The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 21, 1901, Page 1

ey ]] A a Stanford st litary mcli- wation 1 descendant of a coll. Lee fam- iy w é South its great s after the Empe was imprisoned } I ’ wager. Lea wwent to ( a ered Jus ser- wices 1o 1 P an a y and restore the r ! 7 C i. He wvas made « 1 g ral, placed in charg e southern P 5, @ . € tun ’ 15 N0T ) thousand arm 7 province alone. He passe ing on, 1 @ chance to do ‘in empted to a is held a pris- astituted Empress she confines him ’ res to put in foree b the nations of are in favor. proper, the true of the Yang- e living north ous in demanding e Emperor confined, , her 1 of Russia, and, ssed of an army the will of me law of the © of influence ex- f e)sx‘fi:“ n of & sphere of influence s Yke the advance 1t is indefinite, bezy and u r L it envelops and within it, and Russia form of boundary @s she can get railroad ma~ d with which to do it. ror realizes that no power can battles for her; that she tance, for she has the men and the money. To use these two things it is but neces- sary that -the governmental power, here- toforesscatiered through bureaus and far- it % » T spaced viceregal tralized. These reforms were being planned and rapidly put in force when the daring and progressive Emperor was placed in dur- ance by the Dowager's coup. What they were in general has been made known by Kang Yu Wai, who was then the Emperor's personal adviser and confidant, and who has since done more than any other one man for the rescue of kis imperial patron. > As to the detalls and methods, the fine arts of law and statecraft by which such tremendous reforms were to be accom- plished without derangement of the old scttied ways, 1 am indebted to his excel- lency, Count Okuma, who was at that time Premier of Japan and was in con- stant correspondence with the Emperor Kwang Bu. In a personal conversation with that great statesman he informed me of the full details of the plans, which he had suggested for the reform of China, based upon Japan's experience, though, by rea- son of the benefit of it, an improvement on the ystem which In twenty years changed that unknown, hermit empire of the sea- courts, should be oen- girt isles Into a world power of the first agnitude. This may seem strange, for the Em- peror of a country to be in council with the Premier of another country with which he had so lately been at war, but it must be remembered that the war be- tween China and Japan was never a quar- rel that sprang from the heart of the Chi- nese pecple. Most of them had no feeling in the matter; many of them never heard of it. Russfan diplomacy was at the bottom of the entire trouble, as it has been of al] of China’s sorrows. Kwang Su, the imprisoned Emperor, 1s & man who will be to China what Alfred was to England or Peter the Great to Russia. He is at'the present time China’s only hope to preserve her from dismem- berment and an age-long enslavement—of & race cut to pices and parceled among greedy powers, to be taxed and drained for their financial gain. During all of the time that the young Emperor was working out his plans for the advancement of China he and his ad- viser, Kang Yu Wal, were in constant Ly \ \ \ communication with Premier Okuma. There could have been no better counsel- or outside of - the empire on whom he could have placed dependence, as the similarity of the cases to be treated was complete. It is safe to say, therefore,-that China would in the‘same or less length of time than Japan have been placed on a footing where she would be of use to herself and all the world, instead of a huge lethargic menace. In a personal interview ex-Premier Oku- ma gave me the following summing up of the plans which * the Emperor had . adopted: “First, to abolish the present barbarous penal code, which has crept into existence as & Tartar method of maintaining its power over an unwillingly governed race, “Second, to establish free schools of Western learning, that the people may emerge from the darkness in which they have been kept so that their oppression might be more easily continued. “Third, to grant absolute freedom to the press, so that the present system of village councils of the people may Wm EXAMINATION LR A 7/ BUILDINGS. national through the newspapers, which are the people’s forum. i “Fourth, to' gradually change the pres- ent “form of examipations for official preferment from the purely literary and * classic, so as to include the useful arts and* sclences as_taught in the Western scheols. “Fifth, to extend the rallway systems under Government control, that they may ‘become the people’s -highways, -and give them the best form of transportation that the world has seen. “Sixth, to change the present method of collecting ‘the likin, so that the customs dutfes shall be uniform throughout the empire; and that the proceeds thereof be turned directly into the national treasury, instead of the present system of tax farm- ing. . “Seventh, to reorganize and nationalize the mperial army and place it on & mod- ern footing and with Western methods of drill and tactics.” The abolition of the present form of lkin and the substitution of a national system of revenues would release the peo- ple from a yast load in the shaps of = tithers and tax :aciucrs, who are forever on their backs, and would disturb no one but these hard-hearted persons them- selves, and they deserve no sympathy. It'is difficult to define an entire national policy in so few words as Count Okuma used. Still more difficult is it to convey the fine shades of meaning, as he clothed them in well chosen words, but I have given as much of his statement as I can remember, for the reason that I think he knew more of the real intention of the Emperor than any . other person exeept Kang Yu Wai, and he had besides the ad- ditional advantage - of having helped to carry out similar reforms for a similar people. The most crying necessity of all is the abolition of the barbarous punishments prescribed by the ‘Penal Code and the practice of the criminal courts. . While these are in force it i3 useless to ask that humane nations should ever submit their people to Chinese jurisdiction. The result has been the establishment of the mixed eourts, ‘n which one Chinese and one for- elgn Judge sit In bank in judgment of all cases where a forelgmer’'s rights or lib- erties are concerned. This is in itseif = pain to the peopls, but what I3 far worse and more 3 stve of all integrity of the Governmen the exterritorial jurisdie- tlon of the cc which fs & constant cause of friction between the people and the judici A Chinese, apprehended by the native authorities for crime, has but to claim that he is a servant of a for- eigner and engaged In his service at the time, whereupon the Assessor's Court claims his case, and as all courts are fond of extending and enlarging thelr juris- diction, there is never a final settlement or adjudication- to say how far Its powers g I, on the contrary, the Chinese courts were to adopt the Western code of pro- cedure and the punishments of eriminals reduced to those which modern humanity tolerates, there would no longer be a ne- cessity for such courts of exterritorial jurisdiction and one more bone of conten- tion would be removed. It would take but little to reform the code of criminal trials and punishments. As far as I can see the peopls are with- out exception strongly against them and are revolted by the cruelties practiced. Humanity and kindness are Chinese vir- tues not only in theory, but everywhere exhitfted in dafly life. The Emperor Kwang Su is as gentle and peaceable in his instincts as his Tartar forefathers were flerce and cruel. . Again such was the iso- lation of the Emperor from hi der the old regime that it is he neéver even heard of the tortures in- Continued on Page Three & s I'r. Tong Chong, Managing Director of the Chinese Empire Reform Association, Explains FHow Homer Lea Came to Offer His Services to the Chinese Emperor. services to assist the Emperor of China in regaining his throne, which has been usurped by the Em- press Dowager, was Homer Lea. ‘His college education, military tastes, and training made him espe- cially valuable for our purpose. Before his departure from San Francisco for China last year the ob- iect of his mission was discoversd and agents of the Dowager used thelr best efforts to defeat his intentions. Failing in this, they denounced him TB‘E first foreigner to offer his’ “to the Chinese Consulate, and under an apprehension that he was intend- ing to start a revolution much excite- ment was created. The facts were that he was but go- ing to assist the Emperor’s party, and to assist the Emperor, in whose nams the country is ruled, can be no of- fense. He carried letters to all of the great friends of reform in China, and since arriving there has traveled from Singapore to Hongkong, Macao, Can- ton, Shanghai, Yokchama and all provinces, southern x He was well received there and in crder to facilitate his work in reor- ganizing the impcrial army was given a rank which corresponds to that of lieutenant general, together with practically the entire command of all military operations in Kwang- tung, Kwangsi, Yunnan, Kweichow. General Lea has now nearly thirty thousand men ready for mobilization in the province of Kwangtung, and there are altogether in the different provinees nearly four hundred thou- sand ready to take up arms for the rescue of their Emperor. During the year of General Lea’s absence I have been in constant re- ceipt of advices as to his success from the officers of the Imperial Reform party, among them the president, Yung Wing, of Macao, and many others whom the brave young Cali- fornian met. During the greater part cf the time he traveled with a guard of only half a dozen soldiers, as many sedan-chair bearers, and two aids-de- camp, who wers graduates of both Chinese and foreign colleges and gcted as his interpreters, ¢ 3