Amazing Mr. Chen

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 19 (Supplement)

Amazing Mr. Chen

IVE feet five, or perhaps five feet and a-half, spare of figure, with a tinge in complexion that is not typically Chinese; with scarcely any of that obliqueness of eye that

marks for most of us the Chinese countenance; with nothing of the characteristic Chinese suavity of manner, but yet not wholly Western in presence, the Foreign Minister of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Government, bears himself rather as does the Korean or the Japanese than as does the Chinese.

Born at Trinidad in 1878, Eugene Chen had to wait until he came to China in 1912 to discover for himself a Chinese given name. “Eugene” was a baptismal name and he brought it with him to China. With a West Indian education he had prepared himself for the practice of law and had been admitted a solicitor in the English courts. But the revolution of 1911 guaranteed the limelight, so he shook the dust of a dingy solicitor’s office off his feet, said good-bye to title deeds and conveyances, wills and codicils, and plunged into the hectic politics of Peking in 1912. His mastery of English quickly obtained for him a post in Yuan Shih-kai’s sec retariat, virtually as a publicity agent. He earned his salt. The beginnings of a brilliant “Life” of Yuan made their appearance in a Chinese-owned newspaper printed in English. Chen dipped his pen in gall and the dead and gone Empress-Dowager turned in her grave; he dipped it again and the

Former “Briton”, Now Chinese Foreign Minister

great Viceroy Li Hung-chang tasted bitterness in whatever extra-terres-trial sphere he inhabits; but Yuan, it immediately became clear, was to be the salvation of China.

In January, 1914, Chen, who, as a British subject, had at his first coming to Peking made his formal call at the British Legation and had his name registered among those of the British residents of the capital, received the usual notification that the time for annual renewal of registration had arrived; whereupon Eugene Chen presented his compliments to His Britannic Majesty’s Vice-Consul and begged to inform him that henceforth he should consider himself a Chinese citizen and would neither expect British solicitude for his welfare nor seek British protection nor acknowledge British jurisdiction. At first Chen was only anti-British as respects the war; but the battle was so exhilarating that he soon found his greatest delight in excoriating everybody and everything English. He knew all the weak points in the English armour, and these he pierced with his deep-probing rapier. The year 1917 promised and brought a new warfare to be waged. President Wilson invited China to join the associated powers in the World War. From the first Chen fought this, and he threw himself with volcanic energy into the battle that raged on the subject. The President of China, Li Yuan-hung, was opposed t,o entry; all the soldiers favoured it. Parliament spent days and days wrangling about it. The soldiers won the day, and Marshal Tuan Chi-jui was carried into power by the flood of popularity.

Chen raved and tore, shrieked and swore, screamed and cursed as he saw Tuan steadily dragging the country into the war. Tuan clapped him in gaol. Chen’s friends, especially his English friends, who had never been alienated because they knew that most of his sound and fury signified r .thing, tried to secure British protection for him; but that was asking too much. He had reviled every British institution, maligned every British official he could think of, and it had all been accounted to “Chen having another go at it”; but to expect British officialdom to save him from the Consequences of his own exuberant bellicosity, especially after his punctiliously polite disclaimer of British allegiance, was to expect just a little too much. So he stayed in gaol until China had been committed to the war. Now Mr. Chen is on top again. For how long none may say.