# The Truth about China and Japan/Chapter 4

IV
THE PROBLEM OF PEKING
The writer has established, it is to be hoped clearly, the outline of his argument regarding the solution of the imbroglio in the Far East. Taking as his starting-point the practical results flowing from the Chinese collapse in the Korean war of 1894, and the present state of China's international commitments, he found that an indispensable element was wholesale treaty reform—not only as a matter of right but as a matter of expediency. He showed how it must be worked out, what were the real difficulties, and who really stood to lose by such radical adjustments. And yet it must be confessed that even if the relations between China and the West are so fundamentally recast as to revolutionize the old conditions, there will still remain the far more thorny matter of erecting in Peking a really competent government, able and willing to govern by constitutional means, and reasonably stable.
The problem of Peking is so peculiar that no ​parallel case exists in any other part of the world. Turkey is sometimes quoted as a similar instance—but the differences between China and Turkey are greater than the points of resemblance. Turkey comprises a mixture of races; the Chinese are absolutely homogeneous. The rule of the Ottoman Turks was based on military conquest; the Manchus, who were their prototypes, were summarily ousted seven years ago and for many a day prior to their actual collapse had not much more power than the errant descendants of Genghiz Khan. Then Turkey is so close to Europe that her problem in an European issue: China is so far distant that she is remote even to India. Turkey pretended to reform, and then surrendered to the Young Turks, who were virtually Young Germans. The Tu-chün, or military governors in China and their henchmen, may perhaps be held the equivalent of this truculent breed; yet even these semi-ignorant leaders pay homage to the literary traditions of the race, worship formality, and declare that they represent a transitional stage which will soon give way to a new brotherhood.
For the time being, however, what we have to-day, particularly in Peking, pending the settlement, is rule by velleities—i.e. by volition ​in its lowest form, which only takes on a positive character when a direct assault is made on the lares and penates of the office-holders. In the past it has been clearly shown how every time the defenders of the Republic have attempted to adopt definite formulae in place of this obscurantism, they have been beaten into retirement in the provinces because they have lacked the necessary force to win. With this inchoate condition in the capital and with the chief cities held by military rule, watchful drifting has become the slogan. And although all Chinese know perfectly well that without organization, and without the supremacy of the civil authority, it is vain to hope for national solidarity or greatness, no single man has yet been able to effect any lasting improvement. Thus although the empire has gone never to return, and although a definite and recognizable advance in ideas is generally admitted to have occurred throughout China, obscure causes which must be referred back to climate and soil, and to the city-type, which a hundred city-bred generations have evolved, tends to perpetuate this political palsy and to make many foreign critics declare there is actual chaos and retrogression. That behind all this—deep-buried in the twilight of a myriad homes—the supreme ​explanation is to be sought in the very mild impulses of the race, which are expressed in the quietist doctrines animating Chinese society, is the writer's profound conviction. And so does it happen that the Chinese people have come to think that they have been caught in the Caudine Forks, and that it is the Japanese who are striving mightily to play the part of the Samnites and make them pass under the yoke.
II
What are the vital difficulties at the present moment in the way of civil authority being so constituted as to be effective?
First, and greatest of all, there is the question of Parliament and the rôle it should play in the life of the State. Round this question a fierce struggle has raged from the very inception of the Republic, because the abdication of the Manchus was only secured by a compromise so framed that Conservatives and Radicals could interpret that dramatic act much as they pleased. According to Article 53 of the Nanking provisional Constitution, promulgated in January, 1912, and accepted as the law of the land, within ten months of that date a National Assembly was to be convened, to frame the permanent Constitution and to be the articulate ​voice of the nation. The first full Parliament should therefore have assembled in Peking by October, 1912; it did not meet until April, 1913, owing to deliberate obstruction in the elections practised by Yuan Shih-kai—the last act of which was the assassination of the Southern leader Sung Chiao-jen. This Parliament was not yet fully organized when Yuan Shih-kai, alleging that the National Council (sitting prior to the convocation of Parliament) had given him power to do so, forced through the great Reorganization Loan over Parliament's head, denying that it had the right to scrutinize this important measure and being supported in his unconstitutional and reactionary policy by five Powers—England, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan. Native arms and foreign diplomacy thus formed as unholy alliance in China in 1913 as in Vienna Congress days in Europe in 1815.
This first great assault on the Republic was followed by a six-month period of intimidation and bribery, after which Yuan Shih-kai finally secured the passage of the Presidential Election Law and was elected full president for the first five-year term. Thereupon, having a complete legal title, he carried out his coup d'état of the 4th November, 1913, and unseated all Southern members of Parliament, following this by de​stroying by means of bogus enactments the legal framework on which international recognition of the Republic had been accorded; finally capping it all two years later by an elaborate ballot-fraud whereby he declared himself elected Emperor of the Chinese à la Napoleon and head of a so-called Constitutional Monarchy. That comprises the complete story of the first four years of the rule of Peking over the provinces under the Republic and shows what a hollow mockery it was.
With Yuan Shih-kai's death in June, 1916, the 1913 Parliament returned to the capital—weakened but still determined to consummate its main work, which was the formal passage of a permanent Constitution, the draft of which had been so long complete. In spite of every kind of opposition, such progress was made that in less than a year, with the exception of the seven clauses which follow, the two Houses had passed the completed instrument through its second reading, and would have entirely terminated the work had there not been deliberate military obstruction. The seven disputed clauses were:—
Article 32. The ordinary sessions of the national Assembly shall begin on the 1st August of each year. ​Article 35. Both Houses shall meet in joint session at the opening and closing of the National Assembly. If one House suspends its session, the other House shall do likewise during the same period. When the House of Representatives is dissolved, the Senate shall adjourn during the same period.
Article 75. With the concurrence of two-thirds or more of the members of the Senate present, the President may dissolve the House of Representatives, but there must not be a second dissolution during the period of the same session.
When the House of Representatives is dissolved by the President another election shall take place immediately and the convocation of the House at a fixed date within five months should be effected to continue the session.
Article 82. When a vote of want of confidence in the Cabinet Ministers is passed, if the President does not dissolve the House of Representatives according to the provisions made in Article 75, he should remove the Cabinet Ministers.
Article 92. Should the President disapprove of any bill of law passed by the National Assembly he shall, within the period allowed for promulgation, state the reason of his disapproval and request the reconsideration of the same by the National Assembly. If a bill has not been submitted with a request for reconsideration and the period of promulgation has passed, it shall become law. But the above shall not apply to the case when the session of the National Assembly ​is adjourned or the House of Representatives dissolved before the period for the promulgation is ended.
Article 107. The method of organization of the Auditing Department and the qualifications of auditors shall be fixed by law. During his term of office the auditor shall not be dismissed or transferred to any other duty or his salary reduced except in accordance with the law. The manner of punishment of auditors shall be fixed by law.
Article 108. The Chief of the Auditing Department shall be elected by the Senate. The Chief of the Auditing Department may attend sittings of both Houses and report on the audit with explanatory statements.
Now even to those who are not over-familiar with constitutional enactments the aim and purpose of these Articles should be tolerably clear: they were drafted to secure the real independence and supremacy of the National Assembly and to serve as checks against abuses which experience had shown were the chief dangers.
Article 32 had a certain technical importance owing to the 1918 Presidential election, which has now taken place. Articles 35 and 75, placing the Senate in a very strong constitutional position vis-à-vis the Chief Executive, and restricting his power over the Lower House, were ​looked upon by the militarist party as their death-warrant; whilst Article 82, which strictly defines the President's action when a vote of want of confidence in the Cabinet Ministers is passed, contains the very essence of the whole constitutional fight. Article 92 dealing with the President's suspensive veto has been looked upon as hardly less important: and the two concluding Articles, in which Audit is so strictly defined and the control over the National Purse retained by this method after supplies have been actually voted—has been one of the bitterest subjects of dispute. Finally, just before the rupture, a proposal to tack on to the Constitution an additional chapter on local government, dealing with the governing of the provinces, had taken such concrete form that a complete draft had been made; and as in this draft the powers given to Provincial Assemblies were very large, the sweeping-away of the Tu-chün system was imminent.
In June, 1917, although the question of an immediate declaration of war against Germany and Austria was the technical reason, this parliamentary question brought the expected crisis. For the second time in the brief life of the Republic the party with whom power really rested—the military element—saw its existence ​openly menaced. Accordingly, after a long and bitter struggle behind the scenes, President Li Yuan-hung was finally intimidated into promulgating a Mandate of Dissolution, although he had no constitutional right to do so; and as the capital was already under the control of the military, Parliament was forced to scatter.
No doubt it was the fact that the immediate sequel to this dissolution was a burlesque restoration of the Manchus, lasting eleven days, which confused the Northern military party. Had they been well-advised, they would have hastened the summoning of a new Parliament on the valid election law of 1913 and sought a compromise on the seven Articles. But finding the field absolutely free—after they had thrown down the Manchus again—and being fearful of the future, they summoned a packed and illegal National Council, under the so-called authority of the provisional Constitution; instructed this body to alter the election law, and then held a general election which sent to Peking two greatly-reduced, packed Houses in time to carry out the quinquennial Presidential election. Their official candidate, curiously enough, was probably the best man in China, Hsü Shih-chang, a former viceroy, who by training and natural inclination is sufficiently broad-minded ​to settle the problem—if supported. Elected six months ago his tenure of office has already brought improvement; and now that an actual peace conference has assembled in Shanghai to settle the dispute between North and South, hopes are reviving that the common sense of the Chinese race will win a lasting victory.
For fifteen months, however, desultory civil war between North and South has destroyed the fertile regions of Hunan, Szechuan, and Shensi provinces; and until the Allies, after much pressure, sent in Joint Notes on the necessity of instant internal peace, there were no signs that the two great divisions in the country could do more than continue their watchful drifting and thereby intensify the turmoil.
III
Now it must be plain from this account that something has been radically wrong with foreign diplomacy as well as with Chinese hearts for such a record to stand to the discredit of Peking. The type of diplomatic agent the several Allied governments have maintained in the Chinese capital during the Republican period has not been the type which the conditions emphatically call for. With the ​exception of the United States, which are represented by a professor of political and economic science, all the Allied representatives since the inception of the Republic have been men lamentably untrained in the part played in the governing of their own countries by their own Legislatures. Had this not been so, no such stupidity would have been shown as in 1913, when with a golden opportunity to enforce constitutionalism on the leader of the militarists—Yuan Shih-kai—by demanding Parliamentary ratification of a prime financial measure, and thus securing once and for all that financial centralization in China was based on legislative acts, foreign ministers deliberately assisted the Dictator to make a coup d'état by means of foreign money—and thus gave the quarrel a vicious international character. The day has surely passed when such things can be tolerated; but until England, France, Italy, Russia, and Japan publicly repent, and send as envoys to the Chinese capital men specially selected by virtue of a long parliamentary experience in their own countries—plenipotentiaries who thoroughly understand the necessity of the supremacy of the Legislature even in China—there will be no great improvement in the methods of government in Peking. For China ​to-day leans absolutely and entirely on the West—no matter what else may be pretended; and instead of rebuffing the widespread desire to benefit by the superior political knowledge of Europe and America, that desire should be stimulated in every possible way and the fact made perfectly clear by the acts of the accredited foreign representatives that a strong government, based on constitutionalism, is their one and only concern.
This viewpoint is fortified when we consider the actual nature of the contact between the foreign legations and the metropolitan government. That contact is not diplomatic in the ordinary sense of the word: rather is it financial and economic, having come by direct descent from the time when the first foreign representatives in the Canton factory days were Superintendents of Trade. The foreign ministers are therefore principally concerned with questions arising out of loan contracts; with questions concerning the periodic release of surpluses of the Customs and Salt collections which have been almost entirely hypothecated abroad; with disputes arising from the interpretation of treaties and covenants governing commerce and residence and land-ownership—in a word, with all the disjecta membra of a ​mercantile imperialism. And because of this peculiar heredity—with ninety years of strife and gunboat methods behind it—Peking diplomacy, encased since 1900 in a fortified diplomatic quarter, has developed a peculiar mentality among those who interpret it, making them small, irritable, and meticulous when imagination and common-sense and personal acquaintance with the liberating world-movement of the day are emphatically required. No better illustration of this could be given than to recall that when a decade ago China ordered the reform of the archaic system under which the Maritime Customs was controlled from the Chinese Foreign Office, Great Britain instead of agreeing on the necessity, and simply ​stipulating that the controlling agency should be as in other countries the Treasury or Ministry of Finance, raised a terrible outcry against anything being done at all and then let the matter drop—with the result that to-day the Maritime Customs control, which might have been rightly placed, is under separate little government offices hidden away in an obscure lane.
These matters—and what they directly signify—are of the highest importance. For the two ministries on which China's future largely depends, because they are the interpreters of the civilization and organization which the breakdown of the Confucian state-system has brought into the country, are simply the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Communications. Virtually all the politico-financial business arising out of foreign intercourse is in their hands; and only indirectly in the hands of the Chinese Foreign Office. Long ago it should have been the aim of all the liberal Powers to place under the roofs of these two ​Boards—fully centralized and fully defined—all matters which are justly the objects of their official concern. Publication of facts and figures should have been substituted for haggling about details—not hypothecation or alien control, but organization should have been the goal. The Ministry of Finance, with its many foreign Bond Issues, should not only have direct and absolute control over the four great sources of revenue, Customs, Salt, Land-tax, and Wine and Tobacco, but should have been stimulated into issuing proper quarterly statements in Chinese and English, thus bringing light into dark places. There should not have been a constant policy of frightening the Chinese with visions of a Foreign Debt Bureau under foreign control on the Egyptian-Turkish model. A real Chinese service of the national debt, in place of the present semi-foreign pawnbroking methods; a proper currency system, with token coins and bank-notes maintained at parity—these these things would be far more beneficial to the world at large than spheres of influence, or personal victories signalized by the appointment of favoured nationals to sinecures. At present all these questions are inextricably and hopelessly confused; but inasmuch as the provisional suspension of the Boxer indemnities ​(since China's declaration of war against Germany and Austria) will afford an opportunity in the near future for a wholesale review of the financial problem, this view of reform—namely, one policy under one roof—must be vindicated.
For depending directly on revenue-control and currency is the whole question of the credit of the Chinese people, which is to-day in as sorry a position as all the rest. China has virtually accepted as her money standard the silver dollar of the same weight and fineness as the Mexican dollar and the people are becoming accustomed to it. About 200 million of these units have been actually coined by the Chinese mints, not to speak of the hundreds of millions imported in the past from Mexico, and melted in part into sycee. But this currency is officially still only a shopping currency; the money of account is still the tael, which pass from one emporium to another and finally into the creditor-banks in standardized lumps of bullion which vary according to locality. And as the silver dollars are often melted down as fast as they are coined, and as the importation of the white metal has been restricted for several years, we have the crowning anomaly to-day of the chief state bank—the Bank of China—unable to-day to meet its note issue in the capital ​and with its notes at 50 per cent. discount; whilst its branches at the commercial ports manage to maintain their issues at parity because their balances are daily replenished by trade operations, and are not periodically raided by the army-leaders.
From the international point of view this matter of the currency, and the whole loan policy of the Powers, is indeed in as pretty a diplomatic tangle as a Talleyrand could desire. Eight years ago, on American initiative, a currency loan of 50 million gold dollars was signed; but the Revolution of 1911 prevented either the loan being floated or any true reorganization being attempted. Four Powers participated in this loan, England, America, France, and Germany, this official group being later expanded by the admission of Russia and Japan, who had protested that they were being discriminated against by being excluded. Meanwhile in 1913 America dropped out of participation in Chinese finance because of President Wilson's well-known declaration that the conditions of the foreign loans seemed to touch very nearly the administrative independence of China; transactions of this character being obnoxious to the principles upon which the American Government rested. This reduced ​the number of participating countries to five. Since the world-war Germany has, of course, had her partnership in the official consortium cancelled; and the bankruptcy of Russia likewise precludes her from being a sponsor of any Chinese loan.
But this last remark brings up an essential point. These semi-official loans to China, although nominally made by a four-Power group, (which became a six-Power group and finally a five-Power group,) are simply in the hands of certain favoured banks supported by their Legations. In the case of Russia, the Russo-Asiatic Bank is the sole participant; and as this institution is largely owned by French interests, so far from Russia dropping out of Chinese loans, in spite of the fact that it may be a quarter-of-a-century before financial stability has returned to the Bolshevik-ridden country, the French interests concerned are determined that Russia, in the person of a single bank, shall remain a nominal participant, as rich profits accrue from the handling of Chinese issues.
The following should make this clear. The loans, being gold-loans, are paid over to China in silver-credits at exchange-rates which are 'worked' by the banks in an admittedly ​scandalous manner. Thus, in the case of the £25,000,000 sterling Reorganization Loan of 1913, it was discovered by chance that the instalments paid over in Peking were placed to China's credit at a profit of 3 per cent. to the participant banks over and above legitimate commission and over and above the true market-rates. Similarly, by various intricate juggling methods, nominally made in the interests of the foreign bondholders, instalments for the service of foreign loans must be paid monthly into the foreign issuing banks, who allow the Chinese Government 2 per cent. annual interest, and thus make privately at least 5 per cent. per annum from the use of the Chinese Government's moneys. Furthermore other abuses have grown up. Thus in 1915, nominally to safeguard the interest of the bond-holders and in defiance of the particular loan agreement involved, the foreign banks stopped payment to China of ten million dollars of salt surplus, and for four years have held this amount in their coffers as a 'reserve' to pay Chinese coupons, allowing China 2 per cent. per annum on this amount and making at least 5 per cent. net profit per annum on the transaction. The issuing banks have therefore been placed by their governments in the illegal and ​immoral position of being able to utilize China's financial resources in their own interests under the plea that they are safeguarding the interests of the bondholders: that this abuse, which has largely arisen because of the presence in Peking of foreign diplomatic representatives who know little or nothing of business or the money-market, must be terminated at an early date cannot be refuted.
Three steps, which will be bitterly opposed by the foreign banks, should be taken if the problem of Peking is to be solved. First, the next loan should be made to China precisely in the manner that the United States has made loans to the Allies during the war—namely, the participating states should directly make the necessary advances, or at least directly control them. Secondly, the advances should come to China in actual silver, to be delivered in monthly instalments spread over a long period of five or ten years, and turned immediately into dollar currency which it shall be made a penal offence to melt down, or 'chop', or remove from circulation. Thirdly, what was once done in 1856 to remedy the conflict between currencies must be repeated. Then, the Spanish Carolus dollar being insufficient for trade requirements, and the Mexican dollar not being ​accepted in its stead, on a given day all accounts throughout China were transferred into taels, which were made the basis for all trade and for all public and private payments. What is now required is that on a given day, say in 1920 or 1921, all accounts in China from one end of the country to the other without exception, private as well as governmental, after a proper six-months notice, be transferred at fixed rates into Chinese Republican dollars, no other currency being legal tender or permitted even as a money of account, and punishment for infringement being rigidly carried out.
To enforce such a vast programme will necessitate foreign state help in the form of the loan of Treasury officials from the four countries who are alone in an independent financial position to-day, namely the United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan. China would receive Treasury officials of standing in a very different way from the appointees of commercial banks, or of the Legation junta. That such a step will finally become imperative is certain from the fact that it is through the medium of the Bank of China—which should be made the sole Bank of Issue in the country—that a standard currency in notes and in token coins can alone be secured. The Bank of China not only ​requires reform, but a great addition of capital and the opening of five hundred new provincial offices; no such expansion can take place without expert help and the loan of a large amount of foreign capital under the direct control of the participating foreign states. The most bitter opponents of such a reform will be the privileged foreign banks which will be forced to relinquish their octopus grip on the Chinese giant—a grip which directly contributes to the present palsy in Peking. That in all these circumstances, with the prospect of the action we have outlined looming near, the pro-Japanese party in Peking (and it should be thoroughly understood that the pro-Japanese party is to-day very powerful) should have attempted just before the close of the European war to push through a so-called gold-note scheme, a project rotten to the core, but designed ultimately to make the Japanese yen the unit throughout China, is very understandable; for in the present confusion anything is feasible. That this same pro-Japanese party should also have attempted to secure the appointment of a Japanese Treasury official, Baron Sakatani, as sole controller of Chinese currency, is further proof that immediate action is necessary on the part of the interested states.
IV
We have mentioned not only the Ministry of Finance but the Ministry of Communications. corrupt good manners. The extraordinary nature of the railway tangle to-day is due both to the false principles on which the development of Chinese railways has been conducted in the past, and to the present bankruptcy and lack of authority of the Central Government, which is forced to pawn every liquid asset—particularly its communications—to obtain hard cash; and is likewise compelled to allow the military almost a free hand in commandeering rolling-stock and riding roughshod over its behests.
We have already sufficiently insisted upon the nationalization of Chinese railways—that is, on the necessity of all railways being unified in a common system, and so-called railways concessions being pooled as soon as they have been built. In the past the method pursued by foreign interests has been as follows. After a bitter struggle in the dark, with every rival Legation working through every possible agency to prevent consummation, a railway concession (i.e. a building concession) is granted ​to a single concessionaire or to a group of concessionaires, which provides for the issue of a gold loan on the security of the given line; the amortization of that loan after a certain period; and the appointment of a chief engineer and a chief accountant of the concessionaire's nationality—the whole enterprise being nominally controlled by a Chinese director-general, together with a host of his relatives. The granting of this concession, however, is held to carry certain rights, irrespective of the real interests of the country; for instance, the concessionaire considers it necessary to stop the building of any line in his vicinity, particularly parallel lines, and sometimes feeder lines if contracted for by other parties. Moreover, the sphere of influence is still such a cherished doctrine among the diplomatic fraternity, that the invasion of a given sphere by a contractor of rival nationality is one of the most dangerous crimes, providing a local casus belli which is fought out bitterly in the coulisses of the various ministries and throughout the Far Eastern press, Asia Minor could hardly provide a more brilliantly tinted map than the present railway map of China when it is coloured according to the nationality of each concessionaire group. There is consequently ​no unity in Chinese railways, neither in administration or in finance; they are run on the most unbusinesslike and wasteful principles; and whilst nominally the Ministry of Communications is in supreme command, in practice a centralized government control, of the type which the war has made a commonplace, is still unthought of and unrealizable.
It is this centralized control which must be brought to China—with every railway on Chinese soil directly controlled from Peking. The fact that existing lines are already large dividend-earners should simplify the solution of the problem—which as in the case of currency should be worked out by government experts dispatched to China by the interested states, who will not be in any way influenced by the old-fashioned mercantile imperialism.
China requires such a reform for internal political reasons as well as for external. For, as in the case of every other modern convenience, provincial control cannot be properly centralized unless the abuses which are rapidly becoming stereotyped are absolutely checked. At the present moment the military element tend more and more to monopolize the railways; to act generally with such a high hand that the earning-power and safety of existing lines is ​being gravely compromised; and to spread the idea that a bully's rule is the only one the country is fit for. It is by means of their local railway control, just as much as by soldiery, that the military governors maintain themselves.
Now, inasmuch as it is certain that the payment of the Boxer indemnities will never be resumed (since the Allies could not easily consent to such a crime), but will be diverted to some good cause such as education, the urgent matter of a system of national, hard-surface highways should not be lost sight of. Republican China has inherited from the Manchus a great system of Imperial highways, useless for modern purposes since they are unmetalled, but covering a great portion of the land and capable of knitting the country very closely together, besides vastly increasing the prestige of Peking. The allocation of at least one-quarter of the Boxer indemnities to national road-building would in a decade work miracles of education among the people and strengthen the voice of authority. With credit and currency restored, and with a network of railways and roads covering the twenty-two provinces, republican China might soon become as important a factor in world-commerce and world-industry as ​the United States, since the supply of men and women is virtually endless, and is now increasing at the rate of six or seven million persons a year. Only by liberating the natural money-making genius of the Chinese people by giving them reasonable economic guarantees, can Western civilization justify its invasion of Cathay, and its remorseless destruction of the old gods.
V
There remains one question, and one only, to discuss, and we have done.
This is the policing of the country.
The Chinese army, as has been clearly shown, has degenerated into a political police. To transfer it back to its proper sphere, and to reduce its numbers, is the work of education and sympathy as well as of political compromise. For it must be remembered that what the provincial generals have been doing in regard to the provincial capitals, and along the connecting railways, has been largely taught them by what they see in the metropolis and along the railway leading from the sea to Peking. Foreign garrisons, placed in the capital and at each strategic point in the metropolitan province, under the Boxer protocol have for nineteen ​years accustomed men to the belief that soldiers are an essential part of politics—national as well as international—and that it is only the man with the rifle who is the man with a policy. In the opinion of the writer justice as well as expediency requires a relaxation of the safeguards established as a result of the now forgotten siege of the Legations. The few thousand foreign troops in North China no longer mean what they once did; the Chinese army is to-day far too powerful in artillery to be overawed by what was once an impressive force. To protract what is a daily source of irritation is a senseless policy: no statesman can endorse it.
A foreign evacuation protocol is therefore just as essential as an evacuation by Chinese generals of the provincial capitals: the two things should go hand in hand.
Already there is an efficient gendarmerie in Peking, perfectly trustworthy and perfectly able to do its duty if police and politics are separated. The Peking police-schools are gradually transferring more and more men to various parts of the country; and that recruits are excellent and well-trained is shown by the fact that the foreign municipality of Shanghai is requisitioning them and finding them supe​rior to Japanese constables. A sufficient number is all that is required—half a million for the whole country would guarantee peace and security and largely banish the present unrest.
If we are to ensure a happy morrow for the Chinese, all the things which we have touched upon must be considered as one organic whole—to be handled with the idealism and the practical common-sense which have given the name of Woodrow Wilson such prestige and puissance. In a word, the problem of Peking should be made the problem of Europe and America, it should be treated as an intimate and not as an insoluble matter, since it has directly grown out of the superior strength in peace and war of the Western man and urgently demands not his enmity but his sympathy and help.
* ↑ No better illustration of the extraordinary nature of Peking diplomacy could be given than to cite the case of the Russian Legation. This Legation, with its consulates, being deprived of all funds by the Bolshevist capture of the Petrograd administration, entered into negotiations with the Peking Government to continue the payment to it of three-fourths of the Boxer indemnity—that is, $1,800,000 a year—after the other Allies had agreed to suspend provisionally for five years their quotas as a result of the Chinese declaration of war against Germany and Austria. China consented. The result to-day is that a Minister Plenipotentiary, who represents no government, and who is paid by the government to which he is accredited, can stop diplomatic sanction to financial measures to which China requires the unanimous consent of the Treaty Powers by saying he has no instructions! There has never been a more Gilbertian situation in the history of diplomacy since the days of the Bourbons.
* ↑ A very valuable government return for the year ending on the 30th June, 1919, will be found Appendix M, giving precise figures regarding the Public Debt and the National Expenditure. The most cursory study will convince readers that the Chinese fiscal problem is easy of solution on account of the lightness of the debt and the cheapness of the administration in comparison with what exists elsewhere.