CHINA IN TRANSITION.•
Ma. PUTNAM WEALE'S very interesting book is announced as a " semi-official " statement. This is borne out by his extensive use of official documents, which he claims as a unique feature of his work. Another strong point is the fullness of his treatment of the careers and achievements of a large number of Chinese states- men, generals, administrators, and " intellectuals " But the special omit. tunities which Mr. Weale has enjoyed by his long residence in and official connexion with China do not make for complete detachment. It is too much to say, as he does in the first sentence of his Preface, that " this volume tells everything that the student or the casual reader needs to know about the Chinese question." His book tells us a great deal that is valuable, informing, and enlightening, but its tone is controversial. Throughout he adopts a highly critical and often hostile attitude to Japan, while admitting her great industrial achievements and political genius, and he condemns foreign diplomatists, with rare exceptions, for their indifference, their obscurantism, and their acquiescence in or active support of reactionary and absolutist ideals. Yet when all deductions are made for his Sinophil leanings and his fiery tempera- ment, he unquestionably shows good ground for the contention that China has not had fair play in the past, and for his confident belief that " the influence of the Chinese Republic cannot fail to be ultimately world-wide, in view of the practically unlimited resources in man-power which it disposes of." This would seem to indicate possibilities of aggression, but the true genius of China, as he interprets it, is not militaristic, but peace-loving and " rational," though " she will fight for Manchuria if it is impossible to recover it in anyother way," since "Manchuria is absolutely Chinese." The remedy lies in the hands of the Liberal Powers, on whose side China ranged herself in February, 1917. The financial scramble started by the Russian War Loan in 1895 must cease, and China be freed from economic subjection ; the politico-economic relationship between the Republic and the world must be remodelled at the earliest possible opportunity, every agreement made since the treaties of 1860 being carefully and completely revised." Mr. Weals urges the using of the Parliament of China as an instrument of reform instead of regarding it as " an experirnentalthing," since it is solely by using this instrument that satisfactory results can be attained in questions of currency, taxation, railways, ie. Again, he holds that the undertakings extorted by Japan in 1915 under the threat of an ultimatum must be revised, and the legitimate aspirations of the Korean people satisfied, before a true peace between China and Japan can be made possible. In other words, the whole Japanese theory of suzerainty on the Eastern Asiatic Continent must be abandoned. If this can be secured, " the present conflict will have truly been a War of Liberation for the East as well as the West." Incidentally we may note Mr. Weale's statement that China hopes and believes that Britain will never again renew in its present form the Japanese Alliance, which expires in 1921, particularly now that an Anglo-American Agreement has been made possible, since " it is to America and to England that China looks to rehabilitate herself and to make her Republic a reality." His conclusion is that " a China that is henceforth not only admitted to the family of nations on terms of equality but welcomed as a representative of Liberalism and a subscriber to all those sanctions on which the civilization of peace rests, will directly tend to adjust every other Asiatic problem and to prevent a recrudescence of those evil phenomena which are the enemies of progress and happiness."
These claims and conclusions are set out in the final chapter of the book. The justification of them is to be found in the body of the volume, which gives in narrative form the events from the Revolution of 1911 down to the summer of 1917. In a brief retrospect Me
• The Fight Or the lierpnblb. to China. By B. L. Putnam Weal,. With 20 Illus- trations. London . 4iurat aud.Blackett leis. este. . .
Weale sketches the decay and collapse of the Manchu dynasty, an absolutism based, as he holds, on make-believe, yet potent for evil through the maintenance of its traditions and machinery. The rise, decline, and fall of Yuan Shih-kai occupy two-thirds of the book, and the character and achievements of that remarkable man have probably never been so exhaustively discussed before. Mr. Weale calls him an enigma, but offers a solution. He might have been the saviour of China, but he was perverted into becoming her evil genius through ambition, and the support of foreign advisers and diplomatists. Ruthless and unscrupulous in action, he nearly always adopted a middle or temporizing course in policy. He saw that China's development depended on Western aid and Western science, yet strove to maintain the corrupt centralization which alienated the best native elements and estranged the provinces. Mr. Weals speaks more than once of Yuan Shih-kai's consummate ability in diplomacy; but he never regained the confidence of Japan from the day of his strange attack on the Japanese Legation in Seoul in 1884, and though for many years he went from strength to strength, fear of Japan was the dominant factor in his later years. The Revolution of 1911 brought him his opportunity; but" he deliber- ately followed the policy of holding back and delaying everything until the very incapacity of both sides—Revolutionists quite as much as Manchus—forcad him, as man of action and diplomacy, to be acclaimed the sole mediator and saviour of the nation." The gradual phases of his progress from Provisional President to Dictator; the means by which he endeavoured to consolidate his position, by stifling Parliamentary opposition, assassination, bribery, and intimidation.; his secret support, tempered by public disavowals, of the monarchist plot; his employment of native and foreign pamphleteers to spread the monarchical propaganda, leading up to the King-making Bill and the gerrymandered election—all the romance and realism of this strange tragi -comedy loses nothing in Mr. Weale's telling. The Dream Republic faded into a Dream Empire which was shattered by the " People's voice " in the Revo- lution of Yunnan and by the action of the Powers. Yuan Shih-kai's end was tragic in its suddenness and completeness, for he lived to see the ruin of his hopes. But Mr. Weale holds him more sinned against than sinning. " Briefly, when all the facts are properly grouped, it can be said that Yuan Shih-kai was killed by his foreign friends—by the sort of advice he had been consistently given in Constitutional Law, in Finanos, in Politics, in Diplomacy." As for foreign official response, " not one trace of genuine statesmanship, not one flash of altruism, was ever seen save the Amerioan flash in the pan of 1913, when President Wilson refused to allow Americas participation in the great Reorganization Loan because he held that the terms on which it was to be granted infringed China's sovereign rights."
In an epilogue Mr. Weale pays a handsome tribute to President Li Yuan-hung for his patriotic services to the Republic, and describes the difficulties which he had to overcome to convert the Military Party to the severance of diplomatic relations with Germany. But it was not till after the Imperialist Restoration plot of June, 1917, had failed that the deolaration of war against Germany and Austria became possible. The chief obstacle, in Mr. Weale's view, was not so much internal division as the menace of Japanese action. The origin of the famous Twenty-one Demands of Japan submitted in January, 1915, in terms which would have reduced China to vassalage, and ultimately accepted by her in the following May in a modified but still humiliating form, is traced by Mr. Weale to a remarkable document issued by the Japanese Black Dragon Society, which he prints at length without vouching for its absolute authenticity.
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