Liang Chi Chao, the writer and translator, went first to the Straits
Settlements and then to Kobe and Yokohama, Japan, where he edited the
reform Chinese papers, the _Hsi Pao_ (Western paper), and the _Ming
Pao_, and flooded his country with translations of parts of the great
books of British and American liberty. Liang, too, tolerated the
retention of the Manchu monarchs for the time being. Doctor Macklin, an
American missionary of Nanking had translated Henry George’s _Progress
and Poverty_ into Chinese, and this book was in the hands of the
reformers, and particularly appreciated by Sun Yat Sen. Chang Yuan
Chi’s _Commercial Press_ of Honan Road, Shanghai, had, since 1898, been
translating a million dollars a year of Western text-books for Chinese
schools. The American Presbyterian Press at Suchow, and at 18 Peking
Road, Shanghai, the American Episcopal Press, the presses of the other
American and British missions and Bible societies, had for years been
issuing telling books of truth in Chinese. Rich compradores of foreign
houses at Hongkong, like Ma Ying Pui, presented $1,000 to patriotic
lecturing societies like the “Wan Yung.” Hæmon’s argument with his
father, King Creon, in Sophocles’ _Antigone_, brilliantly denouncing
absolute rule as only fitted for the monarch of a desert, was recited
by the foreign-trained students.
Yuan Shih Kai was deposed by the regent, Prince Chun, in 1909, but from
his exile at Chang Te in Honan province, he kept in dignified touch
with the formation of the new forces of opinion and arms, and with
his backers, the northern foreigners. Yuan is a mighty man, quite on
the style of Li Hung Chang, his preceptor, whom we of the West knew
so well. At Tientsin, the foreigners assisted Yuan, previous to 1909,
with instruction in Occidental organization, and the best troops of
the empire, as well as the best schools, and almost the best mills,
were organized by Yuan. The reformers who dare the most, however,
look upon Yuan by his past, as a temporizer, opportunist and dictator
largely under foreign influence; too much Occidentalized, and out
of touch with the spirit of “China for the Chinese”, and the “Sia
Hwei” (reform associations). They look upon him as, in the past, a
Manchuized Chinese who fears to work for himself as a republican, but
must have an employer like a Manchu emperor or some other head; great
as a Richelieu is great, but not as a Washington is great. They say
that while he is thorough of mind, he is not yet vehemently sincere
in heart. They fear that Yuan, if left to himself, would concede too
much to foreign concession seekers. They bitterly recall that but for
Yuan, the reformers of 1897–8 would have swept the kingdom peacefully.
Yuan is the most popular Chinese with foreigners at Peking, Tientsin,
Chifu, Newchwang, Tsingtau and other ports of the north. He is not so
much in touch with the heart of the reform spirit in Western, Central
or Southern China, nor with the foreigners of the great educational
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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