SUN YAT SEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 116, 17 May 1924, Page 5

SUN VAT SEN.

GREAT CHINESE REBEL. WEST GRAFTED IN EAST. WORK FOE THIS MTLLION& Dr. Sun Vat Sen, the most outstanding figure in China, has lately been reporttd dead. The report hue been denied, but has been repeated. The career of euch a man is exceedingly interesting. Late one night in the year 1896, Dr. James Cantlie, a London doctor, was roused from his bed by a ring at his door. He found no one there, but undur the door was a letter. This letter told the doctor that a friend of his waa imprisoned in the Chinese Legation in London, and that the representatives of China in England intended to send him out to China, and hang him there. The writer was the wife of an English servant at the Legation. It was not until Br. Cantlie appealed to the Prime Minister of England, Lord Salisbury, that he was able to procure the release of his friend, who had been entrapped and kept a prisoner by the representatives of China. This was the first that the English public heard of Dr. Sun Vat Sen, and their interest in him was mainly derived from the fact that a Chinaman had been kidnapped in the heart of free England. Later he was to attract the attention of the world for other and more remarkable reasone. Dr. Sun. Vat Sen. was born in Southern China, in the year 1867His father was a Chinese convert to Christianity, and the boy was educated by missionaries. As a young man he entered the College of Medicine founded iii the British possession of Hong Kong for the benefit of the Chinese, by a number of their English well-wishers. He graduated there as a doctor. He took up, however, a task infinitely greater thaii the study of medicine —the liberation of his country. China, an immense Empire, inhabited by hundreds of millions of people, was then ruled by a ■ Manchu Emperor and Manchu nobles, and the people had no voice whatever in their government. The Manchus were people of foreign stock, who had been invited into China in the seventeenth century to put down a rebellion. They put it down, but established themselves as rulers of China. Their form of government was tyrannical and corrupt. At the head of the State was the Emperor, who ruled without the help of a Parliament. Throughout the country the work of government was done by officials responsible to the Emperor and his Ministers and his favourites. There was no public control of any kind over these officials, whose custom it was to enrich themselves by squeezing money out of the people in their districts. It was the object of the Manchus to keep all power in their hands, and they succeeded in getting the whole of this vast country into their cruel and relentless gripForemost among these reformers was the young doctor Sun Vat Sen. He belonged to the highest type of patriot, he who works for the welfare of hie country regardless of personal advancement, and even of personal safety. Sun Vat Sen resembled Garibaldi, though he was more of a man of peace than the great Italian. The liberation of his country was his one aim, and he sought this end largely through the spread of knowledge. The difficulties of his task might have appalled the stoutest heart. The masses of the people were ignorant and apathetic. They disliked and even hated the Manchus, but they preferred to suffer rather than to resist. Resistance, indeed, was highly dangerous. The Manchus' power was everywhere. Spies swarmed through the hind, and whispers of treason were carried to the officials, who, one and all, were determined that a system of government that benefited them so greatly should not be changed. Swift punishment followed the receipt of such information. He devoted his life to the overthrow of the Manchu rule and the establishment of a system of representative government on European lines, which would give the people justice, freedom from the extortions of corrupt officials, a free newspaper press, and a liberal education. On foot he travelled I through a large part of the four milI lion square miles of China, passing under various disguises, and'left representatives of hie cause in nearly every town. As a spectacled pedlar with knick-knacks in his bag he travelled through the Malay Peninsula, and the Straits Settlements, talking to Chinese masters as well as coolies. In Hono- | lulu, in San Francisco and other cities lof the United States, he converted ! Chinese to his cause, and gained their '• confidence by his convincing honesty I and unselfish patriotism. Everywhere he taught and argued. The strongest enemies he had to conquer were not the soldiers of the Emperor of China, but the ignorance and indifference of the Chinese people. He resolved that the people themselves should rebel. As he went from city to city, and from I country to country, he carried his life lin his hands. A price was on his head. !In foreign countries his movement* j were watched by agents of the Chinese ! Government. At times he was very ■ near death. One evening in Canton two I young Government officials, attended by a dozen soldiers entered Sun Vat Sen's room to arrest him. The capture of death of the leader of the reform ! movement would have meant promotion and reward for these officers. Sun Vat I Sen calmly took up a book and began to read aloud; his would-be captors began to ask questions; and in two hours' time the party went away without a prisoner. In the end, force had to be used to overthrow the Manchu dynasty, but that force could not have been employed f successfully if Sun Vat Sen and his I comrades had not prepared the way r carefully by spreading the ideas of I revolt and reform. The party to which he belonged sent young Chinese abroad j to be educated, so that when the * tyranny had been overthrown, and a j Government in which the people had a |. voice had been set up, there would be . men ready to hand who were fitted to take the positions of ministers and ' Government officials. Rebellion broke out, and the Government was swept ' away and s<. republic declared in its " place. Sun Vat Sen was the first Pre--3 sident of the Republic of China.