It was not until long after the month of October, however, that men were able accurately to ascertain how the Revolution broke. Newspaper men with special passes, and on the scent for news, each buttonholed their man, hoping to get the story of why the revolt occurred so long before the appointed time. Every intelligent onlooker saw that sooner or later a great upheaval would come to China—some even got to know that it could not take a very great time before the extensive plans were fully matured—and then the blow would be struck, and China, tottering against forces far too strong for her, would be shaken to her very vitals. But when the signal for the military to rise was actually given, and when the whole of Hupeh's Army did rise, almost as one man, the newspaper men and those who thought they had been watching closely were lifted off their feet. And then there started throughout the world a long string of newspaper hazards as to who was responsible and how the thing had been done. But the story did not leak through. The most careful guesswork failed to get anywhere near the truth, for the correspondents of American and European newspapers had not been behind the scenes, and knew little of what was passing in the early days of October, They knew nothing of the little affair that had happened in the Russian Concession of Hankow. Europeans in Hankow, as a matter of fact, knew nothing about the affair until the newspapers wrote up a short story of it, and on the morning it appeared no one seemed to attach any great importance to what they read. They did not realise that what the Revolutionary party of China had been planning had prematurely fused, and that now there was nothing to do but for the leaders of the movement to take the plunge—hit or miss, as might be. The short newspaper report read as follows, and was printed modestly alongside other general matter:—
"The detonation of a bomb on the Russian Concession yesterday afternoon was responsible for the discovery of a revolutionary element, the existence of which had hitherto not been suspected. At 4 p.m. the police in the neighbourhood of the Russian Municipal Building were startled by a loud report which, it was apparent, emanated from the native houses at the back of the German butchery. A rush was made to the neighbourhood, and in the compound of No. 14 two Chinese were discovered throwing kerosene around, apparently just preparing to set fire to the establishment. These were put quickly under restraint, and a survey of the premises revealed the fact that all the elements of a nice little revolutionary club were present. Bombs already made, acids for their making, revolutionary pamphlets, and a list of names which bore a strong resemblance to the members' roll, gave testimony to the use to which the houses and the compound had been put. It is surmised that the bomb went off accidentally, and the inmates, fearing a visit by the police, attempted to set their place on fire. That their attempts were frustrated is due to the promptitude of the police, who, in addition to the two arrests already mentioned, tried to arrest four men who approached the place in a suspicious manner soon after the explosion; these, however, made their escape. At the Russian police-station, where at a late hour last evening[[1]] a representative of the Hankow Dally News was making inquiries, two Chinese, a man and a woman, were being examined, they having attempted to gain ingress to a suspected house. Like the two men arrested, they, were turned over to the Hsia Kao Ting,[[2]] whose representative had been quickly called to the spot. The Viceroy had already sent a deputy, a naval officer, from Wuchang, and together with the local officials he was busy attempting to unravel the mysteries connected with the revolutionary quarters. Among the articles seized by the police were revolutionary flags, as well as maps of Wuchang and plans apportioning various bodies of revolutionists to their positions for attack on the Wuchang gates. At a late hour last night everything in the neighbourhood of the scene was quiet, and not a soul was in sight except the Russian police, who are to be heartily congratulated on their discovery and the efficient manner in which they handled the situation."
Now, the man whose carelessness in making the bomb caused the premature explosion in the Russian Concession and forced the Revolutionary party to make their coup before they were ready was one Sun Wu, an expert bomb-maker. He bears the marks of the explosion to this day. Sun Wu was taken away immediately by his friends and concealed until he was well enough to join his comrades. One of his comrades was the aforementioned Liu King, who later became Inspector-General of the Republican Government of Hupeh. Liu King's wife was the woman who had undertaken to throw the bomb with which the Revolution was to be started. The story is a most fascinating one, and nothing better can be done at the moment than to reproduce the story as told to a newspaper man long after the great war had seemed to be fairly well settled in favour of the Republicans. Liu's personal appearance proclaims him an extremist, said the report. He is a young man, about thirty, with unusual eagerness in his eyes, wears foreign civilian clothes and gold-rimmed spectacles, has a moustache but, of course, no queue. He comes from a family of scholars among the gentry of Siangyang, in North Hupeh. If he had not gone to Japan, he would probably have been a scholar of the old Chinese type and an official, also of the old type, with a boughten office. In fact, it was whispered that many thousands of taels which he used in the Revolutionary cause were given him by relatives in the expectation that he would buy a taotaiship (magistracy).
In Japan Liu went through both the law course and the military. It is ten years since he first took up revolutionary work. But he did not claim to have done anything very effective till he met Dr. Sun Yat Sen. Here is the story just about as he told it in Chinese:—[[3]]
"It was about six years ago that Sun Yat Sen came to Japan. I was studying at the time in the Tungwen College. All the Chinese students welcomed Sun with the utmost enthusiasm. He organised among us a Society called the 'Tung Ming Hwei,' of which I was a member. The aim of this Society was to move the people of China to realise the shame of being ruled by aliens, and to stir them up to win their freedom. We published a weekly magazine, the People, in which we showed how corrupt, tyrannical, and impotent was the Manchu Government, giving instances of the inhumanity and injustice with which the Manchus had treated our people in the past. We urged reasons why the Chinese people should take revenge on behalf of their ancestors, thus proving their filial piety. We urged that the Chinese should strive to make themselves the equals of other peoples, who looked down upon them simply because they were enslaved by the Manchus. The People became very influential, and nearly all its readers in China and abroad realised that they were slaves, and wanted to free themselves. But the paper did not live long. The Manchu Government complained to the Japanese against its publication, and Japan, wishing to strengthen her friendship with the Chinese Government, suppressed it. We then organised another department, called the Kung Ching (meaning 'Advance together'). The duty of this department was to send agents to the various provinces to inspire the soldiers and scholars with revolutionary spirit and patriotism, and others to Chinese settlements abroad to raise funds. I was twice elected president of this department while I was studying at the Tungping Military College.
"The Revolutionary agents had friends among the military officers throughout China, so that it was easy for them to get into touch with the soldiers. Even if the officers refused to help, they were so friendly with the agents that they would not betray them. So it was very seldom that viceroys or governors were successful in arresting Revolutionists.
"After graduating from the military college and the law college I returned to Hupeh in the sixth moon (July), 1910. I came to Wuchang and found that all the Revolutionary agents had taken flight, owing to the strict search made for them by Viceroy Jui Cheng. I was greatly disappointed. A little later I became sick, and went to my home in Siangyang. The illness was a long one; I was not able to leave my bed till the third moon (May, 1911). I came here but found I was too weak for work, so I returned home for two months. In the fifth moon I came back here, bringing ten thousand taels given me by my family. I took a house beside the middle school in Wuchang. We took care to keep everything very secret. We had various retreats in Wuchang and Hankow, and our headquarters was in the camp of the sappers and miners' corps.
"Sun Wu had been working among the soldiers, and we knew that we could rely on the sappers and miners and the artillerymen. For some time the soldiers were timid, and, though they were eager to revolt against the Manchus, they were unwilling to give a definite promise to join the Revolution at a fixed time. We held secret meetings, and at last we found that the only way to induce some of them was to threaten that they would be blown up with bombs if they did not join.
"We had planned to begin the Revolution in December—simultaneously in eight provinces. We had drawn up lists showing the amount of the funds in the provincial treasuries, so that we knew the amount we should probably have to begin operations with. My wife, who is a zealous Revolutionist and who recently went to Shanghai to organise a corps of women soldiers, had undertaken to disguise herself as a poor pedlar-woman in order that she might throw a bomb at the Viceroy. That was to be the beginning of the Revolution. Sun Wu and myself were experts in the manufacture of bombs. On the night of October 9th Sun was making a bomb when, by some carelessness, he allowed it to explode. This betrayed our plot before we were ready. That was at the Russian Concession in Hankow. Russian policemen came to our place and seized our plant, together with proclamations we had prepared, dispatches to the foreign consulates, private letters, a list of the revolutionists, and a large number of badges. These badges had a design like that now used on the Republican military flag."