Book: The Fight For The Republic in China

B >> Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale >> The Fight For The Republic in China




This being the home of a literary race, papers and notebooks are on most
Members' desks. As the electric bells ring sharply an unending
procession of men file in to take their seats, for there has been a
recess and the House has been only half-filled. Nearly every one is in
Chinese dress (_pien-yi_) with the Member's badge pinned conspicuously
on the breast. The idea speedily becomes a conviction that this after
all is not extraneous to the nation, but actually of the living flesh, a
vital and imperative thing. The vastness and audacity of it all cannot
fail to strike the imaginative mind, for the four or five hundred men
who are gathered here typify, if they do not yet represent, the four or
five hundred millions who make up the country. You see as it were the
nation in profile, a ponderous, slow-moving mass, quickly responsive to
curious sub-conscious influences--suddenly angry and suddenly calm again
because Reason has after all always been the great goddess which is
perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their
movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate
commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of
nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses
his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would
do, but open, with the slim fingers speaking a language of their own,
twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history of
compromises. It would be interesting to write the story of China from a
study of the hands.

Each man goes to the rostrum to speak, and each has much to say. Soon
another impression deepens--that the Northerners with their clear-cut
speech and their fuller voices have an advantage over the Southerners of
the kind that all public performers know. The mandarin language of
Peking is after all the mother-language of officialdom, the _madre
lingua_, less nervous and more precise than any other dialect and
invested with a certain air of authority which cannot be denied. The
sharp-sounding, high-pitched Southern voice, though it may argue very
acutely and rapidly, appears at an increasing disadvantage. There seems
to be a tendency inherent in it to become querulous, to make its
pleading sound specious because of over-much speech. These are curious
little things which have been not without influence in other regions of
the world.

The applause when it comes proves the same thing as applause does
everywhere; that if you want to drive home your points in a large
assembly you must be condensed and simple, using broad, slashing
arguments. This is precisely what distinguishes melodrama from drama,
and which explains why excessive analysis is no argument in the popular
mind. Generally, however, there is not much applause and the voice of
the speaker wanders through the hall uninterrupted by signs of content
or discontent. Sometimes, although rather rarely, there is a gust of
laughter as a point is scored against a hated rival. But it dies away as
suddenly as it arose--almost before you have noted it, as if it were
superfluous and must make room for more serious things.

With the closing of a debate there is the vote. An electric bell rings
again, and with a rough hand the House police close all the exits. The
clerks come down into the aisles. They seem to move listlessly and
indifferently; yet very quickly they have checked the membership to
insure that the excessively large quorum requisite is present. Now the
Speaker calls for the vote. Massively and stiffly, as at a word of
command the "ayes" rise in their seats. There is a round of applause;
the bill has been carried almost unanimously. That, however, is not
always so. When there is an obstreperous mood abroad, the House will
decline to proceed with the agenda, and a dozen men will rise at a time
and speak from behind their desks, trying to talk each other down. The
Speaker stands patiently wrestling with the problem of procedure--and
often failing since practice is still in process of being formed. Years
must elapse before absolutely hard-and-fast rules are established. Still
the progress already made since August, 1916, is remarkable, and
something is being learned every day. The business of a Parliament is
after all to debate--to give voice to the uppermost thoughts in the
nation's mind; and how those thoughts are expressed is a continual
exposition of the real state of the nation's political beliefs.
Parliament is--or should be--a microcosm of the race; parliament is
never any better or any worse than the mass of the people. The rule of
the majority as expressed in the voting of the National Assembly must be
taken as a fundamental thing; China is no exception to the rule--the
rule of the majority must be decisive. But here another complexity of
the new Chinese political life enters into the problem. The existence of
a responsible Cabinet, which is not yet linked to the Legislative body
in any well-understood way, and which furthermore has frequently acted
in opposition to the President's office, makes for a daily struggle in
the administration of the country which is strongly to be condemned and
which has already led to some ugly clashes. But nevertheless there are
increasing indications that parliamentary government is making steady
headway and that when both the Permanent Constitution and the Local
Government system have been enforced, a new note will be struck. No
doubt it will need a younger generation in office to secure a complete
abandonment of all the old ways, but the writer has noted with
astonishment during the past twelve-month how eager even viceroys
belonging to the old Manchu regime have become to fall in with the new
order and to lend their help, a sharp competition to obtain ministerial
posts being evident in spite of the fact that the gauntlet of Parliament
has to be run and a majority vote recorded before any appointment is
valid.

One last anomaly has, however, yet to be done away with in Peking. The
deposed boy Emperor still resides in the Winter Palace surrounded by a
miniature court,--a state of affairs which should not be tolerated any
longer as it no doubt tends to assist the rumours which every now and
again are mysteriously spread by interested parties that a Restoration
is imminent. The time has arrived when not only must the Manchu Imperial
Family be removed far from the capital but a scheme worked out for
commuting the pension-system of so-called Bannerman families who still
draw their monthly allowances as under the Manchus, thanks to the
articles of Favourable Treatment signed at the time of abdication of
1912. When these two important questions have been settled, imperialism
in China will tend rapidly to fade into complete oblivion.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Although the events dealt with in Chapter XVI have brought China
face to face with a new crisis the force of the arguments used here is
in no wise weakened.

[22] Since this was written two Cabinet Ministers have been summarily
arrested.




CHAPTER XV

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


Such, then, were the internal conditions which the new administration
was called upon to face with the death of Yuan Shih-kai. With very
little money in the National Treasury and with the provinces unable or
unwilling to remit to the capital a single dollar, it was fortunate that
at least one public service, erected under foreign pressure, should be
brilliantly justifying its existence. The Salt Administration,
efficiently reorganized in the space of three years by the great Indian
authority, Sir Richard Dane, was now providing a monthly surplus of
nearly five million dollars; and it was this revenue which kept China
alive during a troubled transitional period when every one was declaring
that she must die. By husbanding this hard cash and mixing it liberally
with paper money, the Central Government has been able since June, 1916,
to meet its current obligations and to keep the general machinery from
breaking down.

But in a country such as China new dangers have to be constantly faced
and smoothed away--the interests of the outer world pressing on the
country and conflicting with the native interest at a myriad points. And
in order to illustrate and make clear the sort of daily exacerbation
which the nation must endure because of the vastness of its territory
and the octopus-hold of the foreigner we give two typical cases of
international trouble which have occurred since Yuan Shih-kai's death.
The first is the well-known Chengchiatun incident which occurred in
Manchuria in August, 1916: the second is the Lao-hsi-kai affair which
took place in Tientsin in November of the same year and created a storm
of rage against France throughout North China which at the moment of
writing has not yet abated.

The facts about the Chengchiatun incident are incredibly simple and
merit being properly told. Chengchiatun is a small Mongol-Manchurian
market-town lying some sixty miles west of the South Manchurian railway
by the ordinary cart-roads, though as the crow flies the distance is
much less. The country round about is "new country," the prefecture in
which Chengchiatun lies being originally purely Mongol territory on
which Chinese squatted in such numbers that it was necessary to erect
the ordinary Chinese civil administration. Thirty or forty miles due
west of the town cultivation practically ceases; and then nothing meets
the eye but the rolling grasslands of Mongolia, with their sparse
encampments of nomad horsemen and shepherds which stretch so
monotonously into the infinities of High Asia.

The region is strategically important because the trade-routes converge
there from the growing marts of the Taonanfu administration, which is
the extreme westernly limit of Chinese authority in the Mongolian
borderland. A rich exchange in hides, furs, skins, cattle and foodstuffs
has given this frontier town from year to year an increasing importance
in the eyes of the Chinese who are fully aware of the dangers of a
laissez aller policy and are determined to protect the rights they have
acquired by pre-emption. The fact that notorious Mongol brigand-chiefs,
such as the famous Babachapu who was allied to the Manchu Restoration
Party and who was said to have been subsidized by the Japanese Military
Party, had been making Chengchiatun one of their objectives, brought
concern early in 1916 to the Moukden Governor, the energetic General
Chang Tso-lin, who in order to cope with the danger promptly established
a military cordon round the district, with a relatively large reserve
based on Chengchiatun, drawn from the 28th Army Division. A certain
amount of desultory fighting months before any one had heard of the town
had given Chengchiatun the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the
Japanese began military manoeuvres in the district with various
scattered detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway
zone where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty to
be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent that
dangerous developments might be expected--particularly as a body of
Japanese infantry was billeted right in the centre of the town.

On the 13th August a Japanese civilian at Chengchiatun--there is a small
Japanese trading community there--approached a Chinese boy who was
selling fish. On the boy refusing to sell at the price offered him, the
Japanese caught hold of him and started beating him. A Chinese soldier
of the 28th Division who was passing intervened; and a scuffle commenced
in which other Chinese soldiers joined and which resulted in the
Japanese being severely handled. After the Chinese had left him, the man
betook himself to the nearest Japanese post and reported that he had
been grievously assaulted by Chinese soldiers for no reason whatsoever.
A Japanese gendarme made a preliminary investigation in company with the
man; then returning to the Japanese barracks, declared that he could
find no one in authority; that his attempts at discovering the culprits
had been resisted; and that he must have help. The Japanese officer in
command, who was a captain, detailed a lieutenant and twenty men to
proceed to the Chinese barracks to obtain satisfaction from the Chinese
Commander--using force if necessary. It was precisely in this way that
the play was set in motion.

The detachment marched off to the headquarters of the offending Chinese
detachment, which was billeted in a pawnshop, and tried to force their
way past a sentry who stood his ground, into the inner courtyards. A
long parley ensued with lowered bayonets; and at last on the Chinese
soldier absolutely refusing to give way, the lieutenant gave orders to
cut him down. There appears to be no doubt about these important
facts--that is to say, that the act of war was the deliberate attack by
a Japanese armed detachment on a Chinese sentry who was guarding the
quarters of his Commander.

A frightful scene followed. It appears that scattered groups of Chinese
soldiers, some with their arms, and some without, had collected during
this crisis and point-blank firing at once commenced. The first shots
appear to have been fired--though this was never proved--by a Chinese
regimental groom, who was standing with some horses some distance away
in the gateway of some stabling and who is said to have killed or
wounded the largest number of Japanese. In any case, seven Japanese
soldiers were killed outright, five more mortally wounded and four
severely so, the Chinese themselves losing four killed, besides a number
of wounded. The remnant of the Japanese detachment after this rude
reverse managed to retreat with their wounded officer to their own
barracks where the whole detachment barricaded themselves in, firing for
many hours at everything that moved on the roads though absolutely no
attempt was made by the Chinese soldiery to advance against them.

The sound of this heavy firing, and the wild report that many Japanese
had been killed, had meanwhile spread panic throughout the town, and
there was a general _sauve qui peut_, a terrible retribution being
feared. The local Magistrate finally restored some semblance of order;
and after dark proceeded in person with some notables of the town to the
Japanese barracks to tender his regrets and to arrange for the removal
of the Japanese corpses which were lying just as they had fallen, and
which Chinese custom demanded should be decently cared for, though they
constituted important and irrefragible evidence of the armed invasion
which had been practised. The Japanese Commander, instead of meeting
these conciliatory attempts half-way, thereupon illegally arrested the
Magistrate and locked him up, being impelled to this action by the
general fear among his men that a mass attack would be made in the night
by the Chinese troops in garrison and the whole command wiped out.
Nothing, however, occurred and on the 14th instant the Magistrate was
duly released on his sending for his son to take his place as hostage.
On the 16th the Magistrate had successfully arranged the withdrawal of
all Chinese troops five miles outside the town to prevent further
clashes. On the 15th Japanese cavalry and infantry began to arrive in
large numbers from the South Manchuria railway zone (where they alone
have the Treaty right to be) and the town of Chengchiatun was
arbitrarily placed by them in a state of siege.

Here is the stuff of which the whole incident was made: there is nothing
material beyond the facts stated which illustrate very glaringly the
manner in which a strong Power acts towards a weak one.

Meanwhile the effect in Tokio of these happenings had been electrical.
Relying on the well-known Japanese police axiom, that the man who gets
in his story first is the prosecutor and the accused the guilty party,
irrespective of what the evidence may be, the newspapers all came out
with the same account of a calculated attack by "ferocious Chinese
soldiers" on a Japanese detachment and the general public were asked to
believe that a number of their enlisted nationals had been deliberately
and brutally murdered. It was not, however, until more than a week after
the incident that an official report was published by the Tokio Foreign
Office, when the following garbled account was distributed far and wide
as the Japanese case:--

"When one Kiyokishy Yoshimoto, aged 27, an employe of a Japanese
apothecary at Chengchiatun, was passing the headquarters of the
Chinese troops on the 13th instant, a Chinese soldier stopped him,
and, with some remarks, which were unintelligible to the Japanese,
suddenly struck him on the head. Yoshimoto became enraged, but was
soon surrounded by a large number of Chinese soldiers and others,
who subjected him to all kind of humiliation. As a result of this
lawlessness on the part of the Chinese, the Japanese sustained
injuries in seven or eight places, but somehow he managed to break
away and reach a Japanese police box, where he applied for help. On
receipt of this news, a policeman, named Kowase, hastened to the
spot, but by the time he arrived there all the offenders had fled.
He therefore repaired to the headquarters of the Chinese to lay a
complaint, but the sentry stopped him, and presented a pistol at
him, and under these circumstances he was obliged to apply to the
Japanese Garrison headquarters, where Captain Inone instructed
Lieutenant Matsuo with twenty men to escort the policeman to the
Chinese headquarters. When the party approached the Chinese
headquarters, Chinese troops began to fire, and the policeman and
others were either killed or wounded. Despite the fact that the
Japanese troops retired, the Chinese troops did not give up firing,
but besieged the Japanese garrison, delivering several severe
attacks. Soon after the fighting ceased, the Chinese authorities
visited the Japanese barracks, and expressed the desire that the
affair be settled amicably. It was the original intention of the
Japanese troops to fight it out, but they were completely
outnumbered, and lest the safety of the Japanese residents be
endangered, they stopped fighting. On examination of the dead bodies
of seven Japanese soldiers, who were attacked outside the barracks,
it was discovered that they had been all slain by the Chinese
troops, the bodies bearing marks of violence."

Without entering again into the merits of the case, we would ask those
who are acquainted with recent history whether it is likely that Chinese
soldiers, knowing all the pains and penalties attaching to such action,
would deliberately attack a body of twenty armed Japanese under an
officer as the Japanese official account states? We believe that no
impartial tribunal, investigating the matter on the spot, could fail to
point out the real aggressors and withal lay bare the web of a most
amazing state of affairs. For in order to understand what occurred, on
the 13th August, 1916, it is necessary to turn far away from
Chengchiatun and see what lies behind it all.

At the back of the brain of the Japanese Military Party, which by no
means represents the Japanese nation or the Japanese Government although
it exercises a powerful influence on both, is the fixed idea that South
Manchuria and Inner Mongolia must be turned into a strongly held and
fortified Japanese _enclave_, if the balance of power in Eastern Asia is
to be maintained. Pursuant to this idea, Japanese diplomacy was induced
many months ago to concentrate its efforts on winning--if not
wringing--from Russia the strategically important strip of railway south
of the Sungari River, because (and this should be carefully noted) with
the Sungari as the undisputed dividing-line between the Russian and
Japanese spheres in Manchuria, and with Japanese shallow-draft gun-boats
navigating that waterway and entering the Nonni river, it would be easily
possible for Japan to complete a "Continental quadrilateral" which would
include Korea, South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, the extreme western
barrier of which would be the new system of Inner Mongolian railways
centring round Taonanfu and terminating at Jehol, for which Japan already
holds the building rights[23]. Policing rights--in the outer zone of this
_enclave_,--with a total exclusion of all Chinese garrisons, is the
preliminary goal towards which the Japanese Military Party has been long
plainly marching; and long before anybody had heard of Chengchiatun, a
scheme of reconnoitring detachments had been put in force to spy out the
land and form working alliances with the Mongol bands in order to harass
and drive away all the representatives of Chinese authority. What
occurred, then, at Chengchiatun might have taken place at any one of
half-a-dozen other places in this vast and little-known region whither
Japanese detachments have silently gone; and if Chinese diplomacy in the
month of August, 1916, was faced with a rude surprise, it was only what
political students had long been expecting. For though Japan should be
the real defender of Chinese liberties, it is a fact that in Chinese
affairs Japanese diplomacy has been too long dictated to by the Military
Party in Tokio and attempts nothing save when violence allows it to tear
from China some fresh portion of her independence.

And here we reach the crux of the matter. One of the little known
peculiarities of the day lies in the fact that Japan is the land of
political inaction _because there is no tradition of action save that
which has been built up by the military and naval chiefs since the
Chinese war of_ 1894-95. Having only visualized the world in
international terms during two short decades, there has been no time for
a proper tradition to be created by the civil government of Japan; and
because there is no such tradition, the island empire of the East has no
true foreign policy and is at the mercy of manufactured crises, being
too often committed to petty adventures which really range her on the
side of those in Europe the Allies have set themselves to destroy. It is
for this reason that the Chinese are consistently treated as though they
were hewers of wood and drawers of water, helots who are occasionally
nattered in the columns of the daily press and yet are secretly looked
upon as men who have been born merely to be cuffed and conquered. The
Moukden Governor, General Chang Tso-lin, discussing the Chengchiatun
affair with the writer, put the matter in a nutshell. Striking the table
he exclaimed: "After all we are not made of wood like this, we too are
flesh and blood and must defend our own people. A dozen times I have
said, 'Let them come and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let
them cease their childish intrigues.' Why do they not do so? Because
they are not sure they can swallow us--not at all sure. Do you
understand? We are weak, we are stupid, we are divided, but we are
innumerable, and in the end, if they persist, China will burst the
Japanese stomach."

Such passionate periods are all very well, but when it comes to the
sober business of the council chamber it is a regrettable fact that
Chinese, although foreign friends implore them to do so, do not properly
use the many weapons in their armoury. Thus in this particular case,
instead of at once hurrying to Chengchiatun some of the many foreign
advisers who sit kicking their heels in Peking from one end of the year
to the other and who number competent jurisconsults, China did next to
nothing. No proper report was drawn up on the spot; sworn statements
were not gathered, nor were witnesses brought to Peking; and it
therefore happened that when Japan filed her demands for redress, China
had not in her possession anything save an utterly inadequate defence.
Mainly because of this she was forced to agree to forgoing any direct
discussion of the rights and wrongs of the case, proceeding directly to
negotiations based on the various claims which Japan filed and which
were as follows:--

1. Punishment of the General commanding the 28th Division.

2. The dismissal of officers at Chengchiatun responsible for the
occurrence as well as the severe punishment of those who took direct
part in the fracas.

3. Proclamations to be posted ordering all Chinese soldiers and
civilians in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia to refrain
from any act calculated to provoke a breach of the peace with
Japanese soldiers or civilians.

4. China to agree to the stationing of Japanese police officers in
places in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia where their
presence was considered necessary for the protection of Japanese
subjects. China also to agree to the engagement by the officials of
South Manchuria of Japanese police advisers.

_And in addition_:--

1. Chinese troops stationed in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner
Mongolia to employ a certain number of Japanese Military officers as
advisers.

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