THE NEW REGIME,--FROM 1916 TO 1917
Within an hour of the death of Yuan Shih-kai, the veteran General
Tuan Chi-jui, in his capacity of Secretary of State, had called on
Vice-President Li Yuan-hung--the man whom years before he had
been sent to the Yangtsze to bring captive to Peking--and welcomed
him as President of the Republic. At one o'clock on the same day
the Ministers of the Allied Powers who had hastily assembled at
the Waichiaopu (Foreign Office), were informed that General Li
Yuan-hung had duly assumed office and that the peace and security
of the capital were fully guaranteed. No unrest of any sort need
be apprehended; for whilst rumours would no doubt circulate wildly
as soon as the populace realized the tragic nature of the climax
which had come, the Gendarmerie Corps and the Metropolitan Police
--two forces that numbered 18,000 armed men--were taking every
possible precaution.
In spite of these assurances great uneasiness was felt. The
foreign Legations, which are very imperfectly informed regarding
Chinese affairs although living in the midst of them, could not be
convinced that internal peace could be so suddenly attained after
five years of such fierce rivalries. Among the many gloomy
predictions made at the time, the most common to fall from the
lips of Foreign Plenipotentiaries was the remark that the Japanese
would be in full occupation of the country within three months--
the one effective barrier to their advance having been removed. No
better illustration could be given of the inadequate grasp of
politics possessed by those whose peculiar business it should be
to become expert in the science of cause and effect. In China, as
in the Balkans, professional diplomacy errs so constantly because
it has in the main neither the desire nor the training to study
dispassionately from day to day all those complex phenomena which
go to make up modern nationalism. Guided in its conduct almost
entirely by a policy of personal predilections, which is fitfully
reinforced by the recollection of precedents, it is small wonder
if such mountains of mistakes choke every Legation dossier.
Determined to having nothing whatever to do, save in the last
resort, with anything that savours of Radicalism, and inclining
naturally towards ideals which have long been abandoned in the
workaday world, diplomacy is the instinctive lover of obscurantism
and the furtive enemy of progress. Distrusting all those generous
movements which spring from the popular desire to benefit by
change, it follows from this that the diplomatic brotherhood
inclines towards those truly detestable things--secret compacts.
In the present instance, having been bitterly disappointed by the
complete collapse of the strong man theory, it was only natural
that consolation should be sought by casting doubt on the future.
Never have sensible men been so absurd. The life-story of Yuan
Shih-kai, and the part European and Japanese diplomacy played in
that story, form a chapter which should be taught as a warning to
all who enter politics as a career, since there is exhibited in
this history a complete compendium of all the more vicious traits
of Byzantinism.
The first acts of President Li Yuan-hung rapidly restored
confidence and advertised to the keen-eyed that the end of the
long drawn-out Revolution had come. Calling before him all the
generals in the capital, he told them with sincerity and
simplicity that their country's fortunes rested in their hands;
and he asked them to take such steps as would be in the nature of
a permanent insurance against foreign interference in the affairs
of the Republic. He was at once given fervent support. A mass
meeting of the military was followed by the whole body of
commissioned men volunteering to hold themselves personally
responsible for the maintenance of peace and order in the capital.
The dreadful disorders which had ushered in the Yuan Shih-kai
regime were thus made impossible; and almost at once men went
about their business as usual.
The financial wreckage left by the mad monarchy adventure was,
however, appalling. Not only was there no money in the capital but
hardly any food as well; for since the suspension of specie
payments country supplies had ceased entering the city as farmers
refused to accept inconvertible paper in payment for their
produce. It became necessary for the government to sell at a
nominal price the enormous quantities of grain which had been
accumulated for the army and the punitive expedition against the
South; and for many days a familiar sight was the endless blue-
coated queues waiting patiently to receive as in war-time their
stipulated pittance.
Meanwhile, although the troops remained loyal to the new regime,
not so the monarchist politicians. Seeing that their hour of
obliteration had come, they spared no effort to sow secret
dissensions and prevent the provinces from uniting again with
Peking. It would be wearisome to give in full detail the
innumerable schemes which were now hourly formulated, to secure
that the control of the country should not be exercised in a
lawful way. Finding that it was impossible to conquer the general
detestation felt for them, the monarchists, led by Liang Shih-yi,
changed their tactics and exhausted themselves in attempting to
secure the issue of a general annesty decree. But in spite of
every argument President Li Yuan-hung remained unmoved and refused
absolutely to consider their pardon. A just and merciful man, it
was his intention to allow the nation to speak its mind before
issuing orders on the subject; but to show that he was no advocate
of the terrorist methods practised by his predecessor, he now
issued a Mandate summarily abolishing the infamous Chih Fa Chu, or
Military Court, which Yuan Shih-kai had turned into an engine of
judicial assassination, and within whose gloomy precincts many
thousands of unfortunate men had perished practically untried in
the period 1911-1916.
Meanwhile the general situation throughout the country only slowly
ameliorated. The Northern Military party, determined to prevent
political power from passing solely into the hands of the Southern
Radicals, bitterly opposed the revival of the Nanking Provisional
Constitution, and denounced the re-convocation of the old
Parliament of 1913, which had already assembled in Shanghai,
preparatory to coming up to the capital. It needed a sharp
manoeuvre to bring them to their senses. The Chinese Navy,
assembled in the waters near Shanghai, took action; and in an
ultimatum communicated to Peking by their Admiral, declared that
so long as the government in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui
refused to conform to popular wishes by reviving the Nanking
Provisional Constitution and resummoning the old Parliament, so
long would the Navy refuse to recognize the authority of the
Central Government. With the fleet in the hands of the Southern
Confederacy, which had not yet been formally dissolved, the Peking
Government was powerless in the whole region of the Yangtsze;
consequently, after many vain manoeuvres to avoid this reasonable
and proper solution, it was at last agreed that things should be
brought back precisely where they had been before the coup d'etat
of the 4th November, 1913--the Peking Government being
reconstituted by means of a coalition cabinet in which there would
be both nominees of the North and South--the premiership remaining
in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui.
On the 28th June a long funeral procession wended its way from the
Presidential Palace to the railway station; it was the remains of
the great dictator being taken to their last resting-place in
Honan. Conspicuous in this cortege was the magnificent stagecoach
which had been designed to bear the founder of the new dynasty to
his throne but which only accompanied him to his grave. The
detached attitude of the crowds and the studied simplicity of the
procession, which was designed to be republican, proved more
clearly than reams of arguments that China--despite herself
perhaps--had become somewhat modernized, the oldest country in the
world being now the youngest republic and timidly trying to learn
the lessons of youth.
Once Yuan Shih-kai had been buried, a Mandate ordering the summary
arrest of all the chief monarchist plotters was issued; but the
gang of corrupt men had already sought safety in ignominious
flight; and it was understood that so long as they remained on
soil under foreign jurisdiction, no attempt would be made even to
confiscate their goods and chattels as would certainly have been
done under former governments. The days of treachery and double-
dealing and cowardly revenge were indeed passing away and the new
regime was committed to decency and fairplay. The task of the new
President was no mean one, and in all the circumstances if he
managed to steer a safe middle course and avoid both Caesarism and
complete effacement, that is a tribute to his training. Born in
1864 in Hupeh, one of the most important mid-Yangtsze provinces,
President Li Yuan-hung was now fifty-two years old, and in the
prime of life; but although he had been accustomed to a military
atmosphere from his earliest youth his policy had never been
militaristic. His father having been in command of a force in
North China for many years, rising from the ranks to the post of
tsan chiang (Lieutenant-Colonel), had been constrained to give him
the advantage of a thoroughly modern training. At the age of 20 he
had entered the Naval School at Tientsin; whence six years later
he had graduated, seeing service in the navy as an engineer
officer during the Chino-Japanese war of 1894. After that campaign
he had been invited by Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, then one of the
most distinguished of the older viceroys, to join his staff at
Nanking, and had been entrusted with the supervision of the
construction of the modern forts at the old Southern capital,
which played such a notable part in the Revolution. When Chang
Chih-tung was transferred to the Wuchang viceroyalty, General Li
Yuan-hung had accompanied him, actively participating in the
training of the new Hupeh army, and being assisted in that work by
German instructors. In 1897 he had gone to Japan to study
educational, military and administrative methods, returning to
China after a short stay, but again proceeding to Tokyo in 1897 as
an officer attached to the Imperial Guards. In the autumn of the
following year he had returned to Wuchang and been appointed
Commander of the Cavalry. Yet another visit was paid by him to
Japan in 1902 to attend the grand military manoeuvres, these
journeys giving him a good working knowledge of Japanese, in
addition to the English which had been an important item in the
curriculum of the Naval School, and which he understands
moderately well. In 1903 he was promoted Brigadier General, being
subsequently gazetted as the Commander of the 2nd Division of
Regulars (Chang Pei Chun) of Hupeh. He also constantly held
various subsidiary posts, in addition to his substantive
appointment, connected with educational and administrative work of
various kinds, and has therefore a sound grasp of provincial
government. He was Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Division during
the famous military manoeuvres of 1906 at Changtehfu in Honan
province, which are said to have been given birth to the idea of a
universal revolt against the Manchus by using the army as the
chief instrument.
On the memorable day of October 11, 1911, when the standard of
revolt was raised at Wuchang, somewhat against his will as he was
a loyal officer, he was elected military Governor, thus becoming
the first real leader of the Republic. Within the space of ten
days his leadership had secured the adhesion of fourteen provinces
to the Republican cause; and though confronted by grave
difficulties owing to insufficiency of equipment and military
supplies, he fought the Northern soldiery for two months around
Wuchang with varying success. He it was, when the Republic had
been formally established and the Manchu regime made a thing of
the past, who worked earnestly to bring about better relations
between the armies of North and South China which had been arrayed
against one another during many bitter weeks. It was he, also, who
was the first to advocate the complete separation of the civil and
military administration--the administrative powers in the early
days of the Republic being entirely in the hands of the military
governors of the provinces who recruited soldiery in total
disregard to the wishes of the Central Government. Although this
reform has even today only been partially successful, there is no
reason to doubt that before the Republic is many years older the
idea of the military dictating the policy and administration of
the country will pass away. The so-called Second Revolution of
1913 awakened no sympathy in General Li Yuan-hung, because he was
opposed to internal strife and held that all Chinese should work
for unity and concerted reform rather than indulge in fruitless
dissensions. His disapproval of the monarchy movement had been
equally emphatic in the face of an ugly outlook. He was repeatedly
approached by the highest personages to give in his adhesion to
Yuan Shih-kai becoming emperor, but he persistently refused
although grave fears were publicly expressed that he would be
assassinated. Upon the formal acceptance of the Throne by Yuan
Shih-kai, he had had conferred on him a princedom which he
steadfastly refused to accept; and when the allowances of a prince
were brought to him from the Palace he returned them with the
statement that as he had not accepted the title the money was not
his. Every effort to break his will proved unavailing, his
patience and calmness contributing very materially to the vast
moral opposition which finally destroyed Yuan Shih-kai.
Such was the man who was called upon to preside over the new
government and parliament which was now assembling in Peking; and
certainly it may be counted as an evidence of China's traditional
luck which brought him to the helm. General Li Yuan Hung knew well
that the cool and singular plan which had been pursued to forge a
national mandate for a revival of the empire would take years
completely to obliterate, and that the octopus-hold of the
Military Party--the army being the one effective organization
which had survived the Revolution--could not be loosened in a
day,--in fact would have to be tolerated until the nation asserted
itself and showed that it could and would be master. In the
circumstances his authority could not but be very limited,
disclosing itself in passive rather than in active ways. Wishing
to be above all a constitutional President, he quickly saw that an
interregnum must be philosophically accepted during which the
Permanent Constitution would be worked out and the various parties
forced to a general agreement; and thanks to this decision the
year which has now elapsed since Yuan Shih-kai's death has been
almost entirely eventless, with the exception of the crisis which
arose over the war-issue, a matter which is fully discussed
elsewhere.
Meanwhile, in the closing months of 1916, the position was not a
little singular. Two great political parties had arisen through
the Revolution--the Kuo Ming Tang or Nationalists, who included
all the Radical elements, and the Chinputang or Progressives,
whose adherents were mainly men of the older official classes, and
therefore conservative. The Yunnan movement, which had led to the
overthrow of Yuan Shih-kai, had been inspired and very largely
directed by the scholar Liang Ch'i-chao, a leader of the
Chinputang. To this party, then, though numerically inferior to
the Kuo Ming Tang, was due the honour and credit of re-
establishing the Republic, the Kuo Ming Tang being under a cloud
owing to the failure of the Second Revolution of 1913 which it had
engineered. Nevertheless, owing to the Kuo Ming Tang being more
genuinely republican, since it was mainly composed of younger and
more modern minds, it was from its ranks that the greatest check
to militarism sprang; and therefore although its work was
necessarily confined to the Council-chamber, its moral influence
was very great and constantly representative of the civilian
element as opposed to the militarist. By staking everything on the
necessity of adhering to the Nanking Provisional Constitution
until a permanent instrument was drawn up, the Kuo Ming Tang
rapidly established an ascendancy; for although the Nanking
Constitution had admittedly failed to bring representative
government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a
way as to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least
established as a basic principle that China could no longer be
ruled as a family possession, which in itself marked a great
advance on all previous conceptions. President Li Yuan-hung's
policy, in the circumstances, was to play the part of a moderator
and to seek to bring harmony to a mass of heterogeneous elements
that had to carry out the practical work of government over four
hundred millions of people.
His success was at the outset hampered by the appeal the military
were quick in making to a new method--to offset the power of
Parliament in Peking. We have already dealt with the evils of the
circular telegram in China--surely one of the most unexpected
results of adapting foreign inventions to native life. By means of
these telegraphic campaigns a rapid exchange of views is made
possible among the provincial governors; and consequently in the
autumn of 1916, inspired by the Military Party, a wholly illegal
Conference of generals was organized by the redoubtable old
General Chang Hsun on the Pukow railway for the purpose of
overawing parliament, and securing that the Military Party
retained a controlling hand behind the scenes. It is perhaps
unnecessary today to do more than note the fact that the peace of
the country was badly strained by this procedure; but thanks to
moderate counsels and the wisdom of the President no open breach
occurred and there is reason to believe that this experiment will
not be repeated,--at least not in the same way. [Footnote:
Although the events dealt with in Chapter XVI have brought China
face to face with a new crisis the force of the arguments used
here is in no wise weakened.]
The difficulty to be solved is of an unique nature. It is not that
the generals and the Military Party are necessarily reactionary:
it is that, not belonging to the intellectual-literary portion of
the ruling elements, they are less advanced and less accustomed to
foreign ways, and therefore more in touch with the older China
which lingers on in the vast agricultural districts, and in all
those myriad of townships which are dotted far and wide across the
provinces to the confines of Central Asia. Naturally it is hard
for a class of men who hold the balance of power and carry on much
of the actual work of governing to submit to the paper decrees of
an institution they do not accept as being responsible and
representative: but many indications are available that when a
Permanent Constitution has been promulgated, and made an article
of faith in all the schools, a change for the better will come and
the old antagonisms gradually disappear.
It is on this Constitution that Parliament has been at work ever
since it re-assembled in August, 1916, and which is now
practically completed. Sitting together three times a week as a
National Convention, the two Houses have subjected the Draft
Constitution (which was prepared by a Special Parliamentary
Drafting Committee) to a very exhaustive examination and
discussion. Many violent scenes have naturally marked the progress
of this important work, the two great parties, the Kuo Ming Tang
and the Chinputang, coming to loggerheads again and again. But in
the main the debates and the decisions arrived at have been
satisfactory and important, because they have tended to express in
a concrete and indisputable form the present state of the Chinese
mind and its immense underlying commonsense. Remarkable
discussions and fierce enmities, for instance, marked the final
decision not to make the Confucian cult the State Religion; but
there is not the slightest doubt that in formally registering this
veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political
thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear
for the development of individualism and personal responsibility
in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the
greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which
must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even
more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles
of decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing
for many months to agree on the so-called Provincial system, and
then fighting a battle A OUTRANCE on the question of whether this
body of law should form a chapter in the Constitution or be simply
an annexure to the main instrument. The agreement which was
finally arrived at--to make it part and parcel of the
Constitution--was masterly in that it has secured that the
sovereignty of the people will not tend to be expressed in the
provincial dietines which have now been re-erected (after having
been summarily destroyed by Yuan Shih-kai) the Central Parliament
being left the absolute master. This for a number of years will no
doubt be more of a theory than a practice; but there is every
indication that parliamentary government will within a limited
period be more successful in China than in some European
countries; and that the Chinese with their love of well-
established procedure and cautious action, will select open debate
as the best method of sifting the grain from the chaff and
deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority.
Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than
justified its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch
Committee. Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been
constant and frequent; fierce verbal assaults are delivered on
Cabinet Ministers; and slowly but inexorably a real sense of
Ministerial responsibility is being created, the fear of having to
run the gauntlet of Parliament abating, if it has not yet entirely
destroyed, many malpractices. In the opinion of the writer in less
than ten years Parliament will have succeeded in coalescing the
country into an organic whole, and will have placed the Cabinet in
such close daily relations with it that something very similar to
the Anglo-Saxon theory of government will be impregnably
entrenched in Peking. That such a miracle should be possible in
extreme Eastern Asia is one more proof that there are no victories
beyond the capacity of the human mind.
Meanwhile, for the time being, in China as in countries ten
thousand miles away, ministerial irresponsibility is the enemy;
that is to say that so-called Cabinet-rule, with the effacement of
the Chief Executive, has tended to make Cabinet Ministers removed
from effective daily control. All sorts of things are done which
should not be done and men are still in charge of portfolios who
should be summarily expelled from the capital for malpractices.
[Footnote: Since this was written two Cabinet Ministers have been
summarily arrested.] But although Chinese are slow to take action
and prefer to delay all decisions until they have about them the
inexorable quality which is associated with Fate, there is not the
slightest doubt that in the long run the dishonest suffer, and an
increasingly efficient body of men take their place. From every
point of view then there is reason for congratulation in the
present position, and every hope that the future will unroll
peacefully.
A visit to Parliament under the new regime is a revelation to most
men: the candid come away with an impression which is never
effaced from their minds. There is a peculiar suggestiveness even
in the location of the Houses of the National Assembly. They are
tucked away in the distant Western city immediately under the
shadow of the vast Tartar Wall as if it had been fully expected
when they were called into being that they would never justify
their existence, and that the crushing weight of the great bastion
of brick and stone surrounding the capital would soon prove to
them how futile it was for such palpable intruders to aspire to
national control. Under Yuan Shih-kai, as under the Manchus, they
were an exercise in the arm of government, something which was
never to be allowed to harden into a settled practice. They were
first cousins to railways, to electrical power, to metalled
roadways and all those other modern instances beginning to modify
an ancient civilization entirely based on agriculture; and because
they were so distantly related to the real China of the farm-yard
it was thought that they would always stand outside the national
life.
That was what the fools believed. Yet in a copy of the rules of
procedure of the old Imperial Senate (Tzuchengyuan) the writer
finds this note written in 1910: "The Debates of this body have
been remarkable during the very first session. They make it seem
clear that the first National Parliament of 1913 will seize
control of China and nullify the power of the Throne. Result,
revolution--" Though the dating is a little confused, the prophecy
is worthy of record.
The watchfulness of the special police surrounding the Parliament
of 1916-1917 and the great number of these men also tells a story
as eloquent as the location of the building. It is not so much
that any contemplated violence sets these guardians here as the
necessity to advertise that there has been unconstitutional
violence in the past which, if possible, will be rigidly defeated
in the future. Probably no National Assembly in the world has been
held up to greater contempt than the Parliament of Peking and
probably no body deserves it less. An afternoon spent in the House
of Representatives would certainly surprise most open-minded men
who have been content to believe that the Chinese experiment was
what some critics have alleged it to be. The Chinese as a people,
being used to guild-house proceedings, debates, in which the
welfare of the majority is decided after an examination of the
principles at stake, are a very old and well-established custom;
and though at present there are awkwardnesses and gaucheries to be
noted, when practice has become better fixed, the common sense of
the race will abundantly disclose itself and make a lasting mark
on contemporary history. There can be no doubt about this at all.
Take your seat in the gallery and see for yourself. The first
question which rises to the lips is--where are the young men,
those crude and callow youths masquerading as legislators which
the vernacular press has so excessively lampooned? The majority of
the members, so far from being young, are men of thirty or forty,
or even fifty, with intelligent and tired faces that have lost the
Spring of youth. Here and there you will even see venerable
greybeards suffering from rheumy coughs who ought to be at home;
and though occasionally there is a lithe youngster in European
clothes with the veneer he acquired abroad not yet completely
rubbed off, the total impression is that of oldish men who have
reached years of maturity and who are as representative of the
country and as good as the country is in a position today to
provide. No one who knows the real China can deny that.
The Continental arrangement of the Members' desks and the raised
tribune of the Speaker, with its rows of clerks and recorders,
make an impression of orderliness, tinged nevertheless with a
faint revolutionary flavour. Perhaps it is the straight black
Chinese hair and the rich silk clothing, set on a very plain and
unadorned background, which recall the pictures of the French
Revolution. It is somehow natural in such circumstances that there
should occasionally be dramatic outbursts with the blood of
offenders bitterly demanded as though we were not living in the
Twentieth Century when blood alone is admittedly no satisfaction.
The presence of armed House police at every door, and in the front
rows of the strangers' gallery as well, contributes to this
impression which has certain qualities of the theatre about it and
is oddly stimulating. China at work legislating has already
created her first traditions: she is proceeding deliberately
armed--with the lessons of the immediate past fully noted.
This being the home of a literary race, papers and notebooks are
on most Members' desks. As the electric bells ring sharply an
unending procession of men file in to take their seats, for there
has been a recess and the House has been only half-filled. Nearly
every one is in Chinese dress (pien-yi) with the Member's badge
pinned conspicuously on the breast. The idea speedily becomes a
conviction that this after all is not extraneous to the nation but
actually of the living flesh, a vital and imperative thing. The
vastness and audacity of it all cannot fail to strike the
imaginative mind, for the four or five hundred men who are
gathered here typify, if they do not yet represent, the four or
five hundred millions who make up the country. You see as it were
the nation in profile, a ponderous, slow-moving mass, quickly
responsive to curious subconscious influences--suddenly angry and
suddenly calm again because Reason has after all always been the
great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly
and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the
House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save
for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or
fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he
speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the
slim figures speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning,
insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It would
be interesting to write the story of China from a study of the
hands.
Each man goes to the rostrum to speak, and each has much to say.
Soon another impression deepens--that the Northerners with their
clear-cut speech and their fuller voices have an advantage over
the Southerners of the kind that all public performers know. The
mandarin language of Peking is after all the mother-language of
officialdom, the madre linqua, less nervous and more precise than
any other dialect and invested with a certain air of authority
which cannot be denied. The sharp-sounding, high-pitched Southern
voice, though it may argue very acutely and rapidly, appears at an
increasing disadvantage. There seems to be a tendency inherent in
it to become querulous, to make its pleading sound specious
because of over-much speech. These are curious little things which
have been not without influence in other regions of the world.
The applause when it comes proves the same thing as applause does
everywhere; that if you want to drive home your points in a large
assembly you must be condensed and simple, using broad, slashing
arguments. This is precisely what distinguishes melodrama from
drama, and which explains why excessive analysis is no argument in
the popular mind. Generally, however, there is not much applause
and the voice of the speaker wanders through the hall
uninterrupted by signs of content or discontent. Sometimes,
although rather rarely, there is a gust of laughter as a point is
scored against a hated rival. But it dies away as suddenly as it
arose--almost before you have noted it, as if it were superfluous
and must make room for more serious things.
With the closing of a debate there is the vote. An electric bell
rings again, and with a rough hand the House police close all the
exits. The clerks come down into the aisles. They seem to move
listlessly and indifferently; yet very quickly they have checked
the membership to insure that the excessively large quorum
requisite is present. Now the Speaker calls for the vote.
Massively and stiffly, as at a word of command the "ayes" rise in
their seats. There is a round of applause; the bill has been
carried almost unanimously. That, however, is not always so. When
there is an obstreperous mood abroad, the House will decline to
proceed with the agenda, and a dozen men will rise at a time and
speak from behind their desks, trying to talk each other down. The
Speaker stands patiently wrestling with the problem of procedure--
and often failing since practice is still in process of being
formed. Years must elapse before absolutely hard-and-fast rules
are established. Still the progress already made since August,
1916, is remarkable, and something is being learned every day. The
business of a Parliament is after all to debate--to give voice to
the uppermost thoughts in the nation's mind; and how those
thoughts are expressed is a continual exposition of the real state
of the nation's political beliefs. Parliament is--or should be--a
microcosm of the race; parliament is never any better or any worse
than the mass of the people. The rule of the majority as expressed
in the voting of the National Assembly must be taken as a
fundamental thing; China is no exception to the rule--the rule of
the majority must be decisive.
But here another complexity of the new Chinese political life
enters into the problem. The existence of a responsible Cabinet,
which is not yet linked to the Legislative body in any well-
understood way, and which furthermore has frequently acted in
opposition to the President's office, makes for a daily struggle
in the administration of the country which is strongly to be
condemned and which has already led to some ugly clashes. But
nevertheless there are increasing indications that parliamentary
government is making steady headway and that when both the
Permanent Constitution and the Local Government system have been
enforced, a new note will be struck. No doubt it will need a
younger generation in office to secure a complete abandonment of
all the old ways, but the writer has noted with astonishment
during the past twelve-month how eager even viceroys belonging to
the old Manchu regime have become to fall in with the new order
and to lend their help, a sharp competition to obtain ministerial
posts being evident in spite of the fact that the gauntlet of
Parliament has to be run and a majority vote recorded before any
appointment is valid.
One last anomaly has, however, yet to be done away with in Peking.
The deposed boy Emperor still resides in the Winter Palace
surrounded by a miniature court,--a state of affairs which should
not be tolerated any longer as it no doubt tends to assist the
rumours which every now and again are mysteriously spread by
interested parties that a Restoration is imminent. The time has
arrived when not only must the Manchu Imperial Family be removed
far from the capital but a scheme worked out for commuting the
pension-system of so-called Bannerman families who still draw
their monthly allowances as under the Manchus, thanks to the
articles of Favourable Treatment signed at the time of abdication
of 1912. When these two important questions have been settled,
imperialism in China will tend rapidly to fade into complete
oblivion.