E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team ()
THE FIGHT
FOR THE REPUBLIC
IN CHINA
By B. L. Putnam Weale
Author of Indiscreet Letters from Peking, etc.
WITH 28 ILLUSTRATIONS
London: Hurst & Blackett, Ltd.
Paternoster House, E.C.
1918
PREFACE
This volume tells everything that the student or the casual reader needsto know about the Chinese Question. It is sufficiently exhaustive toshow very clearly the new forces at work, and to bring some realisationof the great gulf which separates the thinking classes of to-day fromthe men of a few years ago; whilst, at the same time, it is sufficientlycondensed not to overwhelm the reader with too great a multitude offacts.
Particular attention may be devoted to an unique feature—namely, theChinese and Japanese documentation which affords a sharp contrastbetween varying types of Eastern brains. Thus, in the Memorandum of theBlack Dragon Society (Chapter VII) we have a very clear and illuminatingrevelation of the Japanese political mind which has been trained toconsider problems in the modern Western way, but which remains saturatedwith theocratic ideals in the sharpest conflict with the TwentiethCentury. In the pamphlet of Yang Tu (Chapter VIII) which launched theill-fated Monarchy Scheme and contributed so largely to the dramaticdeath of Yuan Shih-kai, we have an essentially Chinese mentality of thereactionary or corrupt type which expresses itself both on home andforeign issues in a naïvely dishonest way, helpful to future diplomacy.In the Letter of Protest (Chapter X) against the revival of Imperialismwritten by Liang Ch'i-chao—the most brilliant scholar living—we have aChinese of the New or Liberal China, who in spite of a completeignorance of foreign languages shows a marvellous grasp of politicalabsolutes, and is a harbinger of the great days which must come again toCathay. In other chapters dealing with the monarchist plot we see theofficial mind at work, the telegraphic despatches exchanged betweenPeking and the provinces being of the highest diplomatic interest. Thesedocuments prove conclusively that although the Japanese is morepractical than the Chinese—and more concise—there can be no questionas to which brain is the more fruitful.
Coupled with this discussion there is much matter giving an insight intothe extraordinary and calamitous foreign ignorance about present-dayChina, an ignorance which is just as marked among those resident in thecountry as among those who have never visited it. The whole of thematerial grouped in this novel fashion should not fail to bringconviction that the Far East, with its 500 millions of people, isdestined to play an important rôle in postbellum history because ofthe new type of modern spirit which is being there evolved. Theinfluence of the Chinese Republic, in the opinion of the writer, cannotfail to be ultimately world-wide in view of the practically unlimitedresources in man-power which it disposes of.
In the Appendices will be found every document of importance for theperiod under examination,—1911 to 1917. The writer