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

by Edwin John Dingle

And finally Yuan Shih K'ai. All knew him or of him. Some praised him, but it was a penalty of his greatness that some anathematised him. China to him also was as dear as his fame or his life. There were two pictures: a dawn of peace and tranquillity, a China freed from all racial bitterness, a China plunging manfully out and in her plunge being assisted by all the Powers of the world; the other picture shows a China going down to the deeps of internal despair, renewed hostilities, further bloodshed. And all those who knew what the war had been, those who had seen those twelve thousand mothers' sons hacked and hewn and blown into eternity by infuriated members of their own great race entertained merely one common hope.

I went down to Shanghai and remained in that city whilst the Peace Conference was in progress. To go from the scene of action in Central China to Shanghai was to pass at one stroke from the din of war to the tranquillity of peace and undisturbed civilisation. Hard indeed was it for any one who had been through the crisis in Hankow actually to realise the peace of China's great metropolis—the contrast was so enormous as to force it upon one's imagination that the war was over, that peace assuredly had come. One missed the cannonading, the utter devastation and universal suffering, the burnt-out hamlets and the homeless thousands all over the countryside.

Tang Shao-yi, when he called upon Li Yuan Hung, was reported to have been very surprised at the meagre following that still stood by the Revolutionary leader—of course, several delegates had already left for Shanghai, and he predicted that it would be only a matter of time when we should see the Republicans forced in the very nature of things to take the monarchical course. That General Li Yuan Hung and his supporters had been willing to sink their personal ambitions on behalf of the general welfare of the country had again and again been declared by their leader in the press and by other means. But Tang Shao-yi seemed, when I interviewed him in Hankow just before he sailed for Shanghai, to believe that this was mere Chinese bluff; he declared that they had no other course, and that they did this because they foresaw that their popularity soon would be greatly diminished when the gilt from the official gingerbread had rubbed off.

In the Hankow neighbourhood there were thousands who had no food to eat, no clothes, who had no idea of how they were going to keep body and soul intact during the coming winter, and some of the older conservative school were beginning to question whether it was, after all, worth the candle, and whether it would have been better to have gone in the same old way, bad as that had been. The result of the war in which they took so lively an interest was coming upon them as a horrible nightmare, and I am of the opinion that, although they were as much passively in favour of reform as they had been, four-fifths of the people were horribly tired of waiting for the good times which then seemed farther off than ever. All this was depressing to Tang, coming among it for the first time. But Tang Shao-yi was most generous in his references to General Li Yuan Hung. He thought that the zeal, the disinterestedness, and the abilities with which Li Yuan Hung had carried out so successfully the general principles of the Revolution, the persecution he had suffered and the ignominy that his army had brought to him, and the firmness and independence that he had shown under all circumstances should have had a strong claim upon the sympathies of all people. But the great preponderance of the common people, those who had been hit hardest in the burning of their homes and the loss of all they possessed, were inevitably downcast and wished that it would all pass away and bring anything else so long as peace came with it. Therefore, all looked eagerly to the peace delegates. It was a season most trying to the Revolutionary party, for they were all waiting to see what the outcome of the negotiations would be; and this lull allowed of a little respite for talk. One department at Wuchang was suspected of taking away the power from another, one man from another; some thought that it would be better for General Li to go away and talk peace, whilst others declared that he could not get away because the party would not let him.

Tang Shao Yi, however, would not talk much about the general situation. He told me that he knew very little, that I should know much more than he of what had happened, and would be able to make a fairly good bid as to what would happen in the immediate future, and in spite of the fact that he was Yuan Shih K'ai's chief peace delegate he could not tell what was in Yuan's mind. "And you see," he continued softly, "both sides are now so earnestly seeking for peace that it seems to me that there should not be much trouble about a complete settlement. We realise that they [referring to the Wuchang party] are so strong that we shall have to concede a good deal. There surely cannot be any more war, and if every one means what he says and is prepared to do his best for the best common interests, I think we shall soon complete the Peace Conference."

Tang Shao Yi then looked into the fire. For some time neither of us spoke. He held his rheumatic-stricken arm under his fur gown, then looked up and switched off from political theorising to small talk.

The Revolutionary delegates, when this Peace Conference was arranged, were in a frame of mind determined not to give way. A criterion of their attitude and aims for the Conference may be drawn from the following interview I was privileged to secure as I travelled down-river to Shanghai on board the same steamer with three of General Li Yuan Hung's delegates. The chief man was one Hu Ying, whose main statement was as follows:—

"Our attitude towards Yuan Shih K'ai is summed up in a single sentence. If he obstinately upholds the Manchu Dynasty against the wishes of the people, then he is doomed for ever. He may succeed in overriding the wishes of the people for awhile, but no single man, however able, will be able to stand in the way of the people.

"We do not wish this to be a fight with arms. We know that it would take a good deal of time for us to be able to stand man for man with the Imperial Army, but we know that we have half the world at our back."

Now, Mr. Hu Ying, this same man, some years ago narrowly escaped losing his head for being mixed up in an alleged Revolutionary escapade that cost his more enthusiastic confederate his head. He was the President of the Foreign Office of the Hupeh Government when I interviewed him. He was a man who to a very large extent had been the prime mover in the Republican dream of the future. For many years a strong Revolutionist, he had, however, been called upon to study the arts of Revolutionism in prison. For when the Revolution broke out he was still behind the prison bars in Wuchang, and under normal conditions would have passed the remainder of a miserable life dreaming of the great reforms he now hoped to help forward. He was a man who incontestably had the confidence of Li Yuan Hung. Mr. Hu was only one of a number of delegates sent down to join with Dr. Wu Ting Fang in upholding the Republican side of the argument against Tang Shao Yi and his assistants. They all represented General Li Yuan Hung and thoroughly understood his ideas. Mr. Hu and another of the delegates—a Mr. C. T. Wang, who was a graduate of an American University and in China held the responsible position of the National Secretaryship of the Y.M.C.A. in China—were chosen to assist Dr. Wu by representatives of the various Revolutionary provinces represented at Wuchang. Hu Ying was a short, rather stout Chinese, who told me frankly that he felt fearfully out of it because he could not speak my foreign words, and a man who would never be taken seriously at first sight as one capable of shaping the foreign policy of the Chinese Empire. As a matter of fact, he was nervous with foreigners—it may be, of course, that his long term in prison had made him so—and looked up rather timidly over the steel rims of his glasses as he spoke. He laughed with buoyant candour over his own jokes, and was somewhat of a caricature in his foreign felt hat that was the only sign about him that he had ambitions for Occidentalising his country.