The Fight For The Republic in China Part 18

LIU-KUAN-HSIUNG, Minister of Navy.

CHANG TSUNG-HSIANG, Minister of Justice and Agriculture and Commerce.

CHANG KUO-KAN, Minister of Education.

6th day of the 6th month of the 5th year of Chung Hua Min Kuo.

This tragic denouement did not fail to awaken within very few days among thinking minds a feeling of profound sympathy for the dead man coupled with sharp disgust for the part that foreigners had played--not all, of course--but a great number of them. Briefly, when all the facts are properly grouped it can be said that Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai was killed by his foreign friends--by the sort of advice he has been consistently given in Const.i.tutional Law, in Finance, in Politics, in Diplomacy. It is easy to trace step by step the broad road he had been tempted to travel, and to see how at each turning-point the men who should have taught him how to be true and loyal to the Western things the country had nominally adhered to from the proclamation of the Republic, showed him how to be disloyal and untrue. The tragedy is one which is bound to be deeply studied throughout the whole world when the facts are properly known and there is time to think about them, and if there is anything to-day left to poetic justice the West will know to whom to apportion the blame.

Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, the man, when he came out of retirement in 1911, was in many ways a wonderful Chinese: he was a fount of energy and of a physical st.u.r.diness rare in a country whose governing cla.s.ses have hitherto been recruited from attenuated men, pale from study and the lotus life. He had a certain task to which to put his hand, a huge task, indeed, since the reformation of four hundred millions was involved, yet one which was not beyond him if wisely advised. He was an ignorant man in certain matters, but he had had much political experience and apparently possessed a marvellous apt.i.tude for learning. The people needed a leader to guide them through the great gateway of the West, to help them to acquire those jewels of wisdom and experience which are a common heritage. An almost Elizabethan eagerness filled them, as if a New World they had never dreamed of had been suddenly discovered for them and lay open to their endeavours. China, hitherto derided as a decaying land, had been born anew; and in single ma.s.sive gesture had proclaimed that she, too, would belong to the elect and be governed accordingly.

What was the foreign response--the official response? In every transaction into which it was possible to import them, reaction and obscurantism were not only commonly employed but heartily recommended.

Not one trace of genuine statesmans.h.i.+p, not one flash of altruism, was ever seen save the American flash in the pan of 1913, when President Wilson refused to allow American partic.i.p.ation in the great Reorganization Loan because he held that the terms on which it was to be granted infringed upon China's sovereign rights. Otherwise there was nothing but a tacit endors.e.m.e.nt of the very policy which has been tearing the entrails out of Europe--namely militarism. That was the fine fruit which was offered to a hopeful nation--something that would wither on the branch or poison the people as they plucked it. They were taught to believe that political instinct was the ability to misrepresent in a convincing way the actions and arguments of your opponents and to profit by their mistakes--not that it is a mighty impulse which can re-make nations. The Republic was declared by the actions of Western bureaucrats to be a Republic _pour rire_, not a serious thing; and by this false and cruel a.s.sumption they killed Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai.

If that epitaph is written on his political tombstone, it will be as full of blinding truth as is only possible with Last Things.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] The incident of Chen-chiao is very celebrated in Chinese annals. A yellow robe, the symbol of Imperial authority, was thrown around General Chao Kuang-ying, at a place called Chen-chiao, by his soldiers and officers when he commanded a force ordered to the front. Chao returned to the Capital immediately to a.s.sume the Imperial Throne, and was thus "compelled" to become the founder of the famous Sung dynasty.

The "incident of Yuyang" refers to the execution of Yang Kuei-fei, the favourite concubine of Emperor Yuan Tsung of the Tang dynasty. The Emperor for a long time was under the alluring influence of Yang Kuei-fei, who had a paramour named An Lo-hsan. The latter finally rebelled against the Emperor. The Emperor left the capital and proceeded to another place together with his favourite concubine, guarded by a large force of troops. Midway, however, the soldiers threatened to rebel unless the concubine was killed on the spot. The clamour was such that the Emperor was forced to sacrifice the favourite of his harem, putting her to death in the presence of his soldiers.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NEW ReGIME,--FROM 1916 TO 1917

Within an hour of the death of Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, the veteran General Tuan Chi-jui, in his capacity of Secretary of State, had called on Vice-President Li Yuan-hung--the man whom years before he had been sent to the Yangtsze to bring captive to Peking--and welcomed him as President of the Republic. At one o'clock on the same day the Ministers of the Allied Powers who had hastily a.s.sembled at the Waichiaopu (Foreign Office), were informed that General Li Yuan-hung had duly a.s.sumed office and that the peace and security of the capital were fully guaranteed. No unrest of any sort need be apprehended; for whilst rumours would no doubt circulate wildly as soon as the populace realized the tragic nature of the climax which had come the Gendarmerie Corps and the Metropolitan Police--two forces that numbered 18,000 armed men--were taking every possible precaution.

In spite of these a.s.surances great uneasiness was felt. The foreign Legations, which are very imperfectly informed regarding Chinese affairs although living in the midst of them, could not be convinced that internal peace could be so suddenly attained after five years of such fierce rivalries. Among the many gloomy predictions made at the time, the most common to fall from the lips of Foreign Plenipotentiaries was the remark that the j.a.panese would be in full occupation of the country within three months--the one effective barrier to their advance having been removed. No better ill.u.s.tration could be given of the inadequate grasp of politics possessed by those whose peculiar business it should be to become expert in the science of cause and effect. In China, as in the Balkans, professional diplomacy errs so constantly because it has in the main neither the desire nor the training to study dispa.s.sionately from day to day all those complex phenomena which go to make up modern nationalism. Guided in its conduct almost entirely by a policy of personal predilections, which is fitfully reinforced by the recollection of precedents, it is small wonder if such mountains of mistakes choke every Legation dossier. Determined to have nothing whatever to do, save in the last resort, with anything that savours of Radicalism, and inclining naturally towards ideals which have long been abandoned in the workaday world, diplomacy is the instinctive lover of obscurantism and the furtive enemy of progress. Distrusting all those generous movements which spring from the popular desire to benefit by change, it follows from this that the diplomatic brotherhood inclines towards those truly detestable things--secret compacts. In the present instance, having been bitterly disappointed by the complete collapse of the strong man theory, it was only natural that consolation should be sought by casting doubt on the future. Never have sensible men been so absurd. The life-story of Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, and the part European and j.a.panese diplomacy played in that story, form a chapter which should be taught as a warning to all who enter politics as a career, since there is exhibited in this history a complete compendium of all the more vicious traits of Byzantinism.

The first acts of President Li Yuan-hung rapidly restored confidence and advertised to the keen-eyed that the end of the long drawn-out Revolution had come. Calling before him all the generals in the capital, he told them with sincerity and simplicity that their country's fortunes rested in their hands; and he asked them to take such steps as would be in the nature of a permanent insurance against foreign interference in the affairs of the Republic. He was at once given fervent support. A ma.s.s meeting of the military was followed by the whole body of commissioned men volunteering to hold themselves personally responsible for the maintenance of peace and order in the capital. The dreadful disorders which had ushered in the Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai regime were thus made impossible; and almost at once men went about their business as usual.

The financial wreckage left by the mad monarchy adventure was, however, appalling. Not only was there no money in the capital but hardly any food as well; for since the suspension of specie payments country supplies had ceased entering the city as farmers refused to accept inconvertible paper in payment for their produce. It became necessary for the government to sell at a nominal price the enormous quant.i.ties of grain which had been acc.u.mulated for the army and the punitive expedition against the South; and for many days a familiar sight was the endless blue-coated queues waiting patiently to receive as in war-time their stipulated pittance.

Meanwhile, although the troops remained loyal to the new regime, not so the monarchist politicians. Seeing that their hour of obliteration had come, they spared no effort to sow secret dissensions and prevent the provinces from uniting again with Peking. It would be wearisome to give in full detail the innumerable schemes which were now hourly formulated, to secure that the control of the country should not be exercised in a lawful way. Finding that it was impossible to conquer the general detestation felt for them, the monarchists, led by Liang s.h.i.+h-yi, changed their tactics and exhausted themselves in attempting to secure the issue of a general amnesty decree. But in spite of every argument President Li Yuan-hung remained unmoved and refused absolutely to consider their pardon. A just and merciful man, it was his intention to allow the nation to speak its mind before issuing orders on the subject; but to show that he was no advocate of the terrorist methods practised by his predecessor, he now issued a Mandate summarily abolis.h.i.+ng the infamous _Chih Fa Chu_, or Military Court, which Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai had turned into an engine of judicial a.s.sa.s.sination, and within whose gloomy precincts many thousands of unfortunate men had perished practically untried in the period 1911-1916.

Meanwhile the general situation throughout the country only slowly ameliorated. The Northern Military party, determined to prevent political power from pa.s.sing solely into the hands of the Southern Radicals, bitterly opposed the revival of the Nanking Provisional Const.i.tution, and denounced the re-convocation of the old Parliament of 1913, which had already a.s.sembled in Shanghai, preparatory to coming up to the capital. It needed a sharp manoeuvre to bring them to their senses. The Chinese Navy, a.s.sembled in the waters near Shanghai, took action; and in an ultimatum communicated to Peking by their Admiral, declared that so long as the government in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui refused to conform to popular wishes by reviving the Nanking Provisional Const.i.tution and resummoning the old Parliament, so long would the Navy refuse to recognize the authority of the Central Government. With the fleet in the hands of the Southern Confederacy, which had not yet been formally dissolved, the Peking Government was powerless in the whole region of the Yangtsze; consequently, after many vain manoeuvres to avoid this reasonable and proper solution, it was at last agreed that things should be brought back precisely where they had been before the _coup d'etat_ of the 4th November, 1913--the Peking Government being reconst.i.tuted by means of a coalition cabinet in which there would be both nominees of the North and South--the premiers.h.i.+p remaining in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui.

On the 28th June a long funeral procession wended its way from the Presidential Palace to the railway Station; it was the remains of the great dictator being taken to their last resting-place in Honan.

Conspicuous in this cortege was the magnificent stage-coach which had been designed to bear the founder of the new dynasty to his throne but which only accompanied him to his grave. The detached att.i.tude of the crowds and the studied simplicity of the procession, which was designed to be republican, proved more clearly than reams of arguments that China--despite herself perhaps--had become somewhat modernized, the oldest country in the world being now the youngest republic and timidly trying to learn the lessons of youth.

Once Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai had been buried, a Mandate ordering the summary arrest of all the chief monarchist plotters was issued; but the gang of corrupt men had already sought safety in ignominious flight; and it was understood that so long as they remained on soil under foreign jurisdiction, no attempt would be made even to confiscate their goods and chattels as would certainly have been done under former governments.

The days of treachery and double-dealing and cowardly revenge were indeed pa.s.sing away and the new regime was committed to decency and fairplay. The task of the new President was no mean one, and in all the circ.u.mstances if he managed to steer a safe middle course and avoid both Caesarism and complete effacement, that is a tribute to his training.

Born in 1864 in Hupeh, one of the most important mid-Yangtsze provinces, President Li Yuan-hung was now fifty-two years old, and in the prime of life; but although he had been accustomed to a military atmosphere from his earliest youth his policy had never been militaristic. His father having been in command of a force in North China for many years, rising from the ranks to the post of _Tsan Chiang_ (Lieutenant-Colonel), had been constrained to give him the advantage of a thoroughly modern training. At the age of 20 he had entered the Naval School at Tientsin; whence six years later he had graduated, seeing service in the navy as an engineer officer during the Chino-j.a.panese war of 1894. After that campaign he had been invited by Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, then one of the most distinguished of the older viceroys, to join his staff at Nanking, and had been entrusted with the supervision of the construction of the modern forts at the old Southern capital, which played such a notable part in the Revolution. When Chang Chih-tung was transferred to the Wuchang viceroyalty, General Li Yuan-hung had accompanied him, actively partic.i.p.ating in the training of the new Hupeh army, and being a.s.sisted in that work by German instructors. In 1897 he had gone to j.a.pan to study educational, military and administrative methods, returning to China after a short stay, but again proceeding to Tokio in 1897 as an officer attached to the Imperial Guards. In the autumn of the following year he had returned to Wuchang and been appointed Commander of the Cavalry. Yet another visit was paid by him to j.a.pan in 1902 to attend the grand military manoeuvres, these journeys giving him a good working knowledge of j.a.panese, in addition to the English which had been an important item in the curriculum of the Naval School, and which he understands moderately well. In 1903 he was promoted Brigadier-General, being subsequently gazetted as the Commander of the 2nd Division of Regulars (_Chang Pei Chun_) of Hupeh. He also constantly held various subsidiary posts, in addition to his substantive appointment, connected with educational and administrative work of various kinds, and has therefore a sound grasp of provincial government. He was Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Division during the famous military manoeuvres of 1906 at Changtehfu in Honan province, which are said to have given birth to the idea of a universal revolt against the Manchus by using the army as the chief instrument.

On the memorable day of October 11, 1911, when the standard of revolt was raised at Wuchang, somewhat against his will as he was a loyal officer, he was elected military Governor, thus becoming the first real leader of the Republic. Within the s.p.a.ce of ten days his leaders.h.i.+p had secured the adhesion of fourteen provinces to the Republican cause; and though confronted by grave difficulties owing to insufficiency of equipment and military supplies, he fought the Northern soldiery for two months around Wuchang with varying success. He it was, when the Republic had been formally established and the Manchu regime made a thing of the past, who worked earnestly to bring about better relations between the armies of North and South China which had been arrayed against one another during many bitter weeks. It was he, also, who was the first to advocate the complete separation of the civil and military administration--the administrative powers in the early days of the Republic being entirely in the hands of the military governors of the provinces who recruited soldiery in total disregard to the wishes of the Central Government. Although this reform has even to-day only been partially successful, there is no reason to doubt that before the Republic is many years older the idea of the military dictating the policy and administration of the country will pa.s.s away. The so-called Second Revolution of 1913 awakened no sympathy in General Li Yuan-hung, because he was opposed to internal strife and held that all Chinese should work for unity and concerted reform rather than indulge in fruitless dissensions. His disapproval of the monarchy movement had been equally emphatic in the face of an ugly outlook. He was repeatedly approached by the highest personages to give in his adhesion to Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai becoming emperor, but he persistently refused although grave fears were publicly expressed that he would be a.s.sa.s.sinated. Upon the formal acceptance of the Throne by Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, he had had conferred on him a princedom which he steadfastly refused to accept; and when the allowances of a prince were brought to him from the Palace he returned them with the statement that as he had not accepted the t.i.tle the money was not his. Every effort to break his will proved unavailing, his patience and calmness contributing very materially to the vast moral opposition which finally destroyed Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai.

Such was the man who was called upon to preside over the new government and parliament which was now a.s.sembling in Peking; and certainly it may be counted as an evidence of China's traditional luck which brought him to the helm. General Li Yuan-hung knew well that the cool and singular plan which had been pursued to forge a national mandate for a revival of of the empire would take years completely to obliterate, and that the octopus-hold of the Military Party--the army being the one effective organization which had survived the Revolution--could not be loosened in a day,--in fact would have to be tolerated until the nation a.s.serted itself and showed that it could and would be master. In the circ.u.mstances his authority could not but be very limited, disclosing itself in pa.s.sive rather than in active ways. Wis.h.i.+ng to be above all a const.i.tutional President, he quickly saw that an interregnum must be philosophically accepted during which the Permanent Const.i.tution would be worked out and the various parties forced to a general agreement; and thanks to this decision the year which has now elapsed since Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai's death has been almost entirely eventless, with the exception of the crisis which arose over the war-issue, a matter which is fully discussed elsewhere.

Meanwhile, in the closing months of 1916, the position was not a little singular. Two great political parties had arisen through the Revolution--the Kuo Ming Tang or Nationalists, who included all the Radical elements, and the Chinputang or Progressives, whose adherents were mainly men of the older official cla.s.ses, and therefore conservative. The Yunnan movement, which had led to the overthrow of Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, had been inspired and very largely directed by the scholar Liang Ch'i-chao, a leader of the Chinputang. To this party, then, though numerically inferior to the Kuo Ming Tang, was due the honour and credit of re-establis.h.i.+ng the Republic, the Kuo Ming Tang being under a cloud owing to the failure of the Second Revolution of 1913 which it had engineered. Nevertheless, owing to the Kuo Ming Tang being more genuinely republican, since it was mainly composed of younger and more modern minds, it was from its ranks that the greatest check to militarism sprang; and therefore although its work was necessarily confined to the Council-chamber, its moral influence was very great and constantly representative of the civilian element as opposed to the militarist. By staking everything on the necessity of adhering to the Nanking Provisional Const.i.tution until a permanent instrument was drawn up, the Kuo Ming Tang rapidly established an ascendancy; for although the Nanking Const.i.tution had admittedly failed to bring representative government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a way as to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least established as a basic principle that China could no longer be ruled as a family possession, which in itself marked a great advance on all previous conceptions. President Li Yuan-hung's policy, in the circ.u.mstances, was to play the part of a moderator and to seek to bring harmony to a ma.s.s of heterogeneous elements that had to carry out the practical work of government over four hundred millions of people.

His success was at the outset hampered by the appeal the military were quick in making to a new method--to offset the power of Parliament in Peking. We have already dealt with the evils of the circular telegram in China--surely one of the most unexpected results of adapting foreign inventions to native life. By means of these telegraphic campaigns a rapid exchange of views is made possible among the provincial governors; and consequently in the autumn of 1916, inspired by the Military Party, a wholly illegal Conference of generals was organized by the redoubtable old General Chang Hsun on the Pukow railway for the purpose of overawing parliament, and securing that the Military Party retained a controlling hand behind the scenes. It is perhaps unnecessary to-day to do more than note the fact that the peace of the country was badly strained by this procedure; but thanks to moderate counsels and the wisdom of the President no open breach occurred and there is reason to believe that this experiment will not be repeated,--at least not in the same way.[21]

The difficulty to be solved is of an unique nature. It is not that the generals and the Military Party are necessarily reactionary: it is that, not belonging to the intellectual-literary portion of the ruling elements, they are less advanced and less accustomed to foreign ways, and therefore more in touch with the older China which lingers on in the vast agricultural districts, and in all those myriad of towns.h.i.+ps which are dotted far and wide across the provinces to the confines of Central Asia. Naturally it is hard for a cla.s.s of men who hold the balance of power and carry on much of the actual work of governing to submit to the paper decrees of an inst.i.tution they do not accept as being responsible and representative: but many indications are available that when a Permanent Const.i.tution has been promulgated, and made an article of faith in all the schools, a change for the better will come and the old antagonisms gradually disappear.

It is on this Const.i.tution that Parliament has been at work ever since it re-a.s.sembled in August, 1916, and which is now practically completed.

Sitting together three times a week as a National Convention, the two Houses have subjected the Draft Const.i.tution (which was prepared by a Special Parliamentary Drafting Committee) to a very exhaustive examination and discussion. Many violent scenes have naturally marked the progress of this important work, the two great parties, the Kuo Ming Tang and the Chinputang, coming to loggerheads again and again. But in the main the debates and the decisions arrived at have been satisfactory and important, because they have tended to express in a concrete and indisputable form the present state of the Chinese mind and its immense underlying commonsense. Remarkable discussions and fierce enmities, for instance, marked the final decision not to make the Confucian cult the State Religion; but there is not the slightest doubt that in formally registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relations.h.i.+p which must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing for many months to agree on the so-called Provincial system, and then fighting a battle _a outrance_ on the question of whether this body of law should form a chapter in the Const.i.tution or be simply an annexure to the main instrument. The agreement which was finally arrived at--to make it part and parcel of the Const.i.tution--was masterly in that it has secured that the sovereignty of the people will not tend to be expressed in the provincial dietines which have now been re-erected (after having been summarily destroyed by Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai), the Central Parliament being left the absolute master. This for a number of years will no doubt be more of a theory than a practice; but there is every indication that parliamentary government will within a limited period be more successful in China than in some European countries; and that the Chinese with their love of well-established procedure and cautious action, will select open debate as the best method of sifting the grain from the chaff and deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority.

Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than justified its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch Committee.

Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been constant and frequent; fierce verbal a.s.saults are delivered on Cabinet Ministers; and slowly but inexorably a real sense of Ministerial responsibility is being created, the fear of having to run the gauntlet of Parliament abating, if it has not yet entirely destroyed, many malpractices. In the opinion of the writer in less than ten years Parliament will have succeeded in coalescing the country into an organic whole, and will have placed the Cabinet in such close daily relations with it that something very similar to the Anglo-Saxon theory of government will be impregnably entrenched in Peking. That such a miracle should be possible in extreme Eastern Asia is one more proof that there are no victories beyond the capacity of the human mind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: General Tsao-ao, the Hero of the Yunnan Rebellion of 1915-16, who died from the effects of the campaign.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Liang s.h.i.+h-yi, who was the Power behind Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, now proscribed and living in exile at Hong-Kong.]

Meanwhile, for the time being, in China as in countries ten thousand miles away, ministerial irresponsibility is the enemy; that is to say that so-called Cabinet-rule, with the effacement of the Chief Executive, has tended to make Cabinet Ministers removed from effective daily control. All sorts of things are done which should not be done and men are still in charge of portfolios who should be summarily expelled from the capital for malpractices.[22] But although Chinese are slow to take action and prefer to delay all decisions until they have about them the inexorable quality which is a.s.sociated with Fate, there is not the slightest doubt that in the long run the dishonest suffer, and an increasingly efficient body of men take their place. From every point of view then there is reason for congratulation in the present position, and every hope that the future will unroll peacefully.

A visit to Parliament under the new regime is a revelation to most men: the candid come away with an impression which is never effaced from their minds. There is a peculiar suggestiveness even in the location of the Houses of the National a.s.sembly. They are tucked away in the distant Western city immediately under the shadow of the vast Tartar Wall as if it had been fully expected when they were called into being that they would never justify their existence, and that the crus.h.i.+ng weight of the great bastion of brick and stone surrounding the capital would soon prove to them how futile it was for such palpable intruders to aspire to national control. Under Yuan s.h.i.+h-kai, as under the Manchus, they were an exercise in the arm of government, something which was never to be allowed to harden into a settled practice. They were first cousins to railways, to electrical power, to metalled roadways and all those other modern instances beginning to modify an ancient civilization entirely based on agriculture; and because they were so distantly related to the real China of the farm-yard it was thought that they would always stand outside the national life.

That was what the fools believed. Yet in a copy of the rules of procedure of the old Imperial Senate (Tzuchengyuan) the writer finds this note written in 1910: "The Debates of this body have been remarkable during the very first session. They make it seem clear that the first National Parliament of 1913 will seize control of China and nullify the power of the Throne. Result, revolution--" Though the dating is a little confused, the prophecy is worthy of record.

The watchfulness of the special police surrounding the Parliament of 1916-1917 and the great number of these men also tells a story as eloquent as the location of the building. It is not so much that any contemplated violence sets these guardians here as the necessity to advertise that there has been unconst.i.tutional violence in the past which, if possible, will be rigidly defeated in the future. Probably no National a.s.sembly in the world has been held up to greater contempt than the Parliament of Peking and probably no body deserves it less. An afternoon spent in the House of Representatives would certainly surprise most open-minded men who have been content to believe that the Chinese experiment was what some critics have alleged it to be. The Chinese as a people, being used to guild-house proceedings, debates, in which the welfare of the majority is decided after an examination of the principles at stake, are a very old and well-established custom; and though at present there are awkwardnesses and gaucheries to be noted, when practice has become better fixed, the common sense of the race will abundantly disclose itself and make a lasting mark on contemporary history. There can be no doubt about this at all.

Take your seat in the gallery and see for yourself. The first question which rises to the lips is--where are the young men, those crude and callow youths masquerading as legislators which the vernacular press has so excessively lampooned? The majority of the members, so far from being young, are men of thirty or forty, or even fifty, with intelligent and tired faces that have lost the Spring of youth. Here and there you will even see venerable greybeards suffering from rheumy coughs who ought to be at home; and though occasionally there is a lithe youngster in European clothes with the veneer he acquired abroad not yet completely rubbed off, the total impression is that of oldish men who have reached years of maturity and who are as representative of the country and as good as the country is in a position to-day to provide. No one who knows the real China can deny that.

The Continental arrangement of the Members' desks and the raised tribune of the Speaker, with its rows of clerks and recorders, make an impression of orderliness, tinged nevertheless with a faint revolutionary flavour. Perhaps it is the straight black Chinese hair and the rich silk clothing, set on a very plain and unadorned background, which recall the pictures of the French Revolution. It is somehow natural in such circ.u.mstances that there should occasionally be dramatic outbursts with the blood of offenders bitterly demanded as though we were not living in the Twentieth Century when blood alone is admittedly no satisfaction. The presence of armed House police at every door, and in the front rows of the strangers' gallery as well, contributes to this impression which has certain qualities of the theatre about it and is oddly stimulating. China at work legislating has already created her first traditions: she is proceeding deliberately armed--with the lessons of the immediate past fully noted.

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 ma.s.s, quickly responsive to curious sub-conscious influences--suddenly angry and suddenly calm again because Reason has after all always been the great G.o.ddess which is perpetually wors.h.i.+pped. 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 a.s.sembly you must be condensed and simple, using broad, slas.h.i.+ng arguments. This is precisely what distinguishes melodrama from drama, and which explains why excessive a.n.a.lysis 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 members.h.i.+p to insure that the excessively large quorum requisite is present. Now the Speaker calls for the vote. Ma.s.sively 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 ma.s.s of the people. The rule of the majority as expressed in the voting of the National a.s.sembly 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 Const.i.tution 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 compet.i.tion 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 a.s.sist 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.