THE COMING OF SUN YAT-SEN
Sun Yat-sen for many years has been known the world over as the most
effective Revolutionary China has ever produced. For many years he
had been the leader of a revolutionary movement among Chinese abroad,
and his life was practically devoted to travelling to foreign
countries, keeping his exiled countrymen versed upon the latest
political phases of China.
At the time of the Peace Conference the situation had become so
strained, there were so many parties all genuinely anxious to assume
control--out of the best motives probably--that it seemed necessary
for one strong man to come in safely to direct the Revolutionary
cause. That strong man was Dr. Sun Yat-sen. It was known on the day
the Conference met that Sun Yat-sen was in Singapore. For many days
the people had been looking for him, and disappointment was freely
expressed in Shanghai more particularly (where he was best known)
because of his non-appearance. It seemed that he was now, at the
moment when he could do his country the most good, determined to stay
away. After the Conference had broken up, however, Sun arrived, and
immediately the people took him to their hearts, recognising in him
the one man who now would be strong enough to establish a stable
Government.
{202}
Sun cannot be called a typical Chinese; he is a typical and extremely
able Chinese of the new school. He has lived most of his life
abroad, and from his earliest years, when in Canton he attended the
London Mission with his Christian parents, has been constantly in
close touch with men and things foreign. As has been said,
practically all his life, but particularly since 1895, Sun has been
looked upon as the most active Revolutionary among the Chinese. His
escapes at the hand of the Chinese Government had been many. For
years he had been banished, and his head was ever sought after. His
deliverances had been marvellous. Newspapermen the world over have
constantly interviewed Sun in his wanderings, and it is felt that so
much is known of President Sun that nothing of a general nature need
be added here. It will be more interesting to pass on to see what
Dr. Sun has to say, in a remarkably well written story, of the reason
why his country is in revolt.[1]
"The conspiracy in which I took part as a leader at Canton in
October, 1895," wrote Dr. Sun Yat-sen, "was one of a series which
must ultimately triumph in the establishment of a Constitution in our
Empire. The whole of the people in China, excepting the Imperial
agents, who profit in purse and power by the outrages they are able
to perpetrate, are with us. The good, well-governed people of
America will not fail to understand that Chinese numbering many
millions in their own land and thousands in exile, could not
entertain such feelings about their Empire without good cause. Over
each province there is what the English would call a Governor. There
are no laws, as you know laws. The Governor of each province makes
his own laws. The will of each officer is the law. The people have
no voice. There is no appeal against the law created for his own
purposes by the officer or the Governor, no matter how unjust, no
matter how cruelly carried {203} out. These Governors universally
persecute the people and grow wealthy by squeezing them all into
poverty. Taxes, as taxation is understood by Americans, are unknown.
We pay only a land tax, but the Governors and officers take money
from the masses by innumerable systems of extortion. Every time a
Governor or magistrate or chief officer takes charge of a district,
the first thing he does is to find out who are the rich, who are
favourably disposed toward him and who against him. He selects first
one of those whom he has reason to believe dislikes him, forces one
of those on his side to make a criminal charge against the selected
man, and has him arrested on the charge, which is invariably false.
The Governor enriches himself by each case, as the only thing in the
nature of a law he knows is that of the Dynasty, empowering him to
take as his own as much as he likes, usually the whole of the
property of every man whom he arrests and punishes. The arrested man
has no appeal. He has no advocates. He has no hearing. Only his
accusers are heard. Then he is barbarously tortured to confess the
guilt he knows not.
"The terrible injustice of this procedure is to be seen in that a
magistrate or chief officer never visits that punishment upon any one
who has Imperial influence. Yet any man who has influence with the
magistrate or is in any way a creature of his, can arrest, by his own
will, any person against whom he has a grievance, choose any crime he
likes to name for the purpose, drag the person before the magistrate,
accuse him, and ask that he be punished. Again, the accused person
has no appeal, no defence. He is merely faced with the accusation,
and if he denies it, is put under torture for three days. If at the
end of three days the accused refuses to confess himself guilty,
punishment is meted to him in severity according to the influence of
the accuser, and the necessity the magistrate feels of appeasing him.
The punishment {204} for every offence charged, from petty larceny
upward, is almost invariably beheading. Beheading saves prison
expense, and effectually silences the accused. So much aloof do the
Mandarins keep from the people that many are usually ignorant of this
terrible work of the officers of the Dynasty, and when told of it,
refuse to believe. Some Mandarins refuse to believe, out of fear of
incurring the displeasure of officers. The unhappy masses know the
truth too well. The intelligent, the most enlightened, know of it.
Exiles in all other parts of the world know of it. Bitter hatred of
the Dynasty and of the Imperial officers prevails in every province
of the Empire. There is a great democracy in the Empire, waiting and
praying for the moment when their organisation can be made efficient
and the Dynasty removed and replaced by a constitutional government.
"Our conspiracy to seize Canton failed, yet we are filled with hope.
Our greatest hope is to make the Bible and education, as we have come
to know them by residence in America and Europe, the means of
conveying to our unhappy fellow-countrymen what blessings may lie in
the way of just laws, what relief from their sufferings may be found
through civilisation. We intend to try every means in our power to
seize the country and create a government without bloodshed. I think
we shall, but if I am doomed to disappointment in this, then there is
no engine in warfare we can invoke to our aid that we will hesitate
to use. Our four hundred millions must, and shall, be released from
the cruel tyranny of barbaric misrule and be brought to enjoy the
blessings of control by a merciful, just government, by the arts of
civilisation.
"The conspiracy at Canton, though it failed, was but a momentary
repulse and has in no way damped our ardour. A brief history of the
conspiracy and my own adventures connected with it may convey some
ideas of the difficulties which still lie before us, yet {205} which
we know we shall in due time surmount. We have a head, a chief, and
a body of leaders, all earnest, intelligent, courageous men. They
were elected according to constitutional principles by a body of us,
who met, necessarily, in secret. We have a branch of our Society in
every province. Our meetings of the leaders were held at various
houses, the rendezvous being constantly changed. We had between
thirty and forty centres in the districts of the town, with members
ready to ride at a given moment to the number of at least one
thousand in each centre to take control of the public affairs of the
district. Communications with each of these districts were made by
the employment of messengers. Our communications were by word of
mouth. Our intention was to attack no individual person.
"There is no Government, no organisation, no legal system, no form of
official control except the influential citizens, who, under the
favour of the magistrate or Governor of the province, usurp the use
of the Imperial commissioners and soldiers to carry out their
barbarous tyranny. We had no ruling body, officials, or officers as
such institutions are understood by Europeans, to seize. We had
elected bodies of our followers who had been taught a system of
constitutional rule, for each district, all ready to take office at a
given signal and put the system into practice. The soldiers were
ready to join us. For the soldiers are as great sufferers from
tyranny as the poor masses.
"Now, herein lay our chief difficulty. To effect revolution in China
would be easy but for one thing--the great difficulty in controlling
the citizens. The people, never having known laws, never having been
used to any proper discipline, are utterly demoralised. Life and
property would be in danger from the masses the moment they became
excited. From the soldiers, who are of the most degraded class, we
expected trouble. They would certainly engage in looting the {206}
moment they had discovered a change in the order of things.
"The only problem we had to solve in order to completely succeed was
how to control the people, to make order a certainty, simultaneously
with the establishment of a form of government, and how to check the
excitement and outrages of the inhabitants while they were being
taught to realise the fact that the long-endured tyranny was
overcome. For months we worked hard completing our plans to this
end, and things had reached that condition that each of the thirty
odd leaders had an armed bodyguard of one hundred men. This gave us
three thousand armed men on the spot. Another three thousand were to
join us from another province on a given date. With this body of
men, armed, not to attack any officials, but to control the masses of
people and make them obey our constitutional laws, we should have in
a few hours reached the dynasty of impotence.
"Unhappily, we had to contend with the possibilities of disloyalty
among our own followers. So great is the fear of the
torture-chamber. Into so many tributaries does the main stream of
corruption flow. However, all was prepared. A date was fixed--one
day in October, 1895. We leaders met to receive a telegram from our
agent in Hongkong, who was to inform us that all was right the moment
he knew the three thousand men had set out to our assistance. At the
same time, he was to dispatch a chartered steamer up the Canton
River, laden with arms for the three thousand men who were to control
the people and keep order, and bringing seven hundred coolies to do
the fetching and carrying, the labourer's work needful to carry out
the scheme of establishing our Government. We met at the rendezvous
at Canton, runners and every one at hand. The message arrived to say
that all was right. We dispatched our runners to let every one be
prepared at every centre, burned our papers, {207} and proceeded to
disband ourselves into units, each to carry out his own allotted
portion of revolution. The moment before we disbanded a second
message arrived saying, 'Something has happened, the three thousand
men cannot come.' Our runners were out, and could not be overtaken
and recalled. We had to trust to the discretion of the centres to
await the men. The only thing we could do, for the time being, to
divert suspicion, was to wire our Hongkong agent to keep back the
coolies. He misunderstood. The coolies arrived. No one received
them. They wandered about, not knowing what they were in Canton for.
"So the conspiracy was thwarted. The runners had accused the people,
and set tongues wagging. The Viceroy had been told, 'Something is
going to happen.' He would not believe his informant, and all might
have become quiet, but the arrival of the coolies confirmed the
information. The Government did not start. The unhappy coolies were
hunted by the Imperial Commissioner and his staff, and many of them
beheaded. We leaders dispersed; many fled into the interior. The
Commissioner and Imperial Guard sought the leaders. They seized and
beheaded sixteen persons, only seven of whom had anything to do with
the movement. The remainder were occupants of houses where it was
supposed some of us had met. The leaders all got away. I went on
board my own steam-launch and sailed down to Hongkong, where I stayed
a week. The Imperial officers were seeking me, and I passed them
several times in the street without their recognising me. At the end
of the week, during which I had made arrangements for my family, my
wife and children and my mother, to follow me, I stepped on board a
steamer under the eyes of my stupid pursuers without their noticing
me. When I arrived in London, I was captured for the first time,
after having been pursued around the world for one year. But the
fault was not that of the English people. Indeed, the noble-hearted
{208} way in which the English people came to my assistance, and
rescued me from the death for which I was assuredly destined, make us
shed tears of gratitude.
"In saving my life the English people have earned the love of every
one of our millions of cruelly ill-used people, and strengthened our
hope of one day soon enjoying the blessing of a just government, such
as that which has made your mighty nation so great and so good."
English friends on this occasion had warned him to steer a wide
course away from the Chinese Legation, for there he would technically
be on Chinese soil and could be arrested, but these friends either
neglected to tell Dr. Sun where the Legation was or he forgot the
directions they gave him. At any rate, one day as he was walking
through a certain street two Chinese accosted him. They asked him to
go with them to their lodging, where they could discuss the
Revolution at home. When he demurred they seized him and pushed him
through the door of a nearby house. It was the Chinese Legation.
A white man, who was Sir Halliday Macartney, English Secretary of the
Legation, told Sun that he was under arrest and that he would be
secretly taken out of London and back to Canton. The prisoner was
locked in a room on the top floor of the Legation until arrangements
could be made for the official kidnapping. Dr. Sun tried throwing
messages out of the window weighted with coins, but one of them was
picked up by one of the Legation servants and shown to the Minister,
and the windows were nailed up.
In his desperation Sun managed to bribe an English servant to carry a
message, telling of his plight, to a Dr. Cantlie, one of his friends.
Dr. Cantlie laid the matter before the Government, which took
immediate action. The building was hedged about by detectives and
policemen so closely that the prisoner could not be smuggled out to a
steamer. Finally, seeing the {209} futility of longer holding him,
the Chinese Minister turned Sun loose.
The nervy little doctor went right back to the Far East and began to
hatch another Revolution against his enemies.
This time it was from Japan that he operated. But because he was not
thoroughly wise in the matter of some Japanese business policies he
was swindled out of all the funds he had raised to buy arms by one
Nakimura.
He left Japan and went to live in Singapore. He slipped into China
again and started another uprising. This, too, was ill-timed, and
many patriots lost their heads under the executioner's heavy blade.
Dr. Sun managed to slip across the lower border into Annam disguised
as a blind beggar. No sooner was he across the border than he began
again, wandering from one Chinese colony to another in Annam, in
Tongkin, down in the Straits Settlements, over in the
Philippines--always preaching revolution.
In 1898 K'ang Yu-wei, one of the reformers whom Sun had been allied
with, travelled too fast in his efforts to win the ear of the puppet
Emperor, was betrayed by Yuan Shih K'ai, so it was said, and had to
flee to save his head. Then the Empress-Dowager laid a heavy hand
upon all reformers within reach. Once more Sun escaped. After the
Boxer uprising, which was not at all of Sun's doing and was entirely
out of sympathy with his schemes, the Empress-Dowager seemed to be
bitten by the general sentiment for reform and she promised much for
China that raised the hopes of the new element. But like most Manchu
promises, they were not to be depended on.
DRILLED IN THE UNITED STATES.
Back Sun went to America, and he added a new detail to his
propaganda. He found a young graduate {210} of Leland Stanford
University, Homer Lee, who was military mad and incidentally an
enthusiast on the subject of freedom for China. Lee was made General
of the Reform Cadets, who were Chinese youths of San Francisco,
fitted out with uniforms and guns and taught to do the hay foot,
straw foot in hired halls night after night.
The idea spread to other cities in the United States and to Manila.
The Reform Cadets became a wide-spread organisation. American
drillmasters were hired to coach them; they had target practice and
they gave exhibition drills.
Out in San Francisco the agents of the Chinese Government once tried
to prevail upon the city and State authorities to break up the
organisation because it was technically an armed band of aliens on
American soil. The effort failed.
Such was the man who may become yet the greatest man among the
Chinese in his own country as he has been out of it. In due course
Dr. Sun Yat-sen was proclaimed President, with a provisional
Government at Nanking.
Sun Yat-sen, revolutionist in the most conservative land under
heaven, fugitive for fifteen years from the keenest and most
relentless trailers of men, hidden spirit of strange secret societies
whose ramifications have made mole tracks through every land where
Chinamen are--this man is now President of the Republic of China by
decree of the Provisional Military Assembly at Nanking.
Out of the underground passages of plot and intrigue the nature of
which no Occidental could hope to understand, and through which this
wiry little man has been wriggling and back tracking for more than a
dozen years, a new national figure suddenly jumps to command the
attention of the world. During years past the world has occasionally
caught glimpses of the round black head and narrow, ascetic features
of this Dr. Sun, {211} now in Singapore, now in London, now in San
Francisco.
There had been little paragraphs in the world's news about an
agitator, a Radical, who seemed to be tilting with straws at the
impregnable citadel of the Manchu clan in Peking. The Revolution
began in China and even then, when the name of Sun Yat-sen was
coupled with it people outside of China cracked jokes about a faker,
a charlatan, who was trying to capitalise the upheaval at home for
his own benefit.
Then over night things happened in China. The next morning the world
learned at its breakfast-table that out of the welter and uproar of
revolution in old China a leader had arisen to gird an ancient land
under new harness of government. And it also became manifest that
the Revolution, which had started by concerted movements in the heart
of China and spread with the rapidity of a powder-train, and the
little man who had been dodging and twisting through the world for so
many years were closely related--extraordinarily so.
Sun Yat-sen started many revolutions. Each was stronger than the
last; each achieved a little more. The final one, striven for and
plotted through channels not yet known, has succeeded. Sun Yat-sen
was the man of the hour in China.
An odd circumstance that brings an added thrill of romance into the
story of his life is that though President of united China he still
bears upon his head a price totalling about 700,000 taels. The
rewards for his head offered by provincial governments and the
central authorities in Peking during the last fifteen years have not
been recalled, even though payment upon delivery might be doubtful.
Yet the fact that his head was worth hundreds of "shoes" of silver
during all the latter years of his activity has been one of the
lightest burdens that Dr. Sun has carried about on his narrow
shoulders. He {212} took long chances, apparently he suffered many
close calls from death, but he persisted.
I believe that when he was a young man he was studying medicine under
the care of an English physician in Hongkong. Thence he went to
England and after study in a preparatory school he was graduated from
a medical college and returned to China. He practised the new
medicine, against which there was a violent prejudice on the part of
the Chinese in Macao, in Canton and Hongkong.
Dr. Sun is forty-three now, he was scarcely more than twenty-five
when he began to move for the spreading of a revolutionary spirit in
the hearts of his countrymen. Just where he began and with what
material nobody but the closest of his associates knows.
It seems that his first idea was for reform through peaceful means,
if it were possible for the Chinese people to penetrate the jealous
conservatism of the Manchu masters. To this end the little doctor
began to organise clubs of advanced thinkers among the young Chinese
of the south.
For some time during the early part of 1912 things seemed to go
fairly smoothly, and President Sun seemed to have been successful in
winning the confidence of Yuan Shih K'ai, when, like a bombshell, the
press of the world (especially the London _Times_) deprecated one of
the messages Sun sent to Yuan. This strengthened the Imperial cause.
Abdication of the Court, which had definitely been fixed, did not
take place. Several of the Manchu princes refused to clear out, for
many days the complex situation at Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, and
Wuchang rendered it impossible for one to see what would eventuate.
The Court, however, did abdicate, and left the ground clear. There
was a continuous rumpus in Peking during the following three months,
and in March of 1912 the capital was in a big uproar--the soldiers
broke loose, there was much pillaging and looting, {213} Yuan Shih
K'ai seemed entirely to have lost the situation and the whole country
seemed to be lost. Yuan Shih K'ai meantime had been proclaimed
President, Dr. Sun gracefully withdrawing in his favour. A big
discussion took place over the site for the capital, and just as Yuan
was about to come down to Nanking to settle matters the outbreak at
Peking quashed the whole affair. But this was only one of the
political troubles. Some adjusted themselves: others did not. There
was a lack of money. Soldiers, going unpaid, took the law into their
own hands, and looted on a great scale. The banditti rose up in
formidable strength. Officialdom was abused. Decapitations were
rife. Up to the end of March the interior of China was devoid of all
law and order. In the coast places and big towns where order was
fairly easy to maintain, officials were busy making laws and drawing
up reforms. But whilst reforms were being thus aimed at in some
places, in others there was absolute chaos. The old order had been
taken away, and there was nothing better to put up in its place.
But it is hopeless to give a correct comprehensive estimate of what
was being done. All we knew was that China was changing--in some
places for the worse, in others for the better, but changing
irrevocably, and it was only in the final balancing could one see how
things were to "pan out."
On March 10, 1912, Yuan Shih K'ai took the Oath, which read as
follows:--
"Since the Republic has been established, many works have now to be
performed. I shall endeavour faithfully to develop the Republic, to
sweep away the disadvantages attached to absolute monarchy, to
observe the laws of the Constitution, to increase the welfare of the
country, to cement together a strong nation which shall embrace all
five races. When the National Assembly elects a permanent President,
I shall retire. This I swear before the Chinese Republic."
{214}
The following is a detailed statement, as translated from the
Chinese, of the conditions of the Provisional Republican
Constitution:--
THE PROVINCIAL REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION.
_Chapter 1. General._
Article 1.--The Republic of China is established by the people of
China.
Article 2.--The sovereignty of the Republic of China is vested in the
whole body of the people.
Article 3.--The territory of the Republic of China consists of the
twenty-two provinces, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Tibet, and Kokonor.
Article 4.--The Republic of China will exercise its governing rights
through the National Assembly, Provisional President, Ministers of
State and Courts of Justice.
_Chapter II. People._
Article 5.--The People of the Republic of China will be treated
equally without any distinction of race, class, or religion.
Article 6.--The People will enjoy the following liberties:--
1. No citizen can be arrested, detained, tried, or punished unless in
accordance with the law.
2. The residence of any person can only be entered or searched in
accordance with the law.
3. People have the liberty of owning property and of trade.
4. People have the liberty of discussion, authorship, publication,
meeting, and forming societies.
5. People have the liberty of secrecy of letters.
6. People have liberty of movement.
7. People have liberty of religion.
Article 7.--People have the right of petition to the Assembly.
Article 8.--People have the right of petition to the administrative
offices.
{215}
Article 9.--People have the right of trial at legal courts.
Article 10.--People have the right to appeal to the Court of
Administrative Litigation against any act of officials who have
illegally infringed their rights.
Article 11.--People have the right of being examined to become
officials.
Article 12.--People have the right of election and being elected to
representative assemblies.
Article 13.--People have the duty of paying taxes in accordance with
law.
Article 14.--People have the duty of serving in the army in
accordance with law.
Article 15.--The rights of the people enumerated in this chapter may,
in the public interest, or for the maintenance of order and peace or
upon other urgent necessity, be curtailed by due process of law.
_Chapter III. National Assembly._
(Tsangyiyuan.)
Article 16.--The legislative functions of the Republic of China are
exercised by the National Assembly or Tsangyiyuan.
Article 17.--The National Assembly is formed of the members of
Tsangyiyuan elected by various districts as provided in Article 18.
Article 18.--Five members in each province, Inner Mongolia, Outer
Mongolia, and Tibet and one member from Kokonor will be elected. The
measures for the election will be decided by each district. At the
time of the meeting of the National Assembly each member has one vote.
Article 19.--The official rights of the National Assembly are as
under:--
1. To decide all laws.
2. To decide Budgets and settle accounts of the Provisional
Government.
{216}
3. To decide the measures of taxation, monetary system, and uniform
weights and measures.
4. To decide the amount of public loan and agreements involving any
obligation on the State treasury.
5. To ratify affairs mentioned in Articles 34, 35, and 40.
6. To reply to any affairs referred for decision by the Provisional
Government.
7. To accept petitions of the people.
8. To express views and present them to the Government regarding laws
and other matters.
9. To question Ministers of State and demand their presence at the
Assembly to give reply.
10. To demand the Provisional Government to inquire into cases of the
taking of bribes or other illegal acts of officials of the Government.
11. The National Assembly may impeach the Provisional President if
recognised as having acted as a traitor, by vote of three-fourths of
the members present at a quorum of four-fifths of the whole number of
members.
12. The National Assembly may impeach any of the Ministers of State
if recognised as having failed to carry out their official duties or
having acted illegally, on the decision of two-thirds of the members
present at a quorum of three-fourths of the whole number of members.
Article 20.--The National Assembly may hold its meetings of its own
motion and may decide the date of the opening and the closing of the
same.
Article 21.--The meetings of the National Assembly will be open to
the public, but in case of the demand of any Minister of State or in
case of the majority's decision a meeting may be held in camera.
Article 22.--The matters decided by the National Assembly shall be
promulgated and carried out by the Provisional President.
{217}
Article 23.--When the Provisional President uses his veto against the
decision of the National Assembly his reasons should be declared
within ten days and the matter should be placed before the National
Assembly for further discussion. If two-thirds of the members
attending re-affirm the former decision that decision shall be
carried out as stipulated in Article 22.
Article 24.--The speaker of the National Assembly will be elected by
open ballot of the members, and if the ballot be one-half of the
total votes he is declared elected.
Article 25.--The members of the National Assembly have no
responsibility to outsiders for the speeches and decisions made in
the Assembly.
Article 26.--Except for flagrant offences or during internal
disturbance or foreign invasion the members of the Assembly cannot be
arrested during the session without the consent of the Assembly.
Article 27.--The standing orders of the National Assembly shall be
decided by the National Assembly itself.
Article 28.--The National Assembly shall be dissolved when the
National Convention comes into existence, which will succeed to all
the rights of the National Assembly.
_Chapter IV.--Provisional President and Vice-President._
Article 29.--Provisional President and Vice-President will be elected
by the National Assembly by vote of two-thirds of the members present
at a quorum of three-fourths of the whole number.
Article 30.--Provisional President represents Provisional Government
and controls political affairs and promulgates laws.
Article 31.--Provisional President executes laws and issues orders
authorised by law and has such orders promulgated.
{218}
Article 32.--Provisional President controls and commands the Navy and
Army of the whole country.
Article 33.--Provisional President decides official organisations and
discipline but such should be approved by the National Assembly.
Article 34.--Provisional President is empowered to make appointments
and dismissals of civil and military officials. However, the
Ministers of State, ambassadors and ministers accredited to foreign
Powers, should be approved by the National Assembly.
Article 35.--Provisional President declares war, negotiates peace and
concludes treaties with the approval of the National Assembly.
Article 36.--Provisional President declares martial law in accordance
with law.
Article 37.--Provisional President represents the whole country to
receive ambassadors and ministers of foreign countries.
Article 38.--Provisional President presents bills for laws to the
National Assembly.
Article 39.--Provisional President confers decorations and other
honorary bestowals.
Article 40.--Provisional President declares general amnesty, special
amnesty, commutation, and rehabilitation; general amnesty needs the
approval of the National Assembly.
Article 41.--In case Provisional President be impeached by the
National Assembly the judges of the highest court of justice will
elect nine judges to organise a special tribunal to try and decide
the case.
Article 42.--Provisional Vice-President will act for Provisional
President in case Provisional President dies or is unable to attend
to his duties.
_Chapter V. Ministers of State._
Article 43.--Prime Minister and Ministers of Departments are called
Ministers of State.
{219}
Article 44.--Ministers of State assist Provisional President and
share responsibility.
Article 45.--Ministers of State countersign bills proposed, laws
proposed, laws promulgated, and orders issued by Provisional
President.
Article 46.--Ministers of State and their deputies attend and speak
in the National Assembly.
Article 47.--When any Minister of State is impeached by the National
Assembly, the Provisional President should dismiss him, but the case
may be retried by the National Assembly at the request of the
Provisional President.
_Chapter VI. Courts of Justice._
Article 48.--Courts of Justice consist of judges to be appointed by
Provisional President and Minister of Justice. The organisation of
Courts of Justice and qualification of judges will be decided by law.
Article 49.--The Courts of Justice will try and decide cases of civil
litigation and criminal litigation in accordance with law. However,
administrative litigation and other special litigation will be
stipulated by special laws.
Article 50.--The trials and judgments of the Courts of Justice will
be open to the public, but cases which are considered to be against
peace and order may be held _in camera_.
Article 51.--Judges will never be interfered with by any higher
officials in their offices either during a trial or in delivering
judgment, as judges are independent.
Article 52.--Whilst a Judge holds office his salary cannot be
reduced, and his functions cannot be delegated to another. Unless in
accordance with law, he cannot be punished or dismissed or retired.
The regulations for the removal of Judges will be stipulated by
special law.
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_Chapter VII. Annex._
Article 53.--Within ten months of the date of this law being in
force, the Provisional President should convene a National
Convention. The organisation and the measures for election of such
National Convention will be decided by the National Assembly.
Article 54.--The Constitution of the Republic of China will be
decided by the said National Convention, and before the said
Constitution comes into force this law will have the same force as
the Constitution.
Article 55.--This law will be either added to or revised by
three-fourths of the members of the National Assembly present at a
quorum of two-thirds of the whole number, or by three-fourths of the
members present at a quorum of four-fifths of the whole number, when
the same is proposed by the Provisional President.
Article 56.--This law shall come into force when it is promulgated,
and the rules of provisional government now in force will be
cancelled when this law comes into force.
Recognition of the Powers came slowly. The Republican fanatics cried
out in great volume and the alleged subsidised press still pursued
the for and against of the national argument. However, in due
course, with Yuan as President, the Government went ahead in
endeavours to get money. The reader will probably know the actual
eventualities as they touched the West internationally. There were
still two parties, however, one with Sun at the head, the other with
Yuan. Yuan Shih K'ai was a man cast in a distinctly different mould
from Sun. Before we go on to read his general biographical sketch,
as embodied in the next chapter, it is interesting to note how people
were interesting themselves in him. The following, from a private
letter {221} published in New York, is culled from an American
daily:--
"In 1884, when I went to China, Yuan was just succeeding the Manchu
General in charge of the Chinese troops sent to Seoul after the
troubles of 1882. He drove the Japanese out of Korea following the
emeute of 1884, and on October 3, 1885, after visiting his patron, Li
Hung-chang, he returned to Seoul as full Chinese representative,
taking to himself the title of 'Resident' in the sense in which that
title is used by the British in India, implying Chinese suzerainty.
"Yuan was without much education even for a Chinaman. He knew no
English at all. Korea is as far as he ever ventured abroad, but the
ten years there were a very valuable school for him.
"He was in my time just a big, brutal, sensual, rollicking Chinaman.
Having vast powers, he frequently cut off the heads of Chinese
gamblers and others, and I was an unwilling witness of some of these
street side pastimes of his. He would imprison Korean gentlemen who
objected to parting with their ancestral estates in order that they
might be used to enlarge Yuan's palatial legation. He would not let
a physician save the life of one of his soldiers in the emeute by
amputating his arm, saying, "Of what good would a one-armed soldier
be?" Yet he kept as a pensioner another soldier whose life was saved
but who was useless as a trooper. He was extremely quick, quite
fearless, very rash, yet given to consultation with Tang and others,
and therefore inclined to be reasonable. He was altogether
unscrupulous, but absolutely faithful and devoted to his patron and
largely so to his friends. He would sacrifice an enemy or one who
stood in his way, but would at the same time sacrifice himself
readily for his patron.
"Nobody understands the meaning of the term 'arrogance' who didn't
know Yuan in those years 1884-94. He was arrogance personified. He
would not {222} meet or associate with the Ministers of other Powers
unless he was allowed to occupy a sort of throne and 'receive' them
as though they were vassal envoys. At a Korean State dinner he
always occupied the foot (one end) of the table, which then became
the head."
[1] The _China Press_, Shanghai, December 8, 1911.
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