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Title: China Revolutionized

Author: John Stuart Thomson

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHINA
REVOLUTIONIZED ***

CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED

Copyright, 1913. The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The Honorable Yuan Shih Kai, confirmed as president of
China by the National Assembly, January, 1913. A middle
province type (Honan). He is wearing the uniform of the
General-in-Chief of the northern army. A forceful
progressive leader of the New China.

CHINA
REVOLUTIONIZED

By
JOHN STUART THOMSON
AUTHOR OF
The Chinese, Bud and Bamboo, Etc.

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND MAPS

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, April, 1913
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

DEDICATED TO MOTHER

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Genesis of the Republican
Revolution 1
II Wit and Humor in China 114
III Industrial and Commercial China 137
IV Finance and Budget in China 161
V Business Methods of Foreigners in
China 175
VI Railways in China 186
VII Shipping and Water Routes in China 196
VIII America in China 206
IX The Native Leaders 222
X China’s International Politics 229
XI Chinese Internal Politics 242
XII Some Public Works in Old China 250
XIII The Influence of Japan 259
XIV Pressure of Russia and France on
China 281
XV Some Foreign Types in China, and Their
Influence 288
XVI The Manchu 305
XVII China’s Army and Navy 317

XVIII Modern Education in China 334
XIX Literature and Language 351
XX Life of Foreigners in China 363
XXI Foreign Cities of China 375
XXII Native Cities of China 433
XXIII Religious and Missionary China 450
XXIV Legal Practise and Crime in China 472
XXV Chinese Daily Life 487
XXVI Climate, Disease and Hygiene 499
XXVII Chinese Womanhood 519
XXVIII Agriculture and Forestry in China 533
XXIX Chinese Architecture and Art 541
XXX Sociological China 555
XXXI Awakened Interest in America 567
Index 581

CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED

I

THE GENESIS OF THE REVOLUTION IN
CHINA AND ITS HISTORY

From October 10, 1911, to Yuan Shih Kai’s
Acceptance of the Provisional Presidency

A republic in place of the oldest monarchy! Preposterous. It would
involve making a yellow man think as a white man, and that had never
occurred, not even in the case of the prodigy, Japan. It would involve free
intercourse with the whole wide world, and China had opposed such an
innovation stubbornly for 400 years. It meant that the proudest and most
self-contained nation should treat others as equals and interchange with
them. It involved throwing 4,000 years of continuous history and
agglomerated pride and precedent to the winds, and humbly beginning
anew as a tyro for a while. It meant the dealing with 400,000,000 kings,
instead of one, and asking: “My lord, what is your will?” An educational
system 2,000 years old to be forgotten at once! A religion 5,000 years old at
least, whereby every man had his own god (his father), to be made as cheap
as the paltry sacrifices of wine, rice and the painted stick of Confucianism
were in reality! The taking up of individual and national responsibility for
400,000,000 people, and entrance upon a wide path of world-influence,
with its divided shame and fame! The taking and giving of blows for wrong
and right! The giving up of the triple eternal Nirvana of father, self and son,
in exchange for an exciting rôle limited to fifty-five crowded years in the
individual! The scale of action! A land as large as all Europe, and a people

as numerous as the Caucasic race! The thunderous knock on the long-
locked doors of science and medicine by 400,000,000 people who had
bowed to idol and charm alone! It shook the world. It was pregnant with
paradisal possibilities for mankind, because of the vastness of the
movement and the depth of its well-spring. The launching of this new
leviathan ship of state could not but raise a wave that would lift the already
floating hulks of Europe and America, and give them added impetus,
though temporary alarm. The rearrangement of commerce, manufacture,
labor, finance, taxation, learning, agriculture, art and possibly religion for
the whole world. The adding of the most difficult language to the tongues
and pens of men, and the call on the English speech to rise once more
greater than the mighty stranger, or die. The challenge to Palestine’s Bible
to conquer by truth, or retreat with half a world lost. The uprising again of
the yellow ghosts of Kublai Khan, Batu, Timurlane, and the Khans of the
Golden Horde. What would be the Caucasian’s answer to Emperor
William’s question: “The Yellow Peril”? It will be remembered that the
kaiser once painted a picture showing the nations of Europe gathering to
defend the cross and civilization against an incendiary Buddha lowering in
the eastern sky. Would the stranger within the gates be protected even while
republican and imperialist fought out their argument? Would leadership
arise, and would the great Mongolian mass be intellectualized now that it
was energized? Since the vast body was suddenly displaced, would it
henceforward move by mere gravity, or sympathetic volition? Could it
collectivize and not disintegrate? What would be the effect on the scores of
trembling thrones, where Rominoff, Hapsburg, Savoy, Hohenzollern,
Ottoman, Mikado, Billiken, etc., said they ruled by “divine right”, which is
quite a different thing from noble England’s “constitutional right”? Sun Yat
Sen and the Chinese republicans sent out this challenge: “Tien ming wu
chang” (the divine right lasts not forever).
All these questions presented themselves when the reformers startled
the world with the announcement that there was to be a republic in China. It
was to be a republic—not a monarchy—said even those Chinese who had
been educated in Japan, where lately a Japanese editor educated in America
and ten others had been tried and executed in secret, the papers sealed, and
the press censored. They wanted pitiless publicity in the new republican
China. Had there been no abatement of the opium habit through America’s
leadership of sentiment, and Britain’s sacrifice of revenue from 1909 to

1911, there could have been no rebellion in 1911. The reform cleared the
befogged heads of the nation, added a million men to agitation, and
furnished a hundred million dollars directly and indirectly toward the
independence of the agitators. How great a stone America and Britain set
rolling in that Opium Conference of 1909 at Shanghai!
The great revolution of October, 1911, did not drop as a bolt from a
clear sky. The clouds had been gathering, though many at home and abroad
did not, or would not see them. In September, 1911, the imperial viceroy of
Canton, Chang Ming Chi, sent spies along the new Canton-Hongkong
railway to apprehend smugglers of arms. In the same month troops under
the command of Marshal Lung Chai Kwong, suddenly surrounded the
office of the Shat Pat Po newspaper, at Canton, and arrested several
reformers. General Luk Wing Ting, of Kwangsi province, came down the Si
Kiang (West River) in September, 1911, in the gunboat Po Pik to Canton
and took back with him from the Canton arsenal, machine guns and
ammunition to attack the “anarchists”, as the Manchus persistently called
all reformers. In the month previous, the Ministry of Posts and
Communications at Peking stopped the use of private codes, so as to censor
messages to the reformers. Several viceroys, in secret sympathy with the
reformers, had as early as August, 1911, wired for gunboats, so as to
disperse the fleet from the Yangtze basin, where the revolution was to
strike, and the largest cruiser, the splendid Hai Chi, well-known in New
York, these viceroys suggested should be sent to King George’s coronation
review at Spithead. Even as far back as July, 1907, the Chinese government
approached the powers, requesting that they make espionage on arms
consigned to South China. Rather to our amusement, they used to arrive at
Hongkong as boxed pipes, condensers, bar iron, crockery, etc.—anything
but guns, but that was the humor of the freight classification which the
shippers used! In December, 1906, the scholars of the middle class in
Wuchow, Kwangsi province, at the head of navigation on the West River,
decided to cut off their queues, and adopted khaki uniform, military drill
and track races. They were independently preparing for strenuous times five
years before the outbreak, and these boys were found in the first line of the
attack in October, 1911, up at Hankau, led by the Chinese Colonel Wen,
who had graduated from West Point Military Academy, in America, in
1909. In August, 1911, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
reported that a large part of its $9,000,000 gold note issue was being held,

instead of circulated by the Chinese of Kwangtung and other southern
provinces. This hoarding of safe securities always indicates lack of faith as
to the business and political future.
The celebrated Manchu, Tuan Fang, director-general of railways, was
ordered by the Ministry of Communications to proceed to Canton and Kung
Yik, the new town of the Americanized Chinese, in August, 1911, to “pacify
the people”. Tuan replied that he would not go, and gave as his excuse:
“Canton is infested with anarchism”. In the same month the regent, Prince
Chun, asked Prince Ching to recommend an energetic general to be sent to
quell disturbances in Kwangtung province, and the Tartar general, Fung
Shan, was sent. Spying was not uncommon, impersonators going to a
province ahead of new appointees and reciting a record at the yamen which
seemed to identify them. In August, 1911, the cabinet at Peking decided to
send photographs of new officials in a sealed envelope, so as to prevent this
impersonating.
As an indication of the new spirit which was moving among the
Chinese of Canton for better things at this time, take the inception of the
model town of Heungchow. Chinese returned from America, Singapore and
Hongkong could not bear the municipal restraint of the old city. They chose
a site ten miles up the inner harbor of Macao. Dredging and a breakwater
were begun for a harbor. Broad streets, drains, fine stores, temples, police
and fire stations and equipment, water-works, libraries, parks, reforestation,
chamber of commerce, tramways, electricity and gas, hospitals, schools,
theaters, detached homes with gardens, launch and steamer lines, and a free
port,—all were in the scheme. When a government permits monopoly of
food, and riots result because of justice ineffectually exerted, history shows
that the government is about to fall. I instance the fierce Hangchow rice
riots of July, 1906, under the leadership of the Hung Pang (Red
Association), and the Changsha rice riots of 1910, when Yale College, in
China, was barely saved from the conflagration in the very district which in
1911 was swept by the high tide of the revolution. In 1906 text-books were
issued to the modern schools (Hok Tongs) which contained a caricature of
China, not as the “Middle Kingdom” of old, but as a morsel from which all
the nations took a bite. The intent, of course, was to arouse resentful
patriotism in place of the old inert pride. Many of these schoolboys enlisted
in the two bravest corps of the republicans, the “Dare to Die” band, and the

“Bomb Throwers” regiment. In April, 1911, the rebels, under two of Sun
Yat Sen’s lieutenants, Hu Wai Sang and Wu Sum, operating in Kwangtung
province, issued to the world almost the identical manifesto that President
Sun and Foreign Secretary Wu Ting Fang issued in January, 1912, covering
the following points:
1. Ousting the Manchu.
2. Friendly intercourse with foreigners and protection of foreign
property and person.
3. All foreign treaties now in force to be allowed to run their course.
4. Foreign loans and indemnities contracted by Manchus to date to be
paid.
5. Concessions contracted to date to be binding.
Desperate fighting took place, and had the rebels been sufficiently
supplied with money and arms, the republic would have been declared at
Canton in April instead of at Wuchang and Nanking in November. The
United States gunboat Wilmington and British gunboats were rushed to
Shameen Island, Canton, to protect foreigners. Admiral Li, who was killed
in the October revolution, was barely able to conquer this April revolution
in Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. For centuries the Chinese women
would not associate with the Manchus, whom they called “tent women”. All
through Turkestan the Chinese walled off their section of the city from the
Mongolian settlements, though after the conquest the Manchu troops
displaced the Chinese.
Nearly all the missions were informed by students and friends many
months previous to the revolution that serious and continued disturbances
would occur. The Chinese saw that individualism had arisen in America and
England and was battling with the privileged. Individualism arose at last in
China and resented in this rebellion the quietism taught by the superstition
of Taoism, the resignation of Buddhism and the obedience of Confucianism.
“I am not a clan; I am a man,” said the ambitious Chinese as he saw the
new ray of hope. American diplomacy was not altogether uninformed or
unprepared. The American fleet was made the largest foreign fleet in
Chinese waters in the first month of the revolution, Admiral Murdock
having the cruisers Saratoga (the converted New York of Spanish War

fame), Albany, New Orleans, Wilmington; the gunboats Helena, El Cano,
Villalobos, Samar; the monitor Monterey; and the destroyers Barry and
Decatur.
As far back as June 3, 1910, a year and four months before the
revolution, the Shanghai News printed the following article: “All the
legations and consuls have received anonymous letters from friendly
revolutionaries in Shanghai containing the warning that an extensive anti-
dynastic uprising is imminent. If they do not assist the Manchus, foreigners
are not to be harmed.” In August, 1911, a rebellion broke out at Sining, in
far western Kansu province. The stores were raided for every bolt of foreign
cotton to make uniforms. A boy of fifteen was named leader and he was
given the significantly fanciful name of “Savior of his country” (Chiu Shih
Wang). Rich men cornered the rice supply in the flooded Yangtze valley,
and food riots broke out all along the river in August, 1911. On August 23,
1911, rebels boarded a Chinese gunboat on the romantic Si Kiang (West
River) near Canton, shooting the commander and seizing the arms and
ammunition. On September first the Navy Department strengthened the
patrol of Kwangtung province waters so as to stop the smuggling of arms,
and the army board required miners to get permits to import dynamite, as
they feared that the “anarchists” were importing the explosive. The awful
floods and famines of 1910–11 in the basins of the Yangtze River, the Hwei
River and Grand Canal had created much criticism of the government,
which failed to alleviate suffering; and the famine-stricken were willing to
fight, because an army has a commissariat, at least. “Every one that was in
distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was
discontented, escaped to the cave of Adullam.” Newspapers, such as the
oldest reform journal, the Shen Pao, of Shanghai, related horrible illegal
tortures of the “third degree” used by Manchuized officials, which I have
quoted in the chapter on “Legal Practise.”
Tin was largely financing the propaganda, the 400,000 Chinese tin
merchants and miners of Singapore and Penang in the Straits Settlements
being the largest contributors. Following them came the 100,000 American
Chinese and the 50,000 Australian Chinese. Even in 1898, Li Hung Chang
was known to declare, at Canton, that it was not impossible that the spread
of the proposed new education of the foreigners would overturn the Manchu
dynasty, of which he, a Chinese from Hofei, in Nganhwei province, had

been the strongest prop among the viceroys for forty-five years.
Superstition was not inactive. Halley’s comet flared in the sky. It had shone
when Cæsar fell; when Jerusalem fell; when Italy fell before Attila; when
English Harold fell before William the Conqueror; when Rome fell in
England; when Quebec fell before Wolfe; and now its awful flame must
surely prophesy the fall of the Manchu dynasty. Omens were recited that
red snow (snow and loess) had fallen in Honan province, and that the
Hangchow tidal bore had risen twenty feet, broke over the bank and poured
water into the first gallery of the Haining pagoda. This always meant the
fall of the dynasty, for had it not happened on the night the beloved Mings
fell, and when the scholarly Sungs fell?
As with civil servants in some other countries, the Manchuized civil
service (mandarins) acted as though they were the governors and not the
servants of the people by allotting to themselves high salaries and
peculations. The year before the revolution the land tax yielded about
$150,000,000. Only $30,000,000 reached the government exchequer. The
Chinese held the Manchus responsible for this criminal neglect of audit, for
at least $100,000,000 should have reached the imperial and provincial
exchequers. That would have allowed $50,000,000 for the expected
peculation of that kind of office holders who believe that “public office is a
private graft”. In September, 1911, the month preceding the great
revolution, the Chi Feng Po, a native paper of Peking, reported that all
wages were in arrears and that even the tea coolies had humorously pasted
an anonymous sheet on the imperial controller’s door: “Not even a shadow
of our wages yet; WHY! WHY!” Taxes were increased on long-suffering
Kwangtung province in the south, the brick kilns of Kochau, the silk sheds
of Namhoi, the tea houses, and even the temple keepers being assessed “all
the taxed would bear”. I shall instance a representative revolt. On
September 6, 1911, the bonze at Shek Lung, near Canton, organized a revolt
among the worshipers at his temple. The mob demolished the municipal
yamen, the police station, the government distilleries, abattoir and fish
market. As far back as 1898 the emperor, Kwang Hsu, by edict declared that
the lottery at Canton should pay one-third of the upkeep of the far-away
Peking University. I have related in the chapter on “Chinese Daily Life” the
incident of a unique statue of a kneeling figure erected in the Kwan clan
temple at San Wui, near Canton, in August, 1911, which is whipped by the
worshipers to commemorate the defection of a member to the government’s

railway and tax program. There was always ill feeling between Peking and
Kwangtung provinces, the Manchu and Manchuized viceroys joking at
Peking when they were ordered to assume charge at the yamen at Canton:
“Well, I’m off to boss Miaotszes (barbarians),” which the refined and
commercial Cantonese certainly were not. This superciliousness was deeply
resented.
Repeated complaint had been made that an unrepresentative Manchu
government gave away concessions right and left to foreigners, and that
when these concessions were recalled or bought out, owing to outraged
patriotic feeling in the southern and central provinces, the foreigner in
instances charged immense sums for good will and franchise in addition to
his outlay and interest. I shall not recite instances, as it is the system that I
am denouncing, not the persons. The Chinese rightly said, if we look at the
matter with his eyes, that he was not going to pay vast sums for the
retrocession of his own franchise, which was in some instances coerced
from, or wheedled out of, an effete, governing, unrepresentative clique, the
members of which never consulted the provinces that were concerned.
“Taxation without representation” again. It was not like the repudiation of
the bonds of the southern states, for no money had been paid.
“Compensation” and “indemnity” are two words the Chinese have learned
to hate, and some day they mean to build an immense navy and equip a
large army to interpret these words in the way the Occident interprets them,
when they are synonymous with injustice and “grab”. Bitter complaint has
continually been made since 1898 that Germany monopolized the mining
and railway franchises of the rich province of Shangtung.
On the subject of railways, concessions, etc., the following remarks
will be recalled in the American General J. H. Wilson’s book, China (1887):
“The Chinese will build railroads, open mines, etc., whenever they can be
shown that this can be done with their own money, obtained at first by
private subscription, and by their own labor, under the direction of foreign
experts who will treat them fairly and honestly. They will not for the present
grant concessions or subsidies to foreigners. They will not even take money
from any syndicate by mortgage.” Complaint was also made that the Ming
dynasty, 268 years ago, left as a heritage to the Manchu dynasty, a land full
of public works, bridges, roads, temples, pagodas, canals, and that while the
Manchu collected large taxes, he seldom or never repaired a temple, canal

or road, so that China is now desolate. Objection was also made that the
government shipyards, like the Kiangnan, at Shanghai, were building
luxurious ocean steam yachts for Prince Tsui and others of the imperial
clan, an expense which the nation could not afford.
Two years before the famous revolution of October 10, 1911, the
author, in his book, The Chinese, picked out five men as the leaders of
changing China: Sun Yat Sen, as the anti-Manchu rebel, who would take up
arms in the endeavor to establish a republic; Kang Yu Wei, who would go
almost as far in reform, but would retain the Manchu dynasty under a strict
constitutional monarchy; Liang Chi Chao, as the translator of reform books
and a probable secretary of a reformed state; Wu Ting Fang, as a secret
reformer at heart, “who would bear sympathetic watching”, and Yuan Shih
Kai, to a degree an Occidentalized opportunist of great ability, who was
most favored by the Peking and Tientsin foreigners, though distrusted by
the Chinese and foreigners in the south and Yangtze valley of China. The
revolution was in full sway by November, 1911, with Sun Yat Sen named as
probable president of a Chinese republic (Republic of Han); Kang in the
exact place prophesied; Liang as secretary of justice of Yuan’s first trial
cabinet of a constitutional monarchy; Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of a
provisional republic at Shanghai; and Yuan called from his two years’ exile
at Chang Te in Honan province to be the first minister of the reformed
constitutional monarchy.
This most wonderful of revolutions seemed to break as a bolt from a
clear sky on October 10, 1911, at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, in the
center of the land, under the very guns of the United States gunboats
Helena and Villalobos which were steaming by. It was, as I have attempted
to show, rather a carefully planned matter, the propaganda going on abroad
and at home under bands and leaders, all of whose views did not stop at the
same place, but whose opinions had one source in patriotic reform. Kang,
the oldest and first of the reformers, commenced in 1897 by winning with
his book, Japan’s Reform, the emotional Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu. But
when the emperor fell in 1898 before the reactionary dowager, Tse Hsi,
Kang, the Cantonese with a Hongkong education, was driven to British
Singapore and Penang, from which places he has planned his travels and
propaganda of the “Pao Huang Hwei” (Empire Reform Association), which
contemplated a revolution of reform, but the retention of the Manchu

dynasty as constitutional monarchs for the time being. This association was
quite different from the Kao-lao-hwei, “Ko Ming” and “Sia Hwei” (reform
associations) of Sun Yat Sen, which aimed at a republic. In other words
Kang was a Taft “standpatter” medium reformer, and Sun a thorough-going
advanced reformer of the Roosevelt type. Kang’s associations grew up in
China, America and England, and Kang visited them, recommending the
drilling of companies to attack the troops of the reactionary literati of the
Hanlin academy.
Liang Chi Chao, the writer and translator, went first to the Straits
Settlements and then to Kobe and Yokohama, Japan, where he edited the
reform Chinese papers, the Hsi Pao (Western paper), and the Ming Pao, and
flooded his country with translations of parts of the great books of British
and American liberty. Liang, too, tolerated the retention of the Manchu
monarchs for the time being. Doctor Macklin, an American missionary of
Nanking had translated Henry George’s Progress and Poverty into Chinese,
and this book was in the hands of the reformers, and particularly
appreciated by Sun Yat Sen. Chang Yuan Chi’s Commercial Press of Honan
Road, Shanghai, had, since 1898, been translating a million dollars a year of
Western text-books for Chinese schools. The American Presbyterian Press
at Suchow, and at 18 Peking Road, Shanghai, the American Episcopal
Press, the presses of the other American and British missions and Bible
societies, had for years been issuing telling books of truth in Chinese. Rich
compradores of foreign houses at Hongkong, like Ma Ying Pui, presented
$1,000 to patriotic lecturing societies like the “Wan Yung.” Hæmon’s
argument with his father, King Creon, in Sophocles’ Antigone, brilliantly
denouncing absolute rule as only fitted for the monarch of a desert, was
recited by the foreign-trained students.
Yuan Shih Kai was deposed by the regent, Prince Chun, in 1909, but
from his exile at Chang Te in Honan province, he kept in dignified touch
with the formation of the new forces of opinion and arms, and with his
backers, the northern foreigners. Yuan is a mighty man, quite on the style of
Li Hung Chang, his preceptor, whom we of the West knew so well. At
Tientsin, the foreigners assisted Yuan, previous to 1909, with instruction in
Occidental organization, and the best troops of the empire, as well as the
best schools, and almost the best mills, were organized by Yuan. The
reformers who dare the most, however, look upon Yuan by his past, as a

temporizer, opportunist and dictator largely under foreign influence; too
much Occidentalized, and out of touch with the spirit of “China for the
Chinese”, and the “Sia Hwei” (reform associations). They look upon him
as, in the past, a Manchuized Chinese who fears to work for himself as a
republican, but must have an employer like a Manchu emperor or some
other head; great as a Richelieu is great, but not as a Washington is great.
They say that while he is thorough of mind, he is not yet vehemently
sincere in heart. They fear that Yuan, if left to himself, would concede too
much to foreign concession seekers. They bitterly recall that but for Yuan,
the reformers of 1897–8 would have swept the kingdom peacefully. Yuan is
the most popular Chinese with foreigners at Peking, Tientsin, Chifu,
Newchwang, Tsingtau and other ports of the north. He is not so much in
touch with the heart of the reform spirit in Western, Central or Southern
China, nor with the foreigners of the great educational treaty ports of those
sections, and of the brilliant British colony of Hongkong in South China,
which, with British and American Shanghai, has done most for a reformed
China. Yuan’s only experience outside of China proper was when as a youth
he served twelve years with the army in Korea. Yuan’s temperament is cold.
A noted southern statesman, referring to him, said: “What can you expect of
a man who is so cold that he has to carry three braziers up his sleeve?” In
the Korean campaign of 1884 against Japan, Yuan is said to have objected
to Red Cross operations, jesting that the surgeons didn’t need to take the
trouble, for “while they had remade the man, they hadn’t remade the
soldier”. Yuan was a ruthless decapitator in that and other campaigns.
However, “to err is human, and to forgive, divine”, and if Yuan serves a
united republican China with full heart in the future, the mistakes of the
past will be forgotten in the joys of the glorious deeds that are possible.
Doctor Sun Yat Sen (let us Latinize him as Sunyacius) is a Hongkong
product, and has been a revolutionist and a republican from the beginning.
As a boy he was fed on thrilling stories of the Taiping rebellion by his
uncle, who had served as an officer in that rebellion. He was born at
Fatshan, seven miles west of Canton, in 1866. From 1884–87 he was
assisted by Doctor Kerr, of the Anglo-American Mission, Canton, in whose
office he studied medicine and English. He studied medicine and surgery
under Doctor Cantlie at Hongkong, of which colony he became a citizen
(that is, a British citizen), though of course, he has now returned to his
Chinese citizenship. Doctor Cantlie was then teaching in the Hongkong

School of Medicine, which is now a part of the Hongkong University. In
1892 Sun became the first Chinese practising physician at Macao, and met
with great opposition from the Portuguese doctors, who, in 1894, drove him
to Canton. His father was a Chinese Christian evangelist, a
Congregationalist (London Mission) by denomination, and Sunyacius looks
upon the study of the Christian Bible as the greatest necessity in China’s
education. Even two years before Kang’s work at Peking, Doctor
Sunyacius, in 1895, smuggled arms into Canton, got his revolutionary
forces at work, and received his first baptism of fire, in which he showed, as
on subsequent occasions, absolute fearlessness regarding his life. Sunyacius
also lived for a while with his brother and sympathizers in Honolulu, and
his studies in Hawaii and in America committed him to the republican form
of government. Owing to the Swatow men not meeting the Hongkong men
at Canton, Sunyacius’ plans collapsed in 1895. By the advice of Mr. Dennis,
a prominent solicitor of Hongkong, Sunyacius fled to Kobe, Japan; to
Honolulu and to San Francisco. This incisive, good-looking little man of
about five feet five inches in height, who dresses and looks like an
American or a Briton, has for years been traveling incognito in America,
England and Japan, organizing drill, educational and contributing corps of
the “Kao Lao Hwei” (reform associations), the money and men going to
Canton, Shanghai and Wuchang, where the main revolution broke out on
that memorable day, October 10, 1911. General Hwang Hing was
Sunyacius’ representative in China in receiving this aid. All of Sunyacius’
helpers proved loyal to their trust in handling this money, except one, and of
him Sunyacius himself writes: “He will meet with his due reward.”
Sunyacius’ head carried a price (the modern blacklist) and only his
insistence on British citizenship saved him from being kidnapped as a
lunatic (no less) by the yellow and white detectives of the Manchus, to have
his ankles crushed under the hammer and his body cut into a thousand
pieces (lin chee) slowly at Peking. He was seized on Portland Street in
London, in 1896, and hurried to the Chinese Legation. Sunyacius’ rescue
came about in this dramatic way: His Hongkong teacher, Doctor Cantlie,
was then practising in London. Sunyacius gave to a British secretary in the
Chinese Legation a note addressed to Doctor Cantlie, to whom it was
fortunately delivered in the British spirit of fair play and through the pleas
of a woman, the Briton’s wife counseling her husband to deliver the letter in
“noble scorn of consequence”. The heroic Doctor Cantlie at once took it to

Lord Salisbury and the British Foreign Office, which intervened,
surrounding the Chinese Legation with officers (a new siege of Peking).
Sunyacius was reluctantly given his freedom by the Manchuized Chinese.
Only for Britain, therefore, Sunyacius would never have lived to strike the
tocsin of a republican revolution. But then, Britain has been the mother and
teacher of reformers since Cromwell’s day.
Sunyacius’ headquarters have been at British Singapore and at
Hongkong, but he is as well known at San Francisco, Chicago, New York,
London, Vancouver and Yokohama. He has walked into dormitories of
Columbia College, New York, and talked revolution and reform with some
of the students under the unconscious eye of so prominent a conservative as
President Butler. One of his student protégés was Wellington Koo, now the
Chinese secretary to Yuan Shih Kai. Sunyacius is a thorough-going scholar,
propagandist, organizer and republican, like the book he carried, a man of
“Progress and Poverty”. The world’s great bankers, especially two London
firms long connected with Chinese progress, knew him, his disguises as a
salesman, etc., and his careful plans of government and finance, and he has
not been timid in America, or in London, Hongkong and the Straits
Settlements in asking for loans for his propaganda and revolution. He has
handled a million dollars honestly, and lived most frugally. The greatest
luxury he ever allowed himself was a “Prince Albert” coat and a rose-
bouttonière, but that was so that he might appear acceptably before an
audience of Occidentals! When in Singapore, Doctor Sun had his picture
taken in white ducks and a topey hat, so that he is a modern in tonsorial as
well as other matters! “This conference must be secret and our
correspondence must be anonymous, and upon receipt, burned,” said Sun to
the bankers. “Why?” they asked. “Because I am shadowed night and day.
Look across the way when I suddenly lift the curtain.” He raised the curtain,
and the bankers saw two “sleuths” in the cowardly shadow, one of them a
Chinese, lurking in a recess of a money capital of the Occident, many
thousand miles from the Manchu cabal in Peking, who had Oriental and
Occidental detective agencies in their blacklisting pay.
Dr. Sun is a brilliant and enthusiastic speaker in Chinese and in
English. His speeches to the Chinese often extend into hours. His small
copper-plate handwriting in English is better than his Chinese chirography.
He is a polished writer, having published in 1904 in London a book on “The

Chinese Question”. The Manchus have kept Doctor Sun out of China, and
he is therefore not yet thoroughly known to the Hupeh and Hunan province
guilds, who fired the first successful shot, but he is the pick of the southern
and the alien Chinese, who are the best educated of their race, and have
largely financed reform: the Chinese of Canton, Singapore, Penang, noble
Hongkong, Macao, America, England, Japan, Australia, and brilliant
Shanghai. He has never held office under the Manchus at home or abroad,
and is therefore not well known to foreigners in the salons of diplomats, in
the capitals of the Caucasic race, or to the masses of the Chinese in the
north and west provinces, but he is a coming man, and perhaps the most
consistent and steady of the reformers, as he is certainly the most
promising, intellectual and coolly daring. Sun Yat Sen’s name may some
day be Latinized into Sunyacius, just as Kung Fut Tse’s name became
popular as Confucius. Why not also Latinize Yuan Shih Kai’s name into the
more popular Yuanshius? The following incident will throw a light on Sun’s
character: On February 22nd his elder brother, Sun Mei, a man ordinary in
equipment, was almost elected governor of the great province of
Kwangtung as a popular tribute to Sun Yat Sen. The latter wired from
Nanking, disapproving of the choice for the province’s good, and urging
“brother Mei” to confine himself to business, for which he was more fitted.
Such frankness in family relations when public preferment is at stake, is
scarcely common.
Wu Ting Fang, a Cantonese trained at Hongkong, London and
Washington, blossomed out suddenly at Shanghai in November, 1911, as
foreign minister of the provisional Chinese republican government of the
fourteen central, eastern and southern rebel provinces. The western world
stopped its breath in tremendous astonishment. Wu! the brilliant,
fashionable and evasive Chinese minister at Washington, who would put
you off on politics to discuss vegetarianism, a rebel! He was secretive
beyond parallel, and had never talked revolution. The writer tried to get him
to talk reform in 1909 in connection with the reform prophecies in his book,
The Chinese, and though Wu had then fully decided on the part he would
take in the coming revolution, he would only repeat what the writer said,
and would express absolutely no opinion of his own. I have known writers
who have flayed him for this abrupt evasion, calling him a “rice Christian”
of yore, a temporizer, etc., but I admire him for his calmness, fixed resolves,
and patience in waiting for the prodigious hour to strike. Wu knew what

was coming, and was heartily, though secretly, in favor of it. He was the
first of the rebels to insist on foreign acknowledgment of the rebel
government, and he formulated the most brilliant move of the revolution—
the announcement that if foreigners advanced money to the imperialists,
and the republicans won, the latter would repudiate such loans. This really
won the revolution, for numbers of the foreign syndicates, especially the
Russian, were at first heartily in favor of the Manchu status quo. Wu has
already codified the reform and penal laws of China, and is prepared to
enter upon that difficult question, extraterritoriality. Watch Wu; he is not
afraid to take the side of “China for the Chinese”, although he is the most
polished in western culture of all Chinese officials. He aims to interpret the
East to the West. Wu risked vast preferment, and therefore he is a more
sincere man than doughty Yuan, and he will grow in power with the masses
of the Chinese nation. His brother-in-law is the exceedingly able Doctor Ho
Kai, Commander of the Order of Michael and George, the Chinese member
of the Legislative Council of the royal colony of Hongkong Island, a
thorough legislator, a lovable and brilliant man. Wu is a member of a
worthy Canton family. He is a graduate of the Middle Temple, London; has
practised before the Hongkong bar; and he served Li Hung Chang for many
years as legal adviser at Tientsin and Peking, in drawing up foreign treaties,
etc.
There were other reformers in China and abroad at work from 1898 to
1911, although the western press gave no attention to the really astonishing
matter. The bitter Hunanese republican rebel, the irrepressible Hwang Hing,
was also exiled by the empress dowager, Tse Hsi, in 1898. He fled to Japan,
with a price on his head also, and could hardly be restrained from calling
the psychic moment for a revolution into immediate declaration. He was a
fast organizer, and being nearer the ground, was in close enough touch with
the Chinese of the central provinces to be at Wuchang in October, 1911,
shortly after the first blow was struck. He had much to do with the gentry of
the Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who largely financed and
precipitated the main revolution. Hwang is considered by the extremists of
his party as presidential timber. He is a fervent talker, and like Sun, the last
man in the world to be an opportunist, which is the great Yuan’s one fault in
the minds of many of the Chinese people. Hwang Hing is the one reformer
who has some Japanese sympathies, on account of his education in Japan.
He was born at Changsha in Hunan, where Yale College has a branch.

In America the editors of the Chung Sai Yat Po, the Chinese World, and
Free Press in San Francisco; the Chinese Students’ Club in New York (225
East Thirty-first Street), which publishes a journal, and the Chinese Reform
News in New York, often visited by Sun Yat Sen’s American representative,
Wong Man Su, ably took up the propaganda, which was carried on in their
own way by a thousand newspapers which arose throughout China from
1906 onward, first in the treaty ports, and later in Chinese cities, especially
Canton, Hankau and Shanghai. Much reference was made to the fact that
while China, the largest Oriental country, was without a real parliament,
other Oriental countries had successfully overthrown despotism and
oligarchism, and had popular assemblies, which granted some
representation in return for the privilege of taxation. Japan had a Diet; even
black Russia had a Duma; the Filipinos had an Assembly; Turkey had an
Assembly; little Persia had a representative Mejliss; native members had at
last been admitted into the Viceroy’s Council in India; and Hongkong, with
its 500,000 Chinese had long had two Chinese as brilliant members of the
Legislative Council.
Viceroy Seu Ki Yu’s essay of 1866, praising Washington and
republicanism as ideal, was reissued and distributed, and had great
influence. By 1909 and 1910 the reformers had compelled the Manchus to
heed the howling of the wind, and see the shadow of a cloud, at least as big
as a man’s hand, on the horizon of internal politics. The dowager empress,
Tse Hsi, and later, Prince Ching, and the regent, Prince Chun—all Manchus
—granted provincial and national assemblies; but they were called and
considered only “Tsecheng Yuan” (advice boards), and not legislative
bodies in the free and full sense of the word. The pensions of the Manchus
and bannermen in the various Chinese cities were decreased, and land was
offered them so that they might enter the industrial body. Many Manchus
rebelled, as at Chingtu City in September, 1911. Argument increased. The
cloud on the horizon grew larger. Objection was made to the court’s
monopoly of the rich copper mines of Yunnan province, and complaint was
reiterated that while the southern provinces mainly supported the imperial
authority in taxes paid, these provinces were the least consulted, and the
weakest in representation in any governmental consultations that were held
at Peking. The government developed the armies and schools of the three
northern provinces of Pechili, Shangtung and Shansi with taxes collected
mainly in the southern provinces, where the government neglected schools,

police and army divisions. It was hard to get the Stuart kings to call
Parliaments, and when at a belated date they did, complaint was louder than
ever, for there was something to complain of, and at last a constitutional
place to complain in.
These Chinese assemblies gave little representation directly to the
masses, a high property or high tax qualification debarring them as in
Japan; but the gentry of the guilds, in many cases, espoused the reform
sentiment of the masses, exactly as the Stuart Parliaments did to the disgust
of the Stuarts who hoped for monarchic support, and as the barons of the
“Magna Charta” did at Runnymede to the disgust of Plantagenet John. One
provincial assembly president we must note at this point. He is Tang Hua
Lung, of the Hupeh Assembly. When Hankau was taken on October 10,
1911, Tang jumped to the front as organizer of the first rebel provincial
government; the “province of Hupeh of the Republic of Han”, with
headquarters at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, the ancient viceregal capital
of the illustrious Chang Chih Tung. With Tang Hua, Sun Yu, brother of Sun
Yat Sen, came into prominence. In the mother province of reform, the most
progressive province politically of all the twenty-one, Kwangtung, Wu Hon
Man agitated in his assembly for reform, and when the imperial viceroy,
Chang Ming Chi, fled to Hongkong, because he could find no other refuge,
Wu Hon Man rushed into the yamen at Canton with the rebelling Sixteenth,
and other regiments, and took charge of that great province for the
republican rebels. In its nationalization-of-railways scheme, the Manchus
confiscated the Kwangtung railways, promising to pay the owners only
sixty per cent. of their investment. Title deeds of mines in Kwangtung and
other provinces were also confiscated by the tyrannical Manchu
government.
China’s army was a territorial one. Troops raised in this way are hard to
control in local emergencies, but they are easier to recruit, mobilize, drill
and discipline at the beginning than mixed corps. Among the Generals of
Divisions, transferred from the Navy Department, was Li Yuan Heng, on
whom the revolutionaries largely fixed their hopes as the man trained and
true for the real deeds of deadly arms, which make new governments
possible. Propaganda and patience are all right in their places, but powder
needs a special man of a stern mold, fit to deal with merciless and terrible
enemies. General Li was one of these men, and General Hwang, Sun Yat

Sen’s special representative at the Hankau and Hanyang battles, was
another. General Ling, on the rebels’ right wing and the republican
commander-in-chief, General Hsu Shao Ching, at Shanghai, were others.
General Li’s proclamation of the “Republic of Han”, with military
headquarters at Wuchang, covered the following points:

1. Expulsion of the Manchu dynasty.
PROHIBITED ON PAIN OF DEATH
2. Injuring foreigners.
3. Injuring business by taking advantage of war.
4. Rapine, arson and adultery.
5. Mobbing.
6. Preventing recruiting.
7. Withstanding commissariat.
TO BE REWARDED HIGHLY
8. Supplying commissariat.
9. Supplying ammunition.
10. Protecting foreign concessions.
11. Protecting foreign missions.
12. Spreading republican and reform (Sia Hwei) propaganda.
13. Facilitating restoration of business and commerce.

General Li, a Hupeh man, was the Marlborough of the revolution, a
young, dashing, Christian soldier, used to courts, fine-looking, full of
humor, traveled, approachable. General Hsu, as the successful siege of
Nanking was later to prove, was the Grant of the revolution, steady,
reasonable, persistent, a spender of men, a strategist and a pounder. General
Li was educated at the Pei Yang naval colleges at Tientsin and Chifu, and at
Japanese military and naval schools at Tokio, Kure and Yokosuka, where
the name of China’s one naval hero of the China-Japan War, Admiral Ting,
of the famous battleships Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen, is held in considerable
respect. Li passed through the terrific fire of the naval engagements of the
Yalu and Wei Hai Wei in 1894. He is a Protestant Episcopalian. He traveled
round the world with Li Hung Chang in 1896, so that America and Britain
were then entertaining unawares one of the Washingtons of republican
China.

As general of the Twentieth Division of the northern army, camped at
Lanchow, just east of Peking, was General Chang Shao Tsen (we shall call
him Chang the First to distinguish him from two other generals Chang of
the Manchu camp at Nanking and elsewhere in the northeastern provinces).
Chang the First was well trained by the revolutionists in their doctrines of
liberty, and was told to watch two camps, the so-called People’s National
Assembly at Peking and the Manchu Court at Peking. Chang the First was
trained in war by Yuan Shih Kai and the Manchu general-in-chief, Yin
Tchang, both of whom were effective men, the former schooled by Tientsin
and Peking foreigners, the latter well trained in the Austrian ranks and
before the line of guards at Berlin. In old Canton, the mighty stanch Wu
Hon Man was president of the provincial assembly of Kwangtung province.
He, too, was ready to declare for rebellion, despite the imperial viceroy,
Chang Ming, and the loyal Tartar general, who were quartered on his
province. In the north, Governor Sun Hao Chi, of classic old Shangtung
province (the home of Confucius), was ready to go over. In the province
where Shanghai is located, the president of the assembly, Chang Chien,
who proposes to visit American chambers of commerce, and who is well
known as the host in China of visiting Pacific coast chambers of commerce,
was more than ready to declare for reform. He, with Wu Ting Fang, was
insistent on the abdication of the Manchu dynasty and the declaration of a
republic.
At Lhasa, in far-away Tibet, was an imperial resident who had been
trained in reform at Shanghai and in law at Yale College, in America. He
was the eminent Wen Tsung Yao, destined to be the assistant foreign
minister of the first rebel government, and whose son (a West Point
graduate) was slated to lead the most daring charges at Hankau and
Nanking. Even in the home of the Manchus, at Mukden, Wu Yun Lien, a
Chinese immigrant, president of the Manchuria Assembly, was filled with
the doctrine and ready to declare for reform. Great viceroys, who had
served China long in official positions under the Manchus, were ready to go
over, but for the most part the radical reformers were new men, unknown to
the world, as the Manchus had naturally never given office to them.
Many causes, all important, helped to precipitate the crisis. Sheng
Kung Pao and others at Peking, Tientsin and Hankau, both Chinese and
Manchus whom foreigners know well, had, partly under foreign advice and

Japan’s example, planned to compel the provinces and the gentry of the
guilds to sell out their many little railroads, a number of which were paying
well, to the central government, which intended to nationalize the railroads
quickly under immense loans from the banking nations of the Occident and
Japan. These loans meant to the local gentry the extinction of distributed
small fortunes and opportunities; concessions of mines to foreigners, such
as the immense gifts of franchises to the British “Peking Syndicate” in
Shansi province, to the London and China syndicate in Hupeh province, to
Belgian, German, French, Italian and other syndicates; heavy interest;
continuation of the unscientific Likin system of customs as a security, and
payment of obnoxious bonuses, as when Hupeh province, under Chang
Chih Tung, in 1904, had to pay a bonus to buy back a Chinese railway
concession; and in 1911, when China had to buy the bonds which
represented by an excess payment of $3,750,000 a Chinese railroad which
existed only on paper; and as Professor Ross points out in The Changing
Chinese, when Shansi province had to pay a syndicate over two millions to
relinquish an undeveloped concession in China which cost them almost
nothing. The bitter complaint, written in blood, of the Hunanese of
Changsha City on this subject is quoted in the New York Railway-Age
Gazette of October 13, 1911, and includes this sentence: “When a piece of
meat is in the traitorous railway thief’s mouth, it is hard to take it out.” All
may not agree with the Chinese position, but all should duly consider the
Chinese side of the question as expressed in their words. “Peking has
betrayed Wuchang,” cried the Hupeh men.
There were many more instances from the Sungari to the Yangtze
basins, yea, to the Mekong basin, through 2,500 miles of mine and men,
traffic and trade, of the hard bargain driven by the foreign lender, generally
under bad foreign advice.
No foreign house should ever send a representative to China unless it is
willing to send an enlightened and humane man, who intellectually
appreciates the able Chinese as much as he appreciates the foreigner, and
whose sympathies are equally divided between Cathay and his own nation.
Only such a man can deal fairly and give impartial advice, which alone in
the end will win for the foreigner what properly is his of the profit and
prestige. “Why should we, with the richest mines on earth; the richest
passenger, freight and labor field; with lands plethoric of water power and

grain; and the lowest debt, if unjust coerced indemnities were wiped out,
pay foreigners such immense bonuses, interest and concessions, discounts
and profits to go out of our country”; rang the cry, not only in Hupeh,
Hunan, Szechuen, Shansi and Kwangtung provinces, but even in native
papers printed under the shadow of the foreign banks on the bund at
Tientsin in the north.
There was one large meeting of protest held by the Chinese of British
Hongkong in the Chui Yin Hotel on September 3, 1911, delegates attending
even from distant Szechuen province. Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan’s memorial
was recalled: “The wealth of the country is being monopolized by
foreigners”. The Railroad Protective Association, of Chingtu City, in
August, 1911, issued a famous placard in which the four banking nations in
caricature were made to say: “The wealth of the four provinces of
Szechuen, Kwangtung, Hunan and Hupeh, all is given to us four foreign
nations to swallow down at one gulp”. Chinese men, women and children,
bound together before the ancestral graves, are made to say: “Bound
helplessly; it is unbearable. We are bound in one bunch to be given to
foreigners. Come quickly, friends of the Railroad Protective Association,
and deliver us.” The loot, lying ready for the syndicates of the four nations
to take away, is pictured as cash money, bullion sycee, bank bills, and books
of China’s Confucian classics and history. Other caricatures were prepared
so as to inflame patriotism in the breasts of the new students, the foreigner
being made to say cynically: “The venal students only want their up-keep,
purchased diplomas, political office, four chair bearers, free theatricals and
they’ll hush up. The mask may be brave as a dragon’s head, but the tail is
cowardly as a crawling snake.”
Remembering that Russia and Japan, in 1896, etc., first sought for
railway control and then practically occupied the three Manchurian
provinces, we can understand the patriot’s side of the following article
objecting to the three nations’ railway loan, published in Chinese in a
Hankau paper: “The merchants of Hupeh urge the people to take shares in
the Szechuen, Canton and Hankau railways. The people of China are in a
sad plight. Why is China so poor that every foreigner is eager to come to
her aid? You Chinese say you have plenty of money, but you are unwilling
to loan it. Why do you not use your money to construct these railway lines?
If you do not, the foreigners will come under false pretenses, destroy your

nationality, and cut off your supplies. England has used this diabolical
system to obliterate Egypt; otherwise how could she have got it?” Even if a
foreign banker, statesman or merchant does not fully agree with the local
feeling of the Chinese, it is wise to look frankly at their side of the argument
in making educational, financial and political plans in the future.
There was much complaint also of the private hoards of the Manchu
princes, both in strong-boxes and in foreign banks. The taxes levied in the
southern provinces mainly supported the empire, and these taxes were
increased. Something then was brewing, especially in the southern and
central provinces. The word went forth, “We are not Boxer murderers if we
cry China for the Chinese, and it is not fair to put a stone around China’s
neck with indemnities just because you are ahead of us in possessing fleets.
We love the American and British peoples, and their glorious books on
Liberty, even if we do not love some of your unregulated trusts any more
than you and your Supreme Court’s decisions do! We are willing to pay a
fair rate of interest. Not a hair of a foreigner is to be touched. We appreciate
the education and lovable alienation of the missionaries, and especially the
miracle of Occidental medicine and surgery.”
Here is the guarantee of the “Sia Hwei” (reform association), of
Fuchau, to the Methodist and other missionaries of Fukien province. “We
have just heard that the missionaries, on account of the uprising of the New
China revolutionary associations, with their just cause, have been requested
by your foreign consuls to go to the provincial capital, Fuchau, to be
protected. The Chinese people have become very much enlightened and
their old customs have changed. The Chinese people and the missionaries’
church are at peace, because your church has opened schools, hospitals,
orphanages and similar good institutions. Not one of these but is held deep
in the hearts of the Chinese people. Although we are a humble folk, still we
have seen and appreciated these things. This reform association requests
that you missionaries remain at your posts throughout the province. Should
anything unforeseen occur, we should, of course, exert ourselves to protect
you and your property. We are quite sure that we can afford efficient
protection from mobs and imperialists.” These Fukien people were as good
as their word, for besides sending levies to the revolution, the “hsiang lao”
(head men) of the villages organized home guards for the protection of both
foreigners and natives. When the revolution broke out at Wuchang, the

soldiers of the thirtieth regiment escorted the American missionaries out of
the line of fire from Serpent Hill. The American Episcopal missionaries
crowded aboard the German freighter Belgravia, bound for Shanghai, the
American gunboat Helena, Commander Knepper, standing by. The
revolutionary soldiers of Generals Li and Hwang shouted a peace message:
“American republicans are brothers of ours; good-by!”
A cry went through the vast nation that the Manchu dynasty of usurpers
was signing away the land with hardly a struggle: Tonquin to France;
Formosa and vast Korea to Japan; rich Manchuria, and possibly Jungaria, to
Russia; Kiaochou to Germany; and so on, even little Portugal wanting more
of Heungshan Peninsula; the effete nations of Europe, with only paper
ships, “bluffing” like the monster nations, all demanding “your provinces or
your life”, and getting the provinces. The articles in the independent press
in America were translated in many instances into Chinese, and the spirit of
protest in America, Britain and Germany was emulated in awakened China.
The minority Manchus could not be trusted to control the Chinese, and
“pack” boards (Pus), ministries, and even assemblies, to suit themselves.
Government by “privileged minority” was being called in question
throughout the earth as unconstitutional; why not in China? There must be
true popular government, which the Manchus postponed from month to
month with “standpat” doctrines, and while a deliberative body was formed
at Peking, the ministries, boards and the majority of the National Assembly
were appointed in “machine” style by the Manchus from their set, which, of
course, included many of the Manchuized Chinese, as well as Manchus and
Mongols. The Chinese officials—the old literati—are the viceroys,
ministers and members of the governing boards, whom we foreigners best
know. Many of them are very able, and some of them love reform, but few
of them dared anything for the revolution except Wu Ting Fang. Give him
that credit as often as possible.
The heavy indemnities, amounting to the awful sum of $250,000,000,
for the massacres of 1900, which the “Boxer” empress dowager, Tse Hsi, a
Manchu, approved, have been a heavy load upon the Chinese people of the
southern and central provinces, who had nothing to do with the persecution
of foreigners. The Chinese of the taxed south greatly appreciated, therefore,
American and British action in returning part of their indemnities. But other

nations should do likewise. The Westminster Gazette, of London, now
supports this position.
Histories of peoples, not dynasties and oligarchies, such as John
Richard Green’s History of the English People; books which helped to bring
about the American revolution; the American missionary, Doctor Macklin’s,
Chinese translation of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty; great pæans
of liberty and political pain the world over; editorials from the progressive
American press; chapters from American and English books which
sympathized with the Chinese, were translated and read. The notable book
Service was re-read. It was written in 1897 by Tan Sze Tung, the son of a
governor of Hupeh province. Tan was one of the martyrs of 1898 who were
beheaded by the dowager, Tse Hsi. Tan’s book criticized absolute monarchy
and recommended reform in politics and commerce. Sin Chin Nan, by
translating parts of Dickens, had shown the Chinese people that the
common man endured wrongs that should be righted. Thomas Paine’s The
Crisis, which was read before the American regiments of 1776, was
translated to be read to revolutionary societies like Sun Yat Sen’s “Ka Ming
Tang” and the “Sia Hwei.” Special note was taken of the establishment of a
Duma even in oligarchic Russia; the success of the Young Turk party in
even such a terrific oligarchy as Turkey; the successful revolt in Mexico,
where a practical oligarchy gave lands to favorites and would not grant real
popular government; and the representation of the Oriental race in the
legislative bodies of Hongkong, India, Straits Settlements and the
Philippines.
The preliminary dance was opened in September, 1911, by far western
Szechuen province, Peking issuing this edict in the yellow Peking Gazette:
“Whoever shall serve us by killing rebels or by capturing and binding
members of the rebellion party, shall be rewarded regardless of rules.” The
Peking government had practically confiscated the railways of the
Szechuenese, as the paper which they were given in exchange bore no
guarantee of interest, and no reliance was put upon the value of the security
by the provincial gentry, bankers and farmers. When provinces and states
lose confidence in the sincerity of a fixed central government that is not run
by parties, that government totters to its fall. A national anthem was given
to the nation to sing:

“May China be preserved!
In this time of the Manchu dynasty,
We are fortunate to see real splendor;
May the heavens protect the imperial family.”

The south only sang it in parodies. The railway board (Yuchuan Pu) was
putting through its nationalization-of-railways scheme, in accordance with
the $50,000,000 gold loan from the syndicates of four of the banking
nations. To back up arguments, troops were increased under the various
generals, Tartar and Manchuized Chinese. Some of these troops were from
the federal army, northern divisions, and had been trained by Yuan and
General Yin Tchang. Some were provincial viceroys’ troops, trained both
under foreign and native systems, like the splendid army of the Yunnan
viceroy, Li Chin Hsi. The small railway owners, the small mine owners, the
contractors of man-transportation, the noted farmers and river men of
Szechuen province, were ordered to consent to the new scheme of a
national railway to break across Szechuen province from Ichang to Chingtu,
and for other railways in the province. The terms of the foreign loan, the
price at which the bankrupt federal government would pretend to buy out
the provincial gentry and guilds, the heavy new taxes on the west and south,
were all partly explained, and the men of Szechuen (by blood largely Hupeh
and Hunan provinces’ emigrants) rebelled and “fired the shot that was heard
around the world”.

Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.

The Assembly Hall at Wuchang, where the Eighth Hupeh Division under
General Li Yuan Heng fired the volley that was heard round the world,
and ushered in republican China. In the background is Serpent Hill.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The high tide of the revolution; Nanking’s walls; the crowded boat life of
China.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The Honorable Doctor Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese
republic, Director-General of the National Railway
development; leader of the Tung Men Hwai, the advanced
party in China. By birth, a Southern Chinese (Kwangtung
province), the type best known to foreigners.

A noted, partially loyal Chinese general was shortly put in command of
the imperial troops in the ancient capital, Chingtu. His name was General

Chao Ehr Feng, the famous commander who did the astonishing thing, both
from a religious and military point of view, in 1910, of driving the Dalai
Lama out of Lhasa and Tibet into Darjeeling, in India, and thus putting
Buddhism and its pope at the feet of Confucian China. China also brought
up her bloodiest general, Tsen Chun Hsuan, infamous for putting out the
last terrific Mohammedan rebellion in mountainous Yunnan province of the
clouds, in unnecessary rivers of blood. Foreigners scowled at the
employment of this man, and Manchu China was a little uncertain.
Promises meant nothing to Tsen. He was a man-eating tiger, the bloodiest
man in the world, who pretended and looked to be nothing else, and was
descended from as bloody generals. Peking meant business, and the railway
policy, which was as much a war policy, seemed to be going through.
It was not long, however, before General Chao’s forces were cooped up
in Chingtu, which was besieged by the rebelling province of Szechuen
under the leadership of the president of assembly, Pu Tien Chun, and in the
engagements General Chao was captured and decapitated. The strategic
importance of the railways already built then appeared like the flash of a
saber at the bare neck of the victim. Modern troops were hurried down to
Hankau by rail in twenty-four hours and up the river to Ichang by steamer,
in the rear and on the flank of the besiegers. Then something like thunder
happened among the divisions which had been mobilized at the triple cities
of Wuchang, Hanyang and Hankau. The Eighth Division, under General Li
Yuan Heng, territorial troops of the modern army, hoisted the rebel tri-color
sun flag of red, white and blue over the yellow dragon of the Manchus, put
white bands on their arms and rebelled for the new-born republic of Han.
They captured the leading arsenal, steel and coal plant at Hanyang, the
populous commercial city of Hankau, and the luxurious viceregal capital of
Wuchang on October 13, 1911. This put a high standard on the rebellion,
for Li was a young well-trained general of the new school, a diplomat, a
sturdy man in the field, a patriot who could not be bought and who was
organizer enough to see that his men were not bought. Admiral Sah, with a
fleet of gunboats and small cruisers, aided the imperial divisions under the
bloody general, Chang Piao Tuan, which tried to retake the native city of
Hankau. Li’s troops, especially his “Dare to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) Brigade of
shaven round-heads, fought bravely, although their artillery was only
equipped with percussion shells, as compared with the time-fuse shells
brought down from Peking, Tientsin and Kiaochou to supply the imperial

troops. When ammunition ran out, the rebel troops used the bayonet charge
with reckless daring. It was a new era in fighting in China when yellow men
would charge, with only cold steel, across an area swept by machine guns.
On October 21st, Generals Li and Hwang, with 15,000 ill-equipped rebels,
won the battle of Kwang Shili in Hupeh against General Yin Tchang, the
Manchu minister of war and commander-in-chief, with 20,000 finely
equipped loyalists. Part of General Li’s force was a section of an army
division which had gone over. Others of his new troops were recruited from
the most famous boatmen of the world, the Szechuen trackers of the wild
rapids and sublime gorges of the glorious Yangtze River, and from the
indefatigable, cheerful mountain coolies of Hupeh province, who are as
agile as a chamois.
The propaganda of the rebels now bore fruit in rapid succession. On
October 22nd the rebels, under the leadership of Tan Yen Kai, president of
the Hunan Assembly, took Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. Yale
College has a branch in this long forbidden city. Hunan has always been
notable for honest, sturdy, independent men. It is the proudest province and
the sternest in China. “What way Hunan goes, that way goes China.” It was
the last province to permit missionary activity. Nanchang, the capital of
Kiangsi province, the land of pottery, was taken on the same day,
completing the occupation of the four adjoining central Yangtze provinces,
which was all that Sun (Sunyacius) first planned to do, as a beginning and a
basis on which to solicit foreign loans. It was rebellion indeed, and not a
riot. The Tartars, Manchus and loyalists fled. New provincial governments
were set up, each with a popular assembly. Peking was desperate, for China
was almost split in half by the political earthquake. Peking felt sure that she
held the north, however, with a well-equipped army of about twenty
divisions. The reformers, however, had breathed into the ear of the troops,
and pay was overdue in the impoverished condition of the central
government.
On October 24th, ancient Singan, the capital of the north-western
province of Shensi, the original capital of China, where the empress
dowager, Tse Hsi, fled in 1900, went over to the rebels, despite the threats
of the bloody Mongol governor, General Sheng Yun. This really meant a
fifth seceding province, as far as the populace was concerned. On the same
day, Kowkiang on the Yangtze went over. Then Kweilin, the capital of

Kwangsi province, went over on October 25th. This was the first of the
southern provinces to join the movement openly. On October 25th noble
Fuchau, the famous seaport capital of old Fukien province, went over, and
we have already quoted a wonderful message to the white man from their
“Sia Hwei” (reform association). On October 26th, Ngan-king, capital of
Nganhwei province, declared for the rebels, and on the same day General Li
was suggested as provisional president of the forming republic of Han, with
six of China’s twenty-one provinces already seceding. Reform was as hot as
a prairie fire, and almost as hard to manage.
On October 29th a remarkable thing occurred among the divisions
being massed for an attack on the rebels’ capital at Wuchang. The Twentieth
Division was at Lanchow camp, east of Peking, under General Chang Shao
Teng. They formed the famous Army League, and made reform demands on
the packed National Assembly at Peking, just as Cæsar’s immortal
Thirteenth Legion, before the rebellion, sent demands to the Roman Senate,
whose orders they were supposed to take. In consternation, the packed
National Assembly granted the Nineteen Constitutional Articles, and the
Manchu regent, Prince Chun, an able and traveled man (he went to
Germany in 1901) daily issued edicts and yellow Peking Gazettes, full of
tearful promises, in which, however, the central and southern rebellious
provinces had no confidence. They said: “Edicts are like the wings of day
and night; it all depends on which side the sun is.” This action of the
Twentieth Division halted the government’s war measures, and plans were
laid to get loyal divisions near the Lanchow camp, and get rid of General
Chang the First. This general was not strong enough to attack Peking on his
own account, for there were imperial divisions between him and Generals
Li and Hwang of the revolutionists. But he was strong enough to be
stubborn, and not move forward. Peking was largely in panic. The railroad
station was piled high with household goods, and excursion trains for the
flight of the Manchus were running to Tientsin as fast as they could be
switched. The streets of Peking were crowded with mule carts, bearing
bullion sycee and coins to be stored in the vaults of foreign banks in the
legation quarter. No one half guessed before the wealth which the
pensioned and privileged Manchus had in cache. Proud princes of the blood
were even willing to stand up all the way to Tientsin in open coal cars.
Foreigners, legations, railways and banks were popular as never before in
the north, as a very present refuge in time of trouble! Marvelous treasures

of vases, tapestries, and jade were entrusted to foreigners for safe-keeping,
and the treasures of the Mukden and Peking palaces were sacrificed, foreign
agents taking advantage of the opportunity. Where could a Manchu take
them: to Jehol, to Kalgan where the Russ waited, to Mukden where the
Japanese waited? That was only like running from the door to be caught on
the roof. Before long, treasures next in wonder to those looted at Peking in
1900 will find their way into the palaces, mansions and museums of the
Occident, and artistic China will be robbed bare as a bone; for Peking has
long been robbing China of art. The hotels and khans of Peking were
crowded to the roofs, and the refugees overflowed into the cellars and
stables and moats. Merchantmen were chartered, and held with steam up at
Tientsin, ready to afford a refuge for panic-stricken Manchu princes, or
disgraced Chinese officials like Sheng. Missionaries in the outskirts trusted
the promises of the “Sia Hwei”, and stayed at their posts. Alarmed consuls
arrested them in order to bring them into the capital, and the Chinese forgot
the dignity due to their arms and laughed at the humorously incongruous
situation!
On November 3rd, the Imperial Third Division under General Wong
Chou Yuen, with the assistance of Admiral Sah’s fleet, attacked the rebels in
native Hankau City. The vast flat city is not adapted for defense, and the
loyalists were infinitely better equipped. General Li was short of
ammunition. His troops, however, put up a brave fight, time and again
charging hopelessly with cold steel against machine guns, and eliciting the
unqualified admiration of the foreigners. On that day the Imperial Third
Division made a bloody name for itself in the respect of massacre of non-
combatants and arson. A prosperous city of nearly a million was reduced to
the appearance of nearly a wrecked village. Both rebels and loyalists saved
the foreign quarter along the Yangtze Bund, with its palatial consulates and
business houses, and the American Episcopal St. Paul’s cathedral and St.
Peter’s church, which were turned into hospitals by Doctors Glenton and
MacWillie, and nurse Miss Clark of the Red Cross. Across the river at
Wuchang, the buildings of the American Episcopal Boone University were
turned into a hospital by Doctors Merrins, Paterson and others of the brave.
Heroic missionaries held up their hands against the Third Division, and
pleaded the rules of the Red Cross, but the Manchus, especially Prince Tsai
Tao and others of the Tsai princes, desired by a massacre to induce the
rebels to massacre the first time they had a victory, and thus bring on

foreign intervention to save the dynasty. A dynasty that can not stand
without foreign intervention will never stand, for true strength is in the
hearts of the people alone. It was the old Boxer trick of the dowager
empress, Tse Hsi, in 1900.
The rebels, however, meant to keep their heads, even under such terrific
provocation as that bloody Race Track field of Hankau, over which the
machine guns of the Imperial Third Division swept, and those bloody
streets, maloos and walls where non-combatants were butchered if they
wore a piece of white, or had their queues severed, both of which were
hated rebel signs. To and fro the tide of war surged. On November 3rd, a
great change occurred, for on that day the rebels’ great misfortune in having
no fleet, was to a large degree nullified. Shanghai arsenal, which supplied
Admiral Sah’s fleet, and Shanghai’s native walled city, went over to the
revolutionists. This was the second great step forward. The rebels secured
the well-known Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of the republic of Han,
and their organization spread and strengthened in everything except money
and a modern equipped force.
On the same day, the far southwestern capital and province, Yunnan,
with its splendid army and police, declared for the red, white and blue sun
flag of the republic. Two days after, on November 5th, the famous bore-city,
Hangchow, the center of culture, and capital of the coast province of
Chekiang, was captured by assault, the Manchu general putting up a strong
defense in the Tartar walled section of the city. Ningpo, in the same
province, and Suchow, another ancient capital of culture in Kiangsu
province, went over on the same day.
On November 6th, Admiral Sah’s sailors handed part of the imperial
fleet over to the rebels at Shanghai, and the rebels were now able to reform
their center line. This also gave the republicans their first nucleus of a navy.
Admiral Sah Chen Ping received his baptism of fire in the battle of the
Yalu, under the brave Admiral Ting and Commander Teng. He commanded
in suppressing riots at Changsha in 1910, when Yale College branch was
barely saved, and he is well known as the host of Admiral Emery’s
American fleet at Amoy, when the white squadron was girdling the world
under the surprised eyes of Japan, whose mixed-school and emigration
“bluffs” were called by President Roosevelt in this significant but quiet
way. It was most important to win Kiangsu province, and Chinkiang City

was therefore talked over on November 6th. The same day, in the far north,
the coaling city and naval base of Chifu in Shangtung province, declared for
reform.
Up to this time the cultured old Ming capital of Nanking, the most
beloved city in China, had held out under a concentrated force of 12,000
imperialists, who were unusually well equipped. After Wuchang, Hanyang
and Shanghai, it was next in importance to capture Nanking on the right
wing of the rebels. The imperialists knew that to hold Nanking was worth
an army of 200,000 men, and General Chang Hsun (we will call him Chang
the Second) was in equipment and temper a man to their minds. His second
in command was General Chao, and it was rumored that bloody General
Chang Piao was within the walls. The civil viceroy of Nanking was the well
known Chang Jen Chung, who instituted the first Chinese industrial
exhibition at Nanking in 1910. On the northeast of the walled city are the
peaks of Purple Mountain, 1,400 feet high, dominating with its huge
Armstrong and Krupp guns the north gate, Ta Ping Men, and the east gate,
Chao Yang Men, and the great capital, around which the mighty Yangtze
flows, yellow flooded to the brim. This hill, and the Tartar section of the
city, Chang the Second fortified, so that it would take a hundred to one to
drive him out. On November 8th, the dauntless rebels, led by General Ling,
under the protection of fire from the Canton artillery, took the armory,
arsenal and powder mills outside the south wall, rushed the outworks, and
held part of the southern city with insufficient force. One of the cannon
balls went crashing through the “North Pole” pagoda in the Tartar City. On
November 9th, the imperialists at the strong south fort (Nan Men) hoisted a
white flag of apparent surrender, and as the republicans came up, “near
enough to see the white of their eyes,” they opened a treacherous fire upon
them. The Manchu troops, under General Tieh Liang, looted their own fine
military school in the city. There let us leave the rebel lines and pickets for a
few days, while General Li and General Hwang on the far left wing were
being appealed to for men, and above all, for siege and machine guns and
ammunition.
On November 9th, Fuchau had to be stormed again, for the imperialists
had been reinforced. On that same day, Canton, always stanch for a modern
China, and mother of nearly all the reformers, went over to the rebels under
President of Assembly Wu Hon Man, General Chan Kwang Ming, and

Wong Ching Wai, and drove the imperial viceroy to Hongkong near by,
where the British government pleaded with the great Chinese body to spare
their unwelcome hostage, who had fled in Chinese custom “to a city of
refuge”. All over China, as in the Palestine of the Bible, are towers of
refuge for this very purpose. The American cruiser New Orleans, Captain
Miller, had steamed up to Nanking and taken on board hundreds of
foreigners, including seventy-five Americans, and records. On November
10th, bloody Chang the Second gave orders, in the old “Boxer” trick plan,
for the awful massacre of Nanking. The aim was first to incite the imperial
soldiery with the sight of blood, as tigers baited. On the lovely bright
afternoon, the prison was opened and 200 prisoners were sent into the
yamen courtyard, “to their freedom,” as they thought. There they were
made to kneel in a row, while their necks were stretched out by the queue.
An executioner, with a mercury weighted Taifo shortsword, hurried along
the long line, using only one practised blow to sever each head. The heads
were elevated on bamboo poles. The Manchu troops then tasted the blood in
the belief that human blood would make them brave and invulnerable. They
even dipped their coarse biscuits in the gory pools. They were then ready
for anything that was merciless.
In force, Chang’s trained troops, with machine guns, swept down from
Purple Mountain, Tiger fort, Lion fort and the Tartar section of the city, on
the small force of republicans, and the innocent population of Nanking the
Refined. Shame on the Ninth Division of Shangtung territorial troops and
the old-style turbaned “braves”. Every man who had no queue; every
woman who had the rebel sign of white in her apparel or hair; every man,
woman or child who was a Nankingese was slaughtered without opposition,
and the odious Ninth Division waded back to Tiger, Lion and Purple Hills
through the bloody shambles. This was not war; not even hell; this was an
insane massacre of the innocents. The few republican troops under the
indomitable General Ling fought until their ammunition was spent, and then
with cold steel set, they awaited the rain of bullets from machine guns
across the lead swept spaces of the immense, half-built-up city. It availed
nothing. Peking breathed with hope. Chang the Second was a general after
the “Boxer” Manchu heart. Manchu princes—yea, even those who had
visited America and England, like the dashing Prince Tsai Tao and Prince
Tsai Chun, and who should have known better—had been urging massacres,

and Chang the Second had apparently understood them. General Chang the
Second was heartily backed up by the merciless Tartar general, Tieh Liang.
On November 11th, Amoy, the famous port of Fukien province, where
American officers have been so often entertained by Admiral Sah and other
Chinese admirals, was taken, the American cruiser Saratoga (the old New
York of Santiago fame) and the American gunboat Quiros steaming out of
the harbor so as to be non-combatants in fact and in influence. The
American monitor Monterey, so as to protect foreigners, later steamed into
the harbor, where she was often struck by stray bullets. On November 13th,
the most remarkable thing thus far in the revolution occurred, though the
impulse was not permanently fixed. Mukden, the home capital of the
Manchu race, the mausoleum of their founder, and of many of their dead
emperors, under the influence of Chinese immigrants, declared its
independence under General Wuh Hsiang Chen, and the reform speaker of
the Mukden Assembly, Wu Lun Lien. During all this turmoil, Pechili,
Shansi, and Honan provinces were strongly held by Manchu and Mongol
“banner” troops, but Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang of the republicans got
a note through to the American minister at Peking, asking him to deliver it
to the Manchu regent, Prince Chun. The note requested the Court to
abdicate, and retire to Jehol, 200 miles northeast of Peking, where they
were promised positive protection, and liberal pensions. In the meantime
Yuan Shih Kai returned from exile at Chang Te in Honan province to
Peking, and took up the reins of power as provisional premier of a limited
Manchu monarchy; began treating with the republicans, solidifying the
Manchu army, and soliciting foreign loans, as the empress dowager’s
strong-box no longer furnished funds. Only three out of twenty-one
provinces, and three territories, were now remitting to Peking, but Peking
had the mighty northern army.
On November 17th, the revolutionists under Generals Li and Hwang
attacked the imperial lines at Hankau, and despite their poor equipment in
machine guns and artillery, led by a regiment of Roundheads called “Dare
to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) men, commanded by Colonel Wen, who graduated
from West Point in 1909, they took three of the four parallels by cold steel
charges, sapper work and bomb throwing. One of the rebel shells from
Wuchang punched a hole in a 2,000,000-gallon tank of oil in Hankau, and
the streets were flooded two feet deep with kerosene. It was the first time

that Chinese had met Chinese in scientific modern war, and it marked the
entrance of China into the modern arena, where Might strikes for Right,
instead of only arguing for it. China had begun to find herself. Meanwhile
there was distress in Singan in the north, which city had declared for reform
on October 24th. The Manchus had retaken the suburbs of the city, for it
was in their sphere of control, and had begun, with their mobs, to massacre
missionaries, as was expected. The China Inland Mission outside the city
was attacked, and the English Baptist, Scandinavian and American missions
throughout the province were struck at. Blame was put on the
Mohammedans wherever possible.
Let us go down to Nanking for a moment, to see how the war is
progressing. To keep Nanking and Shanghai in touch, the Americans had
brought up their beautiful cruisers New Orleans and Albany, for the
American Vice-consul Gilbert and the intrepid American missionaries,
Doctor Macklin, President Bowen, Mr. Blackstone, Mr. Garrett and others
were in the city. General Hsu of the imperialists, with the Thirty-fifth
Regiment of Infantry, on November 21st, hoisted the red, white and blue
flag and left the strong lines of Purple Mountain and the Tartar city to join
the rebel ranks, which were being reinforced from Canton and other
directions also. Bloody General Chang the Second, the imperial
commander, immediately had all General Hsu’s relatives in Nanking
murdered in revenge.
In far-away London, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, with an American adviser
and friend, “General” Homer Lea, set sail for Shanghai on the same day. He
first went to Paris, and then took the liner Martha at Marseilles for
Hongkong, from which place he planned safely to reach Shanghai to
complete the rebel government. On November 22nd, when the imperialists
with all their foreign friendships were unable to consummate their loans,
the rebels at Shanghai opened a Republic of Han Central Bank, with a
capital of 5,000,000 taels. The title of the bank was the “Chung Hua”, and
the first notes were dated in the 4609th year of Huang Ti (august
sovereign), he being the mythical first emperor of China, and the inventor
of the Chinese ideograph. The notes were printed in English on one side and
entitled “The Republican China Military Bank Note”. Other notes were
issued by the provincial rebels and read as follows in English and Chinese:
“The Chinese Revolutionary Government promises to pay the bearer ——

dollars after one year of its establishment in China on demand at the
Treasury of the said government in Canton, or its agents abroad. 1st
January, 1911. For President (sd.) Sun Wen.” It will be noted that the
Christian calendar had now come into effect. The shops immediately took
the notes at a premium, something unique in China, the land of financial
discounts and chaotic exchange. Enthusiasm grew. For the first time in the
history of modern China, a company of women took up arms and advanced
with the lines. There were also many Red Cross corps of women, from
Canton, Fuchau, Wuchang, Shanghai, etc.
We shall return to Nanking. On November 25th, by hard scraping at
Canton, the rebels under General Ling brought up twelve field guns for six
hours and fired on the imperial position on Tiger Hill and Lion Hill on the
northwest, near the famous Ming tombs, which are outside the walls of
Nanking (not to be confounded with the remainder of the Ming dynasty
tombs which are at Nankou, northwest of Peking). Then 1,500 troops, led as
usual by companies of queueless “Dare to Die” boys, many of whom were
students in Nanking Protestant University (American), charged, and drove
twice their number of imperialists from the strong lines, which were
supplied with heavy Armstrong and Krupp four-point-seven and six-inch
guns. Unfortunately, many shots struck the gate of the tombs, behind which
the imperialists had also fortified themselves. The rebel navy now came
nearer, despite the fire of Lion Hill, and prepared for the attack, as the rebel
infantry drew their lines closer around the largest walled city of China.
Guns were immediately brought up to breach the heavy walls and high
gates and train on the Lion Hill and Tiger forts, which were within the
Tartar city, and keeping the navy back.
On the left wing at Hankau the rebels were gaining successes. At an
armistice, on November 24th, Yuan Shih Kai’s representatives told General
Li (whom they met at the British consulate on the bund) that he had better
trust the Manchus, as they could secure the hated Russian or Japanese
intervention as in the old notorious days of 1896 and 1900. Li replied that
the republicans had no trust any more in Manchu promises of reform or real
permanent constitutionalism; that the usual relapse of the “Boxer sickness”
would come! At Manila, Hongkong and Singapore, the Americans and
British were preparing troops to be ready, as in 1900, to rush them to
Tientsin to save the Peking legations and missionaries, if the Manchus, or

Hunghutz, or Mongol brigands brought on a massacre to secure foreign
intervention. Though America and Britain emphatically stand for non-
intervention and non-partition of China, both these nations feared Russia
and other powers which were hard to restrain. Britain’s action at this time in
restraining ambitious Japan (greedy with the taste of Formosa, Korea and
South Manchuria) can not be praised too highly. Wu Ting Fang, Doctor Sun
and General Li of the republicans, from Shanghai, London and Wuchang
respectively, issued proclamations that foreigners and missionaries were to
be respected highly as the best friends of New China. In Shansi province
the republicans, separated from their base, were having a hard time against
the Imperial Sixth Division under General Sheng Yun, which had every
advantage of succor by railway from Peking and the junction at Ching Ting.
The imperialists bribed soldiers to assassinate General Wu of the republican
forces operating in these northwest provinces. This was a terrible blow to
reform.
On November 26th, the rebels, under General Ling Chang, attacked the
strong hill forts above Nanking with determination. There was much firing
of heavy guns from the river also, as the new navy of fifteen small vessels
came up. Dogged charges were made across the open and up the zigzag of
Purple Hill. The rebel losses were tremendous, and Chang the Second, of
the imperialists, proved himself as grim a defense fighter as he was a
ruthless leader of massacre. The rebel attack under General Ling Chang was
brilliant and reckless. Who will sing the feats of the new Chinese arms,—
yes, the Chinese, who the world said would never make soldiers, even if
they had a great cause at heart. The fighting was not as magnificently solid
and desperate as Pickett’s gray charge at Gettysburg, the Cuirassiers’ wild
ride into the valley of death at Waterloo, Linievitch’s grim defense of
Putiloff Hill, the shouting sweep of Oku’s dwarf Japanese up Nanshan
Heights, or the silent plunge of Oyama’s ranks into the Liaoyang valley, or
against the black Mukden lines. It was as determined, daring and brilliant,
however, as any land engagement in the South African or Spanish-
American Wars, and far braver and stronger than the theatrical
engagements, with air-ship accessories, of the Italy-Tripoli War. The
world’s critics must now change their criterions. A strong cause WILL make
a strong battle anywhere the world over, no matter what the color of the
soldier, or the cut or tint of his battle flag. The fighting now closed in on
Nanking, the old capital of the Mings, the high-water city of the Taiping

rebellion, and the rebels had a great deal to avenge, and a great deal to gain.
To fail in the attack on Nanking meant a tremendous setback to the
rebellion. Few reinforcements could come, for the fighting was in half a
dozen provinces, and along a broken front extending from Chingtu to
Hankau and Nanking, 1,000 miles, with railway transport service, foreign
ammunition, money and sympathy, favoring the imperialists; and sea and
river transport, and the sympathy of the British and American peoples
favoring the rebels, who, of course, had no navy worth counting as yet.
The alarmed Manchu regent, Prince Chun, at Peking, now gave out his
oath, in the name of the child emperor, Pu Yi (throne name, Hsuan Tung),
sworn before the open heaven to God (Tien), before the Confucian ancestral
tablets, and before Buddha’s image, as follows: “My policy and choice of
officials have not been wise; hence the recent troubles. Fearing the fall of
the sacred Manchu dynasty, I accept the advice of the National Assembly. I
swear to uphold the Nineteen Constitutional Articles (demanded by the 20th
Army Division at Lanchow) and organize a parliament, excluding the
Manchu and Mongol nobles from administrative posts. The heavenly spirits
of your forefathers will see and understand.” They understood! The
educated Chinese of the central and southern provinces laughed; they had
heard the like before, and besides, this oath was taken under compulsion of
the Army League. The new rebel government in Kwangtung province,
under Wu Hon Man, its president, was as yet unable to police the notorious
pirate waters of the Si Kiang (West River), running far up country from
Canton, and the large British tonnage, though armed, suffered. Chief
Officer Nicholson, of the steamer Shui On, was killed in a private attack at
Junction Creek on November 30th, which infuriated British Hongkong,
which was holding its gunboats in leash. The large Chinese tonnage in fear
tied up to the wharves and bund of Canton and the riverine ports. A trick of
the West River pirates was to anchor a deserted stoneboat across the
channel, and as the steamer slowed up, the snake boats and motor launches
of the pirates dashed alongside from the creeks and cane-brakes. The most
daring of these brigand chiefs was the notorious Luk, from whom we shall
hear later. Everywhere else, however, as we have shown, for instance at
Fuchau, the republicans were splendidly protecting foreign traders and
missionaries.

I have said that the revolutionists’ line was too long to defend, with two
principal sieges taking place three hundred miles apart. Peking understood
this, and while the rebels reinforced their attack on the right flank at
Nanking, the imperialists brought down reinforcements by railway to
General Feng Kwo Chang, at Hankau, who at once attacked the rebel left
flank in force, aiming to cripple the rebels by taking back the essential
Hanyang arsenal. Hei Shan, Meit Zu and Tortoise forts were taken by
machine and field gun fire and charges, and General Li’s rebel ranks fell
back under severe loss. The retreating ranks didn’t carry their bird cages
with them as the gentlemen soldiers of Chifu did in the China-Japan War of
1894! General Feng’s and General Wong’s imperialist troops, after breaking
through the Tung Chi (East Messenger) gate and looting, now put the torch
to the rest of Hankau, destroying the homes of a million people, and
burning a hundred million dollars’ worth of property. Such an uncalled for,
accursed outrage, such an unjustifiable act of wholesale arson against non-
combatants has never been known. What would history have said had the
Germans burned Paris, the British, Pretoria or the Americans, Manila? What
should be said when the Manchu imperialists burned Hankau? Why didn’t
they rather sell its tiles, its silk, its oils, its mountains of tea? They admitted
that they needed money. At least there would have been no world’s loss of
property. Hankau belonged to the world as much as to China. The Manchu
must yet answer for this arson, for arson and murder are unjustifiable world
crimes. Arson makes it harder and costlier for an American, a Briton, a
German, a Frenchman, to live, as the wave of cost rolls on, as much as it
makes it harder for the Chinese to live. In these days of world conservation,
no nation should be allowed to put the firebrand to property because men
are fighting or arguing over an idea. Shame on the sack and burning of
Hankau by the Manchus. The British, Americans, volunteers and jackies,
and other foreigners on the long bund, heaped up breastworks of even rice
bags, and swept the riverside and race track on either flank in defense of the
palatial foreign concessions. Here a blue-jacket, there a marine, and
between an ununiformed volunteer clerk, the boys shouldered their
Springfields, Lee-Enfields and Mausers, and held brave guard at the
thinnest part of the long-stretched line of the white man’s empire of
influence and trade.
On the same day the rebels were doing better on the right flank at
Nanking, despite their long front of fifteen miles wide. The Ta Ping Men

(North) gate of the city, and Tiger Hill fort within the walls were
bombarded, and General Ling brought up the rebel guns to bombard
General Chang the Second, who had contracted his lines to Purple, Lion,
Tiger and Pei Che Kao forts in the northeast of the city, as far away as
possible from the rebel fleet, part of which had to be recalled to Wuchang to
assist General Li in his extremity. The imperialists held the strong Nan Men
gate in the south of the city, and the Chao Yang fort at the east gate, which
was fortified with two six-inch, two four-point-seven, and two three-inch
guns, as well as Maxims, surely a deadly armament. In wise patience
America and Britain still held their troops at Manila and Hongkong,
respectively, but Japan was allowed, on the 26th of November, to rush
1,000 more legation and railway guards to Tientsin, and the railway guards
along the Japanese railways in Manchuria were reinforced far beyond
international conventions. Captain Sowerby, with the newly organized
Foreign Frontier Guards, started from Peking to help the harassed
missionaries who were being murdered in Singan and Taiyuen in the north.
This astonishing expedition was remarkable for its intrepidity and its
success. Within a month and a half Captain Sowerby’s men had gone from
Taiyuen to Singan, gathered together forty missionaries, and following the
course of the Wei and Yellow Rivers through the famous Tongkwan pass,
brought his charges safely to Honan City on the Honan railway, from which
place they could easily reach Tientsin. Lies began to spread like wildfire.
Pirates committed atrocities along the West River section of Kwangtung
province, and the Manchus and their sympathizers blamed it on the
ineffective rebel organization of Canton. In the north, Hunghutz, Mongol
and Boxer brigands murdered missionaries, rebels and non-combatants, and
the republican sympathizers blamed it on the ineffective Manchu
government. This is certain: the rebels desperately disliked foreign
intervention, and only pleaded for time to win and organize, while the
Manchus saw that, if driven to the last wall, massacre and lawlessness
would help the retention of the dynasty by causing foreign interventions;
and the Manchus were willing to lose all Manchuria to Japan and all
Mongolia and Turkestan to Russia, to bring this about. The reader will note
that none of the many old generals has appeared on the imperial side, as the
battles narrowed down to engagements with modern weapons of precision
and power, requiring generals trained in modern war. Generals Li and
Hwang, of the rebels, opposed Generals Feng and Wong at Hankau, and

Generals Ling and Hsu opposed Generals Chang and Tieh of the
imperialists at Nanking. More foreign officers, especially Japanese and
Germans incognito, served in the loyalist ranks than in the rebel ranks, and
German ammunition and guns were freely served to the imperialists. After
the battle of Hanyang, two Germans were found among the imperialists’
dead, and two of the imperialists’ wounded were Germans, one of them a
colonel in the German army. The Japanese trusts, the princes of the Choshiu
and Satsuma clans, who control the House of Peers and the Genro Council,
and thus run the government by veto, did not want a republic in China.
They feared it would bring about the control of the budget by the House of
Representatives and real popular government in Japan, which country is
now absolutely controlled by the aristocracy; for the Japanese Diet is no
more representative of the overtaxed people than is the Russian Duma.
They feared also that if the Chinese pope-emperor could fall, so could the
Japanese pope-emperor who was no more holy. The German syndicates
were also anxious to maintain their confiscatory privileges in Shangtung
province, which were obtained from the Manchus. Dictator Yuan always
preferred German instructors in his Pechili, Honan and Shangtung armies.
On November 27th, Yuan Shih Kai, the premier-dictator at Peking, had
poured out the treasures of the Manchu empress dowager’s private chest,
and well paid and well armed troops were rushed to Hankau. Generals Feng
and Wong Chou Yuen had 30,000 modern drilled and equipped men, and
the divisions were heavily supplied with precise artillery. Hankau City and
Hanyang arsenal across the river were bombarded mercilessly, and the
imperialists of Wong’s bloody third division, under cover of this artillery
practise, crossed the Han River thirty miles up and flanked the left wing of
the rebels, whose old Armstrong artillery, using percussion shells, was no
match for the modern three and four-inch guns of the imperialists, who had
the arsenals of the north and the Germans at Kiaochou to draw on. Neither
was the rebel infantry equal, as half of their regiments had been drawn back
to Nanking, 400 miles away, by river. The best the rebels could do was to
oppose 15,000 men, with weak artillery, to 30,000 excellently equipped
imperialists. The result was that the all-important Hanyang arsenal and
world-wide known iron works were lost, and Generals Li and Hwang Hing
had to retreat to Wuchang, the rebel capital across the Yangtze River, which
is a difficult place to defend, as its flanks and rear are vulnerable. The result
of this great reverse was that the lukewarm viceroys in the northern

provinces, who had gone over to the rebels’ cause in the first flush of
success, began to declare again for the Manchus. Shangtung province went
back, and Yuan Shih Kai by the telegraph on this day got his own province
of Honan to return to the imperial fold. Both of these are northern
provinces. Premier Yuan now began rushing reinforcements down the
Grand Canal and railway to Yangchow and Pukow, nearly opposite
Nanking, so as to succor redoubtable General Chang the Second at
Nanking, and enable him to again occupy Tiger fort. General Feng came
over from Hankau to advise Chang. The plan was, by taking back the
Hankau cities and Nanking, to turn both the left and right flanks of the
revolutionists, rush their capital of Wuchang, and crumple up the rebellion
in Shanghai. Everything in equipment, transportation, foreign men, money
and artillery favored the imperialists. Everything in daring and enthusiasm
favored the rebels, whose American-trained students recited the dictum of
Herodotus on republicanism: “The Athenians, when governed by tyrants,
were superior in war to none of their neighbors, but when freed from
tyrants, became by far the first. This then shows that as long as they were
oppressed they purposely acted as cowards, as laboring for a master, but
when they were free every man was zealous to labor for the State.”
There was one thing the rebels were weak or uncertain in. If they
destroyed China’s religion of aristocracy and king worship, what would
they give in its place? Would they give Christianity (their leaders, Doctor
Sun and General Li, being Christians), and a permanent satisfaction with
the rule of a native president and congress over twenty-one provincial
presidents and assemblies? It was a mighty task,—the greatest the world
has known,—and few of the old viceroys and Manchuized Chinese literati
of the Hanlin were at heart prepared for its radical solution. True, the rebels
could staff the twenty-one provinces with advanced Kwangtung, Szechuen,
Hupeh, Hunan and Kiangsu province men, but that was not republican
home rule.
The aim and difficulty of the rebels was to maintain the new ideas
against reverses in the provinces, which had developed few modern thinkers
among the officials, who, like the troops, were looking for salary first and
country afterward. Yuan, the premier-dictator, who had weighed it all up in
Honan, said to himself, according to some southern critics: “Give me
money enough for 100,000 splendid, modern-drilled northern men, and give

me trunk railways. I’ll find men who will fight for whichever side pays
their wages; we must have order, which is civilization’s first law.” Yuan was
a believer in that truism that the radical reformers do all the work, and bear
all the risk of reform, and that the “standpatters”, the moderate progressives
and reactionaries, enjoy all the fruit and political offices. Differently from
Sun, Yuan wanted office first and influence afterward. He was now active in
soliciting foreign loans, securing $1,000,000 from Russia and Belgium, and
the promise of $30,000,000 from Russia, Belgium and Japan, these being
the pro-Manchu powers, while America and Britain represented pro-
Chinese sympathies. The rebels were just as active in soliciting private
subscriptions in America and the Straits Settlements, and 70 per cent. of the
Chinese abroad sent a quarter of their fortunes to Sun Yat Sen and Wu Ting
Fang at Shanghai for the republican cause.
However, it must be admitted that when the Manchus recruited Yuan
Shih Kai, the Honanese, they secured a tower of strength, another Li Hung
Chang, to a large degree a dictator, a believer in money, troops, quick trial
by drumhead, and decapitation, a good servant of any master who would
steadily employ him; a believer in dynasties more than peoples, a modern
progressive but not an idealist or natural republican, a man who hated the
words “turbulent liberty”, but who loved the word “order”; a statesman
more like Diaz, Bismarck or Richelieu than like Washington or Lincoln. He
had never traveled abroad like thousands of other Chinese officials. He
could not speak or read English, and so knew little of the great documents
of liberty and idealism in their first fire of the original. He knew that he was
smashing rapid progress for the second time, just as he had gone against the
reform Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu, and the palace reformers from
Canton: Kang Yu Wei, Liang Chi Choa, etc., in 1898, and joined the
reactionary “Boxer” dowager empress, Tse Hsi. He feared the rebel
sympathizers might assassinate him, and he rode as dictator about Peking
with a cavalry escort. His headquarters were in the modern Wai Wu Pu
Building, which is fitted with steam heat, elevators, electric light, etc. There
he gave regular interviews to the foreign press representatives, in emulation
of the methods long practised by Sunyacius and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai.
He made the Manchus weak, too, for he matched their troops at Peking with
his old Shangtung and Honan territorial troops, man for man. He also sent
the turbulent, stubborn twentieth division, shorn of its commander, Chang,
far to the eastward. The majority of the National Assembly had fled, and the

Manchu princes would not come out of their bedrooms. If the rebels were to
win now, they must produce even a stronger man than Yuan. Who was that
man; where was he in the making?
It is quite orthodox not to despair ever of immemorial China, and to
expect a great man to arise when politics is at its worst, for Confucius arose
from the rivalry of sixteen states, and he formulated his political philosophy
when he was a persecuted exile from his own state of Lu. When the
republicans were most dejected, that great republican, the American
Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, in season and out of season,
unofficially beseeched them to quit themselves like men. So large-hearted a
man could not stand by and see men who were fighting for liberty droop at
their guns. He cheered them; he talked to their students; he gave megaphone
interviews to the world press and supported the discouraged propaganda,
fearing naught the criticism which arose. He was a missionary, but more
than that, he was a man, and an American. Some British missionaries, too,
came in for criticism because they could not refrain from whispering in the
ear of liberty the Cromwellian encouragement: “Be of good cheer.”
By November 29th the lack of money was thinning the lines of the
rebel forces, and Dictator Yuan, at Peking, was growing in strength with
small foreign loans and arms from Russia, Japan and Germany. The rebels,
at Wu Ting Fang’s suggestion, in desperation, threatened to boycott the
commerce of any nation making loans to the Manchu government, and a
German compradore was shot down at Hankau as he was in the act of
delivering arms over to the imperialists. The Manchu Tsai princes sold their
art treasures for arms. The rebels melted the idols of the nation to make
coin. In accord with the protocol of 1901, America now formally offered the
Peking government 2,500 troops to assist in keeping the railway from
Peking to Tientsin open to the sea. The Japanese had already landed their
quota of this foreign force. Naturally the rebels looked on this landing of
foreign troops in the Manchu section of the country as, to a degree, foreign
aid to the Manchus, as it increased their prestige and sources of advice in
the north. More subtle forces than those of arms began to work now on
some of the rebel leaders, and the cause lapsed into darker days because of
the lack of money. Dictator Yuan, in Peking, was exultant, and said to one
member of the legations: “I give the rebellion eight more days to live; I
expect to have 100,000 modern troops and a railway.” Professor E. H.

Parker, the eminent sinologue, now of Manchester University, England,
when a British consul in Korea, wrote of “Yuan’s Machiavellian character”
in his book, John Chinaman. Even some of the Manchus agreed in the cry
of the rebels: “Yuan is making himself dictator; he may seek the throne; he
may split off Northern China; Peking is too near Russian Siberia.” He had
sent the Manchu troops away from Peking, and gathered his old divisions
(like Cæsar with his Thirteenth Legion) of Shangtung and Honan troops
around him.
Yuan appealed to the provinces to send delegates to Peking to discuss a
constitution, but the rebel provinces replied: “No National Assembly can
discuss constitutional government with freedom while your troops,
pounding their rifle stocks, stand at the door; remember the Parliaments of
King Charles.” The rebels cried: “If Yuan and the Manchus win now, it is
foreign money that does it. Why can’t we get foreign money; we’re the
overwhelming majority of the people.” Some of the foreign governments
replied: “We are only interested in trade and order; we can’t wait for you to
fight this out, and possibly kill some of our missionaries; you must win
quickly or we’ll stand by the powers that be.” The rebels replied:
“Cromwell and Washington, Thiers and Grant didn’t win quickly, and if you
let us lose now, we’ll fight it out again. You can’t withstand the
constitutional rights of 400 million people for the sake of a dynasty of
raiders, who seized and entrenched their throne with five million subsidized
cavalrymen, who have now grown effete by subsidy. We are opposed to
entrenched privilege just as much as you are. In Roosevelt’s words: ‘The
land has got to be as good for all of us as it is for some of us.’ These
minority Manchus must cease to usurp office, pensions, privileges and
concession granting. We of the south are taxed without representation. If
America could go to war with this as a cause, why can’t we?”
Yuan, under certain foreign advice, planned to throw a bridge across
the Yangtze River at Hankau, and get his railway down into the heart of the
southern rebel provinces. He believed in quick facilities for throwing his
modern troops against uprisings, for his railway from Peking to Hankau had
won him the present turn in the tide of affairs by enabling him to flank the
long rebel lines. Oh! at this time, some cried, for an emperor warrior of the
real Chinese, a descendant of the Mings; a descendant of the house of
Confucius (the Duke Kungs); or a Washington-like president of a Chinese

republic, who could get foreign loans. This was the cry that was arising
against the return of the Manchu ghost, and the ominous shadow of a
dictator. However, something had been won. The agitation and the battles
had taught the sweet themes of deathless liberty and a new Chinese
nationalism to thousands who had been supine, provincial, or anarchistic in
their despair. It was recalled that Tau Sze Tung, the reformer and son of a
Hupeh governor, who was beheaded in 1898, said on his way to the place of
execution: “Martyrdom must always precede revolution; shall I not be the
first martyr?” Liberty is never defeated, for each time she falls she makes
her conqueror concede something, for she only falls to her knees and rises
again. The reactionary empress dowager, Tse Hsi, after her victory in 1898,
conceded reforms from 1900 to 1908, and it would be so with her
successors, perhaps, after this lesson of protest. A plan was laid by some
foreign bankers, and some Chinese, that if the republican government was
not a success, a direct descendant of Confucius, one Kung, an American
Presbyterian Christian of Shangtung province, would be backed for the
throne in the hope that the Chinese race would flock to his banner.
On November 28th, 29th and 30th, the rebels, under Generals Hsu and
Ling, made a master effort on their right wing, for which purpose they had
weakened their left wing, allowing the two Hankau cities to go. The Canton
bomb throwing levies and artillerymen went into battle singing this new
hymn to Liberty, which is certainly rugged poetry of merit:

“Freedom will work on this earth,
Great as a giant rising to the skies,
Come, Liberty, because of the black hell of our slavery,
Come enlighten us with a ray of thy sun.

“Behold the woes of our fatherland.
Other men are becoming all kings.
Can we forget what our people are suffering?
China the Great is as an immense desert.

“We are working to open a new age in China;
All real men are calling for a new heaven and a new earth.
May the soul of the people rise as high as Kwangtung’s highest peak (Nan
Mountain);
Spirit of Freedom, lead, protect us.”

Nanking was attached in force. The American navy withdrew, while the
small rebel navy of fifteen vessels, under the protection of captured forts
holding back free play of the Lion fort guns, moved up within range to
support the wide rebel attack of fifteen miles frontage. It will be
remembered that General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, held some
of the peaks of Purple Hill outside the northeast walls, and Yuwatei fort on
the south, and nearly all the city. The rebels took the Tiger Hill fort and four
of the northwest gates and forts, after bombardment by the Cantonese,
sapping, and a spirited rush. Then Purple Hill and Yuwatei forts were
bombarded and rushed after a terrific engagement, the imperialists, under
Generals Chang and Tieh, making a last stubborn stand behind the ninety-
foot high and thirty-foot thick walls of the vast city. The scene was terrible
to view. Clouds of cannon smoke, lighted by terrific flashes of gun fire,
made the night of November 30th memorable. The revolutionists, practising
Wolfe’s strategy before Quebec was taken, by a secret path, rushed up a
peak of Purple Mountain, above the imperial position, and shelled the
imperial park of guns. Then in the night a charge, led by Colonel Wen, was
made by the “Dare to Die” picked brigade, who carried hand bombs and
swords. A wild retreat followed down the mountain. Even boys fought with
the greatest bravery. The dying down of the terrific cannonade in the south
meant that the republicans had rushed the Nan Men fort, and an explosion

showed that they had successfully blown it up. Just as daylight broke, the
strong Chao Yang, Tiger and Lion forts were again rushed and taken. The
rebels were bitter, and there was great slaughter of the imperialists in
revenge for General Chang’s merciless massacre of innocents when he
declared a state of war at the beginning of the month. Great lawlessness
overspread the land, the rebels as well as the imperialists being unable to
establish a police force, while they fought out the reform questions. Even in
British Hongkong, where 500,000 Chinese are ruled by 5,000 British, the
authorities had to institute the public whipping of offenders, so as to keep
disorder on the part of the lawless intimidated. Complaint increased along
the Yangtze valley that the Germans were supplying arms to the imperialists
at Hankau, as well as in the northern provinces, from their colony base of
Kiaochou. Bitter complaint was also made that Baron Cottu was the go-
between in asking Russia, France and Belgium for a $30,000,000 loan for
the Manchus and Yuan Shih Kai, which would give the Russo-Asiatique
Bank the same intrusive excuses that Russia availed of in 1898. The rebels
were weak in Shensi province, and American missionaries were killed by
the mob in Singan. Dictator Yuan threw the Sixth Division from Honan into
Shensi to take the province back.
On Saturday, December 2nd, at ten o’clock, a memorable scene
occurred at Nanking. General Chang the Second escaped across the Yangtze
River through the Ta Ping gate on the morning of December 1st to Pukow,
the northern railway terminus, after planting a mine under the Tartar
General’s yamen, which was to be blown when the rebel General Hsu was
caught in the trap at the capitulation. He also secreted eighteen other mines
in the Tartar city, which had therefore to be burned so as to make the
explosion safe. General Chao succeeded in command of the imperialists.
The investiture was complete, and the situation was now hopeless for the
defenders. Twelve brave Americans had remained on the scene, the great
missionaries, Doctor Macklin, Mr. Garrett, Doctor Blackstone, President
A. J. Bowen, of Nanking University, and others, and the vice-consul, Mr.
Gilbert, who dramatically, with field glasses, watched the bombardment
from a high graveyard within the city. They believed in saving blood (“Chiu
Ming,” as the Chinese say), much provocation for revenge as there was on
the side of General Hsu’s victorious men. They pleaded with Hsu for the
first humanitarian surrender in Chinese civil war, as a thrilling example for
all time that Chinese revolutionists, like George Washington’s and Oliver

Cromwell’s men, were patriots and gentlemen at heart, and not mere
feudists fighting under the name of a great cause.
General Hsu, with the advice of Generals Ling, Li and Hwang, and
Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang, rose to the high level. He agreed to a
surrender with honors, even guaranteeing the life of the notorious murderer
of non-combatants, General Chang the Second. The negotiations took place
under the guns of historic Purple Hill, while the panting troops held
enthusiasm in control. Behind the walls the imperialists breathed hard, and
the great populace of shopkeepers eagerly waited and watched the
republican sun flags on Purple Mountain. Hurrah! a shout went up that lives
would be guaranteed (“Chiu Ming”); yes, honor, too! Fling open the
pounded, riddled iron “Great Peace” gate! The steel muzzles of the hot
Armstrongs, the deadly four-point-sevens, the spitting Rexer rapid fire and
three-inch Krupp guns on Purple, Lion and Tiger Hills, held their smoky
breath like good hounds in leash, but straining. The generals and captains
marked time; the troops craned their heads; the Cantonese artillery hitched
up the limbers to the gun carriages. The American missionaries thanked
God and led on the way of peace for a China that would never forget the
moving scene, where forgiveness towered over revenge. Here they come,
General Chao riding ahead of the doughty Shangtung territorials with their
yellow dragon flags flying for the last time, and the bloody turbaned men of
escaped Chang’s army. Ground arms and mark time! The victorious rebels
kept their places, and under the fluttering red, white and blue sun flags of
the new republic, looked on at the impressive acts. The great column of
imperialists deployed with music playing, saluted and piled their arms
before the feet of the victors, General Hsu sitting on horseback where the
pacificators stood. Sun flags and white flags fluttered everywhere as the
sign of rebel dominance. Who are these who now come up with reversed
arms? They do not wear the German peaked caps, and the khaki uniform of
modern troops, but the old turban and slovenly blue uniform of the ancient
troops of China. They are Chang’s bloody old-style warriors, 1,000 of them,
wearing white bands in deep contrition and as a seal of their lives from
massacre. They, too, salute Hsu, the giver of their lives, some of them
giving the unmilitary kotow instead of the modern salute. A cheer went up,
the bands playing with greater spirit. Hold open the “Great Peace” gate!
Victorious Generals Hsu and Ling, and their men, they of a hundred cold
steel and bomb charges, blowing hot the trumpets of victory, and led by the

shaven heroes, the “Dare to Die” regiment of immortal night charges, are on
the ringing, clanging march for the ancient Ming city, which they have
conquered, Nanking the cultured; Nanking the proud capital of capitals;
Nanking where was the yamen of the illustrious Viceroy Liu Kun Yih;
Nanking of the Taipings, and Nanking of the world’s widest republic! A
friendly hand had touched off the mine under the Tartar general’s yamen,
and the eighteen other dastardly mines, so that the victors should not be
blown up treacherously in the crowning hour of their rejoicing. White flags
flutter everywhere. Once the sign of death in China, they are now the sign
of peace in China, as well as in the rest of the world. A shout of welcome
goes up from the populace, who from the beginning, like all the rest of the
central and southern provinces, have been in sympathy with the revolution.
Generals Hsu, Ling and Hwang at Nanking then have indeed balanced for
the rebels the imperialist victory at Hanyang won by General Feng. The
rebels lost their left wing, which was turned. The imperialists have also now
lost their left wing, which has been thus crumpled up at Nanking. New
moves must now be made on the checker-board by Dictator Yuan at Peking.
Governor Chan Kwang Ming and President Wu Hon Man, of the
Canton Assembly, sent out their torpedo-destroyers Wu Ying and Wupang,
and with the British gunboats Robin, Sandpiper and Moorhen from
Hongkong, and the American gunboat Callao, attacked the West River
pirates, and patrolled that romantic river as far as the shadow of Wuchow
Pagoda, 220 miles of varied temples, islands, gorges, reaches and river
peaks. Mercantile vessels steamed up two by two, their wheel-houses
sheathed with steel, their gun racks full, the barred hatches, which let air in
but no smuggled pirates out, nailed down on the ’tween decks, a guard at
each hatch and over each port, and double quartermasters manning the
wheel. Commerce had gone back to medieval conditions, and it was
exciting. Rich compradores of Hongkong, like Chan Kang Yu, of Douglas,
Lapraik and Company, contributed 2,000 uniforms and outfits to equip a
regiment of President Wu’s provincial troops. Part of the rebel navy now
made a four-hundred-mile dash at forced draught to Wuchang and Hanyang,
from Shanghai, to try to keep the successful right wing of the imperialists
from crossing to the rebels’ temporary capital. If the gunboats could keep
the loyalists engaged at Hanyang, it was not impossible that the rebels, if
greatly reinforced from Canton, could turn the flank and strike the loyalists’
supply railway in the rear.

On December 5, 1911, new moves were made at Peking. Prince Chun,
the regent father of the baby Emperor Pu Yi (his real and not his throne
name), resigned in favor of two co-regents, one a Manchu, Prince Tsai Su,
and the other a Chinese, Hsu Shao Ching. This was a buffer move to save
the throne from the republican demands. For the first time in the three
hundred years’ history of the Manchu dynasty, a Chinese was thus brought
to share the regent’s power. Prince Tsai Su had been a grand councilor in
the old days; and when a national assembly was granted he was put in as its
president by Manchu power. Later he was president of the Navy Board, and
president of the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board). He is a moderate progressive,
a Manchu of the Manchus and related to the emperor. Hsu Shao Ching, a
Pechili Chinese, is well known as a former minister to Russia and Germany,
and the first president of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He was a grand
councilor in the old days, a viceroy of Manchuria, and president of the
Railway Board (Yu Chuan Pu) in charge of loans. He has visited America.
The appointment of this republican general-in-chief was, of course, mere
flattery, and he did not serve.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Mortuary statues near tombs of the last native Chinese dynasty, the Ming,
near Nanking. The crowning battle of the revolution swept over this
hillside.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

American, French and British gunboats protecting foreigners at Shameen
Island, Canton, during revolution, 1911–12. In foreground, wupan, or
boat of “five boards.” Note wide awnings required on gunboats. The
awnings on second gunboat (British) were riddled by bullets of
contesting forces.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The famous gate giving entrance to the native city, Tientsin.
Reform in schools, industries and army really started in this
city under the viceroyships of Li Hung Chang and Yuan
Shih Kai, and the taotaiship of Tang Shao Yi.

These moves on the recommendation of Dictator Yuan, who was an old
enemy of Regent Chun, who exiled him, did not satisfy the rebels, who
named Nanking as their permanent capital, called for delegates from all the

rebel provinces, and pressed on the war. “The name is changed at Peking,
but it is the same old game,” they said. A republican loan of ten million
taels, bearing twelve per cent. interest, and sold at about eighty per cent. of
face value, was sought at Shanghai, Wu Ting Fang seeking American
subscriptions especially, for he kept reminding Americans: “You are the
mother of republics; the greatest republic, as we will be the largest
republic.” Wu also wired prominent American and British financiers and
their governments, pleading that loans should not be made to the Manchu
government, and respectfully warning that: “The republican rebels would
remember if loans were made to fight their cause.” This really had a
deterrent influence, for Americans and Britons were able to influence
France to suspend financial action for a while. The American-educated Tang
Shao Yi, Dictator Yuan’s chief assistant, now went to the rebel headquarters
at Wuchang and Shanghai to interview General Li, Minister Wu and
General Hsu regarding peace, and the rebels held sessions of delegates from
the Yangtze, southern and western provinces. Kwangtung province began
its republican organization, and sent up another quota of 3,000 modern
troops from Canton, added to 10,000 previously sent, to reinforce General
Li, who stood marking time at Wuchang against General Feng of the
imperialists at Hanyang.
By this time the fine Tyne-built, gray Chinese cruiser Hai Chi, which
sailed from New York in October, arrived at Shanghai, and amid wild
rejoicing, such as only the southern Chinese can express, ran down the
triangular yellow dragon and hoisted the square tri-color sun flag of the
republican revolution. She was at once ordered to report at the arsenal with
her heavy load of ammunition, which was a godsend to the revolutionists.
This cruiser was the best known abroad of Chinese war vessels, and at once
became the flagship of the rebel navy. She is armed with two eight-inch,
and ten four-point-seven guns. On December 14th, Doctor Sun Yat Sen
(Sunyacius), with the American, Homer Lea, arrived safely at Penang,
Straits Settlements, a hotbed of Chinese reform, which has from time to
time sheltered all the reformers like Sun, Kang, etc., since the coup d’état in
1898. The rich foreignized Cantonese owners of tin mines have been loyal
to reform from the beginning. When Sun arrived at Singapore on December
16th, a band of Chinese girls met him, each waving the tri-color of the
revolution and of the emancipation of Chinese womanhood, and singing the
Chinese Marseillaise, Chung Kwan. The Chinese wore no queues, and the

caricatures which they distributed showed the pig, the dog, the monkey and
the Manchu as all belonging to the races which wear queues! Who will say
that the Chinese are not distinguished for humor! I have for years been
trying to point out this quality in them.
The first wave of the revolution, which had died down somewhat by
the Hankau defeat, had rolled on even into far mountainous Tibet, and
Gyangze, a walled and fortified town on the trade route between Lhasa and
Darjeeling, fell before the revolutionists on December 14th. Gyangze will
be remembered for the stand it made against Sir Francis Younghusband’s
brilliant campaign in 1904 to open up the way from India to Lhasa, and also
for the operations in its neighborhood by General Chao Ehr Feng, who
drove the sacred plotting Dalai Lama for the first time out of China into
India in the startling campaign of 1910.
During this week the Yangtze River for six hundred miles presented a
remarkable scene, as Tang Shao Yi, the emissary of Dictator Yuan, sailed
down to Shanghai to discuss peace terms with the revolutionists at the Town
Hall at Shanghai, which was guarded by British, Sikh and other troops of
the international settlement. At Hankau the last yellow dragon flag of the
imperialists was seen, as the imperial legates, Tang Shao Yi, Yen Shih Si
and Yang Shih Chih, on the steamer Tung Ting, sailed between the new
navy of the rebels on patrol of the great river, which was now their six
hundred miles of front. The fine cruiser Hai Chi, with New York Chinese
among the crew, the companion cruisers Hai Yung and Hai Sun, the
gunboats Kwang Kang, Kwang Poa, On Nam, etc., headed the republican
fleet, which flew the red, white and blue sun flag. The armistice was not
kept in Shansi or Shensi provinces by the imperialist general, Sheng Yun.
When the pourparler opened, the six powers, at America’s suggestion,
informed Wu and Tang that they would appreciate a settlement, because
neither side seemed to be able to keep down piracy, it being as bad along
the Liao River in the north as along the Si valley in the distant south. It will
be recalled that the Manchus of Shansi province early in the campaign
assassinated the great rebel general, Wu Lu Cheng. It was now rumored that
the Chinese had induced Tuan Fang’s troops in the same province to murder
that noble Manchu, who was the greatest friend the foreigners had among
the Manchu officials in the dark “Boxer” days of 1900. Tuan had been
governor of Pechili and Szechuen provinces, head of the railway

development in the Yangtze basin, and above all head of the famous
constitutional committee (Hsien Cheng Pien Cha Kuan), which, in 1906,
went abroad to study foreign parliaments and congresses. He was the
noblest of the Manchus, a repetition in character of Prince Kung of
Victorian days, and he died like a modern hero. “Kneel and be decapitated,”
his troops demanded. “You’ll shoot or cut me down where I stand,” he
declared. Individual virtue does not belong exclusively to any organization.
The rebels went on with their work in calling up troops from Premier
Wu Hon Man at Canton, and in equipping aeroplanes, run by Americanized
Chinese, for a possible air attack on Peking, if the peace conference should
break up in failure, and Hankau could be won back. The missionaries
agreed to flee to the Methodist compound which adjoined the legation
quarter in the Tartar city of Peking, on a signal being given by rocket. The
foreigners in the northern provinces were dubious that a republican
government could be established, but it must be remembered that many of
these foreigners were more surprised than the rest of the world that the
reformers ever shouldered arms for reform and declared for a republic on
October 10, 1911. The foreigners of the northern provinces were
accordingly at first largely in sympathy with the retention of the Manchu,
under a limited monarchy system, and the election of Yuan as premier.
Many of the foreigners of Peking and Tientsin tried to impose their views
upon the foreigners of Shanghai and Hongkong, who naturally knew more
about the reform and republican movement in China, for the initial
reformers of China all came from Canton, Penang, Manila and Shanghai,
where they were influenced by British Hongkong, Singapore and America.
The income of the imperial authority had been levied mainly on the
southern provinces, which had least representation on the Peking Boards
(Pus) since the coup d’état of 1898. Taxation again without representation!
The doubt in the minds of the reformers was that if the Manchu was
retained, he might revert to his old faults of by turns oppressing China, and
by turns looting it, for certain foreign concessionaires. True, said some,
peace could be fixed up now, and matters fought out again, if faith was not
kept. But, said others, by that time certain foreigners will have given Yuan
Shih Kai an army of forty divisions with a fortified base at Peking in touch
with the Russian railway, a navy of battleships, 2,500 miles of new flanking
railways down into the south, and a full exchequer box, while the new
parliaments may be without a Cromwell, a Pym, a Hampden, a Jefferson, a

Franklin, a Lincoln. It was a great question, the largest any nation has ever
handled, and the one answer was: “Well, then, develop your Cromwells,
Pyms, Hampdens, Jeffersons, Franklins, Lincolns, out of such timber as you
have in Sun, Wu, Kang, Li, etc., and let us have peace.”
There are two things that the writer believes and prays for, viz.: that
China will remain a republic, and will become a republic based on the
worship of Christ and the study of the Christian’s Bible. Such a wonderful
nation of four hundred millions, preserved from the immemorial past as one
people, must have been preserved for some providential purpose, to put
irresistible might behind certain altruistic world ideas. Are those ideas the
giving of a truer republicanism, and a more unselfish Christianity than we
have exemplified, to mankind? Japan made one irremediable and
lamentable mistake; she has ignored the fact that the strength of the West is
not in fleets, but in Bible knowledge, certain trusts and occasional wars
notwithstanding. It will be remembered that the secretary of the Board of
Rites, Wang Chao, recommended to the reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, in
1898, that Christianity should be named as the state religion. President Sun
and General Li of the republicans are, as I have said before, a
Congregationalist and an Episcopalian.
As the friendly note from the six powers to the imperialists and
revolutionists at Shanghai was, at America’s and Britain’s suggestion,
identical, it was virtually a tentative recognition by the powers of the
belligerents, which happy result the latter had been trying to obtain at
Minister Wu’s urgency for over two months. Yuan threatened to fight if a
republic was insisted on, and he seized a great part of the Manchu hoards at
Peking and Tientsin, under the name of a forced loan. He needed two
million dollars a month to pay the Manchu and northern bannermen. Four
of the powers were in favor of lending Yuan money, but the rebels said, if
you don’t also lend us money, we will boycott your trade in the central and
southern provinces, and you know that most of the foreign trade emanates
from Southern China, that is, your tea and silk come from that section, and
your exports go there in exchange. If you want to know what a trade
boycott by us means, ask the Japanese, who will recall the “Tatsu Maru”
incident. The rebels also threatened that if loans were made by foreigners to
the imperialists, and the rebels were successful, the latter would repudiate
these loans. This was the most brilliant move to date of the republican

diplomacy. The rebels now made a surprising and broad-minded move.
They wanted to save bloodshed. They knew that a Paul converted had been
made out of a stubborn Saul unconverted; that some reformers were in their
day stanch “standpat machine” men! They offered Yuan the presidency of a
republic, with Sunyacius as vice-president possibly, and Wu as a possible
foreign minister, until real elective assemblies could form parties, and elect
their nominees. Yuan’s emissary at the Shanghai Conference, Tang Shao Yi,
was impressed with the fact that Yuan and others in North China had no
idea how strongly the republican idea had seized on the rebel provinces.
Tang, it will be remembered, is a graduate of an American university, and
he is even more progressive than his patron, Yuan. In making overtures to
Yuan, Sunyacius and Wu of the rebels were showing that they were strong
and calm diplomats, who could waive a detail to win a general cause.
Recent Occidental politics exhibit no such example of the suppression of
factiousness. Wu, however, did not hesitate a minute to tell the six powers
that if they loaned money to the north, or interfered, they would only
prolong the war indefinitely.
On December 21, 1911, the line-up was as follows. Yuan, three of the
powers and some of the world’s financial syndicates, in favor of a
monarchy or war, with a loan to the north, arrayed against the republicans.
Wu, ever persistent in demanding a republic, or renewing the war, with a
trade boycott in the southern and central provinces, against any foreign
nation that loaned the north money. Some of the American journals,
surprisingly, opposed the republic. For instance, on the very day that Doctor
Sunyacius was named president, the New York Outlook (December 30,
1911), with snap judgment, stated that a Chinese republic could, would and
should not be set up at present, and further that “Americans would do well
to throw all their influence on the side of a constitutional monarchy”. Nine-
tenths of the Outlook’s readers doubtless thought that if Homer could
sometimes nod, such surprising retrogressive words as these might be
forgiven the generally progressive Outlook. Similarly in England, the large
London house of Montagu, which has been prominent in very profitable
railway loans to China under the Manchu régime, issued a circular stating
its “satisfaction” when the republicans lost Hankau to General Feng, under
atrocious circumstances of unforgivable massacre and unnecessary arson.
Memoria longa, lingua brevis! Some of Britain’s diplomatic force, arguing
like the reactionaries of George the Third’s day, said that they favored a

monarchy because India might want a greater share in self-government than
she had, forgetting that a wide-awake and fully developed India meant
greater trade for Britain. Three monarchical nations said that they would
favor destroying the American doctrine of the “non-partition of China” and
splitting the four dependencies and the eight provinces north of the Yellow
River from the rebel provinces.
Now, if ever, was the time for America to act, to give the largest and
oldest nation on earth true freedom, and stop massacre and the sowing of
eternal hate between the yellow and the white races. If the republican idea
was decapitated by three of the monarchical nations willingly, and two of
the constitutional nations unwillingly, revulsion would sweep through the
camp of the republicans, and foreigners and missionaries would be slain by
the mobs, who always act before they think the important second time. This
was just what the plotting Manchus had been endeavoring to bring about
since October 10, 1911. “Make the republicans, or the mob in their
provinces, massacre; that will bring in foreign interference, which will save
the Manchu dynasty.” In return, the Manchus promised certain foreign
interests almost any concessions which they might ask for. They could loot
China, the mineral Eldorado of the ages, and exploit the labor host of a new
Goshen. Perfide! ye who are retroactive at this late day after all the lessons
of the crowded past, and who love Money more than Man. Hail! American
republic, the mother of republics, and hail, too, the germinating Chinese
republic! Even Count Okuma, the most liberal of the Japanese, the founder
of the enlightened Waseda University, of whom most sympathy was
expected with China’s effort for freedom, came out with a pessimistic
article at this time, prophesying the “failure of the republic, years of
degeneration, and an inevitable new dynasty”. Did he mean that Japan
would supply one, after first absorbing two provinces of Manchuria?
Yuan, the dictator, began moving his divisions, the Twentieth, now rid
of its reform general, Chang Shao Tsen, being sent from the Lanchow camp
to a point north of Tientsin, to split the republicans of the three provinces of
Manchuria from joining the republicans of Shangtung. Sunyacius, with
Premier Wu Hon Man, of Canton, now left Hongkong for Shanghai, and the
world stood back and waited for the lightning to come out of the clouds.
The half million Chinese of British Hongkong gave them a rousing send-
off, which was at heart approved by the five thousand British merchants and

troops of Hongkong, for Hongkong knew what a trade boycott in the
southern provinces meant. Canton had now struck a swinging pace, and
Premier Wu had sent bodies of troops, particularly his fine artillery and
bomb-throwers, to strengthen the two wings of the rebels under Generals
Li, Ling and Hsu at Wuchang and Nanking, respectively. Among these
troops were one thousand students recruited by the Fong Yuen College at
Canton. God send great things to earth! God save liberty for China, and
keep progress from slipping back a thousand years!
So far, the strongest move in the rebellion was the declaration of
Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang that if Britain joined the three monarchical
powers in loaning Yuan money, a trade boycott would be instituted in the
southern and central provinces against foreign trade, of which Britain held
the largest share. This won Hongkong, and Hongkong was able to hold
British diplomacy on Downing Street, London, and indirectly on Legation
Street, Peking. It was a master move, as brilliantly effective as Napoleon’s
Berlin Decree of November 21, 1806, blockading British commerce, and
only for it the rebellion would have been swamped by four of the six
nations arming and provisioning Yuan, the Manchu and the north. Whatever
comes in the next few years, this cry surely is forever in the heart of
Lincoln’s and Washington’s America: “Long live the republican idea of
distributed wealth and distributed liberty in good old China, America’s
yellow brother across the narrowing purple Pacific.” On Christmas day,
1911, the steamship Cleveland, from New York and San Francisco, with
five hundred American world tourists, arrived at Hongkong. The republican
army immediately invited them to Canton to see their barracks at the Five
Hundred Genii Temple and elsewhere, the resolution saying: “as America
was the first country to become a republic.” Auspiciously on December
26th, Sun Yat Sen arrived at Shanghai, two war-ships escorting his launch
up the river from the Wusung bar. He immediately took an automobile at
the bund wharf and proceeded to Wu’s residence, where conferences were
held, and Nanking decided on as the provisional capital of the fighting
republic. The republican Chinese were delighted that the Americans had
eleven war-ships at Shanghai.
On December 26th, Yuan and the Manchu princes wired Tang Shao Yi
from Peking that they would leave the decision as to a form of government
to a national convention of the twenty-one provinces, the delegates to meet

as soon as possible. The harmony which prevailed in the conferences at
Shanghai between Sun, Wu and Li’s representatives was delightful to those
interested in Chinese progress. The harmony which prevailed between the
missionaries and the revolutionists was also inspiring. In a village of Hupeh
province (Taiping) the people insisted that Mr. Landahl, of the Netherlands
Mission, should head the local Safety League which was maintaining order,
and they pushed that astonished gentleman to the head in the successful
pursuit of notorious pirates who were injuring the causes of both
revolutionists and imperialists. One notorious brigand of Honan province,
named Wang, collected a band of 2,000 robbers, and at Harbin in
Manchuria a band of Hunghutz captured an imperial treasure train with half
a million of money. Vast preparations should now have been made to
protect Chinese and foreigners in the north from massacre, if the National
Assembly should on convening declare for a republic. There could not but
be bitterness when only 17 million Manchus abdicated the rule of 400
millions Chinese, and the widest and most absolute throne the earth has
known, wider than Pharaoh’s, Alexander’s, Xerxes’, Cæsar’s,
Charlemagne’s, Baber Mogul’s, or Tsar’s. The problem of ruling 17 million
Manchu discontents was a greater one than the long dominion which the
subsidized Manchus had enjoyed over 400 millions of disunited and supine
Chinese. The republic of China has mighty problems before it. Let all the
world help her; above all, let education, hope and creature comforts be
bestowed as quickly as possible. There is glorious altruistic work ahead of
everybody for the whole of one’s life.
As the republicans solidified their government about Nanking, the
enemies of China—the land-grabbing nations—who forgot their old
antipathies and quarrels and acted in accord in their scheme of
aggrandizement, prepared to strip her of her vast dependencies, Russia
towering over Turkestan, Mongolia and Northern Manchuria, and Japan
gathering about Lower Manchuria, a secret treaty between the two having
been effected. No place was to be reserved for the great Chinese people to
accommodate their emigration, as the size of farms should be necessarily
increased throughout the land. The American and British doctrine of the
“non-partition of China” was to be struck down. America, Britain and China
will remember, for a Chinese republic can yet gather an army of millions to
take these provinces back, and American and British naval forces, as a
world’s altruistic police, can, if necessary, stand at the doors of the Baltic

and Black Seas and remind Russia of her broken promises and greed. What
a conflict there will yet be, won either by a swamping emigration, or by an
engulfing army, as Russia, Japan and China come nearer together in the old
Chinese dependencies of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. Mongolia,
with her capital at Urga, and Turkestan, with her capital at Kashgar,
practically seceded on December 29th under Russian intrigue. Religious
Khans and Lamas, named by Russia, drove the Chinese ambans out and
took charge, a Russian railway policy to break across country and control
Peking being at once planned. The Manchu dynasty, with a following of
from ten to seventeen million Manchus, sheltered in either Mongolia,
Pechili province, Shangtung or Manchuria, under the egis of either Russia,
Japan, or other nations, will always be a covert weapon for intrigue, which
the bureaucrats of those nations can use against a Chinese republic.
On December 29th, the military convention at Nanking—one vote to a
province—voted unanimously for Sun Yat Sen as the first president of the
provisional republic, until elective assemblies could meet. The civil
delegates from fourteen of the provinces, meeting at Shanghai, also agreed
on Sun Yat Sen as provisional president. The armistice was now extended,
President Sun calling upon the imperialists to respect the neutral zone
between the opposing armies. The rise of President Sun was astounding and
his task immense. From an impoverished propagandist and exile, wandering
over the earth for a whole lifetime, with the Bible in one hand and Progress
and Poverty in the other, he suddenly became the head of the largest nation
upon the earth, and the government of that nation he was expected to
change from being the most absolute monarchy into the freest of republics.
His career is the most inspiring example that was ever presented to
reformers in the world’s history. They say of typhoons and of troubles, that
when things are at their worst, only a change for the better can be looked
for, and so it has been with President Sun’s career.
At the peace conferences at Shanghai, the imperialists pressed for some
northern city as the venue of the convention of provincial delegates, and the
republicans pressed as strongly for Shanghai, because in distinction from
Peking, it was removed from Russian influence. Yuan refused to disband his
army and gave notice that if the republicans advanced, he would order an
attack. The imperialists then tried to get the republicans to agree to pay the
northern troops a sum of money in return for laying down their arms, but

the republicans wisely refused to provision the imperialists in this way for a
continuance of the fighting. They did, however, offer to pay for the
surrender of artillery and ammunition. Yuan held many fruitless conferences
with the Manchu princes and dowager, offering to continue the war if they
would give up their hoards, but of the hundreds of millions of dollars of
their wealth, all he could get was a subscription of $100,000 from the old
lion, Prince Ching, who has been the mentor of the Manchus since Prince
Kung died in the 60’s. The whole of the south, in emulation of the Christian
president, Doctor Sun (Sunyacius), began cutting off their queues and
wearing khaki, as a sign that servility to the Manchus was ended.
Committees of persuasion, the members of which carried shears, operated
even in Yaumati and Kowloon (mainland sections of Hongkong colony).
The Chinese were approached and asked to go to the barbers. If they
refused, shears were drawn and the ancient badge of servitude to the
Manchu, the queue, was severed. The Chinese of Bangkok, Siam, were
humorous in their methods. The republican tri-color was hoisted to the
peak, and two hundred sheared queues were hoisted under it, up the
flagpole! Doctor Sun, president, named the following as his provisional
cabinet:
Vice-President, General Li Yuen Heng, commander of the republican
left wing;
Premier, Hwang Hing, organizer in Japan of the rebellion;
Minister of Justice, Wu Ting Fang, formerly Minister to the United
States, and reformer of the Chinese penal code;
Minister of Communications, Posts and Commerce, Wen Tsung Yao,
American educated, formerly Amban in Tibet, unusually able official;
Colonial Secretary, Fung Chi Yueh, represented Sun in the United
States;
Secretary of State, Wu Hon Man, President Canton Assembly;
Ministers of Finance, Chin Tao Chen, and M. Y. Sung, Manager Chung
Hua rebel bank. I know both well.
Minister of Navy and Marine, General Hwang Hing, second in
command at Hankau, and Sun’s personal representative while he was absent
in America and England;

Foreign Minister, Wang Chung Wei, American educated;
Chief of Staff, General Hsu, the victor of Nanking.
The subject of adopting the Christian calendar was discussed and
decided on, though it was decided to please Chinese pride by letting the
republican bank-notes, issued in December, stand. These notes went back to
mythological times, and named 1911 as the 4609th year since the first
Emperor Huang Ti! The custom of dating the year with each Manchu
emperor’s succession was of course at once discarded in fourteen of the
rebelling provinces. President Sun assumed charge at Nanking and
immediately collected a strong garrison in the old capital of China. In his
former work, The Chinese, the author strongly recommended the change of
the capital of China farther south so as to be nearer the center of China,
closer in touch with the majority of the people who popularly desire the
change, and safely removed from Russian influence and possibility of
attack by Mongolian railway. Preparations were at once made to bring
finance, education, army, navy and a federal government under the control
of the coming parliament, the provincial parliaments already being in
tentative operation in half of the provinces. We have already quoted the text
of notes issued by the republican government of Kwangtung province.
Dictator Yuan, at Peking, in a temporary huff, wired that he would not
recognize Tang Shao Yi as his representative any more at the Shanghai and
Nanking conferences, and that he would only confer by telegram. He
demanded that Peking, and not Nanking, should be named as the meeting
place of the proposed national assembly, which was to select the form of
government. This really broke up the peace conferences, and Wu Ting Fang
so informed the foreign governments.
Yuan then called upon the Manchu princes and royalty for money,
saying that if they would draw two millions a month for six months from
their foreign banks, he could carry on the war. Fearing that the republicans
would send an army by sea from Shanghai to Chin Wang Tao (where the
Great Wall and Peking railway meet the sea, and the only ice free port in the
north) to break Manchuria from the north, and march on Peking, Yuan sent
an army to Chin Wang Tao, but several of the Chinese regiments rebelled.
The republicans had arranged for such a transport service, as they had
seized the ships of the government steamship line, the China Merchants’
Steamship Company. At the Lanchow camp east of Peking, several Chinese

regiments also rebelled, and there was much bloodshed in putting down the
riots. Yuan had five strong northern armies, one under General Feng at
Hanyang, one under Chang the Second north of Nanking on the railway,
one under Sheng Yun operating in Shensi and Shansi provinces, and an
army in both Shangtung and Honan provinces. It looked as though the war
would continue, the republican strength being mainly in that they
threatened, if successful, to repudiate any loans made after January 1, 1912,
by foreigners to the Manchus. Hongkong now sent the One Hundred and
Twenty-sixth Indian Regiment of Baluchis, a battalion of the Yorkshires and
a battery of English garrison artillery to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect
the famous foreign settlement and assist President Wu, of Canton, in
maintaining order. The island was fortified with sand-bags and barbed wire
entanglements. The Hongkong Chinese were enthusiastic for a republic, and
the British government did not prohibit their rejoicing. Their processions
included the use of automobiles and brass bands. What a changed
Hongkong, which used to hide its head in a monster dragon and parade the
streets!
President Sun now informed foreigners that while he could employ
them in all the remainder of China’s development, he could not do so in the
republican army, as the republicans desired to be free of suspicion, and did
not want to create foreign entanglements or embarrassments. The foreign
nations divided up the Tientsin-Peking railway, and foreign men of war,
independent of the republican navy, patrolled the whole rebel front from
Shanghai to Hankau. Germany despatched another full regiment to Tsingtau
in addition to the large garrison already there, America alone up to January
7, 1912, had held her troops at Manila. When the imperialists were
evacuating Hanyang on January 4th, a regiment broke parole, necessitating
an attack by General Li’s republicans, which attack was promptly and
effectively sent in. On the right wing the republicans advanced up the
Nanking-Tientsin railway, forcing General Chang the Second to withdraw
to the north. President Sun was now active in appeals to the foreigners for
recognition of the republic, his manifesto of January 5th, reading as
follows:
1. Treaties of Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be observed.
2. Concessions granted by Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be
respected.

3. Foreign loans and indemnities incurred by Manchus up to October
13, 1911, will be recognized.
4. Foreigners and their property will be protected by the republic.
5. Manchus and their property will be protected by the republic.
6. We will remodel laws; revise civic, criminal, commercial and mining
codes; reform finances; abolish restrictions on trade and commerce; insure
religious toleration; and cultivate better relations with foreign peoples and
governments.
It will be noted that President Sun does not here take up that difficult
question, the nationalization of railways, the premature forcing of which by
the five banking nations on the Manchus largely precipitated the
preliminary revolution in Szechuen province in September, 1911. When the
republican finances will permit just compensation of provincial owners of
railways, the nationalization of trunk railways will be a proper and
opportune project, but confiscation of railways by a promissory note at
sixty per cent. of investment, as was offered by the Manchus to the
Kwangtung province owners, can only bring revolt. By the end of the first
week in January, 1912, certain of the banking groups and powers, fearing
that there would be a long civil strife, attacked the American doctrine of the
“non-partition of China” and canvassed for two Chinas, the northern section
to be retained by the Manchu monarchy, or a republic with Yuan at the
head. Even this would bring its difficulties. To mention one of a thousand,
where would the dividing line be, the Yellow River or the Yangtze River?
The feeling of the republicans on this division can be gaged by asking what
was the feeling of the Americans on the subject of secession. On January
8th the republicans approved a heavy bond issue, based on internal revenue
(the customs being already pledged by the Manchus for foreign loans made
before October 13, 1911, which loans the republicans recognized), and
bearing eight per cent. It was also decided to put the currency on a gold
basis, and though one-dollar, fifty-cent and subsidiary silver coins would be
issued, they were to be only tokens, and their face value was to be secured
by a gold reserve, as in the case of America’s and Japan’s silver coinage,
which is only a token system.
On January 12, 1912, Major-General Franklin Bell despatched on the
transport Logan from Manila the First Battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry,

under Major Arrasmith, to take care of that part of the Peking-to-the-coast
railway allotted to the Americans. This was a confession of two things: first,
that the Manchus might not be able to restrain the “Boxer” mobs in the
north, and second, that it was expected that the republicans would be able to
come north with their three old and two new armies when hostilities should
be opened. Part of General Bell’s thrilling and characteristic American
speech to the troops should be quoted: “The Chinese are worthy of a square
deal. Treat them in a worthy way.” The expedition was a trying one, and
was provided with cords of fire-wood. The enervated troops left the hot
humid climate of Manila for the cold windy climate of North China. The
news that came from the Lanchow camp at this time was most distressing,
to the effect that Yuan’s imperialists were massacring and torturing
republicans by the fiendish lin chee (cutting into a thousand pieces, the
victim being placed in a cage). Men who had adopted the republican badge
of the New China by cutting off their queues were being slain. Even the
Red Cross attendants were attacked. Clearly the Manchu troops at Lanchow
had gone out of hand and become a mob. The American Bishop Bashford
now telegraphed from Shanghai to Dictator Yuan, urging the Manchus to
abdicate for humanity’s sake. General Hwang Hing, minister of war, was
now arranging for five republican armies to march north and converge on
Peking. These armies were:
General Li, with the left wing, from Hankau to Peking, through Honan
province.
Generals Hsu and Ling, with the right wing, from Nanking, through
Kiangsu and Shangtung provinces, along the railway.
A new army, by transport and cruisers, from Shanghai to Chifu, or
some northern port.
A new army of Canton and Hupeh troops to march north in General
Li’s rear.
The combined republican forces of Shensi and Shansi provinces to
march northeast.
The Chinese are exceedingly excitable when aroused from their usually
placid state. This is because their experience is limited, and they have not
yet learned to adapt themselves rapidly to new conditions. They therefore

commit suicide in surprising numbers under the sudden pressure of anger,
shame, poverty, trouble, uncertainty and fear. At this time of revolution,
especially in the northern provinces of Shensi and Shansi where the
republicans were strongly opposed, many officials, widows of soldiers and
the poor, jumped into wells, swallowed balls of opium, or begged their
friends to strangle them.
On January 15th, the republicans sent three cruisers and three
transports, with three battalions, machine and mountain guns, from
Shanghai to Chifu, in preparation for a converging attack on Peking,
America sent in the cruiser Cincinnati, and the Japanese sent in two cruisers
to watch proceedings and protect the foreign colony, which, however, was
not menaced. On January 19th, Foreign Minister Wang Chung Wei sent a
despatch to the powers, requesting recognition of the republic “to avoid a
disastrous interregnum”. On the same day the republic from Shanghai sent
the following drastic demand to Yuan and the Manchus:
1. Abdicate.
2. No Manchu to participate in the provisional government until the
country is quiet.
3. The provisional capital can not be Peking.
4. Yuan can not participate in the provisional government until the
republic has been recognized.
President Sun gave the Associated Press this statement:
1. I have taken an oath to oust the Manchu rulers and restore peace to
the country before resigning.
2. I have taken an oath to establish a republic in China, and if I
consented to the proposal laid down by Yuan (to resign and put him in
charge) I would be foresworn. I am convinced that a republic is not only
practicable, but that it would be the best thing for China. Those
(monarchical nations and syndicates) asserting otherwise know nothing
about the Chinese. This republic is now an established fact. Nothing can
swerve me from what I consider my duty to my fellow countrymen.
Undoubtedly the best thought unanimously supports the republic.

3. China can not allow outsiders to dictate as to her form of
government.
4. There is no question of North and South China; it must be One
China.
5. We are confident of the righteousness of our cause and the
superiority of the military strength of the republicans. If Yuan Shih Kai
persists in obstructing, our armies will be instructed to march northward.
On January 21st the Manchus persisted in not abdicating, and
contemplated appointing the minister of war, Yin Tchang, and the president
of the War Board, Tieh Liang, both Manchus of the ultra type, as dictators
over Yuan. This was in contravention of the agreement of Nineteen
Constitutional Articles between the Manchus and the old National
Assembly, pressed by the soldiers of the Lanchow camp in October, 1911,
that no Manchus were to be placed in authority until a constitutional
government was established.
While the world was watching the camps of war, where the men
stamped eager for blood, two million women and children, in three other
parts of the land were starving from flood, famine and the absence of their
bread providers. Look on the map at the old bed of the Yellow River across
the middle of Kiangsu province; the valley of the Hwei River across
northern Nganhwei province, emptying into Lake Hangsu; and Wuhu, on
the Yangtze, where the flooded river tried to break east across the flat
country to Shanghai, instead of arching north to Nanking. Not since 1906
have crops or homes been long above water in these crowded districts.
What the missionaries mainly, and others (native and foreign) of the Central
China Relief Committee, with headquarters at Shanghai, have done, a
library of books could not adequately tell. Part of the story would be the
relief trains of gift flour which left Minneapolis and was transported free
across the Pacific by the United States army transport Buford; and more of
the story would be the work of the American Red Cross; the grand
missionary periodicals of America; and the Pacific Coast Chambers of
Commerce, which put business aside for philanthropy. Their altruism, their
manly effectiveness, their human kindness that has been so deeply Christian
and Confucian (as you look at it from both an Occidental and an Oriental
standpoint) has been moving beyond words, and it is largely owing to this

action on the part of America that the hand of the war-inflamed Chinese
was stayed against foreigners in this campaign. Their women said: “Don’t
strike the white physicians and bread-givers; the men who speak in mercy
and are clothed in altruism.” The soldiers of the Eighth Division of Hupeh
men, under General Li, at Wuchang, in bidding the American Episcopal
missionaries good-by, cheered them with these words: “Americans are our
brothers.” Never had such a scene of suppressed emotion and earnestness
occurred in China. I have already recited General Li’s manifesto to his men
concerning the treatment of missionaries. None was more surprised than the
good missionaries themselves. From their experience in the “Boxer”
campaign of 1900, the missionaries expected unflinching loyalty from their
converts, but they did not look for the highest Geneva Convention
amenities from the new levies of the revolutionary soldiers. It was really
astonishingly delightful. But on second thought, it might have been seen
that it was only the first fruits of the seed sown long ago by the missionaries
themselves, and now being garnered after many days when the sowing had
been almost forgotten.
Reports came from Peking that the boy emperor, Pu Yi, was utterly
unconscious of trouble and the tottering of the oldest and widest throne on
earth, in all this ebb and flow of war and intrigue. Deserted by his
guardians, parent and tutors, he was left most of the time in the Forbidden
City with eunuchs, who humored his every whim, with the result that his
temper took on true Manchu characteristics. When opposed, he threw the
first thing at hand at those near him. When the food displeased him, he
cracked the dishes over the heads of his kneeling servitors. The Break-Up of
China indeed, but by another author than Lord Charles Beresford!
On January 26, 1912, the armies got in motion again, one corps leaving
Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, to checkmate the republican
expedition which had landed at Chifu. Up the Nanking-Tientsin railway,
General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, and General Hsu met in an
engagement at Kucheng, in northern Nganhwei province, and the former
was defeated. At Wuchang, General Li’s Hupeh forces, reinforced with
Cantonese troops, got in motion to meet General Feng’s imperialists up the
Peking-Hankau railway. Large consignments of Mauser and Krag rifles and
ammunition for Krupp guns, ordered from German firms for the
imperialists, on this day passed through St. Petersburg on their way to

Peking by the Siberian railway. On January 28th, the provisional republican
Senate of forty-two members (three each from fourteen rebel provinces)
convened at Nanking in foreign clothing and without queues. A remarkably
enthusiastic scene occurred at the close of President Sun’s address, which
address urged unity. The members all rose and cheered for the republic,
while a modern band played martial music. The republicans for the first
time in modern history instituted the use of a remarkable regiment of bomb-
throwers. They went to the front with large canvas bags of dynamite bombs
hanging from their shoulders. It required exceptional bravery to enlist in
such a corps, as when a bag was hit by an imperialist’s bullet, the explosion
not only shattered the bomb-thrower, but detonated the bags of his fellows
if they were near. This corps was uniformed in the British military peaked
cap, and they wore tunics and puttees, and had no queues.
By February 3, 1912, the Manchus had fully discussed abdication. It
was proposed that the sacerdotal succession should be maintained, thus
continuing the famous Chou and Confucian sacrifices and ancestor worship
among the Manchus. This would reduce the Manchu emperor to a
Confucian pope, similar to the Mikado before he conquered the Shoguns,
and similar to the Taoist pope at Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi province,
and the Buddhist popes at Urga, in Mongolia, and Lhasa, in Tibet. The
Manchus also stipulated that their hereditary titles should remain. This was
a foolish move, as it removed them more than ever from participation and
influence in the social body, just as the private retention of titles keeps the
descendants of the old French nobility hopelessly divorced from power in
republican France. The republicans again offered Yuan Shih Kai the
presidency, with Sun Yat Sen as premier, this being a union of the
democratic principles in the American and British systems. Yuan was
inclined to insist on a dual republic, but the Nanking republicans insisted
that Yuan should come to Nanking. The republicans under Generals Hsu
and Ling now advanced their right wing, striking General Chung Fung of
the imperialists, at Siuchow, in northern Kiangsu province, and winning a
great victory.
I have said that the most brilliant diplomatic move of the republicans
was that by Wu Ting Fang, who announced in December, 1911, that if any
foreign syndicate or nation made loans to the Manchus, the republicans, if
successful, would repudiate those loans. The most brilliant strategic move

of the republicans was made in November, 1911, when General Li induced
Admiral Sah’s navy to join the republican cause. This enabled the
republicans to hold the large commercial fleet of the China Merchants’
Steamship Company, and it was on this latter fleet that the republicans were
able to raise a loan in February, 1912, from Hongkong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation, when they were at their wits’ end where to find
money to balance the subscriptions which the Manchus had made from their
hoards, and the money which they were drawing from the cash tills of the
rich imperial railways of North China. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha tried to
buy out the China Merchants’ Steamship Company so as to give Japan
dominance in the China coastal trade, but Britain interposed. The
republicans had only one little railway from Shanghai to Hangchow, 104
miles, whose surplus earnings could help them, as compared with the 4,000
miles of successful railway in the territory controlled by the Manchus.
As neither Manchu nor Yuan could hold Manchuria, Japan now
advanced a battalion to Mukden, a measure pregnant with precedents and
controversy in the future. America maintained her reputation for altruism,
Secretary Knox, on February 3rd, addressing the German ambassador a
note to the effect that America’s idea was that all the powers should restrain
their nationals from interfering with loans as much as with arms in China.
The powers which were inclined to break leash were Japan, Russia and
Belgium. The southern republican navy found the international forces and
legations a bar in the way of the capture of Peking. The navy was off Chin-
wang-tao, the only open port on the Liaotung Gulf, in February, 1912, and
was ready to transfer the fifth republican army from Chifu. As long as
Peking was dignified with the legation staffs of foreigners, the prestige of
the foreigner supported to that extent the cause, or rather the integrity of the
imperial north, and the rebels hesitated to send their attack home on account
of international complications. Again and again the republicans asked for
recognition and the transfer of the legations to Nanking. America only gave
any attention to this request, sending Doctor Tenny, of the Peking legation
staff, to pay an unofficial call on and make unofficial inspection of the
republican government at Nanking. Japan and Russia closed their fists
tighter on South and North Manchuria, respectively, lending money right
and left to industrials and mines and thus establishing a mortgage and
excuse for remaining in case of a break-up.

Wherever the capital is to be, whichever faction is to control, whatever
style of government is to win, it does not seem impossible that the free
China of the future will have fewer internecine conflicts and rows than the
England, America or France of history. Liberty goes through about the same
birth pangs whether she is born white, brown, black or yellow! On February
11, 1912, (probably at Yuan’s private suggestion), forty-eight generals of
the imperial army wired Yuan that they would fight no more for the
Manchus, so that the seed of the Lanchow camp had finally spread into a
whole forest. The official birth of the Chinese republic came on Lincoln’s
birthday (think of it, America!), February 12, 1912, the abdication decree of
the Manchus including the following sentence: “Let Yuan organize to the
full the powers of the provisional republican government, forming a great
republic with the union of Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans and
Tibetans.” President Sun Yat Sen telegraphed Canton in particular to accept
Yuan, and another telegram instructed all Chinese consuls abroad to adopt
foreign dress. The United States at once arranged to recognize unofficially
both the northern and southern provisional Chinese republics under
Presidents Yuan and Sun respectively, until a national assembly could form
a united government.
On February 15th, the Christian Chinese provisional president, Sun Yat
Sen, performed a remarkable act of self-sacrifice to win the north for
republicanism and induce Yuan to join the great cause. He also was able to
induce the vehement south to accept the former reactionary Yuan. Doctor
Sun resigned as provisional president in favor of Yuan. The National
Assembly at Nanking paid him this tribute: “Such an example of purity of
purpose is unparalleled in history. It was solely due to your magnanimity
and modesty, Doctor Sun, that northern China was won over to
republicanism.” Here was the man who had achieved republicanism, laying
by all its honors in favor of the man who had longest and most powerfully
withstood republicanism. Yet Sun was happy. China was happy. Yuan and
his aide Tang were happy. The Chinese republican navy at Chifu, Shanghai
and Nanking saluted the republic with a broadside, and the Chinese
legations throughout the world hoisted the new sun flag. With the least
bloodshed ever known, Sun and his cabinet had achieved the greatest
revolution ever known, and had established a republic of twenty-one
republics, four times the population of America. They will be managed by a
combination of the British and American systems, as their bulk is too great

for the strong centralization which is now becoming popular in America to
correct certain corporation evils. The provincial republics will develop
largely as units, until the individual is educated sufficiently for greater
cohesion. Sun Yat Sen will go down to history as the greatest dreamer,
prophet, organizer, altruist and political philosopher the modern world has
known, not that he is brainier than the white man, but being a yellow man,
he has been able to accomplish more than any white man. His reception,
certainly the reception of his cause, by the hearts of men should be
enthusiastic. He stands not alone. The scores of idealists and fighters of his
cabinet made the way for the constructive men who will now take hold.
Above all, he converted Yuan by his self-obliteration, and Yuan converted
the obstructionist north. What if the Honanese Yuan is at the head of affairs
for a while instead of the Kwangtungese Sun? They are both Chinese and
both republicans. China now has the center of the world’s stage, and
America has built the Panama canal to reach quickly a front seat at the
stage. The actors will have long and strenuous parts, and the house is filling
up rapidly to hear, and see, and applaud, if all is done well, as it should be.
Doctor Sun has done the most for a republic. Long years ago he planned it,
and he has been persecuted most by the Manchus for opinion’s sake. When
the assemblies succeed each other, his turn as president or premier will
doubtless come.
Kang Wu Wei had dropped into astonishing silence during all these
strenuous days, but on February 18, 1912, he suddenly and insanely (allow
the emphasis) burst out in rebellion against the republic in Manchuria. Yuan
he opposed; Sun he opposed. Did he, and the rebelling governor, Chao Ehr
Sun, plot then for the Manchus or the Japanese in Manchuria? Why did not
this first reformer Kang repress himself? Why did not Yuan and Sun repress
themselves somewhat and win him? A bas, personal jealousies, antipathies
or overleaping ambitions! Surely there is room for all in twenty-one
republics, which are to be bound as one commonwealth. The Chinese are
intense in feeling and clannish in spirit, and they often turn vehemently on
one another; their Tong wars in New York and San Francisco for instance.
Thus Yuan might hate Kang, and Kang have none of Yuan, whereas,
according to Macaulay, “both should serve the state”. It is this repression of
individual resentment and ambition which has made England and America
so governable, and it is something China will learn as the years of stress
surge about the ship of state. The title of captain or president amounts to

very little in the light of patriotism; all are equal when it comes to manning
the pumps and shortening or letting out sail according to the winds that
blow. Parties will arise; provincial feeling will be assertive; leaders and
their followings will clash, but the Chinese must learn, as we all have to
learn, that the striving must be one way o’ the rope and not a tug against
each other because of personal greed, low ambition or unruliness. In
hundreds of documents issued during the rebellion, the republicans held up
two men, Washington and Napoleon, as representing successful protest
against tyrant kings. But Washington laid the sword by the minute
statesmanship could win. Napoleon used his sword to advance himself and
crush every will except his own; the way of an egotist. If China needs a
foreign model to look at occasionally, let it be that of Washington, with his
moderation, his unselfishness, his charity, his honor, his true republicanism,
which sees in every citizen (man or woman) a king equal to himself, for the
ballot and tax receipt have made all men equal kings!
I have pointed out the inconsistencies of character in Yuan and Kang.
They may develop in other leaders from whom we expect much. It will be
recalled that the great Empress Tse Hsi alternated “Boxer” and reform
edicts; the lopping off of heads, and unbinding of women’s feet; the
composing of poems on gentleness, and teaching her sleeve dogs to run at
foreigners. The greatest viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, wrote
books recommending modern gun foundries and steel mills one day, and the
compulsory enthronement of worn-out Confucianism the next day, in the
land which had always declared that any man could perform all religious
rites. The genial Manchu Tsai princes who were the most affable of men
when the Army, Navy and Constitutional Commissions visited England and
America in recent years, were the irreconcilable Ruperts who insisted on
the slaughter of foreigners and non-combatants in the northern provinces
during the rebellion. The venerable and cultured viceroy of Nanking,
Chang, who was the first official to open a modern exposition in China, was
the very man who helped to hurl that awful slaughter on the innocents, with
the ruthless division of Shangtung troops on November 10, 1911, at
Nanking. The reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, the father of the immortal
progressive edicts of 1898 in the Peking Gazette, the possessor of the
sweetest face that ever graced a Chinese, was known to beat his waiters
over the head with dishes, and his aunt, the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi,
whose private ambition was to be the best painter of plum blossoms in the

land, was known, according to Ching Shan, the comptroller of her
household, to dance in rage that was awful to behold, and which left its
wake in broken crockery and clocks. They have not as yet “lunacy
commissions of three” in China, whose infallible tests are walking the
chalk-line without a corkscrew motion, record of screaming and throwing
vases, talking to one’s self and having wigglety eyes at times, or men of
tawny color might have been incarcerated long before fame came to them!
In the same inconsistent way the Japanese Prince Ito was a constitutionalist
when a student in England, and a red imperialist as a statesman in Japan and
Korea. With the Oriental it often is, “who pays for my ration, his is the flag
I fly”. The larger sentimentality and altruism of republicanism will
doubtless equip the new Chinese with deeper conviction and more enduring
sentiment and devotion to ideals. We call a man who is not a good
republican out of office, or a good Liberal on the left side of the speaker’s
desk at Westminster, not much of a patriot in America or England, and
China and Japan must learn the Pauline admonition to Timothy regarding
manliness: “Be instant in season and out of season.”
Owing to deferred pay, some of General Li’s republican troops at
Wuchang, and General Wu’s republican troops at Canton mutinied in the
middle of February, and on February 29, 1912, regiments of the notorious
Third Division of Yuan’s northern troops mutinied at Peking, partly for the
same reason, partly because they did not want Yuan to go to Nanking; but
mainly all this was a recrudescence of the tricks of the Manchus to bring in
foreign interference. The Manchus had received part of their pension from
the foreign loans and were illegally using it to stir up sedition. The
mutineers burned a mile of houses, stretching from the Manchu’s Forbidden
City to the new Wai Wu Pu Building, which is Yuan’s headquarters, and
millions of dollars of treasures were destroyed, including the historic Wu
Men gate leading to the imperial purple and yellow city. Many shopkeepers
hung out signs, “Already looted; now empty” in an effort to save their
buildings. The houses occupied by Mr. Straight, the representative of the
Morgan Syndicate, and by Mr. Menocal, of the American International
Bank, were looted, as were other foreign houses, but personal affront was
not offered to foreigners. The quarters occupied by the delegates from the
Union Assemblies of the south, who came from Nanking, were fired. The
reactionary troops of Yuan showed their hate of the southerners on every
possible occasion. This was his punishment for raising an army mainly in

the two Manchu provinces, instead of generally enrolling it throughout the
country. These troops wanted to support the rule of the nation by an
unconstitutional Privileged Minority. It would be folly to agree with their
politics, and it would mean terrible bloodshed to disagree with them.
The question they have raised is far from settled. One shell was
dropped into the American legation compound. For strategic purposes,
American soldiers took possession of the Chien Men gate and pagoda
tower, and the German troops occupied the Hatamen gate and pagoda
tower, both of which overlooked the legation and Methodist Mission
quarters. One thousand more foreign troops were brought up from Tientsin
to guard the legations. During the burning the Manchu eunuchs, who had
witnessed the 1900 siege, could be seen in the moonlight gathered on the
glistening yellow roofs of the imperial palaces. It will be recalled that this
Imperial Third Division under General Feng, committed the uncalled-for
and awful arson of Hankau in November, 1911. The Muse of History will in
vain turn the pages of her index to find a record in her volumes of
incendiaries who surpass the reactionary Third Division, whom Yuan now
locked up in their barracks. He then called upon the old-style Chang Ku
turbaned troops to defend the city. Yuan was continually showing distrust
and fear of his troops; neither would he permit the southern delegates to
bring up southern troops to defend the constitution and their liberty, nor
would he permit the empress dowager and the emperor to retire from the
imperial city to the summer palace, some twelve miles distant, or to Jehol:
—he said he feared to arouse the northern troops. The southern delegates
replied: “It is too bad that we deferred thoroughly whipping these
northerners while we were at it.”
On February 29, 1912, the first partial recognition of the republican
government was made by the American House of Representatives,
unanimously passing the Sulzer resolution congratulating the “people” of
China on assuming the responsibilities of self-government. All throughout
Pechili, at Paoting, where the Anglican missionary, Mr. F. Day, was killed
by a mob which was looting with the Sixth Division, at Tientsin, and
throughout Shangtung province, the revolt spread, as a recrudescence of the
Manchuized anti-foreign or “Boxer” movement. Native Christians were
assassinated or had their eyes put out. Doctor Sun, at Nanking was
distressed, and promised to stand by Yuan and republicanism. He sent

telegrams to all the assemblies requesting them to be steady, and generously
saying that Yuan had rendered a service by inducing the Manchus to
abdicate. The situation reminded one of Burke’s description of the French
revolution: “The National Assembly is surrounded by an army not raised
either by the authority of their crown or by their command, and which, if
they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them.” The
new Tientsin mint was looted. Doctor Schreyer, an eminent German
physician of Tientsin, was assassinated. The American legation guard got
through to Peking to the delight of the foreigners. Foolishly none of the
foreign guards brought artillery, and the legations were therefore at the
mercy of any artillery attack that the northern troops might direct against
them. At Fengtai, the British Somerset regiment was on guard when 1,500
Chinese modern soldiers stopped the eastbound train. The Somersets, with
the traditional bravery of the British, gave the Chinese troops one hour to
clear out. By that time the 700 British Inniskilling Fusiliers, under
command of the soldierly Colonel Hancock, were brought west, detrained
quickly, and with the Somersets, marched at once on the positions of the
obstructionist Chinese troops, who found discretion to be the better part of
valor. Then the freed train started for Tientsin. There were now 3,000
foreign troops in Peking, and on March 3rd the Fifteenth American Infantry,
under Major Arrasmith, led a grand march of the quarter to show Yuan’s
rebelling troops that order at last could be sustained, and Japan was called
upon, as in 1900, for 5,000 troops. Hongkong and Manila were also wired
to send reinforcements. The troops of the north who had fought against the
republic for four months, were now showing themselves to be a disgusting
set of “Boxer” looters, incendiaries, murderers and “agents provocateurs”
for intervention. The outcome of the whole matter might be the bringing of
the remobilized southern forces north and the immediate unification of
nationalism at Peking under Sun, Yuan and General Li; although the south
at heart desires Nanking to be the capital, as it is removed from Russian
influence and northern sectionalism.

Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.

Military company of St. John’s American Episcopal University, Shanghai.
Numbers of these young men took part in the revolution, and they are
leaders in the New China.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The bund, Tientsin, where the Legation Guards disembarked during the
revolution of 1911–12.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The heart of religious China, the only reservation made by the
abdicating Manchu emperor; the chaste, blue-roofed
Temple of Heaven, Peking. The beautiful proportions of
this building have been widely praised by foreigners. The
three galleries are of marble.

Amid all the disturbance, another cloud, the size of a man’s hand,
loomed up on the horizon. The Marquis Chu Cheng Yu, a lineal descendant

of the Chinese Ming kings, began to canvass the rioting army for adherents.
Two hundred American marines were rushed from Shanghai to Tientsin on
the collier Abarenda, and the American fleet left the southern ports for
Taku. The transport Warren sailed from Manila with another battalion of the
Fifteenth Infantry and marines. The four-nation bankers, with the approval
of six powers, came to Yuan’s help with $1,000,000 loans on nine months’
warrants, to aid him in putting down mobbing and mutiny by paying off
soldiers, who, however, used the money as fuel for more mutiny. It was
decided to loan the dual republican governments at Peking and Nanking
about $5,000,000 a month. Some of the old-style troops were more loyal to
Yuan than were the notorious Third Division at Peking, the Sixth Division
at Paoting, in Pechili province, the Second Division in Honan, and the Fifth
Division, in Shangtung province, which were loyal to no cause or person.
At the same time the preliminary contract of February twenty-first, by
which the Russo-Asiatic Bank independently was to advance Sun and the
Nanking republican organization $7,000,000, was canceled, and the four
banking powers advanced Sun, at Nanking, $1,500,000 to pay off
Cantonese troops and hire police. The rebellion of Yuan’s troops made
many confess that the southern republicans had probably made a mistake in
not following Chang the Second’s imperial forces of northern troops north
in January, 1912, and giving the northern army several sound thrashings
until the organization was broken up.
On March 9, 1912, the irreconcilable imperial governor of Shansi and
Shensi provinces, General Sheng Yun, a Mongol by blood, still had 15,000
troops (many of them Mohammedans) fomenting Manchu propaganda and
slaying everywhere, while General Yin Tchang, at Japanese Dalny,
Governor Chao Ehr Hsun, at Mukden, and Prince Su, at Jehol and Kalgan,
were doing the same thing. What a confused state of affairs existed in the
mutinous army, of the north, which was divided into five corps. General
Sheng’s Mohammedans were setting Shansi and Shensi provinces on fire.
The corps of Imperial Guards and Manchu divisions at Peking were at heart
of course for the deposed Manchu dynasty. The Mongol divisions in
northern Pechili looted and decapitated and laughed at President Yuan’s
orders. The old-style turbaned troops of Yuan’s were loyal one day and
disloyal another, and the same thing was true of divisions of territorial
Shangtung, Pechili and Honan troops of Yuan’s modern army. In the
southern provinces the republicans had a little more cohesion in the five

armies of their recruited corps and their two territorial armies. In Yunnan
province an entirely isolated army was marking time and had done nothing
for either southern or northern cause of late. Oh! for a strong hand to weave
and hold all these cords in one cable of some strength.
On March 10th, amid the crashing of walls and institutions, a pathetic
but inspiring scene occurred in the modern Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Office) at
Peking. Yuan Shih Kai, dressed in military uniform, was formally
inaugurated provisional president of the republic of China, in the presence
of the Nanking assembly delegates, military and naval officers, provincial
envoys, and many foreigners. Of course, legation staffs and missionary
bodies did not attend officially. Yuan read a declaration promising progress,
to observe the constitution, and retire when the National Assembly
appointed a permanent president for the decided term, if he himself was not
chosen. Two yellow robed Lamas from the Buddhist temple stepped up,
presented Yuan with two honorary scarfs and called him, in Pekingese, “Da
Dsoong Toong” (in Cantonese, Ta Tsung Tung),—the great president. It was
a businesslike military scene, there being very little of Oriental display or
the gorgeous robes of old. Tang Shao Yi was named premier. President
Yuan signalized his assumption of office by pardoning all prisoners, except
murderers and robbers, remitting all overdue land taxes and announcing that
for the present the old laws would stand, except where they were obviously
contrary to the spirit of republicanism.
The new constitution provided that the supreme power was in the hands
of the National Assembly; that all acts of the president required the
approval of the assembly, that the cabinet was answerable to the assembly;
and that the assembly was to elect the president and vice-president, and
have power to pass laws over the executive veto. This was vastly different
from Japan’s stultified parliamentarism, and was a union of the American
system of the lower house being supreme, and of the British executive
efficiency obtainable from a small cabinet. Doctor Sun promised to turn
over the great seal of his office. Disorder ruled throughout the armed north,
where a republic was unpopular with the mercenary troops. Republican
flags were torn down wherever the merchants of Peking put them up. The
rebelling troops decapitated the crowd by thousands at Peking, Tientsin,
Kalgan, Paoting, and throughout Shansi, Shensi and Pechili provinces. So
many heads and bodies lay on the street that the donkeys and mules refused

to pass the heaps. Yuan himself had to add the head of the headtaker to the
pile. He sent the tall, venerable General Chiang Kwei Tai with old-style
turbaned Nganhwei troops, who mowed off heads right and left through the
streets of old Peking. The famous Tongkwan pass, at the heel of the Yellow
River, commanding Shensi and Honan provinces, was seized by the
reactionary troops of General Sheng Yun, who compelled the merchant
guilds to pay blackmail or have their stores looted. Clearly Pechili province,
with its hosts of irreconcilable mercenary troops, was the rock on which the
ship of republicanism was now stranded. Yuan had to change his body-
guard from day to day, one day old-style troops, another day Manchu
troops, and again the champion looters of the Third Division, but the real
hand which afforded what little steadiness there was, was the magnificent
body of foreign troops which amounted to 3,000 picked men.
On March 12th, Provincial President Wu Hon Man and Governor Chan
Kwang Ming, at Canton, were harassed by the notorious pirate chief, Luk,
who was remarkably successful. Luk, through the mutiny of the soldiers,
gained the historic Bogue, Yuchu, Whampoa and Fumen forts, and the
arsenal and admiralty buildings. All the foreign navies, led by the United
States gunboat Wilmington and the British fleet under Commander Eyres,
anchored off Shameen Island, cleared for action, and the passenger
steamers, on which probably every world tourist has probably been, the
Fatshan and Honan, sailed from Canton for Hongkong with two thousand
passengers each. The famous old shallow draft British gunboat Moorhen,
the hero of a thousand pirate chases in intricate Kwangtung province
waters, had her awnings and spars torn by bullets during the night, as she
protected the electric station, so that the pirates could not strike Canton into
midnight, and in the dark massacre along the narrow streets, the maloos and
the bund. Eight hundred British and French troops patrolled the little
foreign island of Shameen.
Before the days of direct primary nominations in America we suffered
from the machine system, which advanced the incompetent and debarred
the eminent and efficient from service in the state. A saloon-keeper who
brought 2,000 votes would demand, for instance, the position of secretary
of state. “But you’re not fitted for it; you’re a hoodlum.” The ward-heeler
would answer: “I must have it; I have to pay my 2,000 brigands the ‘graft’
which we claim is ours; otherwise, remember our revenge next election.”

One Shek Kam Chuen, a young stone-cutter and human hair hawker of
Canton, was very successful in smuggling arms for the revolution, and on
the declaration of independence, he led a following of 2,000 nondescript
men, who did effective work in fighting. They were men who loved a fight
more than liberty, not liberty more than life. When the republic was
victorious and his troops, after being paid, were disbanded, Shek was
unsatisfied. He, a hawker, wanted high office, when even President Sun
turned his brother down from politics to business in Canton because he was
not eminent for political ability. Shek made demands for his men that the
state could not consistently grant. He smuggled arms to take up piracy in
reprisal on the harassed state. The way the governor of Canton treated Shek
and his legal adviser, Chang Han Hing, was, under the constitutional
pressure of public opinion, to capture them at their headquarters, and under
military law, or the application of the popular “recall”, have them both shot,
to the great rejoicing of good citizens and taxpayers. That ended one
instance of heelerism, bossism, packed primary, professional office holding,
“public office a private graft”, piracy, or whatever you like to call it, in
modern China! The “Popular Recall” was a success, despite the cynicism of
the standpatters in Canton, and one of those standpatters was Shek’s lawyer,
Chang, who shared his client’s fate, much to his disgusted surprise. I am
sorry William Dean Howells was not in Canton at that time to write A
Modern Instance!
General Wu Sum, with 2,000 republican provincial troops, left Canton
for Swatow to put down pirates operating around that noted old city, and the
famous General Ling, and General Ho came down from Nanking to assist.
On March 14th the irreconcilable “Boxer” Manchu leader, Prince Tuan,
exiled in Kansu province, raised the standard of revolt, with his son Ku
Kwei, as a pretender to the throne. He had not the moral support of all of
the imperial clan, because he had in 1900 plotted to displace Prince Chun’s
emperor son, “Pu Yi”. Tuan is a shrewd, able and persistent leader. If he had
not been a reactionary in 1900, he might have preserved to the Manchus a
longer lease of power.
The battles of the international financiers still went on at Peking,
Premier Tang Shao Yi’s action in raising $5,000,000 from a Russian-
Belgian syndicate on the Chinese-built Peking-Kalgan railway, incensing
the international group. Tang gave a laconic interview, merely saying:

“China need not necessarily put herself forever in the hands of four nations;
we can deal with independents where we are able to find any. The loan was
first offered to American bankers, but those American bankers who are now
in the Far East would not act independently of the four nations.” Russian,
Japanese and Belgian bankers seemed to fall in with Russia’s plans, as in
1896, to put China under a financial thraldom. Russia did not want a loan
given to China for her army, as Russia and Japan both desire a weak army
in China. The four-nation bankers now offered China $300,000,000, of
which $60,000,000 was to be for army purposes. If Japan joins in this loan,
it will be because she does not want to be shut out of a share in controlling
China’s finances, and an apportionment of the concessions. The National
Review of Shanghai published at this time a caricature, showing Russia
pushing old China, and “Foreign Grafter” pushing New China, out of the
way, while North China, a clam, had shut its shell on the beak of South
China, a heron. The Chinese fable of the bird and the shellfish was quoted
as follows: “A bird attacked an open shellfish on the beach; but the shellfish
closed his shell with a snap, and the bird was caught. Both were then
helpless, and fell an easy prey to some covetous fishermen.” Nearly all the
Japanese papers, including the influential Tokio Nichi and Jiji, and the
Osaka Mainichi, came out attacking Yuan, and endeavoring to stir up
differences between North and South China. If Japan could prove that
Chinese conditions were unstable, there evidently would be more
plausibility for Japan’s possible intervention in Manchuria! On March 16th,
Premier Tang Shao Yi announced a provisional northern cabinet as follows,
until the National Assembly of seven delegates to a province could meet.
None of the appointees is a Manchu.
President, Yuan Shih Kai, a Honan man.
Premier, Tang Shao Yi, Cantonese, educated at Yale University,
America.
Army, General Tuan Chi Jui, Nganhwei man, once viceroy of Hunan,
active in revolution.
Navy, Admiral Lin Kwan Hsung, a man of considerable experience in
the old and new navies, at Canton, along the Yangtze, etc.
Foreign Affairs, Lou Tseng Tsiang, Minister to Russia, Netherlands,
etc. In this appointment Yuan shows how natural it is for him to favor

Russia, whom he fears.
Interior, Cheo Ping Chun, a native of Hunan.
Education, Tsai Yuan Pei.
Railways, Posts, etc., Liang Ju Hao, Cantonese.
Commerce and Labor, Chen Chi Mei.
Agriculture, Sung Chiao Fen.
Justice, Wong Chun Hui, American educated, very able.
Finance, Hsiung Hsi Ling, Hunan man, once in Exterior Department of
Hupeh province.
Most of these are southern men, some of whom replied that they did
not see how they could come without a southern army to protect their lives
from the loosely-held northern troops, who had no idea what constitutional
honor or promises meant. The whole of the American Pacific Navy,
including the fine cruisers California, South Dakota and Colorado, left
Honolulu for the Far East, and the United States steamer Monterey, on the
same day, landed one hundred men at Swatow to preserve order and the
tanks of the Standard Oil Company. On March 19th the republican troops at
Canton and Swatow gained back after severe engagements the forts that the
mutinous troops and pirates had taken. The government at Canton bought
up all the food in the shops so as to starve out Luk’s pirates. Amid all the
conflict of accusation and denial, it is fitting that Yuan Shih Kai should
speak for himself, and therefore I quote parts from his long address to the
old conservatives and to the provincial governors shortly after the
abdication of the dynasty, which abdication he adroitly and successfully
urged when, to use his own words, “it was well nigh impossible to make
stand against the republicans.”
“From the time when I again led the troops and later when I came to
court, I was animated with the purpose of establishing a constitutional
monarchy, but the state of the country changed. The National Assembly and
the provincial assemblies all fathered the policy of not using military force
to put down the disturbances. When Hankau was regained, the naval forces
were lost. The moment Hanyang was reconquered, Nanking fell. The power
of the government over the waterways and the sea was gone, and the

sources of revenue were cut off. Although in various ways I encouraged the
military to greater effort, secured the revocation of Shangtung’s declaration
of independence, subdued the capitals of Shansi and Manchuria, and did all
in my power to prop up the North, yet the tide was too strong and swept
every locality. Revolutionary societies among the people were scattered
everywhere. At this time there was international intervention and it was
requested that in the interests of humanity a truce be declared and
negotiations undertaken. Foreigners continually uttered reproof on the
scores of commercial interests and the indemnity. Because the country was
in such a chaotic state politically, it was difficult to restore order. Within
there was ruin; without there was furnished the possibility of foreign
intervention. The revolutionary forces were coming by various routes to
attack the North. The spirit of the army was shaken. Had the strife been
continued, in a very short time the revolutionary army would have come
north, and in that case it would have been impossible either to fight or to
negotiate for peace. What of the imperial family and the livelihood of the
bannermen? Recently the ministers of foreign nations, the commercial
associations at the ports, the different conferences, the various troops and
the provincial viceroys and governors have sent telegrams, all stating that
the will of the people is bent on a republic, and that it would be well-nigh
impossible to make stand against it. Should the enemy arrive at the walls of
the capital, the disasters resulting would be unimaginable. How much better
for the throne, of its own grace, to proclaim the republic at an early date.
There was condemnation of the policy of staking the fate of their imperial
majesties and the lives and property of the North on a single throw, trusting
to luck in a single battle. An edict was issued by her Imperial Majesty
directing me first to settle with the revolutionary army regarding the
especial consideration to be accorded the imperial family and the treatment
of the Manchus, Mongolians, Mohammedans, and Tibetans. If an agreement
could be reached by the two sides, then the imperial family might enjoy
glory, and the hereditary nobility among the Manchus, Mongols,
Mohammedans, and Tibetans, as well as the allowances of the bannermen,
might continue without interruption. An agreement was made, resulting in
the present state of affairs.”
Neither Yuan nor the north has yet explained to the world the reason
why the nobility of the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, etc., expect titles and
pensions, unless it be the argument that is now wearing out over the world,

in nation after nation, that it is constitutional to maintain rule by a
Privileged Minority over a taxed majority! Yuan says: “An agreement was
made resulting in the present state of affairs,” but the “present state of
affairs” is not entirely satisfactory. At times, it seems in China that
Confucius has abdicated to Confusion. The solution lies in three things:
railways, education, and a real republican congress, none of the three to be
interfered with by either a riotous or office-greedy army, but rather dutifully
served by a patriotic army. There can be no doubt that the action of the
ninety generals of the northern army in forcing the National Assembly at
Peking, in July, 1912, at the sword’s point, to accept against their will the
second cabinet which Yuan Shih Kai had selected, and some of his foreign-
advised measures, was inimical to the vitality of constitutionalism in China.
The result was the forming of a constitutional party in the Yangtze and
southern provinces by Doctor Sun Yat Sen and his friends, called the Tung
Men Hwei (Sworn Brother Society), some of whose measures were the
supervision of Chinese finances, and railway and industrial development,
largely by Chinese, and the discharge of more regiments of northern troops.
The National Assembly and cabinet have recently put in Sunyacius’ charge
the formation of a central railway board to arrange for the extension of
railways.

II

WIT AND HUMOR IN CHINA

In his book Alone in China, Julian Ralph, the New Yorker, wrote in
1898 the following sentence:
“The men and women of China will live in my mind forever, here and
in heaven, as the jolliest, kindest, most sympathetic and generous souls I
ever found in such profusion anywhere in my roving.”
I have lived and traveled three years in China, and have found that the
Chinese influence the foreigners and that the foreigners influence the
Chinese, sharpening each other’s wit, and smoothing each other’s kindly
humor. The jewel has many facets of view, depending on the angle of
vision, and in the following I shall attempt to recall many of the angles.
Regarding the foreign custom, written of by Kipling and others, of the
troubled or exiled ones of the treaty ports taking copiously to liquor for
consolation, a wit remarked: “A corkscrew will never pull a man out of
sorrow.”
The Manchu soldiers read little, and have been under the impression
that others are like them. The “braves” on guard at the Ta Ping gate of
Canton had been in the habit of extorting many a “cumshaw” from humble-
looking citizens before they were allowed to go on their business. They
caught a Tartar in 1910, when they seized a modern editor, who aired his
complaint in his newspaper, which was read in due time by the Military
Prefect Lo. What occurred between Lo and his old-fashioned braves was
not reported, but the braves for many months before the revolution of 1911
saw in every passer-by an editor. Up to the time of free types, complaint had
been smothered at the yamens.

Revolutionary spies had gone ahead of new appointees to distant
provinces and impersonated them with a recitation of their record. In
August, 1911, the Peking Gazette recited that the cabinet would in future
despatch a photograph in a sealed envelope to the governors, so that “they
could pick out the man who fitted the record by physiognomy as well as
memory”.
Back in the 80’s the famous Szechuen pioneer, Archibald Little, dunned
the ears of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) at Peking for permission to
open the whole Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chungking to steamer
service. “Yes,” said the humorously evasive board at last, “you may run
your steamer, but you know that a modern steamer will cut the unwieldy
junks down. Therefore all sailing craft will tie up to the bank of the great
river two days of each week, and give the terrible Fung-kwei (foreign)
steamer full reign on the Yangtze, but on those two days of the week only.
For five days of the week the steam craft must in reciprocation, tie up to the
bank.” This would require weeks longer to ascend the river than could be
done by tracking and sail, and Mr. Little’s plan for fast steamer service was
effectually disposed of by the wily Manchu Board, which boasted that it
“never denied a foreign request”.
Two trains of coolies meet, and words or a jostle precipitate a combat.
After it is all over, and your men take up again the arms of your chair, you
remark that although your leader’s clothes are nearly ripped off, he is
laughing about it. In astonishment, you ask him why, and he replies: “You
should see the fellow I tackled; he hasn’t any left.”
In the country parts, if you hand a cigar to a man at an inn, he thinks it
is proper manners to pass it to every one, to take a puff, just as he would do
with a pipe.
The Chi Feng Pao, a native paper of Peking, reported that in the month
preceding the great 1911 revolution, even the house servants of the Court
had not received their wages for months, and that one morning this
anonymous placard was found placed on the comptroller’s door: “Not even
a shadow of our pay to be seen yet. Why?”
A Chinese merchant, who was disgusted that all his heirs died upon
birth, called at a life insurance office at Tientsin, and asked if “they could

insure a well and proper birth”, for if so, he would gladly take out a policy.
He supposed that was what the new American life insurance meant.
A Hakka woman of the south was seldom given chicken by her
husband, who complained of the expense. She obtained his permission,
however, to purchase a fowl for the god in the Taoist temple. The husband
came home, found his wife eagerly eating the bird, and shrieked out: “How
is this? I bought it for the god, not for you.” She replied: “I offered it to the
god, who ate all he could of it. I am only eating the remainder, thanks to the
god, and not to you, for that.”
It is the custom for the mandarins who go into a country inn, to hang
out a red card, stating that “This inn is full”. A rejected guide replied:
“Rather the mandarin is full.”
I have seen a humorous drawing on a screen, which shows a cat
chasing a mouse. The cat has only been able to catch a hind foot of the
mouse, which keeps running, the foot lengthening in a most comical way,
judging by the disgust on the face of the cat, and the laugh on the face of
the mouse, which says: “That is all you get, anyway.”
“How is it that there are no one-legged men to be seen in China; do you
have no accidents?” an intelligent official was asked, and he replied
humorously: “Oh, yes, but as we know nothing of surgery, when a man’s
leg gets in trouble, we bury the whole man.”
Some of their merry proverbs are:
“If you must beat the priest, wait till he has ended the prayer for you.”
“It’s all very well to tell the priest that you are penitent, but prove it by
pennies.”
“A wheelbarrow ahead means a trail behind.”
“Man’s mouth is wider than a volcano when it comes to words.”
A sick man, sleeping fitfully, is said to be having a “raw sleep”, and
correspondingly a tired or a drunken man, enjoying deep rest, is said to be
having a “ripe sleep”.
It has been the custom of the French and Germans, when a missionary
or an ambassador has been unfortunately assassinated, to compel the

Chinese government to erect a stone arch or pailoo, with the intent of
warning the nation of the wrath of the foreigner. When you ask the common
people, who can not read, if the arch is “in memory of Ambassador So-and-
So” they generally reply: “Oh, no, it’s to the other fellow. It’s in memory of
patriot So-and-So who was executed by a coerced government for killing a
forward foreigner.”
Beheading, outside of Kwangtung province, which has recently
adopted modern methods, is the punishment for far too many crimes. Scores
of prisoners are often beheaded together, as they kneel in a row. The
Chinese loathe this method of punishment, as no good Confucian can
appear in the next world with a headless body to be worshiped as a god by
his descendants. They overcome the difficulty by having the head sewed on
the body before it is buried. There is little to identify the almost unclothed
bodies, and the Doms or coolies who are hired to perform the gruesome
task sometimes get the bodies and heads mixed up, delivering the right
body but the wrong head to the surprised though mourning family, which
stands ready with the coffin and the identifiers. The Chinese are so
possessed of humor that it is not unknown for retainers to burst out laughing
at the incongruous spectacle.
“The American cost of living is nothing compared to the Chinese cost
of loving,” said the demure mandarin, as he pointed to his five wives, et
cetera!
Here is a story that went the rounds of Peking, regarding the equipping
of the First Division. A sum exactly sufficient had been allotted by the Ping
Pu (War Board). The first prince was too good a worshiper of his ancestors
to let such a sum of money pass through his hands without giving the
tablets their share, and he loved his women folk too much not to give them
a present, and then there was his own “cumshaw” or commission,
patriotism being a theory and “graft” a fact. The second prince would be
quite lacking in the Li code of manners if he failed to copy the elder first
prince, and so the money dwindled down the line, until the Ordnance
Department was supplying wooden shells to field guns and wooden cannon
to ramparts. The First Division personnel was on the list all right, but there
was no money to uniform or arm them. By and by a beggar was found in
tatters by the wall. An orderly hurried up, shouted, “You’re the First
Division, go and sew some of your patches together, and defend Peking

from the enemy; here’s your ammunition.” He handed the beggar the last
penny of the appropriation. The beggar grasped the penny, ran off to the
first cake stand, and as he swallowed the rice, exclaimed: “Hunger is the
enemy, and I’m going to buy him off, for did not Confucius teach that
diplomacy always could defeat arms?” Such then was the famous equipping
of the First Division. A traveled Manchu who heard this said: “How about
your American Manchus? We read your newspapers. Why don’t you
foreigners make jokes about the Quay ring of Philadelphia, and the
Tammany ring of old New York, when you supplied your courts with
everything but justice, even to triplicate bills for undiscoverable fixtures,
and quadruplicate pay-rolls for undiscovered appointees? How about that
story of the lighting of the streets of your Darktown, each official taking his
perquisite, so that when the last penny reached the solitary lamplighter, that
worthy concluded that it was so near morning that he would go in a saloon
opposite the unlit lamp, and drink up the money, letting nature furnish
daylight to atone for the weaknesses of her children of the West?”
Here is a story altered to suit any circuit in China. A stern mandarin got
the name of the “Old Devil”. One day, ahead of his escort, he reached his
inn, where quarters had been engaged for him. On attempting to walk into
the best room, the inn-keeper, who did not know him, strenuously objected,
explaining that the room was reserved for “the Old Devil himself”, and woe
betide them all if the engagement was not respected. When his escort came
up, the mandarin had the inn-keeper flogged for daring to speak
disrespectfully of a judge who was a dignified “father and mother” of the
people, and at the same time handed the man a handful of coins as a reward
for keeping faith with the said mandarin.
The coolies take some of their metaphors from their dirty inns. When a
fellow acts impulsively they say: “A louse is loose in his thoughts” or “a
flea has found his brain.”
A conductor of a Chinese railway running out of Canton had his
difficulties both with the English language, and possibly with certain
English or American sailors on a holiday. He pasted up this notice in his
coach: “Small piecee bags onlee. Shaky head, shaky tongue, crazee men, no
can attain. Dirtee men must not smelee. Sick men more better die, and go
freight. Onlee Number One passenger can attain this car.”

Quick transportation is not appreciated in every guild in China. In
Ichang the “loata” (captain) of a Yangtze gorge junk objected to the
proposed railway to Wan Hsien. As an object lesson he was asked how long
it took him to take a cargo to Chungking, and he replied twenty days. When
he was told that a railway could deliver it in a day, he asked with a grimace,
half between a sneer and a smile: “What would my men and I do with the
other nineteen days?”
Yunnan, the capital of the great southwest province, was the first city of
China, under the progressive Viceroy Li Chin Hsi, to erect a sanitary
modern prison, with workshops, commissary, etc. Yunnan, though an
extremely rich province in minerals, is so mountainous that the people, who
live on agriculture, are reduced to great poverty, and are in constant slavery
to oppressive landlords who are really foray chiefs. Now that the
comparatively palatial prison has been erected, there is a rush to commit
life-sentence crimes, so that the boarders may be sure of a fine bed, good
food, medical care, personal security, and interesting work in the various
workshops for the rest of their happy lives, as compared with the
unbearable penury and danger of their lives among the hills. The Miaos,
Lolos, Shans, and Chinese of Yunnan know a good thing when they see it,
and penology is a fad which is spreading like a fire among their mountain
terraces at present.
Here is a story of merry days at Peking. The legation ladies had
informed the Manchu princess that she must be modern since the Dowager
Empress Tse Hsi had decreed it; that she must learn English, music and
dancing. As it was the trend of the hour, the suggestion was accepted. The
Manchu learned various things. It came to be her duty in time to receive a
delegation of earnest missionary ladies, to whom she was ready to prove
that she was modern, and had received the foreign branding. “I know
modern American hymn; national anthem of great flowery flag country; hail
to America. I will sing it and I will dance it.” She danced it and she sang it,
and here is what the horrified missionary ladies heard Madame Manchu
Innocence thrill: Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.
“With butter at fifty cents a pound and eggs at fifty cents a dozen in
your honorable country, I should think you’d move the piano out, and move
the cow and hens into your best room so as to be sure of the precious
creatures,” said a Chinese economist, who was reading the last American

paper at the Hankau guild, and who was satisfied with three cents a dozen
for his eggs.
The tea-tasters employed are all foreigners, and it is essential that the
taster shall abstain from liquors and tobacco. When the first man among
them is seen at the bar in a foreign club at Canton or Hankau, it is a surer
sign than the calendar that July 1st is around again.
Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised
that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations until
he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him short; that as
he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not know any other way in
which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland were living he might say
that this Chinese was the first attorney for the tariff, and its progeny.
The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near
Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of
escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of the waves
to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies its strange actions
because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah, a swift snake boat
pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing junk, which was boarded.
After robbing the crew, the pirates battened them down beneath secured
hatches, and made good their escape, smiling at their aptitude in carpentry.
It is well known that Chinese doctors are only rewarded for cures and
for keeping their patients well. A physician was called in to see a sick tax-
collector (yamen runner). “You’ll have to call in another doctor,” said the
physician. “Am I so bad that you must have a consultation?” inquired the
alarmed patient. “No. You will remember, however, if you have as good a
memory as I, that last week you searched high and low and taxed me the
last cash on the limit of my property and maximum income. I have too
much conscience to kill you, but I’m honest enough to say that I want as
little as possible to do with curing you, so good-by.”
There are more Chinese Macks and Mc’s in Canton and Hongkong than
in all Argyleshire, Scotland. I recall a particularly droll character, Mak, who
was our godown-man at West Point, Hongkong. Mak (we never called him
his personal name, which was Fun) was in full charge of the warehouse, and
came to the office twice a month with proper accounts, which always
checked up with the yearly inventory. When, by appointment, I went down

to supervise that inventory, all was as it should be. Mak had a clean
warehouse, in which neither rats nor coolies were tenants, and his wharf
was kept free of junks and sanpans. I returned unexpectedly one day and
found Mak collecting wharfage for himself from junks which he had
allowed to tie up at the wharf, and rent from coolie families whom he had
allowed to camp, with possibly their plague Bacillariaceæ, between the
aisles of gunny bales in the godown. Longfellow speaks of “folding their
tents like the Arabs and silently stealing away,” but on this occasion, the
retreat of the enemy with their camp paraphernalia was accomplished with
both confusion and noise, because of the haste involved. “How is this,
Mak?” I shouted as a stern typan should. “Oh, cousins overnight, you sabee;
plenty bobbery, but Confucius says, shelter your kin,” Mak blandly replied.
I made him assure me that they were all sailing for parts known or unknown
on the morrow, but I knew that if I caught them there again, they would be
“other cousins” who had claimed hasty hospitality under the same law and
the same necessity. There was only one way to match the blandness of Mak
Fun, or any other godown-man, and that was to move in myself. As Mak
was in other respects a good godown-man, I was blind in the port eye
thereafter to this adaptation of the “cumshaw” by the clan of Chinese
Macks, though as I passed, to quote from the same verse of Longfellow’s
poem, “the night was filled with music” in Chinese Mak’s direction.
The Chinese accept the saddest thing in the world in a droll cheerful
manner. A son, who had grown prosperous in Hongkong, sent his father,
who lived in the silk district outside of Canton, a splendid lacquered coffin,
which he was to keep before him in the best room for friends to see. The
son’s letter said: “Here is something gorgeous for The Event” (that is, his
father’s death).
The North China Herald gives the following as a sample of a Chinese
boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been
discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the services,
was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and makes private of
anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts as a rascal. He
discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you lost things which are
determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request of Missy (the employer’s
wife) which as possible as you can. But I am unliking at there Master to do
anythings, I am much obliged to come to my new place under of your

charges (recommendation) and beg you to bless me as boy or coolie
business for my content at all, or please you to commence the any other
places you know of. So I hope you to grant me a good report, for I am beg it
to you on knees. Shall be much obediently and obliged. Address me to here
as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain, Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.”
For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and
a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you do
not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief, or Chief
of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you from loss and
annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that he is earning
his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know where the watchman is,
so that he may operate in safety if the owner has not taken out the usual
insurance.
A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the
foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who
stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him the
dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of going to
the inferior regions. In ignorantia salus!
On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s fear,
not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said the
Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and they are as
strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in a retreat
before many claimants?”
There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets. The
Hongkong Telegraph writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel door, desiring
to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper, with its usual wit,
suggests that an officer of the law should peer into the fakir’s immediate
future!
The same paper coins this aphorism: “We never know how many
friends we have till we don’t need them; or how few friends we have till we
need them.”
A motor truck was rushing by with a load of empty barrels. “Nothing
can stop them,” suggested the admiring Chan. “Nothing but corks,” replied
the punnist Choi.

The Oriental has seized on Billiken, with the exaggerated mosquito-bite
on his bald head, his elongated cranium, his wolf’s ears, comedian’s smile
like DeWolf Hopper’s or Coquelin’s, his elephant’s feet, Buddha’s barrel-
stomach, and monkey’s arms, as the god of western wealth, humor, or what-
not. The idiot idol, warming his enormous feet, is installed before many a
footlight of burning tapers and punk-sticks in the shrines of eclecticism in
both Taoist and Buddhist China.
To show that hygiene is not fully understood yet in China, which is so
anxious to learn, they tell this story. A European passenger in a coast-wise
steamship, who had to share his room with an Oriental who had been
modernized too quickly, found the latter using his tooth-brush in the
morning ablutions. “You blankety son of the sun, that’s MY tooth-brush,”
exclaimed the disgusted Occidental. “Me bow low for pardons; me thought
it was ship’s tooth-brush,” apologized the Oriental.
The witty Hongkong Mail (was the veteran Murray Bain or the
scholarly Reed the author?) explained to the fellow into whose nog glass an
ancient egg was deposited by the Chinese boy that it wasn’t the fault of the
Cathayan hen, but the fault of the administrators of her estate.
A visitor chided a Hongkong volunteer with the sounds of revelry
which proceeded from one quarter of the camp, and a wit connected with
the local Press shot out this repartee: “Oh, I know Ancient and Honorable
Military Companies where you come from, whose strategy is greatest on
the canteen, whose night attacks are mostly on the bottle, and whose field-
glass is a wine glass.”
The Happy Valley Cemetery trustees at Hongkong were arguing over
the prices of graves. One wit defended the resolution before the board by
saying: “A man only dies once in the East, and surely can afford the luxury
of a high-priced grave.”
The astrologer complained of thieves robbing his house. “You’re an
infallible astrologer, aren’t you?” inquired the judge. “Yes, indeed,” replied
the soothsayer. “Well, why didn’t you foretell the advent of the thieves?”
remarked the droll mandarin. Tableau!
Said the ignorant but successful man of enormous paunch to the caustic
wit: “I have no use for a man whose head is so big that he has to scratch his

hair away out here.” “Nor I,” said the wit, “for the little-brained hog who
has to button his vest away out here.”
The Chinese poor sleep in the open—the Great Unroofed—generally
on their backs against a pillar or wall, with their knees drawn up. A new
mission hospital gathered in the sick, the lame and the blind, who were
sweetly tucked in soft clean beds, under sheets, and commended to their
lullabies. In the morning the staff came upon an amusing sight. Every
patient had dropped out of bed, and was sleeping in the tried and true, good
old fashion against the bed post on the floor. All they would say was: “Me
no sabee new fashion.”
The patient missionary at last reminded John that it was all right to eat
rice “on him” and get hospital treatment, but that there was a little card
which he had signed promising to be a regular contributor as well as a
benefiting member of the organization. John wrote: “My venerable Rev.:
Blushed am I to have been reminded of my forget in worshipping and
offering. Here I enclose my apology and the sum you like if I am right in
making out your multiply. Your spoiled lamb.”
Many nations have been credited with this witty repartee, and the
Chinese are included in the list. The Hongkong merchant prince was
showing his mountain palace, his tennis courts, his stable, his automobile,
possibly his flying machine, his billiard table, his bowling alley, etc., to the
Solon from Canton. “You see that when we British devote ourselves to
pleasure, we do it regardless of expense.” “Rather,” replied the Chinese,
whose relaxation was of a gentler kind, such as walking in gardens, and
flying birds and kites, “I should say you devote yourself to expense
regardless of pleasure.”
Solomon came to humorous judgment when two women of First Kings
brought their case before him, and Lord Kitchener is credited with a grim
humor in dealing with the Arab sheiks who wanted to enlist in the war
against Italy. Here is Chinese humor of the same sort. All of the mandarin’s
staff at his new station thought they would embarrass him by applying for
promotions. Granted with gusto! Every one’s position was advanced one
grade, but the salaries were all reduced one grade at the same time owing to
retrenchments needed.

A freshman of Queen’s College, writing of the popularity of Sir
Matthew Nathan, the indefatigable British governor of Hongkong, who died
from exposure in the 1900 typhoon, said: “He is a very common man.” He,
however, meant common in the Scriptural sense that the heroic governor’s
fame was common to all.
Chinese women are short and soft as compared with the larger and
stronger foreign women seen in the treaty ports. A Chinese student satirist,
who had served as a house boy in San Francisco, thus described in an essay
his former American mistress and her daughters: “The Americaness is open
air breather, consequently her meat is harder than Chinese (he meant her
muscle). In a dangerous melancholy acting, the young Americaness quickly
traps her sorrow husband who comes to pity, but soon runs to grieve in
divorce when loving voice of Americaness recovers from coyness. Bud of
romance early frosted makes scandal column of paper, which is best
advertising much sought and read like dog in manger by all actress without
job. Cold ethics of Chinese woman in comparison sprouts not too quick
ruin, consequently wears better. Americaness system much exciting is open-
air theater for all to laugh and read as run. Americaness never reaches next
birthday, consequently always fresh and sweet like comquat in syrup; but
American poet says: ‘Beware, some sweets do cloy, but food is good each
day.’ I think then China wife is like food, if plain, always satisfying, and
fills the bill, as American Zoo keepers say. American man and Chinese man
believe womans should go slow; consequently Americaness wear hobble
skirt like lasso on ankle, and Chinese woman bind foot. Both mens take no
chances, and exchange mutual wink. However, Chinese woman and
Americaness woman, is both queenesses of talk—when once begun then
heroes run. Talk then is kingdom of womens called Suffragetia, where mans
sees finish and casts his weapons in humble dust.”
Describing life among his friends, the bell-boys at the Shanghai hotels
who have frequently to answer calls for a B. & S. after a bath, another wit
said: “The guests are ringing (wringing) wet in two spellings.”
Was this Oriental a flatterer of womankind, or a droll cynic regarding
mankind? The wife of the missionary asked the native pupil to translate our
maxim: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and he rendered it into these characters:
“Your husband is insane when he is away from you.” Another boy wrote it:
“The angels are crazy.”

At the Chinese Club a scholarly Chinese traveler warned me to follow
the Royal Hongkong Golf Club’s motto, “Festina lente” (make haste
slowly), in dwelling upon the wonderful traits of the Chinese, and he related
the following humorous story: “In your country an enthusiastic missionary,
daringly stimulated by the applause of his audience, put wonder upon
wonder, Pelion on Ossa piled, in describing the vicarious virtues of the
Chinese, by saying: ‘Yes, dear children, lives are cheap in China. I knew a
man there who made his living by selling himself to the executioners to take
the place of those condemned to death.’”
Here is a tale of facetiousness and evasion. A wag, whose appearance
was against him, called at a prison, and held this dialogue with the clerk: “Is
the mandarin in?” “No.” “Is the deputy in?” “No.” “Is the jailer in?” “No.”
“Is the bamboo-wielder in?” “No.” “Oh, say, are the prisoners in, Mr. No-
No-No?”
One of the modernized officials labeled his friend’s book of personal
press flatteries, “The Pursuit of Egotism.”
The well-known Bankers’ Association of Tokio is called the “Eel
Society”. I asked my Chinese friend for his interpretation of this, and he
explained: “Because they are as slippery in the grasp of their Diet as is your
Money Trust in the hands of Congress.” He further told me that they call the
administration papers which say that “everything is lovely and the goose
hangs high”, “official frogs”, because they only know one note, and one
sets the others going on the same old thing.
Two wags met on the street of the Shansi Bankers’ Guild, Peking. One
wore a sour and the other a comical expression. The cynic clenched his fist
at the teak-barred windows of one bank, and with a wry face exclaimed, “I
don’t know how he’s giving it away, but I do know how he got it.” The
other, holding out the hush-money of a silver sycee bar, and pointing to a
banker’s residence across the road, answered: “I don’t know how he got it,
but I happen to know how he’s giving it away.”
A popular Chinese restaurant bears the legend of “The Quiet Woman”,
and the caricature shows a standing woman, whose decapitated head lies at
her feet, and wears at last, before her triumphant husband, a defeated
expression. The double humor is that henpecked men may safely come to

this restaurant, and enjoy that quiet and retirement which home does not
afford.
The humorist tells of a stutterer who held up an old friend, and clinging
to his pajama-frog (for pajamas are outside and not inside clothes in old-
style China), said: “If-f-f-f-f y-y-you h-have an hour I’d l-l-like to h-have a
m-m-minute’s c-conversation with you.”
Athletics of all sorts, except Rugby football, are popular at China’s best
technical school, Pei Yang University at Tientsin. English is used for all
lectures except, of course, Chinese classics. The subject of establishing a
debating class or a Rugby football team came up, and a professor who
defended the former said that “he preferred a man who could stand on his
feet and make his head work to one who could stand on his head and make
his feet work”.
A rich brute went to meet his victim whom he had impoverished. He
jeered, so as to break his spirit as he had done to his estate: “My! what a
come down; what poor clothes.” Quick as a flash from the never-say-die
man came the repartee: “Yes, I expected to meet you, but you should see me
on ordinary days.”
The practical joker has visited romantic Macao. They tell this story of
the Portuguese Sé Mission Cathedral. The Macao women are short, and the
fonts of holy water are placed too high on the wall for them to look into.
The devil was put into the sacred waters by the bad boy, the devil this time
being crabs, which unseen, nipped the fingers of the superstitious women as
they searched high up for the soothing blessing.
The naming of the Chinese servants on board ship, in mess, hong,
office or godown, has presented many a difficulty, and the civilian is more
inconsiderately humorous than the missionary, especially when his help
changes often, as is the case in Hongkong. Numbers instead of names are
generally used. “Number Two piecee cook” is what you would say if you
desired the second cook called. “Number One piecee topside boy” is what
your wife would say if she desired the first up-stairs chamber boy called.
There are no chambermaids. Where a woman is employed, she serves only
as an amah; that is, mother-nurse, or mother-maid. In the irreverent messes
and barracks, some of the men name their servants after some personal
distinction or appearance, such as “The Tall One”; “One Eye”; “Melica”,

because he told you that he had once sailed on a ship for America; “Jesus
man”, because he told you he got converted at a mission school and
preferred the name; “Governor boy”, because he was once a servant in the
governor’s yamen. Sometimes the messes christen their servants according
to their favorite political leaders in America or England: “Loosy Velly” is,
of course, Roosevelt; “Blyan” is Bryan; “Wheel Sun” is Wilson; “Salls
Belly” is Salisbury; “Loy Jo” is Lloyd George, and one boy rejoiced in the
name of “Jimmy de Blaney” (Blaine). Hundreds of these silent servants are
moving about the dining-room of the palatial Hongkong Club at tiffin
(lunch) time, yet you will not hear a footfall, as they wear felt-soled shoes.
Perhaps they are as silently giving you and me numbers, instead of names,
in Chinese. Indeed, I know they do, and would be ashamed to tell my tourist
friends that some of them are soon known as “Wigglety Walk”; “Always
Shout”; “Fool Laugh”; “Pig Eye”; “Wine Face”; “Wine Whiskers” (red
beard); “Buddha’s Belly” (stout); and when women attract them, “Tea
Flower” (pale one); “Buddha’s Mother” (a sweet matron); “Flowery Flag”
(American); “British Queen”; “Snow Flower” (Canadian), etc.
Kipling, Archibald Little, Price Collier and others have written that
some men sometimes drink hard east of Suez. The writer himself in a
former book related the bravery of a famous 11 A. M. Cocktail Brotherhood
in the blazing stifling Orient, and two world-known knights of the pen took
him to tournament to break a lance because of it. One witty evening an old
hand on the club veranda admitted the soft impeachment, and gave himself
and some others medals for the dangers he had passed in these words of
Cicero in the immortal “Murena” oration: “If Asia does carry with it a
suspicion of luxury, surely it is a praise-worthy thing, not never to have
seen Asia, but to have lived temperately in Asia.” Ah! we who had
weathered many a storm, sighed, and in bravery ordered one more, drinking
not to the habit, but to the wit. As Archibald Little, veteran of the East, said,
the tea-tasting season was over, and a mile-stone should be set to mark it!
A droll Chinese boy brought his fast running watch to Gaupp’s jewelry
store on Queen’s Road, Hongkong. On being asked to explain as best he
could what seemed to be the trouble, the Celestial rolled up those
expressive eyes of his, which must move the gods, as they always do men,
to laughter: “Oh, he too muchee to-mollow (to-morrow); you jerk back to
to-day.”

“We have come here to stay,” boasted a corps of the enemy, which took
up an advanced position. “Yes, they stayed,” replied doughty General Li
Yuen after the battle, and his grim smile explained that they stayed as dead
bodies.
Yen Tsz, an eminent premier of the Tsi principality, and a contemporary
wit with Confucius, referring to the increase of crime which called for the
punishment of the amputation of feet, used this ironical phrase: “False feet
are cheaper than shoes these days in our market-place.”
The humor of war is grim. Shortly before Confucius’ day the prince of
Tsu State had overcome the army of Tsin State. The dead lay in heaps. The
Tsu prince was asked if he would not order a tablet raised over the brave
enemy. “Not much,” said he, “I will have a tablet to my own ancestors
raised over them, giving thanks that we do the crowing instead of them this
time.”
A fireman on the new Canton-Hankau railway made out his report of a
regrettable fatality in a collision as follows: “The engineer was died without
senses.”
A consolidation of three formerly independent samshu liquor dealers of
Canton advertised as follows: “This three rice bier dealers, before separate,
is now amalgamated for quite economic, and glad with much public order
for oblige soled more cheap to foreign friends.”
On a landing in a curio store, popular with foreigners, was the
following sign: “Peoples alighted here go down stairs if curious wishing.”
A penitent convert wrote his mission school teacher as follows: “Many
thoughts of unpleasant come into my mind. Many tears drop my spiritual
soul not to speak of outside eyes. I break my beautiful promise. I contemps
the difficults but was mistake. I was failed that time to finish the very good
of God which begunned. Deep repents of my throat is blocked thickly in
bearing regrets for everlasting, but I standing for your forgive and excuse of
God like poor Peter in three times with handkerchief on shame face and
water eyes.”
Just as humorously confused is the attempt of nine-tenths of the
foreigners to make themselves understood in Chinese. Sometimes the
efforts of our missionaries and translators reach the old book-shops, and are

promptly thrown with a smile, which is more humorous than cynical in
these days of humor and enlightenment, into the compartment entitled:
“Second Hand Religion.”
I asked my Chinese friend why their ideograph for two friends was two
pearls, and he explained: “Because each is equally precious, without the
possibility or necessity of being exactly alike.” Let this answer for a picture
of America and China as the new days dawn on each side of the Pacific. A
Tientsin shop seems to have grasped satisfactorily the situation, its sign
reading: “All languages spoken: American understood.”
The many thousand ideograms of the Chinese language are memorized,
and words are often tabulated for the pupil by rhyme. They have no
alphabet and therefore can never use a linotype or typewriter. The Chinese,
accordingly, have wonderful memories, but their memory-method
sometimes places them in humorous situations. English is now required in
nearly all the new Chinese schools, though the Chinese mandarin examiners
know little about the language as yet. A confident Chinese candidate
appeared before the board of a Kwangtung province school as an applicant
for the position of “Professor of English”. “How much English do you
know?” profoundly inquired the mandarin from behind his heavy, tortoise-
rimmed glasses. The amusing reply was: “Numbers, one to ten; a hundred
words beginning with ‘A’, and ten words rhyming with sing.” The Chinese
board accepted the Chinese teacher of English for want of a better man. The
new Chinese are eminently a business race, and therefore, in their excellent
business judgment, the day will come when they will be compelled to throw
away their ideographs so as to avail of the business facilities of our
alphabet-typewriter and linotype. The present Chinese ideograph case in a
printing office has thousands of ideograph types, and it is a sadly humorous
sight on a hot day in humid South China to see a Chinese typesetter darting
about the room like a dragon-fly, trying to meet the editor’s demand for an
“extra.”
The carriages of a funeral procession rolled along the maloo of
modernized Shanghai. The mourners in the first carriage played cards and
laughed. Every one else in the procession joked and smiled. I asked my
Chinese humorist to explain the astonishing incongruity and he replied:
“Why shouldn’t everybody be happy when everybody is deeply satisfied?
Hop Long’s enemies believe that he has descended below to get at last the

many punishments that are coming to him, and Hop Long’s friends just as
confidently believe that he has ascended on high to receive his richly
merited rewards; therefore, you see, all are joyful.”
The landlord made an agreement with the tenant that when the rice was
harvested, he should receive one-third. Harvest was long past in its pale and
sickle moon, and the landlord, receiving nothing, accosted the tenant:
“Look here, thou Choi, didn’t we make an agreement that I should receive
one-third of that rice?” Choi, nothing daunted, replied: “Yes, Laoye, but
there was no third; there were only two baskets of rice and they are both
mine.”
Two Chinese youths were discussing their ambitions. One said: “When
I grow up I want to belong to a theatrical company.” His brother replied:
“Humph, not I. I want the theatrical company to belong to me.”
The Chinese do not raise milch cows or goats. The following aged milk
joke accordingly has been trotted out before every mess table of Treaty Port
China, and been made to blush as a novice for the entertainment of every
griffin. It seems that the new China hands insisted on having fresh milk in
their tea. For the sake of peace the Number One boy at last procured it. The
new hands said: “Of course it’s not like the June grass milk at home, but it
will do in a pinch.” The Number One boy smiled blandly. At last the milk
ceased and the new hands demanded an explanation, which the Number
One boy gave as follows: “No molo milkee; that piecee olo pig have now
got litter of lil pigs; that piecee bucket whitewash now makee finish.”

III

INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHINA.

The eastern states of America and Great Britain have a new slogan:
“Get ready for the Panama Canal.” The western states of America, and
indeed all America, should have another slogan: “Get ready for the China
trade.” It is not far off; it is already on the horizon, “arising a little cloud out
of the sea, like a man’s hand”. It may come with a rush any year and
thousands of companies will have their headquarters at New York. There
are many things to arrange, internally and externally, in currency, in a tariff
of twelve per cent. instead of five per cent., in provincial, inter-provincial
and international politics, in loans and finances, in education, in
nationalization of trunk railways, in harbor, canal and river conservancy, in
reforestation, in patent, copyright and mining laws, in commercial law, in
army matters, in a revenue navy, in police, in municipal organization, in
hygiene, in paternalization as far as famine, flood and seed grain are
concerned, in collection of taxes, in civil service, etc., but none of these
difficulties is insuperable. Then comes the great trade.
On my travels and life of three years in China, I have listened, and I
have glanced about for signs of the new times; and I shall relate just a few
of the indications of progress, indications as different from the old
manifestations as day is from night. Three years ago, yes, one year ago, few
thought that these things were possible. Twenty recent books and five
thousand newspaper articles prophesied that they were not possible. Thirty
recent authors and ten thousand newspaper writers were Laodicean in
attitude. Alas, ye Manchuized scribes! A few books, a few articles, many
missionaries, and the October, 1911, revolution said they were possible, and
the fall of Nanking proved it.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Industrial China. The government, foreign and native capital are vieing with
one another in developing industries of all kinds. Wages are rising, so
that the West need not be alarmed.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Modern road (bund); electric light; telegraph; buildings; trees on border; at
Canton, South China.

Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.

The grandest river gorges in the world, on the Yangtze. These
difficult rapids have separated Eastern and Western China,
but a railway is now under construction. A modern road
skirts the cliffs.

Agricultural machinery will before long be required on the great plains
of Pechili, Mongolia and the three Manchurian provinces, whence America
will draw much grain, meat, oil, lumber and coal. Nail, needle and glass

factories are going up on a small scale. China has the iron in the mine, but
she will need our machinery. Paper mills are largely increasing, and we
need their pulp. Some mills use bamboo, which the Japanese successfully
experimented on in Formosa. Factories for making soap, the most glaringly
deficient thing in dirty China hitherto, have been erected, even in far
western Chingtu City. China, like Japan, has concluded to adopt wool in the
northern provinces instead of padded cotton and sheepskin. Woolen mills
have been erected at Shanghai, Peking, Lanchow, Hankau, Kalgan, etc., to
work up to the vast supplies of Mongolian and Pechili shearings. The old
method of making winter clothing was to pad cotton and silk with cotton
batting and silk waste, the wearer being transformed into a comical
Falstaffian size. Modern tanneries have been erected by Mohammedan
Chinese at Hankau, Lanchow, Singan, etc. Hardware and enameled ware
factories have been erected at Tientsin, Canton, etc., but China can not for
years take care of her needs in hardware. Flour mills abound at Harbin,
Shanghai and Hongkong, and will be rapidly extended throughout the north.
Cement is being heavily produced, and will increase, great factories now
being run at Tongshan in Pechili, Canton and Macao in Kwangtung, and
Tayeh in Hupeh provinces. All of these industries will need machinery. Of
all municipal improvements, China has needed modern water-works the
most. They are now in operation in the cities of Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin,
Canton, Peking, Mukden, Chingtu, Nanking, Hangchow, Chinkiang,
Swatow, Tsinan, Newchwang, etc. Electric cars are run at Canton,
Shanghai, Peking, Hongkong, Hankau, Tientsin, Tsingtau, etc. Hongkong
has a wonderful cable railway up 1,500 feet of mountain, which will be
copied at Kiukiang, and other hill resorts from the heat. Telephone service
is installed at Hongkong, Canton, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau,
Chingtu, Wuhu, Hangchow, Ningpo, Nanking, etc. Electric light is
furnished at Nanking, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Hankau, Swatow,
Mukden, Newchwang, Shanghai, Hangchow, etc. In little of this have the
Americans entered as yet, though they will on a vast scale as American
finance and industry extends its agencies. The financing and the contracting
often go together, and it is not unknown for the British and Germans to
combine, though the British would be glad to join with the Americans, if
there were Americans on the ground. Often the suppliers divide on a plant,
the British furnishing the engines and boilers, and the Germans the
dynamos. Gas works are also being erected, and the incandescent mantle

lamps are very popular. As China has untold riches in coal, her development
in gas lighting will be extensive. There is a great field for American
machinery here. Her pipe foundries will grow, as she has as much iron as
coal. For many years, however, her industrial, municipal and railway
supplies, and certainly her machinery, must largely come from abroad. It is
a great field for the manufacturing nations, and even Austria is entering it
with recent success. She has increased the service of the Austrian Lloyd
Steamship Company from Trieste, and her manufactures are seen more and
more throughout the Far East. Yet Austria is not a nation that can be
compared with America, Britain or Germany in potentiality.
Since China has become a purchaser of machinery, she invites the
world to advertise in Chinese in her newspapers, and to open agencies in
China, where Chinese is read by the compradores at least. She hates
concession hunters when they are of the Pizarro and Cortez type, and
desires to exploit and profit by her own wealth. I have seen the bitterest
complaint in the Ching Wei Pao, an able native paper of Tientsin, that too
many franchises are given free to foreigners, who pay small wages and take
the profits out of the country. Can you blame them for desiring municipal
ownership, if they are willing to buy our machinery and hire our
instructors?
China is slowly establishing fire departments in its municipal and
marine life. I have seen a fire break out on oil boats in the West River of
Kwangtung province. Gongs were struck everywhere, and tugs and
launches hastened to the scene and with hose poured water upon the blaze.
The Chinese engine builders of Hongkong, who were apprenticed at the
British Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, are successfully copying
foreign marine engines and pumps, and for boats under one thousand tons
European builders can not compete with them, except in the matter of
quicker delivery, which is often important. Many motor-boats,
manufactured in Hongkong, are brought across the Pacific for delivery in
Canada via the C. P. R. steamships. Until recently the Szechuen and Hupeh
boatmen of the upper Yangtze would not permit the competition of steam,
but the Kwangtung province men of the West River—the brainiest men of
modern China—have been quick to adopt machinery, possibly because
wonderful Hongkong was so near as an example of the new era and an

efficient interpreter of the West to the East. While the labor at Hongkong is
Chinese, most of the capital and the expert foremanship is British.
The total taxes that a Chinese pays for national, provincial and
municipal purposes is one dollar per head per year, against seven dollars in
Russia, and twenty dollars in Europe and America. As most of this money is
wasted on soon obsolete navies and armies, and is drawn from mines and
land that can not be replenished, one can see the vast wealth with which
China will some day suddenly step into the world arena, China strong, and
the others impoverished in all but brain power.
In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, very simple methods are followed
in producing cotton-seed oil. The seeds are heated, packed into a barrel and
pressure is exerted by driving wedges under a hoop. Meal is made in
buffalo-driven stone mills. These methods will soon change with modern
industrial organization and the importation of our machinery.
At Kiating in the south of Szechuen province are the remarkable gas
and salt wells, the former supplying fuel to evaporate the brine of the latter.
The industry is immense, there being many thousands of wells in the
opulent Min River valley of Central China. The salt is a government
monopoly, and may be retained as such in the new financing, as in some
features of national revenue French and Japanese methods, instead of
American and British, may be followed. In that case, the federal
government would be the purchaser of the new machinery.
Only north of the Yangtze River are ponies seen. Szechuen province
has the most beautiful, many of them being black. The Mongolian pony of
the provinces farther north has a heavier body and a worse temper. Japan
has commenced the stocking of horses, and China will do likewise, when
she widens her roads, and increases the size of her farms so as to make an
animal useful, the men displaced from employment going to the new mines
and railways. Moreover, China is at her wits’ end for fertilizer, which stock
will furnish. She has been at her wits’ end for fuel and has been burning the
field stubble and straw needed for compost. Now coal will save for her this
land enricher.
The fine guild houses in the various cities are erected by subscription
and are put in charge of a caretaker. Meeting halls, showrooms, restaurants,
theater and sleeping quarters are provided. It is the same as if the Ohio men

put up a guild house in New York, and the New York men put up a guild
house in Cincinnati; or if Edinburgh traders erected a guild house in
London, and London men reciprocated. It was the reciprocal working of
these guilds which showed the Chinese that assemblies and parliaments
were feasible, and next to the foreign-trained students, the guild men have
been foremost in China’s representative political bodies. Here are some of
the practical proverbs that are hung up in the guild rooms:
“He who keeps everlastingly at it will grow legs long enough to jump
the highest mountain.”
“When there’s fire a distant lake is not so good as a near bucketful.”
“Gambling is not good, but still I have known one who risked his last
penny and got his first pound.”
“You don’t need to thrash a fast horse, or yell at a wise man.”
“Trust an orange-seller to say that his oranges are sweet, and a
shoemaker to say that his shoes don’t leak.”
“A smiling salesman enhances his wares.”
“A little attention to the cutting end of a chisel makes necessary only a
little attention to the striking end.”
The inland Chinese are sometimes clever in working themselves into
the foreigner’s personnel of staff. First the father brings his boy, and the boy
brings his cousin, imploring the foreigner to let them wait around the office
to pick up a little English. They insist on doing or pretending to do chores;
they whisper to the staff to halve their work with them, and then they beg
for or demand a wage “while they are learning English.” Seldom does the
kind-hearted foreigner refuse it, and he is really spreading the commercial
and literary gospel of the West by doing so.
In some of the Yangtze provinces designs are even yet stamped into the
dyed cotton and silk, by stencil with lime, which takes out the color, as
compared with our system of rolling the inked design on plain goods. The
old will be rung out by the new, as Tennyson prophesied.
Man as a beast of burden must depart in patient earnest China, which is
associated with such unique sights of physical slavery as dozens of coolies
harnessed to a wagon-load of teak in Hongkong, or several hundred trackers

tied to long bamboo hawsers, while they pull junks through the terrific
rapids of the noble Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien. Men for
thousands of years have also supplied with their legs the motive power of
irrigation wheels for raising water, and of tread wheels for turning paddles.
Billions of tons of freight have been carried on the backs and from the
shoulders of men, women and children over the hundreds of mountain
passes on the great trade routes of mountainous China, such as the steep
Mei Ling pass of Kwangtung, the Tangyueh pass of Yunnan, the Tachien
pass into Tibet, etc. Hongkong’s thousand palatial villas and châteaux
eighteen hundred feet above the clouds were carried up brick by brick and
stone by stone in baskets and on bamboos balanced on the bare shoulders of
human beings, who panted piteously in a stifling hot and humid atmosphere
in the equator region. Men have pumped the brine from the deepest brine
wells in the world. Their arms have lifted the weights that have driven the
wells for gas and brine. A pulley, a rope, an endless chain, have been
unknown, and hearts and feet have strained up the thirteen stories of the
pagodas with the coping stone and upcurled eaves. The day of labor-saving
devices dawns for a China whose population is going to decrease within
reason, not with the intent to starve labor, but so that labor may devote itself
to better-paying work. Government officials only can supervise this
condition in China or in America, government’s work being to govern the
big as well as the small, as we are just discovering in the West.
Shopping has been done by a tedious system of bargaining extending
over days, the contract concluding with a shout of “Mai Te” (sale attained),
which corresponds with our stock exchange phrase of “Bid taken.”
Doubtless the modern Chinese will adopt the Anglo-Saxon method of
saving time and coming to a decision quicker. Healthy competition will
bring this about.
Many guilds and Chinese merchants continue the old custom of
sending letters from city to city by messenger or trusted traveler. Hongkong
has attacked this competition with the government post-office by fining
those who deliver private letters from out-ports, though Hongkong permits
private delivery by the excellent “chit-book” system within the city.
China is finding that she can knit her own goods, and she will soon
import yarns mainly. I shall instance the Wei San factory as a sample of five
factories in Hongkong. Canton has ten factories, and Kwangtung province

has many more, not to speak of the immense number of hand-knitting
machines which the Japanese and the Germans are supplying. Tientsin and
Shanghai have several knitting factories, and much foreign machinery will
be needed throughout the land, especially in the Yangtze valley.
Up to Viceroy Chang Chih Tung’s régime in Hupeh in 1906, China
scraped and raked the whole world for cargoes of old horseshoes and iron
scrap, but since the blast furnaces at Hanyang have been a success, China is
doing considerable smelting of ore, of which she has beds almost as rich as
her coal and lime beds. The largest iron mines now worked are at Phing
Ting in eastern Shansi province and Tayeh in eastern Hupeh province. The
Hanyang smelters supply the rail mills of Hanyang, and also ship pig iron to
the Wakamatsu iron works on Kyushu Island, Japan; 40,000 tons of pig to
the Western Steel Corporation of Seattle, and to the eastern seaboard of
America, as well as to Hongkong, on occasions. There is iron ore in more
than half of the provinces, notably in Kiangsu (near Nanking); Nganhwei
and Kiangsi, besides the provinces mentioned. China is already turning out
400,000 tons of iron ore a year, largely by primitive methods. The Han Yeh
Ping Iron and Coal Company at Hanyang, Hupeh province, has three
German blast furnaces, eight Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnaces, a
rolling-mill of one thousand tons a day, blooming mills and a foundry. The
cranes are run by electricity. The iron ore and limestone are secured at
Tayeh eighty miles down the Yangtze from Hankau. Here a whole range of
hills is full of hematite ore. A railway of fifteen miles brings the ore to the
Yangtze River, where it is loaded on junks and towed by steam launches up
to Hanyang.
Among the Chinese companies (stock held by Chinese and foreigners)
which have been managed successfully are the Taku (Tientsin) Tug and
Lighter Company; Shanghai Tug and Lighter; Shanghai Dock and
Engineering; Shanghai and Hongkew Wharf Company; China Oil
Company; Tientsin Iron Works; Union, Yangtze, North China and Canton
Marine Insurance Company; Hongkong, Canton, Yangtze, North China and
China Fire Insurance Companies; China Merchants’ Steamship Company;
Ewo, Shanghai and Soy Chee Cotton Mills; Hai Ho Conservancy
(Tientsin); Ching Ching Mining Company; Kiangnan Dock and Ship-
building at Shanghai; Yangtzepoo Dock and Ship-building at Shanghai;
Vulcan Iron and Car Works; Han Yeh Ping steel plant at Hanyang; colliery

at Pinghsiang; iron mines at Tayeh; Commercial Press of Shanghai in
publishing; Chee Hsin Cement Company (at Tayeh, Hupeh).
In joint stock organization, China will for a while suffer from two
things, nepotism and graft. We have ourselves not yet emerged from
staffing companies with inexperienced and dummy relatives, and from
plundering the corporation exchequer. The Shanghai taotai who decamped
during the rubber panic of 1910, having given several million dollars of
fiduciary funds to friends, will never be forgotten in the Paris of the East.
No more however will the “squeezing” Manchu mandarin come down “like
a wolf on the fold” on struggling concerns or private business.
China mines only 15,000,000 tons of coal yearly, mainly at the
following mines:
Kaiping (near Tientsin), in Pechili province; Wei Hsien, in Honan
(anthracite).
Pingsiang, in Kiangsi province; Lin Cheng, in Pechili (anthracite).
Fangtsze (near Tsinan), in Shangtung province.
Lung Wang (near Chungking), in Szechuen province.
Tse Chow, in Shansi province.
Ching-Ching, in Shansi province (anthracite).
Pao Chin, in Shansi province (anthracite).
Fushun (near Mukden), in Manchuria (owned and operated by
Japanese).
Heijo (near Chemulpo), in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).
Ping Yang, in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).
Hungay and Kebao, in Tonquin (owned and operated by French and
Hongkong capitalists).
This of course is only a beginning. On account of poor transportation
by rail and canal, China imports about 2,000,000 tons of Japanese coal, and
Hongkong and Shanghai import Australian and Welsh coal, some of it for
admiralty purposes. The largest anthracite mines now open are, in their
order, in Shansi, Honan, Pechili and Shangtung provinces; the bituminous

as far as mined, in their order, in Pechili, Kiangsi, Shensi, Kansu,
Shangtung, Szechuen, Yunnan, Kweichou, Hunan and Kwangsi provinces.
Over a million tons of lignite are mined yearly in Manchuria. England has a
coal supply for only one hundred and fifty years, and America’s supply will
not last much longer. This means that China will step full-panoplied into the
coal and iron arena with plethoric supplies which, with her population, will
make her probably the world’s richest nation, in material resources, if not in
brains. The first shipment of Chinese coal for America occurred in July,
1910, when the steamer Inverkip called at Ching Wang Tao on the Gulf of
Pechili and loaded the famous Kaiping coal for San Francisco. The British
Peking Syndicate, mining anthracite coal in Shansi province, purposes to
build colliers to take coal to America. Coal costs at the mines only seventy-
five cents a ton, and with machinery opulent China could reduce this cost. It
is a knowledge of the potentiality of this great wealth that kindled some of
the fire of the October, 1911, revolution, and led the provincial assemblies
of Szechuen and Hupeh to say: “China’s mines and transportation
franchises shall not be passed over to foreigners.” The Peking Syndicate,
mainly British, operating hard coal and iron mines in Shansi, is capitalized
at $6,000,000. The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company has a capital
of $5,000,000. It has for many years operated the famous Kaiping coal
mines north of Tientsin. This is the company which employed Mr. Kinder,
the British engineer, who surreptitiously built the “Rocket,” the first
locomotive used continuously in China.
A wonderful tin mine has been worked for many years at Kuo Chao, in
the southeast corner of Yunnan province, the tin being exported through
Mengtsu. It used to seek Hongkong via the Red River and Haiphong and
sometimes via Nanning, the West River and Canton. The costly narrow
gage railway which the French have run from Haiphong to Yunnan now
catches nearly all of this product. There is much complaint regarding rates,
which are based “on all the traffic will bear,” and it is proposed by the
Chinese to build a railway to Nanning, and send the tin the remainder of the
way by junk and launch. This rich mine produces about 15,000,000 pounds
a year, valued at nearly $6,000,000, and now that German machinery and
German experts have been introduced by the Chinese miners, a greater and
a purer product will result. Until recently the product had to be resmelted at
Hongkong. Of course, great as this product is, the Straits Settlements still
lead in tin mining. There are 30,000 miners (mostly boys, on account of the

narrow unhealthy shafts) at Kuo Chao, and owners, miners, smelters,
porters and the government representatives all have their compulsory labor
unions. This protection of labor must be copied in all countries, the
government forcing the laborer to protect himself, and making the industry
share in the cost of government supervision. Charcoal is used as fuel at the
clay smelters, and the bellows are hand-worked.
As is well known, Southern China is cursed with white ants and
humidity. The former eat the wooden beams, and the latter rusts iron beams.
Ceilings have to be perforated to admit air and light between the floors so
as to keep down the ravages of the white ant. However, Southern China is
copying Hongkong’s example and risking metal beams and ceilings, the
trouble being to find a suitable protective paint. China has graphite, lead for
oxides, carbon, silica, and oils in abundance, and she will in time
manufacture her own protective paints, but we shall supply the machinery.
Brass hardware is used instead of iron on account of the humidity.
The important copper mines of Yunnan were worked as a Manchu
monopoly. Hunan is perhaps the next richest province, with Szechuen,
Shansi and Kweichou following, although every province has copper.
Nickel mines exist in Yunnan, Kwangsi and other southern provinces.
The first engagement between the two immense sugar refineries
(Butterfield’s and Jardine’s) at Hongkong and the great refiners of Formosa
has been won by the latter, which were helped until recently by indirect
Japanese subsidies. When the Sugar Trust, after the government fine and
municipal suit, jumped the price two cents a pound, in 1911, if America had
a Price Board at the head of affairs to induce Congress to act as was done in
the coal shortage, Formosa and Hongkong sugar could have flooded the
country until the price was restored to the five cents rate, or about that rate.
The immense Hongkong refineries (Taikoo and China Sugar) use Javan raw
sugar. The Formosa refineries use their local raw. They not only supply
Japan under a protective tariff, but have enough to supply China. Formosa
produces 600,000,000 pounds a year, and could handily double the amount.
America has the Louisiana, Hawaii and Philippine cane fields to protect, it
is true, but if sugar rises over five and one-half cents a pound retail, the
insistent knockers at the high door, Formosan and Hongkong sugars, might
be allowed to come in, as the tariff-enslaved countries are going to heed the

new cry that food, clothing and building material must be duty-free, or
nearly so.
Flake and amorphous graphite are mined in the Ping An section of
northern Korea, and Japan will, therefore, enter into the manufacture of
crucibles, lubricants, pencils and steel-paint.
China continues to use the earthenware jar and the paper bottle,
reinforced with bamboo withes, to transport her valuable nut, bean and seed
oils. Sometimes staves are brought in by foreigners and set up at Hankau,
Newchwang, etc., in barrels, but it would seem that tin would eventually
come into use, with the idea of conserving wood. The earthenware and
bamboo paper containers are the ideal from a conservation point of view,
but they are too tender and risky for movement abroad. The Hanyang plant
will probably have the first tinware factory.
The royalty imposed in Korea for mining by the Japanese government
is thirty per cent. of the net revenue. The Chinese royalty is twenty-five per
cent. in general, plus an additional twenty per cent. in the case of precious
stones, ten per cent. in gold, silver and quicksilver mines; five per cent. in
coal and iron; and export duty of five per cent., and likin (inland customs
and provincial transportation tax, literally “cash a catty”) two per cent. As
China’s mines are more lucrative, this royalty is not so onerous as the
comparison would seem to make it, and the tendency is to reduce it, under
the new government.
The ship-building and dock facilities of the Far East have fully risen to
the demands. The three largest are at Hongkong, all British owned. The
Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company on the China mainland of
Hongkong (Kowloon), and at Aberdeen on Hongkong Island, over the
mountains from the city of Victoria, has six docks, one of them seven
hundred feet long on the keel blocks. The company builds ships,
locomotives, cars, bridges, engines, motor-boats, boilers, machinery, and,
indeed, anything after the steel is furnished to them, by Britain chiefly.
The Taikoo Dock (Butterfield & Swire) on the eastern end of
Hongkong Island has a dock 787 feet long, and is also equipped to turn out
the largest ships.

The Admiralty Dock of the British Navy on Hongkong Island was built
from shore in the center of the city of Victoria, into the water by
reclamation, instead of being cut out of the rock, as was done with the other
docks. It is equipped to handle large battleships, and can be used by the
mercantile marine in an emergency.
The Tanjong Pagar Dock at Singapore is equipped to handle battleships
and maritime vessels. It is controlled by the Crown Colony.
The Mitsu Bishi Dock, cut out of the high rock at Nagasaki, has one
dock 722 feet long. This company built the new 19,000 tons displacement
ships, oil burners, of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha for the San Francisco route,
and like the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock it always has large salvage
steamers ready to go to the rescue of wrecks, now that wireless has been
established in the Orient. There have been some wonderful expeditions of
help recently on the romantic seas of the Far East.
The Kawasaki Dock Company at Dairen, South Manchuria, has a dock
380 feet long, together with the usual machine and boiler shops. There is a
commercial dock at Kobe, the Harima Dock at Oh, and large government
docks and arsenals at Yokosuka (near Yokohama), Kure and Sasebo. The
last named dock, 777 feet long, built the dreadnought battleship Kawachi,
21,000 tons.
The Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Works, Shanghai (Chinese), built
the imperial yacht once owned by Prince Tsui, and small cruisers which the
republicans seized. It has a dock 575 feet long on the blocks, and has the
usual machine and boiler shops. The Yangtzepoo Dock at Shanghai
(Chinese and foreign owned) has a dock 455 feet long on the blocks.
The Shanghai Dock and Engineering Company (Chinese and foreign)
has docks 560 feet long, where some of the vessels for the Philippine
government were built in 1912.
The Tsingtauer Werft, owned by the Germans, has a floating dock at
Tsingtau, Kiaochou, Shangtung, China, lifting vessels 460 feet long, and
there is the immense floating dock, “Dewey”, of the American navy, at
Cavite, Manila, which does not refuse to do a friendly act for maritime
commerce, when necessary, if the ships are not over 600 feet long.

The French have small docks at Haiphong and Saigon. It will be seen
that as far as taking care of battleships is concerned, only Britain and Japan
have more than one string to the bow, Britain being easily in the lead.
America has only one dock, and that a floating one. It could not lift a
dreadnought, and therefore America has in the meantime wisely moved her
first defense line, as I think the writer, Thomas Millard, a Shanghai
American, recommended in his books, back to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
counting on Cavite, Philippines, as a picket post. Germany at Kiaochou, and
Russia at Vladivostok are as yet out of the running, with inferior docking
accommodations. The Russians are spending $10,000,000 in Vladivostok
on a floating dock, ice-breakers and a wharf. As far as America is
concerned, she can count on Britain. Dewey fitted out at Mirs Bay,
Hongkong, despite all conventions. As Commander Tatnall said at Taku in
China, “Blood is thicker than water,” which was reciprocated by Admiral
Seymour at Manila. When Admiral Diedrichs asked what the British would
do if the Germans fired on the Americans, Seymour replied: “You had better
ask Admiral Dewey, who is informed.” That is the story that goes the
rounds in the East, and if it is not wholly true in fact, it is so potentially.
There is a growing number of smaller Chinese docks, machine shops
and ways. Inland at the Pinghsiang colliery on the borders of Kiangsi and
Hunan provinces, China has machine shops fitted to turn out almost
anything, and the Hanyang Steel Works, across from Hankau, have been
already described. Railway shops are opening up everywhere, and do
creditable work, especially the North China railway at Tongshan; the
Shanghai & Nanking Railway shops at Wusung, near Shanghai, and the
Hongkong and Whompoa Dock shops. The Vulcan Iron Works at Shanghai
construct railway and street-cars.
The immense cement works which are already in operation are the
Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong, in Tonquin (French); Tayeh, in
Hupeh province (Chinese); Chee Hsin Cement Company, at Tongshan, near
Tientsin (Chinese); Green Island Cement Company, at Macao and
Hongkong (British and Chinese). Half of the many bridges that are being
erected for the immense transportation development throughout China and
the Philippines are made of this new concrete.
The Chinese furniture makers of Ningpo, Yunnan, Shanghai, Hongkong
and Canton, are famous. They copy foreign models and also execute the

native designs. The artistic cabinet work of Li Kwong Loong can be seen in
the Shanghai and Hongkong clubs, in the Hongkong Hotel, and in Watson’s
Store at Hongkong. The best effects are in the prized teakwood, which is
becoming the rage in San Francisco. Vantine’s and the Metropolitan
Museum, New York, exhibit specimens of the careful and strong handwork
of these Chippendales of the land of Han. China can take care of herself in
furniture making if time is not of the “essence of importance.” Loving art, I
would not recommend sending her our machinery for furniture, but if
government schools and offices are to be supplied quickly, I suppose we
shall be compelled to make esthetics surrender to utility here also!
The Germans plan to meet the leadership of America, Britain and Japan
in technical instruction in China. The British and Americans control the
Tongshan Engineering School at Tongshan, and the Americans are powerful
in the Pei Yang Science College at Tientsin. At Mukden the Japanese are
influential. At the mechanical shops at Hongkong, Shanghai and Hankau
the British are influential. The Germans plan, with the aid of Krupps, their
foreign office and the Deutsche Asiatische Bank, to establish a central
engineering college at Tsingtau, Shangtung province, with branches
possibly at Hankau and Kaiphong. They believe that the graduates will
order German machinery and material for China’s coming prodigious
development.
The American government has included in its humanitarian pure food
laws a prohibition on the importation of green tea, which is colored in the
pot over the fire with Prussian blue, indigo, talc and gypsum. This changes
the leaf from its flat state and dull yellow and green color to a ball state,
colored lustrous emerald, and increases the aromatic flavor slightly. The
Chinese complain of having to pot-dry the green tea longer to preserve it
under the new rule, and moreover old custom dies hard in China as far as
agriculture is concerned. The American government has done a world
service in improving the quality of the ideal beverage, and the Chinese, who
do things by wholesale, will insist in time that Australia and England, the
champion tea-drinkers per capita, though not in bulk, shall take what the
Americans have made “ploper fashion.” There were amusing instances of
cousin John’s habit of “bluffing” laws on the maxim followed in more lands
than in China, “If laws interfere with your business, why laws?” He heard
of the May 1, 1912, law of the Americans, but he sent his crop over just the

same, saying, “Surely America won’t put it back on my hands, as I haven’t
got used to the law yet; like Mencius’ thief, I can only get used to law
gradually!” Had America relented, John would have seen that his firers
never got used to our laws.
China formulated a patent and copyright office at Peking in 1905, but it
has not yet reached efficiency for various reasons, one being that the states’
rights feeling is stronger than the centralized government movement up to
date. In the meantime the district or municipal taotai will, upon application
of the foreign consul, issue a proclamation prohibiting all Chinese within
his jurisdiction from manufacturing, selling or consuming property which is
pirated; and such theft and infringement are considered unpardonable by the
great body of highly moral Chinese guild merchants, as compared with the
lack of similar honor in the first days of modernized commercial Japan.
Prosecutions have been actually carried on in the mixed courts of foreign
consuls and Chinese taotais against Chinese dealers for handling goods
made in Europe and imported into China under marks similar to American
marks registered with the taotai, and the dealers, whether ignorant or not,
have been convicted and severely punished. Until China is able to establish
an efficient patent department the method that should be followed is to
register the mark or patent at the consul’s and taotai’s office in each
province and port where the goods are to be sold. This will answer very
satisfactorily until the growth of trade, transportation and machinery of
government make the central government more familiar with modern
business methods and international law. It is important in China and
absolutely essential in Japan for the foreigner to register his patent
promptly, for a pirate may precede him and cause irrevocable loss, in Japan
at least.
I want to portray a Chinese character as a type of one interesting and
powerful set of men with whom the West will now come in contact. Ah
Chuk (I shall call that his name for present purposes) was a Cantonese
about fifty-five years of age, though he looked much older because of his
parchment face. He had few of his teeth, because he lived in the days before
the advent of foreign-trained dentists. In his youth he did not fear to strike.
His race were the men who had set in motion the greatest rebellion ever
known, the Taiping scourge. My patriotic and legal duty was to obey the
law in spirit and in letter, and in addition, under no circumstances to lose

temper, but to treat Chuk with unfailing manners. Chuk was the only
Chinese whom I ever knew who disobeyed his Confucian code of flowery
courtesy (Li). He hated me, as he bitterly hated all who firmly withstood
him, and he showed his feelings on every occasion. His gods were not
Buddha, but money and power. On one occasion he said: “I can get you a
Chinese slave girl for four hundred dollars.” I replied: “You insult me,
Chuk.” He hissed, “I meant to.” He asked me why I could not obey the
letter of the law and not the spirit, and I told him that an Occidental
corporation employé, like the soldier, was expected to be absolutely loyal to
orders. He said I was a fool because I made a god of conscience, instead of
expediency; that I had no tact. I replied by quoting their maxim; “Tact is the
discounting of principle in the mart of expediency.”
He feared neither the American, British or Chinese governments, nor
the rich corporation. He corrupted foreign consulates in the old days when
forged citizenship certificates were not unknown. He bullied the Canton
viceroy. He was lord over half a dozen valleys and a hundred hamlets of
Kwangtung province, whose inhabitants were his slaves, because they had
signed bonds of $1,000 each for every Chinese whom he safely got into that
Eldorado, America. He did not press the man in America any more than he
would attempt to press a man in Mars. He pressed his father, his relatives in
Kwangtung, who were on the bond also, for the payment of the $1,000, and
it took the son in America twenty years to pay the money and the heavy
interest. With his foot on the sacred bones of his grandfather he held the
grandson in America in constant fear.
He was lord of the underground routes which ran to South Africa,
America, Australia, Mexico, Canada and wherever Chinese laborers are not
received free. He seldom dressed well; it did not do in those days to look
opulent in China, and besides American inspectors might suspect a well-
dressed dealer in contract slaves. His voice, unlike the usual pliable voice of
his race, was deep in his raucous throat. He would not fear to take life if he
had a chance in the lonely walks of his province, if his opponent was a
strong obstacle to his worship of his two gods, money and power. He could
not get in as many as he wanted by the direct route, so he determined to
institute the first Chinese trans-Pacific steamship company, crossing the
Pacific to Mexico. I told him that he never could get the money, as Queen’s
Road, Hongkong, was a long way from Wall Street; that he would sink a

million of the money of his beloved countrymen. He got the money from
the Chinese, intensely conservative as they were, which proved the power
of his persuasion, and he sank it all in two years. He could not be drawn
into much expression by me, though he could speak English well. I heard
him, however, speaking like a Rooseveltian tornado of storm and lightning
unto his own, and once to two foreigners in whom he trusted, because they
had obeyed him at their risk, and he owned them by the bribes they had
accepted. His will was of iron, unyielding. His persistency was as tireless as
Napoleon’s, and his swift victories were many. He could live without sleep
when he planned his campaigns. He would go anywhere and to anybody to
accomplish his aims. He loved whispering. He cast looks which wielded
men. He swept like a vulture on lambs. He struck at his opponents like a
tiger. He was not a Manchu, but he was Manchuized in his confidence that
the Oriental was superior to the foreigner. I shall never forget the time when
he told me that he had “a white man working for him.” That white man was
descended in the third generation from a brother of a president of America.
Chuk was not uncomfortable when he thus wore the crown. He ruled
over his subject races of the West with all the assurance which Xerxes or
Kublai Khan did. He could plot; he could bribe; he could threat; he could
spend with a lavish hand. One time he would travel in state at home and
abroad, and on another occasion incognito like a spy. He felt he was abler
than any white man because he added the easier conscience of the Orient,
which he called wisdom, to an ability equal to the white man’s, and a will
just as imperious. He despised all religions as he said “conscience makes
faint-hearts of us all.” He had no pity for his dupes or victims. He was a
Cantonese Tippo Tib. I never know, when I am speaking to an American or
Cuban Chinese, if he is not a slave of Chuk’s, remitting to his old father in
Kwangtung province, who will in turn remit to Chuk or Chuk’s heirs, to pay
off that $1,000 and usurious interest added. Chuk is a Cantonese example of
the power which may come to a money lord who has decapitalized labor,
which will never catch up with the principal. His profits on the real cost
were 1,500 per cent. Not even a surveillance of communications could
probe Chuk’s underground methods. Three insurmountable barriers
interposed, the extent of the territory, the Chinese language, and the
changing codes which he used. It would be as difficult as ferreting out a
criminal in the Trastevere section of Rome, if for one reason alone, because
the Trasteverans will not turn informers. Neither will the Chinese.

Therefore, with espionage of communications and informing for bribes
eliminated, a secret service on Chinese law breakers, as far as we are
concerned, is as yet in many respects ineffective.

IV

FINANCE AND BUDGET IN CHINA

With a reformed system of tax collection the following budget is quite
feasible, and will, without any greater pressure on the individual than at
present, lift China out of the slough of despond.

REVENUE GOLD DOLLARS

Land tax, 400,000,000 acres cultivated, at
50c a year $200,000,000
Salt monopoly 10,000,000
Maritime customs 50,000,000
Railway surplus, nationalized trunk lines 10,000,000
Fisheries, tobacco, samshu, mining,
steamship, bank, incorporation,
telegraph and other fees 50,000,000
Income tax 10,000,000
$330,000,000
EXPENDITURE

Interest on foreign loans,—past,
$200,000,000; and in prospect,
$200,000,000; total, $400,000,000, at 4
per cent. $16,000,000
Civil service salaries, etc. 30,000,000
Army, a full division for each province,
100,000 men at $100 a year 10,000,000

Conservation, public works, repairing
national architecture, famine relief, etc 50,000,000
Navy for revenue purposes mainly, with
one dreadnought a year added 24,000,000
Education and crafts schools 100,000,000
Canals, railways, steamships, telegraph,
telephone, etc., extensions 100,000,000
$330,000,000

This proposes $330,000,000 a year for 400,000,000 people, against
Japan’s $350,000,000 a year for only 55,000,000 population. This plan
wipes out the obnoxious opium and likin taxes. The taxes proposed are less
than half per capita what poorer India is paying, and one-tenth of what
Japan is paying, and so China would remain the lowest taxed nation on the
earth. The outstanding government debt of China, even including the
proposed four-nation loans of $50,000,000 gold for currency reform, and
$50,000,000 for new Szechuen and Hunan province railways, is, as I have
detailed elsewhere in this article, only £113,000,000, whereas the present
government debt of Japan, with infinitely less resources and population, is
£300,000,000, not to speak of Japan’s private industrial loans abroad, which
would add another £60,000,000. India’s debt is £170,000,000. The tax
proposed in China is so small that room is left for each province to charge a
door and head tax of 25c each a year, bringing in an additional
$100,000,000 gold for provincial revenues to take care of justice, provincial
public works, etc. Municipalities could then raise their ordinary taxes in the
usual way. All that is wanted in China is an honest audit, the end of
nepotism, and a cessation of “shaking the pagoda tree” by peculating
officials. The whole central and provincial tax would not amount to much
over $1 a head a year, and the municipal taxes would not be any larger than
$1 per capita. This would not be a burden to cause complaint or revolution.
With the immense sum collected China would almost at once take her place
as one of the mightiest of nations. Her credit would be enormous, and her
opportunity for good the greatest in the world because of her wider ethnic
connections. She would not need to raise her customs much above the
present five per cent. ad valorem, and thus oppressive monopolies could not
grow up in the land. Free trade would flow to her with its riches, as it
flowed to Britain, and every man would have enough, and no man too

much; certainly an ideal condition. This budget would provide a splendid
army of well-paid men ($8 gold per man per month is abundant); 100,000
strong, able to throw back any invasion at once, and always ready to keep
down piracy. Riot and strikes are not unpatriotic piracy; they are the
localized suppuration of an economic distress that can be cured or
forestalled in a democracy by other means than a soldiery, which we have
found a failure in America and Britain. The new Chinese navy could add a
new dreadnought battleship each year, and provide crews, yards, and a full
revenue marine. Above all, education and transportation would be taken
care of lavishly, and China would not need to beg at any one’s door for a
loan. She would be a land of peace, because a total tax of $2 gold a year per
capita can raise not the slightest discontent in any land.
The debt of the Chinese government, contracted before October 13,
1911, which debt the republicans recognize, is as follows:

Amount
Amount Interest
Loans in £ in £ Due
7% silver loan, ’94 £490,500 1924
6% gold loan, ’95 800,000 1924
6% gold loan, ’95 333,400 1915
5% gold loan, ’96,
from France and
Russia for
Chinese-Eastern
Railway 12,397,425 1933
4½% gold, ’98,
Britain and
Germany for
railways 14,022,625 1933
5% gold railway loan 1,955,000 1933
5% gold (Boxer
indemnities, etc.) 52,500,000 1940
5% Shanghai-Nanking
railway 2,900,000 1915

5% Canton-Kowloon
railway 1,500,000 1920
5% Tientsin-Pukow
railway (British) 1,850,000 1918
5% Tientsin-Pukow
railway (German) 1,100,000 1918
5% Shanghai-Ningpo
railway 1,500,000 1918
5% Hukuang railways 1,500,000 1921
Total gov’t debts
—
China £92,848,950 £4,642,000
Japan 300,000,000 12,000,000
India 170,000,000
Italy 1,000,000,000
France 1,200,000,000
Britain 1,000,000,000
United States 200,000,000

If Japan returned to China the £35,000,000 indemnity coerced from her
by the Shimonoseki treaty, the Chinese debt would be greatly reduced. This
is Japan’s moral duty, especially if she is allowed by the nations to retain
Formosa, Korea, and possibly part of Manchuria, all of which she plans to
retain. Several of the European nations should follow America’s example
and return the excess in the Boxer indemnities. The banking nations, as long
as America and Britain retain their present high standard of altruism, will
never again permit any power to wheedle an indemnity out of China.
The foreign and local banks operating in China are the following. I use
gold dollars for the table:

Capital
Bank Paid Up Reserve
Hongkong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation $5,000,000 $15,000,000

International Banking
Company of America 3,250,000 3,250,000
Deutsche Asiatische Bank 5,500,000 3,000,000
Yokohama Specie Bank
(Japan) 10,000,000 7,000,000
Lloyd’s Bank (British) 20,000,000 15,000,000
Chartered Bank of India,
Australia and China
(British) 4,000,000 5,000,000
Netherlands Trading Society 18,000,000 2,000,000
Netherlands-India Commercial
Bank 6,000,000 700,000
Russo-Asiatic Bank (Russia-
France) 19,000,000 4,000,000
National Bank of China 1,500,000 400,000
Banque L’Indo-Chine (French) 6,000,000 3,000,000
Bank of Taiwan (Formosan
Japan) 1,800,000 300,000
Mercantile Bank of India
(British) 5,500,000 800,000
Eastern Bank (British) 2,000,000
Chino-Belgian Bank (Belgian) 2,000,000

It will be noted that with one exception all of these banks are strong
institutions. The hoary patriarch among them, endowed with exhaustless
strength still, is the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which
has been operating in China since 1865.
There is a movement in Canton to establish an “Industrial
Encouragement Bank”. The merchants are anxious for currency reform
throughout the kingdom and the establishing of coins of fixed value on the
American decimal plan, but going to a lower decimal to accommodate
small trade and the lower values of China.
It is also proposed by prominent members of the Nanking Assembly to
establish a Sino-American bank, plans for which were laid just before the
October, 1911, revolution.

At the height of the revolution in November, 1911, the rebels did a
remarkable thing successfully at Shanghai. The loyalists at Peking were
unable either with their own imperial Ta-Ching bank, foreign loans, or the
immense ramifications of the Shansi Bank guilds, to uphold their credit, and
the chief fighter of the Manchus, General Chang Hsun Chung, could not
pay his troops. The republicans at Shanghai under Sheng Wan Yung,
minister of finance, and Wu Ting Fang, foreign secretary, organized the
“Chung Hua” Bank at Shanghai with a capital of 5,000,000 taels. The shops
immediately took the money at a high premium, doubtless to give an
impetus to confidence. “Chung Hua” is the Chinese name for China. It
means “central glory”.
Nothing hampers China’s interprovincial trade more than the absence
of a national credit system and commercial paper. Treaty-port China gets
long enough loans from the foreign manufacturer. The trouble is that the
importer can not collect quickly from his customer, and when he does, the
medium is coin, bullion and barter, unnecessarily and clumsily handled,
whereas coin, bullion and barter should only be used for the balances.
China needs a modern currency system, and a modern credit system as well.
It is in accord with manners and business accuracy when at a fair you
are informed that an article will cost you a thousand coins (cash) to say:
“I’ll pay you 500 good coins.” If you had a thousand counterfeits you could
elect to pay with them, but never be so bucolic as to pay a thousand good
coins when a thousand coins are asked. As suggested by America, China’s
new coinage will have a silver dollar, half, quarter, dime, nickel, two cents,
cent, half a cent, and one-tenth of a cent, all minted in government mints,
and alone accepted as legal tender in taxes, telegraph, railway, telephone,
customs, likin, stamp and other charges. Very slowly the old system of
using provincial coinage of debased value, bullion (sycee) exchange,
private bank notes, etc., will pass away. A central bank, like the Ta Ching,
helped by a four-nations foreign loan, backed 40 per cent. by the
government, and 60 per cent. by private subscriptions, with about
$6,000,000 capital, could make a good beginning in taking care of the new
system. Although a silver coinage, the government, like Japan’s, stands to
guarantee the fixed value of the coinage as equal to half its face in gold; that
is to say, the central bank will hold reserves so as to redeem or guarantee a
silver dollar at fifty cents gold. The silver is to have a fixed purity standard,

like the Philippine peso, or the American dollar. Japan stepped into Korea
and refused to accept the old coinage. It immediately became copper
bullion, and had no other value. For safety’s sake, the Japanese insisted that
the coins, worth nominally one-tenth of a cent, should be broken at the
square hole in the center. The steamer Seneca, in 1912, brought 1,400 tons
of these broken Korean coins to New York, whence they were shipped to
Chrome, New Jersey, to be smelted. China can not be so rigid, as she has
not the police or army, but if she could safely be rigid, nothing would clear
up the coinage question better than copying this Japanese example. Since
the adoption of the gold standard in Mexico, the government has to accept
the old Mexican dollar as legal tender for one dollar gold, which gives a
profit of 100 per cent. to the lucky holders of these silver dollars. There are
many of them in China; indeed the Mexican dollar was for many years the
monetary standard in China, and the thrifty Chinese are smuggling the
unchopped coins into Mexico as fast as they can be gathered up from the
Shansi, Kwangtung and other bankers. The Mexican government
anticipated this move, and placed a duty on Mexican dollars returned from
abroad. The honors are even along the Rio Grande boundary; Mexican
dollars are smuggled southward, and Mexican Chinese are smuggled
northward! Most of the Mexican dollars in China, however, have been
chopped in the banks and fan-tan houses, and the thrifty Chinese shroffs
groan when they contemplate that by egotistically sinking their chop into
the face of the Aztec eagle and the Texoco snake, they have now lost 100
per cent. profit. Moral: never mutilate the coin of a realm, whether it is your
own country or not.
As illustrating the irregularity of the currency, let us cite the situation at
Newchwang in 1912 for instance. National taxes are paid in Kuping taels;
provincial taxes in Manchurian dollars. Customs duties are paid in the usual
Haikwan taels; local octroi in small silver. The national post-office will only
accept Mexican dollars. The national telegraph office will only accept
Manchurian dollars. The national Chinese railway cashiers must receive
payment of freight bills in either Peiyang or Kiauchou (German) dollars.
The pursers of the national China Merchants’ Steamship Company demand
payment of fares in either Mexican dollars or Newchwang taels. The
Japanese, who run a railway, a concession, public utility works and a hotel
here, demand payment of their bills in the Japanese silver yen (dollar). On
their railway line they demand payment in the Japanese gold yen. The

Russian demands payment in his paper ruble note. The Americans and the
English demand payment respectively in eagles and sovereigns. All of these
concerns will discount other moneys at a heavy profit, so that they, and the
money changers, in the multiplicity of standards, soon shave the dollar
down till its pride and distinction of stamp are humble and thin enough! A
tael, the old monetary system, is a Chinese ounce equal to 1⅓ ounces
avoirdupois. The Haikwan tael, the standard of fineness accepted by the
Custom House, is rated at 100, in comparison with which are the Tientsin
tael at 105; the Hankau and Newchwang at 108, and the Shanghai at 111.
When new silver arrived at the old provincial mints, it was refined or
adulterated to conform with these grades. The edict of October 5, 1908,
suggested that if the standardization of silver was successful, a gold
standard might be looked for. This would probably slightly raise wages and
costs in China, and slightly decrease them elsewhere.
The national customs, heretofore called the “Imperial Customs”,
managed from Peking in succession by the British knights, Robert Hart,
Bredon and Aglen, continue to be the financial pillar of China, the basis of
foreign loans, the payer of the hated indemnities, the provider of armies,
pensions, and nearly all the machinery of government and even “graft”.
Until a reorganization of the taxes is effected, the customs might be raised
to double what they now are so as to get China on her feet. The department
has been honestly managed, and is a monument to the late Sir Robert Hart,
the sinologue. Where a missionary or a Buddhist monk is not at hand to
take care of a needy traveler, there will be found a national customs cadet,
generally a Briton, an American or a German.
How China is neglected by London, the world’s banker, is illustrated by
the following investments of new capital in a normal year, 1910. China was
given only $3,500,000 in 1909, and $8,000,000 in 1910, whereas to nearly a
billion already loaned, Japan was given $30,000,000 more in 1910; Mexico
a like amount; Argentine, $112,000,000; Russia, $20,000,000; and even
little Denmark, Greece, Turkey and Cuba each received as much as
dormantly opulent and vast China. The neglect of China by America reveals
a similarly regrettable situation. Trade follows the loan as much as it
follows the flag and the missionary, as England’s trade relation with
Argentine proves.

The famous Russo-Chinese Bank, which was the catspaw for the
Russians in securing from the Chinese the troublesome concession for the
Chinese-Eastern railway, which largely led to the war with Japan, was
absorbed in a new institution in October, 1910, called the Banque Russo-
Asiatique, which is largely financed by the Banque du Nord and the Société
Générale of Paris. The old Russo-Chinese Bank had a capitalization of
21,000,000 rubles, one-third of which was subscribed by China. The
capitalization of the new bank is double that of the old.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The oldest and strongest bank operating in China; the Hongkong and
Shanghai Banking Corporation. It has branches throughout China, on
the British banking plan. The building in the background is the
Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The abundant use of street advertising by the new commercial China.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Court of the splendid Swatow guild house at Canton. These are
their chambers of commerce and clubs combined, and are a
power in the new commercial China, almost equal to the
new assemblies. The heir of a tea magnate rides the statue
of a griffin.

China is suspicious regarding foreign loans, and many of the new
China party which precipitated the October, 1911, revolution are opposed to

even railway loans. Objection has been made to one American loan that it
included, besides proper interest, a bonus of millions to take up bonds of a
previous American syndicate which never performed railway work in China
for those bonds; that is, they were organization paper, not property paper.
Objection is also made that our loans name as security the perpetuation of
the odious likin system which disjoints the trade, politics and transportation
of the provinces. The Chinese of the south have constructed many short
railroads, which are run at a profit without foreign loans, and it is this
system which the “states’ rights” people wish to spread. Political and
economical education in the provincial assemblies will in time teach them
the wisdom of the nationalization of trunk railways at least. There is the
same conflict in China between the states, or provinces, and the federal
power, as there is in other countries. In the matter of foreign loans, the
provincial papers complain that the central government has sold the nation
by paying bonuses and heavy interest. The trouble with provincial loans for
railways will be the mixed security offered, one province providing for the
continuation of the objectionable likin, and another province withstanding
it. It is a perfect curse along the magnificent Shanghai-Nanking railway
built by British contractors. The strong desire of the provinces, in the first
ebullition of patriotism, is to build and operate their railways without
foreign aid or federal intervention.
In times of political trouble, the Chinese place vast sums in the trust,
not only of foreign banks at Tientsin, Shanghai and Hongkong, but
valuables and money are placed implicitly in the care of missionaries,
whose fiduciary honesty is esteemed by the Chinese, who, if they do not
understand the text, understand the living example! The missionary is not
only a tower of “doctrine”, to use the Chinese idiom; he is a tower of
finance also. It is a remarkable thing that when the white man’s honesty at
home in certain scandals exposed by government prosecutions, is rocking
like a wooden steeple in the grasp of a tornado, the white man’s honesty in
China is standing steadfast as a rock, and unmoved in the typhoon of local
and international distress, and political, religious and educational change. It
seems that it is a wholesome time to send some of our monopolists to
China, and bring some of our missionaries back to reform things at home!
The licensed pawnshops are called Tang Po Tien and Chi Tien. The
“Yah” pawnshop corresponds to our “fence” shop, to which thieves bring

their plunder. The regular pawnshops are an embryo trust company. They
loan on land, crops, jewels, rent, bills receivable, possessions, houses. They
change money and sell notes of credit. The pawnshops of Mukden and the
north loan on crops, such as beans, millet, etc. The visible grain, and not a
warehouse receipt, is the security, and therefore the pawnshops of the north
have yards and sheds in connection with the plant. The towering square
pawnshops of Kwangtung province in the south are higher than in the other
provinces, showing that capital circulates more among the active Cantonese
merchants. The Chinese of America are mainly Cantonese, or
Kwangtungese; that is, if they are not of the provincial capital, they are
from the province.
Trained carrier pigeons are still used by the Shansi Bankers’ Guilds in
carrying secret code messages stating the exchange prices of silver. This is
quicker than the post, and more secret than the telegraph.
Regarding salaries that will be paid in China’s reconstruction, the
following may give some indication. The salary of advisers to the privy
council has been $90 per month in a nation of 400,000,000, compared to the
salary of an American attorney-general of $1,500 a month.
It is often said that the Chinese are absolutely honest, but when an
exception occurs it is as startling as a bolt from a clear sky. As an aftermath
of the rubber speculation at Shanghai, the taotai, Tsai Nai Huong,
absconded in August, 1911, owing several million dollars to the
government, which sum had been loaned him to assist the local banks.
Some of their proverbs hung up as texts in their guild houses are:
“Don’t wait till you are thirsty to dig your well.”
“Don’t wait for the battle before you sharpen your sword.”
“The higher up, the deeper down when the tumble comes.”
“Fish and fools are the same; neither sees the string on every bait.”
“The fish is measured by your bait.”
“He who buys luxuries soon sells his necessities.”
“A debtor never remembers as long as a creditor.”
“Conscience grows heavier as store weights grow secretly lighter.”

“Hot broth and a time loan both require deliberation.”
“If you are rich and live in a desert, it’s never too far for your poor
relatives to come.”
“If you have money, even your enemy will slave for you.”
“There’s such a thing as drawing the line somewhere; I don’t lend my
umbrella in the dog-days.”
“Some men’s faces are as good as a credit slip.”
It will be perceived that they had a Franklin in China!
The idiom for a lunar eclipse is: “The moon has suffered a deficit,” but
the other expression of the Chinese astronomers: “All round again”,
indicates that losses have been underwritten and solvency reestablished!
May the international financial astrologers in and out of China soon bring in
this happy state. Then a “cycle of Cathay” will be as good as any other
cycle, despite Tennyson’s dictum, and this will redound to the good of every
nation, particularly America and Britain.

V

BUSINESS METHODS OF FOREIGNERS IN
CHINA

The British national board of trade, partly on the advice in Admiral
Lord Beresford’s book, has appointed commercial attachés separate from
the diplomatic and consular bodies to work as specialists and free lances in
China. In contrast with the diplomatic and consular departments, they are
free to use the helpful publicity of the home newspapers in order to correct
and create interest. Canada in a small way has followed Britain’s example.
A consular officer is fixed to his post on account of his daily relationship
with shipping, courts, visits of nationals, emigration and health inspection.
A commercial attaché has more of a roving and special commission, and it
is important in the nature of his office that his advice should be followed
promptly in China and at home. He is in a position to strike quickly and
bring trade to his flag. He is not necessarily that loathsome being which
flourished in China previous to the Russo-Japanese War, a concession
hunter and a looter of weak countries. His aim is to strengthen weak
countries, as he knows that only a rich and contented people can trade
richly with his flag. The more he is of a scholar, gentleman and Christian
the better, for such a person in the long run makes an ideal trader and
patriot, as the American reformers are insisting. He should be a statistician,
an economist, and also an idealist, so that he may be able to formulate a
policy amid the present confused conditions. He is not in any sense a
historian, for he is not to follow his country. He is to lead it, and, moreover,
he must also sympathize with the Chinese point of view to a sufficient
degree.

Europe and America have been trading in China on an extended scale
since in 1842 the Nanking Treaty opened up Canton and four other ports.
Surprisingly few traders have learned the language. The home-rule principle
has been recognized, and the Chinese have been allowed to run the trade in
their own way on the compradore and shroff system. The foreign firm takes
into its employ at a percentage, with a guaranteed minimum, a Chinese
compradore, who speaks English, and who is bonded by the Chinese, and
the compradore takes into his employ a shroff cashier, who is bonded to
him by Chinese. The compradore pays the wages of his Chinese staff. The
foreigner (Si Yang Jin—West Sea people) must deal with the Chinese
customers only through the compradore, and the compradore must under no
circumstances appeal to the head of the foreign firm in London, San
Francisco, etc. He must deal with the agent or branch in the China port, in
whose office he is located on the first floor, with a Chinese staff as large as
the foreign staff up-stairs. One who enters the offices of the Pacific Mail,
American (International) Bank, Standard Oil, P. & O., Butterfield and
Swire, Jardine’s, Fearon’s, and other companies in China, might think at
first that the concern was Chinese. No one but Celestials is to be seen. This
system is an approximation of two views. The Chinese might desire to
handle his own trade, in which case the compradore would set up for
himself, and buy sewing-machines, oils, machinery, tobacco, cotton, etc.,
direct from the foreign agent at the treaty port, or he could ignore the
foreign agent and send his Chinese buyer across to San Francisco, or over
to London. Or the foreigner might learn the language, dismiss his
compradore, and try to sell direct to the Chinese consumer and Chinese
merchant.
It is a world-trade question, a terrific struggle in economics, this getting
rid of the middleman, the drone, and it is therefore still an unsettled
question in China. The compradore and shroff exist, although many foreign
commercial travelers, especially Germans and Japanese, are selling direct to
the Chinese in small lots. Many of these compradores have become notable
and able men, especially those employed by the Hongkong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation. Again, some compradores have tricked the foreign
agent and company with all the legerdemain of a conjurer. That is, instead
of inducing the foreign agent to bring out large quantities of oil, flour, etc.,
we shall say, in time for a high market, the compradore, with his Chinese
alliances (or conspirators, shall we say!) induces the agent to get stocked in

godown when a low market suddenly drops on him. The compradore shifts
and says the market will drop lower still, and the agent authorizes the
compradore to sell quickly. The compradore sells to himself by dummy, and
the oil or flour suddenly rises. The agent is mad clear through, but if he
changed compradores every time this happened he would change so
frequently that his concern would lose prestige with the Chinese. The
Chinese compradore will bleed you, but he will not knowingly bleed you to
death. Of all ornithologists of trade, he does not believe in killing the goose
that lays the golden eggs. He only plucks the goose occasionally! I have
heard tales which, if they are true, would indicate that the Chinese
compradore is not alone expert in legerdemain, but that the foreign agent
sometimes “stands in” with him. There certainly are some mountain palaces
and a princely ménage on the hills of the sumptuous Far East that the
savings from an agent’s salary, or an unexpected legacy never bought. In
trade and in politics, as well as in religion, “by their fruits ye shall know”
compradores, agents, and every one else!
Successful companies operating in China, with foreign managers and
with the majority stock in foreign hands, but using Chinese money also, are
the following incorporated or joint-stock registered companies:

Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (British and German).
Indo-China Steam Navigation (British).
Peking Syndicate (British), Shansi and Honan anthracite coal.
Anglo-French Syndicate (Yunnan mines).
Anglo-French Land Investment Company.
Hongkong Land Investment Company.
Hongkong and Whompoa Dock Company.
Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Dock Company.
Green Island Cement Company (Hongkong and Macao).
Société Anonyme du Luhan (Belgian), s. e. Shansi coal.
Tientsin Land Investment Company.
Tientsin Gas and Electric Company.
Tientsin Water-works.
Hongkong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company.
Hongkong Cotton Company.
Hongkong Rope Company.
Hongkong Dairy Company.

Chinese Engineering and Mining Company (British), Kaiping coal
mines.

The immense Taikoo Company (Butterfield & Swire), operating docks,
shipyards, sugar refineries, steamship lines, etc.; China Sugar Refinery;
Bank of Australia; Eastern and Australia Cable Company, etc., are owned
mainly by British capitalists, who operate an extensive apprentice system or
school in maintaining their personnel in the Far East. The Banque l’Indo-
China is, of course, mainly French, as is the Anglo-French Syndicate. The
Russo-Asiatique Banque is French and Russian. The Cathay Trust
Company is British and Chinese. The Shell Transport (oil and shipping) is
Dutch, largely. Humphreys’ Land Company is British, mainly. There are
scores of rubber companies whose plantations are in Malaysia, but whose
shares are actively dealt in by the Chinese and foreigners of Shanghai,
Hongkong and Tientsin. Large department stores of Hongkong and
Shanghai are incorporated, and their shares are actively dealt in. I refer to
Lane-Crawford, Watson, Central Stores, Weeks, Moultrie, Hall & Holtz,
etc.
The largest foreign commission houses, banks and agencies, with
offices in the various treaty ports, are the following:

United States Steel Products Export Company (American).
Standard Oil Company (American).
American Tobacco Company.
Singer Sewing-Machine Company (American).
International Banking Company (American).
Yokohama Specie Bank (Japanese).
Deutsche-Asiatique Bank (German).
Mitsui & Co. (Japanese), Fushun coal, machinery, cotton, etc.
Mitsu Bishi (ship-building at Nagasaki).
Kawasaki Dock Company (ship-building at Dairen).
American Trading Company.
Sassoon & Co. (German).
Reiss & Co. (British).
Melchers & Co. (German), machinery, shipping, etc.
Arnhold, Karberg & Co. (German).
Henley’s Telegraph Works (British).

Shewan, Tomes & Co. (British and American).
Fearon, Daniel & Co. (American).
Andersen, Meyer & Co. (German).
Carlowitz & Co. (German), smelting, matting, machinery, etc.
J. G. White & Co. (American), engineering.
Punchard, Lowther (British), engineering.
Pearson (British), engineering.
Tsingtau Dock Company (German), ship-building.
Rose, Downs & Thomson (British), oil, machinery.
Priestman Brothers (British), dredgers, excavators.
Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong (French).
Bohler Brothers (British), hardware.
Siemssen & Co. (German).
Kelly, Walsh & Co., Brewer & Co., North China Herald (British),
publishers and booksellers.
Brunner Brothers (German), gas lighting.
Hohenzollern Company (German), locomotives.
Konigs Company (German), bridges.
Reinecker Company (German), machinery, tools.
Hurst-Nelson Company (British), railway equipment.
Glasgow Rolling Stock Company.
Mellowes & Co. (British), station roofs.
Hunt & Co. (British), machine shops.
Leeds Forge Company (British), steel cars.
Cassella & Co. (British), engineering instruments.
Tangye & Co. (British), oil engines.
Yorkshire Copper Works, Union Electric Company (British), electric
plants.
Wilkinson-Heywood Company (British), paint.
Dudgeon, Ltd. (British), excavators.
Waygood & Co. (British), elevators.
Nasymth Wilson Company (British), locomotives.
Vickers, Ltd. (British), railway equipment.
Hawthorne-Leslie Company (British), mining equipment.
Arts and Crafts Company (British), decorators.
Sun Life of Canada, insurance.
Royce, Ltd. (British), cranes.

Herring, Hall, Marvin (American), safes.

The Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, opened a branch in
Hongkong in 1903, but it was closed in 1904, insurance companies
preferring, as a rule, to act through general commission houses at present.
Foreign firms advertise in Chinese almanacs, which circulate in
immense numbers throughout the land. An example is Hallock’s Miscellany,
printed in a scholarly manner by the American Presbyterian Mission Press,
18 Peking Road, Shanghai. The Chinese editions of the Hongkong and
Shanghai papers are excellent mediums, if one is not on the ground.
Chinese travelers arrive at a station hours before the departure of a train,
and foreign firms find it advantageous to display their cartoons and
advertising in Chinese at railway stations. Even if some of the Chinese can
not read, they become familiar with the “chop” or cartoon, which
accordingly is more important than in any land, and should therefore be
registered with the foreign consul and the Chinese taotai. The Asiatic
Petroleum Company, of London, (Dutch-British), uses a cartoon of three
square oil tins, with a tin lamp flaming on the top. The Standard Oil
Company uses a picture of the hand lamp and some paraffin candles. Scott’s
Emulsion Company shows the familiar codfish on the back of the man.
Green Island Cement Company shows the famous mountain island of
Macao’s inner harbor, with the cement chimneys at its foot. Barnard & Leas
Company, of Moline, Illinois, use a picture of their grain sifter. Mousin et
Cie, of Frankfort on Main, use a picture of a rose spray and a Chinese man
and woman. The New Home Sewing-Machines use a picture of the machine
and a greyhound. The Victor Talking Machines show the well-known fox-
terrier listening to “His Master’s Voice”. Many of the firms draw attention
by quoting an epigrammatic gem of Chinese wisdom. The Singer Sewing-
Machine insists that the Chinese shall become familiar with the English
letters and not the Chinese letters in the bridge of their machine, and they
have had wide success. The Wheeler & Wilson Sewing-Machine Company
shows Gabriel blowing his horn, or the spirit of reform telling China to
wake up! The Longines Watch Company, of Paris, uses a Chinese lily in a
vase and a winged hour-glass. The Chinese are becoming large buyers of
time-keepers, and these trade-marks are most important. Several suits over
trade-marks on watches have appeared in the courts of Hongkong. The

Taussig Soap Company, of Vienna, uses a man-headed bird, which appeals
to the humorous Chinese, whose hobgoblins are legion.
The get-equipped-quick advertising correspondence schools are
teaching advertising pupils in America to change their advertisements
constantly. This will not do in China. Nothing pays like a known “chop”,
rigidly adhered to for decades. The Chinese will have nothing else than
their favorite cartoon, or “chop” on cotton bolt, flour bag and everything
else. “Once a customer always a customer” is truer in China than anywhere
else in the world, but it is harder there than anywhere else to get that
customer the necessary “once”, as he has probably linked up with a “chop”
that preceded yours. The Harrison Knitting Machine Company, of
Manchester, England, merely show cuts of their machines, and a competitor
could do the same, and thus confuse the Chinese. Staedtler, the pencil
manufacturer of Nuremberg, shows the man in the moon and a cock. J. H.
Birch, of Library Street, Burlington, New Jersey, shows merely cuts of his
rickshaws, which compete with the Japanese vehicle. The whisky houses of
Britain cease neither day nor night in the attempt to give China something
Occidental to take the place of the debarred opium. They try to adopt
different shaped bottles to distinguish their goods, and some double bottles
are now blown almost in the shape of the whisky’s “W”. The Burnese Alps
Milk Company, of Stalden, has adopted a mother Teddy bear, giving a baby
bear forced lactary injections. Nestle’s Milk Company, of Vevay, shows the
“cow that jumped over the moon”. Aquarius Water Company shows a
Chinese boy bearing a tray with the aerated water. Pathe’s French Films
show the crowing cock. The United States Steel Products Export Company
use the crouching tiger. Swift’s Hams show “S” in a diamond. Clarke’s
Manila Coffee uses a volcano of coffee beans in imitation of Mayon
volcano in the Philippines. The Chee Hsin Cement Company, of Tangshan,
Pechili province, has a pony whose fiery breath has set the sun on fire. This
is the weird mythological style of “chop” with which the poetical Chinese
are familiar and which they like.
The Chinese are a race who have nearly as much imagination as the
Greeks. The Hupeh Cement Works, of Tayeh, use a seventeen-storied
pagoda, which is supposed to represent a very fine product, as pagodas
tower only thirteen stories at the highest. The Indo-China Cement Company
uses the well-known dragon of the Manchus, which tosses three medals in

the air. The British-American Tobacco Company advertises a nautch girl
pulling portiéres apart, a “chop” which is a little more luxuriously
Mohammedan than staid China cares for. Veluvine Protective Paint has
adopted a crouching bulldog. Isuan Aerated Waters, of the Philippines, use a
hand pouring a bottle that fills a glass. The Toyo Kisen Kaisha uses a red
circle in a white fan on a blue flag. Flags are becoming popular chops.
Shields are also used by the British and the Spanish, but they are rather
intricate for the Chinese to understand. There is not much competition yet,
and most of the foreign firms, in their desire to educate the Chinese, are
merely using photographs of their machinery and product, but as soon as
John Chinaman has to choose between two dynamos, two gas engines, two
pumps, etc., each of them must use a “chop” or trade-mark, just as the oil,
the flour, the ham, the cement bag, the bolt of cotton, etc., have now to be
chopped to maintain their position on the slogan popular throughout Canada
and Britain of “what we have we hold.”
The treaty ports of China, such as Shanghai, Tientsin, Hongkong, etc.,
show that almost every form of business is incorporated. Doctors and
dentists form companies, and bring out juniors under indenture. The share
list shows active trading in the following companies among others: railway,
steamship, rubber, banks; marine, life and fire insurance; oil, refineries,
sugar, mining, engineering and contracting, ship-building, car building;
docks, wharves and warehouse (godown); lands, hotels, clubs, buildings,
cotton mills and plantations, cement, power, light, water, trams, millinery,
telephone, telegraph, cable, tailors, dairy farm, abattoir, soda water,
distilleries, flour mills, iron mills, gas, electricity, druggist, newspaper,
booksellers, conservancy, athletic clubs, race course, import and export
firms, jewelers, silk filatures, tea farms, matting factories and plantations,
furniture factories, etc. I know of no place where the craze of men to get
rich faster than savings will accumulate is indicated more than at Shanghai,
Hongkong and Singapore. The bund of Shanghai is as speculatively
feverous as Wall Street.
British Hongkong, like China, holds that all land is crown or state land,
and therefore leases are granted instead of fee-simple deeds, American
style. The British government has gone extensively into the land business at
Hongkong, leveling many terraces, filling many valleys in the mountains,
and reclaiming from the sea vast areas at West Point and East Point,

Hongkong, and at Yaumati, Kowloon and Hunghom on the mainland
section of the hilly colony. Leases for these valuable sites are then put up at
auction, bringing about twice the rental that obtains in Brooklyn or Jersey
City, or the outlying districts of London. In the same way the foreign
concession municipalities of Shanghai, Tientsin, Fuchau, Amoy, Hankau,
Newchwang, Harbin, etc., prepare land for long leases. These will in time
all be strenuous questions with the new republican government of China.
When the foreigner gave up the extraterritorial right in Japan, the Japanese
never again permitted him to own land, unless he became a Japanese
citizen. Many land companies, subletting long leaseholds, have been
formed in all the treaty ports where there are foreign concessions. I do not
believe that republican China desires to acquire these leaseholds for many
years, and if she did she would purchase them. The foreign navies would
see to that.

VI

RAILWAYS IN CHINA

In the third book of Paradise Lost, Milton humorously discussed
transportation in China as follows:
“On the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light,”

but the matter has now reached a development worthy of being discussed
seriously.
China had in 1912 about 5,500 miles of railway in operation, new main
lines having been built from Tientsin to Nanking (Pukow) by German and
British contractors, and from Nanking to Shanghai by British contractors,
so that it is now possible to take cars at Shanghai and go through to Calais,
France, by rail. Branch lines connect the German colony of Kiaochou and
Chifu with this Tientsin trunk railway, so that a German may go straight
through from his Crown colony in cars to Berlin. Before long, when the
Canton-Hankau section is completed, Hongkong’s colonial secretary will be
able to leave Government House, facing the wonderful Botanical Garden on
the hill of Hongkong, take a chair down to the Star Ferry Wharf, cross the
mile of harbor, then take his railway carriage and be whisked through to
Downing Street, London, to take his orders from the secretary of state for
the Crown colonies, with only one ferriage, that from Calais to Dover. Not
only a northern railway route is available, but a southern railway route will
soon be open. When the easy section through Persia, and the short railway
from Yunnan City through Mung Ting pass connects with Mandalay, it will
be possible for the colonial secretary of Indo-China to leave the palatial

Palais at Hanoi and entrain at the Tonquin Railway Gare on the palm-lined
boulevard, going straight through to the Ministré on the Quai d’Orsay,
Paris, via Hyderabad, Teheran, Constantinople and the Gates of the Danube,
all the way without seeing salt water. Likewise the governor of Singapore
will soon be able to entrain opposite Government House for Calais and
London, and cross the teeming continents, passing through the site of the
Garden of Eden, on his way to Downing Street to consult with his chief. He
can also pick up his traveled friend (since the entente cordiale), the
Gouverneur at L’Hotel du Gouverneur, Saigon, and drop him at the Gare du
Nord, Paris, on his way to the departments on the left bank of the Seine.
The Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo railway, built by the British and
Chinese Corporation, and by the Chinese themselves, will soon be
completed. The Peking-Kalgan railway (the route for the tombs of the Ming
emperors) has been finely built by China’s leading engineer, Jeme Tien Yao
(educated at Yale, 1883) and this road will some day, with Russian and
French help, break across Gobi Desert to Kaikhta and Irkutsk, flanking two
thousand miles of Manchurian railway, and saving all that distance in
reaching Europe from Shanghai. The Kaifong-Singan railway will soon be
ready. It is planned to open a new port at Haochow, where the Yellow River
(Hoang Ho) used to meet the Yellow Sea, and to run the railway through to
Kaifong, Singan, Lanchow (in Kansu province) and on to the historic Tarim
valley, and Kashgar, opening up Turkestan. It is also proposed to open a
new port at ice-free Hunshan on the Ginmen River, D’Anville Gulf, Sea of
Japan, where China owns a narrow neck of land running between Northern
Korea and the Vladivostok district of Siberia. From Hunshan a road would
be run to Kirin, two hundred miles over difficult forest-covered country.
From Kirin China has independent lines running between the Russian and
Japanese lines. Hunshan would be an excellent port whence to attack
commercially the two rich northern provinces of Manchuria. The road
planned by America from Chin Wang Tao to Tsitsikar and Aigun is possibly
more of a postponed than a dead road despite Russia and Japan.
The roads from Hankau north to Mukden have paid heavy dividends
and helped the imperial exchequer during the revolution of 1911. These
roads have been hindered neither by difficult construction, nor by obstacles
to traffic such as the likin tax system, which has cursed the free trade and
transportation of the southern part of the country. The Hanyang iron mills

can supply rails at one-third the American cost, viz., nine dollars as
compared with twenty-eight dollars per ton, so that China can afford to
build four miles of railway to America’s one mile, and reduce rates
accordingly because of the lower capital cost. The cars can be erected at
Hongkong in the south, Hankau in the center, and at Tongshan in the north
of China. The locomotives and trucks will be imported from America,
Germany and England. The necessary coast railway from Hongkong to
Ningpo has only been constructed in the neighborhood of Amoy. Something
has been done on the railways from Hongkong to Yunnan City, and from
Hongkong to Chungking, and from Yunnan to Chungking. American
engineers have made the surveys. The railway along the ancient Ta Peh Lu
(Great North Road) post road from Chingtu to Singan has not yet been
begun. A road, too, will break across west from Chingtu to the Tibet
gateway at Tachien. Mention should be made of the railway from Kidalova,
following the north bank of the Amur to Blagovestchensk and Khabarovka,
which Russia is building so as to have an all-Russian railway to
Vladivostok. This railway is under way, although the debt of the Russo-
Japan War has almost destroyed Russian railway building, and postponed
Russia’s commercial (and other?) attack in India’s direction. Had it not been
for that debt, Russia might to-day be striking for railway entrance to
Peking, to Hankau, to Herat and Constantinople, as so many of the British
imperialists like Kipling and Sir Gilbert Parker fear.
Hongkong has at last beat out Shanghai for the trade of the great
western provinces of China. Transshipment is made at Hongkong for
Haiphong, where the new French railway takes merchandise five hundred
miles northwest to Yunnan as a distributing center. Hongkong also has the
West (Si Kiang), Yu, Hong Chu, Eta and Peh Rivers as arteries into the
west. Until two hundred miles of Yangtze gorges and rapids are flanked by
a railway, Shanghai must lose more and more of the vast western trade
which she used to control before the French railway was built. The French
finished in 1910 this remarkable railway from Haiphong to Yunnan, five
hundred miles, and have thus beat out the British, who, because of
Colquhoun’s books, were approaching Yunnan from three points in Burma.
This railway attack on Yunnan has been a battle of two imperial minds of
the Kipling imperialistic type, Colquhoun and Doumer. Colquhoun, the
British governor and author, began urging the construction of British
railways in 1881, and followed up his arguments with a further book in

1898. In 1897, the famous Paul Doumer, once a printer, went to French
China as governor. In 1898 he began his railway to Yunnan. The line,
though narrow gage, has cost $50,000 a mile, even with cheap Oriental
labor. Near the coast of Tonquin the country is that of flat rice fields and
only requires trestling and banking. From Hung Hoa (Bed River) to Lao Kai
no fewer than 180 bridges had to be erected (a fine contract for French
structural firms) to cross the wild broken country of stream, marsh, gorge
and mountain pass. The line rises from sea level to a pass of 5,000 feet
altitude. Much of the Yunnan tin and other exports, which, by pack saddle
and shoulder load, formerly went down to Nanning and took the Yu and Si
Rivers to Hongkong, are now diverted to Haiphong, from which port the
French run branch ship lines to Hongkong and Saigon, connecting with the
great subsidized Messageries Maritimes line to Marseilles. The French need
subsidies because the foreign trade which their bankers control is not so
heavy as is that of Britain and America.
The Hongkong and Canton Railway, 106 miles, has been completed
and marks a new lease of life for Hongkong as the emporium of South,
West and Central China, when the railways from Canton are extended. The
Hongkong Railway starts from Kowloon, across the narrow harbor, running
through 19 miles of British territory, and the remainder through Chinese
territory. The British section, on account of the many tunnels through
mountains, cost almost as much as the entire Chinese section. The fine
steamers of the Hongkong and Canton Steamboat Company, which are well
known to world tourists, and many Chinese steamers and junks compete,
but there is traffic for all, and when there isn’t there will be pooling for all.
The Hongkong government, through the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation, loaned the Kwangtung province government the money for the
Chinese section. (This is an illustration of a few loans which have not been
made to the national government at Peking, and represents provincial as
against the nationalized trunk railway scheme which helped to bring on the
revolution.) The road runs through a part of the country requiring much
trestle work, and bridging on account of waterways. The long Chinese
section of the road cost less with one exception than any standard gage
railway in the world, $35,000 per mile, the nearest approach to this in
America being sections of the Great Northern Railway built years ago at
$40,000 per mile. Nearly all the freight and passenger cars were made at
Hongkong. The best built railway in China is the Shanghai-Nanking. In

easy country it cost $55,000 per mile. It was built by British contractors on
the elaborate, permanent English plan, whose maxim is, “a stitch in time
saves nine”. What spoiled the Chinese in hiring foreign contractors was
their experience with a section of the Shanghai-Hangchow railway. The
Kiangsu and Chekiang provincial governments, hiring native contractors
and engineers (who were trained in America) built a satisfactory road of
125 miles at $25,000 per mile, as compared with the British continuation
north, of $55,000 per mile. The Chinese have never ceased talking of this
economy, although they admit that the English road is better and worth
$35,000 per mile, but not $55,000. Another objection they make is that
foreign syndicates charge five per cent. commission on their purchases. In
the railway from Pukow (opposite Nanking) to Tientsin, the foreign
syndicate was not allowed commission on purchases, so that the “Pukow
plan” is favored. In reference to the low cost, $35,000 per mile, of the
difficult Peking-Kalgan railway, 140 miles, which was built by the Chinese
exclusively, the Chinese Students’ Journal says: “In the construction of the
railway, economy, which must not be confounded with cheapness, must
always be kept in view. All railways built in China must be paid for by our
people, and our people are poor. A railway is not a club-house on which to
expend millions. The redemption of bonds must not be forgotten for a
moment. On the Peking-Kalgan railway there was no temptation to spend
money recklessly, as no five per cent. commission was needed to enrich the
coffers of the foreign corporation. There were no foreign style residences,
cement tennis-courts, ice machines, palatial house-boats, and princely
salaries; no interpreters to make a fortune (i. e., compradores); no graft.
There were no unpleasantnesses through the interference of foreign consuls,
and no reference of insignificant incidents to ministers at Peking.”
The Siberian Railway cost $150,000 a mile through flat country, but
$100,000 of that amount was for nepotism, graft, bureaucracy, boodle and
sweet Roederer champagne.
The revolution and the argument over the nationalization of railways of
course delayed the great Gorge Railway which runs from Ichang to Wan
Hsien on the Yangtze, thus surmounting the almost impassable rapids of the
gorges, which heretofore have split populous Szechuen province from
Hupeh. It would be hard to say how many books have been written about
these difficult rapids and the sublime scenery. The most notable are by

Archibald Little, the trade pioneer of the Yangtze, and then there are
interesting works by Dingle, Geil, Mrs. Kemp, Mr. Bird, Mr. Blakiston, Mr.
Hart and Mrs. Bishop. The road could not possibly parallel the river along
the parapets of the gorges. It breaks inland through great tunnels, some
6,000 feet long. This gorge railway was the most necessary in the whole
world; it should have been the first begun in China. When it is running,
however, the finest scenery in the world will be shut out from the
wondering eyes of man, as the famous gorge boatmen and trackers will give
up their work, and, as it is, many of them have been killed in the recent war
of the revolution, Szechuen and Hupeh provinces being the first to recruit
armies. From Wan Hsien railways will go across country to Chingtu, and up
the Yangtze to Chungking, thus linking the great west with India, French
China and the populous eastern and northern provinces.
General Kuroki’s military railway from Antung to Mukden has now
been turned into a standard-gage road, and a bridge has been thrown across
the Yalu River (famous for its great naval engagement) to Wiju. It is now
possible to take a sleeping-car from Tokio to Shinonoseki, cross the strait
by ferry, take another sleeper at Fusan, and go all the way through Mukden
to Kuang Chang Tsu, connecting there with the Russian line for Moscow
and St. Petersburg. For fast service, however, the Russians are able to favor
the all-Russian line to Vladivostok, whence steamers can be taken for
Hakodate, etc. Passengers from Shanghai can take two routes, one by
steamer to Dalny, and thence via the South Manchurian (Japanese) railway,
or via Tientsin, Newchang, etc. (Chinese railways). The Korean-Yalu route,
however, is infinitely the more scenic. Most of the bridges of this route
were brought from America.
The German railway of 271 miles in Shangtung province shows the
effects of the iron hand in paying small wages, the working expenses in
1910 being only thirty-five per cent. of the gross earnings. The gross
earnings were $8,000 a mile. In a bare country, where mining is
undeveloped, the average receipts were only seventy-one cents per
passenger mile, and ninety cents per ton mile. Over 90 per cent. of the
traffic is third class. The average mixed trainload is 150 tons of freight and
sixty passengers. The famous beans, straw braid, grain and petroleum
predominated in the traffic, but in 1912 coal was beginning to be a growing
factor. The German railway in Shangtung province has set the example of

planting trees. It was copied by the Pennsylvania railway. Nearly all the
railways of China are copying the reforestation methods.
At Tongshan, eighty miles northeast of Tientsin, are the modern shops,
engineering college and town of the national railways of North China. Here
the first Chinese locomotive, the “Rocket”, was built in stealth by the
British mechanical, railway and mining engineer, Mr. C. W. Kinder, who
has done so much for the railways and mines of North China. The college
turns out railway engineers, and some of the instructors are American, like
Mr. F. A. Foster. Other lecturers are British, like Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope.
Railway cars can now be built in the Tongshan shops, the Hanyang
works, the Shanghai works and the Kowloon (Hongkong) works, as well as
at Dalny. The Tongshan works can and have built locomotives.
In 1910 the Department of Communications established at Peking a
railway school. Three hundred of the six hundred students were under
twenty-five years of age. There were eight foreign and thirty-five foreign-
trained Chinese teachers. The course was three years. English, mainly, and
French, German and Chinese were taught. There is no military drill, and the
curriculum includes history, economics, railway bookkeeping and law,
engineering, management of traffic, shops and stations, physics, chemistry,
drawing, mathematics, geography, etc.
Electric tramways have been established at Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai,
Canton and the Manchurian cities, the example having been taken from
Hongkong’s tramway, built in 1905. Recent photographs show the
remarkable change in the bunds and roads of the treaty ports, where the
automobile, electric car, rickshaw, wheelbarrow, chair and litter all have
their fight for the passenger and his nimble coin.
On new lines it is necessary to use blue instead of white glass in the
coaches, as the coolies in their excitement over the scenery forget and put
their heads through the white glass, to which they are not accustomed.
The old system of transportation has not altogether departed, and even
if it had, its memory would linger long. Neither the Peking cart, nor the
mule litter of Shansi, in which one rides between two tandem mules, is on
springs. They are padded so that the passenger, who is not made of rubber,
may be somewhat protected. If the conveyances were not padded, only a

man dressed up for American football could survive the jolting. These are
the vehicles in which dignified (on other occasions) ambassadors have
ridden at Peking in all the years since foreigners were granted the legation
privileges.

VII

SHIPPING AND WATER ROUTES IN CHINA

The larger steamship lines now supplying the China ports are the
following:

American
Pacific Mail—Trans-Pacific.
Standard Oil—Trans-Pacific and Suez route.
Dollar Steamship Company—Trans-Pacific.
Northern Pacific Railway—Trans-Pacific.
American and Asiatic—To America via Suez (agency, American;
flag, British).
Barber Line—To America via Suez (agency, American; flag, British).
Shewan, Tomes & Co.—To Philippines.

British
Canadian Pacific Railway—Trans-Pacific.
Peninsular and Oriental—Suez route to Europe, and coastal.
Ben Line—Suez route to Europe.
Shire Line—Suez route to Europe.
Sassoon Line—To India.
Jardine, Matheson & Co.—To India, coastwise and Philippines.
Butterfield and Swire—Australia, India, coastwise, etc.
Gibb, Livingston & Co.—Australia and Africa.
Blue and White Funnel Lines—Europe, trans-Pacific, coastwise.
British-India—India, trans-Pacific, etc.

Japanese
Toyo Kisen Kaisha—Trans-Pacific to America and South America.
Nippon Yusen Kaisha—Trans-Pacific, Europe, coastwise and
riverine.
Osaka Shosen Kaisha—Trans-Pacific, coastwise and riverine.
Nippon Kisen Kaisha—Coastwise.
Mitsui Bussan Kaisha—Coastwise.

German
North German Lloyd—Europe, coastwise and probably trans-Pacific.
Hamburg-America—Europe, coastwise and probably trans-Pacific.
Hansa Steamship Company—Europe.

Austrian
Austrian Lloyd—Europe and coastwise.

Chinese
China Merchants’ Steamship Company—Coastwise and possibly
trans-Pacific.

British and Chinese
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company—Coastwise and trans-
Pacific planned.
Peking Syndicate—Coastwise and trans-Pacific planned.

French
Messageries Maritimes—Europe, Indo-China and coastwise.

Russia
Russian Volunteer Fleet—Europe and coastwise.
Chinese Eastern Railway Steamers—Coastwise.

Spain
Spanish Royal Mail—Europe via Suez.

Holland
Shell Transport and Trading—Coastwise and Europe.

When the Panama Canal opens, many more Atlantic lines, such as the
Royal Mail, International Marine, German lines, etc., will probably extend
their service in time to China, and many trans-Pacific lines, especially
Japanese and the Pacific Mail, will extend to America’s eastern coast, not to
speak of new lines which may be formed. The British-India Steamship
Company intends to extend its Calcutta line across the Pacific and to New
York. The American railroads could, at small cost, by a generous pro rata of
division rates, have covered the Pacific and Atlantic with American
steamship lines, but they have held off, expecting the really unnecessary
government subsidies. The subsidy argument would possibly have a
different complexion if it were assured that the steamship lines would
remain forever independent, and permit no dummy holdings of stock. In the
meantime, Japanese and British vessels have been employed on the Pacific
and Atlantic Oceans on account of the lower cost of officers’ wages only,
the crews’ wages being the same on a Pacific mailer and a Nippon Yusen
Kaisha mailer, for instance. Both hire Chinese mainly, who are good and
cheap sailors. The American railroad, controlling the west-bound freight,
and the American banker, controlling the heavier east-bound freight, could
make American steamship lines on the Pacific profitable; indeed, the Pacific
Mail already pays its way. The government could, of course, pay a just
amount for mails on an increasing ratio for time made, but if the American
railroad, American banker, American shipper and American globe-trotter
will come to the aid of the American ship, we can, without subsidy, except
to independent smaller owners, cover the Pacific with our starry flag.
All the large lines are building new ships for the China trade. The
Osaka Shosen Kaisha, running to America in connection with the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, has ordered steamships from Armstrong,
in England, and from the Japan shipyards. The Canadian Pacific Railway

Steamship Company and the Pacific Mail are having twenty-knot ships
built. The Hansa Steamship Company, running from Bremen, has ordered
ships from the Weser Ship-building Company, of Bremen. The Russian
Volunteer Fleet has ordered new ships from the Alexander-Nevski works.
Wireless is to be used generally, the first shore station having been fitted at
Hongkong. The Chinese Merchants and the Sino-American companies
(both Chinese) intend to run ships to America, as their plans enlarge. We
may yet see the Chinese flag regularly in New York. The Japanese are to
run a line into the Black Sea in competition with the Russian Volunteer
Fleet; they have already sent boats into Trieste in competition with the
Austrians, and they have before now humbled the Germans in the Bangkok-
Shanghai service. To show that the Japanese are not the least timid in
declaring their maritime ambitions on the Pacific, I shall quote the
following circular signed by Manager Iwanaga of the subsidized Nippon
Yusen Kaisha (the steamship line in which the Mikado is a large
shareholder) at the time of the competition with the long-established British
firm of Butterfield and Swire, a firm which had been very friendly to the
Japanese during the Russian War. Mr. Iwanaga says: “These foreign firms
must be induced to pay respect to the Japanese mercantile flag. It is the duty
of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha to check the arrogance of foreign steamers east
of Suez.”
The history of China’s greatest steamship line, the China Merchants’
Steamship Company, is as follows: When Li Hung Chang was viceroy of
Pechili province at Tientsin in 1871, on advice of Americans and British
who were in his employ, he formed this government-controlled line, partly
to carry tribute grain from the south; because the Grand Canal was allowed
by the various governors to collect silt, while their pockets collected gilt
(and guilt)! Merchants and guilds were invited or coerced to subscribe to
some of the stock. In 1877 the company bought the Shanghai Steam
Navigation Company and its dock for 2,000,000 taels silver. In 1878 Li
diverted from the Grand Canal to the steamship company the Yunnan
copper destined to the Peking and provincial mints. The great government
university at Peking, with provincial branches, created by Kwang Hsu’s
reform edicts of 1898, was to be financed partly by the revenues of this
steamship company. The republicans used its revenues to aid the 1911
revolution because the imperialists used the railway revenues. The head
office of the company is in Shanghai, and it has branches at Newchwang,

Chifu, Tientsin, Chinkiang, Kowkiang, Hankau, Ningpo, Fuchau,
Hongkong and Canton. The ships are distinguishable at the Chinese ports
both by the yellow funnel, and by the immense Chinese characters which,
in Austrian fashion, are not always borne on the bow, but midships. The fine
vessels of this company were once put under the American flag in 1884 to
save them from the French, who were at war with China.
One of the great movements of the future in the reforming Far East will
be the Malay Peninsular Canal, about fifty miles long, which will save
1,500 miles in the voyage from Saigon to Calcutta, Madras, etc. It will not
cut off and make useless the expensive garrison port of Singapore, which
holds the five equatorial seas for Britain, as the Singapore-Rangoon railway
will run along the entire peninsula. All these probabilities in the Far East
should be considered in full by the student of world politics, finance,
commerce and ethnology. A dozen Chinas, Americas, Britains and
Germanies could well work many centuries before the world is restored to
the economic Eden state, where each man will be free, and have enough to
support him and his in peace. Every work of commerce is then a world-
work, claiming the altruist’s enthusiasm, and while we often use the phrase,
“war of the ports of the Far East,” we mean that joyful exhibition of
strength which the wrestler, rather than the warrior, puts forth.
A movement is growing in Japan to deprive foreign ships of the right to
trade between Japanese ports, which is similar to a regulation now in
operation in America and Canada. Japanese vessels, of course, trade
between British and China ports. Another plan that is advocated is to place
on ships not built in Japan such a high duty that Japanese owners will be
compelled to build in Japan, which would include a personal penalty if
Japanese owners owned steamship stock under a foreign flag. All this
involves considerable conflict with British interests that have loaned
immense sums in Japan, and it is certain that the British foreign office, now
so friendly to Japan, will hear from the British Board of Trade, as it is
hearing every day from the consular service and such writers as Beresford,
Colquhoun and Gilbert Parker.
Whampoa, the first port in China where Europeans traded, is to be
opened by the Chinese as a treaty port for deep-sea trading. It is about six
miles below Canton. The port will, of course, compete with Hongkong; but
Hongkong opened up a railway to Canton to protect herself, and she will

see that fast and cheap handling maintains her leadership. The taotai, and
Chang Iu Hin who was educated and enriched at British Singapore, are
representative republicans of Canton who are interested in Whampoa port.
It is proposed to do dredging and make free grants of land for godowns,
wharves, etc.
Portuguese Macao, the second port in China where Europeans traded,
forty miles from Hongkong, is dredging her silted harbor preparatory to
bidding for some of the great oversea trade that is expected. China, which
has ambitions for native ports in the vicinity of Canton, frequently sends her
warships into Macao waters. The natives of the Macao district (Heung
Shan) do not like Portugal’s ambition, and much bitterness is shown.
The Whang Poo Conservancy Board has deepened the river from
Wusung up to Shanghai, and larger ocean steamers are now able to ascend
to the bund. For a long time the largest vessels must lie at Wusung bar, the
“heaven sent barrier” against foreign intrusion, as the Manchus called it
years ago. The Tientsin Conservancy is deepening the river up from Taku.
Both of these boards are controlled by the foreign settlements, although the
Chinese share in the expense. Foreign engineers are hired.
Other trans-oceanic ports planned by China are at Chin Wang Tao in
Pechili province; Hunchun, near Vladivostok on the Japan Sea, and
Haochow, near the junction of Shangtung and Kiangsu provinces. The
British may also develop the port of Wei Hai Wei, now that connection with
the trunk railways of China is in sight.
Few of the great Chinese ports look after the foreign seamen, but
Hongkong has established a sailors’ club and seamen’s institute on a liberal
scale. This idea should be copied along the long yellow coast, for the devil’s
whisper is loudest and his traps are most numerous in China.
The Grand Canal as a shipping factor is grand no more, for three
reasons: it has silted up; it has been paralleled by the railway from
Hangchow to Peking, 1,000 miles; and it has also been paralleled by the
China Merchants and other steamship services from Shanghai to Tientsin.
This once noble work, with its beautiful bridges, pagodas, embankments,
sluices, aqueducts and picturesque junks, passes into history, so far as its
transportation feature is concerned. It may be continued in parts as an
aqueduct, for conservancy purposes in relieving the water pressure on the

flood districts of the Whei and Yangtze valleys, or for water power for a
vast scheme of manufacturing, but that is for engineers, and not economists,
to decide. Marco Polo first made this famous work known to the western
world. The southern section from Hangchow, the bore city and capital of the
Sung dynasty, to the Yangtze River at Chingkiang, was dug about 610 A. D.
The oldest, and most important section from a conservancy point of view,
from Chinkiang to the Whei River, 130 miles, was built about 485 B. C.
Kublai Khan is credited with being the dreamer of the idea, the digger of
the ditch, the De Lesseps of China, and the fact is that he built the northern
section of about 650 miles from the Whei River to Peking in 1289 A. D. in
order to bring the tribute rice and copper of the southern provinces to
Peking. Those who are interested in the canal in its last days of picturesque
use should read the works of Sir John Francis Davis, who was governor of
Hongkong, and whose experience in China covered the crowded years from
1820 to 1846. The American general, J. M. Wilson, has also written a book
covering his inspection of parts of the canal.
On sections of the Yellow River and on the Kia Ling River in Szechuen
province, lumber boats are made up to carry produce to market, the boats
being broken up at Chungking. Return freight which can not be tracked
through the rapids is portaged. Although the Yellow River is 2,500 miles
long, it is only navigable 150 miles from its mouth to Tsinan City, and in
short broken sections in Mongolia and Honan. The loess silt which it
carries, and the porous loess bed through which it flows, make it only a
roaring unmanageable spring and summer drain, China’s sorrow of flood
and famine. Its memorable changing of bed to mouths 300 miles apart, from
Kiangsu to Shangtung province in 1854, and from banks 100 miles apart in
the Gobi Desert, are well known.
Most of the riverine and coast, junk and sanpan sails are square or
oblong, but at Ichang there are strange wupan boats which use the towering
peaked sails seen on the Arab dahabiyehs of Aden and the Nile, the object
being to coax down the high breezes of the difficult gorges of the Yangtze.
This is not the only instance in China of Arab influence in crafts, arts and
blood.
Chinese riverine shipping is growing heavily. All flags are seen on the
Yangtze, and several flags in the lower parts of the Kan and Siang Rivers.
The British and Chinese, and some French flags go up the West and Yu

Rivers to Nanning. Chinese shipping on the Liao River to Newchwang is
heavy in the ice-free season. There are scores of other rivers which will be
dredged so that they may feed the steamship and railroad lines.
The Chinese have an amusing word for captain. “Lao ta” is literally
“old fellow”; because the captain of the old Yangtze rapids boats was
generally the oldest man on board. The captain of the Hakka sanpans of
Canton is often a woman, but she is humorously called “lao ta” with the
rest! China led in all inventions, including woman’s rights!
In the coming great development of Western China, the one name to
inscribe on the tablets is that of the pioneer merchant writer, Archibald
Little, who, after twenty years of effort, broke the veil of the Yangtze gorges
and took the first steamer to open up the ports of Ichang and Chungking in
1898. This brought him within beckoning distance of British Burma and
Archibald Colquhoun’s propaganda, and split China in two with the wedge
of commerce, despite the obstructive Tsung Li Yamen at Manchu Peking.
Mr. Little’s three books on Western China are: Through the Yangtze Gorges,
To Omi Mount in Szechuen, and Across Yunnan; and he wrote, moreover, a
very important geological work which places him high as a prospector and
explorer.

VIII

AMERICA IN CHINA

Where the Happy Valley Road branches off, one part leading to the
Royal Golf Club, and the other to the Mohammedan, Parsee and European
cemeteries, and Wong Nei Chong valley, Hongkong, on a spot where
Secretary William Henry Seward stood in 1869, there is a monument which
has particular interest for Americans and Britons, and possibly it is a
prophecy of their united work in the future in developing China. The
monument tells its own story of brothers in arms in the dangers of the Far
Eastern seas in lonely days as follows:

Erected by the officers and crews of the
United States steam frigate Powhatan
and
H. B. M. steam sloop Rattler,
in memory of
their shipmates who fell in a combined attack on a
fleet of piratical junks off Kuhlan (Kowloon)
August 4, 1855.
Killed in the action:
Powhatan.
John Pepper, seaman.
James A. Halsey, landsman.
Isaac Coe, landsman.
S. Mullard, marine.
B. F. Addamson, marine.

The first American treaty is dated 1844 when Caleb Cushing and
Daniel Webster’s son, Fletcher, went to Hongkong, Canton, Macao, etc., but
American trade began at a still earlier date, when the Empress of China,
Captain Green, Purser Samuel Shaw, sailed from New York on
Washington’s birthday, 1784. The ship Alliance sailed from Philadelphia in
1788 without charts. The ship Massachusetts sailed from Boston in 1789,
armed with twenty six-pound guns, and half the cargo being useless furs for
the southern Chinese! The old Philadelphia merchants interested in the
China trade were of the Archer, Girard and Rulon families. The Boston
merchants who despatched regular packet ships to Canton were of the
Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell, Cushing and Coolidge families.
The first American consuls lived at beautiful Macao. Major Shaw, purser of
the Empress of China was consul in 1786, Samuel Snow in 1794, and
Edward Carrington in 1804. On November 16, 1856, just before the
“Arrow” war, Captain Armstrong, U. S. S. Portsmouth, attacked the Canton
(Bogue) forts. This was the only time America attacked China, except at
Peking in 1900. When all Europe hesitated to befriend the northern states,
China issued this edict to viceroys in 1863: “Keep a careful and close
oversight, and if the Confederate steamer Alabama, or any other vessel of
war, scheming how it can injure American property, shall approach that part
of the coast of China under your jurisdiction, you are to prevent all such
vessels entering our ports.”
The American representatives in China were first trade commissioners,
and afterward diplomats, and the tendency now, at least with the British and
Germans, is to have both commissioners and diplomats. The American
officials were the following:
Caleb Cushing, commissioner, 1844 (first treaty).
Alex. H. Everett, commissioner, 1846 (died, Canton, 1847).
John W. Davis, commissioner, 1847.
Humphrey Marshall, commissioner, 1852.
Robert M. McLane, commissioner, 1853.
Doctor Parker, commissioner, 1856.
William B. Reed, minister, 1857 (first minister).

John E. Ward, minister, 1859.
Anson Burlingame, minister, 1861 (remarkably brilliant).
Mr. Low, minister, 1870.
J. B. Angell, minister, 1882 (later president University of Michigan).
Charles Denby, minister, 1885.
Mr. E. H. Conger, minister, 1900.
W. W. Rockhill, minister, 1905.
Mr. Calhoun, minister, 1909.
The most famous secretary of the American legation was Samuel Wells
Williams, the author of the Middle Kingdom, etc., and editor of the Chinese
Repository. His son serves at present in the Peking legation. It would take a
volume to cover Mr. S. W. Williams’ brilliant work as interpreter of
missions and legations, printer at Canton and Macao, translator, author,
lecturer, secretary, dictionary compiler, professor at Yale, sinologue, money
raiser for the causes of missions and letters, and diplomat.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Note the use of English signs. These balconied shops and homes have a
Spanish effect.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Modern buildings; wider streets. Note woman with deformed feet being
carried on shoulders of servant; also the healthy alert boyhood of China.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Where the first treaty between America and China was signed. The Porta
Cerco gate between Portuguese and native China. The treaty was signed
by Caleb Cushing and Daniel Webster’s son, Fletcher, on July 3d, 1844,
the tablets on the gate being of a later date, and commemorating a
Portuguese victory.

Daniel Webster had not a little to do with America’s relations with
China. He studied the subject deeply. He suggested the first mission that
secured a treaty, and wrote the president’s message of December 30, 1842,
to Congress suggesting the mission. Cushing’s letter of instructions was
signed by Webster, and showed deep knowledge of Chinese affairs. The
treaty was signed in a temple at Wanghai, outside the Porta Cerco stone gate
at Macao; and I would recommend the pilgrimage to the many tourists who
visit the picturesque settlement in South China.
In 1861 an American, Frederick G. Ward, formed the nucleus of the
Manchu imperialist army which finally overcame the Taiping rebels.

Another American took service with Li Hung Chang as secretary. His name
was W. N. Pethick. He had served in the Civil War in America. Mr. Pethick
had considerable influence with Li, assisting him in treaty making, reading
to him reform and economical books, and taking a part in urging the
crusade against opium. Mr. Pethick died from the hardships of the siege of
Peking in 1900.
When John Hay and Philander Knox secured the assent of the nations
to the American and British doctrine of the non-partition of China, they
were repeating the “square deal” terms of the famous treaty of 1868, which
the brilliant American, Anson Burlingame, on behalf of China, which nation
he was then serving as commissioner, secured from America, stipulating the
“territorial integrity of China, and disavowing any right to interfere with
China’s eminent domain”.
In 1900 the American troops found a great store of silver at Tientsin,
but gave it up, as America returned the Boxer indemnity of 1908, and the
abstention of the American troops from looting in Peking in 1900 set the
usual high standard of altruism and soldierly honor which Sun Yat Sen and
Wu Ting Fang say China connects with the name America.
In 1901 Mrs. Conger and the other ladies of the American legation
began the work which threw down the zenana bars which held Manchu and
Chinese women in repressive exclusiveness.
Years ago prominent Chinese made some study of American leaders.
Seu Ki Yu, governor of Amoy and member of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign
Board at Peking) in 1866, to whom Secretary W. H. Seward sent a picture
of Washington, composed the following essay:
“Washington was a very remarkable man. In advising plans he was
more daring than our heroes, Chin Shing or Han Kwang. In winning a
country he was braver than Tsau or Lin Pi. Wielding his four-foot falchion
he enlarged the frontier myriads of miles, and yet he refused to usurp regal
dignity or even to transmit it to his posterity; but, on the contrary, first
proposed the plan of electing men to office. Where in the world can be
found a mode more equitable? It is the same idea, in fact, that has been
handed down to us from the three reigns of Yau, Shun and Yu (the immortal
reigns of China). In ruling the state he honored and fostered good usages,
and did not exalt military merit, a principle totally unlike what is found in

other kingdoms. I have seen his portrait. His mien and countenance are
grand and impressing in the highest degree. Who is there that does not call
him a hero?” This essay was reissued by the republicans in 1911 and had a
wide influence in their propaganda.
The American exports to China, including Hongkong, consisting
chiefly of cotton, machinery, oil, flour and tobacco, were as follows: 1908,
$34,000,000; 1909, $28,000,000; 1910, $23,000,000 (exports to China from
all countries, $305,580,000); 1911, $25,000,000.
The American imports were, in their order, chiefly silk, tea, hides,
wool, straw braid, pig iron, musk, hair, raw cotton, albumen, bristles, and
amounted as follows: 1908, $24,000,000; 1909, $31,000,000; 1910,
$38,000,000 (exports by China to all countries, $251,460,000); 1911,
$32,000,000.
This is but a beginning, as it were, “a little cloud out of the sea, like a
man’s hand”.
America should keep stocks in Manila to attack the Chinese market,
where “time is of the essence of importance”. This applies to iron,
hardware, tinware, structural beams, cottons, woolens, yarn, shoes,
machinery, educational and military apparatus, foods, utensils, pipes, and
everything necessary in municipal, industrial and domestic development. A
Cantonese or Shanghai Chinese does not mind the trip to Manila to inspect,
though he would prefer seeing what America has to offer in Hongkong,
Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin, Mukden, Chingtu and Yunnan, if America
shortly concludes to take advantage of these seven strategic trade centers. In
the meantime full stocks at Manila would be a good beginning. Even in
disturbed years, such as 1911, America’s imports from China were
$32,000,000, and exports $25,000,000. These figures are small compared to
those that will soon obtain, and, of course, America desires first to increase
her exports of machinery, drugs, novelties, utensils, loom products, tools,
etc.
American food and harvester companies will doubtless yet take up land
directly or indirectly in fertile Manchuria, where America must look for
supplies of vegetable oil, wheat, fertilizer, oil cake for milch cows, lumber
and coal, and a market for machinery and manufactures. There is a virgin
territory seven hundred miles by seven hundred miles, inviting the

agriculturist. The American-Chinese Railway planned in 1910, from Chin
Wang Tao, the only ice-free port on the Liaotung Gulf, to Tsitsikar and on to
Aigun on the Amur River, was an excellent scheme and one which may
eventually be accomplished.
The Western Electric Company, of America, installed Peking’s
telephone system. The American Banknote Company set up China’s central
bank engraving department. American companies furnished the stamping
machinery for the new mints. American bridges and locomotives are
frequently seen throughout China. American sewing machines, oil cans and
tobacco papers are on view everywhere throughout the twenty-one
provinces, and the American flour bag, when empty, patches the sails of the
southern junks. Some American presses have come over, but they do not as
yet compete strongly with the British and German presses. American hotel
and kitchen utensils would compete were it not that the palatial treaty port
hotels are controlled as yet by British and German shareholders. American
mining, gas, electric, cranes, sawmill, cement, flourmill and pumping
machinery are coming in, excepting where foreign contractors and bankers
interpose. British shipyard machinery is still ahead. American protective
paints for steel are holding their own in competition with the British and
German paints, especially in the Yangtze valley. American turbines are
slightly ahead, but American pipes, dynamos, stationary engines, winches,
heating plants, dredgers, condensers, cables, electric fans, bleaching and
cotton machinery, refrigerating machinery, wood-working machinery, water
meters, hauling plants, lamps, etc., are still behind the British and German
article, the British trade exceeding the American four to one. American
machinery, with its generally nicer finish and greater adaptation and
efficiency, has a vast field. In sugar machinery, Japan leads, but America
will pass her. In car wheels, rails, and in simple foundry and rolling mill
output, China can not be competed with for any length of time. In shovels,
ballast unloaders, coal and ore hoists, America will lead, as she leads in
locomotives. In the immense telegraph development, Britain leads. In
water-tube boilers, America leads. In couplers, roofing, steam hammers and
drilling machinery, America has a fair chance. In military supplies,
Germany and Japan lead. In motor-boats, America will lead, although if
time is not important, the Chinese dockyards can not be competed with in
steam launches, which are now used very largely to tow the cargo junks. In
automobiles, America leads. In family hardware, America and Britain lead.

In lubricating oils, America meets some competition from the Dutch and
Russians, but in illuminating oils, America leads. In fuel oils, the Dutch
probably lead at present, the Shell Company having tanks of Sumatra oil at
the ports. One of them was dramatically punctured with a shell in the recent
revolution. In brakes, Britain and America share the field. In elevators,
America will win. In reinforcing steel, America will lead. In typewriters,
she long ago won the field. In sanitary hardware, scales, safes, rubber
goods, America has an excellent chance. In phonographs, she has won, but
in amusement films, France is ahead. In milks, Switzerland leads, and
France leads in candies. In extensive systems of harbor improvements,
sewerage, water supply, municipal improvements, power and light plants,
institutions, mill erecting, etc., America will win as soon as the banking
department is attached to the erecting and contracting department. At
present the British and Germans lead, as they have done in South America,
because of the banking department being attached to the constructive and
diplomatic. In sporting goods, drugs, book supplies and school furniture,
America will soon close up on Britain’s lead. In jewelry and fancy goods,
France, Japan, Britain, Germany and America divide the field, in which
there is a fighting chance, with the Chinese themselves as apt pupils in the
competition. In brewery machinery, Japan and Germany lead. In canning
equipment, America could easily seize the kingdom, and give the world
added table necessities and delights from a new realm of sunshine and
warmth. In leather, felt and underwear, America could lead. In special
pianos for the moist climate, Britain leads, but she could be outplayed. In
types, America could win. The field is not for war, but tournament, and the
most efficient should and will win the joust! There are enough events to
provide honors and rewards for each and all. Those nations which have had
high tariffs will suffer most at the beginning of the competition, because
while a high tariff may be the mother of the trusts, it is seldom the mother
of a prodigy in competitive efficiency.
America’s and Britain’s recognition of the Chinese republic might
naturally raise a temporary discontent in the Philippines, India and Egypt,
but in homogeneity and responsibility these patronized people can not
compare with the Chinese. If it should turn out that China, like Russia and
Japan, is not yet ready for republican or constitutional self-government,
much less is the non-fusible muddle of Viscayan, Tagalog, Ilocano and
Moro, in the lovely summer islands; Mohammedan and Bengalese and

Copt, Fellahin and Sudanese. Altruism is a sane creature, walking steadily
on two legs, and is not going to lose its head and permit anarchy anywhere
just to humor sentimentalism. Theodore Roosevelt made this plain in his
Guildhall speech at London, which landed Kitchener in Egypt again to
finish his work, and it would apply as well to-day when certain overanxious
Filipinos compare their organization, temperament and constitution with the
superior Chinese. America, like Britain, can strike with the same hand with
which she shakes hands. The civil service and a host of foreign school-
teachers in the Philippines and India is the shaking of hands. Let the
Philippines and India appreciate it in that way. It would be quite different
for them if monarchical Germany, Japan or Russia controlled. We shall
recognize the republican trial in China because we believe China is
homogeneous, educated and patient enough to make that trial safely, but
neither America nor Britain will for a long time yet permit the trial in the
Philippines, India or Egypt. If those countries ask the Anglo-Saxon why, we
have but one answer; “Look at your history until we managed your
interests, and look at our history.” In recognition of Japan’s power, America
has dropped her first line of defense back to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In a new
understanding of Britain’s oneness with us; of the Philippines linking
Australia, India and Canada; of China’s welcome of our style of
government and altruism, let us, when we have the docks, move our
advance line back to the Philippines; for we mean to have as much to say in
protecting China as any other power, which policy does not involve
annoying illustrious Japan. But we are going to be on the ground, for as far
as Russia and Japan and some others are concerned, they have a land-
grabbing appetite and tendency which is not calculated to give China fair
play in bringing out the great possibilities which are in her, if we respect her
most majestic history. If the complaint is listened to, and America and
Britain should withdraw, consider the kind of liberty our successors would
deal out: the oligarchic rule of Russia, and the Satsuma and Choshiu
nepotism of Japan.
Japan, in traditional Oriental style, has been on occasions alert to play
one nation against another, with the view of gaining an advantage of slow
prodigious China. When the treaty with America was to expire one year
ahead of the termination of treaties with other nations, Japan extended the
latter treaties one year, so that her treaties with all the powers might expire
together. The obnoxious emigration clause in all these treaties would mainly

be taken advantage of, however, in America’s case, and we should have, if
the treaty was insisted on by a sudden opposition which gained power, the
constant strife of the Japanese labor question in Hawaii, the Philippines and
the Pacific coast states, which strife served the deep purpose that America,
being technically in the wrong, might neglect to press Japan on greater
matters where Japan was taking advantage of treaties, as in Manchuria and
Korea. Some of the adroit Japanese statesmen, instead of being wounded at
our attitude, really enjoy it in secret. Certain Jingo Japanese, however,
would have liked, with this excuse, to have tried America’s naval strength
on the Pacific in 1908, and attempted the capture of Manchuria, Fukien
province, the Philippines and Hawaii, which test was probably avoided by
the dramatic master stroke in sending America’s great fleet of battleships
across the Pacific as an object lesson to the Nipponite chauvinist. Japan
should for the future be reasonable enough to assent sincerely to an
interpretative emendation of the “most favored nation clause”, so that it will
really mean the “most favored Oriental nation”, as far as the emigration of
laborers is concerned. This will put Japan on a par with China. America
sends no laborers to Japan; Japan has discharged American professors in
Japan and Korea the very moment the Oriental understudy reported that he
was ready to assume charge; America has bought from Japan vastly more
than she has sold to her; the timely loans of America to Japan, as Mr. Jacob
H. Schiff has said in his notable speech of 1910, enabled Japan to continue
the war with Russia until victory was won; American friendship for Japan
enabled that nation to secure larger treaty stipulations from Russia at
Portsmouth than any other host of the negotiators would have encouraged,
and above all, the tactful American, Perry, opened up Japan to modernity in
1854. Japan’s vaunted Confucian and Shinto manners should teach her to
protect the blood of her historic friend in his own house, and to respect the
greater expense the American laborer nobly goes to in providing, under
greater difficulties, for the living and education of his family. There should
be no more emigration to the American mainland or Hawaii of Japanese
labor than there is of Chinese. Let the Japanese laborers go to Formosa and
Korea, where there are wide enough opportunities and where their own
government, customs and language rule.
Particularly as America has loaned Japan money, there should be an
unequivocal “open door” policy in Manchuria, where Japan is operating
already one double-track and one single-track trunk railway, with branches,

and has intruded many bands of colonizers on old China, which bands live
in settlements where Japan collects taxes against agreement and in practical
contravention of China’s sovereignty. This “open door” policy should end
the brigandage against foreign traders of directly or indirectly rebating to
Japanese shippers on the monopolistic railway privilege to which America
never agreed. Cotton and other goods for the Japanese trade colonies should
not be entered free at Dalny as “railway supplies”! The Japanese
government through the Yokohama Specie Bank should not lend at the
ridiculous rate of two per cent. to Japanese importers and common carriers
the money that came largely from America, if it affects American trade.
This is interpreting an “open door” policy as it is understood at Tokio and
Dalny, not as it is written at Tokio and Washington. Since generous America
buys vastly more from Japan than she sells to her, Japan should lower her
tariff instead of raising it. Japan wants to raise her tariff to sixty per cent. in
some cases while we of the august righteous Occident only permit vast
good-natured China a tariff of five per cent. ad valorem.
The railroads of our Pacific coast, controlling the eastern shipments,
should not invite over Japanese steamship lines, and lay off American lines
as was done with the Boston Steamship Company at Seattle in 1909. As it is
now, our railroads have made contracts with five Japanese steamship lines,
so as to force our government, many critics say, to grant a ship subsidy,
which is unnecessary, as the traffic is great enough to pay, with a mail
payment, the lines on the Pacific running cheaper than those on the Atlantic
on account of the crews being all Chinese. Japanese merchants in
Manchuria have petitioned the Japanese government for state assistance to
be given Japanese manufacturers in Manchuria.
Despite Japan’s and Russia’s rejection of America’s suggestion in 1910,
there will remain only one course eventually to be taken as the result of
Secretary Hay’s announcement in 1899 of the “open door” policy for all
time in China and Manchuria, and that is for a revivified China to secure an
international five-nation loan, or preferably a four-nation loan, to take over
from Russia and Japan all the railways held by those two nations in
Manchuria, and clean those three provinces of Japanese and Russian troops
and Achranie Straja (railway guards), Manchuria thereafter acting as a
buffer Chinese state between those really irreconcilable contestants, who
under present conditions promise to throw the whole world into warlike

turmoil every decade. The Japanese and Russians, by blocking, in 1910, the
American railway concession from Chin Wang Tao to Aigun (which
America did not intend to occupy with troops) really confessed that they
considered, since it so suited them, that the secret agreement which Russia
forced from China in 1899 was of superior power to the Japan-Russia
Treaty made at Portsmouth, which avowed the “open door” policy. Britain,
under pressure from Russia, agreed in 1899 that the former was not to
interfere north of Peking, and the latter agreed not to interfere in the
Yangtze valley (as though she ever could!). In that same year John Hay
secured the assent of the nations, including Russia and Britain, to the
policies for all time of the “non-partition of China” and the “open door”,
which policies were confirmed by the Portsmouth Treaty, and therefore
Japan and Russia, in blocking the Chin Wang to Aigun railway, Chin Wang
to Kailar, or any other northern or Manchurian railway, were acting ultra
vires, and negotiations in the interest of China, and the development of
America’s trade, might well come up again. Certainly the South
Manchurian railway has all the traffic it can handle, and it can no more
serve great Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia than could a railway confined
to Florida serve the eastern and central states as far north as Philadelphia.
Had this Chin Wang to Aigun railway been laid, besides the vast
grazing, agricultural, mineral, lumber and mining territory which would
have been developed, several important centers would have been made
known to the world. Hulutao and Chin Wang are new ports which are ice
free longer than Newchang, which should be made the advance post,
instead of Shanghai, seven hundred miles away, for America’s attack on the
rich Manchurian trade. Some day we shall run steamers across the Pacific to
Hulutao and Chin Wang, and thus be independent of Japan’s port of Dalny.
Tsitsikar on the Nonni River is a great stock, lumber, mining and railroad
center. Aigun, on the great Amur River, is the proposed northern terminus
of this seven hundred and fifty miles of railway. Up to 1900 Aigun was the
largest city in Manchuria, but during the Boxer troubles Russian troops in
revenge razed it to the ground. Here, in May, 1858, was signed the famous
Chinese treaty with Russia, delimiting the present bounds of Manchuria.
Aigun is a most important fur, lumber, agricultural, flour, gold and general
mining center, and has all the great Amur, Sungari and Shilka Rivers to
draw cargoes to its docks.

Across the Amur River on Siberian soil (I can hear George Kennan
revive his reminiscences) lies Blagovestchensk. This city was the scene, in
1900, of one of the most cruel massacres of the ages, which should reveal
fully to the world the real heart of the oligarchal Russian army and
government with which we have had to deal, afar off as yet. Thousands of
unarmed Chinese shopkeepers and gold miners (who had absolutely nothing
to do with Boxerism one thousand miles away) were led to the riverside,
and at the word of command from General Chitchegoff the Russian troops
at the point of the bayonet drove the innocent victims into the swift Amur,
where many were drowned. Blagovestchensk is a thriving modern city. It is
the center of the opulent Siberian gold industry, and has many live
American advance agents who would welcome the American railway by a
bridge over from Aigun! It is lighted by electric light, has clubs, hotels,
libraries, docks, river steamers when the river is open (!), theaters, colleges,
factories, flour and sawmills, splendid churches, fine brick residences, roads
and horses.
Besides its exceedingly rich mines, Manchuria produces in the south,
oak-leaf silk which we in America call Shangtung because it is like the silk
of Shangtung, which was the first known of the wild silks; cotton, jade,
maize, barley, pulse, the very valuable soy-bean, wheat, oats, the very
valuable kaoliang (tall millet), the grain of which produces spirits and the
stalk of which produces paper; hsiao mi (short millet), poppy, polygonum,
used for blue dye; castor oil bean, sesamum, ginseng, paper spruce, fine
fruit and flowers, salt, bean oil, famous vermicelli from loutou beans, the
best tobacco produced in China, hemp (abutilon avicennæ), true hemp,
charcoal, peas, fine reed matting, indigo, etc. Northern Manchuria, besides
much of the foregoing, produces the famous black pigs of Kirin; soda
bricks, cattle, leather, bear and deer skins; a vast amount of the world’s
finest furs, including squirrels, tiger and dog skins, which last are produced
on dog farms largely for the American market; gray bricks, tamara salmon,
sturgeon, etc. The land is a future granary to feed the manufacturing
hundreds of millions in America, who, despite intensive farming, will have
exhausted the natural productiveness of their country.

IX

THE NATIVE LEADERS

In the revolution chapter of this book we have given many names of the
new leaders. Others who have attained prominence are the following. Most
of them have seen foreign service, or been educated in America, Britain,
Germany or Japan. In March, 1912, a descendant of the Ming emperors
came forward at Peking to add to the complexity of the situation. He
endeavored to obtain the allegiance of Yuan’s rebelling northern troops,
who seemed loyal to no cause or person. He was the so-called “Marquis”
Chu Cheng Yu. A Ming claimant would more naturally make his appeal at
the old Ming capital, Nanking, but Nanking was now all for the republic.
Tang Shao Yi, Yuan’s assistant, educated in America, visited America
on many commissions; a superior man, worthy of special mark in the
coming China; Yuan’s representative at the Shanghai peace conferences.
Yen Shih Si and Yang Shih Chi, assistants of Tang at the Shanghai
peace conferences; Board of Finance and Railways, Peking, 1911.
M. Y. Sung, manager of the “Chung Hua” republican bank at Shanghai,
and manager of the China Merchants’ Steamship Company.
Shih Shao Chi, known as “Alfred Sze”, American educated; served on
American embassies; very popular and able.
Chang Chih Yen, republican Board of Commerce, Shanghai.
Tang Wen Chai, Hupeh Provincial Assembly; Board of Commerce,
Shanghai; head of Changsha University.
Sun Hao Chi, Shangtung Provincial Assembly.

Chang Chien, Kiangsu Assembly; Board of Commerce, Shanghai; great
and progressive.
Wang Jen Wen, Szechuen Provincial Assembly.
Wang Shao Liang, head Pei Yang Technical University; established
English as official language in science.
Li Chin Hsi, Yunnan Assembly; as Viceroy established modern army,
police, industrial schools.
Wuh Hsiang Chen, Manchuria Assembly.
Wu Yun Lien, Manchuria Assembly.
Wong Chung Wai, represented republicans at Shanghai peace
conferences.
Tsai Chu Ting, represented republicans at Shanghai peace conferences.
Cheng Teh Chuan, Kiangsu Assembly; once Governor.
Li Ping Hsu, Mayor Shanghai; Civil Administrator Kiangsu Assembly.
Shen Wan Yung, Financial Department; Kiangsu Assembly.
Wang Yi Ting, Trade Department; Kiangsu Assembly.
Li Chia Chu, President first Parliament at Peking, 1911.
Tang Hua Lung, President Hupeh Assembly; a mighty man.
Chen Chun Tao, educated at Hongkong and Yale; first President Ta
Ching Government Bank, 1910; one of the ablest financiers in China.
Chau Tien You (popularly “Jeme”); educated Yale; builder of Peking-
Kalgan Railway; ablest engineer in China.
Kwang Sun Mao, able builder of Canton and northern railways.
Doctor Wu Lien Teh, educated Cambridge University; hero of 1910
plague in Manchuria; one of the ablest modern Chinese doctors.
Chun Tao Tsai, President Chamber of Commerce, Canton.
Lu Hung Chang, President Chamber of Commerce, Hankau.

Admiral Chin Pih, visited New York on cruiser Hai Chi; joined
republicans at Shanghai, December, 1911.
C. T. Wong, graduated from Yale University, 1909.
Admiral Chin Yao Huan, visited New York on Hai Chi; became
republican December, 1911.
General Lau Tien Wei, republican general in Manchuria, 1911; visited
West Point, 1912.
Wu Chung Lin, progressive Chinese minister at Rome, 1912.
E. M. Sah, American educated; authority on municipal government; son
of Admiral Sah.
Hsuing Hsi Ling, Finance Board.
Chow Tsze Chi, Finance Board.
General Chang Cho Lin, Manchuria, victor over Mongols, 1912.
The old leaders who go down to defeat are the following, and of the
many who are called in the reorganization, some of the following will be
found worthy, and some of the disappointed ones may possibly be found
leading the discontented at times.
Chang Ming Chi, imperial Viceroy at Canton; fled to Hongkong, 1911.
Chao Ehr Hsun, Viceroy Mukden, strong but uncertain.
General Wong Yin Chat, imperialist leader Fourth Brigade at Hankau,
1911.
General Tsen Chun Hsuan, Viceroy and stern imperial leader;
enlightened.
Wei Kuang Tao, Viceroy Hupeh, Canton, etc.; modern.
Prince Ching, elderly dean of Manchus; long head of Privy Council;
modern.
Na Tung, Vice-President of old Manchu Council; modern.
Hsu Shih Chang, progressive Chinese member of Manchu Council;
turned General-in-chief of republicans.

Chao Ping Chun, progressive Minister of Peking Police, and
Department of Interior.
Shih Tao, progressive Mongol Prince; Vice-President of National
Assembly, Peking, 1911.
Admiral Sah Chen Ping, imperial Admiral who joined republicans;
entertained American fleet at Amoy, in 1908.
Admiral Jui Cheng, imperial Admiral.
Luk Yuk Lim, Minister to Britain, 1911; progressive.
Prince Kung, able Mongol leader, Peking, 1911.
Liang Tun Yen, American educated; head Foreign Board (Wai Wu Pu),
Peking, 1911; protégé of famous Chang Chi Tung, of Wuchang.
Hu Wei Teh, progressive Vice-President of Foreign Board, 1911;
Minister to Russia, etc.
Liang Ju Hao, Vice-President Railway Board, Peking, 1911.
Nang Shih Cheng, Board of War, Peking, 1911.
Tien Wen Tih, Board of War, Peking, 1911.
Shen Chih Pen, Board of Justice, Peking, 1911.
Liang Chih Chiao, famous old reformer of 1898 coup d’état.
Tang Ching Chung, Board of Education, Peking, 1911; literary
chancellor Kiangsu province, 1904; learned in old and new.
Prince Chun, deposed Manchu Regent, 1911; brother of Emperor
Kwang Hsu.
Lu Chuan Ling, Privy Councilor, Peking, 1911; modern.
Prince Pu Lun, first President Peking Parliament, 1911; visited St.
Louis Exposition; a most dignified progressive; familiar with Hongkong.
Prince Tsai Tse, Manchu head Finance Board, Peking, 1911; visited
America, Britain, etc., 1905.
Prince Tsai Tao, Manchu head of Army; visited America; brother of
Emperor Kwang Hsu.

Prince Tsai Su, Manchu head of Navy; visited America; Interior Board
also.
Prince Tsai Hsun, Manchu head of Navy; visited America, 1909;
brother of famous Manchu Emperor Kwang Hsu, first reform Emperor of
China.
Chang Jen Chung, Viceroy defense of Nanking; stubborn; enlightened;
holder of first exposition in China; well known to Americans.
General Yin Chang, Manchu General-in-chief; director Nobles College;
Minister to Germany, 1901–5; a superior theoretical man, but not a brave
leader in battle.
Liu Ju Lin, Secretary to Washington Legation; Vice-President Foreign
Board.
Chang Yin Tang, Minister to America, 1910.
Sheng Kung Pao, leading defender of nationalization of railways,
Peking, 1910.
Sheng Tah Jen, leading defender of nationalization of railways, Peking,
1910.
Liang Shih Yi, manager Northern Railways of China.
Chen Tung Liang, Minister to Britain, 1904; educated in America.
Li Ching Mai, grandson of illustrious Li Hung Chang; visited America,
1909; a bright man.
Chen Kwein Lung, Governor Pechili, 1910.
Tong Kai Son, President Ambassadors’ College, Peking, 1910;
educated at Yale.
Hu Wei To, Minister to Hague, Russia, Japan, etc.
Liu Shih Hsun, Minister to France, etc.
Ku Hung Ming, able editor of “standpats”.
Chow Chang Ling, manager North China Railways, 1909.
Chen Chao Chang, Governor of Kirin, Manchuria, 1909.

Hsu Chen Pang, educated at Hartford, America; Naval Board, 1910.
Chang Yu Chuan, Foreign Office, 1910; educated at Yale.
Tan Tien Chih, University of California; Superintendent Railway
College, Peking, 1910.
Wu Kwei Lin, Cornell; Railway Board, 1910.
Tsai Ting Kan, Yale; Supreme Court, Tientsin.
Chien Shao Cheng, visited America; Department of Prisons, Peking,
1910.
Wen Tsung Yao, Amban at Lhasa; helped to drive out Dalai Lama, the
Pope of Buddhism.
Tam Hao Heng, Cantonese; Navy Board, Peking, 1910.
Prince Yu Lang, Grand Councilor; Board of Police; organizer of
Imperial Guard; Army Board, Peking, 1911.
Chou Chi Lai, Assistant Foreign Minister, Peking, 1911; progressive.
Shao Chang, Minister Justice, Peking, 1911; Secretary Foreign Board,
1901.
Shou Chi, Minister Dependencies, Peking, 1911; Minister of Mongolia,
1900; Captain of Hatamen Octroi (Customs) Gate, Peking, 1909; an
amusing type of old-style effective revenue man.
Lu Jun Hsiang, Grand Secretary, Peking, 1910; head of Opium
Suppression Board, 1911: a really effective man, representing the best
traditions of old China.
Jung Ching, President Board of Ceremonies, Peking, 1911; remarkable
type of thorough-going conservative.
Sheng Yun, irreconcilable imperial Governor of Shensi and Shansi
provinces, 1911–12.
Prince Tuan, irreconcilable “Boxer” Manchu; exiled in Kansu, and
father of Pretender to Throne, “Ku Kwei”, 1912.
Hsun Pao Oi, Governor of Shangtung province, 1912.
Tong Chao Chuen, progressive; Railway and Finance Boards.

Shum Chun Hsun, experienced Viceroy of various provinces.
King Yu Yuet, Principal Law College, Nanking.
Chan Ki Me, Governor of Shanghai.
Chan Kwang Ming, experienced; progressive Governor.

X

CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL POLITICS.

The treaties and international notes which hold China in obligations to
the outside world (Wai Ih, outside foreigners), and which the republicans
promise to observe, are in part as follows. The “most favored nation” clause
admits nations which did not participate in the original treaty.

1842. Nanking Treaty—Nanking, Canton, Amoy, Fuchau,
Ningpo and Shanghai opened.
1858. Tientsin-British—Newchwang, Chifu, Swatow,
Kiangchow opened.
1860. Tientsin-French Treaty—Tientsin opened.
1861. German Treaty—Chinkiang, Hankau opened.
1876. Chifu Convention—Ichang, Wuhu, Wenchow, Pakhoi
opened.
1881. Russia-China—Russian commercial influence in Ili,
Mongolia, Manchuria; consulates and extraterritoriality provided
for.
1890. Chungking Convention—Chungking opened.
1895. Japan Treaty—Suchow, Hangchow opened.
1896. Russia-China Treaty—Russia given railway and other
privileges in Manchuria; this brought on the war with Japan in 1904.
1897. West River Ports—Samshui, Wuchow, etc., opened.

1899. Russia-China—China not to build railways north of
Peking without Russia’s consent.
1902. British Commercial Treaty (Mackay)—Changsha, Ngan-
king, Wan Hsien, Waichou opened. Likin to be abolished and
customs possibly raised from five per cent. to twelve per cent. ad
valorem.
1905. Japan-China—Grants to Japan by treaty what war with
Russia won for Japan; i. e., military, commercial, mining and
railway dominance in South Manchuria, and Japan to have power to
nullify Chinese or other foreign railway schemes.

Treaties Affecting China

1899. Britain-Russia—Britain not to interfere with Russia north
of great wall, and Russia not to interfere in Yangtze valley.
1899. America to Powers (John Hay’s Note)—“Open door” for
all in China, and preservation of territorial integrity.
1905. Portsmouth Treaty (Russia-Japan)—Japan takes Korea
and part of Manchuria.
1905. Britain-Japan—Alliance and assuring integrity of China.
1907. Russia-Japan—Recognize territorial integrity of China.
1907. Britain-Russia—Britain to support China in Tibet.
1908. America-Japan—Open door in China; integrity of China.
1910. America to Powers—Internationalize Manchurian
railways; rejected by Russia and Japan.
1910. Russia-Japan—Secret convention to reject America’s
financial and commercial plans in Manchuria; Russia and Japan to
divide Manchuria in spheres of influence and trade.

These treaties sound very well, but mean very little, excepting this, that
if Japan or Russia persistently breaks them and invades China, Britain and

America have a cause before the world, to thrash, if it is necessary, the
offender’s navy, and cut Japan off from Korea and Manchuria. The treaties
are a confusion. They all specify that the “open-door” theory is
acknowledged, but Russia and Japan have forced China to assent to their
visé on any proposed railway schemes in Manchuria and Pechili. Despite
the Britain-Japan Treaty of 1905, wherein the “integrity of China” is
specified as a promise to the nations, the London Times confesses as
follows: “The grim facts of the economic gravitation of Manchuria toward
Russian and Japanese control are beyond remedy, treaties and agreements
notwithstanding.” Yet at one time the thunderer would bring on a war for
the sake of a straw! If Russia continues to offend there is no way to stop her
except that America and Britain shall send their navies to pound her Baltic
gates until she behaves in Manchuria, Mongolia, etc., which she soon would
do in fear of her Duma on the inside of the Baltic gates. Britain never again
can use Japan to pound Russia, for Japan and Russia have agreed to take the
Manchurian spoil, as Japan did in the case of Korea, whenever the
opportunity offers through dissension among the powers. Japan and Russia
are high-tariff countries, and wherever they establish themselves, Britain,
America, Germany and France will knock in vain for trade entry. China,
like Britain, is a low-tariff country (at present five per cent., and even the
proposed twelve per cent. would be low), and the manufacturing nations
therefore desire the “open door” maintained, which can only be done on
America’s and Britain’s reiterated treaty stipulations of the “integrity of
China”. America must always keep a Pacific fleet stronger than Japan’s. A
fight is unnecessary, for Japan is checkmated at once by this policy. Britain
and America, and, if possible, Germany, must work together in the Far East
to watch both Russia and Japan, and see that China gets the “square deal” in
having reserved for her expansion her immemorial preserves of Manchuria,
Mongolia and Turkestan. In Premier Yuan’s difficulties, the irreconcilable
former Manchu major general, Yin Tchang, fled to Dalny, where he ran a
bureau which plotted for the overthrow of the republic.
China made a beginning in 1911 in the agitation for the retrocession of
some of the foreign colonies. Prince Ching then suggested that
commissioners should be appointed by the Cabinet to discuss with Britain
the retrocession of Wei-Hai-Wei. There are other nations which hold vastly
more territory than do America and Britain, whether in concessions,
settlements or colonies. The other nations have done comparatively little for

China as compared with America and Britain, and Prince Ching might have
approached this worthy subject in proportionate order. Until China is on her
feet, foreign concessions at all her ports are the best object lesson she could
have in municipal government and improvements, but foreign colonies, as
large as Germany’s Kiaochou and Japan’s and Russia’s spheres of
occupation in Manchuria, are unjust to her.
The New China party bears as a thorn in its flesh the awful burden of
1900, the old Russian and the Japanese indemnities. America alone, under
President Roosevelt’s administration, remitted her share of the 1900
(Boxer) indemnity. These punitive indemnity payments prevented China
from offering relief in the terrible pneumonic plague epidemic in Manchuria
in 1911, and in the famines which followed the floods in 1911 and 1912 in
the central and eastern provinces. Half a million people starved to death,
and China has not forgotten that the funds which the starving people needed
were taken by the rich European nations as indemnity payments. Britain,
however, did return part of her indemnity on condition that it should be
applied to the Shansi University at Taiyuan, of which Doctor Timothy
Richards was president.
China’s helpless position without a navy could not be more eloquently
shown than by the following case: In the Mexican revolution of 1911,
Chinese lives and property were destroyed to the estimated amount of
$33,000,000. China put in a claim to satisfy the heirs and claimants, but no
attention has been paid to it. How different it was when Germany and
Britain held Venezuelan claims only a short time previously!
In the interim, before the establishment of an effective diplomacy and
parliaments or congresses in China, the guilds, with their boycott, have to a
degree acted as the foreign office of the people in obtaining concessions
which armies, navies and courtiers were not yet powerful enough to obtain.
Their effective boycotts are a proof that the people really ruled in China,
and without the expense of armies and navies. They, moreover, proved that
the Chinese people can think together, and keep their word of faith so
fixedly that it is seldom necessary for the central committee of the guilds to
put in effect the heavy money penalties involved. There is this conclusion
among others to be drawn from the interesting history of guilds and
boycotts in China, especially in the last fifteen years, that the provincial and
central parliaments, or congresses, which began work in 1909 and 1910,

will remain, and with some improvement each year reach ever higher
toward the standards of liberty and righteousness, or, in expressive
American slang, the “square deal”.
Who will gainsay that the Chinese is a long-suffering being even in his
own land? I quote the following from the Hongkong Telegraph of
September 1, 1911: “At 6.00 P. M., on August 25, a German in the employ of
a British company, and an Italian priest went into a shop at Shek Ki (near
Canton). The German, who disliked the demeanor of the shop employé,
dealt the man a nasty cut on the head. The foreigners afterward left the shop
and went to a money changer’s. As the changer was slow, the German
snatched a lamp from a table, and smashed it on the ground. The German
assaulted two chair coolies. A riot developed. The two foreigners rushed
into the dwelling of a missionary lady doctor.” Such abuse as this leads to
international troubles, and the consuls at the ports, to whom the patient
Chinese turn over foreign offenders, should be more severe than they are.
These foreign offenders should really be brought back to the village where
they create a disturbance, and in the presence of the consul, and Chinese
taotais and mandarins, should pay to the headman of the village sufficient
damages. Then the Chinese would know that the foreigner is sincere in his
legal measures. Thoughtless or drunken action, like that of the German,
often leads to missionary and other riots before the resentment of the
indignant natives cools. One brutal fool of this kind, violens in vino, can
place at jeopardy the lives of thousands of foreigners and the peace of the
nations. We must scrupulously show China that we are sincere. She has
some cause to feel that when we established our extraterritorial courts we
meant to cheat her of justice. We shall later hear from Wu Ting Fang on this
subject, as he is making a specialty of codifying the laws.
The British government introduced to the foreign office (Tsung Li
Yamen and Wai Wu Pu) for many years, Sir Walter Hillier, as adviser, but
since his appointment was to a degree forced he had less influence than in
the case of the voluntary appointments of the Americans, Dennison and
Stevens, as advisers in the foreign offices of Japan and Korea, respectively.
The four-nations bankers will have foreign advisers on the Chinese Finance
and Foreign Boards, and great tact and patience with China’s difficulties
will at all times be required.

Long before the revolution, as well as after it, the masses of the
Chinese had commenced to think of national and international politics.
Whenever missionaries opened new “tan” (preaching or “talk” halls, as the
Chinese call churches) the auditors listened respectfully for a while to the
“doctrine” or “tao” (way). When the missionary came down from the
platform, and joined the audience on the benches for a familiar “tan” (chat),
religious subjects were not the first spoken of, the following questioning
being common:
“Our first question is, what is your name, age and number of children?”
“Did you come from your country by railway or steamship?”
“How far is it and what was the cost?”
“What is your real business outside of your kindly avocation of
achieving merit by temporarily talking about Jesus?”
“How long have you been in this province of China?”
“Were your clothes made in a China port, or in America, and at what
cost?”
“You do not shave your head and face or change your outer clothes
often, so we suppose you do not bathe often.”
“What do you think of this talk of republics, foreign loans, centralized
government, armies and railways?”
There is no sycamore tree for Zacchæus to climb; he must come down.
They know you are peaceful as an amateur, but they insist on your
professional opinion, and they believe your profession is something more
practical than talking religion. Are you a doctor, a government employé, a
farmer, a soldier, a spy, an artisan, a merchant? If so, you must know about
these practical things, and can answer the questions propounded.
The emigration treaties now stand in almost a humorous attitude in one
respect. To save Japan’s “face” (the Oriental idiom for pride), Japan is
granted permission to land coolies, but Japan by a secret postscriptum
agrees not to let her coolies make the slightest use of this permission, as she
has room for them in Korea, Manchuria, the navy, etc., at present. China is
not permitted to land her coolies, but land some of them she does by the
“underground”, which runs via Canada, Mexico, Central America, Cuba,

etc. Our Pacific coast is correct, notwithstanding the exigencies of
diplomacy, that she can not and will not absorb Oriental labor, any more
than we foist Occidental labor on the Orient. The Pacific coast is quite
consistent for the “square deal”, though it took her some time to trust the
signing of the 1911 Japan Treaty, the immigration clause of which it is
secretly understood is not to be taken advantage of. America can not
welcome too many Chinese students and travelers, and a certain number of
specialized merchants, agriculturalists, agents, artisans and artists, whom
we can well accept as our tutors in their specialties.
On the subject of Asiatic immigration, the authority on American naval
and foreign affairs, Admiral Mahan, writes as follows: “A large
preponderance of Asiatics in a given region is a real annexation, more
effective than the political annexations against which the Monroe doctrine
was formulated. Free Asiatic immigration to the Pacific coast in its present
condition of sparse population would mean Asiatic occupation—Asia
colonized in America. This the United States government can not accept
because of the violent resistance of the Pacific states, if for no other
reason.”
In a former book I have recommended the immigration of a number of
Chinese into the Philippines. The Straits Settlements cover only a small
area. Their population is 300,000 Malays, who are akin to the Filipino. Four
hundred thousand Chinese were brought in, and the little colony in 1911
exported $200,000,000 of tin and other products. Sir Frank Swettenham, the
famous governor of the settlement in its formative period up to 1904, says
of the Chinese: “The industrial development of the country is entirely due
to the Chinese. They are the only people in the peninsula who can be
depended upon. They tolerate no interruptions in the performance of their
daily labor, and save their money to make prudent investments. Without the
Chinese nothing would have been done in the Malay states. No progress
would have been made, and the enormous natural resources of the country
would still be lying dormant.” A remarkable instance of the orderliness of
the Chinese was exhibited in the deportation in 1908 of 60,000 Chinese
emigrants from the Transvaal gold mines to China. Such a body of any
other labor would have shown many signs of rebellion against their removal
from the scenes to which they had grown attached, and where they were
prospering, and against the hot journey of 8,000 miles, made the more

unpleasant because of the crowded quarters on shipboard. No friction or
disturbance marked this unusual industrial event. Coolies though they were,
they kept their word like statesmen, and said: “We promised the colony that
we would only substitute black labor for four years, and as the blacks now
are ready to return to the field, we are going.”
The nations should get together, and permit China to levy a provisional
import duty of twelve per cent. instead of five per cent., and not keep her
government helpless because of starvation. If she had an army and navy like
Japan, she would not need to ask the permission of others to allow her own
government to live. Advice should be given to her, as in the Mackay Treaty,
to strike away the inter-provincial and inter-district fetters of likin (transit
taxes) and export tax, by which method the provinces raise much of their
revenue; and the government should divide up the customs receipts between
the provinces, or permit the provinces to keep all their land tax.
France, which owns the only railway to Yunnan at present, is imposing
an unjust transit tax of ten per cent. on American, British and German
goods, shipped from Hongkong to Yunnan, or vice versa, and which must
cross French China. Canada in the same situation bids for American freights
by making no transit tax, and indeed quoting lower freight rates; this is
intelligent modernism. China and the three commercial nations should have
this Indo-Chinese tax removed, and demand equal rates on French railways.
This rate equalization is what America has demanded of Japan and Russia
on railways in Manchuria. It is the same thing that Germany, at the point of
the Panther’s cannon, demanded of France in the Agadir incident in
Morocco. In other words, the “square deal”, and it must be put in effect, say
the Chinese people and the nations which advocate the “open door”.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The Gothic type of architecture introduced by the French; the Catholic
cathedral on Caine Road, on the slope of Hongkong. Chinese
contractors erect these buildings.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Nan-Tang cathedral (French) towering over native roofs at Canton. Up to
the revolution, this offended the feng-shui superstition of old China, and
was a constant source of difficulty.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Cement hill roads, South China, Kwangtung province. Bamboo
water-buckets. Note luxuriant vegetation, in a moist hot
climate; fern, rubber, tamarind, banyan, mulberry trees.

The political economists of Japan are beginning to denounce the
exportation of coal, and recommend the reservation of the fields as a war
supply. The proposition is to use foreign coal in manufacturing.
Accordingly, measures have been taken to develop the Manchurian, Korean,

Saghalien and Formosan fields, as well as purchasing from the rich Chinese
supplies. This conservation method will certainly be followed by Australia,
England, Germany and America, as the years go by. The export of coal is
not a benefit; it is an impoverishment. The Japanese make into briquettes
the anthracite coal of Ping Yang, Korea, so as to produce a smokeless navy
coal.
An interesting aftermath of the Boxer massacres in 1900 was the
strange disappearance of the Manchu prince, Liang Chow, who was
condemned to be strangled in private with the silver cord, which two unseen
friends were to tighten behind two holes bored in a wall. Prince Liang fled
to America, where he became a pauper, and was buried in the Alamosa,
Colorado, cemetery. At the request of the Manchu throne his body was
exhumed on November 25, 1910, and started on its way to China to the
tombs of the Manchu emperors west of Peking (not the Ming tombs, which
are northwest). A splendid, dragon-gilded coffin was furnished, and the
Manchus sent magnificent mandarin robes, a yellow jacket, peacock feather
and pearl button of honor. The Chinese whom Prince Liang found in
America were not Manchus, but republican Cantonese of southern
Kwangtung province.
Hongkong, the dean of foreign settlements, Shanghai, Tientsin,
Singapore, Hankau, Harbin, etc., all have volunteer military companies and
inter-port rifle matches. Every man in a settlement can be impressed for the
protection of life and property. All these uniformed companies have seen
hard active service in the taking of Kowloon, the various riots at Shanghai,
the Peking Relief Expedition and the revolution which broke out at Hankau
in October, 1911. The companies cover infantry, machine and field gun,
bicycle and garrison corps trained in the use of cannon. Hongkong’s
uniformed contingent at King George’s coronation in London attracted
much attention for the smartness of their swinging march. “We didn’t think
the jaded tropics could turn out such ambition,” was the remark of many
onlookers.
The English historian, Creasy, who lived in the Far East, in writing his
book, Decisive Battles of the World, as early as 1852 recognized the
importance of America’s mission across the Pacific. These are his words:
“The conquests of China and Japan by the fleets and armies of the United
States are events which many now living are likely to witness. Compared

with the magnitude of such changes in the dominion of the old world, the
certain ascendancy of the Anglo-Americans over central and southern
America seems a matter of secondary importance.” If we change Creasy’s
favorite idea of physical conquest to that of moral, educational and
commercial, with physical power only as an auxiliary in the case of the
heinous jealousy of those not concerned, we shall agree with him as to
America’s advance across the Pacific. It was nevertheless a wonderful
prophecy, made as long ago as 1852, when the tide of America’s western
advance, with the exception of one meager settlement, had not yet risen
over the Rockies. All the Chinese leaders, republican and conservative, look
for the growing evidence of America’s interests across the Pacific, and
American affairs and history are keenly studied.
Some of the Chinese proverbs on international politics are the
following:
“He who doesn’t follow up his words with deeds is no more terrible
than the wind on painted water.”
“If you have to guess at roads, the middle one will average up best.”
“Go slow; only the turtle is equipped to draw his head in suddenly.”
“Don’t cross a river with your feet in two boats.”

XI

CHINESE INTERNAL POLITICS

Almost the oldest book in China, the Chou Li, provided for village
management at the same time that sacrifices were instituted, thousands of
years before the Christian era. The oldest man of the clan-village, bearing
the title of “hsiang lao” (village old-one) takes charge at a salary of about
one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and hires say twenty police in the
smaller villages. This “hsiang lao”, when necessary, deals with the district
“siunkian”, who is the government’s lowest mandarin. The people express
their views in an open “hsiang” meeting, which is the same as the old town
meeting of New England, on which present democratic institutions in
America are based; an “open primary”, for that matter.
In the guild councils of the cities, the more experienced tradesmen have
had political experience in their dealings with the “taotai”, a higher class of
mandarin. From “hsiang” and guild meetings, the next step was to send
delegates to viceroys, or even delegates to the Board of Censors at Peking,
accusing viceroys. China, therefore, had some experience in politics before
the reformers of 1898 induced the impressionable young Emperor Kwang
Hsu to issue his famous edicts, which started a wave that rolled on, lifting
provincial assemblies, parliaments, and revolutionists into view; and the
wave is rolling onward still. Kwang Hsu as early as 1891 issued an edict
praising and protecting missionaries. He was never permitted to travel, but
learned from books, brought to him by Kang Yu Wei and the other new
spirits, what was going on in the outside world. In 1894 Kwang Hsu sent to
the American Bible Society at Peking a request for copies of the two
Testaments, “such as are sold to THE PEOPLE”. His immortal edicts began to
appear in the Peking Gazette on June 23, 1898, and ended in September of

that year, when he was imprisoned by the empress dowager and Yuan Shih
Kai. During the issuance of the edicts the dowager was at the summer
palace, eight miles northwest of Peking, where she was preparing her
reactionary plans. The edicts covered the following:

1. New learning for much of the old classical essays. This
reform is in force.
2. Modern army, navy, railways, telephone, telegraph. The slow
progress of the Lu-Han (Peking to Hankau) Railway was
commented on. These reforms are under way, and full of promise.
3. Publicity of national and provincial figures of receipt and
expenditure; i. e., a budget. This reform was instituted by the
National Assembly in 1911, and will be adopted by the republicans.
4. All citizens to have the privilege of memorializing the Throne
independent of the Censor Board.
5. Extension of mail service. This is being brought about by the
extension of the railway service, and the government taking over
private post routes of guilds.
6. Prince Ching to secure assistance from foreigners in
establishing a national university, with branches in provincial
capitals. Departments of universities at Peking, Canton, Shanghai,
Nanking, Paoting, Tientsin, Hankau, etc., have been established.
The English universities, acting under the suggestions of Sir Robert
Hart and Lord Cecil, will assist, as will also America. This is secular
education. The mission schools are, of course, extending to many
new cities.

Let us step into one of the meetings of the first partially formed
Parliament, which opened in 1910. We would call it a Senate. They called it
Tzu Cheng Yuan; that is, Property Laws Assembly, or Taxing Assembly.
The Parliament buildings at Peking, not being completed, the Congress met
in the law hall of the Peking University. This hall is a two-story western
style building, the only Chinese feature being the heavy tiled roof. The
windows are square and have modern sashes. The door is Roman and not
Chinese in curve. The Lower House was not yet formed. In the front row of

two hundred members were Mongol princes, Manchu princes, viceroys,
governors, mandarins, appointed by the Crown, and farther back were men
sent up by the provincial assemblies. The great Prince Pu Lun of the royal
blood, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Hongkong, and who was
commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, most affable, stout and
progressive, opens the assembly with bland dignity. Shen Chia Pan, the
temporary vice-president, sits on his left. The debate at once opens like the
small fire of machine guns. It takes up appeals by the provincial assemblies
on the actions of the provincial governors. Education, foreign loans,
provincial versus nationalized railways, pensions to Manchus, suppression
of opium, acts of departmental secretariates, the leakage in tax collection,
the corruption of courts, the police to serve the people and not against the
people, high tax rate against the poor and low tax rate against the rich,
taxation without representation, foreign aggression in Manchuria and
Turkestan, insults to the flag abroad, nepotism, etc., are discussed, and the
secretariates have a lively time defending themselves from the critical,
eloquent pure Chinese Cantonese; the independent Hunanese who have
many Cromwells among them, and who are foremost for running Chinese
mines and railways without foreign money; the tradition-loving Szechuen
men; the literati and capitalists from Kiangsu; the traveled bankers from
Shansi province; the cosmopolitan men from the imperial province of
Pechili and Shangtung; the rough-rider Mongols from far west Shensi and
Kansu provinces; and the Patrick Henrys from turbulent Fukien province.
The Throne is compelled to promise a Lower House in 1913 instead of
1915, and at last, in its edict, gives all credit to the crushed reformer,
Emperor Kwang Hsu, who learned reform from the Bible and other western
books surreptitiously introduced despite the eunuch spies of the reactionary
Empress Dowager Tse Hsi. This preliminary Senate stormily sends a
suggestion to the oligarchic Grand Council of the Regent that reform shall
be evidenced by the regent and the infant Emperor Pu Yi having their
queues cut off. Thus the spirited debate rolled back and forth between the
old Grand Council and the new Congress or Parliament, until the guns of
the impatient revolution thundered at Hankau, like Cromwell on the doors
of the Long Parliament.
Confucius himself was a politician. He lived in an age of able prime
ministers of some ten highly civilized, equal states, fighting generally by
diplomacy for mastery, on the pretext of the right to monopolize the

succession to perform the sacred rites of the parent Chou state, which alone
was weak. These prime ministers were all abler men than were the titular
rulers of the states. Confucius studied diplomacy in the writings of Kwan
Tsz, premier-philosopher of the adjoining Tsi state. Kwan Tsz’ writings are
sometimes published with Lao Tsz’ works, but should not be confounded
with them. Confucius was also influenced by his friend, the great diplomat,
Shuh Hiang, prime minister of the Tsin state, which was situated far to the
northwest of his native state of Lu; also by the very able minister Tsz Chan
of the state of Cheng, which lay west of Lu. He had to keep his wits awake
to save the small and weaker Lu state from succumbing to the policies of
the ambitious Yen Tsz, prime minister of the Tsi state, which was situated
immediately north of Lu, and from falling before the intrigue of Kupeh Yu,
prime minister of Wei state, lying to the northwest. This last state afforded
Confucius a long exile, when his vicious, ungrateful, new prince hounded
him for fourteen years by an ancient system of “Black List” out of his
positions with some thirty states, content neither to use his eminent
services, nor to let him live that other states might avail of them. He knew
too much about law-breaking by those who occupied the “seats of the
mighty”; and “such men are dangerous”! Devoted as they are to the study of
Confucius’ life, the Chinese thereby imbibed politics.
History throws light on some of the insidiousness of ancient Chinese
intrigue. As long ago as 626 B. C. the ruler of the Chinese principality of
Ts’in, which state was oppressed by the manly Tartars, sent to the Tartar
chief two companies of singing girls “that he might be too weak to ride the
saddle at the head of his cavalry”. In 486 B. C. the prince of Tsi state, lying
to the north of Lu state, sent to the prince of Lu state, Confucius’ master, a
company of singing girls to ensnare manliness in the lap of debauchery,
with the result that Confucius in disgust left the service of his prince and
became a hounded exile, laughed out of his court by the powerful who for
the time were above the law. Where have been that most venerable family
on earth, the Kungs of Shangtung province, who have lived at Kufu near
Yenchow, in all the recent turbulence in China? We have heard of Manchu
princes, of leaders of the Chinese like Kang and Sun, Yuan, General Li, and
Wu Ting Fang; of descendants of the old Ming emperors, etc., but why have
not the lineal descendants of Confucius put forward a man able to handle
politics, war and literature as did their great ancestor? What an opportunity
they have had recently. What an opportunity they have yet to put forward a

man for the presidency, whom all China and all the world will be delighted
to accept if he is only one-twentieth as able as his immortal ancestor.
The secret society, too, has played a great part in internal politics. It is
not so necessary now as it was. The pitiless publicity of a democracy or
constitutional monarchy makes secret duplicity unnecessary. The Kao Ming
Tang was Yuan Shih Kai’s and Prince Ching’s society. At the other extreme
was the Kao-lao-Hwei and other anti-Manchu secret societies. It was the
union of the Triad secret society with the Taiping rebels that made that
revolution powerful enough to spread from Canton to Nanking. In the
Boxer days of 1900 the Buddhist secret society, Tsai Li Hwei, extended its
scope to cover the new movement. Their watchword was: “Store grain for
war; collect forage; revolt”. The Sia Hwei (reform association), Tung Men
Hwei (sworn brother), and other secret societies established in China and
throughout the world by Sun Yat Sen, had much to do with the successful
preliminary work that made the revolution possible.
The old lines of political demarcation are passing away, and new lines
will be drawn in some instances. The powerful viceroys of the fourteen
main provinces were located and named as follows:
“Viceroy of Pechili” province, at Tientsin.
“Viceroy of Shen Kan” (i. e. Shensi and Kansu provinces), at Singan.
“Viceroy of Kiangnan” (i. e. Kiangsu, Nganhwei and Kiangsi
provinces), at Nanking.
“Viceroy of Hu Kwang”, or “Viceroy of Liang Hu” (i. e. Hunan and
Hupeh provinces), at Wuchang.
“Viceroy of Min Che” (i. e. Chekiang and Fukien provinces), at
Fuchau.
“Viceroy of Liang Kwang” (i. e. Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces),
at Canton.
“Viceroy of Yun Kwei” (i. e. Yunnan and Kweichou provinces), at
Yunnan.
The favorite retreats for these retired officials are the five cities of
cultured Kiangsu province: Shanghai, Suchow, Chinkiang, Yangchow and
Nanking; and one city in adjoining Chekiang province, Hangchow. If the

clubs of these cities could by a dictograph breathe what they have heard,
volumes of wonderful interest would keep a score of publishers busy. China
has entered the world arena because of her human interest on a vast scale.
The Manchu may try to come back, as the irreconcilable Major General
Yin Tchang has been plotting from Japanese Dalny. The doctrine of sacred
right, as strongly as the Hohenzollern has enunciated it, has been preached
before in China. The Manchu, with this in view, would not abdicate until he
was assured that in him would lie the ancient right to pay the sacred Chou
sacrifices, which are 4,000 years old. The builder of the Great Wall, the
Emperor Tsin, 200 B. C., said “Shao Ming Yu Tien” (Heaven gives me my
decree to reign). Sunyacius and the republicans of 1911 said: “Tien Ming
Wu Chang” (The divine right lasts not forever).
Some of the political proverbs of the people are the following:
“An oligarchic government bites harder than a tiger.”
“A good hearer knows twice as much as a foolish talker, for he knows
himself and he knows the talker, too.”
“The great statesman makes public opinion his opinion.”
“When the whale gets out of his element, even minnows can safely
laugh.”
“In the rise and decline of his country, each man has his share.”
Chang Chih Tung, the famous viceroy of Wuchang in 1909, used to
say, “Treachery can turn fame to everlasting stench.” May the New China
not be a traitor to progress. Chang was the progressive who established,
among many other modern plants, the wonderfully successful Hanyang
steel plant, whose products are used in Europe, both coasts of America,
Japan and in China on the roadbed from Canton to Harbin, 2,000 miles of
shining steel, in that “Celestial” land that is beginning to find that it has a
grand terrestrial future.

XII

SOME PUBLIC WORKS IN OLD CHINA

Will the spirit which instituted the ancient notable public works of
China revive again? That is the question. The greatest irrigation work in the
world, 2,100 years old, is in China at Chingtu. It was invented by Li Ping,
the engineer-governor, B. C. 250. A plain seventy-five miles by forty miles
is irrigated. It supports nearly 4,000,000 people. The water is taken from the
Min River at Kwan Hien above Chingtu in April, and is permitted to run in
the thousands of channels until November. Then the great banks of the Min
are restored, as the rains are sufficient, and the river runs in its old bed to
join the “father of waters”, the Yangtze River, at Sui Fu. The dikes are made
of iron, cement, stone, timber and bamboo cradles. Li left this message,
which is cut in the stones of his tomb outside the walls of Chingtu: “Shen
Tao Tan Ti Tso Yen” (Dig deep the bars, keep low the dikes). The Chinese
are going to use these works to produce power and light as well as
irrigation.
At Li Ling, over the Lu Ho River in southeast Hunan province, is a
high wooden cantilever bridge of six spans, four hundred and eighty feet
long and twenty feet wide, paved with cobbles, and covered with an
awning. The substructure is masonry, and the cantilever principle is
obtained by increasing the length of the pier timbers as they are laid on one
another. I want to describe a beautiful suspension bridge over the Yang Ti
River near Tali in Yunnan province, which shows that engineering ability
was generally spread throughout the provinces to reach thus far in the
extreme southwest. The double piers on each side of the stream rise in great
strength, and the arch is joined and roofed over most artistically in
characteristic Chinese style, like a temple. Eight suspended iron chains

make the floor of the bridge, which is anchored half-way up the stone piers,
under the arch. From the chains arises a bamboo fence, which is kept from
spreading by stanchions, under which you must stoop at regular distances.
There is a commemoration statue of a recumbent water buffalo at the foot
of one of the pairs of piers. It and the bridge are all that remain of the
forgotten assemblage of orators, patrons, troops and society which ages ago
graced the occasion, another triumph of the doers over the talkers. The
engineer and the architect alone build their own monuments. As in the case
of Christopher Wren at St. Paul’s, “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.”
China thinks more of the engineer than we credit her with thinking;
otherwise she would not have criticized the Manchu so much of late.
Between high banks over the River Lou, in west Szechuen province, is the
famous Lou Ting Haio bridge, built in 1700. It is one hundred and ninety-
two feet long and has nine suspended iron chains, with loose planks laid
across. At Chow Chu, near Swatow, there is a beautiful stone pier bridge
over the Han River. Shops are established at each pier, and the floor of the
shop protrudes, and is supported with great poles that retreat back to the
piers. A daily fair is held upon the bridge, because it is the most central
point for the travelers from many villages. Each village of the district has its
own day for its fair. At Changchow, near Amoy, is a wonderful bridge, from
engineering and artistic points of view. The great Chah Siang built it eight
hundred years ago from voluntary subscriptions. It is one thousand yards
long. There are one hundred and twenty piers, and the height above the
water is forty feet. Five stones of one hundred tons each, twenty feet long,
compose the roadway, each stone being several feet wide. The piers up-
stream are made with a cutwater bow. At Kweiyang, the capital of
Kweichau province, a massive stone bridge of ten piers, with cutwaters,
shows what ancient China could execute in masonry. Near the rich coal
mines at Ping Hsiang, in Kiangsi province, there is a high five-arched, pier-
pinnacled, balustraded bridge, which is singularly beautiful. There are
shrines on the piers, which also have cutwaters. Chinese engineers
discovered the principles of the true arch; that is, a complete ring of
voussoirs, and not the succession of protruding corbels invented by the
Hindus. The Chinese are just discovering western industry and inventions,
but we are just discovering Chinese engineering, with engineers like their
Yu and Chah Siang, and the modern “Jeme”, which will cause not a little
surprise and enthusiasm in the practical Occidental world.

At Yangchow, on the Yangtze River, there is a remarkable pavilion
bridge. The heaviest part of the stone bridge is in the middle of the stream,
which is let through the masonry in a number of half and full arch tunnels.
Over these tunnels rises the heavy masonry pile, topped with an artistic
balustrade. On this is a superstructure of five beautiful pavilions, with
prominent up-curling eaves. The bridge descends on each side to the banks
along a sloping abutment. It is an exceptional structure even for varied
China, both from an artistic and engineering standpoint. The ancient Liu Ko
stone bridge over the Hun River north of Peking is famous for its lion-pier
terminals, its carved stone balustrade which is in the ornate style. After
leaving Szechuen province, on the road into Yunnan, over the Niu Lan
River, at Kiang Ti, is a noted suspension bridge, hung between two heavy
piers in a gorge, the piers being surmounted with curve-roofed pavilions.
The carvings of monkeys, lions, etc., are very fine. The bridge, which is one
hundred and fifty feet by twelve feet, is made of iron chains, pulled very
taut, showing the unusual strength of the anchorage. There is also a hand
chain. The pavilions are, as usual, used as a restaurant and an inn for
travelers.
The two most famous suspension bridges are over the Mekong River in
Yunnan province, between Tali and Yungchang, and over the Salween River
on the main road to Burma. These chain bridges are hung from heavy piers
deep down in the vast gorges, and show that men were mighty enough in
those old days to tackle so mighty a problem. The Ban Chiao bridge at
Yungchang is worthy of the famous engineers of that province. Strong stone
piers are sunk down into the swift stream and anchored to the high banks. A
secure bridge has been laid down over this support. The abutments are
raised and roofed with a glorious double pagoda, the ridge, curling eaves,
flying supports and ornaments all being splendidly carved. The bridge itself
is protected with a balustrade, and is roofed with tiles throughout. It is both
an artistic and a substantial structure. So much for the beautiful bridges of
the old régime, nearly all it will be noted in the native Chinese section of
the country. Herr Dorpmuller and other German engineers are teaching the
Chinese the revival of stone bridges by the massive structures which they
have erected on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow railway.
A beginning has been made in erecting iron truss bridges. The very
long pier bridge carrying the Peking-Hankau (Belgian built) railway across

the Yellow River is well known, and has stood longer than it was thought it
would because of the shifting foundation. The eight-pier steel bridge over
the Hwei River on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow railway was erected by
the Wright-Headson Company, of Motherwell, Scotland. At Shanghai there
is the wide Garden bridge. A steel bridge has been erected over the Yellow
River at Lanchow, the capital of remote Kansu province, and at Tientsin is
the Chin Kung truss bridge. At Chungking a structure has been erected
across the Yalung River. The Hongkong-Canton, Tientsin-Nanking, Peking-
Hankau, North China and Kiachou-Tsinan railways of course have many
steel culvert bridges. There are already a considerable number of
remarkable steel truss bridges of eighteen to twenty-four spans over Liao,
Nu Erh, Hsiao, Taling, Sha, Tawen, Yellow and other great rivers of China.
The French railway, from Haiphong to Yunnan City, is built over one
hundred small bridges in the crossing of the Red River, Namti and Song
River valleys.
From Peking to Tungchow, at the head of navigation from the coast,
about twenty miles, runs a broad road paved five hundred years ago by the
Ming kings with immense blocks, three feet square by two feet thick. The
road sadly needs resetting, but one can readily imagine what a splendidly
substantial road it once was in those spacious days of the last of the pure
Chinese kings. The Ming thought of art and public works. The Manchu has
thought more of intrigue and private dinners since he gave up riding horses
and living in tents. One of the strongest charges against the Manchu was
that he threw the great public works which he inherited into ruin. This
Tungchow Road is the road over which commerce, invasion and many a
dignified embassy have gone during the recent strenuous centuries.
The Che Ling Road runs from Chinchow, in Hunan province, to
Canton. This is the road the new railway will take. The foot road is fifteen
feet wide and composed of great stone blocks one foot thick. Before traffic
was gathered at Hankau and Canton by steamships, the traffic on the Che
Ling foot road was very heavy, and shops lined the long stone highway.
Another famous road, the Mei Ling, also composed of stone blocks, climbs
the great Nan Shan (Southern Mountains) and connects Nangan in Kiansi
province and Canton. This is the road that Abbé Huc took in 1849 when he
made his daring journey from Tibet to Chingtu, Chungking, Hankau,
Kowkiang, Nanchang, up the Kan River to Canton and Macao. There is a

famous imperial road from Peking to Jehol, through Kupikan pass, where
the Manchus may finally be segregated. The road from Peking to the Ming
tombs is paved with a course of large stones. The “Great Road” runs from
Peking to Canton along the coast, and answers to the old Japanese
“Tokkaido”, which runs from Tokio to Kioto. It was a Mongol road, dating
back to the Great Wall. The best Chinese roads, however, were made in the
tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries A. D., during the Sung dynasty, whose
capital was Hangchow.
In 1890 the province of Szechuen built sixty-five miles of a mountain
river road in the gorges of the Yangtze River, starting from Kwei-chow and
running eastward. The road is from one hundred to five hundred feet above
high water and is cut six feet wide and eight feet high into the limestone
cliffs, truly a splendid revival of the noble works of the Ming kings, and in
a sublime situation not to be equaled anywhere. The Szechuen people boast
that their “road goes where a monkey couldn’t hang”. The road was planned
and executed entirely on Chinese initiative. The best known road in China,
and considering its length, the best conditioned road in the empire, runs for
four hundred miles in Szechuen province from Wan Hsien on the Yangtze
River, overland to Chingtu City, the capital. It is called the Siao Pen Lu
(smaller north road), and is paved to the width of six feet. It has many
wonderful staircases cut up mountain faces. The road could be shortened
one hundred miles if bridges were built at the gorges. An internationally
owned railway was planned for this route. From Chungking to Chingtu in
Szechuen province, up hill and down, and across fields and marshes, runs a
traveled road paved much of the way with large stone slabs. From
Chungking to Sui Fu, along the Yangtze River for two hundred miles runs a
notable stone road five feet wide. Along all these old roads the freight of
400,000,000 people has been carried on the backs of men and women, and
even children, whether by barrow or shoulder load, during the long quiet
centuries, at an awful cost of money; for too large a proportion of the nation
has been engaged in the transportation as compared with the producing
department, and this is one reason why China has been poor so long.
Wells have been sunk by contractors, with whom the mayor of the
village (hsiang lao) dealt. A brick caisson, fitted on a bamboo frame, is dug
under and sunk. On this caisson the upper wall is built. Sometimes iron-
pointed bamboo pipes are driven through the bottom of the well. These old

methods will give way to the new, and windmills will begin to hum in old
China.
The modern water-works of Peking take the water from the Sha Ho, a
clear stream in the Western Hills. There are settling tanks, pumping stations,
stand-pipes, etc. One hundred and thirty thousand families are supplied
from the mains. The same concession to labor has been made as at
Hongkong, in that the cleaning of the filter sand and gravel is done by hand
instead of by machine. Nearly all the treaty ports are putting in modern
water-works, which have been sorely needed. China’s death rate is
decreasing, and it is not necessary, even from a Chinese point of view, that
there should be so many births or dual wives any more.
Electric light plants are in operation at nearly all the coast treaty ports,
as well as at some of the Yangtze treaty ports and West River ports inland.
In the Occident, intellectual and spiritual light preceded lighted roads and
the light of science, but as everything is opposite in China, it seems that
science is preceding intellectual and spiritual light. But “these twain shall
meet in one equator round the globe”.
The Lighthouse Department of the National Customs is employing
foreign engineers in harbor and channel work, and some improvements
have been made on the coast and along the rivers, the provincial authorities
making a special tax wherever possible to foot the bills. Often the boatmen,
merchants’ and bankers’ guilds are required to subscribe.
The first systematized attempt to handle public works scientifically was
undertaken by the provincial assemblies of Nganhwei and Kiangsu
provinces in the summer of 1911, during the awful famines, which followed
the great floods. America has sent large contributions of flour and money
for rice. The assemblies put the men, whom the floods withheld from their
fields, on railway building, canal dredging, bridge building, and road
making. It was along these roads that the triumphant right wing of the
republicans marched, headed by Generals Hsu and Ling, in the memorable
attack on Nanking, which broke the imperial resistance, and threw the
Manchu over the yamen wall!
Self-reliance is half brother of independence. I have found that with
these improvements has grown up not a little talk of “China for the
Chinese”. One finds constant complaints in the native Chinese press that

lucrative contracts, such as the erection of government buildings, are given
to Japanese and other foreign contractors instead of local firms. The signs,
taken altogether, are hopeful, and West and East have enough to interchange
without overlapping each other. Nice adjustments will have to be made in
some cases, but tact, patience, mutual sympathy and altruism will in the end
overcome any misunderstandings that may arise.

XIII

THE INFLUENCE OF JAPAN

In 1911 Japan’s tariff agreements expired and a new high tariff was put
into effect in the effort to raise $300,000,000 a year as the state’s revenue.
The same result was experienced as in India. Home manufacturers operated
in the smaller industries, and many larger foreign capitalists opened
Japanese branches. For instance, the Lever Soap Company, of England,
came to Osaka, and the Armstrong-Vickers-Maxim Company, of Newcastle,
the gun-founders and warship builders, came to Muroran in Ezo Island, to
be near the coal mines, the iron ore being imported largely from Tayeh,
China, and much of the pig iron from Hanyang, China. Prices of living have
advanced beyond wages, and in 1912 the municipalities of Tokio, etc., had
to open free rice kitchens to feed crowds of the impoverished and
unemployed. The poor bear the heaviest share of the new taxes and the
increased prices levied by the trusts. The profits of some of the large trusts
go out of the country. There is the same complaint as in China, that foreign
capital and home monopoly are exploiting franchises, subsidy chests and
tariffs. The new high tariff is a success for the monopolists, just as the
American tariff was from 1865 to 1911. The complaint among the people of
the privilege-made-wealth running the government and burdening the
taxpayer is as bitter as in some other countries. The suffrage being limited
in Japan to five millions out of sixty million people, this discontent does not
yet show itself so quickly as in America and Britain. American and British
newspapers, magazines and books which voice reform, and real and not
deputized representation of the taxed, are translated, and widely read, not
only in Japan, but in China.

The world knows the effective work of the Japanese press bureau,
organized with the aid of foreign advisers, before the Japan-Russia War.
This included the publication of Professor Nitobe’s book on Bushido in
Philadelphia, glorifying to the highest pitch of the warm Oriental
imagination everything Japanese. This had much to do with preparing the
way for the Japanese advance in Manchuria. That press bureau has been
strengthened, and has its inspired organs in some of the large cities of the
Occident. No other country is able to color the news on occasions as Japan
is able. With the cry of lèse majesté, Japan, Germany and Russia seem to be
successful in stamping out much of the independent criticism of the taxed,
or those to whom equal opportunity has been denied. There seems to be
only one hope for real liberty in Japan and elsewhere, the rise again, as in
Bunyan’s, Milton’s and Franklin’s time, of the independent pamphlet and
book, whose one motto shall be, “No taxation without real representation.”
The Japanese have appointed the Koreans, Count Yi and Viscount Cho,
to represent the absorbed Korean people, and these two men are expected to
sign every document praising the rule of the Japanese, which document is
then wired over the world by the thoroughly organized press agency. The
former immense missionary influence of the Americans among the common
people is slowly being choked out, and the large foreign gold and other
mining industries of Korea, which promised so well, are also now under
strict watch. In other words, the system of dummification has been applied
to Korean politics, and the famous American teachers and political advisers
have found it well to leave the peninsula. I would instance the long articles
in the New York Times of June 6, 1912, and the New York Herald of
September 1, 1912, in which the American Presbyterian and other churches
charge the Japanese bureaucracy with wholesale persecution, “planting” of
evidence, imprisonment and torture of thousands of Korean political
prisoners as late as 1912. Two methods of colonization face each other in
contrast at the threshold of China—the Japanese method in Korea, and the
American method in the Philippines. Both are progressing commercially,
but the latter alone is progressing educationally and altruistically, so far. It
is noticeable in Korea that the Japanese are breaking down many beautiful
walls and temples to build in their place ugly utilitarian houses. They pay
very little respect to those whom they have conquered. They are obliterators
of art, where art detains utility. The name of the land has been changed to
Chosen. In Manchuria, despite conventions, the Japanese maintain ten times

the railway guard of soldiers agreed upon. Japan will bear friendly watching
everywhere, as the American writers, Millard and Homer Lea, are
constantly urging. Her armaments cost her a heavy taxation and she is
searching for ways to recoup herself. If Manchuria is to be saved to China,
it will be owing more to America’s insistence than to Britain, for Britain at
present is tied up to Japan, and Britain in India has given a hostage to the
East. Perhaps the best way to save Manchuria is to encourage Chinese
emigration, and this plan is now working out, tens of thousands of
Shangtungese leaving yearly for the three rich Manchurian provinces. The
American suggestion that the Russian and Japanese railways in Manchuria
should be made international is possibly not so good a plan as to sell those
roads to China with money loaned for the purpose, and clean Manchuria of
Russian and Japanese troops. There seems no permanent reason why China
should not run Manchurian railways and mines as well and as profitably as
she has run the North China Railway and the Kaiping mine of Pechili
province. To illustrate how Chinese officialdom looks upon the general
subject, I quote from Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan’s memorial, approved by Li
Hung Chang, written in 1893: “Japan attempts now and again to be arrogant
—like a mantis when it assumes an air of defiance—and to despise China,
and gives us no small amount of trouble on the smallest pretext.”
The advance party has its critics in Japan. The Tokio Nichi, the Osaka
Mainichi, the Tokio Jiji and the Tokio Yorodzu take the nation to task for
attempting to compete with America’s navy. They cry out against the
expansionists’ slogan of “Japan’s supremacy on the Pacific”. Here is the
Yorodzu’s plaint against the heavy taxes involved: “Go to the hamlets and
villages, and you find the sons of our soil wearing the sad and worn
appearance of the ‘man with the hoe’. Ask the shopkeepers and merchants,
and they tell you that they are at a loss to know how to make ends meet. So
do small manufacturers and men of moderate salaries, and in fact all who
come under the general term of the middle class. Why? What else but that
their taxes are too heavy, and because the price of commodities has risen
too high since the war? The war has increased the wealth only of the
contractors, speculators, and a small group of millionaires, which accounts
for the sudden rise of the prices of the necessaries of life. Thus the chasm
between the poor and the rich is widening every day. What will become of
the country if the government does not bend all its energies to the
recuperation of our national strength, which has been overtaxed during and

since the late war? The only course which the government should follow at
this critical moment is to curtail all the unnecessary expenses of
administration, most of all, those of the army and navy.” This succinctly
covers what volumes could not cover better. The average Japanese income
is twenty-three dollars gold a year, out of which one-fifth goes to taxes.
Freight rates and tariffs are in some places as powerful as battleships
and battalions in keeping out the commerce of a rival. When Japan and
Russia rejected America’s proposition for an international control of
Manchurian railways, so that the commerce of all nations would pay the
same duty and receive the same car supply in Manchuria, Japan and Russia
made a secret treaty regarding Manchuria on July 4, 1910, and another
agreement in 1912. Among other points, it covered interchange rates. The
Russian railways can by high rates keep out competitive Japanese goods,
and the Japanese railways can retaliate. On non-competitive goods needed
for local consumption, low through rates are accorded, Japan favoring the
famous Harbin flour, timber, kaoliang spirits from the Harbin distilleries,
and Amur salmon and fish. Russia accords low rates northward to Japanese
(i. e., Fushun and Yentai) coal, cement, fresh food, etc. On export
competitive soybeans, for instance, by low rates Japan tries to coax Russian
shipments southward via Dairen, and Russia makes a similar effort to route
Japanese-controlled beans via Vladivostok, but should a Russian shipper try
to send ten miles in the direction of Japanese-owned Dairen he would find
the soy rate higher than all the five hundred miles to Vladivostok.
By indirect methods, such as loans at low interest, rebated godown
charges, rebated rates, and what not (for where there’s a will there’s a way)
Japan can militate against the competition of American and British cottons,
woolens, machinery, etc., in Manchuria. When the Chinese junks on the
Liao River compete in the open season for the soy-bean traffic for
Newchwang, the Japanese railways quote as low a rate as five mills per ton
mile to Dalny, as compared with the lowest rate in America of eight mills.
Japan is a David when she goes out to slay! Japan was the whole cause of
the denial by China of an American-financed and constructed railway from
Chin Wang Tao through Manchuria northward to Aigun. Yet she says she
doesn’t mean to stay in Manchuria! She did not broad-gage Kuroki’s
difficult Antung-Mukden railway recently in such a permanent way as to
suggest that she ever intended to retire or sell out, “treaties and conventions

notwithstanding,” to use the apt phrase of the London Times. Though
America would under no circumstances accept a square foot of land in
China or Manchuria, except on lease in an international municipal
settlement, America must protect her growing and potential trade in
Manchuria and in China, and that trade will always be withstood in one way
or another by Japan. There is nothing now to go to war about, but there will
always be a good deal to argue about, and Japan, as well as the Manchus,
knows a dozen ways of presenting a smiling evasion. Have you ever
proposed a difficult question to a Japanese at a curio auction, and watched
his face! We have all voted that he was a success in making language hide
thought; a born diplomat.
The Japanese government debt outstanding is £300,000,000, as
compared with China’s debt of £93,000,000, and Japan’s industrials have
borrowed privately abroad an added £60,000,000.

Japan’s Debt Annual
in £. Interest. Due.
4% sterling £10,000,000
4½% sterling 29,750,000
4½% second
series 29,750,000
4% 1905 Russia
war 25,000,000 After 1921
5% 1906 Russia
war,
railways,
ships,
Manchuria,
Korea,
Formosa,
Saghalien,
etc. 183,000,000
5% 1907 11,500,000 After 1922
4% 1910 11,000,000 After 1920

Total Japan’s
debt £300,000,000 £12,000,000
Total China’s
debt 93,000,000 4,642,000
Total India’s
debt 170,000,000

Great as is Japan’s debt, she can make heavy payments on it because
she owns her railways, and can allot the railway surplus to the diminishing
of the debt, which China and India can also do because of the
nationalization of most of the railways.
In April, 1912, the Lodge Resolution in the American Senate brought
out the fact that a Japanese trans-Pacific steamship company, acting
doubtless on behalf of the Japan forward party, had long been endeavoring
to obtain from Mexico a strategic base on Magdalena Bay, which could, as
a coaling station, threaten the whole Pacific coast. How would Japan like it
if America obtained a coaling station in Manchuria? She and Russia
compelled China to refuse America a railway franchise in Pechili in 1910.
What is the comparative strength of the American and Japanese navies?
The German specialist, Count von Reventlow, and the American, Homer
Lea, who accompanied Sun Yat Sen to China as military adviser, though he
is not a military man, have in several books prophesied that Japan will and
can defeat America. Japan has four dreadnoughts, the Settsu, Kawachi, Aki
and Satsuma, completed since the Russia War, but they have only half the
gun-power of the ten American superdreadnoughts. Japan has eight
battleships of the 15,000-ton Mikasa type, including the salvaged and
repaired Russian ships, against America’s thirty battleships of the first class.
America can therefore patrol the Pacific from a Philippine base as soon as
she has docks enough, and if America and Britain ever approximate on
world questions, the British navy can be drawn to the Atlantic and waters
west of Ceylon. Two things are sure: first, that America and Britain will
never fight each other; and second, that Britain’s and America’s commercial
and political policies in the East are identical in destiny. As long as America
maintains a two-power standard on the Pacific, that is, two ships to one of
Japan’s she need fear no opposition from Japan, and Japan has certainly
nothing to fear from America, as China ceaselessly praises the altruistic and

non-land-grabbing policy of America over the world. It is true that Japan
has an almost irresistible army, but sea power dictates, as Admiral Mahan’s
brilliant books show. Japan whipped Russia because she controlled the sea.
If America controls the Pacific, the Japanese army could do nothing in
Korea or Manchuria.
Now, as to Russia, the navies of America and Britain pounding on the
Baltic door, if necessary, as a last resort, could make Russia behave in
Manchuria; but if this did not prove wholly effective, a reformed Chinese
army, trained by American and British officers, could in time do to the
Russian battalions that were left what Oyama’s, Nogi’s and Kuroki’s
regiments did. China should not yet be called upon to waste her money on a
navy, as she has no interests for a century beyond the great countries of
Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria, which America and Britain, with their
navies, desire to enable her to retain. Britain and America should have a
persistent, consistent policy, and there will be no naval war, the whole
world over; and Germany can reduce her navy and army charges, which are
a curse to her people. If Germany wants to do a noble work, let her use her
army to influence parliamentary and sociological reforms in tyrannical
Russia, where men are blighted by the curses of opinion-paralyzing
detectivism and oligarchism. If a consistent, persistent policy is maintained
there need no more be an Anglo-German feud on the Atlantic than an
American-Japanese feud on the Pacific.
England needs a two-power navy because she has Africa, India and
Atlantic Canada to defend. America needs a two-power Pacific navy
because she has, as a foster mother of civilization, to help defend Australia,
South America, the Philippines, Pacific Canada and republican China.
Looked upon in this way, a navy becomes a policeman, and not a
swashbuckler. Money is going to be invested to develop all these countries,
and property should be protected, not looted. Those nations which have the
most efficient naval police, and the most altruistic policies, are the nations
which should patrol, and they are America, Britain and possibly Germany,
if the last nation advances, as it seems now to be doing, in parliamentarism
to real representation. America and Lloyd George’s Britain alone are
essentially democracies, and therefore qualify in international altruism.
With Britain’s control of the Suez Canal, and America’s ownership of the
Panama Canal, efficiency is assured in these two nations effectively

standing by to protect political progress and world commerce on a fuller
and freer basis than it has ever been. In amenability and high mechanical
intelligence, Britain, America and Germany alone have qualified in the
management of navies.
Japan and America will not fight on the Pacific, as Count von
Reventlow and Homer Lea prophesy, but America will overbuild Japan
instead. Japan has been more carefully reading the new lesson taught by
America and Britain that there must be no absorption of old China, and she
is now thinking of a possible new rôle, as the interpreter of the East to the
West, and the West to the East. The head of the First Imperial College,
Doctor Nitobe, the coiner of “Bushido”, is foremost in propagating this
idea. Japanese school-teachers are most numerous in Chinese government
schools, especially as teachers of English, in learning which, however, they
are not half so expert as the Chinese themselves. Doctor Nitobe is a
Christian.
At the time of the Japanese War, Professor Nitobe, then with the Tokio
University, wrote a fanciful book on the theme, Bushido (Japanese
pronunciation of “Wu Shih Tao”—way of warrior). It was quite on the style
of Lafcadio Hearn’s apotheosis of the Japanese. Its effect in Japan was to
produce some hysteria and not a little conceit. Foreigners were led to
believe that the Japanese must be right because they were reckless. The
Japanese bureaucracy of the Choshiu, Satsuma and other clans used the
fetish to entrench themselves. No one can say that Japan has real
representative government. Her government is exactly the government that
Russia has. Her Diet is no more representative than is the Duma. The
ministry decides on the budget, and it is put through by steam-roller when
necessary, and ready-made opinion is given to the press. There is no such
thing as the British parliamentary system of the commons absolutely
controlling supply bills, or the American principle of the Lower House
being finally supreme. The extensive press bureau which was established to
popularize the Japan side of the Japan-Russia War, encouraged hara-kiri and
telegraphed over the world in exaggerated terms the details of every
hysterical and self-advertising suicide. For instance, if the warriors could
not take the fort, instead of trying again, they were to march up and blow
their brains out before the moving-picture film, so to speak, leaving a letter
for the Mikado as follows: “We could not do what you asked us; it is our

fault. Therefore in shame we hara-kiri. Bushido! Banzai, etc.” This thing is
being kept up to a degree, and as long as it is encouraged by the
bureaucracy, constitutional government in Japan will be postponed, the
emperor being worshiped in his old office of pope of Kioto instead of
constitutional emperor at Tokio.
I quote the following of many press despatches which constantly
appear in the Japanese and world press: “To give his life as an atonement
because the emperor of Japan had to spend an hour in a common waiting-
room, Moji Shijiro Shimidzu, a trainmaster, threw himself under a train.
Shimidzu had been in charge of arrangements for a journey the emperor
made from Kyushu, after witnessing the army maneuvers. The imperial
train was delayed by a derailment at a misplaced switch. Shimidzu left a
letter saying that he considered it his duty to pay for the emperor’s
embarrassment with his life.” The spectacular suicide of the immortal
captor of Port Arthur, General Nogi, and his wife at the time of the funeral
of the Mikado Mutsuhito on September 13, 1912, comes under the same
category of godless savagery forbidden mankind by the Sixth
Commandment of Sinai. It is time for Japan to cease posing through her
press bureau. We all admire her for many sane and grand things done, and
to tell the truth, we admire the Japanese people more than their present
system of a privileged government where only five millions out of sixty
millions enjoy the franchise. It is a government of the people, but not
sufficiently a government for the people, and certainly not a government by
all the people, all of which conditions Lincoln said should obtain if liberty
was to be assured. That is the aim of the whole world, and it has been
accomplished now in England, America, France, China, Portugal and
Switzerland. The Shimidzus, who commit suicide, do not exhibit patriotism
but hysterical conceit, and the thoroughly organized Japanese press bureau,
and the Choshiu, Satsuma, and other privileged clans, in their own best
interests, should discourage the nonsense; and instead of elevating the man
as a god in the Shinto shrine, they should exhibit him in the foyer of fools.
Christianity teaches that there is only one being for whom we should give
our lives, and that anything else is idolatry. It is not the emperor or the
president whom we are to serve, but the emperor’s men and women; the
president’s men and women; that is, the state, and a real emperor and a real
president must, too, serve the state, which is all the people. Such is the
modern logic Japan should teach her people, and not the hysteria of

Bushido. Japan is not ignorant of her disabilities, and each of the Seiyukei,
Kokuminto and Yushinkai parties are endeavoring to extend the educational
system which Guido Verbeck fashioned for the favored Satsuma, Choshiu,
Fujiwara, Gen, Tosa, Hizen, Kago and other clans of five millions, to the
forty-eight millions of agriculturalists, miners, factorymen and fishermen,
and twelve million Koreans and Formosans. Success to Japan’s educational
extension, is America’s and Britain’s hearty wish, for it “will calm a sea of
troubles”.
Japan has been the first nation in the world to attack the land taxation
question, and Germany and Britain have followed recently, a long way off,
however, and America will probably also follow the example. Until recently
the large estates held by barons and corporations have been taxed on the old
feudal medieval system of an infinitesimal valuation, while the small holder
has been taxed on the full selling value. This has now been changed, and
large owners in Japan can not hold at little cost to await unearned
increment. They must work the land or sell it. Until this system is adopted
the poor of the nations will be decapitalized by tariff, food, clothing,
building material, head, war, permit, excise, export, subsidy, educational
and other high taxes. Land values are about one-tenth what they are in
America, and the land tax is about eight per cent. on selling value. As in
China under the Manchus, land in Japan is nominally the property of the
emperor. Perpetual leases can only be owned outright by Japanese subjects,
or by a company which is incorporated only in Japan. A foreigner in Japan
can not own land, but his Japanese incorporated company can, as the land
would then be at Japan’s command, Japan having no extraterritoriality
exemption law favoring the foreigner, as has China, in civil and criminal
matters.
As is well known, the police are an arm of the central government and
not of the municipality, which savors of despotism and Russia’s example.
There is therefore no really free press in Japan, for state trials may not be
reported or commented on. The police exercise a censorship of news under
their Marunouchi Club of Tokio. There could be no Roosevelts, Wilsons,
Bryans and Lloyd Georges in Japan as in America and England!
They have their money trust question in Japan, for while there are
thousands of small gathering banks, they all deposit in the trust banks,
which thus control the use of “other people’s money”, i. e., credit. These

large banks, whose presidents confer in the meetings of the “Eel Society”,
are the Bank of Japan, Yokohama Specie Bank, Hypothec Bank, Japan
Credit Mobilier, Hokkaido Colonial Bank, Bank of Formosa, Bank of
Korea, and Mitsui’s Bank.
Japan must have its Gifford Pinchot somewhere. She has taken quick
action against states’ rights when conservation was endangered. It was
found that the provinces were selling water-power concessions to
speculators and dummies of the monopolies. The central government in
January, 1911, immediately suspended all provincial and colonial grants
until a national survey could be made, and applicants looked into. It is
proposed to harness several million horsepower of waterfalls on the
Switzerland, and not the Niagara plan (so as not to mar the scenery), which,
with cheap labor, will be a great asset of industrial Japan.

CHINESE REPUBLIC
(See larger)

That Japan has taken up officially the correction of complaints which
have been made in scores of books and hundreds of magazines on her
trickiness and lack of commercial honor is shown in the following article by
Minister of Commerce Oura, in the Jitsugyo no Nihon (Industrial Japan),
written after his world tour, in which he praises the sturdy honesty of old
free-trade England. “I could not help regretting to find that in commercial
morality Japan was too young and weak to be classed among the world’s
foremost countries. Everywhere I went I heard denunciations of and
complaints against Japan. Japanese business men not being particular about
commercial morality, people could not carry on business with our
merchants with confidence. I soon felt ashamed on reflecting upon the fact

that we Japanese had defects, subject to attacks and complaints in the matter
of commercial morality. Our merchandise can not pass the customs
authorities on a mere invoice, but is subjected to a rigorous examination.
British merchandise is always more substantial than is advertised. In short,
British-made goods never fail to justify their advertised description. Quite
the opposite is the case with Japanese goods. Complaints are raised against
Japanese manufactures that they are not up to sample. It is usual, for
instance, for a layer of larger-sized fruit to be arranged on top of the box.
Instances of overcharging, and tricky inferior imitations of standard goods
are common, and damage our reputation.” Confession and contrition are the
parents of reform, and Japan is waking up.
Japan worked her mines in 1911 to the following extent: Coal,
16,000,000 tons, value, $30,000,000; copper, 120,000,000 pounds, value
$15,000,000; pig iron, 60,000 tons, value, $1,500,000 (Kamishi and Sennin
mines); zinc ore, 22,000 pounds, value, $300,000; lead, 8,000,000 pounds,
value, $250,000. The coal came from Japan mines only, and does not
include the great product of the Fushun and Yentai mines in Manchuria. The
copper was mined principally at the Kune, Kosaka, Ashio and Besshi mines
at a cost of nine cents, which is lower than the American cost. Japan is
exhausting the ore in the islands, and is, therefore, looking to rich Korea
and China for her supply of this war and industrial necessity. Her need of
copper is another incentive to expand politically.
Japan is building a railway along the western length of the main island,
and will need $18,000,000 of railway equipment for it. She will probably go
abroad for half of this. Small as Japan is, this railway will open up scenic
and productive districts and add vastly to the riches and strategic resources
of the country.
The method by which Japan built the Kobe harbor piers out into deep
water was most modern. Cement boats, or caissons, one hundred and
nineteen feet long, thirty-five feet high and thirty-four feet wide were built
on a floating dock (planned by a Westminster, England, concern) at the
shore. They were then conveyed to sea, the dock being sunk from under the
cement boat. This latter was floated into position, and gradually sunk with
cement, rubble and sand in the comparatively cheap but massive piers. A
tonnage of 135,000 tons can be warped alongside the dredged sea walls at
one time. It is not so long ago that everything had to be lightered out to the

steamers in the wind-swept roadstead of Kobe, and many days were lost
waiting for smooth water. The writer recalls being held at Kobe for eighteen
hours during a typhonic blow because no launch or sanpan could bring off
the passengers who had gone ashore during a calm. There are now no
delays. There are power-driven cranes and travelers, godowns, and every
facility for the quick handling of cargo. As at Montreal, Hamburg,
Liverpool, Hongkong, etc., the government directly or indirectly assists,
advances, or guarantees in securing the necessary harbor works, railway
connection and dock machinery at Kobe. Kobe is Japan’s great import
harbor, as Yokohama is her export harbor. Tokio is to be an export harbor,
as a long canal for 10,000-ton ships is now being dredged to Yokohama
Bay.
Japan’s petroleum is found in the Echigo district, straight across Hondo
Island from Tokio. The oil is excellent for illuminating and lubricating, and
the industry, which is highly protected, employs 3,300 people, and pays
twenty-five per cent. to the Nippon Oil Company. Fuel oils and crude oils
are brought from Sumatra, America and Mexico.
Much complaint was heard in England when the Grimsby steam
trawlers, owned by syndicates, drove the small owner and the hardy
fisherman from the seas, affecting the recruiting of the navy, as well as
driving a hardy independent class into a condition of economical and
political servitude. Japan has copied this unfortunate example, and steam
trawlers have been introduced in her fishing waters. The government
promises to control it before it seriously affects recruiting for the navy.
The Japanese have gone into shirt-making, the duty on raw material
being rebated when the shirts are exported. Foreign designs are copied. The
men receive nine dollars a month and the women six dollars. The hours are
nine and one-half a day. The companies, like many of the Japanese
industrials, grant a few holidays, and provide theatrical entertainments,
moving-picture shows, baths and tea, none of which is costly, but seem to
keep the workers from realizing that their wages should be three times what
they are, even in Japan, for taxes amount to one-third of the income.
Winter clothing for the masses in general, and service clothing for the
navy, army, artisans, etc., under modern conditions of hard wear, has
become a stern problem in both Japan and China. Silk will not do. Cotton

will not answer in this field. Wool has been adopted, and the gorgeous
colors and texture of the Orient begin to vanish before the requirements of a
practical age. Two of the largest woolen mills in Japan are the Mousseline
(Boshuku) Weaving Company, at Osaka, and the Japan Woolen Company,
at Kobe. Eighty per cent. of the total area of rocky Japan is not under
cultivation, being ruined with tough bamboo grass, which seems impossible
to eradicate, and which destroys the delicate mouths and throats of sheep.
Japan has, therefore, to import her wool from Mongolia, Manchuria,
England, France, Germany and Australia. Not having a full supply of yarn
mills, she imports yarn also from England, France and Germany. Goat’s and
camel’s hair is also imported from South America and Mongolia.
The movement for the conservation of timber has taken hold in Japan,
reinforced cement poles, as well as creosoted poles, being used. The largest
creosote works are at Osaka, and the preserved wood is now used for
Japan’s famous light buildings, railroad trestling, ties, bridges, etc. Japan
has an exceedingly rich treasure forest (one of the world’s last) east of the
South Manchurian Railway, and also bordering the Fusan-Mukden line.
Much of the hard wood of Japan and her colonies is being brought to
America for furniture-making at present.
Japanese steamers will doubtless run to the east coast of America
through the Panama Canal. Micki Shonzo talks of sending twenty of his
vessels through. A Japanese line now carries nitrates, hides, salt, horses,
beef, wool, fish, grain, etc., from Chile, and coal, rice, tea, silk, oils, bean
cake, manufactures, matting, etc., to Chile. Japanese shipping in 1912
amounted to the enormous tonnage of 1,000,000, as compared with 170,000
tons on the day before the Chinese indemnity was paid to Japan in 1895.
Perhaps the rich dividends made by the Oriental Consolidated (gold)
Mining Company, at Unsan, in the Yalu district of Korea, made Japan as
anxious commercially as diplomatically to secure Korea. This American
company, with which Leigh Hunt was connected, and whose concession
was obtained through the offices of United States Minister Allen, has made
in a concession 500 miles square 4,000 per cent. in ten years. One hundred
thousand dollars was put into the gold mining plant, and $4,000,000 has
been paid in dividends, the mines themselves, instead of added capital,
paying for their own development. The Unsan plant is largely self-
contained, having crushers, a foundry, machine shops, a fleet, a railway and

lumbering plant, hospital and barracks. The mining costs only one dollar
and forty cents per ton, hand labor, the Koreans being the best miners in the
Far East, owing to their docile patience. Some of the mines are one
thousand feet deep. The Korean Exploration Company (half American and
half Japanese) has a gold mining concession at Chicksan, south of Seoul.
The new terms that will probably be imposed on foreign mining by Japan
will be at least twenty-five per cent. royalty on the net profits, machinery
imported and ore exported to be duty and loti taxes remitted, respectively. If
Japan can do the smelting, of course ores must go there for treatment.
In Formosa the three largest Japanese sugar companies are the Niitaka,
the Taihoku and the Minami Seito (Southern Sugar Company), capitalized
at about $2,000,000 gold each, with an output of 300,000 tons a year. Japan
can increase this, and supply the world. The government grants subsidies to
the cane growers for fertilizer, and money prizes for model plantations, the
high tariff against Hongkong, of course, being a subsidy for the Formosan
sugar mills, as far as supplying Japan is concerned.
Japan has opened an electric-driven cotton mill, the Naigai Wata, at
Suchow Creek, Shanghai, sending to America for the boilers, to Germany
for the dynamos, and to England (Oldham) for the spinning machinery. The
owners and foremen are Japanese, the workers Chinese. Eighty-five per
cent. of the material is local grown, and fifteen per cent. comes from India
in Japanese steamers. The finished product, mainly yarns, is sent up the
Yangtze River and along the coast in Japanese steamers, and is admitted
into Japan preferentially as far as foreign products are concerned. The
Japanese are extending their ownership of cotton mills erected in China, for
the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha has bought the Hua Hsuan, the Shanghai and the
San Tai mills at Shanghai, and the Wuchang Spinning Mill at Wuchang. The
Mitsui Bishi Kaisha has bought the Chen Hua mill at Shanghai, and the
Nippon Mill Company has bought the Jih Hsin mill in China. There is much
food for thought in this situation. The Japanese also own one-third of the
largest translating press in China, the Commercial Press of Shanghai.
The Japanese firm of Mitsui has established a refinery at Hankau to
handle the famous nuts of Szechuen province, which produce the oil known
as China wood oil. The Mitsui firm also handles the production of soy-bean
oil in Manchuria, shipping the oil and the cake in great quantities in their
own steamers to Europe and America. The Mitsuis do their own banking.

The soy-oil is used for cooking, soap making, and as a substitute in paints
for linseed oil, which is becoming scarce. The cake is used as a milk food
and a fertilizer in Europe and America. To what proportions the industry has
grown can be judged by the following figures: Newchwang (Chinese)
shipped 230,000 tons of beans and 400,000 tons of bean cake in 1911.
Dairen (Japanese) shipped 450,000 tons of beans and 300,000 tons of bean
cake. Vladivostok (Russian) shipped 250,000 tons of each. The soy-bean oil
amounted to about 700,000 hundredweight. This immense crop speaks
eloquently of the richness of the black soil of the three provinces of vast
Manchuria. The bean is also now being planted in Szechuen province in the
rows where the nefarious poppy once bloomed, and America is using
quantities of seed in the southern states in connection with enriching land
which has been impoverished by cotton. The soy-bean, being nitrogenous,
adds to, instead of taking from, the life of the soil. One ton of beans, besides
two tons of soy hay, can be produced per acre.
Canadian and South African railways may own hotels, express,
telegraph, telephone and land companies, but here is what the charter of the
South Manchuria (Japan owned) Railway Company permits them to do:
operate railways, cities, steamships, hotels, mines, electric light and gas
plants, tramways, laboratories, laundries, shops, dormitories, go-downs
(warehouses), hospitals, Y. M. C. A.’s, schools, libraries, mills, selling
agencies, stockyards, forests, sawmills, farms, kaoliang distilleries, etc. This
reminds one of the ancient East India Company’s powers before Warren
Hastings was impeached, or of the ambition of Incoporator Dill in the
palmy days of the incorporation laws of New Jersey State before the
Interstate Commerce Commission got into its stride.
The pernicious influence of the yoshiwara and the demi-monde in
Japan and the Japanese settlements and colonies throughout the Far East, is
fully covered in the tenth chapter of Price Collier’s The West in the East. If
the fire which destroyed the extensive, obtrusive yoshiwara quarter in the
Susaki section of Tokio in 1911 had swept the whole institution away,
womanhood throughout the world would not have the grievance against
Japanese society which it now has. Neither China nor India ever sank this
low in morals, despite all the talk about concubinage and slavery. The fault
lies in the inherent weakness of religion in Japan. The Buddhism and
Confucianism (Shintoism) which Japan imported, have degenerated and lost

soul in the exotic state. If China needs Christianity, Japan needs it more.
The Japanese women are delightfully vivacious; it is a pity so many should
lose their self-respect. Possibly some of it substantiates the eternal teaching
that no nation can persistently ignore poverty and not suffer in morals. The
Japanese government is now doing something to remedy conditions and
raise the moral tone. The fault lies largely with the people themselves; too
great a love of money and too little a love of real religion, with the usual
result that sacred womanhood is the first to be driven down at the wall.

XIV

PRESSURE OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE ON
CHINA

Many books have been written on the Russian advance to the Pacific,
and they eventually induced Britain to hurl Japan on the aggressor. These
volumes include Putnam Weale’s fervid volumes, works by Lord Beresford,
Senator Beveridge, Norman, Chirol, Colquhoun, Alexandria Hosie,
Younghusband, Krausse, Lord Curzon and others. That advance has been
pushed back as far as the borders of Shingking, the southernmost of
Manchuria’s three provinces, and out of the Korean Peninsula, but it is
marking time in the other two Manchurian provinces of Kirin and Helung-
Kiang, and in vast Mongolia, Jungaria and Turkestan. Some critics have
said that in having Russia pushed back from the Pacific, the wave has
backed up on Persia. The American one-time treasurer of Persia, Mr.
Shuster, believes Britain has recently lost to Russia in the buffer states of
the Indian border. Certainly a new party has risen in British diplomacy,
whose writers are Maurice Baring, Hardinge and others, which is not at all
Russophobic. Many believe that Russia intends to try again in Manchuria,
and others believe that Japan will concede to Russia the two northern
Manchurian provinces; or again, that Japan will occupy all Manchuria, and
support Russia’s occupation of Mongolia and part of the Pechili province.
As long as there is oligarchic rule in Russia, there will be danger of the
Russian advance, as the aristocracy wishes to keep an army employed, so as
to use it when necessary on an ambitious Duma, or a people who demand
real representation in return for the tax privilege. Therefore Russia will for
many years press China at one spot or another, and how to checkmate this
pressure is one of Britain’s hardest problems, in which America is involved

because of the Hay doctrine of the “non-partition of China,” which is the
Monroe doctrine of the Far East.
Early in 1911 Russia disturbed the diplomats by sending a note to the
powers that she intended to make a military demonstration against Sungaria
and reoccupy, as from 1871 to 1881, trade routes and frontier cities like
Kuldja and Kobdo. Gullible China was induced to include in the treaty with
Russia at that time permission for Russian caravaners to cross Western
China under Russian arms; to trade without paying duty, and to establish
Russian “imperium in imperio” settlements. The Novi Krai of Harbin
admitted that these extraterritorial demonstrations in Far Western China
aimed not so much at aggression in Turkestan as cajoling further privileges
in Manchuria, such as navigation on the Sungari, Russian settlements,
mining and railway rights, etc. On another occasion, Russia is party to the
rejection of America’s proposal of the internationalization of Manchurian
railways; or again Russia cites some secret coerced treaty and compels
China to refuse a franchise for an American railway from Chin-Wang to
Aigun, or Chin-Wang to Kailar. Yet at the same time Russia is arranging
with China to drop a railway on Peking down from Irkutsk, and a railway
from Semipalatinsk down on Jungaria and the headwaters of the great
Tarim River. The Russian advance is not an extinct volcano; one never
knows when it will be recrudescent somewhere. The party of Admiral
Alexeyev, General Spiridovitch, State Secretary Bezobrazov and Count
Bobrinsky, is not dead at St. Petersburg. Russia is to-day moving 100,000
colonists a year into Siberia. She is double-tracking the Siberian railway
eastward to Lake Baikal.
The following memorial to the throne, written by Viceroy Liu Ming
Chuan, and approved by Li Hung Chang in 1893, reveals China’s
knowledge of Russia’s deep designs: “We feel Russia’s grip on our throat,
and her fist upon our back, and our contact with her is a source of perpetual
uneasiness to our minds. When a quarrel occurs, we have to yield to her
demands.”
Though no one can show why, land-rich Russia considers Mongolia,
Turkestan, Ili, Jungaria, and two provinces of Manchuria, and even Tibet, as
her sphere. In the troubles of the revolution, during the last months of 1911,
harassed China felt Mongolia dragged from under her feet. The Chinese
amban at Koren (Urga) was discountenanced, and Russia set up the

Buddhist Lama as an independent ruler. Plans were also laid to run a
railway down from Kiakhta. The Mongolian princes frequently receive
presents to retain their sympathy and increase their obligations. Russia even
made demands that China should withdraw her troops from the outposts and
discontinue colonization, for China is beginning to learn the strategy of
emigration. The building of the all-Russian link on the north side of the
Amur River from Stretyinsk to Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, is going on
apace at great cost, because the Russians, in trying to settle the district,
refuse to employ Chinese, and have brought out 15,000 Russian railway
laborers. The river has too many shallows for successful transportation, and
it would not pay yet to dredge it. The Chun Kuo Pao, a native paper of
Peking, was so pusillanimous in its fear of Russia and Japan, as to
recommend in 1910 the abandonment of Manchuria to save Mongolia. I
have said pusillanimous, but I might have said venal, as an illustration that
Russian money may not neglect to seek power with some Chinese editors in
the northern provinces.
America desired to keep Japan and Russia separated in Manchurian
aggrandisement, and instead Russia came to a secret amicable agreement
with her old enemy, Japan, in June, 1912. The American, Mr. Shuster, at the
desire of Persia, was satisfactorily managing the customs of Persia, but
Russia successfully intrigued for his retirement. On February 22, 1912, in
the Hall of the Nobility, St. Petersburg, the Nationalist Party held a meeting
to denounce treaties with America. Count Bobrinsky, the president of the
Constitutional Conservative Party, stood up and called Ex-president
Roosevelt the “enemy of Russia,” referring to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty.
Plans were laid before the meeting showing how Chinese Turkestan could
supply America’s place in growing cotton for Russia. Several reasons were
given why Russia opposed America. The real reason was that Russia does
not like America’s and Britain’s policy of the “non-partition of China.” The
aristocracy of Russia also hate the influence upon the Duma of America’s
and Britain’s system of budgets and armies controlled by the lower house of
the people. The oligarchy of Russia hate America’s altruism that would
secure to growing China her ancient fields, mines and forests of Turkestan,
Mongolia and Manchuria. The Chinese rely on America’s altruism. There
was possibly more than humor in the Tientsin shopkeeper’s sign: “All
languages spoken; American understood.”