Recalling her ambassador on February 6, 1904, Japan was ready to strike simultaneous blows at two points. On February 8, Admiral Uriu challenged two Russian cruisers at Chemulpo to come out and fight, otherwise he would attack them in the harbour. Steaming out they fired the first shots of the war, and both were captured or destroyed. A little later on the same day Admiral Togo opened his broadsides on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, and resumed the attack the following morning. Without challenge or notification of any kind, his attack had the effect of a genuine surprise. The Russians, whether from confidence in their position or contempt for their enemy, were unprepared and replied feebly. They had seven battleships to Togo's six, but the big ships of Japan were supported by a flotilla of torpedo-boats which outnumbered those of Russia. These alert little craft did great execution. Creeping into the harbour while the bombardment kept the enemy occupied they sank two battleships and one armoured cruiser. Other Russian vessels were badly damaged; but, according to Togo's report, on the side of Japan not one vessel was incapacitated for actual service.
Land forces, fully equipped and waiting for this special service, commenced operations without delay and began to cut off communication from the land side while Togo's squadron corked up every inlet from the sea. Alexieff, whose title of viceroy revealed the intentions of Russia in regard to Manchuria, taking alarm at the prospect of a siege, escaped to Harbin near the Siberian frontier—a safer place for headquarters. To screen his flight he made unwarrantable use of an ambulance train of the Red Cross Society. Disagreeing with General Kuropatkin as to the plan of campaign, he resigned the command of the army in April, and Kuropatkin was promoted to the vacant place. Beaten in several engagements on the Liao-tung peninsula, the Russians began to fall back, followed by the Japanese under Field-Marshal Oyama; and the siege of the fortress was prosecuted with unremitting vigour.
By July the Japanese had secured possession of the outer line of forts, and, planting heavy guns on the top of a high hill, they were able to throw plunging shot into the bosom of the harbour. No longer safe at their inner anchorage, the Russian naval officers resolved to attempt to reach Vladivostok, where the combined squadrons might assume the offensive or at least be secure from blockade. Scarcely had they gained the open sea when (on August 10) the Japanese fell on them like a whirlwind and scattered their ships in all directions. A few reëntered the harbour to await their doom; two or three found their way to Vladivostok; two sought refuge at the German port of Tsing-tao; two put into Shanghai; and one continued its flight as far south as Saigon.
One gunboat sought shelter at Chefoo, where I was passing my summer vacation. The Japanese, in hot pursuit, showed no more respect to the neutrality of China than they had shown to Korea. Boarding the fugitive vessel, they summoned the captain to surrender. He replied by seizing the Japanese officer in his arms and throwing himself into the sea. They were rescued; and the Japanese then carried off the boat under the guns of a Chinese admiral. Of this incident in its main features I was an eye-witness. I may add that we were near enough to bear witness to the fact of the siege; for, in the words of Helen Sterling:
"We heard the boom of guns by day
And saw their flash by night,
And almost thought, tho' miles away,
That we were in the fight.
The Chinese admiral, feeling the affront to the Dragon flag and fearing that he would be called to account, promptly tendered his resignation. He was told to keep his place; and, by way of consoling him for his inaction, the Minister of Marine added, "You are not to blame for not firing on the Japanese. They are fighting our battles—we can't do anything against them." So much for Chinese neutrality in theory and in practice.
Kuropatkin, like the Parthian, "most dreaded when in flight," renouncing any further attempt to break through the cordon which the Japanese had drawn around the doomed fortress, intrenched his forces in and around Liaoyang. His position was strong by nature, and he strengthened it by every device known to a military engineer; yet he was driven from it in a battle which lasted nine days.
The Japanese, though not slow to close around his outposts, were too cautious to deliver their main attack until they could be certain of success. The combat thickened till, on August 24, cannon thundered along a line of forty miles. Outflanked by his assailants, the Russian general, perceiving that he must secure his communications on the north or sustain a siege, abandoned his ground and fell back on Mukden.
In this, the greatest battle of the campaign thus far, 400,000 men were engaged, the Japanese, as usual, having a considerable majority. The loss of life was appalling. The Russian losses were reported at 22,000; and those of Japan could not have been less. Yet Liaoyang with all its horrors was only a prelude to a more obstinate conflict on a more extended arena.
Without hope of succour by land, and without a fleet to bring relief by sea, the Russians defended their fortress with the courage of despair. Ten years before this date the Japanese under Field-marshal Oyama had carried this same stronghold almost by assault. Taking it in the rear, a move which the Chinese thought so contrary to the rules of war that they had neglected their landward defences, they were masters of the place on the morning of the third day.
How different their reception on the present occasion! How changed the aspect! The hills, range after range, were now crowned with forts. Fifty thousand of Russia's best soldiers were behind those batteries, many of which were provided with casemates impenetrable to any ordinary projectile. General Stoessel, a man of science, courage and experience, was in command; and he held General Nogi with a force of sixty or seventy thousand at bay for eleven months. Prodigies of valour were performed on both sides, some of the more commanding positions being taken and retaken three or four times.
When, in September, the besiegers got possession of Wolf Hill, and with plunging shot smashed the remnant of the fleet, they offered generous terms to the defenders. General Stoessel declined the offer, resolving to emulate Thermopylæ, or believing, perhaps, in the possibility of rescue. When, however, he saw the "203 Metre Hill" in their hands and knew his casemates would soon be riddled by heavy shot, in sheer despair he was forced to capitulate. This was on the first day of the new year (1905). His force had been reduced to half its original numbers, and of these no fewer than 14,000 were in hospital.
General Stoessel has been censured for not holding out until the arrival of the armada; but what could the armada have done had it appeared in the offing? It certainly could not have penetrated the harbour, for in addition to fixed or floating mines it would have had to run the gauntlet of Togo's fleet and its doom would have been precipitated. One critic of distinction denounced Stoessel's surrender as "shameful"; but is it not a complete vindication that his enemies applaud his gallant defence, and that his own government was satisfied that he had done his duty.[*]
[Footnote *: Since writing this I have read the finding of the court-martial. It has the air of an attempt to diminish the national disgrace by throwing blame on a brave commander.]
The Russian commander had marked out a new camp at Mukden, the chief city of the province and the cradle of the Manchu dynasty. There he was allowed once more to intrench himself. Was this because the Japanese were confident of their ability to compel him again to retire, or were they occupied with the task of filling up their depleted ranks? If the latter was the cause, the Russians were doing the same; but near to their base and with full command of the sea, the Japanese were able to do it more expeditiously than their enemy. Yet with all their facilities they were not ready to move on his works until winter imposed a suspension of hostilities.
On October 2 Kuropatkin published a boastful manifesto expressing confidence in the issue of the coming conflict—trusting no doubt to the help of the three generals, December, January, and February. Five months later, on March 8, 1905, he sent two telegrams to the Czar: the first said "I am surrounded;" the second, a few hours later, conveyed the comforting intelligence "the army has escaped."
The Japanese, not choosing to encounter the rigours of a Manchurian winter, waited till the advent of spring. The air was mild and the streams spanned by bridges of ice. The manœuvres need not be described here in detail. After more than ten days of continuous fighting on a line of battle nearly two hundred miles long, with scarcely less than a million of men engaged (Japanese in majority as before), the great Russian strategist broke camp and retired in good order. His army had escaped, but it had lost in killed and wounded 150,000. The losses of Japan amounted to 50,000.
The greatest battle of this latest war, the Battle of Mukden was in some respects the greatest in modern history. In length of line, in numbers engaged, and in the resulting casualties its figures are double those of Waterloo. Once more by masterly strategy a rout was converted into a retreat; and the Russian army withdrew to the northwest.
Weary of crawfish tactics the Czar appointed General Lineivitch to the chief command; and the ablest of the Russian generals was relieved of the duty of contriving ways of "escape." To cover the rear of a defeated force is always reckoned a post of honour; but it is not the sort of distinction that satisfies the ambition of a great commander.
By dint of efforts and sacrifices an enormous fleet was assembled for the relief of Port Arthur. It sailed from Cronstadt on August 11, 1905, leaving the Baltic seaports unprotected save by the benevolent neutrality of the German Kaiser, who granted passage through his ship canal, although he knew the fleet was going to wage war on one of his friends.
Part of the fleet proceeded via Suez, and part went round the Cape of Good Hope—to them a name of mockery. The ships moved leisurely, their commanders not doubting that Stoessel would be able to hold his ground; but scarcely had they reached a rendezvous which, by the favour of France, they had fixed in the waters adjacent to Madagascar, when they heard of the fall of Port Arthur. Of the annihilation of the fleet attached to the fortress, and of the destruction of a squadron coming to the rescue from the north they had previously learned. With what dismay did they now hear that the key of the ocean was lost. Almost at the same moment the last of Job's messengers arrived with the heavier tidings that Mukden, the key of the province, had been abandoned by a defeated army—stunning intelligence for a forlorn hope! Should they turn back or push ahead? Anxious question this for Admiral Rozhesvenski and his officers. Too late for Port Arthur, might they not reënforce Vladivostok and save it from a like fate? The signal to "steam ahead" was displayed on the flagship.
Slowly and painfully, its propellers clogged by seaweed, its keels overgrown with barnacles, the grand armada crossed the Indian Ocean and headed northward for the China Sea. On May 27, steering for the Korean channel, it fell into a snare which a blind man ought to have been able to foresee. Togo's fleet had the freedom of the seas. Where could it be, if not in that very channel? Yet on the Russians went:
"Unmindful of the whirlwind's sway
That hushed in grim repose
Expects his evening prey."
The struggle was short and decisive—finished, it is said, in less than one hour. While Togo's battleships, fresh and in good condition, poured shot and shell into the wayworn strangers, his torpedo-boats, greatly increased in number, glided almost unobservedly among the enemy and launched their thunderbolts with fatal effect. Battleships and cruisers went down with all on board. The Russian flagship was disabled, and the admiral, severely wounded, was transferred to the hold of a destroyer. Without signals from their commander the vessels of the whole fleet fought or fled or perished separately; of 18,000 men, 1,000 escaped and 3,000 were made prisoners. What of the other 14,000?
"Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea."
The much vaunted armada was a thing of the past; and Tsushima or, as Togo officially named it, the Battle of the Sea of Japan, has taken its place along with Trafalgar and Salamis.
Tired of a spectacle that had grown somewhat monotonous, the world was clamorous for peace. The belligerents, hitherto deaf to every suggestion of the kind, now accepted an invitation from President Roosevelt and appointed commissioners to arrange the terms of a treaty. They met in August, 1905, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and after a good deal of diplomatic fencing the sword was sheathed. In the treaty, since ratified, Russia acknowledges Japan's exceptional position in Korea, transfers to Japan her rights in Port Arthur and Liao-tung, and hands over to Japan her railways in Manchuria. Both parties agree to evacuate Manchuria within eighteen months.
Japan was obliged to waive her claim to a war indemnity and to allow Russia to retain half the island of Saghalien. Neither nation was satisfied with the terms, but both perceived that peace was preferable to the renewal of the struggle with all its horrors and uncertainties. For tendering the olive branch and smoothing the way for its acceptance, President Roosevelt merits the thanks of mankind.[*] Besides other advantages Japan has assured her position as the leading power of the Orient; but the greatest gainer will be Russia, if her defeat in the field should lead her to the adoption of a liberal government at home.
[Footnote *: Since this was written a Nobel Peace Prize has justly been awarded to the President.]
"Peace hath her victories,
No less renowned than war."
The Czar signified his satisfaction by making Witte the head of a reconstruction ministry and by conferring upon him the title of Count; and the Mikado showed his entire confidence in Baron Komura, notwithstanding some expressions of disappointment among the people, by assigning him the delicate task of negotiating a treaty with China.
Though the attitude of China had been as unheroic as would have been Menelaus' had the latter declared neutrality in the Trojan war, the issue has done much to rouse the spirit of the Chinese people. Other wars made them feel their weakness: this one begot a belief in their latent strength. When they witnessed a series of victories on land and sea gained by the Japanese over one of the most formidable powers of the West, they exclaimed, "If our neighbour can do this, why may we not do the same? We certainly can if, like them, we break with the effete systems of the past. Let us take these island heroes for our schoolmasters."
That war was one of the most momentous in the annals of history. It unsettled the balance of power, and opened a vista of untold possibilities for the yellow race.
Not slow to act on their new convictions, the Chinese have sent a small army of ten thousand students to Japan—of whom over eight thousand are there now, while they have imported from the island a host of instructors whose numbers can only be conjectured. The earliest to come were in the military sphere, to rehabilitate army and navy. Then came professors of every sort, engaged by public or private institutions to help on educational reform. Even in agriculture, on which they have hitherto prided themselves, the Chinese have put themselves under the teaching of the Japanese, while with good reason they have taken them as teachers in forestry also. Crowds of Japanese artificers in every handicraft find ready employment in China. Nor will it be long before pupils and apprentices in these home schools will assume the rôle of teacher, while Chinese graduates returning from Japan will be welcomed as professors of a higher grade. This Japanning process, as it is derisively styled, may be somewhat superficial; but it has the recommendation of cheapness and rapidity in comparison with depending on teachers from the West. It has, moreover, the immense advantage of racial kinship and example. Of course the few students who go to the fountain-heads of science—in the West—must when they return home take rank as China's leading teachers.
All this inclines one to conclude that a rapid transformation in this ancient empire is to be counted on. The Chinese will soon do for themselves what they are now getting the Japanese to do for them. Japanese ideas will be permanent; but the direct agency of the Japanese people will certainly become less conspicuous than it now is.
To the honour of the Japanese Government, the world is bound to acknowledge that the island nation has not abused its victories to wring concessions from China. In fact to the eye of an unprejudiced observer it appears that in unreservedly restoring Manchuria Japan has allowed an interested neutral to reap a disproportionate share of the profits.
REFORM IN CHINA
Reforms under the Empress Dowager—The Eclectic Commission—Recent Reforms—Naval Abortion—Merchant Marine—Army Reform—Mining Enterprises—Railways—The Telegraph—The Post Office—The Customs—Sir Robert Hart—Educational Reform—The Tung-Wen College—The Imperial University—Diplomatic Intercourse—Progressive Viceroys—New Tests for Honours—Legal Reform—Newspapers—Social Reforms—Reading Rooms—Reform in Writing—Anti-foot-binding Society—The Streets.
"When I returned from England," said Marquis Ito, "my chief, the Prince of Chosin, asked me if I thought anything needed to be changed in Japan. I answered, 'Everything.'" These words were addressed in my hearing, as I have elsewhere recorded, to three Chinese statesmen, of whom Li Hung Chang was one. The object of the speaker was to emphasise the importance of reform in China. He was unfortunate in the time of his visit—it was just after the coup d'état, in 1898. His hearers were men of light and leading, in sympathy with his views; but reform was on the ebb; a ruinous recoil was to follow; and nothing came of his suggestions.
The Emperor had indeed shown himself inclined to "change everything," but at that moment his power was paralyzed. What vicissitudes he has passed through since that date! Should he come again to power, as now seems probable, may he not, sobered by years and prudent from experience, still carry into effect his grand scheme for the renovation of China. To him a golden dream, will it ever be a reality to his people?
Taught by the failure of a reaction on which she had staked her life and her throne, the Dowager became a convert to the policy of progress. She had, in fact, outstripped her nephew. "Long may she live!" "Late may he rule us!" During her lifetime she could be counted on to carry forward the cause she had so ardently espoused. She grasped the reins with a firm hand; and her courage was such that she did not hesitate to drive the chariot of state over many a new and untried road. She knew she could rely on the support of her viceroys—men of her own appointment. She knew too that the spirit of reform was abroad in the land, and that the heart of the people was with her.
The best embodiment of this new spirit was the High Commission sent out in 1905 to study the institutions of civilized countries east and west, and to report on the adoption of such as they deemed advisable. The mere sending forth of such an embassy was enough to make her reign illustrious. The only analogous mission in the history of China, is that which was despatched to India, in 66 A. D., in quest of a better faith, by Ming-ti, "The Luminous." The earlier embassy borrowed a few sparks to rekindle the altars of their country; the present embassy propose to introduce new elements in the way of political reform. Their first recommendation, if not their first report, reaches me while I write, and in itself is amply sufficient to prove that this High Commission is not a sham designed to dazzle or deceive. The Court Gazette, according to the China Times, gives the following on the subject:
"The five commissioners have sent in a joint memorial dealing with what they have seen in foreign countries during the last three months. They report that the wealthiest and strongest nations in the world to-day are governed by constitutional government. They mention the proclamation of constitutional government in Russia, and remark that China is the only great country that has not adopted that principle. As they have carefully studied the systems of England, the United States, Japan, etc., they earnestly request the Throne to issue a decree fixing on five years as the limit within which 'China will adopt a constitutional form of government.'
"A rescript submits this recommendation to a council of state to advise on the action to be taken."
If that venerable body, consisting of old men who hold office for life, does not take umbrage at the prospect of another tribunal infringing on their domain, we shall have at least the promise of a parliament. And five years hence, if the congé d'elire goes forth, it will rend the veil of ages. It implies the conferment on the people of power hitherto unknown in their history. What a commotion will the ballot-box excite! How suddenly will it arouse the dormant intellect of a brainy race! But it is premature to speculate.
In 1868 the Mikado granted his subjects a charter of rights, the first article of which guarantees freedom of discussion, and engages that he will be guided by the will of the people. In China does not the coming of a parliament involve the previous issue of a Magna Charta?
It is little more than eight years since the restoration, as the return of the Court in January, 1902, may be termed. In this period, it is safe te assert that more sweeping reforms have been decreed in China than were ever enacted in a half-century by any other country, if one except Japan, whose example the Chinese profess to follow, and France, in the Revolution, of which Macaulay remarks that "they changed everything—from the rites of religion to the fashion of a shoe-buckle."
Reference will here be made to a few of the more important innovations or ameliorations which, taken together, made the reign of the Empress Dowager the most brilliant in the history of the Empire. The last eight years have been uncommonly prolific of reforms; but the tide began to turn after the peace of Peking in 1860. Since that date every step in the adoption of modern methods was taken during the reign or regency of that remarkable woman, which dated from 1861 to 1908.
As late as 1863 the Chinese Government did not possess a single fighting ship propelled by steam. Steamers belonging to Chinese merchants were sometimes employed to chase pirates; but they were not the property of the state. The first state-owned steamers, at least the first owned by the Central Government, was a flotilla of gunboats purchased that year in England by Mr. Lay, Inspector-General of Maritime Customs. Dissatisfied with the terms he had made with the commander, whom he had bound not to act on any orders but such as the Inspector should approve, the Government dismissed the Inspector and sold the ships.
In the next thirty years a sufficient naval force was raised to justify the appointment of an admiral; but in 1895 the whole fleet was destroyed by the Japanese, and Admiral Ting committed suicide. At present there is a squadron under each viceroy; but all combined would hardly form the nucleus of a navy. That the Government intend to create a navy may be inferred from the establishment of a Naval Board. In view of the naval exploits of Japan, and under the guidance of Japanese, they are certain to develop this feeble plant and to make it formidable to somebody—perhaps to themselves.
Their merchant marine is more respectable. With a fleet of fifty or more good ships the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company are able by the aid of subsidies and special privileges to compete for a share in the coasting trade; but as yet they have no line trading to foreign ports.
In 1860 a wild horde with matchlocks, bows, and spears, the land army is now supplied in large part with repeating rifles, trained in Western drill, and dressed in uniform of the Western type. The manœuvres that took place near Peking in 1905 made a gala day for the Imperial Court, which expressed itself as more than satisfied with the splendour of the spectacle. The contingent belonging to this province is 40,000, and the total thus drilled and armed is not less than five times that number. In 1907 the troops of five provinces met in Honan. Thanks to railways, something like concentration is coming within the range of possibility. Not deficient in courage, what these raw battalions require to make them effective is confidence in themselves and in their commanders. Lacking in the lively patriotism that makes heroes of the Japanese, these fine big fellows are not machines, but animals. To the mistaken efforts recently made to instil that sentiment at the expense of the foreigner, I shall refer in another chapter. A less objectionable phase of the sentiment is provincialism, which makes it easy for an invader to employ the troops of one province to conquer another. In history these provinces appear as kingdoms, and their mutual wars form the staple subject. What feeling of unity can exist so long as the people are divided by a babel of dialects? More than once have Tartars employed Chinese to conquer China; and in 1900 a fine regiment from Wei-hai-wei helped the British to storm Peking. It may be added they repaid themselves by treating the inhabitants as conquered foes. Everywhere they were conspicuous for acts of lawless violence.
Three great arsenals, not to speak of minor establishments, are kept busy turning out artillery and small arms for the national army, and the Board of Army Reform has the supervision of those forces, with the duty of making them not provincial, but national. Efforts of this kind, however, are no proof of a reform spirit. Are not the same to be seen all the way from Afghanistan to Dahomey? "To be weak is to be miserable"; and the Chinese are right in making military reorganisation the starting-point of a new policy. Yet the mere proposal of a parliament is a better indication of the spirit of reform than all these armaments.
In the mind of China, wealth is the correlative of strength. The two ideas are combined in the word Fuchiang, which expresses national prosperity. Hence the treasures hidden in the earth could not be neglected, when they had given up the follies of geomancy and saw foreigners prospecting and applying for concessions to work mines. At first such applications were met by a puerile quibble as to the effect of boring on the "pulse of the Dragon"—in their eyes not the guardian of a precious deposit, but the personification of "good luck." To find lucky locations, and to decide what might help or harm, were the functions of a learned body of professors of Fungshui, a false science which held the people in bondage and kept the mines sealed up until our own day. Gradually the Chinese are shaking off the incubus and, reckless of the Dragon, are forming companies for the exploitation of all sorts of minerals. The Government has framed elaborate regulations limiting the shares of foreigners, and encouraging their own people to engage in mining enterprises.
"Give up your Fungshui;
It keeps your wealth locked up,"
says a verse of Viceroy Chang.
A similar change has taken place in sentiment as regards railways. At first dreaded as an instrument of foreign aggression, they are now understood to be the best of auxiliaries for national defence. It has further dawned on the mind of a grasping mandarinate that they may be utilised as a source of revenue. If stocks pay well, why should not the Government hold them? "Your railways pay 10 per cent.—that's the sort of railway we want in China," said one of the commissioners at a banquet in England.
It would not be strange if the nationalisation of railways decided on this spring in Japan should lead to a similar movement in China. In a country like America, with 300,000 miles of track, the purchase would be ultra vires in more senses than one, but with only 1 per cent. of that mileage, the purchase would not be difficult, though it might not be so easy to secure an honest administration.
Trains from Peking now reach Hankow (600 miles) in thirty-six hours. When the grand trunk is completed, through trains from the capital will reach Canton in three days. Set this over against the three months' sea voyage of former times (a voyage made only once a year), or against the ten days now required for the trip by steamer! What a potent factor is the railroad in the progress of a great country!
The new enterprises in this field would be burdensome to enumerate. Shanghai is to be connected by rail with Tientsin (which means Peking), and with Nanking and Suchow. Lines to penetrate the western provinces are already mapped out; and even in Mongolia it is proposed to supersede the camel by the iron horse on the caravan route to Russia. "Alas! the age of golden leisure is gone—the iron age of hurry-skurry is upon us!" This is the lament of old slow-going China.
When China purchased the Shanghai-Woosung railway in 1876, she was thought to be going ahead. What did we think when she tore up the track and dumped it in the river? An æon seems to have passed since that day of darkness.
The advent of railways has been slow in comparison with the telegraph. The provinces are covered with wires. Governors and captains consult with each other by wire, in preference to a tardy exchange of written correspondence. The people, too, appreciate the advantage of communicating by a flash with distant members of their families, and of settling questions of business at remote places without stirring from their own doors. To have their thunder god bottled up and brought down to be their courier was to them the wonder of wonders; yet they have now become so accustomed to this startling innovation, that they cease to marvel.
The wireless telegraph is also at work—a little manual, translated by a native Christian, tells people how to use it.
Over forty years ago, when I exhibited the Morse system to the astonished dignitaries of Peking, those old men, though heads of departments, chuckled like children when, touching a button, they heard a bell ring; or when wrapping a wire round their bodies, they saw the lightning leap from point to point. "It's wonderful," they exclaimed, "but we can't use it in our country. The people would steal the wires." Electric bells are now common appliances in the houses of Chinese who live in foreign settlements. Electric trolleys are soon to be running at Shanghai and Tientsin. Telephones, both private and public, are a convenience much appreciated. Accustomed as the Chinese are to the instantaneous transmission of thought and speech, they have yet to see the telodyne—electricity as a transmitter of force. But will they not see it when the trolleys run? The advent of electric power will mark an epoch.
China's weakness is not due wholly to backwardness in the arts and sciences. It is to be equally ascribed to defective connection of parts and to a lack of communication between places. Hence a sense of solidarity is wanting, and instead there is a predominance of local over national interests. For this disease the remedy is forthcoming—rail and wire are rapidly welding the disjointed members of the Empire into a solid unity. The post office contributes to the same result.
A postal system China has long possessed: mounted couriers for official despatches, and foot messengers for private parties, the Government providing the former, and merchant companies the latter. The modernised post office, now operating in every province, provides for both. To most of the large towns the mails are carried by steamboat or railroad—a marvellous gain in time, compared with horse or foot. The old method was slow and uncertain; the new is safe and expeditious.
That the people appreciate the change is shown by the following figures: In 1904 stamps to the amount of $400,000 (Mexican) were sold; in 1905 the sale rose to $600,000—an advance of 50 per cent. in one year. What may we not expect when the women learn to read, and when education becomes more general among men?
Sir Robert Hart, from whom I had this statement, is the father of China's postal system. Overcoming opposition with patience and prudence, he has given the post office a thorough organisation and has secured for it the confidence of princes and people. Already does the Government look to it as a prospective source of revenue.
To the maritime customs service, Sir Robert has been a foster-father. Provided for by treaty, it was in operation before he took charge, in 1863; but to him belongs the honour of having nursed the infant up to vigorous maturity by the unwearied exertions of nearly half a century. While the post office is a new development, the maritime customs have long been looked upon as the most reliable branch of the revenue service. China's debts to foreign countries, whether for loans or indemnities, are invariably paid from the customs revenue. The Government, though disinclined to have such large concerns administered by foreign agents, is reconciled to the arrangement in the case of the customs by finding it a source of growing income. The receipts for 1905 amounted to 35,111,000 taels = £5,281,000. In volume of trade this shows a gain of 11-1/2 per cent. on 1904; but, owing to a favouring gale from the happy isles of high finance, in sterling value the gain is actually 17 per cent.
To a thoughtful mind, native or foreign, the maritime customs are not to be estimated by a money standard. They rank high among the agencies working for the renovation of China. They furnish an object-lesson in official integrity, showing how men brought up under the influence of Christian morals can collect large sums and pay them over without a particle sticking to their fingers. While the local commissioners have carried liberal ideas into mandarin circles all along the seacoast and up the great rivers into the interior, the Inspector-General (the "I. G." as Sir Robert is usually called) has been the zealous advocate of every step in the way of reform at headquarters.
Another man in his position might have been contented to be a mere fiscal agent, but Sir Robert Hart's fertile brain has been unceasingly active for nearly half a century in devising schemes for the good of China. All the honours and wealth that China has heaped on her trusted adviser are far from being sufficient to cancel her obligations. It was he who prompted a timid, groping government to take the first steps in the way of diplomatic intercourse. It was he who led them to raise their school of interpreters to the rank of a diplomatic college. He it was who made peace in the war with France; and in 1900, after the flight of the Court, he it was who acted as intermediary between the foreign powers and Prince Ching. To some of these notable services I shall refer elsewhere. I speak of them here for the purpose of emphasising my disapproval of an intrigue designed to oust Sir Robert and to overturn the lofty structure which he has made into a light-house for China.
In May, 1906, two ministers were appointed by the Throne to take charge of the entire customs service, with plenary powers to reform or modify ad libitum. Sir Robert was not consulted, nor was he mentioned in the decree. He was not dismissed, but was virtually superseded. Britain, America, and other powers took alarm for the safety of interests involved, and united in a protest. The Government explained that it was merely substituting one tribunal for another, creating a dual headship for the customs service instead of leaving it under the Board of Foreign Affairs, a body already overburdened with responsibilities. They gave a solemn promise that while Sir Robert Hart remained there should be no change in his status or powers; and so the matter stands. The protest saved the situation for the present. Explanation and promise were accepted; but the Government (or rather the two men who got themselves appointed to a fat office) remain under the reproach of discourtesy and ingratitude. The two men are Tieliang, a Manchu, and Tang Shao-yi, a Chinese. The latter, I am told on good authority, is to have £30,000 per annum. The other will not have less. This enormous salary is paid to secure honesty.
In China every official has his salary paid in two parts: one called the "regular stipend," the other, a "solatium to encourage honesty." The former is counted by hundreds of taels; the latter, by thousands, especially where there is a temptation to peculate. What a rottenness at the core is here betrayed!
A new development worthy of all praise is the opening, by imperial command, of a school for the training of officials for the customs service. It is a measure which Sir Robert Hart with all his public spirit, never ventured to recommend, because it implies the speedy replacement of the foreign staff by trained natives.
Filling the sky with a glow of hope not unlike the approach of sunshine after an arctic winter, the reform in the field of education throws all others into the shade. By all parties is recognised its supremacy. Its beginning was feeble and unwelcome, implying on the part of China nothing but a few drops of oil to relieve the friction at a few points of contact with the outside world.
The new treaties found China unprovided with interpreters capable of translating documents in foreign languages. Foreign nations agreed to accompany their despatches with a Chinese version, until a competent staff of interpreters should be provided. With a view to meeting this initial want, a school was opened in 1862, in connection with the Foreign Office, and placed under the direction of the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs, by whom I was recommended for the presidency. Professors of English, French, and Russian were engaged; and later on German took a place alongside of the three leading languages of the Western world.
At first no science was taught or expected, but gradually we succeeded in obtaining the consent of the Chinese ministers to enlarge our faculty so as to include chairs of astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, and physics. International law was taught by the president; and by him also the Chinese were supplied with their first text-books on the law of nations. What use had they for books on that subject, so long as they held no intercourse on equal terms with foreign countries? The students trained in that school of diplomacy had to shiver in the cold for many a year before the Government recognised their merits and rewarded them with official appointments. The minister recently returned from London, the ministers now in Germany and Japan, and a minister formerly in France, not to speak of secretaries of legation and consuls, were all graduates of our earlier classes.
In 1898 the young Emperor, taught by defeat at the hands of the Japanese, resolved on a thorough reform in the system of national education. It would never do to confine the knowledge of Western science to a handful of interpreters and attachés. The highest scholars of the Empire must be allowed access to the fountain of national strength. A university was created with a capital of five million taels, and the writer was made president by an imperial decree which conferred on him the highest but one of the nine grades of the mandarinate.
Two or three hundred students were enrolled, among whom were bachelors, masters, and doctors of the civil service examinations. It was launched with a favouring breeze; but the wind changed with the coup d'état of the Empress Dowager, and two years later the university went down in the Boxer cyclone. A professor, a tutor, and a student lost their lives. How the cause of educational reform rose stronger after the storm, I relate in a special chapter. It is a far cry from a university for the élite to that elaborate system of national education which is destined to plant its schools in every town and hamlet in the Empire. The new education was in fact still regarded with suspicion by the honour men of the old system. They looked on it, as they did on the railway, as a source of danger, a perilous experiment.
As yet the intercourse was one-sided: envoys came; but none were sent. Embassies were no novelty; but they had always moved on an inclined plane, either coming up laden with tribute, or going down bearing commands. Where there was no tribute and no command, why send them? Why send to the very people who had robbed China of her supremacy! It was a bitter pill, and she long refused to swallow it. Hart gilded the dose and she took it. Obtaining leave to go home to get married, he proposed that he should be accompanied by his teacher, Pinchun, a learned Manchu, as unofficial envoy—with the agreeable duty to see and report. It was a travelling commission, not like that of 1905-06, to seek light, but to ascertain whether the representative of a power so humbled and insulted would be treated with common decency.
The old pundit was a poet. All Chinese pundits are poets; but Pinchun had real gifts, and the flow of champagne kindled his inspiration. Everywhere wined and dined, though accredited to no court, he was in raptures at the magnificence of the nations of the West. He lauded their wealth, culture, and scenery in faultless verse; and if he indulged in satire, it was not for the public eye. He was attended by several of our students, to whom the travelling commission was an education. They were destined, after long waiting as I have said, to revisit the Western world, clothed with higher powers.
The impression made on both sides was favourable, and the way was prepared for a genuine embassy. The United States minister, Anson Burlingame, a man of keen penetration and broad sympathies, had made himself exceedingly acceptable to the Foreign Office at Peking. When he was taking leave to return home, in 1867, the Chinese ministers begged his good offices with the United States Government and with other governments as occasion might offer—"In short, you will be our ambassador," they said, with hearty good-will.
Burlingame, who grasped the possibilities of the situation, called at the Customs on his way to the Legation. Hart seized the psychological moment, and, hastening to the Yamên, induced the ministers to turn a pleasantry into a reality. The Dowagers (for there were two) assented to the proposal of Prince Kung, to invest Burlingame with a roving commission to all the Treaty powers, and to associate with him a Manchu and a Chinese with the rank of minister. An "œcumenical embassy" was the result. Some of our students were again attached to the suite; reciprocal intercourse had begun; and Burlingame has the glory of initiating it".
In the work of reform three viceroys stand pre-eminent, viz., Li Hung Chang, Yuen Shi Kai and Chang Chitung. Li, besides organising an army and a navy (both demolished by the Japanese in 1895), founded a university at Tienstin, and placed Dr. Tenney at the head of it. Yuen, coming to the same viceroyalty with the lesson of the Boxer War before his eyes, has made the army and education objects of special care. In the latter field he had had the able assistance of Dr. Tenney, and succeeded in making the schools of the province of Chihli an example for the Empire.
Viceroy Chang has the distinction of being the first man (with the exception of Kang Yuwei) to start the emperor on the path of reform. Holding that, to be rich, China must have the industrial arts of the West, and to be strong she must have the sciences of the West, he has taken the lead in advocating and introducing both. Having been called, after the suspension of the Imperial University, to assist this enlightened satrap in his great enterprise, I cannot better illustrate the progress of reform than by devoting a separate chapter to him and to my observations during three years in Central China.
Tests of scholarship and qualifications for office have undergone a complete change. The regulation essay, for centuries supreme in the examinations for the civil service, is abolished; and more solid acquirements have taken its place. It takes time to adjust such an ancient system to new conditions. That this will be accomplished is sufficiently indicated by the fact that in May, 1906, degrees answering to A. M. and Ph. D. were conferred on quite a number of students who had completed their studies at universities in foreign countries. As a result there is certain to be a rush of students to Europe and America, the fountain-heads of science. Forty young men selected by Viceroy Yuen from the advanced classes of his schools were in 1906 despatched under the superintendence of Dr. Tenney to pursue professional studies in the United States. That promising mission was partly due to the relaxation of the rigour of the exclusion laws.
The Chinese assessor of the Mixed Court in Shanghai was dismissed the same year because he had condemned criminals to be beaten with rods—a favourite punishment, in which there is a way to alleviate the blows. Slicing, branding, and other horrible punishments with torture to extort confessions have been forbidden by imperial decree. Conscious of the contempt excited by such barbarities, and desirous of removing an obstacle to admission to the comity of nations, the Government has undertaken to revise its penal code. Wu-ting-fang, so well known as minister at Washington, has borne a chief part in this honourable task. The code is not yet published; but magistrates are required to act on its general principles. When completed it will no doubt provide for a jury, a thing hitherto unknown in China. The commissioners on legal reform have already sent up a memorial, explaining the functions of a jury; and, to render its adoption palatable, they declare that it is an ancient institution, having been in use in China three thousand years ago. They leave the Throne to infer that Westerners borrowed it from China.
The fact is that each magistrate is a petty tyrant, embodying in his person the functions of local governor, judge, and jury, though there are limits to his discretion and room for appeal or complaint. It is to be hoped that lawyers and legal education will find a place in the administration of justice.
Formerly clinging to a foreign flagstaff, the editor of a Chinese journal cautiously hinted the need for some kinds of reform. Within this lustrum mirabile the daily press has taken the Empire by storm. Some twenty or more journals have sprung up under the shadow of the throne, and they are not gagged. They go to the length of their tether in discussing affairs of state—notwithstanding cautionary hints. Refraining from open attack, they indulge in covert criticism of the Government and its agents.
Social reforms open to ambitious editors a wide field and make amends for exclusion from the political arena. One of the most influential recently deplored the want of vitality in the old religions of the country, and, regarding their reformation as hopeless, openly advocated the adoption of Christianity. To be independent of the foreigner it must, he said, be made a state church, with one of the princes for a figurehead, if not for pilot.
Another deals with the subject of marriage. Many improvements, he says, are to be made in the legal status of woman. The total abolition of polygamy might be premature; but that is to be kept in view. In another issue he expresses a regret that the Western usage of personal courtship cannot safely be introduced. Those who are to be companions for life cannot as yet be allowed to see each other, as disorders might result from excess of freedom. Such liberty in social relations is impracticable "except in a highly refined and well-ordered state of society." The same or another writer proposes, by way of enlarging woman's world, that she shall not be confined to the house, but be allowed to circulate as freely as Western women but she must hide her charms behind a veil.
Reporting an altercation between a policeman and the driver of one of Prince Ching's carts, who insisted on driving on tracks forbidden to common people, an editor suggests with mild sarcasm that a notice be posted in such cases stating that only "noblemen's carts are allowed to pass." Do not these specimens show a laudable attempt to simulate a free press? Free it is by sufferance, though not by law.
Reading-rooms are a new institution full of promise. They are not libraries, but places for reading and expounding newspapers for the benefit of those who are unable to read for themselves. Numerous rooms may be seen at the street corners, where men are reciting the contents of a paper to an eager crowd. They have the air of wayside chapels; and this mode of enlightening the ignorant was confessedly borrowed from the missionary. How urgent the need, where among the men only one in twenty can read; and among women not one in a hundred!
Reform in writing is a genuine novelty, Chinese writing being a development of hieroglyphics, in which the sound is no index to the sense, and in which each pictorial form must be separately made familiar to the eye. Dr. Medhurst wittily calls it "an occulage, not a language." Without the introduction of alphabetic writing, the art of reading can never become general. To meet this want a new alphabet of fifty letters has been invented, and a society organised to push the system, so that the common people, also women, may soon be able to read the papers for themselves. The author of the system is Wang Chao, mentioned above as having given occasion for the coup d'état by which the Dowager Empress was restored to power in 1898.
I close this formidable list of reforms with a few words on a society for the abolition of a usage which makes Chinese women the laughing-stock of the world, namely, the binding of their feet. With the minds of her daughters cramped by ignorance, and their feet crippled by the tyranny of an absurd fashion, China suffers an immense loss, social and economic. Happily there are now indications that the proposed enfranchisement will meet with general favour. Lately I heard mandarins of high rank advocate this cause in the hearing of a large concourse at Shanghai. They have given a pledge that there shall be no more foot-binding in their families; and the Dowager Empress came to the support of the cause with a hortatory edict. As in this matter she dared not prohibit, she was limited to persuasion and example. Tartar women have their powers of locomotion unimpaired. Viceroy Chang denounced the fashion as tending to sap the vigour of China's mothers; and he is reported to have suggested a tax on small feet—in inverse proportion to their size, of course. The leader in this movement, which bids fair to become national, is Mrs. Archibald Little.
The streets are patrolled by a well-dressed and well-armed police force, in strong contrast with the ragged, negligent watchmen of yore. The Chinese, it seems, are in earnest about mending their ways. Their streets, in Peking and other cities, are undergoing thorough repair—so that broughams and rickshaws are beginning to take the place of carts and palanquins. A foreign style of building is winning favour; and the adoption of foreign dress is talked of. When these changes come, what will be left of this queer antique?
VICEROY CHANG-A LEADER OF REFORM
His Origin—Course as a Student—In the Censorate—He Floors a Magnate—The First to Wake Up—As a Leader of Reform—The Awakening of the Giant
If I were writing of Chang, the Chinese giant, who overtopped the tallest of his fellow-men by head and shoulders, I should be sure of readers. Physical phenomena attract attention more than mental or moral grandeur. Is it not because greatness in these higher realms requires patient thought for due appreciation?
Chang, the viceroy of Hukwang, a giant in intellect and a hero in achievement, is not a commonplace character. If my readers will follow me, while I trace his rise and progress, not only will they discover that he stands head and shoulders above most officials of his rank, but they will gain important side-lights on great events in recent history.
During my forty years' residence in the capital I had become well acquainted with Chang's brilliant career; but it is only within the last three or four years that I have had an opportunity to study him in personal intercourse, having been called to preside over his university and to aid him in other educational enterprises.
Whatever may be thought of the rank and file of China's mandarins, her viceroys are nearly always men of exceptional ability. They are never novices, but as a rule old in years and veterans in experience. Promoted for executive talent or for signal services, their office is too high to be in the market; nor is it probable that money can do much to recommend a candidate. A governor of Kwangsi was recently dismissed for incompetence, or for ill-success against a body of rebels. Being a rich man, he made a free use of that argument which commonly proves effective at Peking. But, so far from being advanced to the viceroyalty, he was not even reinstated in his original rank. The most he was able to obtain by a lavish expenditure was the inspectorship of a college at Wuchang, to put his foot on one of the lower rounds of the official ladder.
Chang was never rich enough to buy official honours, even in the lower grades; and it is one of his chief glories that, after a score of years in the exercise of viceregal power, he continues to be relatively poor.
His name in full is Chang Chi-tung, meaning "Longbow of the Cavern," an allusion to a tradition that one of his ancestors was born in a cave and famed for archery. This was far back in the age of the troglodytes. Now, for many generations, the family has been devoted to the peaceful pursuit of letters. As for Chang himself, it will be seen with what deadly effect he has been able to use the pen, in his hands a more formidable weapon than the longbow of his ancestor.
Chang was born at Nanpi, in the metropolitan province of Chihli, not quite seventy years ago; and that circumstance debarred him from holding the highest viceroyalty in the Empire, as no man is permitted to hold office in his native place. He has climbed to his present eminence without the extraneous aids of wealth and family influence. This implies talents of no ordinary grade; but how could those talents have found a fit arena without that admirable system of literary competition which for so many centuries has served the double purpose of extending patronage to letters and of securing the fittest men for the service of the state.
Crowned with the laurel of A. B., or budding genius, before he was out of his teens, three years later he won the honour of A. M., or, as the Chinese say, he plucked a sprig of the olea fragrans in a contest with his fellow-provincials in which only one in a hundred gained a prize. Proceeding to the imperial capital he entered the lists against the picked scholars of all the provinces. The prizes were 3 per cent. of the whole number of competitors, and he gained the doctorate in letters, which, as the Chinese title indicates, assures its possessor of an official appointment. Had he been content to wait for some obscure position he might have gone home to sleep on his laurels. But his restless spirit saw fresh battle-fields beckoning him to fresh triumphs. The three hundred new-made doctors were summoned to the palace to write on themes assigned by the Emperor, that His Majesty might select a score of them for places in the Hanlin Academy. Here again fortune favoured young Chang; the elegance of his penmanship and his skill in composing mechanical verse were so remarkable that he secured a seat on the literary Olympus of the Empire.
His conflicts were not yet ended. A conspicuous advantage of his high position was that it qualified him as a candidate for membership of the Board of Censors. Nor did fortune desert her favourite in this instance. After writing several papers to show his knowledge of law, history, and politics, he came forth clothed with powers that made him formidable to the highest officers of the state—powers somewhat analogous to the combined functions of censor and tribune in ancient Rome.
Before I proceed to show how our "knight of the longbow" employed his new authority, a few words on the constitution of that august tribunal, the Board of Censors, may prove interesting to the reader. Its members are not judges, but prosecuting attorneys for the state. They are accorded a freedom of speech which extends even to pointing out the shortcomings of majesty. How important such a tribunal for a country in which a newspaper press with its argus eyes has as yet no existence! There is indeed a court Gazette, which has been called the oldest newspaper in the world; but its contents are strictly limited to decrees, memorials, and appointments. Free discussion and general news have no place in its columns; so that in the modern sense it is not a newspaper.
The court—even the occupant of the Dragon Throne—needs watch-dogs. Such is the theory; but as a matter of fact these guardians of official morals find it safer to occupy themselves with the aberrations of satellites than to discover spots on the sun. About thirty years ago one of them, Wukotu, resolved to denounce the Empress Dowager for having adopted the late emperor as her son instead of making him her grandson. He accordingly immolated himself at the tomb of the late emperor by way of protesting against the impropriety of leaving him without a direct heir to worship his manes. It is doubtful whether the Western mind is capable of following Wukotu's subtle reasoning; but is it not plain that he felt that he was provoking an ignominious death, and chose rather to die as a hero—the champion of his deceased master?
If a censor succeeds in convicting a single high functionary of gross misconduct his fortune is made. He is rewarded by appointment to some respectable post, possibly the same from which his victim has been evicted. Practical advantage carries the day against abstract notions of æsthetic fitness. Sublime it might be to see the guardians of the common weal striking down the unworthy, with a public spirit untainted by self-interest; but in China (and in some other countries) such machinery requires self-interest for its motive force. Wanting that, it would be like a windmill without wind, merely a fine object in the landscape.
As an illustration of the actual procedure take the case in which Chang first achieved a national reputation. Chunghau, a Manchu of noble family and high in favour at court, had been sent to Russia in 1880 to demand the restoration of Ili, a province of Chinese Turkestan, which the Russians had occupied on pretext of quelling its chronic disorders. Scarcely had he reported the success of his mission, which had resulted in recovering two-thirds of the disputed territory, when Chang came forward and denounced it as worse than a failure. He had, as Chang proved, permitted the Russians to retain certain strategic points, and had given them fertile districts in exchange for rugged mountains or arid plains. To such a settlement no envoy could be induced to consent, unless chargeable with corruption or incompetence.
The unlucky envoy was thrown into prison and condemned to death (but reprieved), and his accuser rose in the official scale as rapidly as if he had won a great battle on land or sea. His victory was not unlike that of those British orators who made a reputation out of the impeachment of Lord Clive or Warren Hastings, save that with him a trenchant pen took the place of an eloquent tongue. I knew Chunghau both before and after his disgrace. In 1859, when an American embassy for the first time entered the gates of Peking, it was Chunghau who was appointed to escort the minister to the capital and back again to the seacoast—a pretty long journey in those days when there was neither steamboat nor railway. During that time, acting as interpreter, I had occasion to see him every day, and I felt strongly attracted by his generous and gentlemanly bearing. The poor fellow came out of prison stripped of all his honours, and with his prospects blighted forever. In a few months he died of sheer chagrin.
The war with Japan in 1894-1895 found Chang established in the viceroyalty of Hukwang, two provinces in Central China, with a prosperous population of over fifty millions, on a great highway of internal traffic rivalling the Mississippi, and with Hankow, the hub of the Empire, for its commercial centre. When he saw the Chinese forces scattered like chaff by the battalions of those despised islanders he was not slow to grasp the explanation. Kang Yuwei, a Canton man, also grasped it, and urged on the Emperor the necessity for reform with such vigour as to prompt him to issue a meteoric shower of reformatory edicts, filling one party with hope and the other with dismay.
Chang had held office at Canton; and his keen intellect had taken in the changed relations of West and East. He perceived that a new sort of sunshine shed its beams on the Western world. He did not fully apprehend the spiritual elements of our civilisation; but he saw that it was clothed with a power unknown to the sages of his country, the forces of nature being brought into subjection through science and popular education. He felt that China must conform to the new order of things, or perish—even if that new order was in contradiction to her ancient traditions as much as the change of sunrise to the west. He saw and felt that knowledge is power, a maxim laid down by Confucius before the days of Bacon; and he set about inculcating his new ideas by issuing a series of lectures for the instruction of his subordinates. Collected into a volume under the title of "Exhortations to Learn,"[*] they were put into the hands of the young Emperor and by his command distributed among the viceroys and governors of the Empire.
[Footnote *: Translated by Dr. Woodbridge as "China's Only Hope." Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai.]
What a harvest might have sprung from the sowing of such seed in such soil by an imperial husbandman! But there were some who viewed it as the sowing of dragons' teeth. Those reactionaries induced the Dowager Empress to come out from her retirement and to reassume her abdicated power in order to save the Empire from a threatening conflagration. It was the fable of Phaëton enacted in real life. The young charioteer was struck down and the sun brought back to his proper course instead of rising in the west. The progressive legislation of the two previous years 1897-98 was repealed and then followed two years of a narrow, benighted policy, controlled by the reactionaries under the lead of Prince Tuan, father of the heir-apparent, with a junta of Manchu princes as blind and corrupt as Russian grand dukes. That disastrous recoil resulted in war, not against a single power, but against the whole civilised world, as has been set forth in the account of the Boxer War (see page 172).
Affairs were drifting into this desperate predicament when Chang of the Cavern became in a sense the saviour of his country. This he effected by two actions which called for uncommon intelligence and moral force: (1) By assuring the British Government that he would at all costs maintain peace in Central China; (2) by refusing to obey an inhuman decree from Peking, commanding the viceroys to massacre all foreigners within their jurisdiction—a decree which would be incredible were it not known that at the same moment the walls of the capital were placarded with proclamations offering rewards of 50, 30 and 20 taels respectively for the heads of foreign men, women, and children.
It is barely possible that Chang was helped to a decision by a friendly visit from a British man-of-war, whose captain, in answer to a question about his artillery, informed Chang that he had the bearings of his official residence, and could drop a shell into it with unerring precision at a distance of three miles. He was also aided by the influence of Mr. Fraser, a wide-awake British consul. Fraser modestly disclaims any special merit in the matter, but British missionaries at Hankow give him the credit. They say that, learning from them the state of feeling among the people, he induced the viceroy to take prompt measures to prevent an outbreak. At one time a Boxer army from the south was about to cross the river and destroy the foreign settlement. Chang, when appealed to, frankly confessed that his troops were in sympathy with the Boxers, and that being in arrears of pay they were on the verge of revolt. Fraser found him the money by the help of the Hong Kong Bank; the troops were paid; and the Boxers dispersed.
The same problem confronted Liu, the viceroy of Nanking; and it was solved by him in the same way. Both viceroys acted in concert; but to which belongs the honour of that wise initiative can never be decided with certainty. The foreign consuls at Nanking claim it for Liu. Mr. Sundius, now British consul at Wuhu, assures me that as Liu read the barbarous decree he exclaimed, "I shall repudiate this as a forgery," adding "I shall not obey, if I have to die for it." His words have a heroic ring; and suggest that his policy was not taken at second-hand.
A similar claim has been put forward for Li Hung Chang, who was at that time viceroy at Canton. Is it not probable that the same view of the situation flashed on the minds of all three simultaneously? They were not, like the Peking princes, ignorant Tartars, but Chinese scholars of the highest type. They could not fail to see that compliance with that bloody edict would seal their own doom as well as that of the Empire.
Speaking of Chang, Mr. Fraser says: "He had the wit to see that any other course meant ruin." Chang certainly does not hesitate to blow his own trumpet; but I do not suspect him of "drawing the longbow." Having the advantage of being an expert rhymer, he has put his own pretensions into verses which all the school-children in a population of fifty millions are obliged to commit to memory. They run somewhat like this:
"In Kengtse (1900) the Boxer robbers went mad,
And Peking became for the third time the prey of fire and sword;
But the banks of the Great River and the province of Hupei
Remained in tranquillity."
He adds in a tone of exultation:
"The province of Hupei was accordingly exempted
From the payment of an indemnity tax,
And allowed to spend the amount thus saved
In the erection of schoolhouses."
In these lines there is not much poetry; but the fact which they commemorate adds one more wreath to a brow already crowned with many laurels, showing how much the viceroy's heart was set on the education of his people.
In the interest of the educational movement, I was called to Chang's assistance in 1902. The Imperial University was destroyed in the Boxer War, and, seeing no prospect of its reëstablishment I was on the way to my home in America when, on reaching Vancouver, I found a telegram from Viceroy Chang, asking me to be president of a university which he proposed to open, and to instruct his junior officials in international law. I engaged for three years; and I now look back on my recent campaign in Central China as one of the most interesting passages in a life of over half a century in the Far East.
Besides instructing his mandarins in the law of nations, I had to give them some notion of geography and history, the two coördinates of time and place, without which they might, like some of their writers, mistake Rhode Island for the Island of Rhodes, and Rome, New York, for the City of the Seven Hills. A book on the Intercourse of Nations and a translation of Dudley Field's "International Code," remain as tangible results of those lectures. But the university failed to materialise.
Within a month after my arrival the viceroy was ordered to remove to Nanking to take up a post rendered vacant by the death of his eminent colleague, Liu. Calling at my house on the eve of embarking he said, "I asked you to come here to be president of a university for two provinces. If you will go with me to Nanking, I will make you president of a university for five provinces," meaning that he would combine the educational interests of the two viceroyalties, and showing how the university scheme had expanded in his fertile brain.