China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War - Edwin John Dingle

NEW YORK
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1912

TO
THOSE WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES AND
TO THE NEW CHINA PARTY
IN THE HOPE THAT THEIR STRUGGLES FOR FREEDOM
MAY HERALD THE DAWNING OF A DAY OF
RIGHT AND TRUTH FOR CHINA
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This volume is a popular history of the Revolution in China that broke out at Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang in October of 1911. The narrative contains a good deal of new information touching upon revolutionism in China, and the events leading up to the present climax. The magnitude of this Revolution cannot possibly be understood yet; but this volume is written in the hope that it will enable the student otherwise untutored to understand much that one absorbs in Chinese life.

When the Revolution broke out, I was residing in Hankow. Throughout the war I remained in Hankow, leaving this centre for Shanghai during the days when the Peace Conference was held in that city. I am a personal friend of the leader of the Revolution, General Li Yuan Hung, and, by virtue of having all the time been in possession of much exclusive information from behind the political curtain, am probably equipped to write of the main doings of the Revolution in that area where its effects were most marked. On the very eve of the Revolution, a book written by myself was published simultaneously in England and America, which contains some strangely prophetic utterances, and will give the reader who has not made Chinese politics a study a general idea of the condition of the country when the Revolution made the scales drop from the eyes of her teeming millions.[[1]]

I wish gratefully to acknowledge the kind offices of Mr. Thos. F. Millard, editor of the China Press, for allowing me free use of the columns of that journal. Much of my information has been culled from the C.P., although many of the articles were written by myself for that newspaper, whilst the war was in progress; but I am largely indebted to that paper also for many of my general later facts.

Especially also do I wish to thank the Rev. Bernard Upward, of Hankow, for the assistance he has rendered me whilst this volume was being prepared. The chapter entitled "Some Revolution Factors" is from Mr. Upward's pen, as is also that headed "Yuan Shih K'ai"; many of the illustrations shown in the volume also are reproductions from Mr. Upward's splendid collection. My warm thanks are also due to Mr. Stanley V. Boxer, B.Sc., for the drawings from which the two maps embodied in this volume were prepared, and for the explanatory note accompanying the sketch map of the battlefields.