Light on China
Twilight in the Forbidden City. By Sir Reginald Johnston, K.C.M.G. (Gollancz. 18s.)
EVER since the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, culminating in the siege of the Ledations, the course of events in China has been, for most English people, an incomprehen- sible confusion ; sometimes exasperating, sometimes amusing, but never either rational or clear. Chinese politics are like a puzzle with the key lost ; the bits are there, but we have no means of fitting them into any sort of ordered whole. The missing key, of course, has been anything like an adequate knowledge of Chinese tradition, Chinese life and character, and of the personalities and aims which lay behind the chaotic events that have presented themselves to- our bekildered gaze; and the confusion has been greatly augmented by the time- honoured Chinese custom of putting up whole echelons of men of straw, one behind the other, to cover the tracks Of any individual who embarked on an important political intrigue.
In Sir Reginald Johnston's new book we have got, at last, such an informed and reasoned presentation of the inner history of China during the last thirty-six years as does supply us with some sort of key. This is no ordinary-volume of Court gossip; historically, it is difficult to over-estimate its impor- tance. To begin with, Johnston knows ; he has long been a brilliant Chinese scholar, steeped in the literature, the historical tradition and the religious and' social outlook of "China ; on an equality in these matters (and therefore on a footing of intimacy otherwise unattainable) with leaders "of Chinese' thought and action whose very names, here, are conunonly unfamiliar or even unknown ; in a position, at the last, to oppose or abet, on equal terms, the plans and wishes of high Officials, and to some extent to affect the course of events. As no other living foreigner has done, he shared in the tra- ditional ceremonial of that strangest of Courts, a ceremonial rooted in the furthest antiquity and guarded jealously from the sight and knowledge even_ of the Chinese themselves. For him, as for no other, the curtains of the past have been rolled up ; it is with a sense of being transported into some ;ong-forgotten age that we read how, in the "Great Within " of the Imperial precincts, on the eve. of the Emperor's wedding; he heard at day-break the Court musicians render, "on drums and hanging stones" a section of a symphony entitled The Central Harmony," which tradition ascribes to a royal com- poser of the year 2255 B.C. !
It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to the learning, the moderation and sobriety with which Sir Reginald writes. His authority is unquestionable, his knowledge , encyclopaedic ; but—rarest of gifts—he shows an historian's skill in presenting to us, in a clear perspective, the events of which he has personal knoVeledge,' preserving 'an admirable proportion between the affairs of the dynasty, with which he Was, as one of the Imperial tutors, primarily concerned, and the general political scene as it unfolded itself from year to year, from crisis to crisis, from futile war to futile war. His narrative throws a brilliant light on the real causes which lay behind the fall of the Manchu dynasty : the reactionary alarm Of the Empress-Dowager and her entourage at the reforms proposed by that great statesman Ming Yu-wei ; the intrigues and self-seeking of the triple traitor, Yuan Shi-k'ai ; and—to which he gives pride of place—the invincible corruption and obscurantism of the Imperial Household Department, the Nei Wu Fu, which with an almost sublime single-mindedness sought to preserve its own position and perquisites, regardless of the interests of the dynasty whose service was its raison dare. He clears. away, it is to be hoped once for all, the mass of legendary nonsense with which foreigni writers have invested the personality of the Empress-Dowager herself, showing by historical examples that her position as Regent was the normal and traditional one, not a portentous innovation which she owed to her own forge of character. In fact, this book will prove disconcerting reading to many enthusiasts for various Chinese personages. One after another, the Empress-Dowager, Sun Yat-sen, Yiian Shi-k'ai and the " Christian " General, Feng Yii-hsiang, are " debunked " with unsparing and well-documented vigour.
To many, no doubt, one of the most interesting features of the book will be the light it throws on the Manchurian ques- tion. Sir Reginald Johnston, a.kit loyal and devoted serVint of the Imperial-family; is_naturally a Partisan of the dynasty ; but his book, it must be emphasized, is not a partisan book. He is too good an historian for that. When he joins issue, on page 262, with one statement in the Lytton Report, his argument- is extremely well documented front contemporary sources, most of which are -naturally unknown -here. On more general questions of historic fact he is equally-informa- tive. One wonders how many. people in England will here learn with surprise that up to twenty years ago- Manchuria was always regarded as, so to speak, the private park of the Manchu house, and that its connexion with China was a purely dynastic one ; that the year 1907 saw for the -lint time the startling innovation of a Chinese appointed there, as viceroy, instead of a Manchu military governor directly responsible to the throne ; and that the; restrictions On Chinese immigra- tion into Manchuria, 'were Only abolished in that year. Or that as recently as 1925, the republican statesman T'ang Shao-yi- declared publicly that "the Manchu conquerors brought ManChuria as a dowry in the China-Manchuria union," and expressed the view that the ex-Emperor ought to be allowed to resume his sovereignty over his .rightful family heritage.
The photographs, indices, and the arrangement of the copious notes at the end of the book, chapter by.chapter, are all excellent. It would, however, be slightly more convenient if the Jute of each chapter, which alone occurs on the page headings, were givert with the-notes instead of only the number ; one is apt to forget the number of the chapter one is reading. But this is-a trivial blemish in a very remarkable
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