While the world was watching the camps of war, where the men stamped eager for blood, two million women and children, in three other parts of the land were starving from flood, famine and the absence of their bread providers. Look on the map at the old bed of the Yellow River across the middle of Kiangsu province; the valley of the Hwei River across northern Nganhwei province, emptying into Lake Hangsu; and Wuhu, on the Yangtze, where the flooded river tried to break east across the flat country to Shanghai, instead of arching north to Nanking. Not since 1906 have crops or homes been long above water in these crowded districts. What the missionaries mainly, and others (native and foreign) of the Central China Relief Committee, with headquarters at Shanghai, have done, a library of books could not adequately tell. Part of the story would be the relief trains of gift flour which left Minneapolis and was transported free across the Pacific by the United States army transport Buford; and more of the story would be the work of the American Red Cross; the grand missionary periodicals of America; and the Pacific Coast Chambers of Commerce, which put business aside for philanthropy. Their altruism, their manly effectiveness, their human kindness that has been so deeply Christian and Confucian (as you look at it from both an Occidental and an Oriental standpoint) has been moving beyond words, and it is largely owing to this action on the part of America that the hand of the war-inflamed Chinese was stayed against foreigners in this campaign. Their women said: “Don’t strike the white physicians and bread-givers; the men who speak in mercy and are clothed in altruism.” The soldiers of the Eighth Division of Hupeh men, under General Li, at Wuchang, in bidding the American Episcopal missionaries good-by, cheered them with these words: “Americans are our brothers.” Never had such a scene of suppressed emotion and earnestness occurred in China. I have already recited General Li’s manifesto to his men concerning the treatment of missionaries. None was more surprised than the good missionaries themselves. From their experience in the “Boxer” campaign of 1900, the missionaries expected unflinching loyalty from their converts, but they did not look for the highest Geneva Convention amenities from the new levies of the revolutionary soldiers. It was really astonishingly delightful. But on second thought, it might have been seen that it was only the first fruits of the seed sown long ago by the missionaries themselves, and now being garnered after many days when the sowing had been almost forgotten.
Reports came from Peking that the boy emperor, Pu Yi, was utterly unconscious of trouble and the tottering of the oldest and widest throne on earth, in all this ebb and flow of war and intrigue. Deserted by his guardians, parent and tutors, he was left most of the time in the Forbidden City with eunuchs, who humored his every whim, with the result that his temper took on true Manchu characteristics. When opposed, he threw the first thing at hand at those near him. When the food displeased him, he cracked the dishes over the heads of his kneeling servitors. The Break-Up of China indeed, but by another author than Lord Charles Beresford!
On January 26, 1912, the armies got in motion again, one corps leaving Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, to checkmate the republican expedition which had landed at Chifu. Up the Nanking-Tientsin railway, General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, and General Hsu met in an engagement at Kucheng, in northern Nganhwei province, and the former was defeated. At Wuchang, General Li’s Hupeh forces, reinforced with Cantonese troops, got in motion to meet General Feng’s imperialists up the Peking-Hankau railway. Large consignments of Mauser and Krag rifles and ammunition for Krupp guns, ordered from German firms for the imperialists, on this day passed through St. Petersburg on their way to Peking by the Siberian railway. On January 28th, the provisional republican Senate of forty-two members (three each from fourteen rebel provinces) convened at Nanking in foreign clothing and without queues. A remarkably enthusiastic scene occurred at the close of President Sun’s address, which address urged unity. The members all rose and cheered for the republic, while a modern band played martial music. The republicans for the first time in modern history instituted the use of a remarkable regiment of bomb-throwers. They went to the front with large canvas bags of dynamite bombs hanging from their shoulders. It required exceptional bravery to enlist in such a corps, as when a bag was hit by an imperialist’s bullet, the explosion not only shattered the bomb-thrower, but detonated the bags of his fellows if they were near. This corps was uniformed in the British military peaked cap, and they wore tunics and puttees, and had no queues.
By February 3, 1912, the Manchus had fully discussed abdication. It was proposed that the sacerdotal succession should be maintained, thus continuing the famous Chou and Confucian sacrifices and ancestor worship among the Manchus. This would reduce the Manchu emperor to a Confucian pope, similar to the Mikado before he conquered the Shoguns, and similar to the Taoist pope at Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi province, and the Buddhist popes at Urga, in Mongolia, and Lhasa, in Tibet. The Manchus also stipulated that their hereditary titles should remain. This was a foolish move, as it removed them more than ever from participation and influence in the social body, just as the private retention of titles keeps the descendants of the old French nobility hopelessly divorced from power in republican France. The republicans again offered Yuan Shih Kai the presidency, with Sun Yat Sen as premier, this being a union of the democratic principles in the American and British systems. Yuan was inclined to insist on a dual republic, but the Nanking republicans insisted that Yuan should come to Nanking. The republicans under Generals Hsu and Ling now advanced their right wing, striking General Chung Fung of the imperialists, at Siuchow, in northern Kiangsu province, and winning a great victory.
I have said that the most brilliant diplomatic move of the republicans was that by Wu Ting Fang, who announced in December, 1911, that if any foreign syndicate or nation made loans to the Manchus, the republicans, if successful, would repudiate those loans. The most brilliant strategic move of the republicans was made in November, 1911, when General Li induced Admiral Sah’s navy to join the republican cause. This enabled the republicans to hold the large commercial fleet of the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, and it was on this latter fleet that the republicans were able to raise a loan in February, 1912, from Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, when they were at their wits’ end where to find money to balance the subscriptions which the Manchus had made from their hoards, and the money which they were drawing from the cash tills of the rich imperial railways of North China. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha tried to buy out the China Merchants’ Steamship Company so as to give Japan dominance in the China coastal trade, but Britain interposed. The republicans had only one little railway from Shanghai to Hangchow, 104 miles, whose surplus earnings could help them, as compared with the 4,000 miles of successful railway in the territory controlled by the Manchus.
As neither Manchu nor Yuan could hold Manchuria, Japan now advanced a battalion to Mukden, a measure pregnant with precedents and controversy in the future. America maintained her reputation for altruism, Secretary Knox, on February 3rd, addressing the German ambassador a note to the effect that America’s idea was that all the powers should restrain their nationals from interfering with loans as much as with arms in China. The powers which were inclined to break leash were Japan, Russia and Belgium. The southern republican navy found the international forces and legations a bar in the way of the capture of Peking. The navy was off Chin-wang-tao, the only open port on the Liaotung Gulf, in February, 1912, and was ready to transfer the fifth republican army from Chifu. As long as Peking was dignified with the legation staffs of foreigners, the prestige of the foreigner supported to that extent the cause, or rather the integrity of the imperial north, and the rebels hesitated to send their attack home on account of international complications. Again and again the republicans asked for recognition and the transfer of the legations to Nanking. America only gave any attention to this request, sending Doctor Tenny, of the Peking legation staff, to pay an unofficial call on and make unofficial inspection of the republican government at Nanking. Japan and Russia closed their fists tighter on South and North Manchuria, respectively, lending money right and left to industrials and mines and thus establishing a mortgage and excuse for remaining in case of a break-up.
Wherever the capital is to be, whichever faction is to control, whatever style of government is to win, it does not seem impossible that the free China of the future will have fewer internecine conflicts and rows than the England, America or France of history. Liberty goes through about the same birth pangs whether she is born white, brown, black or yellow! On February 11, 1912, (probably at Yuan’s private suggestion), forty-eight generals of the imperial army wired Yuan that they would fight no more for the Manchus, so that the seed of the Lanchow camp had finally spread into a whole forest. The official birth of the Chinese republic came on Lincoln’s birthday (think of it, America!), February 12, 1912, the abdication decree of the Manchus including the following sentence: “Let Yuan organize to the full the powers of the provisional republican government, forming a great republic with the union of Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans and Tibetans.” President Sun Yat Sen telegraphed Canton in particular to accept Yuan, and another telegram instructed all Chinese consuls abroad to adopt foreign dress. The United States at once arranged to recognize unofficially both the northern and southern provisional Chinese republics under Presidents Yuan and Sun respectively, until a national assembly could form a united government.
On February 15th, the Christian Chinese provisional president, Sun Yat Sen, performed a remarkable act of self-sacrifice to win the north for republicanism and induce Yuan to join the great cause. He also was able to induce the vehement south to accept the former reactionary Yuan. Doctor Sun resigned as provisional president in favor of Yuan. The National Assembly at Nanking paid him this tribute: “Such an example of purity of purpose is unparalleled in history. It was solely due to your magnanimity and modesty, Doctor Sun, that northern China was won over to republicanism.” Here was the man who had achieved republicanism, laying by all its honors in favor of the man who had longest and most powerfully withstood republicanism. Yet Sun was happy. China was happy. Yuan and his aide Tang were happy. The Chinese republican navy at Chifu, Shanghai and Nanking saluted the republic with a broadside, and the Chinese legations throughout the world hoisted the new sun flag. With the least bloodshed ever known, Sun and his cabinet had achieved the greatest revolution ever known, and had established a republic of twenty-one republics, four times the population of America. They will be managed by a combination of the British and American systems, as their bulk is too great for the strong centralization which is now becoming popular in America to correct certain corporation evils. The provincial republics will develop largely as units, until the individual is educated sufficiently for greater cohesion. Sun Yat Sen will go down to history as the greatest dreamer, prophet, organizer, altruist and political philosopher the modern world has known, not that he is brainier than the white man, but being a yellow man, he has been able to accomplish more than any white man. His reception, certainly the reception of his cause, by the hearts of men should be enthusiastic. He stands not alone. The scores of idealists and fighters of his cabinet made the way for the constructive men who will now take hold. Above all, he converted Yuan by his self-obliteration, and Yuan converted the obstructionist north. What if the Honanese Yuan is at the head of affairs for a while instead of the Kwangtungese Sun? They are both Chinese and both republicans. China now has the center of the world’s stage, and America has built the Panama canal to reach quickly a front seat at the stage. The actors will have long and strenuous parts, and the house is filling up rapidly to hear, and see, and applaud, if all is done well, as it should be. Doctor Sun has done the most for a republic. Long years ago he planned it, and he has been persecuted most by the Manchus for opinion’s sake. When the assemblies succeed each other, his turn as president or premier will doubtless come.
Kang Wu Wei had dropped into astonishing silence during all these strenuous days, but on February 18, 1912, he suddenly and insanely (allow the emphasis) burst out in rebellion against the republic in Manchuria. Yuan he opposed; Sun he opposed. Did he, and the rebelling governor, Chao Ehr Sun, plot then for the Manchus or the Japanese in Manchuria? Why did not this first reformer Kang repress himself? Why did not Yuan and Sun repress themselves somewhat and win him? A bas, personal jealousies, antipathies or overleaping ambitions! Surely there is room for all in twenty-one republics, which are to be bound as one commonwealth. The Chinese are intense in feeling and clannish in spirit, and they often turn vehemently on one another; their Tong wars in New York and San Francisco for instance. Thus Yuan might hate Kang, and Kang have none of Yuan, whereas, according to Macaulay, “both should serve the state”. It is this repression of individual resentment and ambition which has made England and America so governable, and it is something China will learn as the years of stress surge about the ship of state. The title of captain or president amounts to very little in the light of patriotism; all are equal when it comes to manning the pumps and shortening or letting out sail according to the winds that blow. Parties will arise; provincial feeling will be assertive; leaders and their followings will clash, but the Chinese must learn, as we all have to learn, that the striving must be one way o’ the rope and not a tug against each other because of personal greed, low ambition or unruliness. In hundreds of documents issued during the rebellion, the republicans held up two men, Washington and Napoleon, as representing successful protest against tyrant kings. But Washington laid the sword by the minute statesmanship could win. Napoleon used his sword to advance himself and crush every will except his own; the way of an egotist. If China needs a foreign model to look at occasionally, let it be that of Washington, with his moderation, his unselfishness, his charity, his honor, his true republicanism, which sees in every citizen (man or woman) a king equal to himself, for the ballot and tax receipt have made all men equal kings!
I have pointed out the inconsistencies of character in Yuan and Kang. They may develop in other leaders from whom we expect much. It will be recalled that the great Empress Tse Hsi alternated “Boxer” and reform edicts; the lopping off of heads, and unbinding of women’s feet; the composing of poems on gentleness, and teaching her sleeve dogs to run at foreigners. The greatest viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, wrote books recommending modern gun foundries and steel mills one day, and the compulsory enthronement of worn-out Confucianism the next day, in the land which had always declared that any man could perform all religious rites. The genial Manchu Tsai princes who were the most affable of men when the Army, Navy and Constitutional Commissions visited England and America in recent years, were the irreconcilable Ruperts who insisted on the slaughter of foreigners and non-combatants in the northern provinces during the rebellion. The venerable and cultured viceroy of Nanking, Chang, who was the first official to open a modern exposition in China, was the very man who helped to hurl that awful slaughter on the innocents, with the ruthless division of Shangtung troops on November 10, 1911, at Nanking. The reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, the father of the immortal progressive edicts of 1898 in the Peking Gazette, the possessor of the sweetest face that ever graced a Chinese, was known to beat his waiters over the head with dishes, and his aunt, the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi, whose private ambition was to be the best painter of plum blossoms in the land, was known, according to Ching Shan, the comptroller of her household, to dance in rage that was awful to behold, and which left its wake in broken crockery and clocks. They have not as yet “lunacy commissions of three” in China, whose infallible tests are walking the chalk-line without a corkscrew motion, record of screaming and throwing vases, talking to one’s self and having wigglety eyes at times, or men of tawny color might have been incarcerated long before fame came to them! In the same inconsistent way the Japanese Prince Ito was a constitutionalist when a student in England, and a red imperialist as a statesman in Japan and Korea. With the Oriental it often is, “who pays for my ration, his is the flag I fly”. The larger sentimentality and altruism of republicanism will doubtless equip the new Chinese with deeper conviction and more enduring sentiment and devotion to ideals. We call a man who is not a good republican out of office, or a good Liberal on the left side of the speaker’s desk at Westminster, not much of a patriot in America or England, and China and Japan must learn the Pauline admonition to Timothy regarding manliness: “Be instant in season and out of season.”