June 26.
Atmost one feels inclined to rejoice with the Hunanese on the ignominious expulsion of -the detested Chang Chin-yao as one reads Mr, Rodney Gilbert's vivid and inspiring message to-day, though indeed foreigners have no call to take sides in these quarrels. But the fallen Tuchun appears to be one against whom every humane feeling is aroused without regard to party. Seven years ago his indolence and indifference to public affairs (he was then Governor of Honan) allowed White Wolf, hemmed in on south, east and west to escape. He it was who looked on unmoved at the destruction of Liling and Pingkiang by the infamous 7th division: must not a bandit chief be faithful to his bandits? Our Changsha correspondent, who has a strong sense of the responsibility of a foreign writer to keep a detached point of view, has seldom that we can remember written of any Chinese Governor as he wrote in last Monday's paper. ''No man,"' he said, ''has ever done so much to injure, so little to benefit as the highway-robber who has extorted every dollar that he could. No trick has been too mean; no threat left unused that could bring grist to the mills. 'The meanest spirit that fell from heaven' has found an appropriate dwelling place in Chang Chin-yao and his even more mean younger brother." To the very last he was wringing money from Changsha, $800,000 is said to have been the amount of journey money that he exacted. And now he has fled, his great friends in Peking appear powerless to help him and no one knows his whereabouts. There is a picturesque story that he tried to bribe the captain of the Woodcock, who must have burned to hand him over to his pursuers. If ever there was a case for a Chinese Joel it is surely now.
No wonder that Mr. Gilbert describes Changsha as ''one of the happiest and most self-satisfied cities'? in China. Siangtan, we have been told, is just such another. Not only has the oppressor been driven out, but Hunan has come to her own again, is governed by one of her own sons and policed by her own fellow-provincials, and her an-{cient ideal and glory are again realities, even as they were under the Manchus, who knew well {enongh that they dare not appoint governor whom Hunan did not approve.. There is no city in China more independent, conservative and self-centred than changsha. Peking might nominally select its ruler, but the real power rested in the hands of a be trusted to guard their autonomy jealously. But not all provinces appear to possess the driving power of Hunan or the inspiration of a leader such as Hsiong Keh-wu whom they know and trust. Yet there is a feeling, vague but unmistakeable, that we are on the eve of great events. Who will be the chief antagonists who finally emerge triumphant one cannot even guess. General Wu Pei-fu has proclaimed that he goes to Peking to drive-out the Anfu Club and the pro-Japanese clique. It would be idle to attempt to estimate the value of the promise. More to the point is Peking's penurious state. Never, we are told, have the finances of the Anfu Club been so low. And there is no hope of a loan from abroad. How far Japan has or has not bound herself with the Consortium, is uncertain, The fact of importance is that just now her merchants solid block of literati and landed; need all their money to carry gentry. And this power was! through their own financial crisis, fully" endorsed by the people, whose pride it was that the Taiping rebellion finally broke against the walls of Changsha, within whose gates it is but a few years ago that no foreigner was admitted. So one sees the conflict of Hunan in its true proportions. We confess that at the beginning we underrated its meaning, in excuse of which we may point out that the first telegrams with their obscuring references to North and South misled us. "This is not a war between North and South,'' writes Mr. Gilbert, "but a Hunanese revolution against a thoroughly iniquitous Governor." There is no province in China that will not applaud what Hunan has done.
But will they follow Hunan's example? Not all of them, it is a mercy to think, are afflicted with a Chang Chin-yao. But there are very few that have not a long score to settle with their misrulers. Szechuan indeed is showing how it can rise against oppression from without; and Kansu and Shansi, content with their government, can probably the end of which is not yet. How will Anfu stand without money? The same sort of questions, mutatis mutandis, have been ask. ed many times in China's long history, often with doleful dis. appointment. But at. the risk of prophesying one begins to expect that the nightmare of the past five years is preparing-to give way to a new phase, perhaps to that federation. of internally auto-nomeus states to which some are looking as the only possible fulfilment of republicanism in China. Tf so, Hunan will have added to her proud record the great entry that she has not only gained her own freedom, but has given the lead to her sister provinces.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.