Footnotes
[1.] China Today (March, 1935), I, No. 6, p. 112. This is the leading English-language journal of the Chinese Communists. Mme. Sun's letter to the paper is characteristic of the attitude toward Nanking adopted throughout the magazine. [2.] These manuscripts consist of the following chief items: Linebarger, Paul Myron Wentworth, Conversations with Sun Yat-sen 1919-1922 (written in 1933-1935); the same, A Commentary on the San Min Chu I (four volumes, 1932-1933); and Sun Yat-sen, How China Was Made a Republic (Shanghai, 1919). These are all typescripts, with autograph corrections by their respective authors. The manuscripts of Judge Linebarger represent his attempts to replace, from memory, books which were destroyed at the time of the bombardment of the Commercial Press in Shanghai by the Japanese. He had prepared a two-volume work on the life and principles of Sun Yat-sen and had left his manuscripts and other papers in the vaults of the Press. When the Press was bombed the manuscripts, documents, plates and Chinese translations were all destroyed; the only things remaining were a few pages of proof sheets for The Life and Principles of Sun Chung-san, which remain in the possession of the present author. Judge Linebarger attempted to replace these volumes. He had a few notebooks in which he had kept the outlines of his own speeches; he had not used these, because of the secondary value. When, however, the major volumes were lost, he returned to these notebooks and reconstructed his speeches. They were issued in Paris in 1932 under the title of The Gospel of Sun Chung-shan. He also prepared the Commentary and the Conversations from memory. These manuscripts possess a certain somewhat questionable value. Judge Linebarger himself suggested that they be allowed the same weight that testimony, based upon memory but delivered under oath, upon a subject ten years past would receive in a court of justice. The seven volumes described are in the possession of the present author. Other materials to which the author has had access are his father's diaries and various other private papers; but since he has not cited them for references, he does not believe any description of them necessary. Finally, there are the manuscripts of Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese Republic, which contain a considerable amount of material deleted from the published version of that work, which appeared in New York in 1925. For comments on other source material for Sun Yat-sen which is not generally used, see Bibliography. [3.] Lyon Sharman, Sun Yat-sen, His Life and Its Meaning, New York, 1934, p. 405. [4.] He did this in his Political Testament, which is given in almost every work on Sun Yat-sen or on modern Chinese politics. It was written in February and signed in March 1925, shortly before his death. [5.] The Chinese text of these is given in Hu Han-min, ed., Tsung-li Ch'üan Chi (The Complete Works of the Leader), 4 vol. in 1, Shanghai, 1930. This collection comprises the most important works of Sun which were published in his lifetime. Edited by one of the two scholars closest to Sun, it is the standard edition of his works. English versions of varying amounts of this material are given in Paschal M. d'Elia, The Triple Demism of Sun Yat-sen, Wuchang, 1931; Frank W. Price, San Min Chu I, The Three Principles of the People, Shanghai, 1930; and Leonard Shih-lien Hsü, Sun Yat-sen, His Political and Social Ideals, Los Angeles, 1933. Each of these works will henceforth be cited by the name of its editor; for brief descriptions and appraisals, see the bibliography. [6.] The only English version of this work is one prepared by Wei Yung, under the title of The Cult of Dr. Sun, Shanghai, 1931. Fragments of this work are also to be found in Vilenskii (Sibiriakov), V., Sun' Iat-sen, Otets Kitaiskoi Revoliutsii, (Sun Yat-sen, Father of the Chinese Revolution), Moscow, 1925; Zapiski Kitaiskogo Revoliutsionera, (Notes of a Chinese Revolutionary), Moscow, 1926; Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary, Philadelphia, n. d.; and Karl Wittfogel, Sun Yat Sen, Aufzeichnungen eines chinesischen Revolutionärs, Vienna & Berlin, n. d. (ca. 1927). [7.] This work has not been translated into any Western language. [8.] Sun Yat-sen, The International Development of China, New York and London, 1929. [9.] This is given in Hsü, cited above, and in Min-ch'ien T. Z. Tyau, Two Years of Nationalist China, Shanghai, 1930, pp. 439-442. Dr. Tyau substitutes the word “Fundamentals” for “Outline,” a rather happy choice. [10.] See bibliography for a complete list of the translations. d'Elia translation, cited, pp. 36-49, dedicates a whole chapter to the problem of an adequate translation of the Chinese phrase San Min Chu I. He concludes that it can only be rendered by a nelogism based upon Greek roots: the triple demism, “demism” including the meaning of “principle concerning and for the people” and “popular principle.” [11.] T'ang Leang-li, The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution, New York, 1930, p. 166. [12.] d'Elia translation, cited, p. 58. [13.] d'Elia translation, cited, p. 58. [14.] See Lyon Sharman, Sun Yat-sen, His Life and Its Meaning, New York, 1934, p. 292, for a stimulating discussion of the parts that the various documents played in the so-called "cult of Sun Yat-sen." [15.] Sharman, cited, p. 270. [16.] A typical instance of this sort of criticism is to be found in the annotations to the anonymous translation of the San Min Chu I which was published by a British newspaper in 1927 (The Three Principles, Shanghai, 1927). The translator and annotator both remained anonymous; the translation was wholly inadequate; and the annotations a marvel of invective. Almost every page of the translation was studded with notes pointing out and gloating over the most trivial errors and inconsistencies. The inflamed opinion of the time was not confined to the Chinese. [17.] Paul M. W. Linebarger, Deutschlands Gegenwärtige Gelegenheiten in China, Brussels, 1936, p. 53. Judge Linebarger repeats the story told him by General Morris Cohen, the Canadian who was Sun's bodyguard throughout this period. [18.] Nathaniel Peffer, China: The Collapse of a Civilization, New York, 1930, p. 155. [19.] d'Elia, cited; Hsü, cited; and Wittfogel, cited. [20.] Maurice William, Sun Yat-sen Versus Communism, Baltimore, 1932; and Tsui Shu-chin, The Influence of the Canton-Moscow Entente upon Sun Yat-sen's Political Philosophy, in The Social and Political Science Review, XVIII, 1, 2, 3, Peiping, 1934; and other works listed in bibliography, pp. 268-269. [21.] Two such are the chapters on Sun Yat-sen's thought to be found in Harley Farnsworth MacNair, China in Revolution, Chicago, 1931, pp. 78-91 (Chapter VI, “The Ideology and Plans of Sun Yat-sen”) and Arthur N. Holcombe, The Chinese Revolution, Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1930, pp. 120-155 (Chapter V, “The Revolutionary Politics of Sun Yat-sen”). The former is the shorter of the two, and is a summary of the various documents involved. The distinction between the ideology and the plans is so convenient and illuminating that the present writer has adopted it. Except for the comments on the influence of William upon Sun Yat-sen, it is completely reliable. The latter is a discussion, rather than an outline, and admirably presents the gist of Sun's thought. [22.] Holcombe, cited, p. 136 ff. [23.] The word “ideology” is one of the catchwords of the hour. The author regrets having to use it, but dares not coin a neologism to replace it. He does not desire that “ideology” be opposed to “truth,” but uses the word in its broadest possible sense, referring to the whole socio-psychological conditioning of a group of people. He does not, therefore, speak of ideologies as a collection of Paretian derivations, fictions which mask some “truth.” He considers his own background—or Pareto's, for that matter—as ideological, and—in the sense of the word here employed—cannot conceive of any human belief or utterance not ideological. The task he has set himself is the transposition of a pattern of Chinese ideas concerning government from the Chinese ideology to the Western-traditionalist ideology of the twentieth century. Whether one, the other, neither, or both, is “right,” is quite beside the point, so far as the present enterprise is concerned. In calling the whole non-physical background of a society the ideology of that society, the author can excuse his novel use of the term only if he admits that he establishes the new meaning by definition, without any necessary reference to the previous use of the term. He has no intention of following, in the present work, any “theory of ideology” or definition of “ideology” established by political philosophers, such as Marx, or sociologists such as Weber, Mannheim, or Pareto. (Professor A. O. Lovejoy suggested the following definition of the term, “ideology,” after having seen the way it was employed in this work: “Ideology means a complex of ideas, in part ethical, in part political, in part often religious, which is current in a society, or which the proponents of it desire to make current, as an effective means of controlling behavior.”) [24.] Confucianism may be read in the Legge translations, a popular abridged edition of which was issued in 1930 in Shanghai under the title of The Four Books. Commentaries on Confucius which present him in a well-rounded setting are Richard Wilhelm, Confucius and Confucianism, New York, 1931; the same, Ostasien, Werden und Wandel des Chinesischen Kulturkreises, Potsdam, 1928, for a very concise account and the celebrated Geschichte der chinesischen Kultur, Munich, 1928, for a longer account in a complete historical setting; Frederick Starr, Confucianism, New York, 1930; H. G. Creel, Sinism, Chicago, 1929; and Marcel Granet, La Civilization Chinoise, Paris, 1929. Bibliographies are found in several of these works. They deal with Confucius either in his historical setting or as the main object of study, and are under no necessity of distorting Confucius' historical rôle for the purpose of showing his connection with some other topic. The reader may gauge the amount of distortion necessary when he imagines a work on Lenin, written for the information and edification of Soviet Eskimos, which—for the sake of clarity—was forced to summarize all Western thought, from Plato and Jesus Christ down to Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx, in a few pages providing a background to Lenin. [25.] There is a work on Confucianism upon which the author has leaned quite heavily: Leonard Shih-lien Hsü, The Political Philosophy of Confucianism, New York, 1932. Dr. Hsü is interested in sociological political theory. The novelty of his work has aroused a great amount of criticism among Chinese scholars of the older disciplines, whether the relatively conservative and established Western disciplines or the ultra-conservative schools of the truly classical literati. His work cannot be recommended for any purposes other than those which Dr. Hsü himself had in mind; there are several other works, the product of philosophers, historians, and literary historians, which will present a portrait of Confucius and Confucianism more conventionally exact. In its own narrow but definite field Dr. Hsü's work is an impressive accomplishment; he transposes the Confucian terms into those of the most advanced schools of social thought. A reader not forewarned might suffer by this, and read into Confucius an unwarranted modernity of outlook; if, however, the up-to-dateness is recognized as Dr. Hsü's and not Confucius', the work is valuable. It puts Confucius on common ground with modern social theory, ground on which he does not belong, but where his ideas are still relevant and interesting. The present author follows Dr. Hsü in this transposition of Confucius, but begs the reader to remember that this is one made for purposes of comparison only, and not intended as valid for all purposes. (He must acknowledge the stimulating criticism of Mr. Jan Tai, of the Library of Congress, who made it clear that this distortion of Confucius was one which could be excused only if it were admitted.)—An interesting presentation of Confucius as transposed into the older political theory, untouched by sociology, is to be found in Senator Elbert Duncan Thomas, Chinese Political Thought, New York, 1927. [26.] Granet, Chinese Civilization, cited, p. 84. Granet's work, while challenged by many sinologues as well as by anthropologists, is the most brilliant portrayal of Chinese civilization to the time of Shih Huang Ti. His interpretations make the language of the Odes (collected by Confucius) intelligible, and clear up the somewhat obscure transition from the oldest feudal society to the epoch of the proto-nations and then to the inauguration of the world order. [27.] Granet, cited, pp. 87-88. [28.] Richard Wilhelm, Geschichte der chinesischen Philosophie, Breslau, 1929, p. 19. [29.] One could therefore say that membership in a society is determined by the outlook of the individual concerned. [30.] In modern Western political thought, this doctrine is most clearly demonstrated in the Marxian thesis of the withering-away of the state. The Marxists hold that, as the relics of the class struggle are eliminated from the new society, and classlessness and uniform indoctrination come to prevail, the necessity for a state—which they, however, consider an instrument of class domination—will decline and the state will atrophy and disappear. [31.] Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, History of Chinese Political Thought during the early Tsin Period, translated by L. T. Chen, New York, 1930, p. 38. [32.] Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (cited, p. 48 and following) discusses these points.—The author is indebted to Mr. Jên Tai for the explanation of the relation of these various factors in the Confucian ideology. [33.] Leon Wieger and L. Davrout, Chinese Characters, Hsien-hsien, 1927, p. 6. [34.] Hsü, cited above, chapter three, contains an excellent discussion of the doctrine of rectification. [35.] A stimulating discussion of the pragmatism of early Chinese thought is to be found in Creel, cited. [36.] It must be pointed out in this connection that Confucius advocated an ideology which would not only be socially useful but scientifically and morally exact. He did not consider, as have some Western thinkers of the past century, that the ideology might be a quite amoral instrument of control, and might contain deliberate or unconscious deception. Hsü writes, in his Confucianism, cited, p. 93, of the various translations of the word li into English: “The word li has no English equivalent. It has been erroneously translated as ‘rites’ or ‘propriety’. It has been suggested that the term civilization is its nearest English equivalent; but ‘civilization’ is a broader term, without necessarily implying ethical values, while li is essentially a term implying such values.” Li is civilized behavior; that is, behavior which is civilized in being in conformance with the ideology and the values it contains. [37.] Hsü, cited, p. 103. [38.] Confucius the individual was quite nationalistically devoted to his native state of Lu, and, more philosophically, hostile to the barbarians. Hsü, cited, p. 118. [39.] John K. Shryock, The Origin and Development of The State Cult of Confucius, New York, 1932, traces this growth with great clarity and superlative scholarship. The work is invaluable as a means to the understanding of the political and educational structure commonly called “Confucian civilization.” [40.] This expansion took place in China in the reign of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, who used the state of Ch'in as an instrument by means of which to destroy the multiple state-system and replace it with a powerful unitary state for all China. He sought to wipe out the past, raising the imperial office to a position of real power, and destroying the whole feudal organization. He abolished tenantry and supplanted it with a system of small freeholds. Although his immediate successors did much to restore the forms and appearances of the past, his work was not altogether undone. Himself hostile to Confucius, his actions implemented the teachings to an enormous degree. See Granet, cited, pp. 96-104. [41.] D. H. Kulp, Family Life in South China, New York, 1925, p. xxiv. [42.] H. G. Creel, cited, p. 10. Creole writes as follows of the significance of the village: “The village life is very important, for it appears to be the archetype from which the entire Chinese conception of the world and even of the cosmos grew. The village was, as has been said, small. It was based on agriculture. It was apparently a community of a peaceful regularity and a social solidarity beyond anything which we of the present can imagine.” [43.] Arthur Smith, one of the few Westerners to live in a Chinese village for any length of years, wrote: “It is a noteworthy fact that the government of China, while in theory more or less despotic, places no practical restrictions upon the right of free assemblage by the people for the consideration of their own affairs. The people of any village can, if they choose, meet every day of the year. There is no government censor present, and no restriction upon the liberty of debate. The people can say what they like, and the local Magistrate neither knows nor cares what is said.... But should insurrection break out, these popular rights might be extinguished in a moment, a fact of which all the people are perfectly well aware.” Village Life in China, New York, 1899, p. 228. This was written thirteen years before the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty. [44.] J. S. Burgess, The Guilds of Peking, New York, 1928. This is perhaps the best work on the subject of the guilds which has yet appeared. The information was gathered by the students of the author, who as a teacher had excellent facilities for developing contacts. The students, as Chinese, were able to gather data from the conservative guild leaders in a manner and to a degree that no Westerner could have done. The classification here given is a modification of Burgess'. [45.]
S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, New York, 1895, p. 405. Dr. Williams, whose work is perhaps the most celebrated single work on China in the English language, wrote as follows concerning the nobility under the Ch'ing:
“The titular nobility of the Empire, as a whole, is a body whose members are without power, land, wealth, office, or influence, in virtue of their honors; some of them are more or less hereditary, but the whole system has been so devised, and the designations so conferred, as to tickle the vanity of those who receive them, without granting them any real power. The titles are not derived from landed estates, but the rank is simply designated in addition to the name....” He also pointed out that, under the Ch'ing, the only hereditary titles of any significance were Yen Shing Kung (for the descendant of Confucius) and Hai Ching Kung (for the descendant of Kuo Hsing-hua, the formidable sea adventurer who drove the Dutch out of Taiwan and made himself master of that island).
T'ang Leang-li writes, in The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution, New York, 1930, p. 168, as follows concerning Sun Yat-sen's early teaching of nationalism:
“Previous to the Republican Revolution of 1911, the principle of nationality was known as the principle of racial struggle, and was in effect little more than a primitive tribalism rationalized to serve as a weapon in the struggle against the Manchu oppressors. It was the corner-stone of revolutionary theory, and by emphasizing the racial distinction between the ruling and the oppressed classes, succeeded in uniting the entire Chinese people against the Manchu dynasty.” (Italics mine.) In speaking of min ts'u as a primitive tribalism which had been rationalized as a weapon, Dr. T'ang might lead some of his readers to infer that Sun Yat-sen did not believe what he taught, and that—as a master-stroke of practical politics—he had devised an ideological weapon which, regardless of its truthfulness, would serve him in his struggles. But, it may be asked, what was Sun Yat-sen struggling for, if not the union and preservation of the Chinese people?
The danger of relying too much on foreign aid can be illustrated by a reference to Sun-Joffe Manifesto issued in Shanghai, January 26, 1922. Sun Yat-sen, as the leader of the Chinese Nationalist movement, and Adolf Joffe, as the Soviet Special Envoy, signed a joint statement, the first paragraph of which reads as follows:
“Dr. Sun Yat-sen holds that the Communistic order or even the Soviet System cannot actually be introduced into China, because there do not exist here the conditions for the successful establishment of either Communism or Sovietism. This view is entirely shared by Mr. Joffe who is further of the opinion that China's paramount and most pressing problem is to achieve unification and attain full national independence, and regarding this great task he has assured Dr. Sun Yat-sen that China has the warmest sympathy of the Russian people and can count on the support of Russia.”
See T'ang Leang-li, cited, p. 156.
In view of the subsequent Communist attempt, in 1927, to convert the Nationalist movement into a mere stage in the proletarian conquest of power in China, in violation of the terms of the understanding upon which the Communists and the Chinese Nationalists had worked together, the leaders of the Kuomintang are today as mistrustful of what they term Communist politico-cultural imperialism as they are of capitalist politico-economic imperialism. It is curious that the APRA leaders in Peru have adopted practically the same attitude.
Mariano Ponce, Sun Yat Sen, El fundador de la Republica de China, Manila, 1912, p. 23.
“Y tampoco era posible sustituirla por otra dinastía nacional. Sólo existen al presente dos familias en China, de donde podían salir los soberanos: uno es la descendencia de la dinastía Ming, de que usurparon los mandchüs el trone, hace más de dos siglos y medio, y la otra es la del filósofo Confucio, cuyo descendiente lineal reconocido es el actual duque Kung. Ni en una, ni en otra existen vástagos acondicionados para regir un Estado conforme á los requerimientos de los tiempos actuales. Hubo de descartarse, pues, de la plataforma de la ‘Joven China’ el pensamiento de instalar en el trono á una dinastía nacional. Y sin dinastía holgaba el trono.
“No sabemos si aún habiendo en las dos familias mencionados miembros con condiciones suficientes para ser el Jefe supremo de un Estado moderno, hubiese prosperado el programa monarquico.
“Lo que sí pueda decir es que desde los primeros momentos evolucionayon las ideas de Sun Yat Sen hacia el republicanismo....”
Ponce then goes on to point out Sun Yat-sen's having said that the decentralized system of old government and the comparative autonomy of the vice-regencies presented a background of “a sort of aristocratic republic” (“une especie de república aristocrática”).
Wittfogel, cited, p. 140: “... Seine Drei Prinzipien verkörpern in ihrer Entwicklung den objektiven Wandel der ökonomisch-sozialen Situation Chinas, in ihren Widersprüchen die realen Widersprüche der chinesischen Revolution, in ihren jüngsten Tendenzen die Verlagerung des sozialen Schwerpunktes der Revolution, die Klassen in Aktion setzt, deren Ziel nicht mehr ein bürgerlich-kapitalistisches, sondern ein proletarisch-sozialistisches und ein bauerlich-agrar-revolutionäres ist.
“Sun Yat-sen ist demnach nicht nur der bisher mächtigste Repräsentant der bürgerlich-nationalen, antiimperialistischen Revolutionen des erwach-enden Asiens überhaupt, er weist zugleich über die bürgerliche Klassen-schranke dieser ersten Etappe der asiatischen Befreiungsbewegung hinaus. Dies zu verkennen, wäre verhängnisvoll, gerade auch für die proletarisch-kommunistische Bewegung Ostasiens selbst.”
The unfavorable view of the Five Powers is taken by Dr. Jermyn Chi-hung Lynn in his excellent little book, Political Parties in China, Peiping, 1930. Since Dr. Lynn speaks kindly and hopefully of the plans of Wu Pei-fu, one of the war-lords hostile to Sun Yat-sen and the whole Nationalist movement, his criticism of Sun Yat-sen need not be taken as completely impartial. It represents a point that has been made time and time again by persons antagonistic to the San Min Chu I.
“The Wu Chuan Hsien Fa is also no discovery of Dr. Sun's. As is known, the three power constitution, consisting of the legislative, judiciary [sic!] and executive functions, was originally developed, more or less unconsciously, by the English, whose constitution was critically examined by Montesquieu, and its working elaborately described by him for the benefit of his fellow-countrymen. And the unwritten constitution of Old China contained the civil service examination and an independent Board of Censors. Now the much-advertised Wu Chuan Hsien Fa or Five-Power constitution only added the systems of state examination and public censure to the traditional form of constitution first advocated by the French jurist.” P. 66, work cited.