CHINA’S GREATEST SOLDIER, WHO NEVERTHELESS BELIEVES IN REUNION OF HIS COUNTRY BY TALKING RATHER THAN FIGHTING

SOMETHING is known outside of China of Chang Tso-lin, variously called the “Satrap of Manchuria,’ “First War Lord of China,” and Super-Tuchun, but little has been heard about Wu Pei-fu, the chief obstacle to Chang Tso-lin’s ambition to control China south of the Great Wall.

Two years ago thousands of students from middle schools, colleges, and universities throughout China converted agitation into action and flocked to the camp of Wu Pei-fu to enlist in the almost holy crusade against the Anfu clique traitors who were selling their country’s sovereignty to Japan. Wu, then a division commander unknown outside of military circles, suddenly sprang into prominence in the summer of 1920, when he executed a strategic withdrawal from Hunan, whither he had been sent to conquer the “rebellious South.”

By what foreign military attaches pronounced to be the most brilliant military tactics ever executed by a Chinese general, Wu sent the opposing forces rolling back against Peking, defeated, disorganized, and fighting each other. Wu Pei-fu’s well-disciplined force by slow and careful stages made its way to Peking, disarmed the defeated troops, and relieved the capital, which was ready to do him honor. Then Chang Tso-lin, ex-bandit and uncrowned King of Manchuria, swooped down with his divisions, and, with a slur at “the subordinate military officer,” appropriated the fruits of Wu’s victory. At the same time he adopted the defeated soldiers into his own ranks. After all, Wu was but a division commander turned popular hero overnight. He had not the prestige nor the numbers to face the Manchurian war lord.

Wu withdrew with his loyal Third Division to the barracks built by Yuan Shih-kai, as the nucleus of his monarchical establishment, in the out-of-the-way loess hills of western Honan, there to bide his time.

Wu spent the autumn, winter, and spring training his model army. Visitors, among whom was American Minister Charles R. Crane, to his camp in Honanfu (or Loyang, the ancient capital of the Chow dynasty, 1000 B.C.), found him very hospitable-inclined to drink a bit to excess in honor of his guests-and very busy.

In the spring of 1921, through the agency of an American newspaper man, he discovered that a secret pact directed against him had been concluded between Tuchun Chen Shu-fan at Shensi, the province at his rear, and Chang Tso-lin of Mukden. He refused to submit to this threat, and, having made a public oath that this world was too small to hold both Chen and himself, began immediate operations against the Shensi Tuchun.

In the course of this action Wu despatched to Shensi his subordinate. Brigade Commander Feng Yu-hsiang, popularly known as the “Christian general.”

Feng is a man of the same ideals as Wu, and this demarcation of a distinct field of effort for Feng has ended the slight jealousy over popular idolism ex-isting between them, and has united them in a common purpose.

Wu had no sooner established his influence in northwest China than the call came to him to take a hand in the Middle Yangtze situation. Hupeh, the most important province of central China and the one which contains the three “Wuhan” cities (Hankow, Wuchang, and Hanyang) situated at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han Rivers, had suffered for four years under the misrule of Tuchun Wang Chan-yuan, the most reactionary of the militarists. His rule was characterized by extortion, opium trading, and every form of official corruption. Although all the Chinese armies were unpaid for months, Wang’s soldiers had even greater arrears due them than others.

Driven to desperation, and encouraged by a disaffected populace, his soldiers had repeatedly mutinied. In three of these mutinies foreign interests suffered heavily. Some Japanese lives were lost, and Japanese, British, and American consular and commercial property was destroyed.

Chang Tso-lin, fearing for the prestige of militarism, decreed that Wang should stay. Hupeh local leaders, however, bribed the military of the neighboring province, Hunan, to undertake an offensive against him.

Sun Yat-sen, whose Commander Chen Chung-ming had just added the province of Kweichow to his recent conquest of Kwangtung, immediately sent agents to Hunan in an attempt to enlarge the affair into a general Southern invasion of the North. The whole country was thrown into apprehension. The U. S. S. Albany and other foreign cruisers and gunboats cleared for action and lay in the Yangtze off the foreign concessions. Every one was asking: “What will Wu, whose forces, lying half-way between Peking and Hankow, are the key to the situation, do?” At this critical moment and while Wu’s troops were moving southward along the railway, not knowing which side they would support upon arrival in Hupeh, the writer visited General Wu, who had calmly remained in his Loyang headquarters.

“My foremost aim in regard to the Hunan-Hupeh situation,” said General Wu Pei-fu to me, “is to prevent the interprovincial squabble from becoming a general war between the North and South. Aside from the resultant needless suffering which reoutbreak of strife of this nature would cause the Chinese people and the foreigners in our midst, no possible benefit therefrom could come to the nation. The ultimate reunion of the provinces would be postponed rather than hastened thereby. Not force, but the convocation of a people’s constitutional assembly, is the solution of the problem of reunification.”

It was thus apparent that Wu Pei-fu was interested in wider issues than the suzerainty of the Wuhan region. When Wang Chan-yuan fled, and the advancing Hunanese (and Szechuanese, who also thought to capitalize the situation) were repulsed by Wu’s merciless strategy (for, like all good generals, he is ruthless in war), Wu found himself in possession of China’s richest section. But this did not, as politicians and militarists in the North hoped, satisfy and occupy him. Leaving Hupeh in the control of a henchman, Hsiao Yao-nan, he returned to Honan and resumed the training of a model army.

When I visited him there, General Wu assured me that he remained as enthusiastic regarding the convocation of the constitutional assembly as at the close of his campaign against the Anfu Government. “The country cannot be fought together,” he said, using a forceful Chinese idiom. “This method has been tried in vain for eleven years, and promises no more success in the future than in the past. The only hope lies in talking it together.”

Yet General Wu is not unaware of the necessity of a powerful armed force to guarantee freedom of action to the delegates who do the talking, as well as to the people in their selection. “My suggestion was ignored last summer,” he said, “because at that time I lacked the military prestige to protect it from the attacks of selfish chieftains whose advantage lay in other directions.” The Vice-Inspecting-General inferred that, if his plans did not miscarry, his military prestige would soon be sufficient to warrant his undertaking the guardianship of his constitutional scheme.

“But what about the inevitable opposition from Manchuria?” I questioned. General Wu’s face took on a wistful look. “Everything I have been for,” he said, “Chang Tso-lin seems to have been against. Still,” his face brightened, “Manchuria is not vital to the life of China proper. If Chang Tso-lin must have his little kingdom, the Chinese Republic can for the time being do without the territory of the Three Eastern Provinces. And there is no reason why the Three Eastern Provinces should any longer dictate to us of China proper regarding our political changes, or why our political aspirations should lie at the mercy of the Fengtien lord.”

This policy clashed directly with the ambition of Chang Tso-lin, who, from his Manchurian seat, hoped to spread his dominion over the intramural provinces.

Wu Pei-fu is a man of one idea-of one scheme. It is founded upon the one bit of American history which he has studied carefully. That idea is the redrafting of the Constitution and the reunion of the nation through a national convention, such as that which sat at Philadelphia and created the American Nation in 1787. Wu Pei-fu is obsessed with the idea that a new national convention can produce as much improvement over the Nanking Provisional Constitution of 1911 as the Convention which created the United States and its constitution in 1787 produced over the Confederation of six years earlier. With this ambition for his country has undoubtedly become mixed a personal ambition bred by conceptions in Wu’s imagination as to the part he himself is to play in the new regime.

What comprise his motives and whether or not they lead in the direction of a constructive, or even definite, plan is of prime importance to the Chinese nation to-day, inasmuch as upon Wu now rests the burden of political action involving the territory south as well as north of the Yangtze.

Although a sympathetic understanding exists between Sun Yat-sen’s military commander. General Chen Chung-ming, and Wu Pei-fu, it will be seen that for the time being the theories of Wu Pei-fu are in direct conflict with those of Dr. Sun. The Cantonese agitator’s fundamental doctrine is that the Chinese revolution has never been completed; that the overthrow of the men who are the heirs of the Manchu autocracy must, and can, be accomplished only by violence. Wu Pei-fu’s position, on the other hand, is that violent methods can-not be decisive, and that the only hope is in a convocation of provincial leaders under the protection and, we might infer, spur of a benevolent military force. History seems to be with Sun Yat-sen.

China’s frequent past periods of disruption have been brought to their close not by talking but by the ruthless military conquest of one individual or faction. At least according to the records. But, knowing Chinese traits, we are prone to suspect that there was much compromise and palaver mixed with the fighting. In comparing the present with past periods of disruption we find also many new elements affecting the situation. It has often been said that the foreign settlements and Legations, providing oases for political- refugees, are the greatest obstacle in the way of political stability.

Foreign interests in China refuse to undergo the loss occasioned by prolonged internecine strife. Again, there are no definite lines along which an issue can be fought out. Wu Pei-fu may just as truly claim to be the exponent of progressivism as Sun Yat-sen-yet the two may easily find themselves in armed conflict. As Wu Pei-fu sees it, there are too many chieftains and too many factions to allow of “fighting the revolution out to its finish.” The only real issue upon which any chieftain or faction could push a pan-China campaign would be that of individual supremacy. And democracy in China, although still an infant in mind, is too strong in body to allow the career of the uncamouflaged conqueror to culminate. Yuan Shih-kai’s failure is conclusive evidence of this.

Under such circumstances, Wu Pei-fu is justified in his statement that the prospect of fighting China into unity is not hopeful. His trustfulness in palaver may appear ingenuous, but let him be given credit for maintaining some degree of faith in his country’s political future. There are too many Chinese who, when they turn occasional attention from private ambition to their nation’s predicament, are prone to shake their heads in utter helplessness, and, let it also be said, unhelpfulness.

General Wu, although uttering no word which might be interpreted as treason against Peking, has shown a true conception of the inconsequence of Peking in the life of the people of the provinces. If his suggestions of last year remain unchanged, his constitutional assembly would invite the recognition of the present de facto Government at Peking, but would not be discouraged by refusal. It would take upon itself the liberty of reshaping the entire administration of the nation, from the Constitution to the seat of Government. All present arrangements and precedents would simply be swept aside. Wu realizes that he would require a tremendous military prestige to enforce the decisions of such a conference. If his own views and the decisions of the assembly should coincide, the results might be really democratic in trend. If the assembly could agree, as the writer fears, only under coercion from him, the resultant Government would be a camouflaged military dictatorship. This is, indeed, the form of government which those familiar with inland China consider the most practical. That it would be far superior in progressivism and benevolence to the score of dictatorships existing in China to-day is undoubted. The danger is that it would contain within itself the seeds of re-disunion.

Strangely enough, the national assembly has been a favorite idea of Dr. Sun. Some discouragins experiences have, however, inclined the pioneer of republican ideas to rely upon the imposition of new ideas through military force. Paradoxically, Wu Pei-fu, a man of purely military antecedents, concludes that nothing decisive can be accomplished by military force, and turns with hope to the Chinese aptitude for discussion and compromise. In the opinion of the writer, Wu’s hope comes to this: If a group of men who can dominate their respective provinces can be brought together and protected in the course of their discussion from outside threat and in a measure from bribe, they should be able to determine the lines of some sort of interprovincial confederacy taking the place of a central government, and entrust to their powerful patron their execution and perpetuation.

The first requisite of a unified and peaceful China under this scheme must be the absolute prohibition of interprovincial alliance outside of the confederation and the abolition of nationally supported provincial armies. Wu Pei-fu has set the precedent for the immediate squelching of interprovincial strife. The plan, following the precedent of the selection of provincial delegates, would allow a great deal of freedom within the provinces themselves. The important thing is to get a hold upon those factors which can dominate in their respective provinces, whether for the time being they be democratic or not. If the dominating factor in a particular province be military, it must be accepted as the representative of that province in the confederation, being at the same time well curbed within the lines of its own province. When capitalistic or democratic elements within the province become able to overawe the military, they should succeed to the national representation. The fact that military power is curbed within provincial lines will militate against its downfall. There is hardly a Tuchun to-day who holds his position without the aid of outside-province troops. Again, a military chief dependent for revenues upon his own province will become gradually subservient to the powerful guilds and growing financial interests. General Wu realizes that he is working against time-that outside nations whose industries demand China’s natural resources will not indefinitely let China alone to work out her own salvation.

“Is the idea of foreign intervention virile?” he asked. “It is dormant, but will not remain so if China continues to disappoint the world,” I replied. “Then we must hasten,” the little General concluded.

That Wu Pei-fu will prove a positive factor in the establishment of stable and popular government in China is open to doubt. Although unquestionably the greatest soldier which his country has produced in modern times, he has little political and diplomatic ability.

It is of course well-nigh impossible for a leader in China to do anything for his country, and this is one reason why salvation must come through a general leavening of the people rather than through leadership. The Chinese people, possibly in part as a result of some thousands of years of disappointing experience, but more because of their intense individualism, do not want leadership. Nothing has been more evident in the past ten years of chaos in China than the tendency of the crowd to combine to lop off any head which gets itself above the others. Not only do the tactics of the rising figure’s political enemies force him into the traditional paths of Tuchunism, but the very attitude of the common people, who psychologically mistrust any lord of the ascendant and regard power as synonymous with corruptness, bears in the same direction. After all, the Tuchun is the product of his people.

Source: The Outlook, 11 Oct 1922