Sun Yat-sen for many years has been known the world over as the most effective Revolutionary China has ever produced. For many years he had been the leader of a revolutionary movement among Chinese abroad, and his life was practically devoted to travelling to foreign countries, keeping his exiled countrymen versed upon the latest political phases of China.
At the time of the Peace Conference the situation had become so strained, there were so many parties all genuinely anxious to assume control—out of the best motives probably—that it seemed necessary for one strong man to come in safely to direct the Revolutionary cause. That strong man was Dr. Sun Yat-sen. It was known on the day the Conference met that Sun Yat-sen was in Singapore. For many days the people had been looking for him, and disappointment was freely expressed in Shanghai more particularly (where he was best known) because of his non-appearance. It seemed that he was now, at the moment when he could do his country the most good, determined to stay away. After the Conference had broken up, however, Sun arrived, and immediately the people took him to their hearts, recognising in him the one man who now would be strong enough to establish a stable Government.
Sun cannot be called a typical Chinese; he is a typical and extremely able Chinese of the new school. He has lived most of his life abroad, and from his earliest years, when in Canton he attended the London Mission with his Christian parents, has been constantly in close touch with men and things foreign. As has been said, practically all his life, but particularly since 1895, Sun has been looked upon as the most active Revolutionary among the Chinese. His escapes at the hand of the Chinese Government had been many. For years he had been banished, and his head was ever sought after. His deliverances had been marvellous. Newspapermen the world over have constantly interviewed Sun in his wanderings, and it is felt that so much is known of President Sun that nothing of a general nature need be added here. It will be more interesting to pass on to see what Dr. Sun has to say, in a remarkably well written story, of the reason why his country is in revolt.[[1]]
"The conspiracy in which I took part as a leader at Canton in October, 1895," wrote Dr. Sun Yat-sen, "was one of a series which must ultimately triumph in the establishment of a Constitution in our Empire. The whole of the people in China, excepting the Imperial agents, who profit in purse and power by the outrages they are able to perpetrate, are with us. The good, well-governed people of America will not fail to understand that Chinese numbering many millions in their own land and thousands in exile, could not entertain such feelings about their Empire without good cause. Over each province there is what the English would call a Governor. There are no laws, as you know laws. The Governor of each province makes his own laws. The will of each officer is the law. The people have no voice. There is no appeal against the law created for his own purposes by the officer or the Governor, no matter how unjust, no matter how cruelly carried out. These Governors universally persecute the people and grow wealthy by squeezing them all into poverty. Taxes, as taxation is understood by Americans, are unknown. We pay only a land tax, but the Governors and officers take money from the masses by innumerable systems of extortion. Every time a Governor or magistrate or chief officer takes charge of a district, the first thing he does is to find out who are the rich, who are favourably disposed toward him and who against him. He selects first one of those whom he has reason to believe dislikes him, forces one of those on his side to make a criminal charge against the selected man, and has him arrested on the charge, which is invariably false. The Governor enriches himself by each case, as the only thing in the nature of a law he knows is that of the Dynasty, empowering him to take as his own as much as he likes, usually the whole of the property of every man whom he arrests and punishes. The arrested man has no appeal. He has no advocates. He has no hearing. Only his accusers are heard. Then he is barbarously tortured to confess the guilt he knows not.
"The terrible injustice of this procedure is to be seen in that a magistrate or chief officer never visits that punishment upon any one who has Imperial influence. Yet any man who has influence with the magistrate or is in any way a creature of his, can arrest, by his own will, any person against whom he has a grievance, choose any crime he likes to name for the purpose, drag the person before the magistrate, accuse him, and ask that he be punished. Again, the accused person has no appeal, no defence. He is merely faced with the accusation, and if he denies it, is put under torture for three days. If at the end of three days the accused refuses to confess himself guilty, punishment is meted to him in severity according to the influence of the accuser, and the necessity the magistrate feels of appeasing him. The punishment for every offence charged, from petty larceny upward, is almost invariably beheading. Beheading saves prison expense, and effectually silences the accused. So much aloof do the Mandarins keep from the people that many are usually ignorant of this terrible work of the officers of the Dynasty, and when told of it, refuse to believe. Some Mandarins refuse to believe, out of fear of incurring the displeasure of officers. The unhappy masses know the truth too well. The intelligent, the most enlightened, know of it. Exiles in all other parts of the world know of it. Bitter hatred of the Dynasty and of the Imperial officers prevails in every province of the Empire. There is a great democracy in the Empire, waiting and praying for the moment when their organisation can be made efficient and the Dynasty removed and replaced by a constitutional government.
"Our conspiracy to seize Canton failed, yet we are filled with hope. Our greatest hope is to make the Bible and education, as we have come to know them by residence in America and Europe, the means of conveying to our unhappy fellow-countrymen what blessings may lie in the way of just laws, what relief from their sufferings may be found through civilisation. We intend to try every means in our power to seize the country and create a government without bloodshed. I think we shall, but if I am doomed to disappointment in this, then there is no engine in warfare we can invoke to our aid that we will hesitate to use. Our four hundred millions must, and shall, be released from the cruel tyranny of barbaric misrule and be brought to enjoy the blessings of control by a merciful, just government, by the arts of civilisation.
"The conspiracy at Canton, though it failed, was but a momentary repulse and has in no way damped our ardour. A brief history of the conspiracy and my own adventures connected with it may convey some ideas of the difficulties which still lie before us, yet which we know we shall in due time surmount. We have a head, a chief, and a body of leaders, all earnest, intelligent, courageous men. They were elected according to constitutional principles by a body of us, who met, necessarily, in secret. We have a branch of our Society in every province. Our meetings of the leaders were held at various houses, the rendezvous being constantly changed. We had between thirty and forty centres in the districts of the town, with members ready to ride at a given moment to the number of at least one thousand in each centre to take control of the public affairs of the district. Communications with each of these districts were made by the employment of messengers. Our communications were by word of mouth. Our intention was to attack no individual person.
"There is no Government, no organisation, no legal system, no form of official control except the influential citizens, who, under the favour of the magistrate or Governor of the province, usurp the use of the Imperial commissioners and soldiers to carry out their barbarous tyranny. We had no ruling body, officials, or officers as such institutions are understood by Europeans, to seize. We had elected bodies of our followers who had been taught a system of constitutional rule, for each district, all ready to take office at a given signal and put the system into practice. The soldiers were ready to join us. For the soldiers are as great sufferers from tyranny as the poor masses.
"Now, herein lay our chief difficulty. To effect revolution in China would be easy but for one thing—the great difficulty in controlling the citizens. The people, never having known laws, never having been used to any proper discipline, are utterly demoralised. Life and property would be in danger from the masses the moment they became excited. From the soldiers, who are of the most degraded class, we expected trouble. They would certainly engage in looting the moment they had discovered a change in the order of things.