Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, to checkmate the republican
expedition which had landed at Chifu. Up the Nanking-Tientsin railway,
General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, and General Hsu met in
an engagement at Kucheng, in northern Nganhwei province, and the former
was defeated. At Wuchang, General Li’s Hupeh forces, reinforced with
Cantonese troops, got in motion to meet General Feng’s imperialists
up the Peking-Hankau railway. Large consignments of Mauser and Krag
rifles and ammunition for Krupp guns, ordered from German firms for the
imperialists, on this day passed through St. Petersburg on their way
to Peking by the Siberian railway. On January 28th, the provisional
republican Senate of forty-two members (three each from fourteen rebel
provinces) convened at Nanking in foreign clothing and without queues.
A remarkably enthusiastic scene occurred at the close of President
Sun’s address, which address urged unity. The members all rose and
cheered for the republic, while a modern band played martial music. The
republicans for the first time in modern history instituted the use of
a remarkable regiment of bomb-throwers. They went to the front with
large canvas bags of dynamite bombs hanging from their shoulders. It
required exceptional bravery to enlist in such a corps, as when a bag
was hit by an imperialist’s bullet, the explosion not only shattered
the bomb-thrower, but detonated the bags of his fellows if they were
near. This corps was uniformed in the British military peaked cap, and
they wore tunics and puttees, and had no queues.
By February 3, 1912, the Manchus had fully discussed abdication. It
was proposed that the sacerdotal succession should be maintained,
thus continuing the famous Chou and Confucian sacrifices and ancestor
worship among the Manchus. This would reduce the Manchu emperor to
a Confucian pope, similar to the Mikado before he conquered the
Shoguns, and similar to the Taoist pope at Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi
province, and the Buddhist popes at Urga, in Mongolia, and Lhasa,
in Tibet. The Manchus also stipulated that their hereditary titles
should remain. This was a foolish move, as it removed them more than
ever from participation and influence in the social body, just as the
private retention of titles keeps the descendants of the old French
nobility hopelessly divorced from power in republican France. The
republicans again offered Yuan Shih Kai the presidency, with Sun Yat
Sen as premier, this being a union of the democratic principles in the
American and British systems. Yuan was inclined to insist on a dual
republic, but the Nanking republicans insisted that Yuan should come
to Nanking. The republicans under Generals Hsu and Ling now advanced
their right wing, striking General Chung Fung of the imperialists, at
Siuchow, in northern Kiangsu province, and winning a great victory.
I have said that the most brilliant diplomatic move of the republicans
was that by Wu Ting Fang, who announced in December, 1911, that if any
foreign syndicate or nation made loans to the Manchus, the republicans,
if successful, would repudiate those loans. The most brilliant
strategic move of the republicans was made in November, 1911, when
General Li induced Admiral Sah’s navy to join the republican cause.
This enabled the republicans to hold the large commercial fleet of the
China Merchants’ Steamship Company, and it was on this latter fleet
that the republicans were able to raise a loan in February, 1912, from
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, when they were at their
wits’ end where to find money to balance the subscriptions which the
Manchus had made from their hoards, and the money which they were
drawing from the cash tills of the rich imperial railways of North
China. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha tried to buy out the China Merchants’
Steamship Company so as to give Japan dominance in the China coastal
trade, but Britain interposed. The republicans had only one little
railway from Shanghai to Hangchow, 104 miles, whose surplus earnings
could help them, as compared with the 4,000 miles of successful railway
in the territory controlled by the Manchus.
As neither Manchu nor Yuan could hold Manchuria, Japan now advanced a
battalion to Mukden, a measure pregnant with precedents and controversy
in the future. America maintained her reputation for altruism,
Secretary Knox, on February 3rd, addressing the German ambassador a
note to the effect that America’s idea was that all the powers should
restrain their nationals from interfering with loans as much as with
arms in China. The powers which were inclined to break leash were
Japan, Russia and Belgium. The southern republican navy found the
international forces and legations a bar in the way of the capture
of Peking. The navy was off Chin-wang-tao, the only open port on the
Liaotung Gulf, in February, 1912, and was ready to transfer the fifth
republican army from Chifu. As long as Peking was dignified with the
legation staffs of foreigners, the prestige of the foreigner supported
to that extent the cause, or rather the integrity of the imperial
north, and the rebels hesitated to send their attack home on account
of international complications. Again and again the republicans asked
for recognition and the transfer of the legations to Nanking. America
only gave any attention to this request, sending Doctor Tenny, of the
Peking legation staff, to pay an unofficial call on and make unofficial
inspection of the republican government at Nanking. Japan and Russia
closed their fists tighter on South and North Manchuria, respectively,
lending money right and left to industrials and mines and thus
establishing a mortgage and excuse for remaining in case of a break-up.
Wherever the capital is to be, whichever faction is to control,
whatever style of government is to win, it does not seem impossible
that the free China of the future will have fewer internecine conflicts
and rows than the England, America or France of history. Liberty goes
through about the same birth pangs whether she is born white, brown,
black or yellow! On February 11, 1912, (probably at Yuan’s private
suggestion), forty-eight generals of the imperial army wired Yuan
that they would fight no more for the Manchus, so that the seed of
the Lanchow camp had finally spread into a whole forest. The official
birth of the Chinese republic came on Lincoln’s birthday (think of it,
America!), February 12, 1912, the abdication decree of the Manchus
including the following sentence: “Let Yuan organize to the full the
powers of the provisional republican government, forming a great
republic with the union of Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans and
Tibetans.” President Sun Yat Sen telegraphed Canton in particular to
accept Yuan, and another telegram instructed all Chinese consuls abroad
to adopt foreign dress. The United States at once arranged to recognize
unofficially both the northern and southern provisional Chinese
republics under Presidents Yuan and Sun respectively, until a national
assembly could form a united government.
On February 15th, the Christian Chinese provisional president, Sun Yat
Sen, performed a remarkable act of self-sacrifice to win the north for
republicanism and induce Yuan to join the great cause. He also was able
to induce the vehement south to accept the former reactionary Yuan.
Doctor Sun resigned as provisional president in favor of Yuan. The
National Assembly at Nanking paid him this tribute: “Such an example of
purity of purpose is unparalleled in history. It was solely due to your
magnanimity and modesty, Doctor Sun, that northern China was won over
to republicanism.” Here was the man who had achieved republicanism,
laying by all its honors in favor of the man who had longest and most
powerfully withstood republicanism. Yet Sun was happy. China was happy.
Yuan and his aide Tang were happy. The Chinese republican navy at
Chifu, Shanghai and Nanking saluted the republic with a broadside, and
the Chinese legations throughout the world hoisted the new sun flag.
With the least bloodshed ever known, Sun and his cabinet had achieved
the greatest revolution ever known, and had established a republic
of twenty-one republics, four times the population of America. They
will be managed by a combination of the British and American systems,
as their bulk is too great for the strong centralization which is now
becoming popular in America to correct certain corporation evils.
The provincial republics will develop largely as units, until the
individual is educated sufficiently for greater cohesion. Sun Yat Sen
will go down to history as the greatest dreamer, prophet, organizer,
altruist and political philosopher the modern world has known, not
that he is brainier than the white man, but being a yellow man, he
has been able to accomplish more than any white man. His reception,
certainly the reception of his cause, by the hearts of men should be
enthusiastic. He stands not alone. The scores of idealists and fighters
of his cabinet made the way for the constructive men who will now
take hold. Above all, he converted Yuan by his self-obliteration, and
Yuan converted the obstructionist north. What if the Honanese Yuan is
at the head of affairs for a while instead of the Kwangtungese Sun?
They are both Chinese and both republicans. China now has the center
of the world’s stage, and America has built the Panama canal to reach
quickly a front seat at the stage. The actors will have long and
strenuous parts, and the house is filling up rapidly to hear, and see,
and applaud, if all is done well, as it should be. Doctor Sun has done
the most for a republic. Long years ago he planned it, and he has been
persecuted most by the Manchus for opinion’s sake. When the assemblies
succeed each other, his turn as president or premier will doubtless
come.
Kang Wu Wei had dropped into astonishing silence during all these
strenuous days, but on February 18, 1912, he suddenly and insanely
(allow the emphasis) burst out in rebellion against the republic in
Manchuria. Yuan he opposed; Sun he opposed. Did he, and the rebelling
governor, Chao Ehr Sun, plot then for the Manchus or the Japanese in
Manchuria? Why did not this first reformer Kang repress himself? Why
did not Yuan and Sun repress themselves somewhat and win him? _A bas_,
personal jealousies, antipathies or overleaping ambitions! Surely
there is room for all in twenty-one republics, which are to be bound
as one commonwealth. The Chinese are intense in feeling and clannish
in spirit, and they often turn vehemently on one another; their Tong
wars in New York and San Francisco for instance. Thus Yuan might hate
Kang, and Kang have none of Yuan, whereas, according to Macaulay, “both
should serve the state”. It is this repression of individual resentment
and ambition which has made England and America so governable, and it
is something China will learn as the years of stress surge about the
ship of state. The title of captain or president amounts to very little
in the light of patriotism; all are equal when it comes to manning the
pumps and shortening or letting out sail according to the winds that
blow. Parties will arise; provincial feeling will be assertive; leaders
and their followings will clash, but the Chinese must learn, as we all
have to learn, that the striving must be one way o’ the rope and not
a tug against each other because of personal greed, low ambition or
unruliness. In hundreds of documents issued during the rebellion, the
republicans held up two men, Washington and Napoleon, as representing
successful protest against tyrant kings. But Washington laid the sword
by the minute statesmanship could win. Napoleon used his sword to
advance himself and crush every will except his own; the way of an
egotist. If China needs a foreign model to look at occasionally, let
it be that of Washington, with his moderation, his unselfishness, his
charity, his honor, his true republicanism, which sees in every citizen
(man or woman) a king equal to himself, for the ballot and tax receipt
have made all men equal kings!
I have pointed out the inconsistencies of character in Yuan and Kang.
They may develop in other leaders from whom we expect much. It will be
recalled that the great Empress Tse Hsi alternated “Boxer” and reform
edicts; the lopping off of heads, and unbinding of women’s feet; the
composing of poems on gentleness, and teaching her sleeve dogs to run
at foreigners. The greatest viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, wrote
books recommending modern gun foundries and steel mills one day, and
the compulsory enthronement of worn-out Confucianism the next day,
in the land which had always declared that any man could perform all
religious rites. The genial Manchu Tsai princes who were the most
affable of men when the Army, Navy and Constitutional Commissions
visited England and America in recent years, were the irreconcilable
Ruperts who insisted on the slaughter of foreigners and non-combatants
in the northern provinces during the rebellion. The venerable and
cultured viceroy of Nanking, Chang, who was the first official to open
a modern exposition in China, was the very man who helped to hurl
that awful slaughter on the innocents, with the ruthless division of
Shangtung troops on November 10, 1911, at Nanking. The reform emperor,
Kwang Hsu, the father of the immortal progressive edicts of 1898 in the
_Peking Gazette_, the possessor of the sweetest face that ever graced a
Chinese, was known to beat his waiters over the head with dishes, and
his aunt, the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi, whose private ambition was to be
the best painter of plum blossoms in the land, was known, according to
Ching Shan, the comptroller of her household, to dance in rage that was
awful to behold, and which left its wake in broken crockery and clocks.
They have not as yet “lunacy commissions of three” in China, whose
infallible tests are walking the chalk-line without a corkscrew motion,
record of screaming and throwing vases, talking to one’s self and
having wigglety eyes at times, or men of tawny color might have been
incarcerated long before fame came to them! In the same inconsistent
way the Japanese Prince Ito was a constitutionalist when a student
in England, and a red imperialist as a statesman in Japan and Korea.
With the Oriental it often is, “who pays for my ration, his is the
flag I fly”. The larger sentimentality and altruism of republicanism
will doubtless equip the new Chinese with deeper conviction and more
enduring sentiment and devotion to ideals. We call a man who is not a
good republican out of office, or a good Liberal on the left side of
the speaker’s desk at Westminster, not much of a patriot in America
or England, and China and Japan must learn the Pauline admonition to
Timothy regarding manliness: “Be instant in season and out of season.”
Owing to deferred pay, some of General Li’s republican troops at
Wuchang, and General Wu’s republican troops at Canton mutinied in
the middle of February, and on February 29, 1912, regiments of the
notorious Third Division of Yuan’s northern troops mutinied at Peking,
partly for the same reason, partly because they did not want Yuan
to go to Nanking; but mainly all this was a recrudescence of the
tricks of the Manchus to bring in foreign interference. The Manchus
had received part of their pension from the foreign loans and were
illegally using it to stir up sedition. The mutineers burned a mile of
houses, stretching from the Manchu’s Forbidden City to the new Wai Wu
Pu Building, which is Yuan’s headquarters, and millions of dollars of
treasures were destroyed, including the historic Wu Men gate leading to
the imperial purple and yellow city. Many shopkeepers hung out signs,
“Already looted; now empty” in an effort to save their buildings. The
houses occupied by Mr. Straight, the representative of the Morgan
Syndicate, and by Mr. Menocal, of the American International Bank,
were looted, as were other foreign houses, but personal affront was
not offered to foreigners. The quarters occupied by the delegates from
the Union Assemblies of the south, who came from Nanking, were fired.
The reactionary troops of Yuan showed their hate of the southerners on
every possible occasion. This was his punishment for raising an army
mainly in the two Manchu provinces, instead of generally enrolling it
throughout the country. These troops wanted to support the rule of the
nation by an unconstitutional Privileged Minority. It would be folly
to agree with their politics, and it would mean terrible bloodshed to
disagree with them.
The question they have raised is far from settled. One shell was
dropped into the American legation compound. For strategic purposes,
American soldiers took possession of the Chien Men gate and pagoda
tower, and the German troops occupied the Hatamen gate and pagoda
tower, both of which overlooked the legation and Methodist Mission
quarters. One thousand more foreign troops were brought up from
Tientsin to guard the legations. During the burning the Manchu eunuchs,
who had witnessed the 1900 siege, could be seen in the moonlight
gathered on the glistening yellow roofs of the imperial palaces. It
will be recalled that this Imperial Third Division under General Feng,
committed the uncalled-for and awful arson of Hankau in November, 1911.
The _Muse of History_ will in vain turn the pages of her index to find
a record in her volumes of incendiaries who surpass the reactionary
Third Division, whom Yuan now locked up in their barracks. He then
called upon the old-style Chang Ku turbaned troops to defend the city.
Yuan was continually showing distrust and fear of his troops; neither
would he permit the southern delegates to bring up southern troops to
defend the constitution and their liberty, nor would he permit the
empress dowager and the emperor to retire from the imperial city to
the summer palace, some twelve miles distant, or to Jehol:--he said he
feared to arouse the northern troops. The southern delegates replied:
“It is too bad that we deferred thoroughly whipping these northerners
while we were at it.”
On February 29, 1912, the first partial recognition of the republican
government was made by the American House of Representatives,
unanimously passing the Sulzer resolution congratulating the “people”
of China on assuming the responsibilities of self-government. All
throughout Pechili, at Paoting, where the Anglican missionary, Mr. F.
Day, was killed by a mob which was looting with the Sixth Division,
at Tientsin, and throughout Shangtung province, the revolt spread, as
a recrudescence of the Manchuized anti-foreign or “Boxer” movement.
Native Christians were assassinated or had their eyes put out. Doctor
Sun, at Nanking was distressed, and promised to stand by Yuan and
republicanism. He sent telegrams to all the assemblies requesting them
to be steady, and generously saying that Yuan had rendered a service
by inducing the Manchus to abdicate. The situation reminded one of
Burke’s description of the French revolution: “The National Assembly
is surrounded by an army not raised either by the authority of their
crown or by their command, and which, if they should order to dissolve
itself, would instantly dissolve them.” The new Tientsin mint was
looted. Doctor Schreyer, an eminent German physician of Tientsin, was
assassinated. The American legation guard got through to Peking to
the delight of the foreigners. Foolishly none of the foreign guards
brought artillery, and the legations were therefore at the mercy of any
artillery attack that the northern troops might direct against them. At
Fengtai, the British Somerset regiment was on guard when 1,500 Chinese
modern soldiers stopped the eastbound train. The Somersets, with the
traditional bravery of the British, gave the Chinese troops one hour
to clear out. By that time the 700 British Inniskilling Fusiliers,
under command of the soldierly Colonel Hancock, were brought west,
detrained quickly, and with the Somersets, marched at once on the
positions of the obstructionist Chinese troops, who found discretion to
be the better part of valor. Then the freed train started for Tientsin.
There were now 3,000 foreign troops in Peking, and on March 3rd the
Fifteenth American Infantry, under Major Arrasmith, led a grand march
of the quarter to show Yuan’s rebelling troops that order at last
could be sustained, and Japan was called upon, as in 1900, for 5,000
troops. Hongkong and Manila were also wired to send reinforcements.
The troops of the north who had fought against the republic for four
months, were now showing themselves to be a disgusting set of “Boxer”
looters, incendiaries, murderers and “_agents provocateurs_” for
intervention. The outcome of the whole matter might be the bringing of
the remobilized southern forces north and the immediate unification
of nationalism at Peking under Sun, Yuan and General Li; although the
south at heart desires Nanking to be the capital, as it is removed from
Russian influence and northern sectionalism.
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
Military company of St. John’s American Episcopal University,
Shanghai. Numbers of these young men took part in the revolution,
and they are leaders in the New China.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The bund, Tientsin, where the Legation Guards disembarked during the
revolution of 1911–12.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The heart of religious China, the only reservation made by the
abdicating Manchu emperor; the chaste, blue-roofed Temple of
Heaven, Peking. The beautiful proportions of this building have
been widely praised by foreigners. The three galleries are of
marble.
]
Amid all the disturbance, another cloud, the size of a man’s hand,
loomed up on the horizon. The Marquis Chu Cheng Yu, a lineal descendant
of the Chinese Ming kings, began to canvass the rioting army for
adherents. Two hundred American marines were rushed from Shanghai
to Tientsin on the collier _Abarenda_, and the American fleet left the
southern ports for Taku. The transport _Warren_ sailed from Manila
with another battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry and marines. The
four-nation bankers, with the approval of six powers, came to Yuan’s
help with $1,000,000 loans on nine months’ warrants, to aid him in
putting down mobbing and mutiny by paying off soldiers, who, however,
used the money as fuel for more mutiny. It was decided to loan the dual
republican governments at Peking and Nanking about $5,000,000 a month.
Some of the old-style troops were more loyal to Yuan than were the
notorious Third Division at Peking, the Sixth Division at Paoting, in
Pechili province, the Second Division in Honan, and the Fifth Division,
in Shangtung province, which were loyal to no cause or person. At the
same time the preliminary contract of February twenty-first, by which
the Russo-Asiatic Bank independently was to advance Sun and the Nanking
republican organization $7,000,000, was canceled, and the four banking
powers advanced Sun, at Nanking, $1,500,000 to pay off Cantonese troops
and hire police. The rebellion of Yuan’s troops made many confess that
the southern republicans had probably made a mistake in not following
Chang the Second’s imperial forces of northern troops north in January,
1912, and giving the northern army several sound thrashings until the
organization was broken up.