CHAPTER XIV

THE COMING OF SUN YAT-SEN

Sun Yat-sen for many years has been known the world over as the most effective Revolutionary China has ever produced. For many years he had been the leader of a revolutionary movement among Chinese abroad, and his life was practically devoted to travelling to foreign countries, keeping his exiled countrymen versed upon the latest political phases of China.

At the time of the Peace Conference the situation had become so strained, there were so many parties all genuinely anxious to assume control--out of the best motives probably--that it seemed necessary for one strong man to come in safely to direct the Revolutionary cause. That strong man was Dr. Sun Yat-sen. It was known on the day the Conference met that Sun Yat-sen was in Singapore. For many days the people had been looking for him, and disappointment was freely expressed in Shanghai more particularly (where he was best known) because of his non-appearance. It seemed that he was now, at the moment when he could do his country the most good, determined to stay away. After the Conference had broken up, however, Sun arrived, and immediately the people took him to their hearts, recognising in him the one man who now would be strong enough to establish a stable Government.

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Sun cannot be called a typical Chinese; he is a typical and extremely able Chinese of the new school. He has lived most of his life abroad, and from his earliest years, when in Canton he attended the London Mission with his Christian parents, has been constantly in close touch with men and things foreign. As has been said, practically all his life, but particularly since 1895, Sun has been looked upon as the most active Revolutionary among the Chinese. His escapes at the hand of the Chinese Government had been many. For years he had been banished, and his head was ever sought after. His deliverances had been marvellous. Newspapermen the world over have constantly interviewed Sun in his wanderings, and it is felt that so much is known of President Sun that nothing of a general nature need be added here. It will be more interesting to pass on to see what Dr. Sun has to say, in a remarkably well written story, of the reason why his country is in revolt.[1]

"The conspiracy in which I took part as a leader at Canton in October, 1895," wrote Dr. Sun Yat-sen, "was one of a series which must ultimately triumph in the establishment of a Constitution in our Empire. The whole of the people in China, excepting the Imperial agents, who profit in purse and power by the outrages they are able to perpetrate, are with us. The good, well-governed people of America will not fail to understand that Chinese numbering many millions in their own land and thousands in exile, could not entertain such feelings about their Empire without good cause. Over each province there is what the English would call a Governor. There are no laws, as you know laws. The Governor of each province makes his own laws. The will of each officer is the law. The people have no voice. There is no appeal against the law created for his own purposes by the officer or the Governor, no matter how unjust, no matter how cruelly carried {203} out. These Governors universally persecute the people and grow wealthy by squeezing them all into poverty. Taxes, as taxation is understood by Americans, are unknown. We pay only a land tax, but the Governors and officers take money from the masses by innumerable systems of extortion. Every time a Governor or magistrate or chief officer takes charge of a district, the first thing he does is to find out who are the rich, who are favourably disposed toward him and who against him. He selects first one of those whom he has reason to believe dislikes him, forces one of those on his side to make a criminal charge against the selected man, and has him arrested on the charge, which is invariably false. The Governor enriches himself by each case, as the only thing in the nature of a law he knows is that of the Dynasty, empowering him to take as his own as much as he likes, usually the whole of the property of every man whom he arrests and punishes. The arrested man has no appeal. He has no advocates. He has no hearing. Only his accusers are heard. Then he is barbarously tortured to confess the guilt he knows not.

"The terrible injustice of this procedure is to be seen in that a magistrate or chief officer never visits that punishment upon any one who has Imperial influence. Yet any man who has influence with the magistrate or is in any way a creature of his, can arrest, by his own will, any person against whom he has a grievance, choose any crime he likes to name for the purpose, drag the person before the magistrate, accuse him, and ask that he be punished. Again, the accused person has no appeal, no defence. He is merely faced with the accusation, and if he denies it, is put under torture for three days. If at the end of three days the accused refuses to confess himself guilty, punishment is meted to him in severity according to the influence of the accuser, and the necessity the magistrate feels of appeasing him. The punishment {204} for every offence charged, from petty larceny upward, is almost invariably beheading. Beheading saves prison expense, and effectually silences the accused. So much aloof do the Mandarins keep from the people that many are usually ignorant of this terrible work of the officers of the Dynasty, and when told of it, refuse to believe. Some Mandarins refuse to believe, out of fear of incurring the displeasure of officers. The unhappy masses know the truth too well. The intelligent, the most enlightened, know of it. Exiles in all other parts of the world know of it. Bitter hatred of the Dynasty and of the Imperial officers prevails in every province of the Empire. There is a great democracy in the Empire, waiting and praying for the moment when their organisation can be made efficient and the Dynasty removed and replaced by a constitutional government.

"Our conspiracy to seize Canton failed, yet we are filled with hope. Our greatest hope is to make the Bible and education, as we have come to know them by residence in America and Europe, the means of conveying to our unhappy fellow-countrymen what blessings may lie in the way of just laws, what relief from their sufferings may be found through civilisation. We intend to try every means in our power to seize the country and create a government without bloodshed. I think we shall, but if I am doomed to disappointment in this, then there is no engine in warfare we can invoke to our aid that we will hesitate to use. Our four hundred millions must, and shall, be released from the cruel tyranny of barbaric misrule and be brought to enjoy the blessings of control by a merciful, just government, by the arts of civilisation.

"The conspiracy at Canton, though it failed, was but a momentary repulse and has in no way damped our ardour. A brief history of the conspiracy and my own adventures connected with it may convey some ideas of the difficulties which still lie before us, yet {205} which we know we shall in due time surmount. We have a head, a chief, and a body of leaders, all earnest, intelligent, courageous men. They were elected according to constitutional principles by a body of us, who met, necessarily, in secret. We have a branch of our Society in every province. Our meetings of the leaders were held at various houses, the rendezvous being constantly changed. We had between thirty and forty centres in the districts of the town, with members ready to ride at a given moment to the number of at least one thousand in each centre to take control of the public affairs of the district. Communications with each of these districts were made by the employment of messengers. Our communications were by word of mouth. Our intention was to attack no individual person.

"There is no Government, no organisation, no legal system, no form of official control except the influential citizens, who, under the favour of the magistrate or Governor of the province, usurp the use of the Imperial commissioners and soldiers to carry out their barbarous tyranny. We had no ruling body, officials, or officers as such institutions are understood by Europeans, to seize. We had elected bodies of our followers who had been taught a system of constitutional rule, for each district, all ready to take office at a given signal and put the system into practice. The soldiers were ready to join us. For the soldiers are as great sufferers from tyranny as the poor masses.

"Now, herein lay our chief difficulty. To effect revolution in China would be easy but for one thing--the great difficulty in controlling the citizens. The people, never having known laws, never having been used to any proper discipline, are utterly demoralised. Life and property would be in danger from the masses the moment they became excited. From the soldiers, who are of the most degraded class, we expected trouble. They would certainly engage in looting the {206} moment they had discovered a change in the order of things.

"The only problem we had to solve in order to completely succeed was how to control the people, to make order a certainty, simultaneously with the establishment of a form of government, and how to check the excitement and outrages of the inhabitants while they were being taught to realise the fact that the long-endured tyranny was overcome. For months we worked hard completing our plans to this end, and things had reached that condition that each of the thirty odd leaders had an armed bodyguard of one hundred men. This gave us three thousand armed men on the spot. Another three thousand were to join us from another province on a given date. With this body of men, armed, not to attack any officials, but to control the masses of people and make them obey our constitutional laws, we should have in a few hours reached the dynasty of impotence.

"Unhappily, we had to contend with the possibilities of disloyalty among our own followers. So great is the fear of the torture-chamber. Into so many tributaries does the main stream of corruption flow. However, all was prepared. A date was fixed--one day in October, 1895. We leaders met to receive a telegram from our agent in Hongkong, who was to inform us that all was right the moment he knew the three thousand men had set out to our assistance. At the same time, he was to dispatch a chartered steamer up the Canton River, laden with arms for the three thousand men who were to control the people and keep order, and bringing seven hundred coolies to do the fetching and carrying, the labourer's work needful to carry out the scheme of establishing our Government. We met at the rendezvous at Canton, runners and every one at hand. The message arrived to say that all was right. We dispatched our runners to let every one be prepared at every centre, burned our papers, {207} and proceeded to disband ourselves into units, each to carry out his own allotted portion of revolution. The moment before we disbanded a second message arrived saying, 'Something has happened, the three thousand men cannot come.' Our runners were out, and could not be overtaken and recalled. We had to trust to the discretion of the centres to await the men. The only thing we could do, for the time being, to divert suspicion, was to wire our Hongkong agent to keep back the coolies. He misunderstood. The coolies arrived. No one received them. They wandered about, not knowing what they were in Canton for.

"So the conspiracy was thwarted. The runners had accused the people, and set tongues wagging. The Viceroy had been told, 'Something is going to happen.' He would not believe his informant, and all might have become quiet, but the arrival of the coolies confirmed the information. The Government did not start. The unhappy coolies were hunted by the Imperial Commissioner and his staff, and many of them beheaded. We leaders dispersed; many fled into the interior. The Commissioner and Imperial Guard sought the leaders. They seized and beheaded sixteen persons, only seven of whom had anything to do with the movement. The remainder were occupants of houses where it was supposed some of us had met. The leaders all got away. I went on board my own steam-launch and sailed down to Hongkong, where I stayed a week. The Imperial officers were seeking me, and I passed them several times in the street without their recognising me. At the end of the week, during which I had made arrangements for my family, my wife and children and my mother, to follow me, I stepped on board a steamer under the eyes of my stupid pursuers without their noticing me. When I arrived in London, I was captured for the first time, after having been pursued around the world for one year. But the fault was not that of the English people. Indeed, the noble-hearted {208} way in which the English people came to my assistance, and rescued me from the death for which I was assuredly destined, make us shed tears of gratitude.

"In saving my life the English people have earned the love of every one of our millions of cruelly ill-used people, and strengthened our hope of one day soon enjoying the blessing of a just government, such as that which has made your mighty nation so great and so good."

English friends on this occasion had warned him to steer a wide course away from the Chinese Legation, for there he would technically be on Chinese soil and could be arrested, but these friends either neglected to tell Dr. Sun where the Legation was or he forgot the directions they gave him. At any rate, one day as he was walking through a certain street two Chinese accosted him. They asked him to go with them to their lodging, where they could discuss the Revolution at home. When he demurred they seized him and pushed him through the door of a nearby house. It was the Chinese Legation.

A white man, who was Sir Halliday Macartney, English Secretary of the Legation, told Sun that he was under arrest and that he would be secretly taken out of London and back to Canton. The prisoner was locked in a room on the top floor of the Legation until arrangements could be made for the official kidnapping. Dr. Sun tried throwing messages out of the window weighted with coins, but one of them was picked up by one of the Legation servants and shown to the Minister, and the windows were nailed up.

In his desperation Sun managed to bribe an English servant to carry a message, telling of his plight, to a Dr. Cantlie, one of his friends. Dr. Cantlie laid the matter before the Government, which took immediate action. The building was hedged about by detectives and policemen so closely that the prisoner could not be smuggled out to a steamer. Finally, seeing the {209} futility of longer holding him, the Chinese Minister turned Sun loose.

The nervy little doctor went right back to the Far East and began to hatch another Revolution against his enemies.

This time it was from Japan that he operated. But because he was not thoroughly wise in the matter of some Japanese business policies he was swindled out of all the funds he had raised to buy arms by one Nakimura.

He left Japan and went to live in Singapore. He slipped into China again and started another uprising. This, too, was ill-timed, and many patriots lost their heads under the executioner's heavy blade.

Dr. Sun managed to slip across the lower border into Annam disguised as a blind beggar. No sooner was he across the border than he began again, wandering from one Chinese colony to another in Annam, in Tongkin, down in the Straits Settlements, over in the Philippines--always preaching revolution.

In 1898 K'ang Yu-wei, one of the reformers whom Sun had been allied with, travelled too fast in his efforts to win the ear of the puppet Emperor, was betrayed by Yuan Shih K'ai, so it was said, and had to flee to save his head. Then the Empress-Dowager laid a heavy hand upon all reformers within reach. Once more Sun escaped. After the Boxer uprising, which was not at all of Sun's doing and was entirely out of sympathy with his schemes, the Empress-Dowager seemed to be bitten by the general sentiment for reform and she promised much for China that raised the hopes of the new element. But like most Manchu promises, they were not to be depended on.

DRILLED IN THE UNITED STATES.

Back Sun went to America, and he added a new detail to his propaganda. He found a young graduate {210} of Leland Stanford University, Homer Lee, who was military mad and incidentally an enthusiast on the subject of freedom for China. Lee was made General of the Reform Cadets, who were Chinese youths of San Francisco, fitted out with uniforms and guns and taught to do the hay foot, straw foot in hired halls night after night.

The idea spread to other cities in the United States and to Manila. The Reform Cadets became a wide-spread organisation. American drillmasters were hired to coach them; they had target practice and they gave exhibition drills.

Out in San Francisco the agents of the Chinese Government once tried to prevail upon the city and State authorities to break up the organisation because it was technically an armed band of aliens on American soil. The effort failed.

Such was the man who may become yet the greatest man among the Chinese in his own country as he has been out of it. In due course Dr. Sun Yat-sen was proclaimed President, with a provisional Government at Nanking.

Sun Yat-sen, revolutionist in the most conservative land under heaven, fugitive for fifteen years from the keenest and most relentless trailers of men, hidden spirit of strange secret societies whose ramifications have made mole tracks through every land where Chinamen are--this man is now President of the Republic of China by decree of the Provisional Military Assembly at Nanking.

Out of the underground passages of plot and intrigue the nature of which no Occidental could hope to understand, and through which this wiry little man has been wriggling and back tracking for more than a dozen years, a new national figure suddenly jumps to command the attention of the world. During years past the world has occasionally caught glimpses of the round black head and narrow, ascetic features of this Dr. Sun, {211} now in Singapore, now in London, now in San Francisco.

There had been little paragraphs in the world's news about an agitator, a Radical, who seemed to be tilting with straws at the impregnable citadel of the Manchu clan in Peking. The Revolution began in China and even then, when the name of Sun Yat-sen was coupled with it people outside of China cracked jokes about a faker, a charlatan, who was trying to capitalise the upheaval at home for his own benefit.

Then over night things happened in China. The next morning the world learned at its breakfast-table that out of the welter and uproar of revolution in old China a leader had arisen to gird an ancient land under new harness of government. And it also became manifest that the Revolution, which had started by concerted movements in the heart of China and spread with the rapidity of a powder-train, and the little man who had been dodging and twisting through the world for so many years were closely related--extraordinarily so.

Sun Yat-sen started many revolutions. Each was stronger than the last; each achieved a little more. The final one, striven for and plotted through channels not yet known, has succeeded. Sun Yat-sen was the man of the hour in China.

An odd circumstance that brings an added thrill of romance into the story of his life is that though President of united China he still bears upon his head a price totalling about 700,000 taels. The rewards for his head offered by provincial governments and the central authorities in Peking during the last fifteen years have not been recalled, even though payment upon delivery might be doubtful.

Yet the fact that his head was worth hundreds of "shoes" of silver during all the latter years of his activity has been one of the lightest burdens that Dr. Sun has carried about on his narrow shoulders. He {212} took long chances, apparently he suffered many close calls from death, but he persisted.

I believe that when he was a young man he was studying medicine under the care of an English physician in Hongkong. Thence he went to England and after study in a preparatory school he was graduated from a medical college and returned to China. He practised the new medicine, against which there was a violent prejudice on the part of the Chinese in Macao, in Canton and Hongkong.

Dr. Sun is forty-three now, he was scarcely more than twenty-five when he began to move for the spreading of a revolutionary spirit in the hearts of his countrymen. Just where he began and with what material nobody but the closest of his associates knows.

It seems that his first idea was for reform through peaceful means, if it were possible for the Chinese people to penetrate the jealous conservatism of the Manchu masters. To this end the little doctor began to organise clubs of advanced thinkers among the young Chinese of the south.

For some time during the early part of 1912 things seemed to go fairly smoothly, and President Sun seemed to have been successful in winning the confidence of Yuan Shih K'ai, when, like a bombshell, the press of the world (especially the London _Times_) deprecated one of the messages Sun sent to Yuan. This strengthened the Imperial cause. Abdication of the Court, which had definitely been fixed, did not take place. Several of the Manchu princes refused to clear out, for many days the complex situation at Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, and Wuchang rendered it impossible for one to see what would eventuate.

The Court, however, did abdicate, and left the ground clear. There was a continuous rumpus in Peking during the following three months, and in March of 1912 the capital was in a big uproar--the soldiers broke loose, there was much pillaging and looting, {213} Yuan Shih K'ai seemed entirely to have lost the situation and the whole country seemed to be lost. Yuan Shih K'ai meantime had been proclaimed President, Dr. Sun gracefully withdrawing in his favour. A big discussion took place over the site for the capital, and just as Yuan was about to come down to Nanking to settle matters the outbreak at Peking quashed the whole affair. But this was only one of the political troubles. Some adjusted themselves: others did not. There was a lack of money. Soldiers, going unpaid, took the law into their own hands, and looted on a great scale. The banditti rose up in formidable strength. Officialdom was abused. Decapitations were rife. Up to the end of March the interior of China was devoid of all law and order. In the coast places and big towns where order was fairly easy to maintain, officials were busy making laws and drawing up reforms. But whilst reforms were being thus aimed at in some places, in others there was absolute chaos. The old order had been taken away, and there was nothing better to put up in its place.

But it is hopeless to give a correct comprehensive estimate of what was being done. All we knew was that China was changing--in some places for the worse, in others for the better, but changing irrevocably, and it was only in the final balancing could one see how things were to "pan out."

On March 10, 1912, Yuan Shih K'ai took the Oath, which read as follows:--

"Since the Republic has been established, many works have now to be performed. I shall endeavour faithfully to develop the Republic, to sweep away the disadvantages attached to absolute monarchy, to observe the laws of the Constitution, to increase the welfare of the country, to cement together a strong nation which shall embrace all five races. When the National Assembly elects a permanent President, I shall retire. This I swear before the Chinese Republic."

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The following is a detailed statement, as translated from the Chinese, of the conditions of the Provisional Republican Constitution:--

THE PROVINCIAL REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION.

_Chapter 1. General._

Article 1.--The Republic of China is established by the people of China.

Article 2.--The sovereignty of the Republic of China is vested in the whole body of the people.

Article 3.--The territory of the Republic of China consists of the twenty-two provinces, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Tibet, and Kokonor.

Article 4.--The Republic of China will exercise its governing rights through the National Assembly, Provisional President, Ministers of State and Courts of Justice.

_Chapter II. People._

Article 5.--The People of the Republic of China will be treated equally without any distinction of race, class, or religion.

Article 6.--The People will enjoy the following liberties:--

1. No citizen can be arrested, detained, tried, or punished unless in accordance with the law.

2. The residence of any person can only be entered or searched in accordance with the law.

3. People have the liberty of owning property and of trade.

4. People have the liberty of discussion, authorship, publication, meeting, and forming societies.

5. People have the liberty of secrecy of letters.

6. People have liberty of movement.

7. People have liberty of religion.

Article 7.--People have the right of petition to the Assembly.

Article 8.--People have the right of petition to the administrative offices.

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Article 9.--People have the right of trial at legal courts.

Article 10.--People have the right to appeal to the Court of Administrative Litigation against any act of officials who have illegally infringed their rights.

Article 11.--People have the right of being examined to become officials.

Article 12.--People have the right of election and being elected to representative assemblies.

Article 13.--People have the duty of paying taxes in accordance with law.

Article 14.--People have the duty of serving in the army in accordance with law.

Article 15.--The rights of the people enumerated in this chapter may, in the public interest, or for the maintenance of order and peace or upon other urgent necessity, be curtailed by due process of law.

_Chapter III. National Assembly._

(Tsangyiyuan.)

Article 16.--The legislative functions of the Republic of China are exercised by the National Assembly or Tsangyiyuan.

Article 17.--The National Assembly is formed of the members of Tsangyiyuan elected by various districts as provided in Article 18.

Article 18.--Five members in each province, Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, and Tibet and one member from Kokonor will be elected. The measures for the election will be decided by each district. At the time of the meeting of the National Assembly each member has one vote.

Article 19.--The official rights of the National Assembly are as under:--

1. To decide all laws.

2. To decide Budgets and settle accounts of the Provisional Government.

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3. To decide the measures of taxation, monetary system, and uniform weights and measures.

4. To decide the amount of public loan and agreements involving any obligation on the State treasury.

5. To ratify affairs mentioned in Articles 34, 35, and 40.

6. To reply to any affairs referred for decision by the Provisional Government.

7. To accept petitions of the people.

8. To express views and present them to the Government regarding laws and other matters.

9. To question Ministers of State and demand their presence at the Assembly to give reply.

10. To demand the Provisional Government to inquire into cases of the taking of bribes or other illegal acts of officials of the Government.

11. The National Assembly may impeach the Provisional President if recognised as having acted as a traitor, by vote of three-fourths of the members present at a quorum of four-fifths of the whole number of members.

12. The National Assembly may impeach any of the Ministers of State if recognised as having failed to carry out their official duties or having acted illegally, on the decision of two-thirds of the members present at a quorum of three-fourths of the whole number of members.

Article 20.--The National Assembly may hold its meetings of its own motion and may decide the date of the opening and the closing of the same.

Article 21.--The meetings of the National Assembly will be open to the public, but in case of the demand of any Minister of State or in case of the majority's decision a meeting may be held in camera.

Article 22.--The matters decided by the National Assembly shall be promulgated and carried out by the Provisional President.

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Article 23.--When the Provisional President uses his veto against the decision of the National Assembly his reasons should be declared within ten days and the matter should be placed before the National Assembly for further discussion. If two-thirds of the members attending re-affirm the former decision that decision shall be carried out as stipulated in Article 22.

Article 24.--The speaker of the National Assembly will be elected by open ballot of the members, and if the ballot be one-half of the total votes he is declared elected.

Article 25.--The members of the National Assembly have no responsibility to outsiders for the speeches and decisions made in the Assembly.

Article 26.--Except for flagrant offences or during internal disturbance or foreign invasion the members of the Assembly cannot be arrested during the session without the consent of the Assembly.

Article 27.--The standing orders of the National Assembly shall be decided by the National Assembly itself.

Article 28.--The National Assembly shall be dissolved when the National Convention comes into existence, which will succeed to all the rights of the National Assembly.

_Chapter IV.--Provisional President and Vice-President._

Article 29.--Provisional President and Vice-President will be elected by the National Assembly by vote of two-thirds of the members present at a quorum of three-fourths of the whole number.

Article 30.--Provisional President represents Provisional Government and controls political affairs and promulgates laws.

Article 31.--Provisional President executes laws and issues orders authorised by law and has such orders promulgated.

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Article 32.--Provisional President controls and commands the Navy and Army of the whole country.

Article 33.--Provisional President decides official organisations and discipline but such should be approved by the National Assembly.

Article 34.--Provisional President is empowered to make appointments and dismissals of civil and military officials. However, the Ministers of State, ambassadors and ministers accredited to foreign Powers, should be approved by the National Assembly.

Article 35.--Provisional President declares war, negotiates peace and concludes treaties with the approval of the National Assembly.

Article 36.--Provisional President declares martial law in accordance with law.

Article 37.--Provisional President represents the whole country to receive ambassadors and ministers of foreign countries.

Article 38.--Provisional President presents bills for laws to the National Assembly.

Article 39.--Provisional President confers decorations and other honorary bestowals.

Article 40.--Provisional President declares general amnesty, special amnesty, commutation, and rehabilitation; general amnesty needs the approval of the National Assembly.

Article 41.--In case Provisional President be impeached by the National Assembly the judges of the highest court of justice will elect nine judges to organise a special tribunal to try and decide the case.

Article 42.--Provisional Vice-President will act for Provisional President in case Provisional President dies or is unable to attend to his duties.

_Chapter V. Ministers of State._

Article 43.--Prime Minister and Ministers of Departments are called Ministers of State.

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Article 44.--Ministers of State assist Provisional President and share responsibility.

Article 45.--Ministers of State countersign bills proposed, laws proposed, laws promulgated, and orders issued by Provisional President.

Article 46.--Ministers of State and their deputies attend and speak in the National Assembly.

Article 47.--When any Minister of State is impeached by the National Assembly, the Provisional President should dismiss him, but the case may be retried by the National Assembly at the request of the Provisional President.

_Chapter VI. Courts of Justice._

Article 48.--Courts of Justice consist of judges to be appointed by Provisional President and Minister of Justice. The organisation of Courts of Justice and qualification of judges will be decided by law.

Article 49.--The Courts of Justice will try and decide cases of civil litigation and criminal litigation in accordance with law. However, administrative litigation and other special litigation will be stipulated by special laws.

Article 50.--The trials and judgments of the Courts of Justice will be open to the public, but cases which are considered to be against peace and order may be held _in camera_.

Article 51.--Judges will never be interfered with by any higher officials in their offices either during a trial or in delivering judgment, as judges are independent.

Article 52.--Whilst a Judge holds office his salary cannot be reduced, and his functions cannot be delegated to another. Unless in accordance with law, he cannot be punished or dismissed or retired. The regulations for the removal of Judges will be stipulated by special law.

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_Chapter VII. Annex._

Article 53.--Within ten months of the date of this law being in force, the Provisional President should convene a National Convention. The organisation and the measures for election of such National Convention will be decided by the National Assembly.

Article 54.--The Constitution of the Republic of China will be decided by the said National Convention, and before the said Constitution comes into force this law will have the same force as the Constitution.

Article 55.--This law will be either added to or revised by three-fourths of the members of the National Assembly present at a quorum of two-thirds of the whole number, or by three-fourths of the members present at a quorum of four-fifths of the whole number, when the same is proposed by the Provisional President.

Article 56.--This law shall come into force when it is promulgated, and the rules of provisional government now in force will be cancelled when this law comes into force.

Recognition of the Powers came slowly. The Republican fanatics cried out in great volume and the alleged subsidised press still pursued the for and against of the national argument. However, in due course, with Yuan as President, the Government went ahead in endeavours to get money. The reader will probably know the actual eventualities as they touched the West internationally. There were still two parties, however, one with Sun at the head, the other with Yuan. Yuan Shih K'ai was a man cast in a distinctly different mould from Sun. Before we go on to read his general biographical sketch, as embodied in the next chapter, it is interesting to note how people were interesting themselves in him. The following, from a private letter {221} published in New York, is culled from an American daily:--

"In 1884, when I went to China, Yuan was just succeeding the Manchu General in charge of the Chinese troops sent to Seoul after the troubles of 1882. He drove the Japanese out of Korea following the emeute of 1884, and on October 3, 1885, after visiting his patron, Li Hung-chang, he returned to Seoul as full Chinese representative, taking to himself the title of 'Resident' in the sense in which that title is used by the British in India, implying Chinese suzerainty.

"Yuan was without much education even for a Chinaman. He knew no English at all. Korea is as far as he ever ventured abroad, but the ten years there were a very valuable school for him.

"He was in my time just a big, brutal, sensual, rollicking Chinaman. Having vast powers, he frequently cut off the heads of Chinese gamblers and others, and I was an unwilling witness of some of these street side pastimes of his. He would imprison Korean gentlemen who objected to parting with their ancestral estates in order that they might be used to enlarge Yuan's palatial legation. He would not let a physician save the life of one of his soldiers in the emeute by amputating his arm, saying, "Of what good would a one-armed soldier be?" Yet he kept as a pensioner another soldier whose life was saved but who was useless as a trooper. He was extremely quick, quite fearless, very rash, yet given to consultation with Tang and others, and therefore inclined to be reasonable. He was altogether unscrupulous, but absolutely faithful and devoted to his patron and largely so to his friends. He would sacrifice an enemy or one who stood in his way, but would at the same time sacrifice himself readily for his patron.

"Nobody understands the meaning of the term 'arrogance' who didn't know Yuan in those years 1884-94. He was arrogance personified. He would not {222} meet or associate with the Ministers of other Powers unless he was allowed to occupy a sort of throne and 'receive' them as though they were vassal envoys. At a Korean State dinner he always occupied the foot (one end) of the table, which then became the head."

[1] The _China Press_, Shanghai, December 8, 1911.

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