What we are at the moment concerned with is the naval and military reform of the twenty-five years preceding the advent of Prince Ch'un to power. In the purchase of war material no single system was followed. The provincial rulers at Canton, Foochow, Nanking, and Tientsin no doubt had to sanction what was done within their respective provinces—a check which might be perfunctory or conscientious—but practically the management was in the hands of subordinate officials without knowledge or training or visible responsibility. As in war each Chinese regiment fights for its own hand, or runs away as the case may be, so in the supply of arms each local official did pretty much what seemed right in his own eyes. Hence the heterogeneous composition of matériel, one small body of troops carrying in a campaign thirteen different patterns of rifle, with ammunition still more curiously diversified.
Concerning the arsenals established under the auspices of the various governors-general from Canton even to Kirin in Manchuria, and under the technical management of foreigners, the most remarkable point to be noted—and it applies generally to the employment of foreigners in China—is the faithful service the Chinese have been able to command in circumstances where it was hardly to be expected. An ignorant employer and an expert employee is a combination apt to engender the worst abuses, and the way the Chinese selected their foreign executive—a marine engineer here, a surgeon of a marching regiment there, a naval lieutenant somewhere else—was not the way, one would have thought, to obtain either honesty or efficiency. Yet the foreigners selected either possessed or acquired adequate qualifications, and one and all rendered devoted service to their employers. The position of these foreigners, however, never was or could be one of authority: whatever they did was under the orders of their Chinese superior, who was often too ignorant to weigh the reasons for what was done. In course of time the natives themselves became more instructed, but whether their half-knowledge was a help or a hindrance to the work of their foreign experts is problematical. Of the quality or quantity of the matériel turned out in the various Chinese arsenals it were useless to speak. It produced an illusory sense of security, and for a time imposed equally on native and foreigner.
Nor was training entirely neglected. Drill-masters were engaged. Schools were established in connection with the arsenals, where naval instruction especially was carried to a high standard. Students sent to Europe proved themselves most apt to assimilate the instruction given to them. Of those who distinguished themselves at Greenwich may be mentioned the present Minister to the Court of St James's. Cadets were also received into the British navy, and some very expert officers were turned out by these means. A large number of youths were at one time selected to be educated in the United States, remaining there long enough to learn to read and write English, and to become enamoured of Western life. This educational experiment was interesting in many ways. The youths who were sent to America under the care and at the instigation of the Cantonese, Yung Wing, who had himself been educated in the United States, were domiciled for the most part with private families there; and they so imbibed the influence of their surroundings that a high sense of honour was developed in them. The writer can speak from personal experience of the fidelity and efficiency of some of these students. Captain Clayson, who had several serving under him in the "Peiyang Squadron," has said that although on their return to China the authorities had distributed them in services other than those for which they had been trained, yet because of the school discipline they had been subjected to, and the sense of honour developed by their contact with Western people, he found them far more useful and trustworthy than the men who had been trained in Chinese naval schools. This experience seems to suggest that there are good moral qualities of the Chinese waiting, like the mineral ores in their country, for an awakening influence. In all these progressive efforts Li Hung-chang retained the lead, and his own province was well in advance in educational enterprises. Besides a military school with German, and a naval school with English, instructors, he set up within a mile of his Yamên a fairly furnished medical school with a hospital attached. His special corps of foreign-drilled troops was the best equipped and best disciplined force in the empire.
While all this progress was being made in the direction of military efficiency, the naval requirements of the country were not neglected. The failure of the undigested Lay-Osborn scheme showed the Chinese that the naval problem must be attacked in a different fashion. It was a false start, and they must begin again. Accordingly, profiting by what they had heard and seen of the efficient service rendered in their narrow waters by foreign gunboats, the Chinese Government contracted with the Armstrong firm for a small flotilla carrying one heavy gun with a wide range of fire. These craft were little more than floating gun-carriages; but notwithstanding broad beam and flat bottoms, they were moderately sea-worthy. They were known as the Alphabeticals, from being named after the Greek letters. This modest flotilla was the nucleus of the Chinese navy.
Attempts at naval construction were made at Shanghai, Foochow, and Canton; but beyond providing work and training for native artificers, and acting occasionally as transports on a small scale, despatch-carriers, and official yachts, the vessels turned out from native yards rendered no service to the country. The Chinese navy as a potential military arm only took shape when Li Hung-chang was able to carry the Government with him so far as to purchase effective war-ships in Europe, to institute a system of training under competent foreign officers, and to establish naval harbours with docks and workshops. Two iron-clad battleships, a respectable squadron of cruisers, and some smaller craft, manned by trained crews and officered by men who had received a regular naval education and perfectly understood their duties, constituted the fighting navy of China. The two English officers who supervised the training, Captain Tracy at Foochow and Captain Lang in the Gulf of Pechili, were thoroughly satisfied with the capacity of both officers and men, and what was distinguished as the Peiyang or Northern Squadron was brought up by the latter officer to such a state of efficiency that he reckoned that a further two years' drill would enable the Chinese to take its place, on a small scale, among the best equipped fleets in the world.
And while the navy was developing so satisfactorily, coast fortifications also made great progress. The mouths of rivers were all defended by the best modern guns; three naval ports in the Gulf of Pechili—Port Arthur, Weihai-wei, and Talien-wan—were fortified at great expense, and everything externally evinced a determination on the part of China to place herself in a position of independence, delivered from the fear of foreign attack, except of course by land, and even that had been partially provided for, as we have seen, by the military establishments in Manchuria.
Between the naval and the military preparations, however, there was an immense disparity. The force for which Li Hung-chang was personally responsible was carefully drilled, armed, fed, and paid, and, given competent leading, would no doubt have rendered a good account of itself; but the army as a whole was never brought to a state approaching efficiency. The navy, on the other hand, possessed the best ships and the best armament that money could buy, with the most modern appliances for war, and its personnel was subjected to the most careful discipline. The fortress guns were also of the newest and best pattern, and nothing was spared, apparently, to fit them for the purpose for which they were intended. It was generally conceded that the fortresses so armed were safe from attack by sea.
The explanation of the great difference between the organisation of the sea and the land forces seems to be that the former, being a new creation, was beyond the range of criticism and was unhampered by any traditions, while the reform of the army was merely patching a worn-out garment. The immemorial conditions of military service were unchanged. No army was formed, but a series of local levies raised without cohesion or central control. The foreign instructors were kept strictly to their class-work, were subordinated to the people whom they had to instruct, and possessed no kind of authority. They were allowed to drill the men, while the officers for the most part held themselves above the drudgery of the parade-ground. The few who had acquired a smattering of military education in Europe were as helpless as the foreign drill-masters to move their wholly ignorant superiors. Hence abuses of the most grotesque kind did not creep but rushed into every camp and every school, reducing the scientific teaching to a hollow farce.
The familiar factors of peculation and nepotism had an important influence on these naval and military developments in China. Such things are no monopoly of the Chinese. If corruption could ruin a State, it would not be necessary to look so far afield as China for national disasters. But the form which the vice takes in China has a determining effect on the administration quite irrespective of the waste of resources and diminution of efficiency which are common to corruption in all its forms. Thus if we have to reconcile the lavish purchases of material with the attenuation of personnel, we need only reflect that the former bring large emoluments with little labour to the official employed, while the training of men involves much work and little profit. Further, if we want an explanation of the infinite diversity of the arms which are furnished to the troops, we may find it in the excessive competition among officials for a share of the traffic, and the interest which the higher authorities have in passing without inspection what is purveyed by their subordinates.
Nepotism in China is part and parcel of the family system, which is the palladium of the nation. Every military corps raised is essentially territorial; and if ever it is moved from one province to another, it looks to a territorial chief, and no stranger can command it. Li Hung-chang's disciplined troops, if not all of his own clan, were at least the natives of his province and spoke his dialect. His subordinate officials were blood relations and family adherents. It needs no argument to show how such a survival of feudalism militates against national organisation. Pure feudalism, indeed, would be less detrimental; for under it territorial exclusiveness would at least be balanced by territorial responsibility, but under the short-service system of China a governor or governor-general may during his three years' term throw everything into confusion and half ruin the finances of a province with which he is precluded from having any territorial tie, and then proceed to another and repeat the performance. The navy, though, as we have said, exempt from the incubus of tradition, was nevertheless unable to withstand the pressure of immemorial heredity. As the first and principal naval school happened to be at Foochow, it was natural that new battleships and cruisers should be officered and manned in the first instance by natives of Fukien province. The admiral, however, hailed from another province—that of Li Hung-chang. Though brave and capable, Admiral Ting was uneducated, and found it hard to hold his own among the captains and lieutenants who had been to Greenwich and could speak and write English, and some of them French. Neither the Chinese admiral nor the English co-admiral—who was led to believe he possessed authority, but was deceived—were able to repress the intrigues which ran riot among the Foochow officers,—intrigues having for their object the complete control of the fleet, the power of keeping out and admitting whom they chose without reference to qualifications, and the general determination to subordinate the naval service to their personal and family advantage. The presence of Captain Lang was a hindrance to their schemes, and they intrigued him out. But as the fleet belonged to the north, they were unable to exclude northern seamen from the country round Weihai-wei, who proved when the day of trial came the most intelligent and the staunchest force that China possessed.