Sun Yat-Sen and the Secret Societies

Abstract

IF THERE iS one fact of modern Chinese history beyond dispute, it is that the father of modern China was Sun Yat-sen. It is clear that he furnished the leadership for the movement that drove the Manchus off the throne of China and established the Republic. It has not yet been made equally clear just what forces his leadership utilized in carrying on his dramatic struggle with the old empire. One of the most important, in both the propaganda phase and the execution phase of the Revolution, was the force that for centuries had been more or less bottled up in the secret-society movement. Chung Hua Kuomintang, or Chinese People's Party, which rules China today and does not permit the existence of any other political party, still bears within its organic structure the residual traces of its secret-society origin. Even as the Masonic Order is said to have evolved from a radical secret organization to a highly respectable fraternal and benevolent society, so the Kuomintang has evolved from an underground, proscribed organization to the point where it today represents a noble attempt at a new order in China. This article is an effort to trace that part of Sun's revolutionary activity which utilized secret societies, first in stirring up interest in revolution and later as well-organized units, used to working under cover and thus equipped to strike quickly and effectively. One of the most interesting hints that has ever been thrown out in connection with Sun Yat-sen's use of secret societies as an instrument of revolution is the one which ascribes to an American author, Homer Lea,1 the conception of the whole plan. It is certain that Lea came to appreciate the power that they exerted. In his book, Vermilion Pencil, published in i908, he wove into his tale the story of one of these societies, The Great Deluge Family.2 He was for a while military