LAST MANDATE OF YUAN SHIH-KAI
The Min Kuo has been established for five years. Unworthily have I, the Great President, been entrusted with the great task by the citizens. Owing to my lack of virtue and ability I have not been able fully to transform into deeds what I have desired to accomplish; and I blush to say that I have not realized one ten-thousandth part of my original intention to save the country and the people. I have, since my assumption of the office, worked in day and thought in the night, planning for the country. It is true that the foundation of the country is not yet consolidated, the hardships of the people not yet relieved, and innumerable reforms are still unattended to. But by the valuable services of the civil officials and military men, some semblance of peace and order has been maintained in the provinces and friendly relations with the Powers upheld till now.
While on the one hand I comfort myself with such things accomplished, on the other hand I have much to blame myself for. I was just thinking how I could retire into private life and rest myself in the forest and near the springs in fulfilment of my original desire, when illness has suddenly overtaken me. As the affairs of the State are of gravest importance, the right man must be secured to take over charge of the same. In accordance with Article 29 of the Provisional Constitution, which states that in case the office of the Great President should be vacated for certain reasons or when the Great President is incapacitated from doing his duties, the Vice-President shall exercise authority and power in his stead. I, the Great President, declare in accordance with the Provisional Constitution that the Vice-President shall exercise in an acting capacity, the authority and power of the Great President of the Chung Hua Min Kuo.
The Vice-President being a man of courtesy, good nature, benevolence and wisdom, will certainly be capable of greatly lessening the difficulties of the day and place the country on the foundation of peace, and so remedy the defects of me, the Great President, and satisfy the expectations of the people of the whole country. The civil and military officials outside of the Capital as well as the troops, police and scholars and people should doubly keep in mind the difficulties and perils of the nation, and endeavour to maintain peace and order to the best of their ability, placing before everything else the welfare of the country. The ancients once said: "It is only when the living do try to become strong that the dead are not dead." This is also the wish of me, the Great President.
(Signed) TUAN CHI-JUI,
Secretary of State and
Minister of War
TSAO JU-LIN,
Minister of Foreign Affairs and
Communications.
WANG YI-TANG,
Minister of Interior.
CHOW TZU-CHI,
Minister of Finance.
LIU-KUAN-HSIUNG,
Minister of Navy.
CHANG TSUNG-HSIANG,
Minister of Justice and
Agriculture and Commerce.
CHANG KUO-KAN,
Minister of Education.
6th day of the 6th month of the 5th year of Chung Hua Min Kuo.
This tragic dénouement did not fail to awaken within very few days among thinking minds a feeling of profound sympathy for the dead man coupled with sharp disgust for the part that foreigners had played—not all, of course—but a great number of them. Briefly, when all the facts are properly grouped it can be said that Yuan Shih-kai was killed by his foreign friends—by the sort of advice he has been consistently given in Constitutional Law, in Finance, in Politics, in Diplomacy. It is easy to trace step by step the broad road he had been tempted to travel, and to see how at each turning-point the men who should have taught him how to be true and loyal to the Western things the country had nominally adhered to from the proclamation of the Republic, showed him how to be disloyal and untrue. The tragedy is one which is bound to be deeply studied throughout the whole world when the facts are properly known and there is time to think about them, and if there is anything to-day left to poetic justice the West will know to whom to apportion the blame.
Yuan Shih-kai, the man, when he came out of retirement in 1911, was in many ways a wonderful Chinese: he was a fount of energy and of a physical sturdiness rare in a country whose governing classes have hitherto been recruited from attenuated men, pale from study and the lotus life. He had a certain task to which to put his hand, a huge task, indeed, since the reformation of four hundred millions was involved, yet one which was not beyond him if wisely advised. He was an ignorant man in certain matters, but he had had much political experience and apparently possessed a marvellous aptitude for learning. The people needed a leader to guide them through the great gateway of the West, to help them to acquire those jewels of wisdom and experience which are a common heritage. An almost Elizabethan eagerness filled them, as if a New World they had never dreamed of had been suddenly discovered for them and lay open to their endeavours. China, hitherto derided as a decaying land, had been born anew; and in single massive gesture had proclaimed that she, too, would belong to the elect and be governed accordingly.
What was the foreign response—the official response? In every transaction into which it was possible to import them, reaction and obscurantism were not only commonly employed but heartily recommended. Not one trace of genuine statesmanship, not one flash of altruism, was ever seen save the American flash in the pan of 1913, when President Wilson refused to allow American participation in the great Reorganization Loan because he held that the terms on which it was to be granted infringed upon China's sovereign rights. Otherwise there was nothing but a tacit endorsement of the very policy which has been tearing the entrails out of Europe—namely militarism. That was the fine fruit which was offered to a hopeful nation—something that would wither on the branch or poison the people as they plucked it. They were taught to believe that political instinct was the ability to misrepresent in a convincing way the actions and arguments of your opponents and to profit by their mistakes—not that it is a mighty impulse which can re-make nations. The Republic was declared by the actions of Western bureaucrats to be a Republic pour rire, not a serious thing; and by this false and cruel assumption they killed Yuan Shih-kai.
If that epitaph is written on his political tombstone, it will be as full of blinding truth as is only possible with Last Things.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [20] ] The incident of Chen-chiao is very celebrated in Chinese annals. A yellow robe, the symbol of Imperial authority, was thrown around General Chao Kuang-ying, at a place called Chen-chiao, by his soldiers and officers when he commanded a force ordered to the front. Chao returned to the Capital immediately to assume the Imperial Throne, and was thus "compelled" to become the founder of the famous Sung dynasty.
The "incident of Yuyang" refers to the execution of Yang Kuei-fei, the favourite concubine of Emperor Yuan Tsung of the Tang dynasty. The Emperor for a long time was under the alluring influence of Yang Kuei-fei, who had a paramour named An Lo-hsan. The latter finally rebelled against the Emperor. The Emperor left the capital and proceeded to another place together with his favourite concubine, guarded by a large force of troops. Midway, however, the soldiers threatened to rebel unless the concubine was killed on the spot. The clamour was such that the Emperor was forced to sacrifice the favourite of his harem, putting her to death in the presence of his soldiers.