The Fight For The Republic in China / Putnam Weale, B. L. (Bertram Lenox), 1877-1930

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THE FIGHT FOR THE REPUBLIC IN CHINA

by

B. L. PUTNAM WEALE

Author of _Indiscreet Letters from Peking_, etc.

With 28 Illustrations

London: Hurst & Blackett, Ltd.
Paternoster House, E.C.

1918







[Illustration: President Li Yuan-Hung.]




PREFACE


This volume tells everything that the student or the casual reader needs
to know about the Chinese Question. It is sufficiently exhaustive to
show very clearly the new forces at work, and to bring some realisation
of the great gulf which separates the thinking classes of to-day from
the men of a few years ago; whilst, at the same time, it is sufficiently
condensed not to overwhelm the reader with too great a multitude of
facts.

Particular attention may be devoted to an unique feature--namely, the
Chinese and Japanese documentation which affords a sharp contrast
between varying types of Eastern brains. Thus, in the Memorandum of the
Black Dragon Society (Chapter VII) we have a very clear and illuminating
revelation of the Japanese political mind which has been trained to
consider problems in the modern Western way, but which remains saturated
with theocratic ideals in the sharpest conflict with the Twentieth
Century. In the pamphlet of Yang Tu (Chapter VIII) which launched the
ill-fated Monarchy Scheme and contributed so largely to the dramatic
death of Yuan Shih-kai, we have an essentially Chinese mentality of the
reactionary or corrupt type which expresses itself both on home and
foreign issues in a naively dishonest way, helpful to future diplomacy.
In the Letter of Protest (Chapter X) against the revival of Imperialism
written by Liang Ch'i-chao--the most brilliant scholar living--we have a
Chinese of the New or Liberal China, who in spite of a complete
ignorance of foreign languages shows a marvellous grasp of political
absolutes, and is a harbinger of the great days which must come again to
Cathay. In other chapters dealing with the monarchist plot we see the
official mind at work, the telegraphic despatches exchanged between
Peking and the provinces being of the highest diplomatic interest. These
documents prove conclusively that although the Japanese is more
practical than the Chinese--and more concise--there can be no question
as to which brain is the more fruitful.

Coupled with this discussion there is much matter giving an insight into
the extraordinary and calamitous foreign ignorance about present-day
China, an ignorance which is just as marked among those resident in the
country as among those who have never visited it. The whole of the
material grouped in this novel fashion should not fail to bring
conviction that the Far East, with its 500 millions of people, is
destined to play an important role in _postbellum_ history because of
the new type of modern spirit which is being there evolved. The
influence of the Chinese Republic, in the opinion of the writer, cannot
fail to be ultimately world-wide in view of the practically unlimited
resources in man-power which it disposes of.

In the Appendices will be found every document of importance for the
period under examination,--1911 to 1917. The writer desires to record
his indebtedness to the columns of _The Peking Gazette_, a newspaper
which under the brilliant editorship of Eugene Ch'en--a pure Chinese
born and educated under the British flag--has fought consistently and
victoriously for Liberalism and Justice and has made the Republic a
reality to countless thousands who otherwise would have refused to
believe in it.

PUTNAM WEALE.

PEKING, June, 1917.




CONTENTS


    I.--GENERAL INTRODUCTION

   II.--THE ENIGMA OF YUAN SHIH-KAI

  III.--THE DREAM REPUBLIC
        (From the Manchu Abdication to the dissolution of Parliament)

   IV.--THE DICTATOR AT WORK
        (From the Coup d'etat of the 4th Nov. 1913 to the outbreak of the
        World-war, 1st August, 1914)

    V.--THE FACTOR OF JAPAN

   VI.--THE TWENTY-ONE DEMANDS

  VII.--THE ORIGIN OF THE TWENTY-ONE DEMANDS

 VIII.--THE MONARCHIST PLOT
        1st The Pamphlet of Yang Tu

   IX.--THE MONARCHY PLOT
        2nd Dr. Goodnow's Memorandum

    X.--THE MONARCHY MOVEMENT IS OPPOSED
        The Appeal of the Scholar Liang Chi-chao

   XI.--THE DREAM EMPIRE
        ("The People's Voice" and the action of the Powers)

  XII.--"THE THIRD REVOLUTION"
        The Revolt of Yunnan

 XIII.--"THE THIRD REVOLUTION" (_continued_)
        Downfall and Death of Yuan Shih-kai

  XIV.--THE NEW REGIME--FROM 1916 TO 1917

   XV.--THE REPUBLIC IN COLLISION WITH REALITY: TWO TYPICAL INSTANCES OF
        "FOREIGN AGGRESSION"

  XVI.--CHINA AND THE WAR

 XVII.--THE FINAL PROBLEM:--REMODELLING THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC
        RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHINA AND THE WORLD

        APPENDICES--DOCUMENTS AND MEMORANDA




ILLUSTRATIONS

  President Li Yuan-Hung

  The Funeral of Yuan-Shih-kai: The Procession passing down the great
  Palace Approach with the famous Ch'ien Men (Gate) in the distance

  The Provincial Troops of General Chang Hsun at his Headquarters of
  Hsuchowfu

  The Funeral of Yuan Shih-kai: The Catafalque over the Coffin on its
  way to the Railway Station

  The Funeral of Yuan Shih-kai: The Procession passing down the great
  Palace Approach with the famous Ch'ien Men (Gate) in the distance

  An Encampment of "The Punitive Expedition" of 1916 on the Upper
  Yangtsze (_By courtesy of Major Isaac Newell, U.S. Military Attache_.)

  Revival of the Imperialistic Worship of Heaven by Yuan Shih-kai in
  1914: Scene on the Altar of Heaven, with Sacrificial Officers clothed
  in costumes dating from 2,000 years ago.

  A Manchu Country Fair: The figures in the foreground are all Manchu
  Women and Girls

  A Manchu Woman grinding Grain

  Silk-reeling done in the open under the Walls of Peking

  Modern Peking: A Run on a Bank

  The Re-opening of Parliament on August 1st, 1916, after three years of
  dictatorial rule

  The Original Constitutional Drafting Committee of 1913, photographed
  on the Steps of the Temple of Heaven, where the Draft was completed

  A Presidential Review of Troops in the Southern Hungtung Park outside
  Peking: Arrival of the President

  President Li Yuan-Hung and the General Staff watching the Review

  March-past of an Infantry Division

  Modern Peking: The Palace Entrance lined with Troops. Note the New
  Type Chinese Policeman in the foreground

  The Premier General Tuan Chi-Jui, Head of the Cabinet which decided to
  declare war on Germany General Feng Kuo-chang, President of the
  Republic The Scholar Liang Chi-chao, sometime Minister of Justice, and
  the foremost "Brain" in China

  General Tsao-ao, the Hero of the Yunnan Rebellion of 1915-16, who died
  from the effects of the campaign

  Liang Shih-yi, who was the Power behind Yuan Shih-kai, now proscribed
  and living in exile at Hong-Kong

  The Famous or Infamous General Chang Hsun, the leading Reactionary in
  China to-day, who still commands a force of 30,000 men astride of the
  Pukow Railway

  The Bas-relief in a Peking Temple, well illustrating Indo-Chinese
  Influences

  The Late President Yuan Shih-kai

  President Yuan Shih-kai photographed immediately after his
  Inauguration as Provisional President, March 10th, 1912

  The National Assembly sitting as a National Convention engaged on the
  Draft of the Permanent Constitution. (Specially photographed by
  permission of the Speakers for the Present Work)

  View from rear of the Hall of the National Assembly sitting as a
  National Convention engaged on the Draft of the Permanent
  Constitution. (Specially photographed by permission of the Speakers
  for the Present Work)




CHAPTER I

GENERAL INTRODUCTION


The revolution which broke out in China on the 10th October, 1911, and
which was completed with the abdication of the Manchu Dynasty on the
12th February, 1912, though acclaimed as highly successful, was in its
practical aspects something very different. With the proclamation of the
Republic, the fiction of autocratic rule had truly enough vanished; yet
the tradition survived and with it sufficient of the essential machinery
of Imperialism to defeat the nominal victors until the death of Yuan
Shih-kai.

The movement to expel the Manchus, who had seized the Dragon Throne in
1644 from the expiring Ming Dynasty, was an old one. Historians are
silent on the subject of the various secret plots which were always
being hatched to achieve that end, their silence being due to a lack of
proper records and to the difficulty of establishing the simple truth in
a country where rumour reigns supreme. But there is little doubt that
the famous Ko-lao-hui, a Secret Society with its headquarters in the
remote province of Szechuan, owed its origin to the last of the Ming
adherents, who after waging a desperate guerilla warfare from the date
of their expulsion from Peking, finally fell to the low level of
inciting assassinations and general unrest in the vain hope that they
might some day regain their heritage. At least, we know one thing
definitely: that the attempt on the life of the Emperor Chia Ching in
the Peking streets at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century was a
Secret Society plot and brought to an abrupt end the pleasant habit of
travelling among their subjects which the great Manchu Emperors
K'ang-hsi and Ch'ien Lung had inaugurated and always pursued and which
had so largely encouraged the growth of personal loyalty to a foreign
House.

From that day onwards for over a century no Emperor ventured out from
behind the frowning Walls of the Forbidden City, save for brief annual
ceremonies, such as the Worship of Heaven on the occasion of the Winter
Solstice, and during the two "flights"--first in 1860 when Peking was
occupied by an Anglo-French expedition and the Court incontinently
sought sanctuary in the mountain Palaces of Jehol; and, again, in 1900,
when with the pricking of the Boxer bubble and the arrival of the
International relief armies, the Imperial Household was forced along the
stony road to far-off Hsianfu.

The effect of this immurement was soon visible; the Manchu rule, which
was emphatically a rule of the sword, was rapidly so weakened that the
emperors became no more than _rois faineants_ at the mercy of their
minister.[1] The history of the Nineteenth Century is thus logically
enough the history of successive collapses. Not only did overseas
foreigners openly thunder at the gateways of the empire and force an
ingress, but native rebellions were constant and common. Leaving minor
disturbances out of account, there were during this period two huge
Mahommedan rebellions, besides the cataclysmic Taiping rising which
lasted ten years and is supposed to have destroyed the unbelievable
total of one hundred million persons. The empire, torn by internecine
warfare, surrendered many of its essential prerogatives to foreigners,
and by accepting the principle of extraterritoriality prepared the road
to ultimate collapse.

How in such circumstances was it possible to keep alive absolutism? The
answer is so curious that we must be explicit and exhaustive.

The simple truth is that save during the period of vigour immediately
following each foreign conquest (such as the Mongol conquest in the
Thirteenth Century and the Manchu in the Seventeenth) not only has there
never been any absolutism properly so-called in China, but that apart
from the most meagre and inefficient tax-collecting and some
rough-and-ready policing in and around the cities there has never been
any true governing at all save what the people did for themselves or
what they demanded of the officials as a protection against one another.
Any one who doubts these statements has no inkling of those facts which
are the crown as well as the foundation of the Chinese group-system, and
which must be patiently studied in the village-life of the country to be
fitly appreciated. To be quite frank, absolutism is a myth coming down
from the days of Kublai Khan when he so proudly built his _Khanbaligh_
(the Cambaluc of Marco Polo and the forebear of modern Peking) and
filled it with his troops who so soon vanished like the snows of winter.
An elaborate pretence, a deliberate policy of make-believe, ever since
those days invested Imperial Edicts with a majesty which they have never
really possessed, the effacement of the sovereign during the Nineteenth
Century contributing to the legend that there existed in the capital a
Grand and Fearful Panjandrum for whom no miracle was too great and to
whom people and officials owed trembling obedience.

In reality, the office of Emperor was never more than a
politico-religious concept, translated for the benefit of the masses
into socio-economic ordinances. These pronouncements, cast in the form
of periodic homilies called Edicts, were the ritual of government; their
purpose was instructional rather than mandatory; they were designed to
teach and keep alive the State-theory that the Emperor was the High
Priest of the Nation and that obedience to the morality of the Golden
Age, which had been inculcated by all the philosophers since Confucius
and Mencius flourished twenty-five centuries ago, would not only secure
universal happiness but contribute to national greatness.

The office of Emperor was thus heavenly rather than terrestrial, and
suasion, not arms, was the most potent argument used in everyday life.
The amazing reply (_i.e._, amazing to foreigners) made by the great
Emperor K'ang-hsi in the tremendous Eighteenth Century controversy
between the Jesuit and the Dominican missionaries, which ruined the
prospects of China's ever becoming Roman Catholic and which the Pope
refused to accept--that the custom of ancestor-worship was political and
not religious--was absolutely correct, _politics in China under the
Empire being only a system of national control exercised by inculcating
obedience to forebears_. The great efforts which the Manchus made from
the end of the Sixteenth Century (when they were still a small
Manchurian Principality striving for the succession to the Dragon Throne
and launching desperate attacks on the Great Wall of China) to receive
from the Dalai Lama, as well as from the lesser Pontiffs of Tibet and
Mongolia, high-sounding religious titles, prove conclusively that
dignities other than mere possession of the Throne were held necessary
to give solidity to a reign which began in militarism and which would
collapse as the Mongol rule had collapsed by a mere Palace revolution
unless an effective _moral_ title were somehow won.

Nor was the Manchu military Conquest, even after they had entered
Peking, so complete as has been represented by historians. The Manchus
were too small a handful, even with their Mongol and Chinese
auxiliaries, to do more than defeat the Ming armies and obtain the
submission of the chief cities of China. It is well-known to students of
their administrative methods, that whilst they reigned over China they
_ruled_ only in company with the Chinese, the system in force being a
dual control which, beginning on the Grand Council and in the various
great Boards and Departments in the capital, proceeded as far as the
provincial chief cities, but stopped short there so completely and
absolutely that the huge chains of villages and burgs had their historic
autonomy virtually untouched and lived on as they had always lived. The
elaborate system of examinations, with the splendid official honours
reserved for successful students which was adopted by the Dynasty, not
only conciliated Chinese society but provided a vast body of men whose
interest lay in maintaining the new conquest; and thus Literature, which
had always been the door to preferment, became not only one of the
instruments of government, but actually the advocate of an alien rule.
With their persons and properties safe, and their women-folk protected
by an elaborate set of capitulations from being requisitioned for the
harems of the invaders, small wonder if the mass of Chinese welcomed a
firm administration after the frightful disorders which had torn the
country during the last days of the Mings.[2]

It was the foreigner, arriving in force in China after the capture of
Peking and the ratification of the Tientsin Treaties in 1860, who so
greatly contributed to making the false idea of Manchu absolutism
current throughout the world; and in this work it was the foreign
diplomat, coming to the capital saturated with the tradition of European
absolutism, who played a not unimportant part. Investing the Emperors
with an authority with which they were never really clothed, save for
ceremonial purposes (principally perhaps because the Court was entirely
withdrawn from view and very insolent in its foreign intercourse) a
conception of High Mightiness was spread abroad reminiscent of the awe
in which Eighteenth Century nabobs spoke of the Great Mogul of India.
Chinese officials, quickly discovering that their easiest means of
defence against an irresistible pressure was to take refuge behind the
august name of the sovereign, played their role so successfully that
until 1900 it was generally believed by Europeans that no other form of
government than a despotism _sans phrase_ could be dreamed of. Finding
that on the surface an Imperial Decree enjoyed the majesty of an Ukaze
of the Czar, Europeans were ready enough to interpret as best suited
their enterprises something which they entirely failed to construe in
terms expressive of the negative nature of Chinese civilization; and so
it happened that though the government of China had become no
government at all from the moment that extraterritoriality destroyed the
theory of Imperial inviolability and infallibility, the miracle of
turning state negativism into an active governing element continued to
work after a fashion because of the disguise which the immense distances
afforded.

Adequately to explain the philosophy of distance in China, and what it
has meant historically, would require a whole volume to itself; but it
is sufficient for our purpose to indicate here certain prime essentials.
The old Chinese were so entrenched in their vastnesses that without the
play of forces which were supernatural to them, _i.e._, the
steam-engine, the telegraph, the armoured war-vessel, etc., their daily
lives could not be affected. Left to themselves, and assisted by their
own methods, they knew that blows struck across the immense roadless
spaces were so diminished in strength, by the time they reached the spot
aimed at, that they became a mere mockery of force; and, just because
they were so valueless, paved the way to effective compromises. Being
adepts in the art which modern surgeons have adopted, of leaving wounds
as far as possible to heal themselves, they trusted to time and to
nature to solve political differences which western countries boldly
attacked on very different principles. Nor were they wrong in their
view. From the capital to the Yangtsze Valley (which is the heart of the
country), is 800 miles, that is far more than the mileage between Paris
and Berlin. From Peking to Canton is 1,400 miles along a hard and
difficult route; the journey to Yunnan by the Yangtsze river is
upwards of 2,000 miles, a distance greater than the greatest march
ever undertaken by Napoleon. And when one speaks of the Outer
Dominions--Mongolia, Tibet, Turkestan--for these hundreds of miles
it is necessary to substitute thousands, and add thereto difficulties
of terrain which would have disheartened even Roman Generals.

Now the old Chinese, accepting distance as the supreme thing, had made
it the starting-point as well as the end of their government. In the
perfected viceregal system which grew up under the Ming Dynasty, and
which was taken over by the Manchus as a sound and admirable governing
principle, though they superimposed their own military system of Tartar
Generals, we have the plan that nullified the great obstacle. Authority
of every kind was _delegated_ by the Throne to various distant governing
centuries in a most complete and sweeping manner, each group of
provinces, united under a viceroy, being in everything but name so many
independent linked commonwealths, called upon for matricular
contributions in money and grain but otherwise left severely alone[3].
The chain which bound provincial China to the metropolitan government
was therefore in the last analysis finance and nothing but finance; and
if the system broke down in 1911 it was because financial reform--to
discount the new forces of which the steam engine was the symbol--had
been attempted, like military reform, both too late and in the wrong
way, and instead of strengthening, had vastly weakened the authority of
the Throne.

In pursuance of the reform-plan which became popular after the Boxer
Settlement had allowed the court to return to Peking from Hsianfu, the
viceroys found their most essential prerogative, which was the control
of the provincial purse, largely taken from them and handed over to
Financial Commissioners who were directly responsible to the Peking
Ministry of Finance, a Department which was attempting to replace the
loose system of matricular contributions by the European system of a
directly controlled taxation every penny of which would be shown in an
annual Budget. No doubt had time been vouchsafed, and had European help
been enlisted on a large scale, this change could ultimately have been
made successful. But it was precisely time which was lacking; and the
Manchus consequently paid the penalty which is always paid by those who
delay until it is too late. The old theories having been openly
abandoned, it needed only the promise of a Parliament completely to
destroy the dignity of the Son of Heaven, and to leave the viceroys as
mere hostages in the hands of rebels. A few short weeks of rebellion was
sufficient in 1911 to cause the provinces to revert to their condition
of the earlier centuries when they had been vast unfettered agricultural
communities. And once they had tasted the joys of this new independence,
it was impossible to conceive of their becoming "obedient" again.

Here another word of explanation is necessary to show clearly the
precise meaning of regionalism in China.

What had originally created each province was the chief city in each
region, such cities necessarily being the walled repositories of all
increment. Greedy of territory to enhance their wealth, and jealous of
their power, these provincial capitals throughout the ages had left no
stone unturned to extend their influence in every possible direction and
bring under their economic control as much land as possible, a fact
which is abundantly proved by the highly diversified system of weights
and measures throughout the land deliberately drawn-up to serve as
economic barriers. River-courses, mountain-ranges, climate and soil, no
doubt assisted in governing this expansion, but commercial and financial
greed was the principal force. Of this we have an exceedingly
interesting and conclusive illustration in the struggle still proceeding
between the three Manchurian provinces, Fengtien, Kirin and
Heilungchiang, to seize the lion's share of the virgin land of Eastern
Inner Mongolia which has an "open frontier" of rolling prairies. Having
the strongest provincial capital--Moukden--it has been Fengtien province
which has encroached on the Mongolian grasslands to such an extent that
its jurisdiction to-day envelops the entire western flank of Kirin
province (as can be seen in the latest Chinese maps) in the form of a
salamander, effectively preventing the latter province from controlling
territory that geographically belongs to it. In the same way in the
land-settlement which is still going on the Mongolian plateau
immediately above Peking, much of what should be Shansi territory has
been added to the metropolitan province of Chihli. Though adjustments of
provincial boundaries have been summarily made in times past, in the
main the considerations we have indicated have been the dominant factors
in determining the area of each unit.

Now in many provinces where settlement is age-old, the regionalism which
results from great distances and bad communications has been greatly
increased by race-admixture. Canton province, which was largely settled
by Chinese adventurers sailing down the coast from the Yangtsze and
intermarrying with Annamese and the older autochthonous races, has a
population-mass possessing very distinct characteristics, which sharply
conflict with Northern traits. Fuhkien province is not only as
diversified but speaks a dialect which is virtually a foreign language.
And so on North and West of the Yangtsze it is the same story,
temperamental differences of the highest political importance being
everywhere in evidence and leading to perpetual bickerings and
jealousies. For although Chinese civilization resembles in one great
particular the Mahommedan religion, in that it accepts without question
all adherents irrespective of racial origin, _politically_ the effect of
this regionalism has been such that up to very recent times the Central
Government has been almost as much a foreign government in the eyes of
many provinces as the government of Japan. Money alone formed the bond
of union; so long as questions of taxation were not involved, Peking was
as far removed from daily life as the planet Mars.

As we are now able to see very clearly, fifty years ago--that is at the
time of the Taiping Rebellion--the old power and spell of the National
Capital as a military centre had really vanished. Though in ancient days
horsemen armed with bows and lances could sweep like a tornado over the
land, levelling everything save the walled cities, in the Nineteenth
Century such methods had become impossible. Mongolia and Manchuria had
also ceased to be inexhaustible reservoirs of warlike men; the more
adjacent portions had become commercialized; whilst the outer regions
had sunk to depopulated graziers' lands. The Government, after the
collapse of the Rebellion, being greatly impoverished, had openly fallen
to balancing province against province and personality against
personality, hoping that by some means it would be able to regain its
prestige and a portion of its former wealth. Taking down the ledgers
containing the lists of provincial contributions, the mandarins of
Peking completely revised every schedule, redistributed every weight,
and saw to it that the matricular levies should fall in such a way as to
be crushing. The new taxation, _likin_, which, like the income-tax in
England, is in origin purely a war-tax, by gripping inter-provincial
commerce by the throat and rudely controlling it by the barrier-system,
was suddenly disclosed as a new and excellent way of making felt the
menaced sovereignty of the Manchus; and though the system was plainly a
two-edged weapon, the first edge to cut was the Imperial edge; that is
largely why for several decades after the Taipings China was relatively
quiet.

Time was also giving birth to another important development--important
in the sense that it was to prove finally decisive. It would have been
impossible for Peking, unless men of outstanding genius had been living,
to have foreseen that not only had the real bases of government now
become entirely economic control, but that the very moment that control
faltered the central government of China would openly and absolutely
cease to be any government at all. Modern commercialism, already
invading China at many points through the medium of the treaty-ports,
was a force which in the long run could not be denied. Every year that
passed tended to emphasize the fact that modern conditions were cutting
Peking more and more adrift from the real centres of power--the economic
centres which, with the single exception of Tientsin, lie from 800 to
1,500 miles away. It was these centres that were developing
revolutionary ideas--_i.e._, ideas at variance with the Socio-economic
principles on which the old Chinese commonwealth had been slowly built
up, and which foreign dynasties such as the Mongol and the Manchu had
never touched. The Government of the post-Taiping period still imagined
that by making their hands lie more heavily than ever on the people and
by tightening the taxation control--not by true creative work--they
could rehabilitate themselves.

It would take too long, and would weary the indulgence of the reader to
establish in a conclusive manner this thesis which had long been a
subject of inquiry on the part of political students. Chinese society,
being essentially a society organized on a credit-co-operative system,
so nicely adjusted that money, either coined or fiduciary, was not
wanted save for the petty daily purchases of the people, any system
which boldly clutched the financial establishments undertaking the
movement of _sycee_ (silver) from province to province for the
settlement of trade-balances, was bound to be effective so long as those
financial establishments remained unshaken.

The best known establishments, united in the great group known as the
Shansi Bankers, being the government bankers, undertook not only all the
remittances of surpluses to Peking, but controlled by an intricate
pass-book system the perquisites of almost every office-holder in the
empire. No sooner did an official, under the system which had grown up,
receive a provincial appointment than there hastened to him a
confidential clerk of one of these accommodating houses, who in the name
of his employers advanced all the sums necessary for the payment of the
official's post, and then proceeded with him to his province so that
moiety by moiety, as taxation flowed in, advances could be paid off and
the equilibrium re-established. A very intimate and far-reaching
connection thus existed between provincial money-interests and the
official classes. The practical work of governing China was the
balancing of tax-books and native bankers' accounts. Even the
"melting-houses," where _sycee_ was "standardized" for provincial use,
were the joint enterprises of officials and merchants; bargaining
governing every transaction; and only when a violent break occurred in
the machinery, owing to famine or rebellion, did any other force than
money intervene.

There was nothing exceptional in these practices, in the use of which
the old Chinese empire was merely following the precedent of the Roman
Empire. The vast polity that was formed before the time of Christ by the
military and commercial expansion of Rome in the Mediterranean Basin,
and among the wild tribes of Northern Europe, depended very largely on
the genius of Italian financiers and tax-collectors to whom the revenues
were either directly "farmed," or who "assisted" precisely after the
Chinese method in financing officials and local administrations, and in
replenishing a central treasury which no wealth could satisfy. The
Chinese phenomenon was therefore in no sense new; the dearth of coined
money and the variety of local standards made the methods used economic
necessities. The system was not in itself a bad system: its fatal
quality lay in its woodenness, its lack of adaptability, and in its
growing weakness in the face of foreign competition which it could never
understand. Foreign competition--that was the enemy destined to achieve
an overwhelming triumph and dash to ruins a hoary survival.

War with Japan sounded the first trumpet-blast which should have been
heeded. In the year 1894, being faced with the necessity of finding
immediately a large sum of specie for purpose of war, the native bankers
proclaimed their total inability to do so, and the first great foreign
loan contract was signed.[4] Little attention was attracted to what is a
turning-point in Chinese history. There cannot be the slightest doubt
that in 1894 the Manchus wrote the first sentences of an abdication
which was only formally pronounced in 1912: they had inaugurated the
financial thraldom under which China still languishes. Within a period
of forty months, in order to settle the disastrous Japanese war, foreign
loans amounting to nearly fifty-five million pounds were completed. This
indebtedness, amounting to nearly three times the "visible" annual
revenues of the country--that is, the revenues actually accounted for to
Peking--was unparalleled in Chinese history. It was a gold indebtedness
subject to all sorts of manipulations which no Chinese properly
understood. It had special political meaning and special political
consequences because the loans were virtually guaranteed by the Powers.
It was a long-drawn _coup d'etat_ of a nature that all foreigners
understood because it forged external chains.

The _internal_ significance was even greater than the external. The
loans were secured on the most important "direct" revenues reaching
Peking--the Customs receipts, which were concerned with the most vital
function in the new economic life springing up, the steam-borne coasting
and river-trade as well as the purely foreign trade. That most vital
function tended consequently to become more and more hall-marked as
foreign; it no longer depended in any direct sense on Peking for
protection. The hypothecation of these revenues to foreigners for
periods running into decades--coupled with their administration by
foreigners--was such a distinct restriction of the rights of eminent
domain as to amount to a partial abrogation of sovereignty.

That this was vaguely understood by the masses is now quite certain. The
Boxer movement of 1900, like the great proletarian risings which
occurred in Italy in the pre-Christian era as a result of the
impoverishment and moral disorder brought about by Roman misgovernment,
was simply a socio-economic catastrophe exhibiting itself in an
unexpected form. The dying Manchu dynasty, at last in open despair,
turned the revolt, insanely enough, against the foreigner--that is
against those who already held the really vital portion of their
sovereignty. So far from saving itself by this act, the dynasty wrote
another sentence in its death-warrant. Economically the Manchus had been
for years almost lost; the Boxer indemnities were the last straw. By
more than doubling the burden of foreign commitments, and by placing the
operation of the indemnities directly in the hands of foreign bankers by
the method of monthly quotas, payable in Shanghai, _the Peking
Government as far back as fifteen years ago was reduced to being a
government at thirty days' sight, at the mercy of any shock of events
which could be protracted over a few monthly settlements_. There is no
denying this signal fact, which is probably the most remarkable
illustration of the restrictive power of money which has ever been
afforded in the history of Asia.

The phenomenon, however, was complex and we must be careful to
understand its workings. A mercantile curiosity, to find the parallel
for which we must go back to the Middle Ages in Europe, when "free
cities" such as those of the Hanseatic League plentifully
dotted river and coast line, served to increase the general difficulties
of a situation which no one formula could adequately cover.
Extraterritoriality, by creating the "treaty port" in China, had been
the most powerful weapon in undermining native economics; yet at the
same time it had been the agent for creating powerful new
counter-balancing interests. Though the increasingly large groups of
foreigners, residing under their own laws, and building up, under their
own specially protected system of international exchange, a new and
imposing edifice, had made the hovel-like nature of Chinese economics
glaringly evident, the mercantile classes of the New China, being always
quick to avail themselves of money-making devices, had not only taken
shelter under this new and imposing edifice, but were rapidly extending
it of their own accord. In brief, the trading Chinese were identifying
themselves and their major interests with the treaty-ports; they were
transferring thither their specie and their credits; making huge
investments in land and properties, under the aegis of foreign flags in
which they absolutely trusted. The money-interests of the country knew
instinctively that the native system was doomed and that with this doom
there would come many changes; these interests, in the way common to
money all the world over, were insuring themselves against the
inevitable.

The force of this--politically--became finally evident in 1911; and what
we have said in our opening sentences should now be clear. The Chinese
Revolution was an emotional rising against the Peking System because it
was a bad and inefficient and retrograde system, just as much as against
the Manchus, who after all had adopted purely Chinese methods and who
were no more foreigners than Scotchmen or Irishmen are foreigners to-day
in England. The Revolution of 1911 derived its meaning and its value--as
well as its mandate--not from what it proclaimed, but for what it stood
for. Historically, 1911 was the lineal descendant of 1900, which again
was the offspring of the economic collapse advertised by the great
foreign loans of the Japanese war, loans made necessary because the
Taipings had disclosed the complete disappearance of the only _raison
d'etre_ of Peking sovereignty, _i.e._ the old-time military power. The
story is, therefore, clear and well-connected and so logical in its
results that it has about it a finality suggesting the unrolling of the
inevitable.

During the Revolution the one decisive factor was shown to be almost at
once--money, nothing but money. The pinch was felt at the end of the
first thirty days. Provincial remittances ceased; the Boxer quotas
remained unpaid; a foreign embargo was laid upon the Customs funds. The
Northern troops, raised and trained by Yuan Shih-kai, when he was
Viceroy of the Metropolitan province, were, it is true, proving
themselves the masters of the Yangtsze and South China troops; yet that
circumstance was meaningless. Those troops were fighting for what had
already proved itself a lost cause--the Peking System, as well as the
Manchu dynasty. The fight turned more and more into a money-fight. It
was foreign money which brought about the first truce and the transfer
of the so-called republican government from Nanking to Peking. In the
strictest sense of the words every phase of the settlement then arrived
at was a settlement in terms of cash.[5]

Had means existed for rapidly replenishing the Chinese Treasury without
having recourse to European stockmarkets (whose actions are
semi-officially controlled when distant regions are involved) the
Republic might have fared better. But placed almost at once through
foreign dictation under a species of police-control, which while
nominally derived from Western conceptions, was primarily designed to
rehabilitate the semblance of the authority which had been so
sensationally extinguished, the Republic remained only a dream; and the
world, taught to believe that there could be no real stability until the
scheme of government approximated to the conception long formed of
Peking absolutism, waited patiently for the rude awakening which came
with the Yuan Shih-kai _coup d'etat_ of 4th November, 1913. Thus we had
this double paradox; on the one hand the Chinese people awkwardly trying
to be western in a Chinese way and failing: on the other, foreign
officials and foreign governments trying to be Chinese and making the
confusion worse confounded. It was inevitable in such circumstances
that the history of the past six years should have been the history of a
slow tragedy, and that almost every page should be written over with the
name of the man who was the selected bailiff of the Powers--Yuan
Shih-kai.

[Illustration: The Funeral of Yuan Shih-kai: The Procession passing
down the great Palace Approach, with the famous Ch'ien Men (Gate) in the
distance.]

[Illustration: The Provincial Troops of General Chang Hsun at his
Headquarters of Hsuchowfu.]

[Illustration: The Funeral of Yuan Shih-kai: The Catafalque over the
Coffin on its way to the Railway Station.]

[Illustration: The Funeral of Yuan Shih-kai: The Procession passing down
the great Palace Approach, with the famous Ch'ien Men (Gate) in the
distance.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] As there is a good deal of misunderstanding on the subject of the
Manchus an explanatory note is useful.

The Manchu people, who belong to the Mongol or Turanian Group, number at
the maximum five million souls. Their distribution at the time of the
revolution of 1911 was roughly as follows: In and around Peking say two
millions; in posts through China say one-half million,--or possibly
three-quarters of a million; in Manchuria Proper--the home of the
race--say two or two and a half millions. The fighting force was
composed in this fashion: When Peking fell into their hands in 1644 as a
result of a stratagem combined with dissensions among the Chinese
themselves, the entire armed strength was reorganized in Eight Banners
or Army Corps, each corps being composed of three racial divisions, (1)
pure Manchus, (2) Mongols who had assisted in the conquest and (3)
Northern Chinese who had gone over to the conquerors. These Eight
Banners, each commanded by an "iron-capped" Prince, represented the
authority of the Throne and had their headquarters in Peking with small
garrisons throughout the provinces at various strategic centres. These
garrisons had entirely ceased to have any value before the 18th Century
had closed and were therefore purely ceremonial and symbolic, all the
fighting being done by special Chinese corps which were raised as
necessity arose.

[2] This most interesting point--the immunity of Chinese women from
forced marriage with Manchus--has been far too little noticed by
historians though it throws a flood of light on the sociological aspects
of the Manchu conquest. Had that conquest been absolute it would have
been impossible for the Chinese people to have protected their
women-folk in such a significant way.

[3] A very interesting proof--and one that has never been properly
exposed--of the astoundingly rationalistic principles on which the
Chinese polity is founded is to be seen in the position of priesthoods
in China. Unlike every other civilization in the world, at no stage of
the development of the State has it been necessary for religion in China
to intervene between the rulers and the ruled, saving the people from
oppression. In Europe without the supernatural barrier of the Church,
the position of the common people in the Middle Ages would have been
intolerable, and life, and virtue totally unprotected. Buckle, in his
"History of Civilization," like other extreme radicals, has failed to
understand that established religions have paradoxically been most
valuable because of their vast secular powers, exercised under the mask
of spiritual authority. Without this ghostly restraint rulers would have
been so oppressive as to have destroyed their peoples. The two greatest
monuments to Chinese civilization, then consist of these twin facts;
first, that the Chinese have never had the need for such supernatural
restraints exercised by a privileged body, and secondly, that they are
absolutely without any feeling of class or caste--prince and pauper
meeting on terms of frank and humorous equality--the race thus being the
only pure and untinctured democracy the world has ever known.

[4] (a) This loan was the so-called 7 per cent. Silver loan of 1894 for
Shanghai Taels 10,000,000 negotiated by the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank. It
was followed in 1895 by a L3,000,000 Gold 6 per cent. Loan, then by two
more 6 per cent. loans for a million each in the same year, making a
total of L6,635,000 sterling for the bare war-expenses. The Japanese war
indemnity raised in three successive issues--from 1895 to 1898--of
L16,000,000 each, added L48,000,000. Thus the Korean imbroglio cost
China nearly 55 millions sterling. As the purchasing power of the
sovereign is eight times larger in China than in Europe, this debt
economically would mean 440 millions in England--say nearly double what
the ruinous South African war cost. It is by such methods of comparison
that the vital nature of the economic factor in recent Chinese history
is made clear.

[5] There is no doubt that the so-called Belgian loan, L1,800,000 of
which was paid over in cash at the beginning of 1912, was the instrument
which brought every one to terms.




CHAPTER II

THE ENIGMA OF YUAN SHIH-KAI

THE HISTORY OF THE MAN FROM THE OPENING OF HIS CAREER IN KOREA IN 1882
TO THE END OF THE REVOLUTION, 12TH FEBRUARY, 1912


Yuan Shih-kai's career falls into two clear-cut parts, almost as if it
had been specially arranged for the biographer; there is the
probationary period in Korea, and the executive in North China. The
first is important only because of the moulding-power which early
influences exerted on the man's character; but it is interesting in
another way since it affords glimpses of the sort of things which
affected this leader's imagination throughout his life and finally
brought him to irretrievable ruin. The second-period is choke-full of
action; and over every chapter one can see the ominous point of
interrogation which was finally answered in his tragic political and
physical collapse.

Yuan Shih-kai's origin, without being precisely obscure, is unimportant.
He came of a Honanese family who were nothing more distinguished than
farmers possessing a certain amount of land, but not too much of the
world's possessions. The boy probably ran wild in the field at an age
when the sons of high officials and literati were already pale and
anaemic from over-much study. To some such cause the man undoubtedly
owed his powerful physique, his remarkable appetite, his general
roughness. Native biographers state that as a youth he failed to pass
his _hsiu-tsai_ examinations--the lowest civil service degree--because
he had spent too much time in riding and boxing and fencing. An uncle in
official life early took charge of him; and when this relative died the
young man displayed filial piety in accompanying the corpse back to the
family graves and in otherwise manifesting grief. Through official
connections a place was subsequently found for him in that public
department under the Manchus which may be called the military
intendancy, and it was through this branch of the civil service that he
rose to power. Properly speaking Yuan Shih-kai was never an
army-officer; he was a military official--his highest rank later on
being that of military judge, or better, Judicial Commissioner.

Yuan Shih-kai first emerges into public view in 1882 when, as a sequel
to the opening of Korea through the action of foreign Powers in forcing
the then Hermit kingdom to sign commercial treaties, China began
dispatching troops to Seoul. Yuan Shih-kai, with two other officers,
commanding in all some 3,000 men, arrived from Shantung, where he had
been in the train of a certain General Wu Chang-ching, and now encamped
in the Korean capital nominally to preserve order, but in reality, to
enforce the claims of the suzerain power. For the Peking Government had
never retreated from the position that Korea had been a vassal state
ever since the Ming Dynasty had saved the country from the clutches of
Hideyoshi and his Japanese invaders in the Sixteenth Century. Yuan
Shih-kai had been personally recommended by this General Wu Chang-ching
as a young man of ability and energy to the famous Li Hung Chang, who as
Tientsin Viceroy and High Commissioner for the Northern Seas was
responsible for the conduct of Korean affairs. The future dictator of
China was then only twenty-five years old.

His very first contact with practical politics gave him a peculiar
manner of viewing political problems. The arrival of Chinese troops in
Seoul marked the beginning of that acute rivalry with Japan which
finally culminated in the short and disastrous war of 1894-95. China, in
order to preserve her influence in Korea against the growing influence
of Japan, intrigued night and day in the Seoul Palaces, allying herself
with the Conservative Court party which was led by the notorious Korean
Queen who was afterwards assassinated. The Chinese agents aided and
abetted the reactionary group, constantly inciting them to attack the
Japanese and drive them out of the country.

Continual outrages were the consequence. The Japanese legation was
attacked and destroyed by the Korean mob not once but on several
occasions during a decade which furnishes one of the most amazing
chapters in the history of Asia. Yuan Shih-kai, being then merely a
junior general officer under the orders of the Chinese Imperial
Resident, is of no particular importance; but it is significant of the
man that he should suddenly come well under the limelight on the first
possible occasion. On 6th December, 1884, leading 2,000 Chinese troops,
and acting in concert with 3,000 Korean soldiers, he attacked the Tong
Kwan Palace in which the Japanese Minister and his staff, protected by
two companies of Japanese infantry, had taken refuge owing to the
threatening state of affairs in the capital. Apparently there was no
particular plan--it was the action of a mob of soldiery tumbling into a
political brawl and assisted by their officers for reasons which appear
to-day nonsensical. The sequel was, however, extraordinary. The Japanese
held the Palace gates as long as possible, and then being desperate
exploded a mine which killed numbers of Koreans and Chinese soldiery and
threw the attack into confusion. They then fought their way out of the
city escaping ultimately to the nearest sea-port, Chemulpo.

The explanation of this extraordinary episode has never been made
public. The practical result was that after a period of extreme tension
between China and Japan which was expected to lead to war, that
political genius, the late Prince Ito, managed to calm things down and
arrange workable _modus vivendi_. Yuan Shih-kai, who had gone to
Tientsin to report in person to Li Hung Chang, returned to Seoul
triumphantly in October, 1885, as Imperial Resident. He was then
twenty-eight years old; he had come to the front, no matter by what
means, in a quite remarkable manner.

The history of the next nine years furnishes plenty of minor incidents,
but nothing of historic importance. As the faithful lieutenant of Li
Hung Chang, Yuan Shih-kai's particular business was simply to combat
Japanese influence and hold the threatened advance in check. He failed,
of course, since he was playing a losing game; and yet he succeeded
where he undoubtedly wished to succeed. By rendering faithful service
he established the reputation he wished to win; and though he did
nothing great he retained his post right up to the act which led to the
declaration of war in 1894. Whether he actually precipitated that war is
still a matter of opinion. On the sinking by the Japanese fleet of the
British steamer _Kowshing_, which was carrying Chinese reinforcements
from Taku anchorage to Asan Bay to his assistance, seeing that the game
was up, he quietly left the Korean capital and made his way overland to
North China. That swift, silent journey home ends the period of his
novitiate.

It took him a certain period to weather the storm which the utter
collapse of China in her armed encounter with Japan brought about--and
particularly to obtain forgiveness for evacuating Seoul without orders.
Technically his offence was punishable by death--the old Chinese code
being most stringent in such matters. But by 1896 he was back in favour
again, and through the influence of his patron Li Hung Chang, he was at
length appointed in command of the Hsiaochan camp near Tientsin, where
he was promoted and given the task of reforming a division of old-style
troops and making them as efficient as Japanese soldiery. He had already
earned a wide reputation for severity, for willingness to accept
responsibility, for nepotism, and for a rare ability to turn even
disasters to his own advantage--all attributes which up to the last
moment stood him in good stead.

In the Hsiaochan camp the most important chapter of his life opens;
there is every indication that he fully realized it. Tientsin has always
been the gateway to Peking: from there the road to high preferment is
easily reached. Yuan Shih-kai marched steadily forward, taking the very
first turning-point in a manner which stamped him for many of his
compatriots in a way which can never be obliterated.

It is first necessary to say a word about the troops of his command,
since this has a bearing on present-day politics. The bulk of the
soldiery were so-called _Huai Chun_--_i.e._, nominally troops from the
Huai districts, just south of Li Hung Chang's native province Anhui.
These Kiangu men, mixed with Shantung recruits, had earned a historic
place in the favour of the Manchus owing to the part they had played in
the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion, in which great event General
Gordon and Li Hung Chang had been so closely associated. They and the
troops of Hunan province, led by the celebrated Marquis Tseng Kuo-fan,
were "the loyal troops," resembling the Sikhs during the Indian Mutiny;
they were supposed to be true to their salt to the last man. Certainly
they gave proofs of uncustomary fidelity.

In those military days of twenty years ago Yuan Shih-kai and his
henchmen were, however, concerned with simpler problems. It was then a
question of drill and nothing but drill. In his camp near Tientsin the
future President of the Chinese Republic succeeded in reorganizing his
troops so well that in a very short time the Hsiaochan Division became
known as a _corps d'elite_. The discipline was so stern that there were
said to be only two ways of noticing subordinates, either by promoting
or beheading them. Devoting himself to his task Yuan Shih-kai gave
promise of being able to handle much bigger problems.

His zeal soon attracted the attention of the Manchu Court. The
circumstances in Peking at that time were peculiar. The famous old
Empress Dowager, Tzu-hsi, after the Japanese war, had greatly relaxed
her hold on the Emperor Kwanghsu, who though still in subjection to her,
nominally governed the empire. A well-intentioned but weak man, he had
surrounded himself with advanced scholars, led by the celebrated Kang Yu
Wei, who daily studied with him and filled him with new doctrines,
teaching him to believe that if he would only exert his power he might
rescue the nation from international ignominy and make for himself an
imperishable name.

The sequel was inevitable. In 1898 the oriental world was electrified by
the so-called Reform Edicts, in which the Emperor undertook to modernize
China, and in which he exhorted the nation to obey him. The greatest
alarm was created in Court circles by this action; the whole vast body
of Metropolitan officialdom, seeing its future threatened, flooded the
Palace of the Empress Dowager with Secret Memorials praying her to
resume power. Flattered, she gave her secret assent.

Things marched quickly after that. The Empress, nothing loth, began
making certain dispositions. Troops were moved, men were shifted here
and there in a way that presaged action; and the Emperor, now
thoroughly alarmed and yielding to the entreaties of his followers, sent
two members of the Reform Party to Yuan Shih-kai bearing an alleged
autograph order for him to advance instantly on Peking with all his
troops; to surround the Palace, to secure the person of the Emperor from
all danger, and then to depose the Empress Dowager for ever from power.
What happened is equally well-known. Yuan Shih-kai, after an exhaustive
examination of the message and messengers, as well as other attempts to
substantiate the genuineness of the appeal, communicated its nature to
the then Viceroy of Chihli, the Imperial Clansman Jung Lu, whose
intimacy with the Empress Dowager since the days of her youth has passed
into history. Jung Lu lost no time in acting. He beheaded the two
messengers and personally reported the whole plot to the Empress Dowager
who was already fully warned. The result was the so-called _coup d'etat_
of September, 1898, when all the Reformers who had not fled were
summarily executed, and the Emperor Kwanghsu himself closely imprisoned
in the Island Palace within that portion of the Forbidden City known as
the Three Lakes, having (until the Boxer outbreak of 1900 carried him to
Hsianfu), as sole companions his two favourites, the celebrated
odalisques "Pearl" and "Lustre."

This is no place to enter into the controversial aspect of Yuan
Shih-kai's action in 1898 which has been hotly debated by partisans for
many years. For onlookers the verdict must always remain largely a
matter of opinion; certainly this is one of those matters which cannot
be passed upon by any one but a Chinese tribunal furnished with all the
evidence. Those days which witnessed the imprisonment of Kwanghsu were
great because they opened wide the portals of the Romance of History:
all who were in Peking can never forget the counter-stroke; the arrival
of the hordes composed of Tung Fu-hsiang's Mahommedan cavalry--men who
had ridden hard across a formidable piece of Asia at the behest of their
Empress and who entered the capital in great clouds of dust. It was in
that year of 1898 also that Legation Guards reappeared in Peking--a few
files for each Legation as in 1860--and it was then that clear-sighted
prophets saw the beginning of the end of the Manchu Dynasty.

Yuan Shih-kai's reward for his share in this counter-revolution was his
appointment to the governorship of Shantung province. He moved thither
with all his troops in December, 1899. Armed _cap-a-pie_ he was ready
for the next act--the Boxers, who burst on China in the Summer of 1900.
These men were already at work in Shantung villages with their
incantations and alleged witchcraft. There is evidence that their
propaganda had been going on for months, if not for years, before any
one had heard of it. Yuan Shih-kai had the priceless opportunity of
studying them at close range and soon made up his mind about certain
things. When the storm burst, pretending to see nothing but mad fanatics
in those who, realizing the plight of their country, had adopted the
war-cry "Blot out the Manchus and the foreigner," he struck at them
fiercely, driving the whole savage horde head-long into the metropolitan
province of Chihli. There, seduced by the Manchus, they suddenly changed
the inscription on their flags. Their sole enemy became the foreigner
and all his works, and forthwith they were officially protected. Far and
wide they killed every white face they could find. They tore up
railways, burnt churches and chapels and produced a general anarchy
which could only have one end--European intervention. The man, sitting
on the edge of Chinese history but not yet identifying himself with its
main currents because he was not strong enough for that had once again
not judged wrongly. With his Korean experience to assist him, he had
seen precisely what the end must inevitably be.

The crash in Peking, when the siege of the Legations had been raised by
an international army, found him alert and sympathetic--ready with
advice, ready to shoulder new responsibilities, ready to explain away
everything. The signature of the Peace Protocol of 1901 was signalized
by his obtaining the viceroyalty of Chihli, succeeding the great Li Hung
Chang himself, who had been reappointed to his old post, but had found
active duties too wearisome. This was a marvellous success for a man but
little over forty. And when the fugitive Court at length returned from
Hsianfu in 1902, honours were heaped upon him as a person particularly
worthy of honour because he had kept up appearances and maintained the
authority of the distressed Throne. As if in answer to this he flooded
the Court with memorials praying that in order to restore the power of
the Dynasty a complete army of modern troops be raised--as numerous as
possible but above all efficient.

His advice was listened to. From 1902 until 1907 as Minister of the Army
Reorganization Council--a special post he held simultaneously with that
of metropolitan Viceroy--Yuan Shih-kai's great effort was concentrated
on raising an efficient fighting force. In those five years, despite all
financial embarrassments, North China raised and equipped six excellent
Divisions of field-troops--75,000 men--all looking to Yuan Shih-kai as
their sole master. So much energy did he display in pushing military
reorganization throughout the provinces that the Court, warned by
jealous rivals of his growing power, suddenly promoted him to a post
where he would be powerless. One day he was brought to Peking as Grand
Councillor and President of the Board of Foreign Affairs, and ordered to
hand over all army matters to his noted rival, the Manchu Tieh Liang.
The time had arrived to muzzle him. His last phase as a pawn had come.

Few foreign diplomats calling at China's Foreign Office to discuss
matters during that short period which lasted barely a twelve-month,
imagined that the square resolute-looking man who as President of the
Board gave the same energy and attention to consular squabbles as to the
reorganization of a national-fighting force, was almost daily engaged in
a fierce clandestine struggle to maintain even his modest position.
Jealousy, which flourishes in Peking like the upas tree, was for ever
blighting his schemes and blocking his plans. He had been brought to
Peking to be tied up; he was constantly being denounced; and even his
all powerful patroness, the old Empress Dowager, who owed so much to
him, suffered from constant premonitions that the end was fast
approaching, and that with her the Dynasty would die.

In the Autumn of 1908 she took sick. The gravest fears quickly spread.
It was immediately reported that the Emperor Kwanghsu was also very
ill--an ominous coincidence. Very suddenly both personages collapsed and
died, the Empress Dowager slightly before the Emperor. There is little
doubt that the Emperor himself was poisoned. The legend runs that as he
expired not only did he give his Consort, who was to succeed him in the
exercise of the nominal power of the Throne, a last secret Edict to
behead Yuan Shih-kai, but that his faltering hand described circle
after circle in the air until his followers understood the meaning. In
the vernacular the name of the great viceroy and the word for circle
have the same sound; the gesture signified that the dying monarch's last
wish was revenge on the man who had failed him ten years before.

An ominous calm followed this great break with the past. It was
understood that the Court was torn by two violent factions regarding the
succession which the Empress Tzu-hsi had herself decided. The fact that
another long Regency had become inevitable through the accession of the
child Hsuan Tung aroused instant apprehensions among foreign observers,
whilst it was confidently predicted that Yuan Shih-kai's last days had
come.

The blow fell suddenly on the 2nd January, 1909. In the interval between
the death of the old Empress and his disgrace, Yuan Shih-kai was
actually promoted to the highest rank in the gift of the Throne, that
is, made "Senior Guardian of the Heir Apparent" and placed in charge of
the Imperial funeral arrangements--a lucrative appointment. During that
interval it is understood that the new Regent, brother of the Emperor
Kwanghsu, consulted all the most trusted magnates of the empire
regarding the manner in which the secret decapitation Decree should be
treated. All advised him to be warned in time, and not to venture on a
course of action which would be condemned both by the nation and by the
Powers. Another Edict was therefore prepared simply dismissing Yuan
Shih-kai from office and ordering him to return to his native place.

Every one remembers that day in Peking when popular rumour declared that
the man's last hour had come. Warned on every side to beware, Yuan
Shih-kai left the Palace as soon as he had read the Edict of dismissal
in the Grand Council and drove straight to the railway-station, whence
he entrained for Tientsin, dressed as a simple citizen. Rooms had been
taken for him at a European hotel, the British Consulate approached for
protection, when another train brought down his eldest son bearing a
message direct from the Grand Council Chamber, absolutely guaranteeing
the safety of his life. Accordingly he duly returned to his native place
in Honan province, and for two years--until the outbreak of the
Revolution--devoted himself sedulously to the development of the large
estate he had acquired with the fruits of office. Living like a
patriarch of old, surrounded by his many wives and children, he
announced constantly that he had entirely dropped out of the political
life of China and only desired to be left in peace. There is reason to
believe, however, that his henchmen continually reported to him the true
state of affairs, and bade him bide his time. Certain it is that the
firing of the first shots on the Yangtsze found him alert and issuing
private orders to his followers. It was inevitable that he should have
been recalled to office--and actually within one hundred hours of the
first news of the outbreak the Court sent for him urgently and
ungraciously.

From the 14th October, 1911, when he was appointed by Imperial Edict
Viceroy of Hupeh and Hunan and ordered to proceed at once to the front
to quell the insurrection, until the 1st November, when he was given
virtually Supreme Power as President of the Grand Council in place of
Prince Ching, a whole volume is required to discuss adequately the maze
of questions involved. For the purposes of this account, however, the
matter can be dismissed very briefly in this way. Welcoming the
opportunity which had at last come and determined once for all to settle
matters decisively, so far as he was personally concerned, Yuan Shih-kai
deliberately followed the policy of holding back and delaying everything
until the very incapacity marking both sides--the Revolutionists quite
as much as the Manchus--forced him, as man of action and man of
diplomacy, to be acclaimed the sole mediator and saviour of the nation.

The detailed course of the Revolution, and the peculiar manner in which
Yuan Shih-kai allowed events rather than men to assert their mastery has
often been related and need not long detain us. It is generally conceded
that in spite of the bravery of the raw revolutionary levies, their
capacity was entirely unequal to the trump card Yuan Shih-kai held all
the while in his hand--the six fully-equipped Divisions of Field Troops
he himself had organized as Tientsin Viceroy. It was a portion of this
field-force which captured and destroyed the chief revolutionary base in
the triple city of Hankow, Hanyang and Wuchang in November, 1911, and
which he held back just as it was about to give the _coup de grace_ by
crossing the river in force and sweeping the last remnants of the
revolutionary army to perdition. Thus it is correct to declare that had
he so wished Yuan Shih-kai could have crushed the revolution entirely
before the end of 1911; but he was sufficiently astute to see that the
problem he had to solve was not merely military but moral as well. The
Chinese as a nation were suffering from a grave complaint. Their
civilization had been made almost bankrupt owing to unresisted foreign
aggression and to the native inability to cope with the mass of
accumulated wrongs which a superimposed and exhausted feudalism--the
Manchu system--had brought about. Yuan Shih-kai knew that the Boxers had
been theoretically correct in selecting as they first did the watchword
which they had first placed on their banners--"blot out the Manchus and
all foreign things." Both had sapped the old civilization to its
foundations. But the programme they had proposed was idealistic, not
practical. One element could be cleared away--the other had to be
endured. Had the Boxers been sensible they would have modified their
programme to the extent of protecting the foreigners, whilst they
assailed the Dynasty which had brought them so low. The Court Party, as
we have said, seduced their leaders to acting in precisely the reverse
sense.

Yuan Shih-kai was neither a Boxer, nor yet a believer in idealistic
foolishness. He had realized that the essence of successful rule in the
China of the Twentieth Century was to support the foreign point of
view--nominally at least--because foreigners disposed of unlimited
monetary resources, and had science on their side. He knew that so long
as he did not openly flout foreign opinion by indulging in bare-faced
assassinations, he would be supported owing to the international
reputation he had established in 1900. Arguing from these premises, his
instinct also told him that an appearance of legality must always be
sedulously preserved and the aspirations of the nation nominally
satisfied. For this reason he arranged matters in such a manner as to
appear always as the instrument of fate. For this reason, although he
destroyed the revolutionists on the mid-Yangtsze, to equalize matters,
on the lower Yangtsze he secretly ordered the evacuation of Nanking by
the Imperialist forces so that he might have a tangible argument with
which to convince the Manchus regarding the root and branch reform which
he knew was necessary. That reform had been accepted in principle by the
Throne when it agreed to the so-called Nineteen Fundamental Articles, a
corpus of demands which all the Northern Generals had endorsed and had
indeed insisted should be the basis of government before they would
fight the rebellious South in 1911. There is reason to believe that
provided he had been made _de facto_ Regent, Yuan Shih-kai would have
supported to the end a Manchu Monarchy. But the surprising swiftness of
the Revolutionary Party's action in proclaiming the Republic at Nanking
on the 1st January, 1912, and the support which foreign opinion gave
that venture confused him. He had already consented to peace
negotiations with the revolutionary South in the middle of December,
1911, and once he was drawn into those negotiations his policy wavered,
the armistice in the field being constantly extended because he saw that
the Foreign Powers, and particularly England, were averse from further
civil war. Having dispatched a former lieutenant, Tong Shao-yi, to
Shanghai as his Plenipotentiary, he soon found himself committed to a
course of action different from what he had originally contemplated.
South China and Central China insisted so vehemently that the only
solution that was acceptable to them was the permanent and absolute
elimination of the Manchu Dynasty, that he himself was half-convinced,
the last argument necessary being the secret promise that he should
become the first President of the united Republic. In the circumstances,
had he been really loyal, it was his duty either to resume his warfare
or resign his appointment as Prime Minister and go into retirement. He
did neither. In a thoroughly characteristic manner he sought a middle
course, after having vaguely advocated a national convention to settle
the matter. By specious misrepresentation the widow of the Emperor
Kwanghsu--the Dowager Empress Lung Yu who had succeeded the Prince
Regent Ch'un in her care of the interests of the child Emperor Hsuan
Tung--was induced to believe that ceremonial retirement was the only
course open to the Dynasty if the country was to be saved from
disruption and partition. There is reason to believe that the Memorial
of all the Northern Generals which was telegraphed to Peking on the 28th
January, 1912, and which advised abdication, was inspired by him. In any
case it was certainly Yuan Shih-kai who drew up the so-called Articles
of Favourable Treatment for the Manchu House and caused them to be
telegraphed to the South, whence they were telegraphed back to him as
the maximum the Revolutionary Party was prepared to concede: and by a
curious chance the attempt made to assassinate him outside the Palace
Gates actually occurred on the very day he had submitted an outline of
these terms on his bended knees to the Empress Dowager and secured their
qualified acceptance. The pathetic attempt to confer on him as late as
the 25th January the title of Marquess, the highest rank of nobility
which could be given a Chinese, an attempt which was four times renewed,
was the last despairing gesture of a moribund power. Within very few
days the Throne reluctantly decreed its own abdication in three
extremely curious Edicts which are worthy of study in the appendix. They
prove conclusively that the Imperial Family believed that it was only
abdicating its political power, whilst retaining all ancient ceremonial
rights and titles. Plainly the conception of a Republic, or a People's
Government, as it was termed in the native ideographs, was
unintelligible to Peking.

Yuan Shih-kai had now won everything he wished for. By securing that the
Imperial Commission to organize the Republic and re-unite the warring
sections was placed solely in his hands, he prepared to give a type of
Government about which he knew nothing a trial. It is interesting to
note that he held to the very end of his life that he derived his powers
solely from the Last Edicts, and in nowise from his compact with the
Nanking Republic which had instituted the so-called Provisional
Constitution. He was careful, however, not to lay this down
categorically until many months later, when his dictatorship seemed
undisputed. But from the day of the Manchu Abdication almost, he was
constantly engaged in calculating whether he dared risk everything on
one throw of the dice and ascend the Throne himself; and it is precisely
this which imparts such dramatic interest to the astounding story which
follows.




CHAPTER III

THE DREAM REPUBLIC

(FROM THE 1st JANUARY, 1912, TO THE DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT)


To describe briefly and intelligibly the series of transactions from the
1st January, 1912, when the Republic was proclaimed at Nanking by a
handful of provincial delegates, and Dr. Sun Yat Sen elected Provisional
President, to the _coup d'etat_ of 4th November, 1913, when Yuan
Shih-kai, elected full President a few weeks previously, after having
acted as Chief Executive for twenty months, boldly broke up Parliament
and made himself _de facto_ Dictator of China, is a matter of
extraordinary difficulty.

All through this important period of Chinese history one has the
impression that one is in dreamland and that fleeting emotions take the
place of more solid things. Plot and counter-plot follow one another so
rapidly that an accurate record of them all would be as wearisome as the
Book of Chronicles itself; whilst the amazing web of financial intrigue
which binds the whole together is so complex--and at the same time so
antithetical to the political struggle--that the two stories seem to run
counter to one another, although they are as closely united as two
assassins pledged to carry through in common a dread adventure. A huge
agglomeration of people estimated to number four hundred millions, being
left without qualified leaders and told that the system of government,
which had been laid down by the Nanking Provisional Constitution and
endorsed by the Abdication Edicts, was a system in which every man was
as good as neighbour, swayed meaninglessly to and fro, vainly seeking to
regain the equilibrium which had been so sensationally lost. A litigious
spirit became so universal that all authority was openly derided,
crimes of every description being so common as to force most respectable
men to withdraw from public affairs and leave a bare rump of desperadoes
in power.

Long embarrassed by the struggle to pay her foreign loans and
indemnities, China was also virtually penniless. The impossibility of
arranging large borrowings on foreign markets without the open support
of foreign governments--a support which was hedged round with
conditions--made necessary a system of petty expedients under which
practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid
asset it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of
undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of
unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the
market was flooded with a worthless currency which it was unable to
absorb. The Provincial leaders, being powerless to introduce
improvement, exclaimed that it was the business of the Central
Government as representative of the sovereign people to find solutions;
and so long as they maintained themselves in office they went their
respective ways with a sublime contempt for the chaos around them.

What was this Central Government? In order successfully to understand an
unparalleled situation we must indicate its nature.

The manoeuvres to which Yuan Shih-kai had so astutely lent himself from
the outbreak of the Revolution had left him at its official close
supreme in name. Not only had he secured an Imperial Commission from the
abdicating Dynasty to organize a popular Government in obedience to the
national wish, but having brought to Peking the Delegates of the Nanking
Revolutionary Body he had received from them the formal offer of the
Presidency.

These arrangements had, of course, been secretly agreed to _en bloc_
before the fighting had been stopped and the abdication proclaimed, and
were part and parcel of the elaborate scenery which officialdom always
employs in Asia even when it is dealing with matters within the purview
of the masses. They had been made possible by the so-called "Article of
Favourable Treatment" drawn-up by Yuan Shih-kai himself, after
consultation with the rebellious South. In these Capitulations it had
been clearly stipulated that the Manchu Imperial Family should receive
in perpetuity a Civil List of $4,000,000 Mexican a year, retaining all
their titles as a return for the surrender of their political power, the
bitter pill being gilded in such fashion as to hide its real meaning,
which alone was a grave political error.

In spite of this agreement, however, great mutual suspicion existed
between North and South China. Yuan Shih-kai himself was unable to
forget that the bold attempt to assassinate him in the Peking streets on
the 17th January, when he was actually engaged in negotiating these very
terms of the Abdication, had been apparently inspired from Nanking;
whilst the Southern leaders were daily reminded by the vernacular press
that the man who held the balance of power had always played the part of
traitor in the past and would certainly do the same again in the near
future.

When the Delegates came to Peking in February, by far the most important
matter which was still in dispute was the question of the oath of office
which Yuan Shih-kai was called upon to take to insure that he would be
faithful to the Republic. The Delegates had been charged specifically to
demand on behalf of the seceding provinces that Yuan Shih-kai should
proceed with them to Nanking to take that oath, a course of action which
would have been held tantamount by the nation to surrender on his part
to those who had been unable to vanquish him in the field. It must also
not be forgotten that from the very beginning a sharp and dangerous
cleavage of opinion existed as to the manner in which the powers of the
new government had been derived. South and Central China claimed, and
claimed rightly, that the Nanking Provincial Constitution was the
Instrument on which the Republic was based: Yuan Shih-kai declared that
the Abdication Edicts, and not the Nanking Instrument had established
the Republic, and that therefore it lay within his competence to
organize the new government in the way which he considered most fit.

The discussion which raged was suddenly terminated on the night of the
29th February (1912) when without any warning there occurred the
extraordinary revolt of the 3rd Division, a picked Northern corps who
for forty-eight hours plundered and burnt portions of the capital
without any attempts at interference, there being little doubt to-day
that this manoeuvre was deliberately arranged as a means of intimidation
by Yuan Shih-kai himself. Although the disorders assumed such dimensions
that foreign intervention was narrowly escaped, the upshot was that the
Nanking Delegates were completely cowed and willing to forget all about
forcing the despot of Peking to proceed to the Southern capital. Yuan
Shih-kai as the man of the hour was enabled on the 10th March, 1912, to
take his oath in Peking as he had wished thus securing full freedom of
action during the succeeding years.[6]

[Illustration: An Encampment of "The Punitive Expedition" of 1910 on the
Upper Yangtsze.

_By courtesy of Major Isaac Newell, U.S. Military Attache_.]

[Illustration: Revival of the Imperialistic Worship of Heaven by Yuan
Shih-kai in 1914: Scene on the Altar of Heaven, with Sacrificial
Officers clothed in costumes dating from 2,000 years ago.]

[Illustration: A Manchu Country Fair: The figures in the foreground are
all Manchu women and girls.]

[Illustration: A Manchu Woman grinding Grain.]

It was on this astounding basis--by means of an organized revolt--that
the Central Government was reorganized; and every act that followed
bears the mark of its tainted parentage. Accepting readily as his
Ministers in the more unimportant government Departments the nominees of
the Southern Confederacy (which was now formally dissolved), Yuan
Shih-kai was careful to reserve for his own men everything that
concerned the control of the army and the police, as well as the
all-important ministry of finance. The framework having been thus
erected, attention was almost immediately concentrated on the problem of
finding money, an amazing matter which would weary the stoutest reader
if given in all its detail but which being part and parcel of the
general problem must be referred to.

Certain essential features can be very rapidly exposed. We have already
made clear the purely economic nature of the forces which had sapped the
foundations of Chinese society. Primarily it had been the disastrous
nature of Chinese gold-indebtedness which had given the new ideas the
force they required to work their will on the nation. And just because
the question of this gold-indebtedness had become so serious and such a
drain on the nation, some months before the outbreak of the Revolution
an arrangement had been entered into with the bankers of four nations
for a Currency Loan of L10,000,000 with which to make an organized
effort to re-establish internal credit. But this loan had never actually
been floated, as a six months' safety clause had permitted a delay
during which the Revolution had come. It was therefore necessary to
begin the negotiations anew; and as the rich prizes to be won in the
Chinese lottery had attracted general attention in the European
financial world through the advertisement which the Revolution had given
the country, a host of alternative loan proposals now lay at the
disposal of Peking.

Consequently an extraordinary chapter of bargaining commenced. Warned
that an International Debt Commission was the goal aimed at by official
finance, Yuan Shih-kai and the various parties who made up the
Government of the day, though disagreeing on almost every other
question, were agreed that this danger must be fought as a common enemy.
Though the Four-Power group alleged that they held the first option on
all Chinese loans, money had already been advanced by a Franco-Belgian
Syndicate to the amount of nearly two million pounds during the critical
days of the Abdication. Furious at the prospect of losing their
percentages, the Four Power group made the confusion worse confounded by
blocking all competing proposals and closing every possible door. Russia
and Japan, who had hitherto not been parties to the official consortium,
perceiving that participation had become a political necessity, now
demanded a place which was grudgingly accorded them; and it was in this
way that the celebrated six-power Group arose.

It was round this group and the proposed issue of a L60,000,000 loan to
reorganize Chinese finance that the central battle raged. The Belgian
Syndicate, having been driven out of business by the financial boycott
which the official group was strong enough to organize on the European
bourses, it remained for China to see whether she could not find some
combination or some man who would be bold enough to ignore all
governments.

Her search was not in vain. In September (1912) a London stockbroker,
Mr. Birch Crisp, determined to risk a brilliant coup by negotiating by
himself a Loan of L10,000,000; and the world woke up one morning to
learn that one man was successfully opposing six governments. The
recollection of the storm raised in financial circles by this bold
attempt will be fresh in many minds. Every possible weapon was brought
into play by international finance to secure that the impudence of
financial independence should be properly checked; and so it happened
that although L5,000,000 was secured after an intense struggle it was
soon plain that the large requirements of a derelict government could
not be satisfied in this Quixotic manner. Two important points had,
however, been attained; first, China was kept financially afloat during
the year 1912 by the independence of a single member of the London Stock
Exchange; secondly, using this coup as a lever the Peking Government
secured better terms than otherwise would have been possible from the
official consortium.

Meanwhile the general internal situation remained deplorable. Nothing
was done for the provinces whose paper currency was depreciating from
month to month in an alarming manner; whilst the rivalries between the
various leaders instead of diminishing seemed to be increasing. The
Tutuhs, or Military Governors, acting precisely as they saw fit, derided
the authority of Peking and sought to strengthen their old position by
adding to their armed forces. In the capital the old Manchu court,
safely entrenched in the vast Winter Palace from which it has not even
to-day been ejected (1917) published daily the Imperial Gazette,
bestowing honours and decorations on courtiers and clansmen and
preserving all the old etiquette. In the North-western provinces, and in
Manchuria and Mongolia, the so-called Tsung She Tang, or Imperial Clan
Society, intrigued perpetually to create risings which would hasten the
restoration of the fallen House; and although these intrigues never rose
to the rank of a real menace to the country, the fact that they were
surreptitiously supported by the Japanese secret service was a continual
source of anxiety. The question of Outer Mongolia was also harassing the
Central Government. The Hutuktu or Living Buddha of Urga--the chief city
of Outer Mongolia--had utilized the revolution to throw off his
allegiance to Peking; and the whole of this vast region had been thrown
into complete disorder--which was still further accentuated when Russia
on the 21st October (1912) recognized its independence. It was known
that as a pendent to this Great Britain was about to insist on the
autonomy of Tibet,--a development which greatly hurt Chinese pride.

On the 15th August, 1912, the deplorable situation was well-epitomised
by an extraordinary act in Peking, when General Chang Cheng-wu, one of
the "heroes" of the original Wuchang rising, who had been enticed to the
capital, was suddenly seized after a banquet in his honour and shot
without trial at midnight.

This event, trivial in itself during times when judicial murders were
common, would have excited nothing more than passing interest had not
the national sentiment been so aroused by the chaotic conditions. As it
was it served to focus attention on the general mal-administration over
which Yuan Shih-kai ruled as provisional President. "What is my crime?"
had shrieked the unhappy revolutionist as he had been shot and then
bayonetted to death. That query was most easily answered. His crime was
that he was not strong enough or big enough to compete against more
sanguinary men, his disappearance being consequently in obedience to an
universal law of nature. Yuan Shih-kai was determined to assert his
mastery by any and every means; and as this man had flouted him he must
die.

The uproar which this crime aroused was, however, not easily appeased;
and the Advisory Council, which was sitting in Peking pending the
assembling of the first Parliament, denounced the Provisional President
so bitterly that to show that these reproaches were ill-deserved he
invited Dr. Sun Yat-sen to the capital treating him with unparalleled
honours and requesting him to act as intermediary between the rival
factions. All such manoeuvres, however, were inspired with one
object,--namely to prove how nobody but the master of Peking could
regulate the affairs of the country.

Still no Parliament was assembled. Although the Nanking Provisional
Constitution had stipulated that one was to meet within ten months
_i.e._ before 1st November, 1912, the elections were purposely delayed,
the attention of the Central Government being concentrated on the
problem of destroying all rivals, and everything being subordinate to
this war on persons. Rascals, getting daily more and more out of hand,
worked their will on rich and poor alike, discrediting by their actions
the name of republicanism and destroying public confidence--which was
precisely what suited Yuan Shih-kai. Dramatic and extraordinary
incidents continually inflamed the public mind, nothing being too
singular for those remarkable days.

Very slowly the problem developed, with everyone exclaiming that foreign
intervention was becoming inevitable. With the beginning of 1913, being
unable to delay the matter any longer, Yuan Shih-kai allowed elections
to be held in the provinces. He was so badly beaten at the polls that it
seemed in spite of his military power that he would be outvoted and
outmanoeuvred in the new National Assembly and his authority undermined.
To prevent this a fresh assassination was decided upon. The ablest
Southern leader, Sung Chiao-jen, just as he was entraining for Peking
with a number of Parliamentarians at Shanghai, was coolly shot in a
crowded railway station by a desperado who admitted under trial that he
had been paid L200 for the job by the highest authority in the land, the
evidence produced in court including telegrams from Peking which left no
doubt as to who had instigated the murder.

The storm raised by this evil measure made it appear as if no parliament
could ever assemble in Peking. But the feeling had become general that
the situation was so desperate that action had to be taken. Not only was
their reputation at stake, but the Kuomingtang or Revolutionary Party
now knew that the future of their country was involved just as much as
the safety of their own lives; and so after a rapid consultation they
determined that they would beard the lion in his den. Rather
unexpectedly on the 7th April (1913) Parliament was opened in Peking
with a huge Southern majority and the benediction of all Radicals.[7]
Hopes rose with mercurial rapidity as a solution at last seemed in
sight. But hardly had the first formalities been completed and Speakers
been elected to both Houses, than by a single dramatic stroke Yuan
Shih-kai reduced to nought these labours by stabbing in the back the
whole theory and practice of popular government.

The method he employed was simplicity itself, and it is peculiarly
characteristic of the man that he should have been so bluntly cynical.
Though the Provisional Nanking Constitution, which was the "law" of
China so far as there was any law at all, had laid down specifically in
article XIX that all measures affecting the National Treasury must
receive the assent of Parliament, Yuan Shih-kai, pretending that the
small Advisory Council which had assisted him during the previous year
and which had only just been dissolved, had sanctioned a foreign loan,
peremptorily ordered the signature of the great Reorganization Loan of
L25,000,000 which had been secretly under negotiation all winter with
the financial agents of six Powers[8], although the rupture which had
come in the previous June as a forerunner to the Crisp loan had caused
the general public to lose sight of the supreme importance of the
financial factor. Parliament, seeing that apart from the possibility of
a Foreign Debt Commission being created something after the Turkish and
Egyptian models, a direct challenge to its existence had been offered,
raged and stormed and did its utmost to delay the question; but the
Chief Executive having made up his mind shut himself up in his Palace
and absolutely refused to see any Parliamentary representatives.
Although the Minister of Finance himself hesitated to complete the
transaction in the face of the rising storm and actually fled the
capital, he was brought back by special train and forced to complete the
agreement. At four o'clock in the morning on the 25th April the last
documents were signed in the building of a foreign bank and the Finance
Minister, galloping his carriage suddenly out of the compound to avoid
possible bombs, reported to his master that at last--in spite of the
nominal foreign control which was to govern the disbursement--a vast sum
was at his disposal to further his own ends.

Safe in the knowledge that possession is nine points of the law, Yuan
Shih-kai now treated with derision the resolutions which Parliament
passed that the transaction was illegal and the loan agreement null and
void. Being openly backed by the agents of the Foreign Powers, he
immediately received large cash advances which enabled him to extend his
power in so many directions that further argument with him seemed
useless. It is necessary to record that the Parliamentary leaders had
almost gone down on their knees to certain of the foreign Ministers in
Peking in a vain attempt to persuade them to delay--as they could very
well have done--the signature of this vital Agreement for forty-eight
hours so that it could be formally passed by the National Assembly, and
thus save the vital portion of the sovereignty of the country from
passing under the heel of one man. But Peking diplomacy is a perverse
and disagreeable thing; and the Foreign Ministers of those days,
although accredited to a government which while it had not then been
formally recognized as a Republic by any Power save the United States,
was bound to be so very shortly, were determined to be reactionary and
were at heart delighted to find things running back normally to
absolutism[9]. High finance had at last got hold of everything it
required from China and was in no mood to relax the monopoly of the salt
administration which the Loan Agreement conferred. Nor must the fact be
lost sight of that of the nominal amount of L25,000,000 which had been
borrowed, fully half consisted of repayments to foreign Banks and never
left Europe. According to the schedules attached to the Agreement, Annex
A, comprising the Boxer arrears and bank advances, absorbed L4,317,778:
Annex B, being so-called provincial loans, absorbed a further
L2,870,000: Annex C, being liabilities shortly maturing, amounted to
L3,592,263: Annex D, for disbandment of troops, amounted to L3,000,000:
Annex C, to cover current administrative expenses totalled L5,500,000:
whilst Annex E which covered the reorganization of the Salt
Administration, absorbed the last L2,000,000; The bank profits on this
loan alone amounted to 11/4 million pounds; whilst Yuan Shih-kai
himself was placed in possession by a system of weekly disbursements of
a sum roughly amounting to ten million sterling, which was amply
sufficient to allow him to wreak his will on his fellow-countrymen.
Exasperated to the pitch of despair by this new development, the Central
and Southern provinces, after a couple of months' vain argument, began
openly to arm. On the 10th July in Kiangse province on the river
Yangtsze the Northern garrisons were fired upon from the Hukow forts by
the provincial troops under General Li Lieh-chun and the so-called
Second Revolution commenced.

The campaign was short and inglorious. The South, ill-furnished with
munitions and practically penniless, and always confronted by the same
well-trained Northern Divisions who had proved themselves invincible
only eighteen months before fought hard for a while, but never became a
serious menace to the Central Government owing to the lack of
co-operation between the various Rebel forces in the field. The Kiangse
troops under General Li Lieh-chun, who numbered at most 20,000 men,
fought stiffly, it is true, for a while but were unable to strike with
any success and were gradually driven far back from the river into the
mountains of Kiangse where their numbers rapidly melted away. The
redoubtable revolutionary Huang Hsin, who had proved useful as a
propagandist and a bomb-thrower in earlier days, but who was useless in
serious warfare, although he assumed command of the Nanking garrison
which had revolted to a man, and attempted a march up the Pukow railway
in the direction of Tientsin, found his effort break down almost
immediately from lack of organization and fled to Japan. The Nanking
troops, although deserted by their leader, offered a strenuous
resistance to the capture of the southern capital which was finally
effected by the old reactionary General Chang Hsun operating in
conjunction with General Feng Kuo-chang who had been dispatched from
Peking with a picked force. The attack on the Shanghai arsenal which had
been quietly occupied by a small Northern Garrison during the months
succeeding the great loan transaction, although pushed with vigour by
the South, likewise ultimately collapsed through lack of artillery and
proper leadership. The navy, which was wholly Southern in its sympathies
and which had been counted upon as a valuable weapon in cutting off the
whole Yangtsze Valley, was at the last moment purchased to neutrality by
a liberal use of money obtained from the foreign banks, under, it is
said, the heading of administrative expenses! The turbulent city of
Canton, although it also rose against the authority of Peking, had been
well provided for by Yuan Shih-kai. A border General, named Lung
Chi-kwang, with 20,000 semi-savage Kwangsi troops had been moved near
the city and at once attacked and overawed the garrison. Appointed
Military Governor of the province in return for his services, this Lung
Chi-kwang, who was an infamous brute, for three years ruled the South
with heartless barbarity, until he was finally ejected by the great
rising of 1916. Thoroughly disappointed in this and many other
directions the Southern Party was now emasculated; for the moneyed
classes had withheld their support to the end, and without money nothing
is possible in China. The 1913 outbreak, after lasting a bare two
months, ignominiously collapsed with the flight of every one of the
leaders on whose heads prices were put. The road was now left open for
the last step Yuan Shih-kai had in mind, the coup against Parliament
itself, which although unassociated in any direct way with the rising,
had undoubtedly maintained secret relations with the rebellious generals
in the field.

Parliament had further sinned by appointing a Special Constitutional
Drafting Committee which had held its sittings behind closed doors at
the Temple of Heaven. During this drafting of the Permanent
Constitution, admittance had been absolutely refused to Yuan Shih-kai's
delegates who had been sent to urge a modification of the
decentralization which had been such a characteristic of the Nanking
Instrument. Such details as transpired showed that the principle of
absolute money-control was not only to be the dominant note in the
Permanent Constitution, but that a new and startling innovation was
being included to secure that a _de facto_ Dictatorship should be
rendered impossible. Briefly, it was proposed that when Parliament was
not actually in session there should be left in Peking a special
Parliamentary Committee, charged with supervising and controlling the
Executive, and checking any usurpation of power.

This was enough for Yuan Shih-kai: he felt that he was not only an
object of general suspicion but that he was being treated with contempt.
He determined to finish with it all. He was as yet, however, only
provisional President and it was necessary to show cunning. Once more he
set to work in a characteristic way. By a liberal use of money
Parliament was induced to pass in advance of the main body of articles
the Chapter of the Constitution dealing with the election and term of
office of the President. When that had been done the two Chambers
sitting as an Electoral College, after the model of the French
Parliament, being partly bribed and partly terrorised by a military
display, were induced to elect him full President.

On the 10th October he took his final oath of office as President for a
term of five years before a great gathering of officials and the whole
diplomatic body in the magnificent Throne Room of the Winter Palace.
Safe now in his Constitutional position nothing remained for him but to
strike. On the 4th November he issued an arbitrary Mandate, which
received the counter-signature of the whole Cabinet, ordering the
unseating of all the so-called Kuomingtang or Radical Senators and
Representatives on the counts of conspiracy and secret complicity with
the July rising and vaguely referring to the filling of the vacancies
thus created by new elections.[10] The Metropolitan Police rigorously
carried out the order and although no brutality was shown, it was made
clear that if any of the indicted men remained in Peking their lives
would be at stake. Having made it impossible for Parliament to sit owing
to the lack of quorums, Yuan Shih-kai was able to proceed with his work
of reorganization in the way that best suited him; and the novel
spectacle was offered of a truly Mexican situation created in the Far
East by and with the assent of the Powers. It is significant that the
day succeeding this _coup d'etat_ of the 4th November the agreement
conceding autonomy to Outer Mongolia was signed with Russia, China
simply retaining the right to station a diplomatic representative at
Urga.[11]

In spite of his undisputed power, matters however did not improve. The
police-control, judiciously mingled with assassinations, which was now
put in full vigour was hardly the administration to make room for which
the Manchus had been expelled; and the country secretly chafed and
cursed. But the disillusionment of the people was complete. Revolt had
been tried in vain; and as the support which the Powers were affording
to this regime was well understood there was nothing to do but to wait,
safe in the knowledge that such a situation possessed no elements of
permanency.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The defective nature of this oath of office will be patent at a
glance:

"At the beginning of the Republic there are many things to be taken care
of. I, Yuan Shih-kai, sincerely wish to exert my utmost to promote the
democratic spirit, to remove the dark blots of despotism, to obey
strictly the Constitution, and to abide by the wish of the people, so as
to place the country in a safe, united, strong, and firm position, and
to effect the happiness and welfare of the divisions of the Chinese
race. All these wishes I will fulfil without fail. As soon as a new
President is elected by the National Assembly I shall at once vacate my
present position. With all sincerity I take this oath before the people
of China.

"Dated the tenth day of March in the First Year of the Republic of China
(1912)."

(Signed) Yuan Shih-kai.

[7] The Parliament of China is composed of a House of Representatives
numbering 596 members and a Senate of 274. The Representatives are
elected by means of a property and educational franchise which is
estimated to give about four million voters (1 per cent of the
population) although in practice relatively few vote. The Senate is
elected by the Provincial Assemblies by direct ballot. In the opinion of
the writer, the Chinese Parliament in spite of obvious shortcoming, is
representative of the country in its present transitional stage.

[8] The American Group at the last moment dropped out of the Sextuple
combination (prior to the signature of the contract) after President
Wilson had made his well-known pronouncement deprecating the association
of Americans in any financial undertakings which impinged upon the
rights of sovereignty of a friendly Power,--which was his considered
view of the manner in which foreign governments were assisting their
nationals to gain control of the Salt Administration The exact language
the President used was that the conditions of the loan seemed "to touch
very nearly the administrative independence of China itself," and that a
loan thus obtained was "obnoxious" to the principles upon which the
American government rests. It is to be hoped that President Wilson's
dictum will be universally accepted after the war and that meddling in
Chinese affairs will cease.

[9] The United States accorded formal recognition to the Republic on the
election of the Speakers of the two Houses of Parliament: the other
Treaty Powers delayed recognition until Yuan Shih-kai had been elected
full President in October. It has been very generally held that the long
delay in foreign recognition of the Republic contributed greatly to its
internal troubles by making every one doubt the reality of the Nanking
transaction. Most important, however, is the historical fact that a
group of Powers numbering the two great leaders of democracy in
Europe--England and France--did everything they could in Peking to
enthrone Yuan Shih-kai as dictator.

[10] According to the official lists published subsequent to the coup
d'etat, 98 Senators and 252 Members of the House of Representatives had
their Parliamentary Certificates impounded by the police as a result of
the Mandates of the 4th November, and were ordered to leave the Capital.
In addition 34 Senators and 54 Members of the Lower House fled from
Peking before their Certificates could be seized. Therefore the total
number affected by the proscription was 132 Senators and 306
Representatives. As the quorums in the case of both Houses are half the
total membership, any further sittings were thus made impossible.

[11] A full copy of this agreement will be found in the appendix.




CHAPTER IV

THE DICTATOR AT WORK

(FROM THE COUP D'ETAT OF THE 4TH NOVEMBER, 1913, TO THE OUTBREAK OF THE
WORLD-WAR 1ST AUGUST, 1914)


With the Parliament of China effectively destroyed, and the turbulent
Yangtsze Valley dragooned into sullen submission, Yuan Shih-kai's task
had become so vastly simplified that he held the moment to have arrived
when he could openly turn his hand to the problem of making himself
absolutely supreme, _de jure_ as well as _de facto_. But there was one
remaining thing to be done. To drive the last nail into the coffin of
the Republic it was necessary to discredit and virtually imprison the
man who was Vice-President.

It is highly characteristic that although he had received from the hero
of the Wuchang Rising the most loyal co-operation--a co-operation of a
very arduous character since the Commander of the Middle Yangtsze had
had to resist the most desperate attempt? to force him over to the side
of the rebellion in July, 1913, nevertheless, Yuan Shih-kai was
determined to bring this man to Peking as a prisoner of state.

It was just the fact that General Li Yuan-hung was a national hero which
impelled the Dictator to action. In the election which had been carried
out in October, 1913, by the National Assembly sitting as a National
Convention, in spite of every effort to destroy his influence, the
personal popularity of the Vice-President had been such that he had
received a large number of votes for the office of full President--which
had necessitated not one but three ballots being taken, making most
people declare that had there been no bribery or intimidation he would
have probably been elected to the supreme office in the land, and
ousted the ambitious usurper. In such circumstances his complete
elimination was deemed an elementary necessity. To secure that end Yuan
Shih-kai suddenly dispatched to Wuchang--where the Vice-President had
resided without break since 1911--the Minister of War, General Tuan
Chi-jui, with implicit instructions to deal with the problem in any way
he deemed satisfactory, stopping short of nothing should his victim
prove recalcitrant.

Fortunately General Tuan Chi-jui did not belong to the ugly breed of men
Yuan Shih-kai loved to surround himself with; and although he was a
loyal and efficient officer the politics of the assassin were unknown to
him. He was therefore able to convince the Vice-President after a brief
discussion that the easiest way out of the ring of intriguers and
plotters in which Yuan Shih-kai was rapidly surrounding him in Wuchang
was to go voluntarily to the capital. There at least he would be in
daily touch with developments and able to fight his own battles without
fear of being stabbed in the back; since under the eye of the foreign
Legations even Yuan Shih-kai was exhibiting a certain timidity. Indeed
after the outcry which General Chang Cheng-wu's judicial murder had
aroused he had reserved his ugliest deeds for the provinces, only small
men being done to death in Peking. Accordingly, General Li Yuan-hung
packed a bag and accompanied only by an aide-de-camp left abruptly for
the capital where he arrived on the 11th December, 1913.

A great sensation was caused throughout China by this sudden departure,
consternation prevailing among the officers and men of the Hupeh
(Wuchang) army when the newspapers began to hint that their beloved
chief had been virtually abducted. Although cordially received by Yuan
Shih-kai and given as his personal residence the. Island Palace where
the unfortunate Emperor Kwanghsu had been so long imprisoned by the
Empress Dowager Tsu Hsi after her _coup d'etat_ of 1898, it did not take
long for General Li Yuan-hung to understand that his presence was a
source of embarrassment to the man who would be king. Being, however,
gifted with an astounding fund of patience, he prepared to sit down and
allow the great game which he knew would now unroll to be played to its
normal ending. What General Li Yuan-hung desired above all was to be
forgotten completely and absolutely--springing to life when the hour of
deliverance finally arrived. His policy was shown to be not only
psychologically accurate, but masterly in a political sense. The
greatest ally of honesty in China has always been time, the inherent
decency of the race finally discrediting scoundrelism in every period of
Chinese history.

The year 1914 dawned with so many obstacles removed that Yuan Shih-kai
became more and more peremptory in his methods. In February the young
Empress Lun Yi, widow of the Emperor Kwanghsu, who two years previously
in her character of guardian of the boy-Emperor Hsuan Tung, had been
cajoled into sanctioning the Abdication Edicts, unexpectedly expired,
her death creating profound emotion because it snapped the last link
with the past. Yuan Shih-kai's position was considerably strengthened by
this auspicious event which secretly greatly delighted him; and by his
order for three days the defunct Empress lay in State in the Grand Hall
of the Winter Palace and received the obeisance of countless multitudes
who appeared strangely moved by this hitherto unknown procedure. There
was now only a nine-year old boy between the Dictator and his highest
ambitions. Two final problems still remained to be dealt with: to give a
legal form to a purely autocratic rule, and to find money to govern the
country. The second matter was vastly more important than the first to a
man who did not hesitate to base his whole polity on the teachings of
Machiavelli, legality being looked upon as only so much political
window-dressing to placate foreign opinion and prevent intervention,
whilst without money even the semblance of the rights of eminent domain
could not be preserved. Everything indeed hinged on the question of
finding money.

There was none in China, at least none for the government. Financial
chaos still reigned supreme in spite of the great Reorganization Loan of
L25,000,000, which had been carefully arranged more for the purpose of
wiping-out international indebtedness and balancing the books of foreign
bankers than to institute a modern government. All the available specie
in the country had been very quietly remitted in these troubled times by
the native merchant-guilds from every part of China to the vast emporium
of Shanghai for safe custody, where a sum not far short of a hundred
million ounces now choked the vaults of the foreign banks,--being safe
from governmental expropriation. The collection of provincial revenues
having been long disorganized, Yuan Shih-kai, in spite of his military
dictatorship, found it impossible to secure the proper resumption of the
provincial remittances. Fresh loans became more and more sought after;
by means of forced domestic issues a certain amount of cash was
obtained, but the country lived from hand to mouth and everybody was
unhappy. Added to this by March the formidable insurrection of the
"White Wolf" bandits in Central China--under the legendary leadership of
a man who was said to be invulnerable--necessitated the mobilization of
a fresh army which ran into scores of battalions and which was vainly
engaged for nearly half a year in rounding-up this replica of the
Mexican Villa. So demoralized had the army become from long licence that
this guerrilla warfare was waged with all possible slackness until a
chance shot mortally wounded the chief brigand and his immense following
automatically dispersed. During six months these pests had ravaged three
provinces and menaced one of the most strongly fortified cities in
Asia--the old capital of China, Hsianfu, whither the Manchu Court had
fled in 1900.

Meanwhile wholesale executions were carried out in the provinces with
monotonous regularity and all attempts at rising ruthlessly suppressed.
In Peking the infamous Chih Fa Chu or Military Court--a sort of Chinese
Star-Chamber--was continually engaged in summarily dispatching men
suspected of conspiring against the Dictator, Even the printed word was
looked upon as seditious, an unfortunate native editor being actually
flogged to death in Hankow for telling the truth about conditions in the
riverine districts. These cruelties made men more and more determined to
pay off the score the very first moment that was possible. Although he
was increasingly pressed for ready money, Yuan Shih-kai, by the end of
April, 1914, had the situation sufficiently in hand to bring out his
supreme surprise,--a brand-new Constitution promulgated under the
euphonious title of "The Constitutional Compact."

This precious document, which had no more legality behind it as a
governing instrument than a private letter, can be studied by the
curious in the appendix where it is given in full: here it is sufficient
to say that no such hocuspocus had ever been previously indulged in
China. Drafted by an American legal adviser, Dr. Goodnow, who was later
to earn unenviable international notoriety as the endorser of the
monarchy scheme, it erected what it was pleased to call the Presidential
System; that is, it placed all power directly in the hands of the
President, giving him a single Secretary of State after the American
model and reducing Cabinet Ministers to mere Department Chiefs who
received their instructions from the State Department but had no real
voice in the actual government. A new provincial system was likewise
invented for the provinces, the Tutuhs or Governors of the Revolutionary
period being turned into Chiang Chun or Military Officials on the Manchu
model and provincial control absolutely centralized in their hands,
whilst the Provincial Assemblies established under the former dynasty
were summarily abolished. The worship at the Temple of Heaven was also
re-established and so was the official worship of Confucius--both
Imperialistic measures--whilst a brand-new ceremony, the worship of the
two titulary Military Gods, was ordered so as to inculcate military
virtue! It was laid down that in the worship of Heaven the President
would wear the robes of the Dukes of the Chow dynasty, B.C. 1112, a
novel and interesting republican experiment. Excerpts from two Mandates
which belong to these days throw a flood of light on the kind of
reasoning which was held to justify these developments. The first
declares:

    ... "In a Republic the Sovereign Power is vested in the people, and
    the main principle is that all things should be determined in
    accordance with the desires of the majority. These desires may be
    embraced by two words, namely, existence and happiness. I, the
    President, came from my farm because I was unable to bear the
    eternal sufferings of the innocent people. I assumed office and
    tried vainly to soothe the violent feelings. The greatest evil
    nowadays is the misunderstanding of true principles. The Republicans
    on the pretext of public interest try to attain selfish ends, some
    going so far as to consider the forsaking of parents as a sign of
    liberty and regarding the violation of the laws as a demonstration
    of equality. I will certainly do my best to change all this."

In the second Mandate Yuan Shih-kai justifies the re-establishment of
the Confucian worship in a singular way, incidentally showing how
utterly incomprehensible to him is the idea of representative
government, since he would appear to have imagined that by dispatching
circular telegrams to the provincial capitals and receiving affirmative
replies from his creatures all that is necessary in the way of a
national endorsement of high constitutional measures had been obtained.

    ... "China's devotion to Confucius began with the reign of the
    Emperor Hsiaowu, of the Han dynasty, who rejected the works of the
    hundred authors, making the six Confucian classics the leading
    books. Confucius, born in the time of the tyranny of the nobility,
    in his works declared that after war disturbances comes peace, and
    with peace real tranquillity and happiness. This, therefore, is the
    fountain of Republicanism. After studying the history of China and
    consulting the opinions of scholars, I find that Confucius must
    remain the teacher for thousands of generations. But in a Republic
    the people possess sovereign power. Therefore circular telegrams
    were dispatched to all the provinces to collect opinions, and many
    affirmative answers have already been received. Therefore, all
    colleges, schools, and public bodies are ordered to revive the
    sacrificial ceremony of Confucius, which shall be carefully and
    minutely ordained." ...

With the formal promulgation of the Constitutional Compact the situation
had become bizarre in the extreme. Although even the child-mind might
have known that powers for Constitution-making were vested solely in the
National Assembly, and that the re-division of authority which was now
made was wholly illegal, because Yuan Shih-kai as the bailiff of the
Powers was able to do much as he pleased; and at a moment when Liberal
Europe was on the eve of plunging into the most terrible war in history
in defence of right against might, reaction and Prussianism of the most
repulsive type were passed by unnoticed in China. In a few loosely
drafted chapters not only was the governance of the country rearranged
to suit a purely dictational rule, but the actual Parliament was
permanently extinguished and replaced by a single Legislative Chamber
(_Li Fa Yuan_) which from its very composition could be nothing but a
harmless debating Society with no greater significance than a dietine of
one of the minor German States. Meanwhile, as there was no intention of
allowing even this chamber to assemble until the last possible moment, a
Senate was got together as the organ of public opinion, ten Senators
being chosen to draft yet another Constitution which would be the final
one. Remarkable steps were taken a little later in the year (1914) to
secure that the succession to the dictatorship should be left in Yuan
Shih-kai's own hands. An elaborate ritual was contrived and officially
promulgated under the title of the Presidential Succession Law on the
29th December whereby the Chief Executive selected three names which
were placed in a gold box in a Stone House in the grounds of the
Palace,--the gold box only to be opened when death or incapacity
deprived the nation of its self-appointed leader. For the term of the
presidency was openly converted into one of ten years and made subject
to indefinite renewal by this precious instrument which was the work of
the puppet senate. In case of the necessity of an election suddenly
arising, an Electoral College was to be formed by fifty members drawn
from the Legislative Chamber and fifty from the Senate, the Presidential
candidates consisting of the President (if he so desired) and the three
whose names were in the gold box in the Stone House in the Palace
grounds. It is not definitely known to whom these provisions were due,
but it is known that at least they were not the work of the American
adviser.

His responsibility, however, was very great; for the keynote of all this
scheme, according to Dr. Goodnow[12], was "centralization of power," a
parrot-like phrase which has deluded better men than ever came to China
and which--save as a method necessary during a state of war--should
have no place in modern politics. But it was precisely this which
appealed to Yuan Shih-kai. Although as President he was _ex officio_
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, he now turned this office into
a direct and special organization installed within the precincts of the
Imperial City. The flags of this new dictatorship constantly floated
over his palace, whilst scores of officers were appointed to scores of
departments which were directly concerned with centralizing the control
of every armed man in the country in the master's hands. Meanwhile in
order to placate provincial commanders, a "Palace of Generals," was
created in Peking to which were brought all men it was held desirable to
emasculate. Here, drawing ample salaries, they could sit in idleness the
livelong day, discussing the battles they had never fought and
intriguing against one another, two occupations in which the product of
the older school of men in China excels. Provincial levies which had any
military virtue, were gradually disbanded, though many of the rascals
and rapscallions, who were open menaces to good government were left
with arms in their hands so as to be an argument in favour of drastic
police-rule. Thus it is significant of the underlying falseness and
weakness of the dictator's character that he never dared to touch the
troops of the reprobate General Chang Hsun, who had made trouble for
years, and who had nearly embroiled China in war with Japan during the
so-called Second Revolution (July-August, 1913) by massacring some
Japanese civilians in the streets of Nanking when the city was
recaptured. So far from disbanding his men, Chang Hsun managed
constantly to increase his army of 30,000 men on the plea that the post
of Inspector-General of the Yangtsze Valley, which had been given to him
as a reward for refusing to throw in his lot with the Southern rebels,
demanded larger forces. Yuan Shih-kai, although half afraid of him,
found him at various periods useful as a counterweight to other generals
in the provinces; in any case he was not the man to risk anything by
attempting to crush him. As he was planted with his men astride of the
strategically important Pukow railway, it was always possible to order
him at a moment's notice into the Yangtsze Valley which was thus
constantly under the menace of fire and sword.

Far and wide Yuan Shih-kai now stretched his nets. He even employed
Americans throughout the United States in the capacity of press-agents
in order to keep American public opinion favourable to him, hoping to
invoke their assistance against his life-enemy--Japan--should that be
necessary. The precise details of this propaganda and the sums spent in
its prosecution are known to the writer; if he refrains from publishing
them it is solely for reasons of policy. England it was not nec