The revolution of 1911 made known to the world the Chinese generals on the northern and southern sides, who were really able to command a modern army in action as well as in field maneuvers. Generals Li, Ling, Ho, Hwang, Hsu, etc., were the leading southerners. Generals Feng, Chang, Chao and Sheng were among the leading northerners in active service. All of these are Chinese. The much-heralded Manchu generals proved a failure, and few of the old-style Tartar generals, like Chiang and Chen of Pechili province; Na Yen, of Kalgan; Tuan, of the Red Banner Corps; Prince Su, of the Peking Gendarmerie, etc., were called upon to serve in the field. The latter decidedly had the ferocious temperament, but they lacked the knowledge of modern tactics. General Chao Ehr Feng, conqueror of the Tibet mutiny and the Dalai Lama in 1910, an effective old-style general, was cooped up in Chingtu City at the opening of the rebellion in September, 1911. General Yin Tchang, the Manchu general-in-chief; Brigadiers-General Ha and Liang, who visited America in 1910; Major General Ho; Prince Tsai Tao, the Manchu minister of war; Prince Yu Lang, of the dapper gray Imperial Guards, etc., never got much nearer the war than the point of mobilization, and their private car on the Hankau-Peking railway, with the engine pointed northward! The military princes of the royal blood, Tsai Pu, Tsai Jin, Duke Ling, Prince Pu, etc., all kept their dress uniforms innocent of the dust of field and the grime of powder. Prince Tsai Hsu, royal admiral of the navy, kept aboard his luxurious steam yacht which the Kiangnan Dock Company of Shanghai built for him, and sulked away from Admiral Sah’s service fleet, which was making a last dash to cut the rebel’s left flank between Wuchang and Hankau.

The modern Chinese army dates back to 1894 and the defeat in the China-Japan War over Korea. Viceroys Li Hung Chang and Yuan Shih Kai were bent on drilling an effective service. Chiefly German and Japanese instructors were hired, though there were a few other foreigners also. General Upton (U.S.A.), of Civil War fame, once made a trip to China and planned with Viceroy Li Hung Chang the establishment of a Chinese West Point in the north, which has been begun in the Pei Yang Military College at Tientsin. Emperor William personally instructed General Yin Tchang in Germany. An army of Imperial Guards and ten divisions, mostly territorial for facility in recruiting and mobilizing, was whipped into shape chiefly in the northern provinces, and twenty other divisions were partly formed as provided for by the famous Army Edict of April 16, 1906. Modern arsenals, headquarters offices, field maneuvers, Red Cross, foreign instructors, the Pei Yang Military College, etc., were all provided for. The old-style provincial turbaned troops allotted to each viceroy, and the pensioned soldiers of the eight Manchu banners were not all disbanded. They were quartered among the 4,000 walled cities. No conscription was necessary, as the men seemed anxious to serve for the wage, or the promise of six dollars a month. The plan was to keep the men three years with the colors, three years with the reserve, and thereafter for ten years with a landwehr on the German plan. By 1900 the new army was not cohesive, or the reactionary empress dowager, Prince Tuan, General Tung Fu of Kansu, and Yu Hsien, of Shangtung, would have wiped out the foreigners in the legations and Admiral Seymour’s international relief expedition at Tientsin. When the 1911 rebellion opened, the Eighth Division joined the republicans at Wuchang, and earned immortal glory. Their brothers of the Third Division opposed them at Hankau. The Ninth Division of Shangtung and Kiangsu territorials held Nanking for the imperialists, but the Kiangsu Brigade of that division later deserted. The Twentieth Division of Manchurian territorials at Lanchow Camp near Peking earned immortal glory by sending up to the National Assembly and the throne nineteen constitutional articles which they said had to be signed before they would war for the throne. This was lÈse majestÉ with a vengeance! The Guards Division was at Peking, where it stayed, watching the hoards of bullion and sycee more than constitutional articles! The Sixth Division was in Shansi province. The First Division of Manchu troops, and the Second and Fourth Divisions at times shuttlecocked along the railway between Hankau and Peking. The Fifth Division was at Tsinan, capital of Shangtung province.

Had China’s army not been territorial, the rebellion might never have got into swing, because it would have been impossible to have intrigued with a mixed Eighth Division. Again, had China’s army not been territorial, President Yuan could have used the Third, Fourth, Sixth and Twentieth Divisions at Peking in March, 1912, to suppress the mutiny, whereas these divisions remained in sympathy with the First Manchu Division and the Imperial Guards Division, and refused to obey the constitutional head of the government at a climacteric time. A mixed army is not easily mobilized, but when mobilized it is more amenable to discipline, and the ignoring of local feeling in view of the larger aims of statesmanship. England’s, Germany’s and France’s armies are territorial. Italy’s and America’s regular armies are not. America’s vast militia army, however, on which she mainly depends, is, of course, territorial.

General Yin Tchang, who had much to do with organizing the effective ten divisions of the northern army, is a graduate of Peking University. He served five years in the Austrian infantry, and as minister to Germany, at Emperor William’s request, he enjoyed that unusually able and enthusiastic monarch’s private instruction in army matters. In 1900 General Yin Tchang came in contact with the allied forces at Tientsin, and held his retreat together well enough to elicit much admiration. General Yin and the regent, Prince Chun, both visited Hongkong in 1901 and there gained sympathy from us all for the great promise which they showed in guiding the New China. Yin Tchang’s excellent idea was to take the provincial armies away from the viceroys, and make the new divisions answerable to the Board of War (Ping Pu) at Peking. Prince Tsai Tse’s, the finance minister’s plan, was to inform each governor what amount he was to send to Peking as the province’s share in maintaining a central army. There was considerable conflict over this issue, many southern governors saying that they paid for two armies, one modern army which was held in the north, of which they never received their allotted division or brigade, and the old-style provincial troops which they had to maintain to preserve order. General Ha Han-Chang, a Chinese by blood, came next to Yin in drilling the new army. He is also a Pei Yang graduate, and trained with the Japanese army. General Liang-Pi, a Manchu, had an experience similar to that of General Ha, before accepting command of the First Brigade. None of these men is like Tieh-Liang and the other well-known old-style generals, strong in classics but weak in tactics. They reversed the order. General Li Chin Hsi at remote Yunnan City raised and drilled an excellent division. The division at Canton went all to pieces before the republican troops of General Wu Sum, but the Shansi divisions were effectually held together by General Sheng Yun, a Mongol, who later captured the Tongkwan pass, which commands the road from the west to Peking. Many soldiers of the southern divisions, in the first few weeks of the revolution, fired from the hip, as they were not used to the recoil on the shoulder. They, of course, soon did better. One of the best and most popular marksmen of the Singapore Rifle Team which competed at Bisley in 1910 was Sergeant Tan Chow Kim, a Cantonese Chinese.

The name of Frederick T. Ward should be linked with “Chinese” Gordon’s in connection with Chinese military records. General Ward, born at Salem, Massachusetts, lost his life in the service of China. He organized and led the only great army that China ever had before 1906. His name stands linked with Gordon’s as the maker of the “Ever Victorious Army,” the conqueror of the Taiping horde.

A modern rage for dull-colored new uniforms has struck gorgeously gowned old China. I shall recite an amusing instance. In the fall of 1911 a band of rebels organized in Sining, in far-western Kansu province. They chose a boy of fifteen as their prophet leader because he bore peculiar birthmarks. He was given the fanciful name of Savior of the Land (Chu Shih Waang). The generals reported that the new force should wear modern uniforms of cotton. The stores were swamped with orders, and every bolt of foreign cotton was immediately bought up, no matter what its design. The Imperial Guards wear gray, and the other divisions wear blue and khaki.

Aviation was introduced in China (really Indo-China) at Saigon on December 1, 1910, by the Holland-Frenchman, Vanderborn. He was followed later in the year at Shanghai by the American, “Bud” Mars. The first Chinese aviator was Fug-Yu, who was trained in America, and who experimented at the Lanchow (east of Peking) camp in 1911. During the revolution a number of Chinese students took lessons in aviation in America and left for the rebel front. Had the war continued it was the intention to destroy Peking by dynamite dropped from air-ships. Both Sun and Yuan are to be congratulated that this necessity was obviated by diplomacy.

China’s antiquity, vast population and warlikeness have been brought in question by some writers. That she had a vast population as far back as the third century before the Christian era is proved by the army records. The Ts’in clan, operating under their celebrated General Peh Ki, slew and beheaded in 293 B.C. 240,000 Hans; in 275 B.C. 40,000 Ngwheis; in 264 B.C. 50,000 Hans; in 260 B.C. 400,000 Chows, and in 256 B.C. 90,000 more Chows, thus exterminating the imperial ancestral clan which instituted the sacrifices and held the sacred tripods. Szma Tsien, the historian, writing at 100 B.C., says the allies lost a million men in fighting this Ts’in clan. After the Christian era the Chinese took fewer plural wives and fought fewer wars. Twenty years ago, an emperor who raised the despised military class to the equal of scholars, farmers and merchants, would have been decapitated. Compare one of the military edicts of the regent, Prince Chun, dated Peking, April, 1911: “We are of the opinion that militarism is the first thing necessary to the upbuilding and preservation of a nation.”

Some of the military proverbs of the old Chinese are:

“The best general thinks of wise strategy before blind courage.”

“A mob does not make a regiment, for a trained man is as effective as a score untrained, and much easier to save in a retreat.”

“A good general can’t blame defeat on bad soldiers, for a good general has no poor regiments.”

“The pike only grabs the duck’s lame leg that can’t kick.”

“The battle may not be for a cycle of years, but the soldier must awake for it every day.”

“A dog that bites the hardest shows his teeth the least.”

“A whisper can bring on a war.”

“Keep your good cannon masked, and your bad guns on brave parade.”

“If the enemy doesn’t know your weakness, you are not weak.”

“It’s the man behind the gun more than the gun, and the man inside the fort more than the wall.”

Chinese literature is not without its stirring war songs, which breathe not only the pathos of the suffering of those at home, but the sacrificing patriotism of the ranks. The following is quoted from Confucius’ Odes, B.C. 551:

THE SOLDIER

The following far older poem was written in 800 B.C. by Li Hua to commemorate a battle between the ancient Chinese tribe of Wei and the Northern Mongols:

THE BATTLEFIELD

With such Spartan poetry the early Chinese were able to fire the race with militarism. The ideograph is virile and laconic in the highest degree, just as the Anglo-Saxon of “Beowulf” is more condensed than our later Latinized speech.

Confucius believed in revenge upon a murderous enemy of one’s family. He replied to a question of a pupil on this matter: “Have only your weapons for a pillow.”

Two of the promising colonels in the southern republican army are graduates (1909 class) of the American West Point Academy. They were admitted on the personal recommendations of President Roosevelt. One is Colonel Wen Ying Hsing, a nephew of Wen Tsung Yao, who is assistant minister of foreign affairs of the Nanking Republican Assembly. Colonel Wen has seen hard service as military adviser of the Canton Provincial Assembly. The other “West Pointer” is Colonel Chen Ting, brother of Doctor Chen Shin Tao, minister of finance of the Nanking Republican Assembly.

On one of my rambles through the narrow streets of Canton I dropped into an artist’s shop on Yuck Tsze Street and selected some treasured, delightful opal-colored paintings, full of spirit, of the old picturesque three-masted Manchu war-junks which in the early days one saw sometimes beating into the reaches and broads of the flooded waters of Kwangtung province. The yellow shields, emblazoned with ideographs, hang over the midship bulwarks of the ship. The latticed red rudder is high above the water so that it may drag the unwieldy keelless boat around. The great blue sweeps, with yellow eyes, stretch from the galley-ports. The ship itself has eyes on the bow. The overhanging cabin in the high stern is crowded with men, stores and bronze cannon. The low red prow cuts the olive green sea into white foam. The red triangular flags flaunt challenge from all the masts. The great square brown matting sails spread like clouds above the blue-gowned leadsman in the bow. Dipping under the horizon are the fleeing black banners of the enemy, and the sea-gulls scatter in terror. Only the serrated blue hills are brave along the iron shores.

The first important names in connection with the building and drilling of China’s modern navy are Captain Lang, R. N. (British), and Captain Siebelin (U.S.N. and H.S.M.). These men prepared the fleet for the war with Japan in 1894, which developed Admiral Ting and Captain Teng as China’s sole naval heroes, who, however, could do little with an inefficient war board (Ping Pu) behind them. The captured battleships Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen are in Japan’s retired list. They were very fine ships for their day, and resisted heavy punishment in the battles of the Yalu and Wei Hai Wei. The navy training schools are at Tientsin, Chifu, Nanking, Fuchau, Shanghai, Amoy, and there will be another at Nimrod Bay, south of Ningpo. Admiral Beresford, on his visit to China in 1898, advised with the Chinese officials, especially Li Hung Chang, regarding navy matters, and some cruisers were built in England, though the two best battleships were built in Germany. Captain Bradley Osbon, an American, served for years in developing the Chinese navy.

The Chinese cruiser Hai Chi, painted the regulation gray, and spreading the gorgeous yellow dragon flag, took part in King George the Fifth’s coronation festivities at Spithead in July, 1911, and in September, 1911, she came to New York and anchored beneath Grant’s tomb. Conspicuous friendliness on both occasions was shown to the officers and crew as a mark of the new interest in China which has arisen in Britain and America especially. Similar cruisers, the Hai Chow and the Hai Yung; gunboats of the Po Pik class; and torpedo boats of the Wu Pang class, were in constant use in China in the ante-republican days. One day they were watching that Portugal did not encroach at Macao; a week later shelling rebels around the great cities which line the Yangtze River or making a dash to the Gulf of Pechili to be ready to take on board the infant emperor. The cruiser Fei Hung, the first Chinese warship built in America, was launched at Camden, New Jersey, on April 24, 1912. Larger cruisers are building in England, and when Chinese politics and finances are more settled, it is proposed to order battleships from both Britain and America, and form three fleets, the Northern, Yangtze Central and Southern fleets. Shanghai can dock the smaller vessels, but British Hongkong alone has up to this time been able to dock battleships in Chinese waters. China has as yet no submarines. The British navy maintains several submarine torpedo boats at Hongkong, and in that land-locked harbor, of all others in the world, the moral effect upon an enemy would be terrifying.

In recent years the naval policy of China has been developed by Prince Tsai Hsu. Admiral Sah Chen Ping, who commanded the Yangtze fleet which operated against the republicans in October, 1911, and against the pirates who attacked Yale College, at Changsha, in 1910, has visited America, and entertained the American round-the-world fleet at Amoy in 1908. He has a son in a western American college. General Li Yuen Heng, one of the two greatest republican generals, was really trained for the navy at Pei Yang and Chifu Colleges, and in Japan. Admirals Jiu Cheng, Li Chun, of the Canton riots of April, 1911; Tan; Ching, who entertained the American fleet at Amoy; Commander Hsu Chen Pang, who was educated at Hartford, America; Admirals Liu and Hai Chun; Admiral Chin Yao Huan and Commander Wu Chung Lin, both of whom visited New York on the cruiser Hai Chi, are all well known. Commanders Chen, Yang and Wong represented China when the cruiser Fei Hung was built at Camden, New Jersey, in 1912. When the republican troops took the Shanghai arsenal it discouraged the navy, which could not secure ammunition in time for effective work. The fleet then went over to the red, white and blue sun flag, and later landed a republican army in Shangtung province at Chifu to flank the imperial left wing operating at Tsinan. The fleet also made a demonstration against Chin Wang Tao on the gulf of Pechili, thus forcing the imperialists to hold several divisions in the north to protect Peking. This enabled the republicans to follow up the Nanking victory, drive General Chang out of Nganhwei province, and made the Whei River instead of the Yangtze River the republican front. If America undertakes with a Pacific fleet to back up for all time the “non-partition of China” policy, the writer is not a believer in a Chinese navy at present, outside of possibly one dreadnought a year when the finances are revised. Of course a strong revenue and police fleet for the rivers should be provided. Attention should rather be given to China’s army, so that she may be able to do her own police work as far as Russian or other intruders are concerned. Having no oversea colonies, she really has no use for a navy at present, excepting that one dreadnought a year would, if necessary, lend a little more than moral support to America’s altruistic and non-land-grabbing policy in the Far East.

The Chinese are splendid sailors, and as is well known, they invented the water-tight compartment in their junks, sanpans and wupans forgotten centuries ago. I have had much intercourse with the watermen of the southern provinces and can speak well of their seamanship. They compose the crews of the mercantile fleets which cross the Pacific, and have brought their ships through those awful circular typhoons which rage for days. They have also developed modern yacht designers like Ah King at Hongkong, and they are quick at the tiller and boom. I have, in writing of the Chinese, given perhaps a hundred instances of things which they do oppositely to the Occidental manner. Here is the one hundred and first: Holding their nostrils, they dive feet foremost, like the pearl fishermen of the Manaar Gulf of Ceylon! When our launch screws would get tangled with the many ropes of Blake Wharf, Hongkong, I have often seen half of the crew merrily jump overboard with knives in their teeth, and work under water for an extraordinary length of time; and though some writers call the Chinese stolid and humorless, I have always seen them highly appreciative of applause and good-natured laughter over the unexpected incidents that arise in an Oriental day’s work. On one occasion the writer, who was exhausted with the tide, was saved from drowning at Junk Bay, Hongkong, by the quick-witted efforts of a native laota (coxswain) who deftly swung his launch within reach, and whose ready arms reached out to “chiu ming” (save life).

The short story of China’s navy would not be complete without a word on the naval engagements of the China-Japan War of 1894–5 over Korea, when the whole world breathlessly watched the first trial of modern ironclads, and when the Chinese on several occasions really showed fearlessness under hopeless conditions. At the end of July, 1894, Chinese troops arrived at the Yalu River (which divides Korea and Manchuria) to reinforce General Yeh and Yuan Shih Kai, under cover of the cruiser Chi Yuen (2,300 tons, 17.5 knots), the Kuang Yi (1,030 tons, 16 knots), etc. On July 25th this fleet was met by the much superior Japanese fleet consisting of the Yoshino (4,100 tons, 23 knots), Akitsushima (3,150 tons, 19 knots), and Naniwa (19 knots). After a hot exchange the Chi Yuen escaped from the faster Yoshino by superior work in the stokehold. The Kuang Yi ran aground. Admiral Ting, the one big name in China’s navy, with a weak squadron, daringly sailed from Pechili Gulf on September 14th for the Yalu, landed stores, and skilfully evaded Admiral Ito’s and Rear-Admiral Tsuboi’s squadrons. On September 17th, Admiral Ting led the way with the Chen Yuen (7,400 tons, 15-knot German-built battleship) and the Ting Yuen, a twin battleship, in the center, the other vessels on the wings, to meet the Japanese fleets which were advancing in column. Ito passed wide of the right wing of the Chinese. At 6,000 yards the Chinese opened fire ineffectively, but the Japanese reserved their fire until 3,000 yards’ range was reached. The Japanese passed through to the rear, and drove off the smaller Chinese warships. The larger Chinese vessels swung to starboard to keep their bows toward the circling Japanese. The Japanese armored cruiser Fuso (3,700 tons, 13 knots), built in England, steamed in close to the Chinese line. The Hi Yei, protected Japanese cruiser (2,250 tons, 14 knots), crossed between the Chinese battleships Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen, and as could be expected, both were so damaged that they had to seek the Japanese rear. The slow Japanese Akagi, gunboat (614 tons, 13 knots), was hit by the Chinese left wing. The second Japanese squadron now came up, and at once attacked the Chinese front, the first Japanese squadron having completed the circle, attacking the Chinese rear. The Japanese then withdrew and reformed, but the Chinese were not able to reform their line. The Chinese Yuen Wei (gunboat, 1,350 tons, 16 knots) on fire, headed for the Yalu, where she sank with the brave Captain Teng. The Chinese Chao Yuen (gunboat, 1,350 tons, 16 knots) was accidentally rammed by the unmanageable Chinese Chi Yuen (coast defense, 2,300 tons, 17 knots), and both sank, leaving only the two Chinese battleships, which kept fighting and following the Japanese as best they were able. The second Japanese squadron sank the Chinese King Yuen (coast defense, 2,900 tons, 15 knots), while the first Japanese squadron circled around the two Chinese battleships, which could not be maneuvered to advantage. The Chinese Ting Yuen cleverly planted a shell into the Japanese Matsushima (coast defense, 4,277 tons, 16 knots, French built). At 5:30 P.M., after seven and one-half hours’ fighting, the Japanese withdrew for repairs, although they had three armored coast defense, 4,200-ton, 16-knot ships in good condition, two armored and six protected cruisers, all of which answered their helms.

On October 18th, the Chinese battleship Chen Yuen struck at Wei Hai Wei and was seriously injured. On February 5, 1895, at 2 A.M., by a bold move, the first of its kind in naval war, the Japanese torpedo boats raced for an entrance to narrow Wei Hai Wei harbor. Eight boats got in under the high-pointed guns of the fort and fired eleven torpedoes. One torpedo from boat “9” struck the Chinese battleship Ting Yuen, which steamed for shallow water, where the Chinese blew her up (this is the battleship which the Japanese later raised and used against the Russians in 1904). The Japanese lost torpedo boats “9” and “22”.

On the morning of February 6th, five more Japanese torpedo boats headed for the harbor, and four entered, torpedoing the Chinese Lai Yuen (coast defense, 2,900 tons, 15 knots) German built; the Wei Yuen (corvette, 1,300) and tender Pan Fah. The Chinese torpedo fleet attempted to escape from the western entrance, but were captured or destroyed by the first Japanese squadron. The Japanese towed mortar platforms near the western entrance, and pounded the remaining Chinese battleship Chen Yuen, which sank, as her deck was not armored (later raised by Japanese and used against the Russians in 1904). On February 17th, Admiral Ito steamed in, and China’s one fighting naval hero, Admiral Ting, brave but unfortunate, committed suicide. The Japanese secured as prizes the Kang Chi, third-class cruiser (1,030 tons, 16 knots), built at Shanghai; the Ping Yuen (coast defense, 2,600 tons, 10 knots), built at Shanghai, and the Kuang Ping (third-class cruiser, 1,030 tons, 16 knots), built at Shanghai. The battle showed the world that a large, fast mosquito fleet, with longer-range guns, can whip even a few bulldog battleships, if the maneuvering of the latter is crippled by lucky shots early in the engagement. In other words, a fleet of faster unarmored cruisers, converted Lusitanias, for instance, whose full gun and engine power is effectively maintained, by choosing and keeping their favored range, could in the open sea finally whip poorly handled units of slower battleships.

On one other occasion the crew of a Chinese warship quitted themselves like men. That was when the gunboat Chen Wei alone engaged the whole French fleet of armor-clads at Foochow, August 23, 1884. I quote the report of an independent eye-witness, Commissioner Carrall of Sir Robert Hart’s Imperial Customs Service: “Exposed to the broadsides of the Villars and the D’Estaing, and riddled by a terrific discharge from the heavy guns of the Triomphante, the little Chen Wei fought to the last. In flames fore and aft, drifting helplessly down the stream and sinking, she plied her guns again and again, till one of the French torpedo boats, the Volta, dashing in through the smoke, completed the work of destruction with a well-placed torpedo.”

The successful rush of an unsupported republican torpedo boat at Hankau on November 19, 1911, past the whole line of blazing imperial shore batteries, in broad daylight, is considered by the foreigners of Hankau as dangerous and courageous a piece of work as the recent revolution exhibited.