CHAPTER V

WITH MEN WHO WATCH POLITICS

I found in Peking several good observers of political life, especially Dr. George Morrison, Mr. B. Lenox Simpson, and Mr. W.H. Donald. All three had the training in observation and judgment which comes from writing for responsible papers. Doctor Morrison was gifted with a memory for details. Thus, he would say: "When I first visited New York I lived in a little hall room on the third floor of 157 East Twenty-ninth Street, with a landlady whose name was Simkins, who had green eyes and a red nose and who charged me two dollars a week for my room." He delighted in detailing minutely his daily doings. His sense of infinite detail combined with his remarkable memory made Doctor Morrison an encyclopædia of information about Chinese public men. He knew their careers, their foibles and ambitions, and their personal relationships. Like most British in China he was animated with a sincere wish to see the Chinese get ahead, and was distressed by the obstacles which a change for the better encountered at every step. His own mind was of the analytical and critical type rather than the constructive, and his greatest services were rendered as interpreter of events and in giving to public men and the people a clear idea of the significance of complex Chinese situations. "I am annoyed," he would say, "because kindly old ladies persistently identify me with the missionary Morrison who died in 1857."

Mr. Donald's acquaintance with Chinese affairs had come through close contact with the leaders of new China, with whom he coöperated intimately in their military and political campaigns. He had a heart for the Chinese, as if they had been his own people. He worried about their troubles and fought their fights. Mr. Simpson, the noted writer who uses the pen name "Putnam Weale," began active life as a member of the Maritime Customs service, but he soon resigned, to devote himself wholly to literary work. His masterly works of political analysis were written in the period of the Russo-Japanese War, although his best-known book came a little earlier--a book which long earned him the ill-will and suspicion of many of the legations in Peking. He himself disavows giving in "Indiscreet Letters from Peking" a recital of actual facts. He told me: "I wished to give the psychology of a siege, selecting from the abundant material significant facts and expressions, but I was not in any sense attempting to chronicle events and personal actions."

Mr. Simpson has also written a series of novels dealing with Chinese life. The short stories are the best; the longer ones, while interesting in description and clever in dialogue, lack that intuitive power of characterization which is found in the greatest novels, though "Wang the Ninth" which has recently come from the press is an admirable study of Chinese psychology and an excellent story as well. Though his playful and cynical mind often led people to judge that he was working solely for literary effect, it seemed to me he had a deep appreciation of what China should mean to the world; he also had real sympathy for the Chinese, and desired in every way to help them to realize the great promise of their country and people. As a conversationalist Mr. Simpson resembled Macaulay, in that his interludes of silence were infrequent. Notwithstanding the brilliance of this conversation, luncheon parties of men occasionally seemed to become restive under a monologue which gave few others a chance to wedge in a word.

Aside from these three British writers, many other men were following with intelligent interest the course of events. Bishop Bashford, gifted with a broad and statesmanlike mind, could always be trusted to give passing events significant interpretations. Dr. W.A.P. Martin had then reached an age at which the individual details of current affairs no longer interested him. His intimate friend, Dr. Arthur H. Smith--a rarely brilliant extemporaneous speaker--was full of witty and incisive observations, often deeply pessimistic, though tempered with a deep friendship for the Chinese people.

Among the members of the diplomatic corps it was chiefly the Chinese secretaries who busied themselves, out of professional interest with the details of Chinese affairs, although they did not in all cases exhibit a broad grasp of the situation.

Mr. Willys R. Peck, Chinese secretary of the American Legation, born in China, had a complete mastery of the difficult language of the country. He could use it with a colloquial ease that contrasted most pleasantly with the stilted and stiff enunciation of the ordinary foreigner speaking Chinese. His tact in intercourse with the Chinese and his judgment on character and political affairs could be relied on. Mr. Peck took the place of Mr. E.T. Williams, who was called to Washington as chief of the Far Eastern Division in the State Department. I considered it great good fortune that there should be at the Department a man so experienced and so familiar with Chinese affairs.

It was my good fortune to have as first secretary of the legation a man exceptionally qualified to cope with the difficulties and intricacies of Chinese affairs. Not only are these affairs infinitely complex in themselves, but they have been overlaid through many decades with a web of foreign treaty provisions, which makes them still more baffling to the stranger who tackles them. But Mr. J.V.A. MacMurray, the secretary, was possessed of a keenly analytical, legally trained mind which was able to cut through the most hopelessly tangled snarl of local custom, national law, international agreement, and general equity. Also his interest in things Chinese was so deep and genuine that his researches were never perfunctory. The son of a soldier, he had an almost religious devotion to the idea of public service.

Among the ministers themselves, Sir John Jordan, actual Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, was through long experience and careful attention to affairs most fitted to speak with authority on things Chinese. I was immediately greatly attracted to him and formed with him a close acquaintanceship. This led to constant coöperation throughout the difficult years that lay ahead. Sir John was a man of unusually long and varied experience in China. He came first to the consular service, then became minister resident in Korea, and his forty years of official work had given him complete intimacy with Chinese affairs. Although he speaks Chinese with fluency, in official interviews and conversations he was always accompanied by his Chinese secretary and expressed himself formally in English. As a matter of fact, few diplomats ever use the Chinese language in official conversation. Because of its infinite shades of meaning it is a complex and rather unprecise medium, therefore misunderstandings are more readily avoided through the concurrent use of another language. While Sir John understood Chinese character and affairs and was sympathetic with the country in which his life work had been spent, yet there dwelt in him no spirit of easy compliance. When he considered it necessary, he could insist so strongly and so emphatically upon the action he desired taken that the Chinese often thought of him as harsh and unrelenting: yet they always respected his essentially English spirit of fairness and straightforwardness.

Other colleagues with whom close relationships grew up were Don Luis Pastor, the Spanish minister, a gentleman thoroughly American in his ways and familiar through long residence in Washington with our affairs; and Count Sforza, the Italian minister. To the latter China seemed more or less a place of exile; he appeared bored and only moderately interested in the affairs about him. But his legation--with Countess Sforza, Madame Varè, whose Lombard beauty did not suggest her Scotch origin; the Marquise Denti, with her quizzical, Mona Lisa-like haunting smile, concealing great ennui; and the entirely girlish and playful Countess Zavagli, a figure which might have stepped out of a Watteau--was a most charming social centre. M. Beelaerts van Blokland, the Netherlands minister, a man of clear-thinking, keen mind, and great reasonableness, and the Austrian minister, M. von Rosthorn, a profound Chinese scholar, who was then working on a Chinese history, were men of whom I saw much during these years.

There were few sinologists in Peking at this time. The successive Chinese secretaries of the American Legation ranked high in this respect. Of resident sinologists the most noted, Mr. (later Sir) Edward Backhouse was a recluse, who never allowed himself to be seen in the company of other people of a Western race. At the only period when I had long conversations with him I found him much disturbed by wild rumours current in the Chinese quarter to which I could not attach any weight. Others whose knowledge of Chinese was exceptional were Mr. Sidney Mayers, representative of the British China Corporation, who had formerly been in the consular service; Doctor Gattrell, who had acted as secretary of the American Group; Mr. W.B. Pettus, the director of the Peking Language School; Mr. Simpson, already mentioned; and several missionaries and professors at Peking University.

Of the Chinese there were, of course, many with whom I could profitably discuss the events of the day and gather suggestions and interpretations of value. With all these men I conversed upon events, relying for my information not on rumours or reports, but on the facts which I could learn through the men directly concerned; or through others well informed. The opinion which I formed from such various sources about the political condition of China at this time, the spring of 1914, may be stated as follows:

The political authority of the Central Government in China rested upon military organization. Other sources of authority, such as customary submission on the one hand, and the support based upon the intelligent coöperation of all classes of citizens in the achievement of the purposes of government in accordance with public opinion on the other, were only of secondary influence. It was therefore important to inquire whether the military power was so organized as to afford a stabilizing support to public authority. This did not seem to be the case.

In the first place, the existence of a large army of doubtful efficiency was in itself an evil, considering the then limited resources of the Chinese State, and the fact that any attempt to reduce the military forces to more reasonable dimensions met with stubborn opposition. Whenever troops were disbanded they showed no tendency to return to useful occupations: the ex-soldiers desired only to continue to live upon the country, and, no longer serving the established authority, they joined bandit gangs, rendering the interior of the majority of the provinces insecure.

The weakness of the army was strikingly demonstrated whenever an attempt was made to use it to defend the country against either external or internal enemies. In the campaign against the Mongols, the Chinese troops had failed entirely; even within the country itself, this huge army was not able to insure the fulfilment of that first duty of a government--the protection of the lives and property of its citizens.

In the provinces of Honan and Hupei brigands, led by a person known as "White Wolf," had for months been terrifying the population; ravaging the countryside; sacking walled cities; murdering and outraging the population; and in a number of instances had killed foreigners. Thus far the army had been powerless to suppress these brigands; in fact, evidence was at hand that the troops had repeatedly been so lax and remiss that the only explanation of their conduct would seem to lie in a secret connivance at the brigandage, and lack of coöperation among the commanders of the troops.

As the authority of the Central Government was commensurate with its control over the tutuhs (tuchuns), or military governors, the attitude of the latter toward the President had to be carefully watched; and it was causing no small uneasiness that there did not seem to be perfect agreement among these pillars of authority in the various provinces; thus, friction had recently been reported between General Tuan Chi-jui, the Minister of War, who was the acting tutuh of Hupei, and General Feng Kuo-chang, the tutuh of Kiangsu, two of the most powerful supporters of the President.

None of the provinces of China, during the preceding three months, had been free from brigandage, attempted rebellion, troubles resulting from the disbanding of troops, and local riots. Conditions were worst in the provinces of Honan and Hupei, in which the bands of "White Wolf" are operating.

These bands had assumed a distinctly anti-foreign attitude. In Kansu there were constant Mohammedan uprisings, related to the open rebellion in Tibet and Mongolia. Bandit movements had also occurred in the provinces of Shansi, Shensi, Szechuan (super-added to revolts of the troops), Anhui, Kiangsi, Hunan, Fukien, Kweichow, Yunnan, and Kwangtung. Chekiang, Kwangsi, Shantung, and Chihli had been the least molested.

While the Government had been unable to fulfil its duty of protecting the lives and property of its citizens, it was also unable to exercise the elementary power of providing, through taxation, the means for its own support. The maintenance of the army had eaten up the available means and it had not been possible to secure sufficient money from the provinces to meet the ordinary running expenses of the Central Government. The remarkable resisting power of China is illustrated by the fact that, notwithstanding the conditions of rebellion and political unrest which characterized the year 1913, general commerce remained so active that the collections of the Customs and of the Salt Gabelle exceeded those of any previous year. These two sources of revenue were sufficient to provide for the interest payments and amortization of the long-term foreign loans then contracted; their administration, under foreign control, had secured to the Central Government the funds to meet these obligations and to avoid open bankruptcy.

All other forms of taxation were disorganized. The collection of the land tax was in many places discontinued; records had been destroyed, or the population took an attitude hostile to its collection. The proceeds of the _likin_, as far as collected, were retained for provincial use. Altogether, the Central Government received from the provinces not more than 10 per cent. of the estimated income from these sources under the last Imperial Budget for 1912.

Meanwhile, the Central Government had been living from hand to mouth, using the proceeds of foreign loans for administrative purposes, and was kept going by taking cash advances upon foreign loan contracts made for furnishing materials and for various concessions. In this way the future had been discounted to a dangerous extent.

The weakness of the financial administration of the Government was found in all other branches of its activities. There was little evidence of constructive capacity.

In the ministries and departments of the Central Government the greatest disorganization was apparent. In dealing with technical questions the officials were often entirely at sea, not being trained themselves in these matters, nor willing to make real use of the many advisers who were engaged by the Government; there was no adequate system of accounting; the departmental records were not well kept; frequently the existence of a transaction was not known to the officials most nearly concerned; past transactions, fully consummated, had been forgotten; there was no centralization of governmental knowledge; so a great deal of the public business was transacted in a haphazard way, leading to a helpless opportunism of doing the things most strongly urged and of grasping at small immediate advantages at the cost of engagements long to be regretted.

Ambitious schemes of general policy had been brought up, and elaborate regulations promulgated, to all of which little attention was subsequently paid. On the other hand, there had scarcely been one single concrete result obtained in constructive work.

The metropolitan Province of Chihli had been quiet and peaceful since the outbreak of 1912. The Government here certainly had sufficient authority to introduce constructive reforms, and the general conditions for such action in this province had been relatively most favourable. But not even in the case of Chihli Province had the taxation system been rendered efficient; no efficient auditing methods had been introduced in practice, although systems of auditing control had been promulgated; educational institutions had been allowed to run down: in short, under the most favourable conditions, no constructive work had been accomplished.

Nearly all attempts to do something of a constructive nature had been immediately associated with foreign loans, often involving a cash advance to the Government. It might, of course, be said that the great difficulty of the Chinese Government was exactly that it lacked the funds for carrying out constructive work; and that, therefore, only such lines of improvement could be followed for which it had been possible to secure foreign loans.

This, however, was only partly true. A great many reforms could have been accomplished without the increase of expenditure; indeed, they would have resulted in a reduction of outlay. The fact seemed to be that the Central Government, realizing how important foreign financial support had been to it during the Revolution of 1913, was anxious to secure more and more funds from abroad without counting the ultimate cost.

An opportunity for obtaining from abroad large sums of money, far beyond any amount ever before dealt with by Chinese officials and merchants, in itself had an unsettling effect upon methods of public business. The old caution and economy, which kept the public debt within narrow limits, had given way to a readiness to obtain funds from abroad in enormous amounts, without apparently the realization of the burden imposed upon China by way of the necessity of return in the future through the results of labour and sacrifice of millions of people.

Nor had the old system, under which the inadequate salaries of officials had ordinarily to be supplemented by extraneous illicit gains, given way to a more efficient and business-like organization of the public service under which officials would be able to devote their undivided attention to the accomplishment of their regular allotted tasks without spending their energy in contriving additional means of obtaining income.

In the case of certain classes of officials, the Government had endeavoured to place their salaries at a figure sufficient to render them independent of these practices; but the resources of the Government were not adequate to enable it at once to place the entire public service upon a basis of individual independence. It was also true that certain among the closest advisers of the President were commonly believed to have used their positions for the purpose of accumulating vast private fortunes--a belief which, whether justified or not, must be counted with in determining the standing of the Government as enjoyed throughout the country.

Thus the old hostility and lack of confidence, which formerly characterized the relations between merchants and officials, continued under the new system.

Through the dissolution of the Parliament, the Government had destroyed an organ which might, in the course of time, have established relations of confidence between the great middle class of China and the Government.

As a statesman, the President emphasized in the first place the requirements of order and of authority. To him it seemed that Parliament, with its free discussion, with its opportunity for forming political factions, opposing the men in authority, stood in the way of the establishment of a lasting system of legal order. He, therefore, dissolved first the national parliament, then the assemblies of the provinces, and finally the local self-governing bodies.

In each case inefficiency was justly complained of. The men in the parliamentary bodies had often been self-seeking, factional, and unpractical. But the President seemed to have no perception of the true value of parliamentary action as a basis of public authority; he considered opposition to the Government synonymous with opposition to lawful authority. And in his ideas upon the reconstitution of Parliament, as far as they had been announced, two main principles dominated: first, that only men of mature experience and of conservative ideas should be selected; and secondly, that the activities of Parliament should be confined to discussing and giving advice upon policies already determined upon by the Administration.