Imatges de pàgina
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Provincial autonomy is a fact, and many sincere thinkers wish to make it the basis of Chinese policy. Each tuchun dominates his province and is a law unto himself, thanks to his control of troops and taxes. As most provinces are fully as large and as rich as France, a tuchun is comparable to a pre-war European potentate, but with the powers of an Asiatic despot. Several tuchuns have made millions by trafficking in opium. Others sell concessions. Not a few have levied tribute on subjecttowns under one pretext or another. And all maintain their rule by force. Their armies now number about 1,700,000, or an average of nearly 100,000 active soldiers under each tuchun. Naturally the tuchuns tend to favor the division of China into eighteen nations, with themselves as lords and emperors. Why should anybody else approve? Simply, because China is too huge, too immature politically, and too inchoate, to think and act as a unit.

The political realist has often noted that this land should be thought of, not as an ordinary single country, but rather as a backward continent containing widely differing races and economic divisions, more or less like Europe of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, when there were no railroads, posts, telegraphs, or sense of community. China as a whole is surely less of a political entity than Europe was when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. Yunnan has less in common with Manchuria than Portugal then had with Sweden; and the wider conflicts of interest between North and South are quite as acute and as stubborn as any between the popes and the emperors or the Hapsburgs and their many foes. Most important of all, the level of political intelligence in modern China is certainly lower than that of Western Europe three centuries ago. And nobody who understands the origins and nature of

political intelligence believes that the Chinese can rise much faster than Europeans have risen. You do not make men good citizens by building railways through their farms. You do not produce statesmen merely by installing telephones in the offices of senators. Slow experiment by trial and error, still slower education of millions, slow crushing of superstitions, slow refinement of tastes and desires out of such stuff is citizenship made. And this process must work from the home and the village outward and upward.

The people who dwelt between Dublin and Constantinople when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed could not have been organized into one successful State by the greatest of political geniuses. Even to-day their descendants cannot create the United States of Europe, which is the only sure salvation for that wretched continent. Geographical differences, many languages, race-prejudices, childish nationalistic fancies, and grave economic conflicts still keep the European masses ignorant, provincial, and befuddled. How hopeless, then, to expect that the eighteen provinces of China, with their 350,000,000 mediæval folk, mostly destitute of all the tools of civilization, can combine under one government, which will work even as smoothly as a backward European nation!

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junks and barges again. The robbers have come down from the mountains. And in great hordes the hunghutze (professional Manchu robbers) are marauding across Manchuria. On the borders of Tibet bandits have baffled and beaten the soldiers of the tuchuns. Out of Mongolia, but a few months past, the rabble trailing the fanatical Living Buddha came within a day's march of the gates of Peking. Harbin, at the date of this writing, saw thousands of hunghutze drawing near. And for a year, or longer, the Chinese Eastern Railway has been attacked and plundered almost daily by these same outlaws, whom the Chinese troops dare not defy, knowing that many of them are working for certain Japanese adventurers and others for the Russian reactionaries, all clients of the mighty tuchun, Chang Tso-lin.

This red arc of ruin spans the two thousand miles that lie between Vladivostok and the frontier of Burma. It has paralyzed trade on a thousand highways and driven the boatmen from the rivers. Even between large cities travel is so hazardous that local officials forbid foreigners to attempt it, and require native merchants to take along armed guards in such numbers that only the most urgent mission can justify the cost. It is the thirteenth century on the miry roads of England; night, and a dark forest ahead.

III

While China crumbles, a plan grows in the north. If only half successful, it will shake the world before many years have gone. No outsider knows its details, for they seethe in the cunning brain of Chang Tso-lin, inspector-general of Manchuria, the power behind Peking, and the most sinister and strenuous of the war lords. Chang rules from Mukden of bloody memory,

VOL. 128- - NO. 5

where he holds the most strategic position in all Asia. His is the rich land where Russia, China, and Japan meet in their struggle for existence. Manchuria dominates Peking, Vladivostok, the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Amur River Valley, and Korea. It is the gateway from China to Siberia, from China to Japan, and from Japan to Mongolia and world-power. Chang sits at the gate and collects toll, such as the traffic will bear.

The traffic bears a good deal, and the proceeds have gone to Chang's head. He dreams of empire. Some observers have imagined that he would be monarch of all China; but Chang is too shrewd for that; and if he were not, his shrewder Japanese backers would halt him. His vision is much more practicable, hence more dangerous. He sees a new Manchu-Mongol Empire, stretching from the sea to the core of Asia. On Manchuria and Mongolia Chang would rebuild the throne of Jenghiz Khan,and send the bill to the Japanese. He will sell to the Japanese, at their own terms, a thousand concessions; and on his coronation day Japan will occupy peaceably a wedge twenty-four hundred miles long, giving them 'interior lines' dominating both Siberia and China. In short, what 'little Hsu' and his Anfuites dreamed of doing 'for China,' Chang would do for himself and his Tokyo friends. The Japanese backed the Anfuites, and lost. Now they are backing Chang, and hope to win. And to-day the odds are strongly in their favor.

Three facts will convince you of all this. One is Chang's military power, another is his management of the Peking Government, and the third is his long series of business deals with Japanese. It must shock the American reader to learn that this clever schemer now rules an army of 300,000 well-equipped soldiers, over which the so-called Cen

tral Government exercises not the slightest control, although it is compelled to pay most of its upkeep. Since Hsu demobilized some 300,000 of the Peking forces last summer, Chang has become the overshadowing force; and not alone because his is the largest army in China. His strength flows largely from three immense strategic advantages: adequate food-supplies within his own lines, the superior railway system of Manchuria, and the reserves of munitions held ready by his Japanese friends in Manchuria and Korea. To all this, add a double geographic advantage: Manchuria is quite detached from the rest of China, hence not surrounded by potentially hostile provinces; and it is near the arsenals and shipyards of Japan. Why should not Chang dream of empire?

And how can the frail Hsu resist Chang's demands? Dexterous, cunning, and strong of will, the uncrowned king of Manchuria manipulates his marionettes at Peking without an effort. His technique is too elaborately celestial to report here. Judge it by its fruits. Chang milks the treasury dry, plays off one clique against another, and traffics with the Japanese 'going and coming.' Week by week he sells off China's assets and invests the proceeds in Chang. And all so quietly and suavely, that nobody quite knows what is happening until too late.

Last July Chang seemed to be desperately hard up. But of a sudden he handed over to his commissary general $2,510,000 in honest cash, albeit Mexican. This oddly coincided with his signing incorporation papers and concessions for a large Japanese development company in Mongolia; and it preceded by only a few days his shocking surrender of the Chinese Eastern Railway, through a shady bond-issue vote. Because of an old debt, conveniently overlooked for years, Chang's Peking

Government was able legally to demand the payment of some 13,000,000 taels from that road; and the road could pay only with a bond issue whose terms had to meet with the approval of the Peking Minister of Finance and the Minister of Communications - both Chang's trained Pekingese. The issue was authorized in such a form that only Japanese would consider underwriting it, and they for political purposes.

At the date of writing, strong efforts are being made to block the issue. Whether they succeed or not, Chang's intentions and methods remain clear. If he is thwarted here, it will be only for a while. Legally as well as factually, no man can launch an enterprise in Manchuria or Mongolia save by Chang's leave. And Chang sees fit to favor the Japanese. Steadily since 1906 the Japanese have been pouring money into his domain. They have financed twenty-seven large corporations, mostly banks and the rest mining companies, lumber-mills, railways, and electrical plants. They show a gross authorized capitalization of 71,525,000 yen, a sum which means much more in that raw country of cheap land and coolie wages than twice as many dollars would mean to-day in our own country. Apart from its arithmetical significance, the investment acquires abnormal power from the protection against non-Japanese competition furnished by the Japanese authorities, as well as by Chang himself.

Manchuria being thoroughly in hand, Chang now prepares to absorb Mongolia. Circumstances played into his hand last spring, when the Siberian peasants and the Far Eastern Republic drove Ungern's reactionary riff-raff all the way to Urga, in Mongolia. Ungern carried on a variety of still obscure schemes, now to capture Chita, now to attack Peking through the Living Buddha. Chang saw in Peking's panic

his own chance. Knowing, as every other well-informed person in the Far East knew, that Semenoff and Ungern were third-rate adventurers, with never a chance of wrecking the Chita Government, and that they were merely being used by a small clique of Japanese militarists as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon the Far Eastern Republic for the gaining of concessions, Chang nobly volunteered to drive the invaders off Chinese soil. It would cost Peking seven to ten millions, of course, but the job would be done with neatness and dispatch. Unhappy Hsu advanced three millions, then two more. Chang posted bulletins of his plans and progress. Months passed, and not a soldier moved. Chang had to wait till Japan was through with Semenoff. Finally, when the Japanese had kicked Semenoff out, and Ungern, his underling, had not even a broken reed to lean on, and the Living Buddha had wandered back into the windy solitudes, China's great defender marshaled a mere handful of braves. Perhaps some of them are arriving in Urga now; and Chinese history will not run true to form unless, once in Urga, they stay there as long as Chang finds backing for his Mongol empire. They may be there when the second Jenghiz Khan enters in triumph, escorted by a purely honorary Japanese army. Who knows? Mad dreams do come true. And the truth itself is often madness.

IV

What has all this to do with disarmament? Well, each tendency in China's chaos affects every foreign investor there. Each will do so much more after a disarmament programme, however modest, has been adopted. Now, the British investor in China largely shapes British policy toward China; and so too with the American and Japanese. Furthermore, disarmament hangs upon

the powers

a prior understanding among as to their Far Eastern policies. Plainly, then, every move toward disarmament must be determined chiefly by what foreign investors think of the drift in China. What must their thoughts be?

What if Chang has his way? Then Japan will become a colossal continental power as well as a maritime one. Her protectorate will extend first over Manchuria and Mongolia; next over Shantung; then probably over Kansu, whose tuchun is a friend of Chang, installed by Chang's cunning. The Japanese militarist party will have justified its expensive policy. The price of conquest will be collected from the conquered, and Japan's finances will be greatly strengthened. The present monopolistic policy of Japan, which has just been extended still further in Korea, will swiftly drive foreign investors out.

What if Sun Yat-sen prevails? Sun is an intense nationalist, aglow with the desire to free China from the alien. He hates Japan most, America least. In common with millions of his countrymen, he believes that the foreigner has caused most of China's woes, and that expelling the money and the political influence of all foreigners is the first step toward national regeneration. Given full power, Sun would cancel or heavily amend every foreign concession, put a quick end to extraterritoriality, restore the treaty ports to China, and finance the country from within. All of which would not encourage outsiders to drop money in Chinese ventures.

What if provincial autonomy arrives? The eighteen new nations would soon join in one or two loose confederations, but these latter would not hamper the new military kings. Forthwith, the status of innumerable concessions would become dubious, for the central government which had granted them would have ceased. All would depend upon

the good will, the cupidity, or the fear of the local tuchun. It would be Central Europe and the Balkans over again, but poisoned with mediævalism. Civil wars, intrigues, an endless unstable balancing of petty powers, and interminable uncertainty as to to-morrow would sap the courage of the boldest foreign investor and leave the field open only to the adventurer. Probably the treaty ports would thrive, for even the dullest war lord realizes that they are the life of their provinces. But all expansion beyond their environs would halt.

To all this, one exception. Japan would profit richly by the disintegration. She would sign treaties with the new northern kingdoms, paying gladly the tuchuns' price. The technique followed in olden days by the British in dealing with the native states of India would be repeated, with modern variations and embellishments. And a quarter-century would see Japan the master of the continent.

Here are the three outstanding possibilities in China, in their baldest form. Each is little more than a possibility, as matters now stand. Chang will not have his way as sweetly as he hopes; for his countrymen understand him, and the Japanese behind him realize the danger of quick and open imperialism. Sun's foes are many and mighty, while his purse is lean. And provincial autonomy is suspect because too many militarists are shouting for it, while clear thinkers understand that China must present a united front against Japan, or go under. Over and above all these restraints tower the battleships that ride in the harbors of Manila, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. These vessels are singularly unpopular among river pirates, opium smugglers, poppy farmers, white slavers, bandit chieftains, and exploiters white and yellow. All of which suggests a leading

question. What if the Washington Conference, moved by lofty idealism,whatever that may mean,—were to persuade the three dominant naval powers to scrap, let us say, one half of their fleets, or to cease new construction? How would that noble act affect Chang, Sun, and provincial autonomy? And how, in turn, the American, British, and Japanese investors in China?

The answer is too easy. And it gives us a first clear glimpse of the obstacles to disarmament.

Cut the British and American fleets one half, whether by scrapping battleships or by suspending new construction, and you leave the coast clear for Chang and his Japanese friends to annex Mongolia and Shantung. They can and will double their speed of conquest on the day Anglo-Saxon sea-power dwindles. How so? Geography tells the whole story. From Japan's huge naval port, Nagasaki, to the mainland of Asia is less than 150 miles - an easy night's run for transports and battleships. The waters are dotted with islands which, fortified or used as bases for destroyers and submarines, make the passage fairly safe, even under heavy attack. Furthermore, the Japanese can mass in Korea and Manchuria millions of soldiers, if need be, long before a foreign power could effectively interfere. interfere. Military railways, warehouses, terminals, and other basic necessities of war, are already installed in vital points. And the farmers of Manchuria can now supply food for a sizable army. To all of which facts we need add but one, unsuspected by most Americans, perhaps, but recognized by all naval experts: neither the British nor the American fleet of to-day is strong enough to carry on a modern war anywhere in the Far East, chiefly because of the abnormally long and weak line of supplies and the distance from primary bases.

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