Chiang was an ardent nationalist, but he was also a Chinese. The new philosophy he was advocating conflicted with the sensibilities he had acquired during his traditional education. As an old-fashioned Chinese he wanted peace: as a modern army officer he saw the necessity of building military strength. The exultation of success warred with ancient maxims. One result of the compromise he reached was a passage that was prophetic:
“The world today is a place in which we must be armed to maintain peace. If all the nations would only put humanity before everything else and realize … that aggression is not right, then instead of maintaining a balance of power, there would be a universal commonwealth. When we have established a world republic comprising white, red and black races, we shall only need a police force to maintain interior order in those united states, and that would be sufficient to keep trouble away. A central government could be created to deal with greater matters, and should there arise disputes between the states, they could go to the central government for justice, when right and wrong would be declared.”
This appeared in 1912. There is no evidence that anybody paid attention to it. All young officers have their dreams.
3 “STORMS OF TEMPER” 1912–23
“A republic is the best form of government,” Yuan Shihkai telegraphed to Sun. “The whole world admits this. That in one leap we have passed from autocracy to republicanism is really the outcome of many years of strenuous efforts exerted by you all, and is the greatest blessing to the people.”
Not to be outdone in courtesy, Sun retorted, “Mr. Yuan is a man of political experience, upon whose constructive ability our united nation looks forward to the consolidation of its interests.”
The long, grueling struggle undergone by Sun and his colleagues had produced heroes, but they were heroes of a special sort. They were excellent revolutionaries, but none of them had ever been part of a legislative body operating in the open, and now that the chance had come they had no idea how to go about the job. Yuan, on the other hand, understood such matters.
So it was natural that the republicans should give in to his judgment and relinquish their plan to keep the government in Nanking. Was it not unwise, asked Yuan, to leave Peking to its own devices when everything was still unsettled? While the discussion was going on a street riot took place in Peking, and the republicans were convinced. Possibly Yuan engineered the riot to make his point. The new President, therefore, was inaugurated in the North.
A private citizen again, Sun went up to Peking to discuss railway expansion. There were already several good railways operating in the hinterland from the coast, but he visualized more; seventy-five thousand miles of new track to begin with, built and operated by the Chinese Government, within the next ten years. He figured the cost of this development as three billion U. S. dollars, which he proposed borrowing abroad. Yuan agreed to everything, and appointed Sun Yat-sen Director of Railways, putting at his disposal a handsome sum. To his surprise Sun did not pocket the money, but in good faith set to work immediately drumming up interest in the loan among Western countries. He had Japan in mind as one possible creditor. Sun trusted Japan, as he trusted everybody, too much, a mistake the young officer Chiang Kai-shek would not have made.
This same officer was still in Shanghai, where the end of hostilities had left him, an instructor in the military academy General Chen Chi-mei had set up. The situation in China was not yet so settled that the former revolutionaries felt they could relax. They kept their uniforms and continued to recognize the standing army. Chiang was one of the few officers available who had had a modern training. Conscious of this, he began to appreciate himself. He was fully fledged; he was a success. He might even have become a little bit swell-headed. He was only twenty-five.
As a veteran of the revolutionary struggle and an early member of the League, he sat in on the political discussions now taking place. Sun had talked it over with three special friends in the Tung Meng Hui: Huang Hsing, Wang Ching-wei, and Hu Han-min; and they came to the conclusion that their League was out of date. Its aim had been to accomplish a successful revolution; and that aim had been achieved. A new party should be formed to deal with whatever governmental problem might arise in the future—the Kuomintang, or National People’s Party. Most members were in favor of enlarging its boundaries to include a few of the other political societies that always abound in China.
Chiang Kai-shek found himself at odds with the majority because he thought it better to keep the membership of the Kuomintang select and small. He was not able to carry his point, and grew angry. At the best, he had a quick and imperious temper, and he was suffering from jealousy of Wang Ching-wei and Hu Hanmin. Wang and Hu had edited the Min Pao when it carried weight as a subversive journal. They were both known as brilliant revolutionary strategists. Furthermore, Wang had earned great merit in the old days by recklessly attempting to assassinate the Prince Regent and suffering ten months’ imprisonment as a result in an Imperial jail. Both these men were far better known than young Chiang Kai-shek, and their opinions had more influence than his. They were civilians, not officers: this fact rankled in the military man’s heart. Finally he resigned from the Kuomintang and dropped his interest, temporarily, in political matters.
His other occupations continued, however; he still instructed in the military academy, and his influential friend General Chen kept him busy. His nominal salary was not high. Official salaries in China were mere token payments, but he did not depend on this income. Chen helped. To understand the complications of Chinese day-by-day economics is difficult for Americans because we have a cut-and-dried system of salary for the job. Yet it is not many centuries since our people too followed the feudal custom observed in China of patron and patronized. In the footsteps of Chen Chi-mei, by means of such irregular contributions, Chiang prospered. He was not wealthy, but he was better off than he had ever been before. He sent money home and began to enjoy city life and learned to relax among boon companions.
It was another period in his private life that has been obscured by his conversion to Christianity. Only one book compiled by Chinese, a mere outline of his life, comes to grips with the question, and if the Generalissimo had been able to censor the account it would not exist today. Yet it is mild enough.
“Then came a period of rather riotous living, which few young men can escape,” it says. “… with a comfortable income which he was receiving there was much chance for moral degeneration. His friends, knowing his temper, and that persuasion would be futile, deplored this; and he would have gone from bad to worse, had it not been for the fact that the second revolutionary war started and kindled again the smoldering ashes of patriotism.”
It is rather difficult to figure out just what this means. Did Chiang take to drink and gambling? If he drank, it could not have been for a very protracted period, and if he gambled there is no tale of his having been ruined. The only clue that suggests itself is that it must have been about this time Chiang Wei-kuo was born. Today, Wei-kuo is referred to as Chiang Kai-shek’s younger son, the half brother of Ching-kuo. Back in the thirties, he was said to be an adopted son, the child of one of Chiang’s close friends and a Japanese teahouse girl. There are always scandalous stories about public figures, especially in China, but again I want to emphasize the point that only the Westerner considers this sort of thing as something shameful. The young man of 1913 was not a monster. He merely behaved like the other men of his world.
Before a year passed, the republicans decided they had been misled about Yuan Shih-kai. Under their jealous gaze the President committed sin after sin of omission, and showed no slightest tendency to put their constitution into practice. The old gang of officials carried on in their familiar way. The people of Peking, watching, began to wonder if there had ever been a revolution at all. The only change that could be seen was in the relations Yuan now maintained between China and the Western powers. These had improved. In 1912 Sun would have rejoiced at this fact; in 1913 he was infuriated. If
Yuan should manage to float a substantial loan from Europe and America, as he showed every sign of doing, there would be no holding him; he would go his own way and destroy every vestige of republicanism.
The powers were only interested in the old question that had existed in the time of the Manchus: should they or should they not lend money to help develop China? Would it be a good investment? Yuan was persuasive. On New Year’s Day, 1913, he made an optimistic speech to correspondents about his country’s financial status. “Plenty of Revenue, Declares China’s President,” said a New York paper’s headlines. Foreign bankers, led by the British, themselves advised by pro-Yuan residents in Peking, talked it over and drew up agreements and wrangled as to projected railways and factories, and drove a hard bargain. In the end, it was too hard a bargain for President Wilson’s taste. He suddenly announced that he objected to the conditions of the proposed contract: they would hinder China’s development. They provided for a much more stringent control—by the British—over Customs revenue, and a lien on the salt tax as well. Wilson’s decision, said his diplomatic representative in China, was “a refusal to join with others in placing on the young republic the fetters of foreign financial control.”
This was music to the ears of Sun Yat-sen. As spokesman of the Kuomintang he sent an appeal to Europe imploring the nations involved in the five-power loan not to let it go through. But no one listened. The loan was not only met, it was oversubscribed, and one hundred and twenty-five million U. S. dollars were handed over to Peking. As Sun had bitterly predicted, though it was called a reorganization loan at least half of it went down the drain, divided up among army officials and the other key men who must be sweetened to support Yuan.
The days of happy dreams were over: Sun determined to overthrow Yuan. But the President had consolidated his position to a degree of strength that surpassed the old Manchu Court’s. In June there was a brief flare-up of rebellion in Wuchang, but it was suppressed by Yuan’s forces. A few weeks later, on July 2, Sun sent a telegram expressing his “ultimatum” to Yuan Shih-kai, calling on him to resign the presidency.
Not very much to the world’s amazement, Yuan ignored this suggestion, and the Nationalists forthwith began their second revolution. They were woefully unready, and the results of the attempt make one wonder how genuine a mass movement the 1911 revolution was. But that one, of course, had been prepared for years by dint of patient undercover work. This time, Sun found the enemy better entrenched, strengthened by his own hand, and the new revolution was poorly advertised. Most of the country didn’t even hear about it.
At the call to duty, Chiang sallied forth like Achilles from his sulking tent, ready to do battle for his old companions. The story was short and painful. Shanghai was strongly manned by Yuan’s troops. Chiang was supposed to lead his men against the arsenal and take it, but the guards stood firm, though the siege continued for several days. On all other fronts the “punitive expedition” met with the same fate: within two weeks everyone involved in the debacle, Sun and Chiang included, fled to Japan. They were back where they had started.
It was a strange, intense, melodramatic existence for that little group in Japan. Generals, millionaires, paupers, politicos of every sort moved about and plotted and carried rumors, and went short of money. In the middle of it all was Sun Yat-sen, a little battered, a little sad, very much disillusioned, but undaunted in his determination. There were his faithful friend Charles Soong, and Charles’ wife, grave to the point of severity, and their two beautiful daughters, Eling and Chingling. There was his own wife, who had long adapted herself, as the model Chinese woman must, to fits and starts and uncertainties. The Suns and the Soongs were as close as two families can be when their ideals and interests have coincided for half a lifetime. Mrs. Sun, Mrs. Soong, and Eling had journeyed to Japan in a friendly party before Sun’s break with Yuan Shih-kai for a holiday at a spa. And Eling now helped the Doctor as his secretary, just as her father Charles served as treasurer for the Party. It was all very cozy, at first, but then something interfered in the most awkward way.
The Kuomintang authorities who built up Sun Yat-sen as an idol after his death, taking their technique wholesale from Soviet Russia’s treatment of the Lenin story, have always been embarrassed by one aspect of his character which they weren’t equipped to camouflage. Lenin’s temperament does not seem to have been amorous. Sun’s was. He was romantic and naïve, but he was amorous as well. Working day after day in Eling’s company, he began to get ideas. At last he put in a formal request to Charles Soong for his daughter’s hand. He had not quite forgotten that he was married, but it made no difference, he said; a divorce could be obtained. He also made light of the discrepancy in their ages, and the fact that he was a contemporary of Eling’s father and had known her since she was in her cradle.
Charles Soong was shocked and outraged. There was a quarrel, and Eling served no longer as Sun’s secretary. Shortly thereafter she married a young man who had already asked for her hand: Dr. Kung Hsiang-hsi, educated in America like Eling herself, and working with the Y.M.C.A. in Japan. Kung came of a banking family in Shansi; he was a Christian, politically sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, and altogether thoroughly suitable. Relations between the Suns and the Soongs continued, on the surface, friendly. Then Chingling upset things again, not only for her unfortunate parents but for those same much-tried historians.
They are unable to relegate Chingling to the background, because she won’t stay there: besides, they need her for other reasons; she has been far too useful to hide away. The story had got to be admitted, but it was swaddled and wrapped and softened to such an extent that the writer of this book was definitely taken aback one day by a tactless remark made by W. H. Donald, family friend of the Soongs.
“That was the trouble with the old boy,” he said of Sun. “Couldn’t keep him off the women.”
Chingling took Eling’s place as Sun’s secretary—Chingling, delicately pretty, ardently absorbed in political questions, obsessed by her ideal of Sun Yat-sen. He had been her courtesy uncle when she was a baby; in America she had heard of his work from her parents; the glorious Revolution of 1911 stirred her blood and made her proud to claim him as a friend. Now she was privileged to serve him. He was in trouble and he confided in her. Hero worship possessed the young girl. Whatever possessed Sun knocked him off balance.
More painful interviews followed. It was a peculiarly difficult situation. Eling had been easily settled because she didn’t care for Sun anyway, but Chingling was determined to have her hero. What distressed Mrs. Soong more than anything else was the fact that he was already married to a woman his own age and had had several children by her. Sun was supposed to be a Christian, like Mrs. Soong herself, and Chingling, and all the others. He was no unbaptized heathen. As unchristian Chinese, Sun Yat-sen and Soong Chingling could have lived together without comment from anyone. As unChinese Christians they would have had to suffer a certain amount of obloquy, but Sun could have got a divorce—divorces were becoming common among Westerners in 1913—and his subsequent marriage with Chingling would have been in order. As it was, however, they were Christian Chinese, and so they had to behave in a manner that satisfied neither side of their background. Sun quietly put away his wife, and Chingling moved in with him.
In public the Soongs showed no resentment. Charles continued to serve the Party as he had done before. Chingling appeared everywhere as Madame Sun. Only the first Madame Sun, to the day of her death, referred to her successor as the Concubine—and she used an impolite word for it, too.
There were in the constitution certain checks on a President’s power, chief of which was the National Assembly, which at the time of the Second Revolution was still full of Kuomintang members. Yuan, on his way up the peak of dictatorship, knew these men would thwart him if they could. He forced them out, and the Assembly soon died of anemia. Nothing now stood between Yuan and his ultimate goal, to be Emperor.
His actions might have been obs
erved with greater attention by the West had it not been for the date—1914. The powers had no time to worry about China’s government. Japan, however, was closer to Peking, and the Japanese saw what Yuan was up to. There was a German naval base at Tsingtao. Japan and Britain made an alliance, agreeing to attack it. Once it had been won, the Japanese were left in charge, and then, purely on the strength of their presence in China—they had no other excuse for such arbitrary action—they presented Yuan Shih-kai with the notorious “Twenty-one Demands.”
In these, Japan claimed first right to finance a northern railway, monopoly control of trade privileges at Kiaochao Bay, and a promise that China would restrain all other foreign powers from digging into Shantung and the coastal islands. She also claimed a ninety-nine-year extension of Japanese rights in Manchuria, with a hint of further Japanese expansion in Mongolia. Furthermore, she wanted control of iron and coal production in Central China and first rights to the capitalization of practically all future exploitation of natural resources in Fukien. Chinese police and military bodies were to be subject to Japanese authority.
It would give a false impression to say that the Chinese, one and all, immediately became furiously indignant and resentful. The great masses of people were unaware of these matters, or at least indifferent to them, to an extent incomprehensible to our more politically conscious Americans and Europeans. The Chinese peasant was not a dull clod—far from it—but he was cynical after so many generations of Manchu rule, and he deliberately concentrated on the matters which affected him nearly, such as the weather’s effect on his crops, local taxation, and the personal affairs of his family.