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

by Edwin John Dingle

Then over night things happened in China. The next morning the world learned at its breakfast-table that out of the welter and uproar of revolution in old China a leader had arisen to gird an ancient land under new harness of government. And it also became manifest that the Revolution, which had started by concerted movements in the heart of China and spread with the rapidity of a powder-train, and the little man who had been dodging and twisting through the world for so many years were closely related—extraordinarily so.

Sun Yat-sen started many revolutions. Each was stronger than the last; each achieved a little more. The final one, striven for and plotted through channels not yet known, has succeeded. Sun Yat-sen was the man of the hour in China.

An odd circumstance that brings an added thrill of romance into the story of his life is that though President of united China he still bears upon his head a price totalling about 700,000 taels. The rewards for his head offered by provincial governments and the central authorities in Peking during the last fifteen years have not been recalled, even though payment upon delivery might be doubtful.

Yet the fact that his head was worth hundreds of "shoes" of silver during all the latter years of his activity has been one of the lightest burdens that Dr. Sun has carried about on his narrow shoulders. He took long chances, apparently he suffered many close calls from death, but he persisted.

I believe that when he was a young man he was studying medicine under the care of an English physician in Hongkong. Thence he went to England and after study in a preparatory school he was graduated from a medical college and returned to China. He practised the new medicine, against which there was a violent prejudice on the part of the Chinese in Macao, in Canton and Hongkong.

Dr. Sun is forty-three now, he was scarcely more than twenty-five when he began to move for the spreading of a revolutionary spirit in the hearts of his countrymen. Just where he began and with what material nobody but the closest of his associates knows.

It seems that his first idea was for reform through peaceful means, if it were possible for the Chinese people to penetrate the jealous conservatism of the Manchu masters. To this end the little doctor began to organise clubs of advanced thinkers among the young Chinese of the south.

For some time during the early part of 1912 things seemed to go fairly smoothly, and President Sun seemed to have been successful in winning the confidence of Yuan Shih K'ai, when, like a bombshell, the press of the world (especially the London Times) deprecated one of the messages Sun sent to Yuan. This strengthened the Imperial cause. Abdication of the Court, which had definitely been fixed, did not take place. Several of the Manchu princes refused to clear out, for many days the complex situation at Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, and Wuchang rendered it impossible for one to see what would eventuate.

The Court, however, did abdicate, and left the ground clear. There was a continuous rumpus in Peking during the following three months, and in March of 1912 the capital was in a big uproar—the soldiers broke loose, there was much pillaging and looting, Yuan Shih K'ai seemed entirely to have lost the situation and the whole country seemed to be lost. Yuan Shih K'ai meantime had been proclaimed President, Dr. Sun gracefully withdrawing in his favour. A big discussion took place over the site for the capital, and just as Yuan was about to come down to Nanking to settle matters the outbreak at Peking quashed the whole affair. But this was only one of the political troubles. Some adjusted themselves: others did not. There was a lack of money. Soldiers, going unpaid, took the law into their own hands, and looted on a great scale. The banditti rose up in formidable strength. Officialdom was abused. Decapitations were rife. Up to the end of March the interior of China was devoid of all law and order. In the coast places and big towns where order was fairly easy to maintain, officials were busy making laws and drawing up reforms. But whilst reforms were being thus aimed at in some places, in others there was absolute chaos. The old order had been taken away, and there was nothing better to put up in its place.

But it is hopeless to give a correct comprehensive estimate of what was being done. All we knew was that China was changing—in some places for the worse, in others for the better, but changing irrevocably, and it was only in the final balancing could one see how things were to "pan out."