Aviation was introduced in China (really Indo-China) at Saigon on December 1, 1910, by the Holland-Frenchman, Vanderborn. He was followed later in the year at Shanghai by the American, “Bud” Mars. The first Chinese aviator was Fug-Yu, who was trained in America, and who experimented at the Lanchow (east of Peking) camp in 1911. During the revolution a number of Chinese students took lessons in aviation in America and left for the rebel front. Had the war continued it was the intention to destroy Peking by dynamite dropped from air-ships. Both Sun and Yuan are to be congratulated that this necessity was obviated by diplomacy.
China’s antiquity, vast population and warlikeness have been brought in question by some writers. That she had a vast population as far back as the third century before the Christian era is proved by the army records. The Ts’in clan, operating under their celebrated General Peh Ki, slew and beheaded in 293 B. C. 240,000 Hans; in 275 B. C. 40,000 Ngwheis; in 264 B. C. 50,000 Hans; in 260 B. C. 400,000 Chows, and in 256 B. C. 90,000 more Chows, thus exterminating the imperial ancestral clan which instituted the sacrifices and held the sacred tripods. Szma Tsien, the historian, writing at 100 B. C., says the allies lost a million men in fighting this Ts’in clan. After the Christian era the Chinese took fewer plural wives and fought fewer wars. Twenty years ago, an emperor who raised the despised military class to the equal of scholars, farmers and merchants, would have been decapitated. Compare one of the military edicts of the regent, Prince Chun, dated Peking, April, 1911: “We are of the opinion that militarism is the first thing necessary to the upbuilding and preservation of a nation.”
Some of the military proverbs of the old Chinese are:
“The best general thinks of wise strategy before blind courage.”
“A mob does not make a regiment, for a trained man is as effective as a score untrained, and much easier to save in a retreat.”
“A good general can’t blame defeat on bad soldiers, for a good general has no poor regiments.”
“The pike only grabs the duck’s lame leg that can’t kick.”
“The battle may not be for a cycle of years, but the soldier must awake for it every day.”
“A dog that bites the hardest shows his teeth the least.”
“A whisper can bring on a war.”