TH

HE months following Feb. 1, 1917, not only by bringing America into the great war-changed the face of the Western Hemisphere; they made a lasting alteration in the Far East also. On Feb. 9, Wu Ting-fang, Foreign Minister of the Chinese Republican Government, handed a note to Admiral von Hintze, the German Minister to Peking, that made a rupture between the Chinese and German Governments ultimately inevitable. Six days before President Wilson had issued an appeal urging neutral powers everywhere to show their abhorrence of Germany's new campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare by breaking off relations with the German Government. China's response was therefore of special interest to Americans, especially a's, accompanying a copy of the note to Germany, a special note was handed to Dr. Reinsch, the American Minister to Peking, in which there appeared the following significant words:

China, being in accord with the principles set forth in your Excellency's [President Wilson's] note, and firmly associating itself with the United States, has taken similar action by protesting energetically to Germany against the new blockade measures. China also proposes to take such other action in the future as will be deemed necessary for the maintenance of the principles of international law.

The sentences of greatest weight in Dr. Wu's first note to Germany were these:

The new measures of submarine warfare inaugurated by Germany are imperiling the lives and property of Chinese citizens even more than the measures previously taken, which have already cost China many lives and constitute a violation of international law. * If, contrary to expectation, this protest be ineffective, China will be constrained, to its profound regret, to sever diplomatic relations.

China's reasons for taking this stand were amply covered by specific ills and grievances at Germany's hands, and by the wider strategy of China's own political position. For specific grievances, China

had a death roll of over 200 peaceful merchant seamen, lost on neutral and belligerent ships at the hands of German submarines. In principle also the ambitious and rapidly developing Chinese mercantile communities, whose cornerstone of commercial progress is unrestricted access to the high seas, had begun to distinguish sharply by Feb. 1 between the salutary restraint of allied policing and the indiscriminate outrages of German piracy. The Allies, furthermore, were the principal guarantors of China's integrity and autonomy, and in the closer association with them which thus became so opportune, China's assurance of a place at the peace conference, which she might expect as an actual and belligerent ally, was the third major element which induced her Government to take its first step toward war.

Influenced by America

Lastly, China's move was due to her increasing and always sympathetic responsiveness to the foreign policy of the United States, the only power which today holds no concessions or spheres of interest in her sovereign territory, and has exacted no punitive indemnity from her Government. For China, on America's invitation, capably and energetically presented to the Peking Government by Dr. Reinsch, not only took the first step toward breaking off relations with Germany, but incidentally, for the first time in her modern history, assumed in a diplomatic note a position of active interest and presumptive interference in the affairs of European nations.

The German answer to China's note did not reach Peking till the first days of March, though by Feb. 25, Dr. Yen, China's Minister to Berlin, announced that the German Government had assured him orally that Germany could not alter her submarine campaign. By March 9, however, Admiral von Hintze had handed to the Chinese Government a

formal refusal to accede to China's demands, offering merely the barren assurance that Germany was willing to open negotiations so as better to "respect the lives of Chinese and their property,"

* * "hoping" that China would not break off diplomatic relations, and "promising" that Germany would do her utmost to secure China's participation in the peace conference if friendly relations between the two countries were maintained.

China's attitude, in the meantime, had substantially matured toward the final rupture. Three factors, in the main, brought her to this decision. The Japanese Government, through Baron Motono, its Foreign Minister, had publicly announced that it would put no obstacle in the way of China's independent action. Tuan Chi-jui, then Prime Minister of China under President Li Yuan-hung, had assured the nation that the Allies were prepared to guarantee China adequate concessions upon her becoming a belligerent. Chief among these concessions, as stated by Premier Tuan, were the abrogation of the Boxer indemnities (roughly, $15,000,000 in 1916) for the period of the war, and possibly for an even longer period; the extension to China of the right to raise her customs duties above the statutory 5 per cent. now allowed on a diminishing scale of price levels dating back more than ten years, and the removal of the foreign troops installed after the Boxer outrages along the Peking-Mukden Railroad. And, thirdly, under the influence of these guarantees and the possibility of gaining even further concessions, and encouraged by relief from Japanese constraint, China's disputing factions took a larger view of their country's welfare and gave the issue with Germany a clear field for immediate decision.

Diplomatic Relations Severed

That decision was a foregone conclusion. Every politically important element in China's limited but energetic sphere of public life was in favor of breaking off with Germany. The President and the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the military parties of the north, and particularly the radically inclined

Parliament, largely representing the ideas of the southern parties, all decisively ratified this momentous step. Scattered elements opposed it, such as a group of radicals led by the famous exPresident Sun Yat-sen, but the southern parties as a whole approved it and backed it. This was clearly shown when, on March 11, Premier Tuan Chi-jui appeared before both houses of Parliament and put the question of rupture with Germany to a final vote. The outcome, a majority of 158 to 37 in the Senate and 331 to 87 in the House, or a joint support of the Premier's policy by 4 to 1, manifested impressively the decision of liberal China and gave the Government an im2 mediate mandate to break off relations with Germany.

Thereupon, on March 14, Dr. Wu Tingfang handed to Admiral von Hintze a final note, of which the closing words effectually put China's position as follows:

It [the German reply] is therefore not in accord with the object of that [the Chinese Government's] protest; and the Government of China, to its deep regret, considers its protest to be ineffectual. It is therefore constrained to sever the diplomatic relations at present existing with the Imperial German Government.

Admiral von Hintze was at once given his passports, and China inaugurated her new status toward Germany by seizing German merchant ships at her ports, including six at Shanghai, and interning their crews on shore. Germany's immediate loss through her rupture with China went much further than this, however. China had been the centre and the base of extensive plotting and propaganda in the German cause throughout the Far East. The mutiny at Singapore, seditious propaganda in India, and the mysteriously financed Mongolian bandits who roved along the Siberian border during the first two years of the war are instances of Germany's opportunity, if not of her actual achievements, in the way of using China's neutrality as a safe and convenient shield for the virtual war measures with which we became somewhat earlier so disagreeably familiar in America. With the loss of China's friendship, all this was substantially curtailed.

Loss of Trade Advantages

There is still to be considered Germany's loss of an economic base there. Germany had 244 companies in China at the beginning of the war, with a total capitalization of over a quarter of a billion dollars. Her trade had increased by 120 per cent. in the eight years preceding the war, years in which American trade had remained practically stationary. It was also of a carefully planned strategic quality, specializing in engineering afield in inland China and in representing the firms of many other nations as middlemen in the treaty ports. It had ballasted its favored position everywhere with special concessions; thus it had to lose not merely its own material substance, but just the sort of imponderable advantage derived from long penetration which is hardest to recover; and which China's unfriendliness at once enormously accentuated.

The positive advantage to the Allies of China's rupture with Germany was much less obvious, but it was by no means insignificant. China had by Feb. 1 already sent some 100,000 of her sons as industrial workmen in Government shops, controlled establishments, and war munition factories in general behind the battle lines in France. The closer association with the Allies that became opportune after March 14 opened the way immediately to increase this service far beyond previous plans; so that China's vast labor supply was again drawn upon, and estimates were made for its utilization by the allied Governments in a combatant army of 200,000, or even 250,000 men. England also commenced to recruit Chinese labor, in close co-operation with the Chinese Government, not only for service in the factories-and on the farms-of Europe, but for her great construction works in Mesopotamia; while in another extreme of the world's climate Russia, too, enlisted thousands of Chinese woodsmen and northern peasants to serve her agricultural needs as loggers and farm hands in Siberia and Russian Mongolia.

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Though there was no immediate prospect, or desire, even after China might

declare war on Germany, of sending Chinese troops to Europe, the prospective disposal of China's enormous stocks of iron and coal, as well as those of tin and antimony, of which latter China produces a substantial portion of the world's annual yield, constituted a really estimable allied advantage. Her 500,000-ton* production of iron ore and her 13,000,000-ton* production of coal, both of excellent quality, were each factors in the economic scale in a world reduced to the ultimates in men and metal.

Beginning of Internal Disorder

China's own domestic political situation, stabilized by the crisis of March 14, became less and less stable, however, as that crisis receded. In that situation there were three capital factors. Dominance in China in a military sense was held by the Prime Minister, Tuan Chijui, who was also Minister of War and leader of the conservative party of the Generals and old officials generally known (though the designation is not quite accurate) as the northern party. Dominance in a political sense was held by the liberals, led by the President, Li Yuan-hung, an ex-General of the first revolution and a mid-Chinaman from the Yang-tse Province of Hupeh, and backed up by a Cabinet representing the constructive and liberal forces, as distinct from the radicals, of the Republican Government. The third major force, the radical element which was mainly responsible for the first revolution, in 1911, was intrenched in control of the Senate, and held the balance of power, with the assistance of so-called independents, in the House of Representatives.

As the question of China's entrance into the war drew, during April and May, more and more urgently to a decision, sharp and irreconcilable differences between these parties began to be revealed. Already there had been one crisis, between March 6 and 8, when the Prime Minister, in the heat of a disagreement with the President, had left the capital and conducted the Government indepen

*Approximate estimates. See China Year Book, 1916.

dently from Tien-tsin.

The issue then was whether or not Tuan Chi-jui had the right to send a telegram to Tokio which virtually broke off relations with Germany, without consulting Parliament, through the agency and under the tutelage of Japan. President Li eventually induced him to return to the capital and submit the question to Parliament, with the result that China broke with Germany quite as decisively, but independently, with respect to any foreign advice or control whatsoever.

Early in May the Prime Minister began to press for China's immediate entrance into the war. The President's party and the radical parties demurred, first, because they professed not to know positively what guarantees the Allies were prepared to give, and, secondly, because they feared-so they asserted-the plenary powers which a state of war would place in the hands of the Premier and his reactionary followers. A military conference of the chief northern Generals, which had been summoned to the capital in April, gave color to the general fears of a reactionary ascendency by making frequent and vigorous demands for intervention. At length the Premier invited them to meet with the Cabinet, and on May 2 it was announced that the Cabinet was unanimously committed to an immediate declaration of war against Germany.

Drifting Toward Rebellion

On May 10 the Premier appeared before Parliament, and amid scenes of great disorder, and in a session surrounded by soldiers and crowds friendly to the northern party, vehemently urged an unconditional and immediate declaration of China's belligerency on the side of the Allies. After stormy sessions lasting the greater part of the night, Parliament voted down the Premier's policy. The press of the southern parties thereupon directly accused the Premier of seeking the war only as an excuse for instituting martial law and assuming control of the Government. The Premier rejoined by summarily arresting the editor of the leading radical paper in Peking, the bilingual English and Chinese Peking Gazette, who had also accused Tuan of con

niving at Japanese ascendency over China's war policy. On this the President acted with equal promptness, and on May 23 dismissed Tuan Chi-jui from office.

Tuan's dismissal was the signal to the northern Generals not merely to endeavor to recover their lost prestige, but to rise in actual rebellion against the Government. President Li attempted to conciliate them by appointing as Premier on May 29 Li Ching-hsi, nephew to the great statesman Li Hung Chang and one of their own leaders; and Parliament ratified his nomination by a decisive and obviously conciliatory majority. But the northern Generals, after seizing every trunk railroad to Peking and after placing their own soldiers around the President's immediate person in Peking, declared on June 3 that they no longer recognized Li Yuan-hung's authority and appointed a Provisional Government, with Hsu Shih-chang, former Premier under Yuan Shih-kai and Viceroy in Manchuria under the Imperial Government, as Dictator. They then issued a proclamation from Tien-tsin reiterating their demand for China's immediate entrance into the war, but insisting that that action must be accompanied by the dismissal of Parliament, the extinction of the almost completed liberal Constitution, and the reinstatement of Premier Tuan Chi-jui. They disclaimed vigorously any desire to set up a monarchy and professed themselves on June 5 to be loyal to the republic.

The situation remained a complete deadlock. On June 7 the American Government dispatched the following note to Peking, the first word to be received from any of the powers, which lent the full weight of American influence to the cause of conciliation:

The United States Government learns with the most profound regret of the dissensions in China and expresses a sincere desire that tranquillity and political co-ordination be forthwith established.

The entry of China into the war, or the continuance of the status quo in her relations with the German Government, are matters of secondary importance. China's principal necessity is to resume and continue her political entity and proceed along the road to national development. In China's form of govern

ment, or the personnel which administers the Government, America has only the friendliest interest, and desires to be of service to China.

America expresses the sincere hope that factional and political disputes will be set aside and that all parties and persons will work to re-establish and co-ordinate the Government and secure China's position among nations, which is impossible while there is internal discord.

On the same day Secretary Lansing added to the salutary impression of this note by vehemently disclaiming the statement that America had given any aid or encouragement to the rebellion. On June 11 Dr. George Morrison, British adviser to the Chinese President, added an intimation of the policy of his Government by urging “in the strongest possible manner the retention of Parliament" and by saying directly to President Li Yuan-hung, "You must retain Parliament." Professor Ariga, the Japanese adviser, gave the less decisive advice that President Li had the right to dismiss Parliament if he wished to do so. The American adviser, Dr. W. Willoughby, interviewed in Tokio, summed up the situation in the following words: “I look for turmoil of long duration between militarism and constitutionalism"; during which, it would seem to be inferred, China's genuinely serviceable participation in the war will be indefinitely delayed.

[EDITORIAL NOTE.-A dispatch from Peking, dated June 13, announced that the Presidential mandate dissolving Parliament had been signed by Ching Chao-chung as Acting Premier, and that it was believed that the dissolution would bring about civil war, as the leaders in the southern provinces had telegraphed President Li Yuan-hung that they no longer recognized his authority, despite the fact that the President had accompanied the dissolution mandate with a long statement attempting to justify his action. The President again called into conference at the palace Dr. George Morrison and Professor Nagao Ariga, who repeated the advice they had previously given. The President said that he had already placed his seal on the mandate, and asked what he could do, declaring that he could not obtain the signature of any of the members of the Cabinet to the document. Dr. Morrison replied that the President had better tear it up. Professor Ariga said that if the President was unable to obtain a countersignature of a member of the Cabinet he should get one from the head of the judiciary.

A Tokio dispatch of June 12 stated that the alleged failure of the United States Government to consult Japan before presenting its note to China had caused considerable resentment in Japan. Secretary of State Lansing on June 13 authorized the statement that the text of the note as first published in Japan was false and that the irritation expressed by the Japanese press had been caused by the fabricated text. The correct text was obtained later and accurately printed in the Japanese newspapers. Nevertheless, the latest dispatches show that Japanese opinion holds that the United States should be asked to recognize Japan's special position in China in order to prevent future misunderstandings.]