CHINA AND THE WAR
The question of Chinese sentiments on the subject of the war, as well as the precise relations between the Chinese Government and the two groups of belligerents, are matters which have been totally misunderstood. To those who have grasped the significance of the exhaustive preceding account of the Republic in travail, this statement should not cause surprise; for China has been in no condition to play anything but an insignificant and unsatisfactory rôle in world-politics.
When the world-war broke out China was still in the throes of her domestic troubles and without any money at all in her Central Treasury; and although Yuan Shih-kai, on being suddenly confronted with an unparalleled international situation, did initiate certain negotiations with the German Legation with a view to securing a cancellation of the Kiaochow lease, the ultimatum which Japan dispatched to Germany on the 15th August, 1914, completely nullified his tentative proposals. Yuan Shih-kai had, indeed, not been in the slightest degree prepared for such a sensational development as war between Japan and Germany over the question of a cruiser-base established on territory leased from China; and although he considered the possibility of sending a Chinese force to co-operate in the attack on the German stronghold, that project was never matured, whilst his subsequent contrivances, notably the establishment of a so-called war-zone in Shantung, were without international value, and attracted no attention save in Japan.
Chinese, however, did not remain blind to the trend of events. After the fall of Tsingtao and the subsequent complications with Japan, which so greatly served to increase the complexities of a nebulous situation, certain lines of thought insensibly developed. That the influential classes in China should have desired that Germany should by some means rehabilitate herself in Europe and so be placed in a position to chastise a nation that for twenty years had brought nothing but sorrow to them was perhaps only natural; and it is primarily to this one cause that so-called sympathy with Germany during the first part of the war has been due. But it must also be noticed that the immense German propaganda in China during the first two years of the war, coupled with the successes won in Russia and elsewhere, powerfully impressed the population—not so much because they were attracted by the feats of a Power that had enthroned militarism, but because they wrongly supposed that sooner or later the effects of this military display would be not only to secure the relaxation of the Japanese grip on the country but would compel the Powers to re-cast their pre-war policies in China and abandon their attempts at placing the country under financial supervision. Thus, by the irony of Fate, Germany in Eastern Asia for the best part of 1914, 1915 and 1916, stood for the aspirations of the oppressed—a moral which we may very reasonably hope will not escape the attention of the Foreign Offices of the world. Nor must it be forgotten that the modern Chinese army, being like the Japanese, largely Germany-trained and Germany-armed, had a natural predilection for Teutonism; and since the army, as we have shown, plays a powerful rôle in the politics of the Republic, public opinion was greatly swayed by what it proclaimed through its accredited organs.
Be this as it may, it was humanly impossible for such a vast country with such vast resources in men and raw materials to remain permanently quiescent during an universal conflagration when there was so much to be salvaged. Slowly the idea became general in China that something had to be done; that is that a state of technical neutrality would lead nowhere save possibly to Avernus.
As early as November, 1915, Yuan Shih-kai and his immediate henchmen had indeed realized the internal advantages to be derived from a formal war-partnership with the signatories of the Pact of London, the impulse to the movement being given by certain important shipments of arms and ammunition from China which were then made. A half-surreptitious attempt to discuss terms in Peking caused no little excitement, the matter being, however, only debated in very general terms. The principal item proposed by the Peking government was characteristically the stipulation that an immediate loan of two million pounds should be made to China, in return for her technical belligerency. But when the proposal was taken to Tokio, Japan rightly saw that its main purpose was simply to secure an indirect foreign endorsement of Yuan Shih-kai's candidature as Emperor; and for that reason she threw cold-water on the whole project. To subscribe to a formula, which besides enthroning Yuan Shih-kai would have been a grievous blow to her Continental ambitions, was an unthinkable thing; and therefore the manoeuvre was foredoomed to failure.
The death of Yuan Shih-kai in the summer of 1916 radically altered the situation. Powerful influences were again set to work to stamp out the German cult and to incline the minority of educated men who control the destinies of the country to see that their real interests could only lie with the Allies, who were beginning to export Chinese man-power as an auxiliary war-aid and who were very anxious to place the whole matter on a sounder footing. Little real progress was, however, made in the face of the renewed German efforts to swamp the country with their propaganda. By means of war-maps, printed in English and Chinese, and also by means of an exhaustive daily telegraphic service which hammered home every possible fact illustrative of German invincibility, the German position in China, so far from being weakened, was actually strengthened during the period when Rumania was being overrun. By a singular destiny, any one advocating an alliance with the Allies was bitterly attacked not only by the Germans but by the Japanese as well—this somewhat naïve identification of Japan's political interest with those of an enemy country being an unique feature of the situation worthy of permanent record.
It was not until President Wilson sent out his Peace offering of the 19th December, 1916, that a distinct change came. On this document being formally communicated to the Chinese Government great interest was aroused, and the old hopes were revived that it would be somehow possible for China to gain entry at the definitive Peace Congress which would settle beyond repeal the question of the disposal of Kiaochow and the whole of German interests in Shantung Province,—a subject of burning interest to the country not only because of the harsh treatment which had been experienced at the hands of Japan, but because the precedent established in 1905 at the Portsmouth Treaty was one which it was felt must be utterly shattered if China was not to abandon her claim of being considered a sovereign international State. On that occasion Japan had simply negotiated direct with Russia concerning all matters affecting Manchuria, dispatching a Plenipotentiary to Peking, after the Treaty of Peace had been signed, to secure China's adhesion to all clauses en bloc without discussion. True enough, by filing the Twenty-one Demands on China in 1915—when the war was hardly half-a-year old—and by forcing China's assent to all Shantung questions under the threat of an Ultimatum, Japan had reversed the Portsmouth Treaty procedure and apparently settled the issues at stake for all time; nevertheless the Chinese hoped when the facts were properly known to the world that this species of diplomacy would not be endorsed, and that indeed the Shantung question could be reopened.
Consequently great pains were taken at the Chinese Foreign Office to draft a reply to the Wilson Note which would tell its own story. The authorized translation of the document handed to the American Legation on the 8th January has therefore a peculiar political interest. It runs as follows:—
"I have examined with the care which the gravity of the question demands the note concerning peace which President Wilson has addressed to the Governments of the Allies and the Central Powers now at war and the text of which Your Excellency has been good enough to transmit to me under instructions of your Government.