick in business as the quickest Anglo-Saxon—but that is no excuse why men who call themselves superior should treat them with contempt. The Chinese are the first to acknowledge that it will take them a generation at least to modernize effectively their country and their government; but they believe that having erected a Republic and having declared themselves as disciples of the West they are justified in expecting the same treatment and consideration which are to be given after the war even to the smallest and weakest nations of Europe.