Foreign News: Lost Leader

At Peking, Death won its inevitable victory. Its victim was Dr. Sun Yatsen, founder and leader of the Kuo Mintang (Young China) Party.

A year ago (TIME, May 26), his death was prematurely announced; but it was not until last January that he was taken to the Rockefeller Hospital at Peking and declared to be in the advanced stages of cancer of the liver.

Dr. Sun was born in a small village near Canton, where the people are the “old” Chinese, driven south centuries ago. As a boy, he traveled far to reside with his brother, a prosperous contractor, at Honolulu. There the spark of revolt against the lethargic and superstitious regime of the Son of Heaven was ignited. His brother feared for him, sent him back to his native village; but he had not long been there before he committed an act of irreverence toward a village god and was consequently expelled.

He left the village sorrowfully, went to Canton, studied at a British college, left, went to Hong-Kong, studied surgery, became a doctor, was probably the first yellow man to perform a scientific operation.

In all this time he was active, spreading revolt through his Anti-Manchu organization, known far and wide in China as the “Dare-to-dies.”

The Manchus were not easy to conquer and, on numerous occasions, Dr. Sun was almost caught by Imperialists and had, consequently, to flee the country. Thus it happened that he spent a great part of his time abroad, always, however, working for the overthrow of the Son of Heaven at Peking, always with a price upon his head. At every capital, his opponents sought to assassinate him. At Tokyo, where he established his headquarters next to the Imperial Chinese Embassy, his very footsteps were dogged. At New York, he proved to a number of skeptical Manhattan bankers, with whom he was dining in a Fifth Avenue club, that he was being watched. He strode to the window and pointed down to several skulking Chinese waiting in the shadows. At London, he was kidnapped and released only through the mediation of Lord Salisbury.

In 1911, the revolution unfurled its desperate banners; and, by the twelfth day of the following year, China, the oldest of monarchies, had become a republic. Dr. Sun did not get what he wanted out of the revolution; he formed a separate republic in the south and kept up the spirit of revolt against successive administrations in Peking. It was this attitude that earned for him the soubriquet of “the perpetual rebel.”