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:

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.