The Life and Adventures of Morrison of China

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Author: Peter Thompson | Robert Macklin

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Morrison of china B format

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The life and adventures of

MORRISON of CHINA


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Peter Thompson, born in Melbourne, was a Fleet Street journalist for 20 years, rising to deputy editor of the Daily Mirror, editor of the Sunday Mirror and a director of Mirror Group Newspapers. Since turning to writing, he has written biographies of the Princess of Wales, the Duchess of York, Robert Maxwell, Elvis Presley, Aristotle Onassis and Jack Nicholson. He has also written The Battle for Singapore, which Soldier magazine described as ‘a stylishly pacy, dramatic and vivid narrative, enlivened by survivors’ first-hand accounts which will hook the most casual of readers’. He lives in London, where he runs Mayfair News Service. Robert Macklin, born in Brisbane, began his journalistic career at the Courier-Mail and later wrote for The Age, The Bulletin and The Canberra Times, where he was associate editor until 2002. He is the author of three novels—The Queenslander, The Paper Castle and Juryman—and the non-fiction works, Fire in the Blood: The epic tale of Frank Gardiner and Australia’s other bushrangers, the memoir War Babies, Jacka VC: Australian hero, and most recently Kevin Rudd: The biography. He is a graduate of the Australian F ilm and Television School, writer/producer of an eight-part television series, Bushranger Country, and lives in Canberra where he divides his time between writing books, films and television. Peter Thompson and Robert Macklin are co-authors of The Battle of Brisbane, Kill the Tiger and Keep off the Skyline.


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The life and adventures of

MORRISON of CHINA

PETER THOMPSON AND ROBERT MACKLIN


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F irst published in 2004 under the title The Man Who Died Twice: The life and adventures of Morrison of Peking This edition first published in 2007 Copyright © Peter Thompson and Robert Macklin 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Thompson, Peter Alexander. The life and adventures of Morrison of China. Bibliography. Includes index ISBN 978 1 74175 351 6 (pbk.). 1. Morrison, G.E. (George Ernest), 1862–1920. 2. Australians—China—Biography. 3. Journalists—China—Biography. 4. Adventure and adventurers—Australia— Biography. 5. Blackbirding—Australia 6. China—History—Boxer Rebellion, 1899–1901. 7. China—History—1912–1928. 8. New Guinea—Discovery and exploration. 9. Australia—Discovery and exploration. I. Macklin, Robert, 1941– . II. Title. 951.041092 Internal design by Tabitha King Maps by Ian Faulkner Set in 12/14 pt Granjon by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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‘Only as a newspaper correspondent can I expect to distinguish myself above the common herd . . . In spite of all that is said to the contrary, it is the noblest in my opinion of all the professions . . . as energy, courage, temperance and truthfulness are necessary to its success.’ G.E. MORRISON, 1882, aged 20


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Contents Prologue

Peking 1900

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Part I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1862–1894 Shoe Leather The Noblest Profession Exposing the Slavers Following Burke and Wills New Guinea Disaster Doctor’s Orders Eastern Promise A Pleasant Journey

3 19 29 44 57 76 88 99

Part II 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

1895–1911 Moberly’s Man Secret Agent Chinese Puzzle Dragon Empress The Boxer Uprising 1900 Rescue and Retribution Morrison’s War The Northcliffe Touch Revolution!

125 136 154 179 201 234 255 275 302


Part III 18 19 20 21 22 23

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1912–1920 China’s Champion The Entwined Heart Perfidious Nippon Dynasty of Dunces Sentimental Journey The F inal Struggle

Epilogue The Noble Professional Notes Sources and Bibliography Index

325 342 364 383 406 419 435 439 449 454


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Prologue

PEKING 1900

The day began badly. It started to rain, mixing the red brick dust into muddy slop in the courtyards. It was 16 July 1900 and George Ernest Morrison, along with 472 other civilians, a garrison of about 400 soldiers of Japanese and various European nationalities, and more than 3000 Chinese refugees, had been under siege for a month. The Boxers, the fanatical anti-foreigners, acting with the connivance of the ruthless Dowager Empress and with the help of the Chinese armed forces, had surrounded the legations in the imperial capital of Peking on 18 June. At any time, it seemed, they could call up the heavy artillery, smash the brick buildings to pieces and obliterate the foreign devils who they believed had feasted on China and tortured its people at gunpoint for half a century. viii


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The 38-year-old Australian with the solid, athlete’s body, even features, ready smile and fair hair shot through with the red dust of collapsing brickwork, dressed hastily. The rain intensified. His friend, Captain B.M. Strouts, the senior British officer, went to the nearby Customs Mess for a cup of tea to start the day. Morrison went after him; they would make a dash for the Fu where the Chinese refugees were crowded, Strouts to make one of his regular inspections, Morrison to keep up to date for his next report—whenever that might be—back to The Times in London. And while he was there he might need to exercise his other skills, as a doctor, to ease some refugee’s suffering. But to reach the Fu—the grounds of the palace of Prince Su whom Morrison had persuaded to vacate in favour of the refugees—the two men had to run the gauntlet of Chinese snipers in two exposed areas. They were up for it. Strouts was a soldier; this was his natural terrain; and Morrison had never lost that streak of daring that relishes the physical challenge. The rain stopped abruptly as they started out and they made it safely across to the Fu, where they linked up with a Japanese officer, Colonel Shiba. While Strouts carried out his inspection, Morrison and Shiba passed along the direction of fire until they reached the brow of the Japanese trench. Shots were fired at them by the enemy from a range of not more than thirty metres, but missed. When Strouts joined them, Morrison suggested he check the Japanese line but Strouts declined to go any further; he had already carried out his mission and said he was returning to the Legation. ‘Then I will go with you,’ Morrison replied. ix


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‘And I will go too,’ said Shiba. The three men descended a few paces into the line of fire and were walking towards the safety of the barricades when three shots rang out. Morrison was hit in the right thigh. At the same moment, Strouts cried, ‘My God,’ and fell into Shiba’s arms, his right leg shattered. Despite his own wound, Morrison helped Shiba drag Strouts out of danger, though shots were still whizzing by. While Shiba ran off for the surgeon, Morrison tried unsuccessfully to staunch the flow of blood from Strouts’s wound by making a tourniquet using his handkerchief and a twig. It was quite hopeless; the bone of the officer’s leg was projecting against his trousers. Then Captain Nakagawa, the Japanese surgeon, arrived and tried once again to staunch the bleeding by compressing the external iliac. Soaked in blood, Strouts was still conscious and inquired after Morrison’s own wound. Morrison murmured that his was unimportant. Then he passed out, his life blood ebbing steadily from his body. That same day readers of later editions of The Times in London were appalled to read that the paper’s correspondent Dr George Ernest Morrison, one of the most famous figures in contemporary life, had perished in the uprising. The following day the paper printed a two-column obituary, part of which read: Throughout the last three critical years in China, it is to Dr Morrison that the British public has looked from day to day for the earliest and most accurate intelligence . . . With extraordinary judgment, amounting almost to intuition, in an atmosphere which he used himself to describe as ‘saturated


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with lies’, he discriminated with unfailing accuracy between what was true and what was false. His own shrewdness and resourcefulness, his untiring industry, his infinite capacity for taking pains enabled him time and again to transmit important information of which the official confirmation used only to limp in with halting steps two or three days later.

Back in Australia there was shock at the news. In his home town of Geelong the flags flew at half mast to mourn its most famous son, the legendary Morrison of Peking . . .


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Part I

1862–1894


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SHOE LEATHER

One of the first lessons a bright young reporter learns is the value of ‘shoe leather,’ the journalistic shorthand for the need to be there, on the spot, face to face with the participants, when the events to be reported take place. It is a phrase that might have been invented to characterise the foundations of George Ernest Morrison’s extraordinary career. We do not know exactly when Ernest, as his mother called him, took his first faltering steps toward the end of 1862—having been born on 4 February of that year—but we do know that once started, for the next 58 years he stopped only to tell the stories of his journeys, to regain his astonishing strength and stamina, and to plan his next foray among the great events and leading figures of his day. 3


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He was born into a loving home and all his life he would be his mother’s favourite. From the beginning they were close and the sense of self-confidence this imbued, his belief in his right to hold an opinion and be listened to, never left him. It was the first essential building block of his vocation. In later life he would always find the time to write to her, and always with affection. On his father’s side he came from robust, adventurous Nordic stock who made their way to the Outer Hebrides and over the centuries were drawn into the Scottish mainstream. The Morrisons were a family bent toward teaching and a great love of books. In 1857 Ernest’s uncle Alexander was the first among them to reach Australia, where he took up the post of headmaster of the prestigious Scotch College, Melbourne. Alexander’s glowing accounts of ‘antipodal scholastic prosperity’ were just the encouragement his younger brother George needed at 28 to abandon the ‘ineffable drudgery’ of the Scottish classroom to seek his fortune in the new world. After only three years in the Victorian system he became principal of the Geelong College. Located in Knowle House, near the centre of the township, it contained eighteen rooms and already had a history as a hotel, a grammar school and as Mrs Boyce’s Establishment for Young Ladies when the Presbyterian Church sought to establish the college in 1861. George Morrison fitted their requirements for a headmaster as though tailored for the task. As the school historian G. McLeod Redmond wrote in 1911, ‘He was typically and undeniably Scotch. Every tone and line of him proclaimed the fact. Indeed, it was to his Scottish strength


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of mind and business ability that the college owes most of its success today’. But while Morrison agreed to become the college’s first headmaster, he was not content to work for wages. The Morrison credo was essentially one of independence and self-reliance. This was evident in the Morrison line for several generations before the brothers advanced on the antipodes. It was certainly clear in George Senior from the time he won a scholarship to Aberdeen University, where he was the most brilliant student of his time, carrying off all the glittering prizes for each of the four years of his arts degree, in fields as diverse as classics, mathematics and natural philosophy. He was president of the Debating Society and there, according to Redmond, ‘He cultivated the gift of simple oratory which later made his little homilies to erring collegians such terrifying ordeals. Most of the Doctor’s pupils preferred his gentle canings to his impressive lecturings’. Once he had established himself at Geelong College he employed his considerable powers of persuasion to convince the Church that he should take over the financial obligations and opportunities the school afforded. He had a willing partner in his wife, the former Rebecca Greenwood, from Haworth, West Yorkshire, which had become famous as the home of the Brontë sisters. The fictional manor houses of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange are drawn from buildings in the area where young Rebecca grew up. There was about her an independence of mind not unlike that of the Brontës’ creations. She actually travelled to Australia unescorted in a clipper ship to


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Melbourne and married George there shortly after her arrival in 1859. In 1863 a meeting of the College Council ceded full control to the Morrison family. By now Victoria was enjoying boom times in the wake of the gold rush of the 1850s. Farmers and graziers were making their fortunes from wool and meat and were sending their young families to boarding school to celebrate and consolidate the family’s rise through the social strata. Principal Morrison, with his academy by the sea, offered a vigorous and healthy regime under a firm but patient hand. By then young George Ernest had made his unremarkable entry into the world as the second child of the union after little Mary Alice in 1860. They would have three more sons—Norman, Reggie and Clive—and two more daughters—Violet and Hilda. And while the peripatetic journalist would see very little of his siblings in later life, the school provided a good living and the parents a boisterously happy home. Geelong College was for all the Morrisons a glorious and seemingly endless adventure. ‘The Doctor’ was in charge—a tall, square figure, spare but stocky and powerful, habitually clad in a frock suit and seen around the school bearing in his hand a silk hat, a chalk box and a short cane. Redmond says: ‘His broad, massive head, wide-browed, wide-eyed with its square jaw concealed beneath thick whiskers, denoted strength and inflexibility of purpose’. Knowle House, by then widely known as the House of Knowledge, was small and cramped as the school quickly expanded to its limits. Redmond delights in the stories of little George Ernest being carried around to the


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classrooms by his proud father. At times he would leave the boy outside the classroom, whereupon the youngster would kick at the door crying, ‘Open, old George.’ This was the signal for the delighted headmaster to relent and father and son to be reunited. The usual tensions inherent in having a headmaster for a father seem in Morrison’s case to have been overcome. In the diary which young George Ernest—for that was how he styled himself—began at 16, ‘Papa’ is always treated with affection and respect. To his teenaged son, one of the elder Morrison’s finest achievements was his acquaintance with the great war correspondent Archibald Forbes, who was actually a mere follower in his father’s university debating team. However, the diary begins at a time when his mother had been taken ill and each daily entry starts with a report on her condition and treatment—notably ‘vapour baths’— and her slow recovery. Geelong College continued to prosper financially and academically. The school did so well that in 1869 the Morrisons bought a large area of land on Newtown Hill and a new building was ready for occupation in 1871. The Morrison family went to Queenscliff, further down the promontory from Geelong, for their usual Christmas holidays. They returned to discover that all the new accommodation had been taken up with more than 30 boarders. Almost immediately extensions were necessary and it was not until 1876 that the college found the form it would retain for twenty years and which remains its foundation today. According to young Morrison, ‘We may not have been hard students but we lived healthy, happy lives,


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giving more time to outdoor play than to study’. But young George Ernest’s principal memories were not of the schoolroom, but rather of the holidays at their Queenscliff beach house. Shortly after his seventeenth birthday, his passion for long walks began to show itself. ‘I awoke this morning and got up to see the time at one-thirty’, he wrote, ‘but went back to bed again and got up at quarter to four. Having dressed I went downstairs and had a slight breakfast then taking my walking stick and my football bag in which were a pair of slippers, a clean pair of socks and my dinner I set off by four. Auntie was the only one to see me off. ‘It was pitch dark when I started and I couldn’t see to read till I had walked eight miles. I got to the Wallington [Hotel] which is nine and three-quarter miles from the college at half past six. At the Wallington I had a shandy gaff and got a bottle of lemonade and left there at a quarter to seven. I got into Queenscliff which is eleven and a quarter miles from the Wallington without meeting anybody and feeling pretty fresh at half past nine’. In his incomplete autobiography, Reminiscences, Morrison says, ‘My tastes were those of the nomad. I loved to travel alone. During the Christmas holidays I followed my bent, each year travelling further afield. I loved books of travel’. Chief among these was Henry Morton Stanley’s How I Found Livingstone, published in 1872 when Morrison was ten, and Coomassie and Magdala: The Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa, which followed in 1874. Stanley was a remarkable character and young Morrison was entranced by his adventures. The illegitimate son of John Rowlands of Denbighshire, Wales, as a


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boy he was known as John Rowlands in the workhouse and among the distant relatives who helped to raise him. As a teenager he sailed from Liverpool as a cabin boy, landing at New Orleans in 1859. There he was befriended by a merchant, Henry Hope Stanley, whose first and last names he adopted as part of a quest to start a new life. ‘Morton’ would be added later. Stanley then led a roving life as a soldier in the American Civil War, a seaman on merchant ships, and from 1867 as a journalist—Special Correspondent for James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald. The book on Livingstone, the great explorer-cummissionary, which recorded their famous greeting, was heady stuff to the athletic young colonial. Stanley struggled through the heart of the Dark Continent beset on all sides by warring tribes and stricken by illness until he reached Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, Dr David Livingstone’s last known port of call. There he found the old hero racked by fever and short of supplies. Stanley stepped across the jungle clearing, his hand extended: ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume.’ Morrison consumed these adventures and when he heard that Coomassie and Magdala, based on Stanley’s dispatches as a war correspondent in Ashanti (modern Ghana), had been published he recorded his delight in the diary. ‘I got it from the library tonight. I greatly admire Stanley . . .’ By now 17-year-old George Ernest was 180 centimetres tall and well proportioned at 78 kilograms with fair hair, strong and regular features and good manners. But in his own words he had a ‘very bashful’ nature, particularly


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with the opposite sex. It was an attitude to women that would persist throughout his life, a legacy of the Calvinist teachings of his Scottish heritage. And though Morrison would always be a dutiful churchgoer, he was by no means an ardent believer in matters theological. Going to church was simply the thing to do, part of the fabric of a time when God, Queen and Country were revered and when devotion to humanity’s crowning glory, the British Empire, was paramount. He could take pride in his native land when the cricket team won the first official Test match in Melbourne against the English team in 1877; he could rejoice in the annual running of the Melbourne Cup when in 1878, 90 000 people packed the famous Flemington racecourse; he could be fascinated by the mad career of the Kelly Gang who the same year shot and killed three policemen—Sergeant Kennedy and Constables Lonigan and Scanlon—at Stringybark Creek and became hunted bushrangers. But already his ambitions encompassed the wider world. ‘It is my fixed intention to do something great some day’, he wrote. And greatness was the stuff of which the men of Empire, like Stanley, were made. He decorated his room with woodcuts of imperial triumphs from the Illustrated London News—lavish stories and sketches of exploration and conquest in India and Afghanistan, Africa and Arabia. Geelong’s proximity to Melbourne allowed a measure of culture to be included in the school curriculum and in August 1878 Morrison’s diary records an excursion by train to see the play of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. ‘For a ticket you


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had to pay 7/6 and you were supplied with everything— could go first class up, cabs were supplied to take you to and from the play; over 400 went. I went to a party . . . but didn’t get on well.’ He was much more comfortable with sporting contests and the diary is packed with detailed accounts of football matches revealing an instinctive feel for the dramatic narrative. He also kept up with political events and in one diary entry reports a bon mot from Disraeli, delivered in a speech at the Carlton Club: ‘. . . Which do you believe most likely to enter into insane convention, a body of English gentlemen honoured by the favour of their sovereign and the confidence of their fellow subjects, managing your affairs for five years I hope with prudence and not altogether without success, or a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and glorify himself.’ Morrison comments: ‘He was taking a rise out of Gladstone’. There was always something interesting happening at school. On 13 October he writes, ‘Today a young blackguard of a boarder, Morton by name, was expelled. He is a regular thief as he stole 28/6 from Stewart McArthur besides various other sums from other boys. He got a right good hiding both from Papa and the boys’. Indeed, the boys had a surprising degree of physical self-expression. Shortly afterward he reports the same Stewart McArthur having a quiet word to his resident master, J.E. Martin, about his not having had a bath since he’d arrived at the beginning of term. And next day, when


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Martin declined to take the hint, the boarders acted: ‘Stewart McArthur said to Martin, “Come and have a bath.” He whined and replied that really and truly he’d have a bath if they’d let him but he seemed in no hurry to fulfil his promise. ‘Accordingly, four of the biggest boys laid hold of him and succeeded, notwithstanding his struggles in which he bent the head of the bed, in carrying him in triumph, headfirst down the stairs. ‘Martin was one mass of grease and filth and his legs were covered with a thin cake of mud which he declared was hair. The hulking fool walked through the bath, went under the shower and then dried himself. In this operation he completely ruined two towels. The boys threaten to give him another in a fortnight’. And two weeks later: ‘Annie the housemaid left, she was drunk on Saturday, Sunday and today . . . The country is in a state of alarm at the Kellys, the dead body of a lost constable has been found riddled with bullets. Great difficulty will be in the way of the men being captured’. The 18-year-old diarist can be withering in his descriptions of relatives and acquaintances, revealing a glimpse of the powers of observation and the cutting wit he would later be renowned for. After noting the anniversary of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, he writes: Arthur Greenwood [his mother’s brother] came down, much to the delight of Isabella Murray. This elderly gal, besides being as ugly as sin is as nervous as a cat and as delicate as a spider. She is quite uneducated, has no money, figure or any womanly quality, drops her h’s by the score and manufactures them by the dozen. She has got a squeaky miserable sort of a


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voice, just such a voice as you would expect from a woman of 38 who has a bust like a deal board, a set of teeth bought in Colac (and second hand even then) and a mouth graced with a moustache a la Lord Harris.

More seriously the next day: ‘I was sorry to see in the papers this morning that the Prince Imperial of France who had lately gone to Africa to throw in his lot with the English had been killed in a reconnaissance by the Zulus. ‘Archibald Forbes, the celebrated Special Correspondent of the Daily News when lately in Rangoon made the acquaintance of my cousin James and told him that he was at university with George Morrison and remembered him as one of the cleverest and rowdiest students’. A few days later he learns that Forbes, ‘for his newspaper corresponding services in the Turko–Russian war was allowed £5000 expenses and when he got home received £2000 from the proprietors of the Daily News’. This was palpably a world to which he aspired but for now the simple life of fishing and shooting at Queenscliff, football and cricket at college and a great devotion to the Geelong team in the Victorian Australian Rules competition is suddenly complicated by the presence of girls. On 26 July, a fine Saturday: After dinner [brother] Reggie, Jack and I went out shooting in the wagon, Hugh driving. We had gone over two miles when my cold became so bad that much against my inclination I was forced to return. Quite without any express intention my steps directed me to the Botanical Gardens and there by the strangest coincidence in the world I met sweet Annie Evans. She did look splendid, so tall and ladylike and


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winsome. She seemed surprised to see me and we walked down one of the paths together. Standing talking to her is it wonderful that I did not hear approaching footsteps? My absorbed senses are abruptly awakened by her exclaiming, ‘Who’s this coming?’ I look round and am face to face with that gent whom I am in the habit of calling Papa. He gives Annie a queer look and remarks to me that he thought I had gone out shooting. I feel I am blushing up to the eyelids as I say, ‘Please papa, I did go out but my cold was so bad I had to come back and please papa I won’t do it again, really and truly I won’t.’ This fetches him. He leaves and I had a good laugh at my own expense. But for this unfortunate encounter, the afternoon passes pleasantly enough . . .

Although Morrison’s world was, by all accounts, idyllic, he had a healthy curiosity about life beyond his immediate experience. About this time he and a mate, Jim Wighton, presented themselves at the Geelong jail and asked the Superintendent to see it in operation. ‘In the office we saw the busts of four criminals that have been executed in Geelong’, he wrote. ‘The cells are very clean and everything is kept in tip top order, but I am disappointed with my visit. I expected to see murderers in chains or at any rate lifers and long sentence prisoners confined in iron barred cages, but there wasn’t a notorious criminal among the lot and what men I did see were as harmless a looking set as you could find anywhere.’ Even the gallows were a letdown, though he relished a meeting with the prisoner-librarian who regaled him with yarns of hangmen swinging off their victims’ bodies to break the neck and thin ropes that nip the criminal’s head clean off on his journey to eternity.


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On 30 December 1880 his quest to expend some shoe leather resurfaced and, ‘having made all preparations beforehand, I started for a walk to wile away my holidays’. He travelled light. ‘All necessities are carried in a canvas knapsack on my back, for defence a tomahawk is in my belt whilst cooking utensils in the shape of two billies suspended by straps dangle behind.’ Inside the billies were writing materials and other essentials like matches and in the knapsack a leg of mutton, a loaf of bread and some lemons. In his pocket he carried £6 14s 6d. He told the family he had no particular destination in mind, but in fact he had decided to walk more than 1000 kilometres to Adelaide and despite the discomforts of camping out, enjoyed himself enormously. ‘My slumbers last night were disturbed by dreams of snakes and octopuses’, he wrote in his second entry. And a few days later he complained of rheumatic pains brought on by sleeping in the open. ‘I am going to make it a rule never to sleep out when a house is within ten miles.’ He waited until 4 January before telling his mother his intentions in a letter posted from Mount Graham: ‘I suppose you have been wondering whatever happened to me. I would have written before but I’ve never had the opportunity . . . To make a long story short, I have resolved to walk to Adelaide and I must ask you not to be in fear at all about my getting there. I have set myself some work to do. I do hope you are not anxious about me at all. I shall be home in about three weeks or a month’. He met a variety of fellow travellers, including Mr McLeod, ‘a fine handsome man, the very image of the pictures of Don Quixote’. McLeod’s house, he discovered


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from the man himself, was notorious as once being the public house kept by the murderer Malachi Martin: This gentleman went out riding one day with a Mr Robertson. The two quarrelled and the former hit the latter over the head with a loaded stockwhip handle and then placed him on the ground with his throat cut and a penknife in his hand so as to make believe he had committed suicide. Malachi married his widow. A jewellery hawker travelling this way was missed, some of his wares were found on Mrs Martin and his empty box was discovered under the Salt Creek Bridge. The parents of the girl [Malachi] had as general servant sent for her to come home to Adelaide. She was owed two years wages and to save this Malachi murdered her and then stuffed the corpse down a wombat hole. The crows betrayed the deed, she was found by the blacks and Mr Martin expiated his crime. They say that a traveller walking along that road on a dark windy night is followed by a huge black cat the very appearance of which raises an involuntary shudder and, crying piteously, it walks in a mysterious manner in his footsteps as if it had some dreadful, blood-curdling secret to divulge. Mr McLeod made my hair stand on end relating this . . . would have slept well last night but for that horrid black cat.

Morrison reached his destination on 14 February in a state of great good humour. On the last day, he says: Being in good condition, I frequently ran. My whole walk had been 652 miles, or the way I went 752.


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I loafed about the town for an hour or two and in the afternoon went down to the [Adelaide] Oval to see Jarvis play [cricket]. As I seated myself in the grandstand a general titter passed through the crowd and everybody tried to be funny at my expense. Just because I had on a flannel cricketing shirt— perhaps a little dirty—old serge breeches, a green cap, leggings, old boots and a knapsack. One pertinacious old fool was very inquisitive and would have it that I had been down two years before with sheep and he had seen me. I have now finished my walk and my diary and I certainly have found the latter the more arduous of the two. I am now fairly done up with exhaustion so I’ll shut up. By the way, Jarvis got run out first ball. The End.

In fact it wasn’t quite the end of the adventure. Though he told no one at the time, he later admitted that he tried to follow in the footsteps of the much admired Stanley and sign on to a ship bound for South America. ‘My attempt failed’, he said in Reminiscences. ‘Had it succeeded the whole course of my life would have been altered.’ For the moment, emulation of his hero would have to wait. He returned by steamer to Melbourne and to his sporting interests—rowing, athletics, cricket and Australian Rules football—in all of which he was outstanding; and also to his studies where he was less successful because his mind was occupied elsewhere. Morrison Sr had his own ideas about his eldest son’s career path. During one of their Queenscliff holidays he


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engaged Ernest in ‘a yarn about my future prospects’. And he would brook no nonsense about journalism. When he completed his schooling the young man would go to Edinburgh to study medicine. To his father, he acquiesced. But to his diary he was more candid: ‘I haven’t given up hope of becoming a Special Correspondent’, he said, ‘though of course I cannot become it [immediately]’. And the way his father described it, the prospect of becoming a surgeon was not all bad. ‘At least’, he said, ‘I would go to a war—that is, if a war happened to be on at the time I was finished’. At his mother’s suggestion he sent a version of his diary to David Syme, proprietor of The Age, the leading newspaper in Victoria. Syme also published a weekly magazine-style paper, The Leader, and he telegrammed Morrison his acceptance of The Diary of a Tramp for publication in that journal in three episodes. He also offered to pay his young Special Correspondent seven guineas. Rebecca Morrison was thrilled and, though he feigned nonchalance, so too was young George Ernest. When the first paper arrived carrying his byline, he was at the gate to meet it. The experience of seeing himself in print was, he wrote, ‘not bad; not bad at all’. He was launched upon the journalistic sea.


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THE NOBLEST PROFESSION

In the 1880s Melbourne easily surpassed Sydney as Australia’s largest city, a lively place undergoing a building boom that had begun in the 1860s and by 1890 would result in the completion of all its great public buildings. The State Parliament House was so grand and capacious that it would be the natural venue for the Federal Parliament from 1901 until a more permanent home was established in Canberra in 1926. Melbourne University, into which Morrison had recently been accepted, opened in 1855. Big companies and most of the top medical practitioners had splendid offices in Collins Street, which boasted a ‘Paris end’ among its plane trees. The spires of Saint Patrick’s and Saint Paul’s Cathedrals dominated the skyline. It was the home of the National Art Gallery where Morrison and his 19


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friends went often to see the latest acquisition—usually from a British traditionalist with a biblical theme. But beneath the imperial homage were the currents that would produce the famous Heidelberg School—Roberts, McCubbin, Streeton and others—who would so brilliantly celebrate their native land. Morrison was living with his Uncle Alexander’s family at Scotch College and he still played cricket and football with some distinction, once facing the fearsome ‘Demon’ Spofforth, star of the Australian team. But whenever possible he joined his friends at parties in their homes, picnics in F itzroy Gardens and on the banks of the Yarra, and boating on Albert Park Lagoon. Bashful he might be but Morrison was by no means immune to the charms of the young ladies of his circle. In any case, they were not discouraged by his shyness, especially after he was accepted into the medical school of Melbourne University. He was from an upstanding and prominent family; what it lacked in wealth was more than made up for in respectability and good humour. In his intimate circle, in addition to sweet Annie Evans whom he met in the Botanic Gardens, there was ‘Amy Ledwick, rather tall and very well made. Her complexion and teeth are beautiful though you could hardly say she was pretty. But she has the most glorious pair of eyes I have ever seen. They are intensely dark and shine when she becomes animated with extraordinary brilliancy’. However, Morrison spent more time at the lagoon in serious training than boating and socialising with his friends. With his seven guineas from The Leader, supplemented by £10 from his uncle for doing the vocabulary of a Latin grammar he was writing, the


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18-year-old George Ernest had bought a 3-metre cedar canoe which he named The Stanley. He planned to paddle down the Murray River, almost 2000 kilometres from Wodonga in Victoria to the sea in South Australia. But that was just part of it. He would not only pay his way by writing despatches for The Leader during his journey, he would compile a work on some of the great Australian explorers—Sturt, Oxley and Mitchell among them. The adventures and privations he would experience would give him a special insight to the feats of his colonial forebears. And he would dedicate the book to Stanley, ‘Special Correspondent to the New York Herald, the discoverer of Livingstone, the identifier of the Lualuba and Congo [Rivers], the greatest traveller of this or any other age, the most extraordinary man, and the man for whom before all others in this world I admire the most’. As he said later, ‘Every Saturday and Sunday used to find me in my canoe on the lagoon. With practice I was able not only to stand up in the canoe and paddle, but I could even balance standing on its rounded deck’. Despite these distractions Morrison passed his first year exams, though without any particular distinction. Like most freshman students he found so much else to do during the year that the final month became a torrid battle with the books as he ‘stewed’ his subjects. There is a sense in his diary that he can barely wait to reach the end of the year and the freedom of the wide River Murray. When he arrived at Wodonga he had his shotgun and one hundred cartridges and planned to live as much as possible off the country. There were wild pigs, kangaroos and rabbits in abundance on the riverbank; the birdlife was so plentiful that he would be able to choose between


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teal, wood and mountain duck as his fancy took him. And the Murray was renowned for its magnificent native cod and yellow-belly. However, he also had on board a supply of biscuits, cocoa, salt, and medicinal brandy in the first aid kit. At 6.30 a.m. next day he engaged ‘two brawny men’ to carry his canoe down to the river. No one had attempted such a feat before and there was much that could go wrong. An unexpected wind-shift could easily capsize the small craft under sail and there were snags and floating debris that could cave in the light cedar hull. ‘Once afloat, all my anxiety vanished’, he said. ‘The river was calm and still and as I paddled into the stream I felt free.’ The conscientious diarist filled scores of pages recording minor misfortunes as the canoe became entangled in snags, or lively descriptions of the wildlife and the human beings he encountered. He visited an ostrich farm and that too provided a diversion. And he wrote regularly to his mother: I am hoping to catch the post tomorrow at Murray Downs and to do that I am going to travel all night. The moon is just past the full so by waiting for it to rise I think I can do it all right though the distance is fifty miles. I shot a brace of ducks and a pair of cockatoos this morning. After dinner I am going to have a look at the ostriches. I should like to hear particulars about that Grammar match. I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year and with love to all, believe me, your loving son, G.E. Morrison.


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He had Christmas dinner with one William Shoebridge who ran the mail stables at Loungara. Shoebridge told the young adventurer wonderful stories about the actions he was involved in during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. Indeed, Mr Shoebridge not only distinguished himself in the capture of Peking in 1860, but was recommended for the Victoria Cross no fewer than three times. ‘He now receives a pension for his meritorious services’, Morrison wrote straight-faced. But in his subsequent story for The Leader there is a gentle scepticism. He was learning the ways of solitary men on the fringes of Australian settlement. Along the way he slept on the riverbank, at outstations and homesteads where he had sent letters of introduction before leaving Melbourne, and in hotels in the river townships. In Reminiscences Morrison says: I paddled 1,555 miles to the sea and then continued up the arm of the sea known as the Coorong, parallel with the coast, to a coaching stage called Cockatoo Wells. By a curious coincidence I arrived there on the same day as I had the previous year when on my tramp round to Adelaide. The keeper of the shanty was a man who had spent some time in Spain. His stories thrilled my imagination and for years I looked forward to the day when I might repeat his experience. As fortune would have it, some years later I was able to see Spain even more intimately than he had done. Then, having sent my canoe by coach to Robetown and thence by steamer to Melbourne, I walked back to Geelong, 347 miles. This was quite a successful journey, for the account published from week to week in The Leader more than paid for its expenses.


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It might not have been the usual stuff of exciting journalism and in later years, after decades at the forefront of international reporting and controversy, he was somewhat dismissive of his serialised exploits. ‘I fear that the journey was more interesting and less tedious than the account thereof ’, he says. ‘Before the narrative was finished Mr G.A. Syme, the Editor [and brother of proprietor David Syme] repeatedly assured me that everyone was tired of it. It was wearisome, he said, and monotonous.’ However, if true—and in fact Morrison’s talents as a writer made ‘Down the Murray in a Canoe’ an extraordinarily engaging read—it did not prevent David Syme from investing very substantial funds, and his paper’s reputation, in subsequent Morrison projects. These future projects were precipitated in no small part by his failure in the key materia medica subject of his second-year studies. At the time it came as a shock to the Morrison ego. In high indignation—but uncompromisingly accurate reporting—Morrison wrote to the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and Members of the University Council complaining about his examiner: ‘Dr Williams told me that I had done a shocking paper, that I had failed to attain 25 per cent of the marks and only one question had I answered to his satisfaction. “Take an example,” he added, “you were asked the doses of morphine by hypodermically and by the stomach. You wrote a page and a half in reply but said nothing whatever about the doses.” ‘I was astonished. It was so hard to reconcile this with what I remembered to have written that I asked the examiner if he would go over the paper with me. He


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kindly consented and we met last Monday evening, March 20 1882 . . .’ To no avail. Though Morrison was able to point out that his answers were consistent with the textbook in some areas, there was plenty of evidence that he was not then the most conscientious student. Indeed, a passage in An Australian in China, which he wrote twelve years later, admits as much: ‘I had, among other trifling lapses, prescribed a dose of Oleum Crotonis of “one half to two drachma carefully increased”. I confess that I had never heard of the wretched stuff: the question was taken from far on in the textbook—Garrod—and unfortunately my reading had not extended quite so far.’ And when a ‘deputation from my family’ attended upon Dr Williams, he told them that to allow young George Ernest become a doctor was akin to letting ‘a mad dog loose in Collins Street’. Morrison Sr took the blow well. At a formal end-of-year dinner at Geelong College he spoke of four old boys who had gone on to university, three of whom had passed all subjects, the other having failed one, but that conclusively. His son recorded the speech in his diary: The surprise, the speaker said, was that this candidate should have failed at all. For besides having ability far above the three successful candidates, he had inherited intense application and liking for his work and he was plucked, he was perfectly convinced, owing rather to an error of judgment on the part of the examiner than to any fault of his own. He would refrain from personal motives from mentioning his name though this one clue to it he would give the company, namely that he was a better man than his father.


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In Reminiscences Morrison said, ‘That I was unjustly plucked I have no shadow of a doubt, but I bear no grudge to the examiner—on the contrary, his error was one of the fortunate episodes of my life’. But plucked he certainly had been and so, Morrison said, ‘I left the university. It was a severe blow to the university, but the university survived’. Given his immediate involvement in another great project it is hard to believe that Morrison himself was much discouraged by the blow. He determined to visit the Pacific islands and expose the commerce in so-called ‘black pearls’—the slave trade in South Sea islanders. Morrison’s publishing patron, David Syme, abhorred the rottenness of the Kanaka trade and its effect on the nation. It differed from the notorious African trade in human cargoes to America and the Caribbean more in form than in fact. The motive was the same—to obtain labour at a negligible price for the sugarcane or cotton fields of the country concerned. In Australia the practice was called ‘blackbirding’ and in the second half of the nineteenth century about 60 000 Kanakas (the Hawaiian word for ‘boy’) were seduced or forced on board ship, by a variety of means, and transported in putrid conditions to either Queensland or F iji. There they were sold to the sugar farmers, usually for a specified period, where they did hard labour clearing fields and cutting cane, literally for slave wages. More than 800 ships scoured the South Pacific to ‘harvest’ the human crop. The big profits to be made had attracted influential figures, not least a company partowned by the Queensland Premier Robert Mackenzie. Other colonial MPs and business supporters provided a


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network of protection. The Queensland sugar industry expanded rapidly and by 1882 scores of sailing ships were feeding its growing need for cheap labour. Most decent Melburnians, Syme prominent among them, were unmoved by the protests from the Queensland Government that they had officials aboard to ensure humane and Christian treatment. But until then no newspaper had attempted to expose the disgrace with a first-hand account. By 1882, The Age was an active and vigorous campaigner with a circulation of more than 50 000 and a staff that boasted a future prime minister, Alfred Deakin, providing a new and influential brand of journalism. The assignment was tailor-made for a young adventurer who could handle himself in the company of men and who could write a descriptive narrative that captured the reader’s full attention. F inally Morrison made public the decision that had been pressing itself upon him for almost as long as he could remember. The young ladies of his circle would have to do without him. The football and the cricket would be left behind. He wrote to his mother from Melbourne: ‘Only as a newspaper correspondent can I expect to distinguish myself above the common herd . . . It is the noblest, in my opinion, of all the professions and as energy, courage, temperance and truthfulness are necessary to its success, to this fact must be ascribed the high positions occupied by journalists all over the world . . . I go to Queensland to commence the apprenticeship of a profession in which I earnestly hope some day to make my mark’.


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EXPOSING THE SLAVERS

‘Beware how you speak of my son Ernest. He is too well known for base slanders to affect his character. His morals were not learned in New Guinea.’ So cabled an enraged Rebecca Morrison to Captain Lilyblack, master of one of the slavers during the controversy that erupted in the wake of Morrison’s exposé. The young reporter was under fire, not only from the scoundrels engaged in the trade but also from their political protectors in the Queensland Government. Premier Mackenzie had by then been succeeded by Samuel Griffith, whose later claim to fame was as one of the architects of the Australian Constitution.1 In fact, the federation of the Australian states would have an unintended consequence for Griffith and his ilk. A combination of the implicit racism in British imperial 29


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attitudes and trade unionist fears of cheap labour found political expression in the White Australia Policy which eventually put an end to the Kanaka trade. In 1883, however, after Morrison’s articles and letters had forced an inquiry into blackbirding, Griffith called him ‘a very young man who does not bear a high reputation and whose narratives need to be received with much caution’. Morrison responded in an open letter in The Age: ‘Were you not shielded by Parliamentary privilege, I should compel you to retract your words or you should have to answer for your libel in a court of justice’. Griffith’s policy, he said, was ‘to suppress all the facts connected with the odious traffic in human flesh’. The Age itself was in no doubt where the truth lay. Morrison’s eight-part series, A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver, had been presented more in the tone of a Boys’ Own adventure—albeit a perilous one—than a bareknuckled condemnation of the trade. That came later when Morrison was back in Melbourne. And then The Age backed him to the hilt. But when he began the voyage, he was an exuberant 19 year old out in the world and following Stanley’s bright star. The byline he used for the series was that of ‘A Medical Student’, no doubt in deference to his father’s continuing ambition for his eldest son. But the opening paragraph of the series was typical of the plain-spoken directness that would become the hallmark of his journalism. ‘I have shipped as an ordinary seaman and I am off to see the way in which the labour trade of Queensland is recruited’, he wrote. ‘Our fine brigantine is taking back to the islands eighty-eight natives who have completed their time in Queensland. It is our first voyage, our captain is


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new to the trade, and we shall be anxiously waited for by the town, which feels pride in our vessel; and by the owners, whose first venture this is.’ The town in question was the port of Mackay, right at the centre of the sugar industry. It was 1 June 1882. Morrison began the cruise in the Lavinia as an ordinary seaman, confined to the ship, but quickly caught the captain’s eye and ended as a trusted member of the boat-crew that undertook the hazardous negotiations on the various islands. This was typical of the man; there was nothing dispassionate about the Morrison character. Neither then nor throughout his career could he stand back from an event or a story and play the passive observer. He had to be in the thick of it. Indeed, on his first night aboard he encountered the raw brutality of the trade. ‘I heard a noise, as of someone groaning under the windlass’, he said in his first dispatch. I got up and saw that it was a sickly lad—a little boy about fourteen years of age. I said compassionately, ‘You very sick, poor boy?’ but he only moaned more pitifully. He struggled to his feet, and as he walked past me with tottering steps I shuddered at his withered little frame, already in the hands of death. That boy tottered down to his bunk and the first night out at sea he died and his body was let into the deep. I felt very sad for this homeless Malo boy, and indignant that any health officer could be heartless enough to allow that he was in a fit state to make the long voyage to his island home.

The journey, which took 100 days, provided a perfect platform from which to observe the human commerce and the eccentric characters who conducted it. Morrison’s


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powers of observation and expression were perfectly suited to the task. The ship itself stank. ‘From the lumbered up and crowded state of the hold the air was hot and mephitic’, he said, ‘and I shall be thankful to escape fever in so pestilential an atmosphere’. The characters who peopled it were brought to life by his artistry: Jimmie—one of four other able seamen aboard—‘is a little fellow with no chin’. All Jimmie’s pride may be said to be centred in his moustache, his waistcoat and his one shirt. Though every drunken spree reduces his wardrobe by one article or another—this time a hat, the next a coat and so on—yet the waistcoat is still his and on every available occasion in port it is brought out, together with the one shirt. Then with a small low crowned felt hat jauntily stuck on the side of his head, a pipe in his mouth and a forefinger in each of the waistcoat pockets, Jimmie walks up and down the deck . . . sometimes as he thinks his voice will break forth into melody—‘She’s a darling, she’s a daisy, she’s a dumpling, she’s a lamb’—the only two lines he knows but he knows them to perfection. The fair creature that has all these charms I often wish dead, this affectionate description so grates upon my ear.

Morrison had lots of fun with the captain, one Jones. ‘There was great interest on the fo’c’sle’, he wrote, ‘if it would be the same Jones who lost a seaman overboard going around Cape Horn, who threw him a chair and told him to take it easy till he came back again’. However, there was great relief when Captain Jones appeared. ‘One so harmless looking could never have done such a deed. Our captain is one who came in through the hawse-


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pipe—the nautical way of saying he had worked his way up from before the mast.’ It turned out that he was an excellent seaman and a very able navigator. Morrison’s only complaint was his inconsistency in dealing with his men—sometimes overly familiar and at others the posturing martinet. The 81 Kanaka men were a ‘mixed assortment’ but the great majority were ‘bright, clean, strong intelligent fellows whose labour surely is cheap at £18 for three years’. The seven women, he said, ‘were of varying shades of beauty: an ugly old witch from Lakono, a great butt for the captain’s jocularity, and known on board as Mrs Maclean, standing at one end, a pretty woman from Aoba at the other. The latter, though her lips were rather thick, bore a striking resemblance to the Princess of Wales. She had an unladylike addiction to her pipe’. When the captain heard of Morrison’s medical studies he immediately appointed him ship’s doctor and he treated the minor ailments, from ulcers to stomach disorders, with some success and no small sense of pride. However, he was by no means infallible and the callow undergraduate is reflected in his account of one incident in which he treated a young Aoha lad with violent dysentery. ‘I gave him a stiff dose of Castor Oil and chlorodyne’, he said. ‘Two days later I repeated the dose adding ostentatiously since the captain was standing by, a little sulphate of zinc to show him that my knowledge of materia medica was practically unlimited. ‘ “The value of this prescription,” I remarked to the captain, “is self-evident . . . the dysentery, disgusted with the angry contention, makes haste to quit.” It turned out


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as I expected, partly. The dysentery took its departure, but, worse luck, so did the boy.’ As time passed he became a little more responsible and sober in his approach and concocted a special gutwrenching remedy to discourage malingerers. But the ill-treatment of the Kanakas was endemic and finally it sickened the young reporter and he took refuge in seamanship. ‘I find steering exhilarating’, he wrote, ‘especially if it happens to be night time and our skipper is light-hearted. ‘He then jaunts up and down the poop, his trousers hitched up to his armpits, and suddenly trills out this charming verse from the few in his repertoire: “For we live in unitigh, And Beelzebub is nigh, So it’s come and join this Hallelujah band.”

‘And the tremolo on the “band” is hardly finished when I am startled with a brisk, “Where the devil are you going to, man?” and looking at the compass I find the needle three points away’. The exhilaration, however, did not derive from any special competence. ‘On the 7th’, he said, ‘I went to relieve the wheel at breakfast, a heavy sea running at the time and the mate being on duty at the poop’. I got on all right for some time but presently was considerably interested to see a mountainous wave bearing down upon us and threatening to engulf the schooner. The mate, greatly excited, screeched out, ‘Look out, look out. Take care, take ca . . .’ but ere another word had time to leave his lips his lanky


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form was seen sprawling in the lee scuppers . . . and when the order was given, not knowing how to obey it, I did what one should always do in similar cases—let the vessel go ahead and trust to providence. The wave hurled itself against our broadside, broke and drenched with spray everyone on the main deck; the captain’s shells were tossed overboard, the water casks sent rolling, the government agent dashed against the skylight, Jimmie bumped out of his bunk, the cook sent flying across the cabin like an acrobat and a combined yell came up from the hold as the boys thought the schooner was capsized. The after roll dashed the starboard boat into the water with great violence and shook the vessel from stem to stern. I was secretly admiring the success of my exploit when the red face of our skipper appeared above the skylight wanting to know who the devil—the captain is fond of invoking the aid of his guardian deity—was trying to shake the mast out of his ship. He saw me and his face assumed a pitying expression of disgust at my ignorance, but I returned a look of such benignant self-satisfaction that he did no more than express his feelings in doubtful language and give prompt orders for my removal.

When they reached Lakono, Morrison joined the boat party to go ashore with one of the returning natives. A French schooner had been there recently and kidnapped seven men, so there was tension in the air. Morrison was introduced to the chief, who was wearing a long black coat and whose hair was cut into the shape of a jester’s cap. The man was suffering from a sore chest. The young reporter took him aboard the boat and gave him some


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medicine. There they had a ‘decoy’ Kanaka who urged his compatriots to follow. The chief took flight, but they ‘recruited’ six others in spite of the efforts of their fellows on shore and in the shallows to persuade them to leap over the side. Then they island hopped, returning their human cargo and enticing as many newcomers as possible to replace them. The dangers to the blackbirders included not just the reefs and rocky headlands to be negotiated but the islanders’ well-developed taste for human flesh. At Aoba, an island notorious for its cannibalism, the boats stood off the beach and tried to recruit the young men with promises of cash. But again the French had been before them and, as Morrison wrote, ‘an islander decoyed to Noumea has a harder lot than his brother in Queensland. He is set to work in the nickel mines, he is badly paid and poorly fed; indeed his condition is a bad form of slavery. A Noumea schooner cannot get boys except by kidnapping them and by representing herself to be in the Queensland labour trade’. He provided an extraordinary insight into the level of exploitation. ‘When a boy is near home’, he wrote, ‘the [gun] powder which for safety was taken away from him at the commencement of this voyage is returned to him, so that he may have time to pack it away neatly in his box’. The box and his firearms are the fruit of his three years engagement in Queensland and have cost every penny of the eighteen sovereigns which he has received at the end of his time. First with his money he buys a rifle, either Snider or


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Spencer, for £2 10s or £3 10s and two muskets—old disused Tower weapons—which cost him £1; and lays in a stock of powder, the quantity varying according to the execution he intends among his natural enemies, the men of the bush—that is, island inhabitants as opposed to dwellers by the sea. A hundred or two cartridges he gets for his rifle and shot and caps [for the muskets]. Next he spends a good deal on pipes and tobacco and matches. The balance goes in purchasing a blanket, calico, gaudy handkerchiefs, a looking glass, scent, knives, tomahawks, an axe or two, a saw, a file, scissors, perhaps a pot or pan, a fishing line and hooks and other things he thinks will be of service to him. If he is musically inclined he will spend a pound or two on hurdy gurdy, if more than usually domesticated he will bring home a kettle, a frying pan, a bucket and such like. Last of all he gets an outfit according to his taste in which to go ashore and excite the admiration of his friends. One remarkably ugly little fellow had on a very high belltopper with a long puggaree; another was fitted out with a brilliant scarlet and gold military jacket with all kinds of flaps and pockets while his head was crowned with a black and gold smoking cap. His money must have abruptly run out for here his clothing stopped and his legs were seen as nature made them.

In a detailed manner that would become typical of Morrison the mature reporter he counted and listed every firearm in the possession of the men returned during the voyage and concluded, ‘They spent on offensive weapons exactly £730, or £10 a head out of the £18 each had earned for his three years labour’. His interest in the missionary service, which would


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become so central to his experience in China, was piqued during this voyage. At first, when he visited Aneiteum, the southernmost island of the New Hebrides, he was enthusiastic. ‘Aneiteum is the only island in the South Seas’, he wrote, ‘where the complete Bible has been given to the natives in their own tongue’. For the main portion they are indebted to the labour of Dr Geddie, the Rev. Messrs Copeland and Inglis completing the task. The natives can also read in their own language the Pilgrim’s Progress and the Westminster Catechism, both, I understand, translated by Mrs Geddie. Nearby Little Amiva with its 160 inhabitants has been the field of labour of the Rev. J. Paton for sixteen years. I am under the impression that a more delightful home for a missionary lies not under heaven.

However, he was quickly disabused of his tranquil vision. The ship passed Erromange where he discovered that the Reverend John Williams and his assistant Mr Harris were murdered by treacherous natives whom they were trying to civilise. They were succeeded by the Reverend Mr Gordon, who was ‘brutally butchered’, while his brother, who came to bring the body home, suffered a similar fate. By the time they reached Amboym, halfway into the voyage, Morrison had secured a permanent place in the recruiting boat, otherwise rowed by natives. They sailed and rowed near to the shore and a single boy presented himself. He was quickly taken aboard. Shortly after, an old man appeared and by his ‘jabbering’ made it clear he wanted to be paid for the boy. ‘With considerable dexterity our recruiter manages to hand this fellow a trade


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musket, two tins of powder, a box of caps, a pipe and tobacco, and he seems well pleased’, he wrote. ‘Another boy now scrambles into the boat and is paid for at the same rate. A third, with a slight limp in his walk, calls us further down the coast and him we also succeed in getting into the boat, though not without difficulty. An axe and a couple of tomahawks pay for him. No others coming forward, we make sail again and continue round the coast.’ Coasting along Mallicolo on 22 August they dropped anchor, filled their water casks and put one of the returnees ashore. ‘The chattering and jumping, the laughing and excitement when he was seen by those on shore was indescribable’, he said. ‘His box was well filled but judging from the little I saw I should think a fortnight would see all the contents cadged out of him.’ They visited only one other island as a possible source of recruits and there they came under rifle fire, but the shooting was so far off it presented no danger. Then there remained only Santo Island, where three returnees were to be dropped off, and then they could head for home. One of the threesome was ‘Piggy-pig’. Morrison wrote: ‘I think every white man on board gave him some little present or other, he was such a bright, cheery little fellow’. The three were dressed in the height of island fashion—Piggy had an enormous pair of heavy boots in which he clumped about in a manner curious to see. Our boat took them and their boxes to the place indicated where some fifty of their friends were ready to receive them, a large proportion being women. The latter had their hair cropped close to the head all but a strip down the middle. In some it looked well; in a maiden


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of sixteen or seventeen who came tripping over the stones with a bunch of bananas it looked simply bewitching. Piggy amused us by his actions. He was most important. Opening his box with great pomp, he gave a bright yellow umbrella to an old man and his old musket to a brother. He then took his Snider, loaded it and, striking an attitude, fired it off. At this, all with muskets made the same ridiculous figure and fired at the cliff, I suppose as a welcome. But if they heard the shots on our schooner they would have been frightened, for not far from here the natives massacred the mate and Government Agent and two of the boat’s crew of the F iji vessel Isabelle and also killed Lieutenant Luchkraft of the Cormorant who was in charge of the landing party sent to inquire into it.

That evening the captain decided to return to the island on a final recruiting expedition and Morrison was ordered from his bunk. He tends to understate the danger so we may believe that the incident that followed could easily have turned very nasty. When they reached the shore, in almost the same place and time that the Isabelle massacre had taken place, ‘We backed in and the men came around us’, he says. ‘It was a bold thing for us to do; I did a bolder, a more foolish if you will.’ I went ashore among the natives, unarmed and alone and walked up to where the women were and tried to get the one pointed out to come to the boat. One ugly fellow with a long knife like an executioner’s, kept always close to me. I watched him carefully; he was an uncomfortable sort of fellow to have beside you in the dark.


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Since anything more rash could hardly be done the skipper called me to take my place in the boat. I did. He had got frightened. He threw a handful of tobacco among the crowd and while they jostled for it we pulled out. I believe we were lucky getting away as we did.

Then as in a dream that night he hears the call, ‘We’re homeward now’. I got up. It was, as I heard, at a quarter past two, the yards had been squared, the course southwest by west set and the injunction given, ‘Keep straight now; that course is to take us home’. Our run to Queensland was rapid. On 8 September the schooner lay snugly at the bank she had left just one hundred days before. The boys fetched £16 a head. The captain was satisfied, the crew were satisfied, the owners were satisfied— what more could one wish?

Once free of the slaver’s milieu, however, Morrison’s sense of fair play and the values of college and home reasserted themselves. He wrote a very long letter to The Age condemning the trade as ‘an accursed thing’ and branded the recruiting as criminal fraud against the men and women of the islands. The recruiters, he said, use corrupt native ‘beachcombers’ to spread tales of riches awaiting the island men on the mainland. Once enticed aboard the whaleboat and rowed to the schooner, the only way out is to leap overboard. At such a time, he said, ‘the watch will vie with each other in the sport of shooting him’. There is no suggestion that this took place on his own vessel, but there can be little doubt from other accounts that it was not unknown.2


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His most graphic condemnation was reserved for the use made of the island women, ‘whose presence aboard turns a ship into a “brothel” and whose experience on the mainland almost invariably transformed a pretty, chaste girl into a diseased hag within the three years ashore’. The controversy raged for some months with the Reverend John Paton, a former missionary in the South Seas, taking up the cudgels on his behalf. David Syme excused Morrison his relatively gentle treatment of the slavers in the first-hand account. Indeed, in an editorial he made a virtue of Morrison’s reticence to condemn in the wild flush of passion but to wait until a more mature perspective could be brought to bear. However, once roused, the older man saw Morrison as the light shining upon a vile malefaction and he called on God ‘to send down the fire of heaven to consume the slavers and their ilk’. The young reporter, for his part, was satisfied that he had made his point. It was time to move on.


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FOLLOWING BURKE AND WILLS

In August 1860, two years before Morrison’s birth, Robert O’Hara Burke left Melbourne at the head of a massive expedition to cross the continent from south to north. Sponsored by the Royal Society of Victoria, the venture wanted for nothing. There were wild scenes as Melburnians farewelled the 15 officers and men with their 25 camels, imported cameleers, horses and wagons, abundant food for two years and lavish equipment, including six tons of firewood and 45 yards of green gossamer for veils to keep off the flies. It was a tragi-comedy of errors. By the time they had reached the Barcoo River, about halfway to their goal, Burke had decided to make the rest of the trip with only the malleable William John Wills, Charles Gray and John King as his companions. The four reached the boggy area 44


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fringing the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Normanton district in February 1861, but found it impenetrable and turned back. Gray died of exhaustion and privation on the return journey. And when the three survivors reached the Barcoo camp they found it deserted—not knowing that the rear party had pulled out that morning. Burke and King made for Adelaide and left Wills behind. Burke perished from exhaustion only two days out and on King’s return to camp he found Wills dead. Only then did John King accept the help of friendly Aboriginals, who easily survived off the land and who had watched the white men in wonderment. The story of the trek—with its needless tragedy— touched a chord in the developing Australian character and it was endlessly discussed in the milieu in which young Morrison grew to manhood. It fired in him an almost obsessive need to pit himself against the same challenge, but this time alone, on foot and with only the stores and equipment he could carry in his swag. When he returned from his South Pacific exposé, he boarded the Ranelagh for the Palmer River in the Gulf of Carpentaria. But after a shipwreck and a detour to Port Moresby, a hazardous voyage on a Chinese junk around the northern coastline and an adventurous stopover on Thursday Island, he finally reached Normanton in December 1882. He was 20 years old. ‘At Normanton when I confided my intention of strolling overland to Melbourne’, he wrote later, ‘people professed to think me mad. “How reckless,” said one. “No chance,” said another. “It’s suicide,” added a third. The elderly lady at the hotel grew eloquent at the dangers


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awaiting me. She was no cur, she assured me, but she wouldn’t be game to tackle such a walk. Fearing an attack of nervousness I hurried out of Normanton’. In fact, he went 24 kilometres before seeing his first fellow human— a group of five horse teamsters carrying wool and other produce out of the area. He had no sooner reached them than rain pelted down and there they remained for two days. ‘As the next house was seventy-five miles away I just had to wait patiently.’ However, on Friday, 22 December, Morrison spied a break in the clouds and left the more cautious teamsters behind. ‘I was thirty miles on my way before it came on to rain again’, he said. The teams hesitated and have been there ever since, I fancy. This long stage is much dreaded by the carriers. It lies through country lightly timbered with the gutta-percha trees, the bastard box and the coolibah, a district said to swarm with Blacks and annually subject to inundation. When I was halfway through there came on a violent tempest of wind and rain. The track became a bog and the knapsack got so sodden with water that I groaned under its weight. It was not safe to rest. The accounts I had heard of the track when flooded made me tremble to sit down; so I wearily struggled on through water and mud up to my knees, forgetting the dangers of this dismal, gloomy country in the fatigue of walking. Suddenly the wind died away, the sun shone out through the clouds, the rain stopped and in a little while I came to where no rain had fallen at all. It had been merely a local storm. The following morning I came to two huts and a stockyard, the cattle station of Veno Park. Two stages of


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twenty-five miles each through a country whose monotonous flatness is occasionally relieved by richly wooded sandhills bring you to a public house.

And there he rested. But only briefly. He was now on the immense plain that stretches to the Flinders River and it was important to get beyond it before the floods arrived. ‘Carriers tell me it rises 30 feet’, he said, ‘and I can well believe it. The high gums on the banks of the Flinders have drift timber in their very topmost branches’. Again, however, he had company. ‘I had a mate who sought to accompany me out of nervousness. He was mounted on a poor wretched moke which had a fistula between its shoulders that was sickening to see. Yet he was very proud of his horse and was quite disgusted because the only bid he could get for horse, saddle and bridle when he put him up for sale was ten shillings. His only fault in the eyes of his owner was that he was not a mare.’ The unnamed old codger was the first of many bush characters the young man encountered on the trek and Morrison clearly delighted in their eccentricities, at least in retrospect. ‘When buying flour for myself and my mate’, he wrote, ‘I asked him how much we should require. “Six pound,” he replied. “Surely,” said I, “six pound of flour will not be enough for you and me for three days”—we were eighty-one miles from the next house—but he begged of me to trust him for that. Borrowing the loan of the kitchen, he baked a damper of the weight and hardness of a stone. We had no knife strong enough to cut it!’ But there was also a sombre side to the district—the treatment of the local Aboriginal people. ‘The wretched


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Blacks are shot without mercy’, he wrote in an article for The Age. ‘One night I was at a station whose owner is said to have shot more Blacks than any two men in Queensland, when the mailman came in and reported that he had seen a Black prowling about the stockyard. ‘Loading his rifle, Mr— at once sallied out after him, but came back in an hour quite disappointed that, though he could pick up the tracks by the stockyard, it was too dark to follow them.’ It was not his only encounter with the ‘frontier’ attitudes of the white settlers to the Aboriginal people. On other occasions he exchanged friendly words with Aboriginal groups he met along the track and on one occasion he teamed up with a black man who regaled him with great tales of adventure in distant lands. Parts of western Queensland at the time were engaged in an undeclared war on the original inhabitants, but Morrison was never threatened by them and never sought to do them harm. In contrast to his journey with the slavers of the South Seas, his preferred role was that of the meticulous observer. He was more worried about native creatures of reptilian persuasion. ‘Alligators are said to swarm in Spear Creek, as the Norman River is called above Normanton’, he wrote. ‘I hesitate to give the dimensions of the largest that has been seen.’ He was not so coy, however, when it came to snakes. I killed several Mulga snakes—a finely marked brown snake nearly six feet in length. When I was at the headwaters of the Diamantina a Black passed me trailing after him a snake nine feet six inches long and as thick as a cable. It is a kind of rock python which often attains a length of 12 or 15 feet.


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The Black would have me to believe that it was not deadly. It is a man’s duty to kill every snake he can. I have killed the brown snake, the tiger snake, the poor harmless carpet snake and a black snake with a blue belly. There were many I had no means of identifying, not the least interesting being an active little fellow which was disturbed by my coming and commenced to wriggle about in a most fantastic way. Just as I turned for a stick it made one spring off the track and vanished down a hole not large enough to introduce your two smallest fingers.

Then with a rueful grin he notes, ‘Many anecdotes of snakes were told me. People so unkindly take advantage of one’s credulous inexperience’. They also took advantage of his good nature. The most precious commodity on the journey was water and on one occasion early in the trek he was approached by a mailman and another rider while camped for lunch. ‘Both were well mounted and driving packhorses’, he wrote. ‘It was a hot sultry thirsty day and I had a larger stock of water than usual, having filled my two-quart billy as well as my water bag. These men asked me for a drink and before I could stop them they had emptied my billy of all but a cupful though they were within two miles of water on horseback while I was over twenty-eight from it on foot. ‘I made it a rule of my walk never to ask or accept a drink from any traveller whether on foot or horseback. It gave me satisfaction to be independent even in this.’ He frequently wrote home and the early bravado of his departure from Normanton gradually gave way to a firm self confidence. ‘You must not think it a mad idea’, he told his mother after several weeks on the track. ‘The


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experience I have gained in former trips has been of great use to me.’ He painted the best possible picture to a clearly concerned parent in Geelong. ‘I am enjoying splendid health and am as free as a lark. On my back I carry a warm blanket, a large oilcloth, a light hammock, four pairs of socks, white duck trousers, pair of shoes, three handkerchiefs, two shirts, suit of pyjamas, two or three books, soap, toothbrush, a billy, a quartpot and pannikin and a waterbag and tucker.’ His routine was relaxed and agreeable, he told his mother. ‘I camp as soon as hungry and live as happy as the day is long. For breakfast I usually have two quarts of tea, beef and johnny cake and occasionally a pint of American apples. About 11, I camp to make myself a cup of cocoa. At dinner I usually can have three courses viz beef tea, beef and potatoes and stewed apples, besides tea of course. And supper is about the same. ‘When I get to a town, people come to look at me as if I were a gorilla.’ In fact the going was much tougher than he admitted. In his journal he recorded a bout of sunstroke. It followed an encounter with a townsman who drew him a map to reach a hut about 160 kilometres distant. ‘I keep it as a curiosity’, he says. ‘A distance of nine miles was made to appear twice as long as one of twelve miles, a trifling inaccuracy which caused me unnecessary anxiety and torture.’ The first night I could not sleep from fear that I had taken a wrong turning. In the morning I started to go thirty-five miles without knowing whether there was water on the track or even water where I was making to. My waterbag holds two quarts and a half, but the day was so hot that by midday


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although I had hardly wet my mouth, the water was all evaporated. Still I kept moving, but at half past four I just knocked up. It came upon me suddenly—without any warning I was seized with an irresistible desire to take off all my clothes. I had no wish in the world but to lie down. I camped under a tree. The anxiety of mind, for it was but a chance that water was within thirteen miles of me, added to my thirst and I suffered torments. All through the night I lay naked on my back, my tongue contracted to a point, my body hot and feverish, my brain reeling. Just as day dawned I staggered to my feet, but which way was I to turn, to the right or the left? In a brief intermission of my confusion I recollected that I had turned off to the tree to the right; but during the night I had got my head where my feet should have been and I actually tried to pick up the tracks by walking away from it. But Providence watched over me and set me on my way. I was so dazed that the track became more blurred and indistinct every minute. A wide plain now stretched before me and a belt of timber at its furthest end gave me hope. I reached the creek and threw down my knapsack and followed up and down the sandy bed for a weary distance, but it was as dry as the Sahara. On again and another plain with another belt of timber was to cheer or disappoint me. The creek was drier looking and sandier than the first one. I was throwing myself down in despair when my eyes lit on a beautiful pool of water under the shade of a weeping ti-tree. The reaction quite unnerved me. I rested and drank all day.

On 4 February when Morrison took time out at Maneroo Station near Muttaburra to write to his mother again, the


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incident which could so easily have ended tragically was banished from thought. ‘It is a Sunday’, he said, ‘and I am taking a rest in the most comfortable quarters that it has yet been my lot to fall into and I fell into them by curious luck’. He had camped near the station homestead, washed his clothes in the creek and was just preparing his midday meal when a rider came up and after a chat asked Morrison’s name. ‘I hesitated and said Morrison. He at once knew me and told me that his name was A.G. Love, a relation of Rev Andrew—deceased alas!—and he jabbered away till I was quite exasperated with myself for mentioning my name. I was so hungry I was glad when he left me.’ But he was not gone long. A.G. Love went straight to the property’s owner, Kennedy, and his manager soon returned with an invitation to dinner. Happily, young Morrison had a clean outfit and he was soon being entertained royally by the owner, ‘an educated English gentleman’ and a visitor to the station, Charlie Fairbairn, whose own holdings were immense. It made for a pleasant interlude, but Morrison’s single-mindedness would brook no compromise. ‘They intend to keep me here a week’, he wrote, ‘but I shall be on my way again tomorrow as time presses’. Nor did he mention to his host that it was his 21st birthday. This development of single-minded independence runs in a clear and growing stream throughout the journey. There is a note of triumph in the article he wrote for The Age when he says: At Thargomindah I had laid in such a supply of flour and beef that for seventy-five miles I was absolutely independent


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of everyone. Timber and water were abundant. By this time I had trained myself to do with very little water. I could walk twenty-five miles without wetting my lips. The Corellas flock to water at sundown, the thirsty traveller need but be guided by them and he will infallibly be brought to water . . . When I decided to camp I spread the oilcloth and having lit a fire put on my salt beef to boil in the billy. By the time it was done and the quart pot of tea made, I had a johnny cake or flapjack ready for cooking on the raked out coals.

There were times when the journey seemed endless. In western New South Wales the landscape ‘seemed the very incarnation of dreary desolation’, he said. ‘The days were very, very lonely. Weak, fagged and badly in need of a spell, I could not rest until I reached Wilcannia.’ There at the telegraph station he was able to wire home for more funds and when they arrived two days later his spirits lifted. He shouted himself two nights in a hotel. Refreshed and eager for the track he then set off through hundreds of kilometres of saltbush before reaching mallee, mulga and sandalwood country. ‘I travelled now very rapidly’, he said. ‘After Hay I passed through Deniliquin, Rochester, Elmore and Heathcote, while in my own colony [of Victoria] it was a perfect picnic. Instead of immense tracts of country owned by one man, and given up to sheep, there were a succession of beautiful farms, each with its haystack, its neat cottage, its substantial fence and its scene of vigorous activity. ‘Ploughing was in full swing, clearing and grubbing, beautiful hilly country exceedingly fertile and supporting so excellent a type of people pleased me beyond measure.’


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He arrived in Melbourne on 21 April 1883, exactly four months after setting out from the northern rim of the continent. And like any good reporter, he held back one surprising little fact for a footnote: ‘I travelled 1700 miles through the interior of Australia without seeing a kangaroo’. In Reminiscences he says, ‘My journey was accomplished without difficulty other than that involved in constant physical exertion. If nothing else, my walk proved how great had been the progress of colonisation in the interior during the twenty-one years that had elapsed since the Burke and Wills party met with its disasters’. The entire trip covered 2034 miles or 3254 kilometres in 123 days and when the account appeared in The Age the whole country marvelled at it. Letter writers praised his ‘dauntless courage’ and ‘invincible determination’. Somewhat more prophetically, The Times of London said, ‘Mr Morrison’s feat commands the admiration of all interested in exploration and must be set down as one of the most remarkable of pedestrian achievements’. However, the praise was not universal. The rival Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, attacked not just his journey but his earlier exposé of the slavers. ‘For some time past’, it editorialised, ‘the accredited exponent of radical opinion in Melbourne [The Age] has devoted a good deal of pains to the task of showing that Queensland sanctions a wholesale system of murder and man stealing under the guise of the Polynesian labour traffic. ‘To prove its assertions it relies chiefly on the authority of a young gentleman who has recently acquired some transient notoriety by performing the curious and


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purposeless feat of walking as a swagman from Carpentaria to Melbourne and who had previously gratified his love of adventure by taking some trips to the South Seas in labour vessels’. David Syme defended him in print and paid him £4 10s for his article; but more importantly it inspired the newspaperman to engage the young reporter for an expedition worthy of H.M. Stanley himself—a crossing of Papua New Guinea from south to north. It was Morrison’s idea, conceived in the brief stint there en route to Normanton. But as New Guinea was much in the news at the time, Syme embraced it wholeheartedly and awarded the 21 year old with leadership of the wild endeavour and the grandiloquent title of Special Commissioner of the Melbourne Age. The appointment did not involve any actual payment, though no doubt Morrison would be well rewarded for his accounts. But payment was of no consequence to the reporter. ‘I was young and inexperienced and ardent’, he wrote later. ‘I cared nothing for money. I had a firm belief in my own future.’ When word of the expedition reached the editorial floor of The Argus, the mouthpiece of the conservatives would not be outdone. They announced their own expedition under the leadership of one Captain William Armit whose claims to a scientific background—and even a captaincy in the Queensland police force—were dubious at best. But the gauntlet was cast down and no one was more eager to pick it up than George Ernest Morrison. After walking across Australia, he was ready for anything.


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NEW GUINEA DISASTER

It was a grande folie and one that could so easily have been fatal to the young reporter. For all his undoubted courage, physical stamina and mental toughness, Ernest Morrison had barely attained his majority when David Syme entrusted him with leadership of the New Guinea expedition. He would later write of the hubris that had led him to accept the commission. ‘I could not believe in the possibility of my failing, and against the advice of my friends I accepted a responsibility for which I was unfitted. My journey was ill-conceived and ill-prepared.’ Ill-conceived it certainly was—and for that the older and more experienced Syme must take much of the blame—but at the time Morrison did all he could to prepare for the hazards of the ‘Last Unknown’, as New 57


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Guinea was dubbed by historian Gavin Souter. Indeed, the young explorer seems almost to have anticipated the fabled William Boot in Evelyn Waugh’s classic Scoop in outfitting himself for the rigours awaiting in the Dark Continent. Boot, it will be remembered, in a single afternoon acquired ‘a rather over-furnished tent, three months rations, a collapsible canoe, a jointed flagstaff and Union Jack, a hand-pump and sterilising plant, an astrolabe, six suits of tropical linen and a sou’wester, a camp operating table and set of surgical instruments, a portable humidor guaranteed to preserve cigars in condition in the Red Sea and a Christmas hamper complete with Santa Claus costume and a tripod mistletoe stand, and a cane for whacking snakes’. The parsimonious Syme was no Lord Cooper of The Beast. In an early fit of generosity he told Morrison not to economise on men or equipment if the safety and success of the expedition were at stake, but the reporter’s response so startled him that he immediately regretted it. His ‘Special Commissioner’ quickly acquired 400 pounds of salt, 200 of sugar, 450 of meat, a side of bacon, six tins of meat extract, six bottles of pickles, 60 pounds of tea, eight tins of coffee,12 tins of milk, a dozen bottles of Lea & Perrins sauce, 250 pounds of flour, six tins of baking powder, 42 pounds of oatmeal, 30 pounds of maize, 40 pounds of his beloved apples and a dozen tins of biscuits . . . tomahawks, books, writing material, great quantities of tobacco, until the total reached a massive four tons of stores which he had loaded aboard a lugger for shipment to the infant settlement of Port Moresby. And as he approached the mysterious island which hovered on the map like some giant bird of paradise over


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the Australian continent his purchases betrayed an increasingly diplomatic state of mind. In Cooktown, for example, Morrison bought vast quantities of ‘trade’ for the natives—in a shopping expedition he stocked up with 81 pounds of beads, 88 yards of cloth, a dozen magnifying glasses, Jew Harps, whistles, files, 500 mirrors, half a dozen mouth organs, three dozen lockets, a gross of necklets and no fewer than 14 dozen butchers knives! Thereafter, Syme and his managers fought a rearguard action against Morrison’s extravagance. But the horse had bolted. In fact, when it came to horses he excelled himself, appropriating fifteen cantankerous beasts left behind by gold prospectors in the grounds of the Port Moresby mission station. The missionaries were not pleased. But then, Morrison was not impressed with them either. ‘The behaviour of Mr Lawes causes me the greatest disgust’, he wrote in a letter to his mother. ‘It is charitable to assume he is half-witted.’ Of his colleague, Chalmers, he could only credit him with a better head for liquor than Saint George, the Cooktown police magistrate ‘[who] is over here on a visit, chiefly I think to aid in drinking the missionary spirits’. The horses brought him grief when one of them objected to being used as a pack animal and, as he reported home in a telegram, ‘ran about, smashed packs [and] rushed a mare’. Morrison was forced, he said, to put the beast down by rifle shot. Whereupon ‘drunken missionaries exaggerated trifling act of necessity into dastardly crime . . . threatening to set natives on to me’. His only consolation was that he had denied the horses to the rival Argus expedition led by the ‘drunken


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scamp’ W.E. Armit ‘who was twice discharged from the government service for drunkenness and misbehaviour’. Warming to his theme, he told Rebecca Morrison, ‘He has more than twice abandoned his wife to shift for herself. He is thirty-five years of age, an incessant talker with a bullying, boastful manner that is very disgusting. He has all the requisites for engaging in the beche de mer trade’. Also, he notes, ‘it was Armit’s brother who wrote that book of fictitious narrative entitled Wanderings in New Guinea by Captain Lawson’. In his seminal work New Guinea: The Last Unknown, Gavin Souter notes that Wanderings appeared eight years earlier in 1875 under the imprint of the respectable London publishers, Chapman & Hall. It had raised enormous interest in the country and was therefore indirectly responsible for Morrison’s presence there. As the reporter claimed, it was indeed a ‘fictitious’ narrative though at the time there were many who believed in the marvels it recorded. In only seven months, Souter reveals, ‘Captain Lawson’ seemed to have made more discoveries than any other explorer of his time. These included a waterfall larger than Niagara and a mountain more than 1000 metres higher than Mt Everest, which he named Mt Hercules. ‘The new species of plant and animal life that he found in the interior were no less remarkable’, Souter says. ‘Daisies the size of sunflowers, spiders as big as dinner plates, scorpions 10 inches [25 cm] long . . . deer with long manes of silky hair, an ox resembling an American bison, huge apes repulsive in feature yet human-like to an extraordinary degree, a tree measuring 84 feet [32 metres] around the bole and a striped feline


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larger and more handsomely striped than the Indian tiger.’ While there were limits to public credulity, shady entrepreneurs and enthusiastic ‘adventurers’ plied a nice trade in investment schemes to penetrate the interior and plunder the treasures that undoubtedly awaited the stout of heart. Indeed, the British Colonial Office was more than once forced to discourage ‘settlement’ plans by commercial British and Queensland groups with threats of naval interdiction. Little wonder that Morrison’s erstwhile companions in Port Moresby found surcease from their nervousness in strong liquor. His own men caused the young expeditionary serious concerns. He had engaged them in Cooktown and at the time was delighted to report home that ‘they were most highly recommended by . . . Saint George the police magistrate’ before the saintly veil of sobriety had been torn asunder. He took photographs of the two white men of the party, Edmund ‘Ned’ Snow and John Wheeler Lyons, and sent them home with a description of Ned Snow as ‘remarkably short and of such eccentric conformation that, whereas his body seemed longer than his legs, his head appeared more lengthy than either’. Snow was a prospector who at 42 had not yet found his mother lode and, according to Morrison, ‘volunteered to go with me for nothing’. John Lyons by contrast was a much taller man, ‘very wiry, twenty-six years of age and by repute one of the best bushmen in the north’. Indeed, Lyons had sacrificed £12 a month with everything found as a station hand to accompany the young journalist on his mission of exploration.


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As it turned out, Lyons in particular would be a fortuitous choice. However, two others—a Malay named Cheerful, later revealed to be an opium smoker and ‘an incarnate devil’, and a Tanna man called Lively, though ‘highly recommended’ by the same source—proved ‘curious customers’. Shortly after they reached New Guinea Morrison let them go and engaged two locals, nicknamed Dick and Bosun, to take their place. There followed a frantic effort to get the expedition moving into the interior ahead of the Argus group, who were only a week behind them. ‘My telegrams should be in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald a full week before [Armit’s] and my letters also’, Morrison wrote in his diary. Moreover, he was confident that his capacity to repel native attack was fully secured. ‘My party is splendidly equipped for defence—it has three six-chambered revolvers, one Winchester repeating rifle, three Sniders and two double-barrelled guns.’ Indeed, he was prepared for a very long trek into the mysterious interior and sought to reassure Rebecca in a telegram: ‘I shall be away months, perhaps a year or over. Must make good attempt. Everything promises success. Apprehend no danger. Wonderful good fortune to secure two such excellent white men. All enthusiastic about trip. Trust all well and no needless anxiety. Love Geo E. Morrison, New Guinea’. In truth, the situation at the camp was somewhat more fractious than the dutiful son had intimated to his mother. The missionaries kept pestering him about the ownership of the horses with such various and exasperating claims that he finally confided to his diary, ‘I am going to take the horses fair means or foul. There is no


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law over here and should Mr St George endeavour to speak I am just in the right temper to punch his head!’ By now he envisioned the expedition taking a full 18 months. ‘There is a pretty stiff hill just behind us but once we are over it we shall be all right I think.’ And he reassured himself that ‘In taking the horses we have done a perfectly legal action. The Argus party could have taken them if we hadn’t and they still suspect that we shall send them back. But not a horse shall return if we can help it’. He only had thoughts for the future. ‘I have the opportunity of making a name for myself. I trust in God that I shall be able to avail myself of it.’ Like Stanley, he expected the jungle to close over him for months on end before word of his remarkable deeds reached civilisation. ‘Syme will be very much disgusted, but we are going where there is absolutely no means of communication’, he said. In fact David Syme was already becoming agitated as his young Special Commissioner was totally engrossed in his preparations while The Argus’s Captain Armit was chronicling his advance on Moresby and ‘beating him all round’. Morrison’s silence, he cabled, was ‘inexplicable’ and he demanded a letter ‘by special messenger’. Alas, it was not forthcoming. By now Morrison had engaged no fewer than 20 men and boys to carry the equipment, three native women to assist at the campsites, a turncoat from the Argus expedition, George Belford, and two other Europeans, Frank Wilkinson and Mr Chalmers himself, who had spent six years in the area and was a fund of tall tales and true. An added urgency was provided by the way Morrison’s ‘trade’ goods were disappearing as the natives helped themselves.


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At 8 a.m. on 11 July, to the strains of a popular song, ‘The Vagabond’, the expedition plunged into the bush and, as he later wrote: We fall into marching order and strike out for the Vavimana Hills where we turned to admire Mt Owen Stanley whose lofty peak rises through clouds to 13,205ft. After a few minutes rest and another start we descend into the valley and come to a nice shady spot. Here, without any apparent cause, our followers seat themselves under a tree and I learn from Mr Chalmers that at this place they always have a smoke and take leave of their relatives and friends who, by the way, have accompanied us this far in force.

This was a far cry from the usual Morrison regime and he fretted at the wasted time. ‘In the midst of a soliloquy as to what I would do I am pulled up short [by Chalmers].’ But he quickly learned that the terrain made very different demands on the tramper than that in central Australia. ‘We arrive at the River Laroki which we find much swollen; in fact, without the aid of rafts, impassable. ‘This being the case, a vacuum in the inner man making itself felt, and some kangaroo having been shot, we decide on tiffin.’ Rarely if ever had such a British description been applied to the fare provided by ‘Granny and her two handmaids’. The kangaroos were butchered and spiced into ‘a savoury mess’ together with tea and rice for the natives. But Morrison was undeterred. ‘Having consoled the inner man, we set about making rafts and after an hour’s work have the pleasure of seeing two afloat.’ There were no issues of modesty. ‘We strip’, he wrote,


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‘and now the mosquitoes, who have hitherto only shown themselves hungry, appear as regular gluttons. The best way to foil them is to take to the water; so half of us push off one raft, half the other, then a struggle commences. The tide is running at a rate of knots and the raft is undoubtedly clumsy. However, we make the opposite shore some forty yards below, scramble up the bank, make fast our crafts, unload them, then proceed to adorn ourselves in the garb of civilisation’. Then came a precipitous climb to a village where they camped for the night, but the man carrying the tent was far behind and there was a torrential downpour. F inally the tent bearer arrived and the white men’s quarters were erected. ‘We set to and eat, I think I may say, a welldeserved meal after which pipes are lighted and under their soothing influence we forget our troubles and recount our feelings about the day’s work. We have travelled today sixteen miles in all, but such paths, such hills!’ The following days were even more exhausting and Morrison was greatly put out as his precious equipment was disappearing into the jungle as the bearers carried it off as booty. When they reached villages hoping for supplies of fresh vegetables they found them deserted and the sense of impending danger palpable. In a rash moment, Morrison gave chase to a native boy making off with one of the American tomahawks. The young man turned and threw the axe, which shaved Morrison’s leg; Morrison responded by overtaking and grappling with him. According to Lyons he ‘punched him in the head’ then for good measure he fired ‘a charge of small shot’ into his backside to discourage further pilfering.


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Chalmers in the lead took a wrong turning and they were forced to climb yet another mountain to resume their course. After another sleepless night ‘caused chiefly by fleas, ants and a small room half-filled with yams, a fire in the centre and the unpleasant proximity of one of the chief ’s servants whose leg has been badly bitten by an alligator, we were only too glad to see daylight and turn out’, he writes. He tries to enlist more bearers from the village to replace his deserters, but can tempt them only ‘with offers of large remuneration’. As they penetrated further inland the native population increased and each day they became bolder in their forays to acquire the ‘trade’. By now Snow had bailed out and Lyons and Wilkinson were sick with fever; Morrison himself had been unwell but had shaken it off. On 3 October, he set out from the campsite with much of the equipment and three natives with machetes to cut tracks for the horses through the jungle toward the next village. Slowly he became aware that he was being followed by 40 tribesmen, some of whom were carrying spears, others armed with bows and arrows. Then on signal they rushed the party and took off with much of the ‘trade’. Totally exasperated, Morrison fired his rifle and hit one of the offenders. Lyons later wrote, ‘[Morrison] came and told us what he had done and said he felt like a murderer. That afternoon there was great howling and crying among the savages. They collected from all the houses around and many brought spears which they stacked alongside a large house’. Next morning, despite the fever, Lyons and the others joined Morrison on the jungle trek. Then came a fateful visit from the tribal chief of the man Morrison wounded.


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‘His life is now despaired of ’, he reported, and the expedition must turn back. After only 38 days on the track Morrison would not hear of it. Even when they discovered a clear warning—crossed spears and a shield placed on the track before them—he refused to be diverted. Lyons was to the rear of the expedition, Morrison well ahead when, the former wrote, ‘I heard a most piercing scream after which a shot was fired’. He struggled through the high grass to find Morrison ‘stretched on his back and covered with blood from head to foot’. One spear was lodged near his eye, another protruded from his belly. Lyons was shocked. ‘I have seen a good few spear wounds in my time but never saw two in one man so close to vital parts and not to prove fatal.’ However, he said, Morrison’s first thoughts were not for his wounds: ‘Oh my poor dear Mother, the trouble I have caused you,’ he uttered, followed by, ‘What will Mr Syme say at my failure?’ In Reminiscences Morrison says: ‘One of [the spears] penetrated my stomach just under the chest and the other entered the hollow of my right eye and stuck in the bone at the bottom of the bridge of my nose. ‘At the moment I was struck I was raising my foot to step upon a bank a couple of feet in height that lay across the track, and instinctively as the spear sped towards me I threw my head back, overbalanced and fell to the ground. Had it not been for this I should surely have been killed . . . As soon as I fell I pulled out the spear which hung from the corner of my eye and directly I did so a torrent of blood rushed from my nose’. But he could not dislodge the spearhead from his face.


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Lyons proved a tower of strength to the wounded man. In a letter to Rebecca Morrison he described the horror that followed. ‘When he started vomiting large clots of blood the other men seemed frightened almost to death’, Lyons said. ‘They lent me no assistance whatever but wanted me to go and leave everything.’ Despite his fever Lyons unloaded the horses with the idea of somehow hoisting his leader on to one, but first he had to break off the second spear shaft, thus leaving the pointed tips behind in Morrison’s face and belly. To return the way they had come would have been ‘madness’, so he determined to cut across country to where a track led more directly to Port Moresby. ‘At last we made a start but he had to get off to vomit more blood. After a little while we went a little further and I gave him a drink of nice cold water; directly he did I thought he would have died, he suffered awful pain. ‘We kept on going, though very slow. We fell in with five natives at sundown and I got them to carry him a short distance in his blanket. The black boys had lost the other blanket so all your son laid on that night was a blanket but no covering. I had to shift him from side to side about every ten minutes. He could get no rest the way he lay but he bore bravely. Never once complaining.’ Next day they made good progress, but Lyons had to leave him with Wilkinson while he went ahead to find and cut a track. When he returned, Morrison told him his fellow traveller, clearly expecting he was about to die, had refused to get him a horse blanket from a mount tethered some yards away. And since he could not walk himself he had lain the night in the cold once again. ‘Your poor son was ill as ill could be’, Lyons said. ‘He ate nothing for


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eight days and getting like a shadow but he kept up bravely all the time.’ The wound in his mouth was becoming infected. The lower left part of his belly was swollen and bruised so he could barely walk. He was able to drink some coffee but soon his face became paralysed. ‘I never saw a better fellow to endure hardship’, Lyons wrote. ‘How he managed to sit a horse was something wonderful because at places it was like going up and down the side of a house.’ Morrison was consumed with the shame of having been bested by the Argus expedition. Lyons wrote: ‘His chief anxiety seemed to be what Mr Syme might say at his turning back’. In fact Captain Armit’s band was in little better condition. They had begun well with the leader glorying in the challenge: ‘I felt happy—perfectly happy and contented’, he wrote on his first evening in the bush, ‘for I was in New Guinea, the naturalist’s paradise. I dropped off instanter, and dreamt of paradise birds with plumage of rainbow hues and tails 10 yards long’. In his first dispatch he wrote, ‘These Papuans are no more savages than we are. I am actually beginning to love these Papuans, so much belied and yet so good’. However, his party soon succumbed to malaria and while Armit’s head was ‘opening and shutting’ with the dread fever, their leading scientific member Professor William Denton was fatally infected. The Papuans he so cared for rifled their supplies too and the remaining members of the party staggered back to Port Moresby on 3 September, a month before Morrison sustained his wounds. Meanwhile, Lyons attempted to lift the young journalist’s spirits. ‘I tried to cheer him up by telling him he


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had risked his life in the service of Mr Syme and he could expect no more from anyone.’ Indeed, he would later write unbidden to Syme on Morrison’s behalf. But for the moment his only concern was to get the young man back safely and by the ninth day Morrison’s left leg was becoming ‘fixed in a flexed position’ while his face became ever more infected. He was, however, beginning to take some liquid food—soup and a few wet biscuits—and on the eleventh day he actually shot a duck or two from which Lyons made a nutritious giblet stew. Frank Wilkinson and the rest of the party went ahead and alerted the authorities that the Morrison party had come to grief. He then sent a note back to the wounded man via the native Dick. ‘I have got an attack of the diarrhoea and cannot sit the horse, so forgive my not coming out’, he said. ‘I must tell you that Armit has not succeeded, having to turn back through sickness. He told Hunter that if you came into Port sick every attention would be shown you and once he told them to come out and look for us to see if all was right . . . Goodbye and God bless you until we meet. Love to Jack. Your sincere friend, Frank.’ F inally on 15 October Morrison was carried into Port Moresby on a blanket, the spear points still embedded behind the eye and through the abdomen. The faithful Lyons found great consolation in the fact that ‘we had the satisfaction of going 25 miles further than any white man and that over country that has never been reported on’. Moreover, it had not been his leader’s fault that they had come to grief. ‘I have not the slightest hesitation in saying if the party had been a larger one your son would have done what he had undertaken to do’, he told Rebecca


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Morrison. ‘That was the only fault he made—in taking too small a party. None but a very large party will penetrate very far inland in New Guinea.’ And the wounded man’s first outburst of concern for his mother was no passing show. ‘Your son slept very little for a long time and used to ramble in his sleep, say all sorts of things, but your name I would often hear. He is a young gentleman that any lady in the land might be proud to call son and I have no doubt at some future time he will make a brilliant name for himself. I wish him every sort of success for he has proved himself both physically and mentally a gentleman fit to travel anywhere. ‘I would never wish to travel with a more generous or humane gentleman for leader. I only done for your son what one white man would do for another. He thinks too much altogether for the little service I rendered him.’ This is unlikely. While Morrison had great difficulty coming to grips with the whole excruciating episode, he was never to forget Lyons’s ‘devotion’. He stayed in Port Moresby for more than two weeks, badly lamed and in great pain from the shafts embedded in his body and wedged at the back of his throat between the first and second cervical vertebrae. He drugged himself to sleep and awaited a boat to take him back to Melbourne for treatment. F inally he caught a small schooner, the Pride of the Logan, which took more than a week to reach Cooktown while he sweated out another fever attack. His leg was still ‘frozen’ in a flexed position and a Cooktown medico attempted to straighten it by sitting on it. The direct if unorthodox approach was temporarily effective, though desperately painful. But it would be a further three weeks before he reached


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Melbourne and in the steamer Warrego, five days out from Cooktown, he suddenly expelled a splinter of wood 2 cm long from his nose. ‘My voyage back to Melbourne, defeated and wounded, was the most disagreeable experience of my lifetime’, he wrote 30 years later. ‘It seemed as though I had been lamed for life. I have destroyed every paper that I had in connection with my journey and endeavoured to efface from my memory all recollection of it. The narrative I wrote was called “My Failure in New Guinea” but the exigencies of the newspaper required the adoption of a less modest title. I had no copy to speak of.’ In fact the articles appeared without a byline and were titled ‘The Reason for Morrison’s Failure’. They were a confusing mix of third person reportage from staffer George Stephens and first person travelogue, in the manner of the Acts of the Apostles. Indeed the saintly Lucan, author of Acts, was also reputedly a medical man and it too bristles with miraculous escapes from almost certain death. Morrison would find no consolation in the analogy. His agonies would continue for 169 days until the spear point was extracted, without chloroform, from his throat through the right nostril by Melbourne’s leading surgeon, Sir Thomas F itzgerald. For the moment, however, there was the balm of family to restore his spirits. By this time Geelong College was well established and the Morrison children formed a close-knit group around their parents. In 1880 the Doctor had acquired a paddock on the south-western side of the school grounds. It was not much more than a rough cow pasture at the time but would one day become the school oval.


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From 1876 the college remained practically unaltered for twenty years, though its reputation and that of its first family would spread well beyond the state of Victoria. The old stable, coach house and cowshed stood at the back of the church. Hugh Mackay, the Doctor’s loyal factotum, had planted a strip in front of them with vegetables. A small fruit orchard there tempted the boarders and old Hugh fought a continuing battle against footballs bashing into his beloved pear trees. Mary Alice, Morrison’s older sister, was now 24 and would soon marry a young lawyer, H.B. Higgins, who would rise to become President of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. His next younger brother, Reggie, had followed Ernest’s medical bent and after starring on the college’s sporting field—and as a first grade football player for Geelong—he had left for Edinburgh University in 1882 to study medicine. Tales of his sporting prowess were arriving in a steady stream—from his victories in all-Scotland foot races over 200 yards to his hurling a cricket ball a remarkable 111 yards. Indeed, he soon became one of the foremost rugby players in Scotland. Norman, at 18, was about to leave for Melbourne University, where he would graduate as a Master of Engineering and eventually succeed his father as Principal of Geelong College. Young Clive was 11 and he too showed both athletic and scholastic promise. After playing football for Geelong and rowing for Melbourne University he would become a country lawyer. But for the moment he was thrilled to have his big brother home and in the family’s care. So too were his sisters Violet, eight, and Hilda, who was one year younger.


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They doted on Ernest and became his willing nurses as he fought to regain his health. But above all was the abiding presence of his mother, who provided the young man with the resilience to fight back against the spreading infection. Rebecca, to whom all the boarders brought their troubles and who never forgot a face or a name, put everything else aside to tend her eldest and favourite son. Despite her best efforts his condition remained poor and he was forced to return to F itzgerald, who twice lanced abscesses resulting from the spear point which had worked its way into his buttock. However, the cause of the infection eluded the surgeon’s best efforts to locate it and he recommended the young man put himself in the hands of Professor John Chiene at the University of Edinburgh. F itzgerald added that he was about to go to England himself and suggested that Morrison accompany him. Once again Rebecca Morrison bid her eldest son farewell at a Melbourne quayside. Gaunt and frail, he was a mere shadow of the young adventurer who had set out to conquer the Last Unknown. But now he was returning to the land of his ancestors.


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Morrison was just 22 years old and partially crippled when the RMS Mirzapore set sail for London on 27 March 1884. Sir Thomas F itzgerald continued to treat his patient on board ship and, detecting the presence of a foreign body in Morrison’s left buttock where one of the spearheads had embedded itself, decided to operate. Three weeks into the voyage while the Mirzapore was crossing the Indian Ocean, F itzgerald anaesthetised Morrison and made an incision in his left buttock. F inding a sinus leading into the pelvis, the surgeon probed further and came to a large sac of pus in which there were wooden spear fragments. He wanted to remove the main obstacle by making an abdominal incision but reluctantly decided to wait because he feared that an epidemic of scarlet fever among passengers and a 76


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shortage of antiseptics might endanger his patient’s life. Morrison spent the next six days in bed. Most of the passengers knew of his adventurous past and a steady stream of visitors, most of them adoring young women, visited his cabin to cheer him up. As the Mirzapore sailed along the Sudanese coast towards the Suez Canal, Morrison would have been fascinated to know that one of the greatest dramas of the period was unfolding in that country’s harsh interior. General Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon, who had been sent by the British Government in January to organise the evacuation of Egyptian troops from the Sudan, had become stranded in Khartoum by the Muslim forces of the selfproclaimed Mahdi (or Islamic Messiah). Gordon, a fanatically evangelical Christian, was a legend. After the British capture of Peking in 1860, he had taken part in the looting and burning of the Summer Palace. ‘I have done well,’ he said of his plunder. Three years later during the Taiping Rebellion, however, he had been hired by the Manchu Dynasty to command the EverVictorious Army which had recorded 33 victories against the rebels. As a reward, China’s Dowager Empress Tz’uHsi had awarded him the Yellow Jacket, China’s highest military honour.1 By the time Morrison, ‘suffering severely’, arrived in London on 14 May 1884 Gordon’s plight in Khartoum was known to Prime Minister Gladstone and had triggered an outraged reaction in the jingoistic British press. Morrison limped into St George’s Hospital, Knightsbridge, but the doctors could do little to relieve his suffering and the following week he travelled in great pain to Edinburgh, where he entered the students’ ward of the


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Royal Infirmary on 20 May as a patient of the eminent John Chiene, Professor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh. Chiene was unable to feel the obstacle which F itzgerald had located in his left buttock. He opted to see how the injury would react to rest and a simple diet, but within days Morrison was experiencing an unbearable burning sensation in his left thigh. ‘It was not until 1 July, when my strength was much reduced, that the operation was performed’, he wrote in Reminiscences. F irst, Chiene consulted his colleague, Mr Joseph Bell, the surgeon whom Arthur Conan Doyle had met in Edinburgh as a young medical student and later used as his model for Sherlock Holmes. Bell confirmed Chiene’s belated decision and the operation went ahead, with Bell assisting and no fewer than 16 other surgeons looking on. Chiene made an incision in Morrison’s abdomen and extracted a wooden spearhead three inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. It had been in Morrison’s body for 260 days. ‘It was about the size of your second finger’, he wrote to his mother. ‘I was extremely fortunate I came home when I did for who in Victoria could have removed it?’ In common with his parents, Morrison had started referring to the Mother Country as ‘home’. The spearhead was handed over to the medical school’s museum and when Morrison was discharged the following month he was able to walk unaided, though with the rolling gait of a seaman. By the New Year he had made a complete physical recovery from both spear wounds. By then he had made a momentous decision. The humiliation of his ‘utter failure’ in New Guinea haunted


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him. Indeed, he would never erase the painful memory; it would remain a niggling reminder of his limitations for the rest of his life. And since it was so closely associated with his journalism, he felt compelled to escape it by taking a new direction. The way was clear—he would bow to his father’s advice and fit himself for a more ordered and respectable profession. Thus on 6 January 1885 he enrolled at Edinburgh University to complete his medical studies. Taking lodgings at 6 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh, he devoted himself to books and lectures. ‘There is no question but that I worked hard’, Morrison wrote in Reminiscences. It was also apparent that his terrible experiences in New Guinea had done nothing to blunt his reporter’s curiosity. ‘I was anxious to finish my course as soon as possible and travel round the world.’ Through daily newspapers, particularly The Times, Morrison followed British attempts to extricate ‘Chinese’ Gordon from his Khartoum prison. Gladstone had sanctioned a relief expedition in August 1884 and this army, under one of Morrison’s boyhood heroes, General Garnet Wolseley, had fought its way 1350 kilometres up the uncharted Nile, arriving at Khartoum on 28 January 1885. It was too late. Two days earlier Khartoum had been stormed, Gordon had been killed and his head presented to the Mahdi as a trophy of war. Some of the stories in The Times had been written by the paper’s Cairo correspondent, Charles Frederic Moberly Bell, the wise and humane newspaperman who would later have a most profound influence on Morrison’s career. Morrison, meanwhile, continued to hone his reporting skills. He collected photographs of


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faculty members and wrote little pen portraits of them: Alexander Russell Simpson, Professor of Midwifery, was ‘a pious fraud’, but Sir John Wylie, lecturer in Medicine, was ‘the best physician in Scotland’. Morrison neither drank nor smoked and dressed for comfort rather than style in an unstarched shirt with a turned-down collar and a loosely cut tweed suit. But it is also evident from his correspondence with other students that he had an eye for a pretty face. ‘I regret to hear that the Woman incident still lies heavy on your breast’, one of them, W.S. Newton, wrote to him in reply to some epistolary confession. ‘Remember your late experience of the lady who wants your address and keep clear of the wiles of the charmer opposite.’ Nor was Morrison above boasting about his sexual conquests with ‘a little courtesan’ or ‘strumpet’. Fellow student J.C. Hutton wrote to him enviously: ‘Three in one night—it’s positively too greedy. How the Lord must watch over you to give you three’. Morrison was permitted to count the time he had spent at Melbourne University towards his degree and graduated after two and a half years’ study on 1 August 1887, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee year. He was still only 25. ‘His knowledge of Medicine and Surgery is extensive and accurate, his abilities are great’, his examiner wrote. ‘Besides being well versed in his professional work, he is a widely read and cultured man . . . I know few whom I can more highly recommend, and few whose success in life I look upon as more certain.’ Professor Chiene added his own testimonial, recalling his first meeting with Morrison in the students’ ward ‘when you suffered from the effects of a spear wound’ and


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adding, ‘You go from here with knowledge and power for your future work’. Morrison did not hesitate to take his leave of Scotland. Shortly after graduation, he paid £6 for a berth in the SS Hibernia and, following the well-blazed trail of many Scottish emigrants, sailed for Saint John’s, Newfoundland, with £15 in his pocket, an emigration certificate and a brand new medical diploma to show prospective employers. He had to share his cabin with three other men but it was, he remarked, ‘better treatment than a passenger in the steerage’. One of his companions was a Glaswegian pork sausage manufacturer ‘who glorified in the mysteries of his calling’. This man confided to Morrison that one pound of pork would give a pork flavour to 40 pounds of inferior meat and, using this technique, he had made £700 profit a year for many years. With his ill-gotten gains, he intended to buy a ranch. Morrison did not stay long in Canada. Heading south in September, he found Philadelphia in festive mood for the one hundredth anniversary of the American Constitution. On Chestnut Street he watched General Phil Sheridan ride past at the head of American troops. He was also present when President Cleveland made a rousing speech at Constitution Hall. None of this democratic pageantry induced Morrison, an Empire loyalist to the core, to stay in America. He was a young man adrift, a medical degree in his pocket for which he had little use, yet denied an outlet for the one great passion that urged him on, expending ‘shoe leather’ to no clear purpose. Strolling along a river, he saw a steamer unloading bananas from Jamaica and decided on


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a whim to sail with her back to the Caribbean. He was disconcerted when the boat dropped him off in Saint Ann’s Bay on Jamaica’s northern side rather than his intended destination, Kingston, in the south. The fare had cost him $30 and by the time he reached the capital he was almost broke. Jamaica, he admitted, was much bigger than he had thought. He took a room at 54 Duke Street and set about trying to find work as a doctor in the island’s medical service. Nothing was forthcoming and, in desperation, he made his way to Ewarton, where he threw himself on the mercy of a local physician, Dr Frank Rand. ‘Nothing could exceed the kindness that was shown to me by this generous man’, Morrison wrote. Rand told Morrison he was wasting his time looking for work as none was available and he should leave Jamaica. He offered to lend him enough money to make a short tour before departing. Morrison started his journey on foot and walked over to Falmouth, then around the coast to Montego Bay. Wherever he walked he was jeered and someone informed him that a white man walking in Jamaica was ‘an insult to the Almighty’. Morrison discovered that able-bodied men were being recruited in Jamaica to work on the Panama Canal and the Costa Rica Railway but, as a professional man, he was repeatedly turned down. ‘In each case the answer to my request was the same: Gladly would employment have been given me had I only known Spanish’, he wrote. ‘It may seem ridiculous but I detected in this the hand of Providence directing me to go to Spain.’ He recalled the stories of the shanty keeper at Cockatoo Wells about


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Spain’s ancient glory. ‘I determined to go to Spain’, he wrote. ‘That intention beset me and was not to be shaken off.’ Providence took a hand in the shape of Captain W. Peploe Forward, Kingston agent of the Atlas Steamship Co., who arranged free passage to New York as assistant purser in the banana boat SS Alps. Sporting a Caribbean suntan and dressed in tropical rig, Morrison stepped ashore in a bitterly cold New York on 4 November 1887. He had exactly $7.13 to his name. For $2 a week, payable in advance, he secured a bleak room at the top of a building at 203 West 19th Street. ‘I warmed the room by keeping the gas burning but on the second day this scheme failed, the landlady telling me that when lodgers paid only $2 in advance they were expected to put out the light at 9 o’clock. Then I was colder than ever.’ Morrison applied unsuccessfully for several jobs. To stay in his mean lodgings, he was forced to pawn everything he owned. F irst to go was his cardigan jacket, ‘the only warm piece of clothing I possessed’. The pawnbroker at Simpson’s, 171 Bowery, offered him a dollar for it, but when Morrison eagerly accepted, he picked up the garment and noted a certain disproportion between the length of the body and the length of the arm. He cut the price to 75 cents. Morrison still took it. ‘It was ungenerous’, he wrote, ‘but I had no alternative’. His small case of surgical instruments kept him in food for some time, but he ate a proper meal only every second day and then it would be pork and potatoes for 10 cents at Beefsteak John’s in the Bowery. After 24 days of misery, Morrison was ready to


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abandon New York and return to Scotland. Not having any money had severely limited his horizons and would lead to a lifelong fear of poverty, of being destitute and hungry. Fortunately, he met a man named Junner M. Croll, who accepted that he was a genuine case of hardship and found him a passage to Glasgow on the Anchor Line’s Ethiopia. Croll gave an undertaking to the steamship company that he would pay the $30 fare if Morrison failed to do so on arrival. On his last night in New York Morrison went to Cassidy’s Shades, a saloon in Chatham Square between the Bowery and Chinatown, and had a long talk with the Tichborne Claimant, Arthur Orton, who was managing the bar and drinking the profits. Orton, a butcher from Wagga Wagga, still maintained that he was the long-lost heir Sir Roger Tichborne, Bart., but Morrison laughed at his claims and described him as an ‘overfed bullock’. Back in Edinburgh, his desire to go to Spain proved stronger than ever and when he heard that Dr J.S. Mackay, senior medical officer of the British-controlled copper mining giant Rio Tinto, was visiting the city he tracked him down. Mackay listened sympathetically as the young man, after showing his credentials and describing his previous experiences, poured out his heart about wanting to work in Spain. Mackay suggested that Morrison write a formal application to Rio Tinto but while he was waiting for a reply Morrison was disappointed to hear that Mackay had suddenly been recalled to Spain. He took a job as locum tenens with a practice in Skye, and was also offered the post of surgeon aboard an Arctic whaler but turned it


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down. ‘Spain obsessed me’, he wrote. He had almost given up hope when he received a telegram from Mackay: ‘All right buy Spanish grammar Mackay’. He had been appointed assistant surgeon in the Rio Tinto mines on six months’ probation at a salary of £20 a month, with a house and a horse provided. Sailing from Cardiff to the Gulf of Cadiz in Southern Spain, Morrison disembarked at Huelva, the port of the Rio Tinto mines, on 8 May 1888. He quickly discovered that Spain’s ‘ancient glory’ was in short supply, apart from the monastery of La Rabida, where Christopher Columbus had sought help while preparing for his epic voyage to the Americas. ‘Lineal descendants of his fellow voyagers still live in the neighbourhood’, Morrison wrote. ‘I think I can boast that lineal descendants of the Discoverers of the New World have been under my benevolent care.’ Along with eight Spanish and three British doctors, he was charged with attending to the medical needs of 9500 mine workers and their families. ‘I am becoming a very great surgeon indeed and amputate limbs with a sang froid which is wonderful’, he wrote to his mother. Three months after Morrison’s arrival, Dr Mackay resigned as senior medical officer and Morrison was appointed in his place on a salary of £400 a year. But promotion did not improve his opinion of the desolate Rio Tinto mines. ‘It was a God-forsaken spot’, he wrote. ‘Sulphur smoke pouring forth from the calcining of the copper ore devastated the country for miles around.’ He worked long hours and was pleased when a young Spanish woman named Pepita joined him in his leisure time. He took her dancing and she fell madly in love with


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him. But Morrison was finding life in Rio Tinto hard going and had no intention of staying long or getting married. ‘My relations with the Spaniards were friendly and I had no unpleasantness’, he wrote. Yet on one occasion he needed all his wits to avoid being stabbed. He was returning to the hospital from the town when he overtook a group of Spanish men. One of them was carrying a goatskin of wine. As Morrison passed, a young man pointed to the wineskin and said: ‘Do you care for a taste, Senor?’ Morrison politely declined and had gone only a short distance when the same man, stepping after him, repeated in a somewhat louder tone: ‘Do you care to taste, Senor?’ Morrison again replied: ‘No, many thanks.’ He tried to walk on, but the same man asked him a third time: ‘Do you care to taste, Senor?’ As he said it, Morrison felt something prick into his leg. ‘I turned quickly round and found the man pointing at me with his rapier’, Morrison wrote in Reminiscences. ‘My first impulse was to pull out my revolver, for we always carried a revolver, but I first said politely, speaking as if to the assembly, “Caballeros, I am the doctor of the hospital up there,” pointing to our hospital. “I am on my way to attend to your sick compatriots. Do you wish me to see them when I am full of wine?” With one voice they cried, “The Senor is right.” And I walked on unmolested, many of them saying to me, “Good night, go with God.” ’ Morrison’s relations with the Rio Tinto management were fractious and he had several run-ins with the manager, William Rich. Matters came to a head in August 1889 when Morrison discovered that frauds involving


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several thousands of pounds a year were being perpetrated in the hospital’s pharmacy. On reporting the matter to the company he was astonished to receive a letter from Rich expressing the ‘gravest disapproval’ of the language in his report. Fed up with managerial intransigence, Morrison promptly resigned. ‘It appears’, he later wrote, ‘that the frauds I discovered were insignificant compared with other frauds that soon after came to light’. Pepita was inconsolable that he was leaving. She described Morrison as ‘my joy, my consolation, my life’, and begged to stay at his side. But although he professed his love for her, Morrison had no intention of taking her with him. As he packed his bags, he drew up an inventory of his worldly wealth, thus starting a ritual which he would perform at intervals for the rest of his life. He was owed £65 4s 6d in wages, he had furniture worth £4 13s, he had savings of £187 2s 11d, and there was £7 12s 2d in his pocket. Without a backward glance Morrison left Rio Tinto on 9 November 1889 and journeyed to Cadiz, where he booked into a hotel in the Plaza de la Constitucion. One of Pepita’s letters, written in vivid purple ink, caught up with him there. ‘Your departure has aroused in me a love and a passion so that I do not leave off thinking of you for a moment’, she wrote. ‘I am blind with love and do not think of other thing except to give you pleasure.’ But Morrison was out of reach. He was heading for Africa and it would be another 23 years before he found the woman he wanted to marry.


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EASTERN PROMISE

The semi-invalid who had arrived in England in May 1884 not knowing whether he would be crippled for the rest of his life had developed into a strapping 27 year old who had matured in ways that set him apart from his less intrepid contemporaries. With his handsome countenance, lofty bearing, broad smile and engaging personality, Morrison made friends easily wherever he roamed, but he usually chose to travel alone; he loved the sense of freedom that solo travel gave him—the freedom to indulge his innate journalistic curiosity. From Cadiz, Morrison crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to Tangier where he received a warm welcome as a British subject. Britain had become Morocco’s largest trading partner and the Royal Navy patrolled the straits as a deterrent to the country’s enemies, France and Spain. Morrison 88


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hoped to visit the interior, but had no idea how this might be accomplished. Walking into a pharmacy, he found the chemist, Nicholas Dassoy, a Greek who spoke fluent English, in a state of some excitement. Dassoy was leaving for Fez in the morning and was anxious to pack. Morrison exclaimed that he had always wanted to see the royal city. ‘Then come with me,’ said Dassoy. ‘You shall have a mule and we shall go first to Wazan to see the son of the Sharif who is ill, and then to Fez.’ ‘Done!’ said Morrison. The following morning he packed a bag containing clean clothes, his telescope, his instrument case and £3 15s in English money, and joined Dassoy’s little party, which included a soldier of the Sultan’s bodyguard, a Jewish servant and five Moroccans. F irst, Dassoy presented Morrison to the Sharif of Wazan, who was in Tangier. Sharifs in Morocco were, Morrison noted, ‘as common as Colonels in America or Captains in Queensland’. They were the heads of Berber or Arab families who claimed direct descent from the Prophet. The Sharif of Wazan, however, was the spiritual head of the Islamic church in Morocco and a highly venerated man. He had numerous wives, including Emily Keane, an Englishwoman. Dassoy had recently cured the Sharif of a long illness and, as a result, had been asked to treat the Sharif ’s son, who was also ill. As the little mule train bumped inland under the blazing sun, Morrison learned that, among his many talents, Dassoy spoke Arabic and a score of other languages. ‘His chief surgical work’, Morrison wrote, ‘may be emphatically described as repairing the ruptured anuses of the buggered’.


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When they reached Wazan (now Ouezzane), Dassoy introduced Morrison to the Sharif ’s son, also a holy man, and invited him to take over the case. The patient was suffering from a huge abscess in the loin which had turned him into an invalid. Morrison treated him by lancing and draining the abscess. ‘His relief was great and instantaneous’, Morrison wrote. ‘It is such a ridiculously small thing to us that you will be amused to hear the whole town now knows of the improvement in the saint and the whole town is in jubilation.’ The Sharif ’s son was so grateful that he invited Morrison and Dassoy to stay with him. ‘I lived in the Palace at Wazan and had the run of the park and [did] some partridge shooting’, Morrison wrote. He wanted to explore the mysteries of the seraglio, but the Sharif ’s son, an effeminate 35 year old, had little need for women. Instead, Morrison and Dassoy celebrated the birth of Christ on 25 December by eating tinned Cambridge sausages from their stores and drinking a bottle of port wine. Continuing their journey, they reached Fez, the ancient centre of Moroccan political, cultural and commercial life. They called at Sultan Mawlay Hassan’s palace to hand over his bodyguard, who had been shot during a visit to Tangier. ‘It is said that a minute record is kept of all the births in the family of the Sultan’, Morrison wrote. ‘[He fathers] at least one hundred children per annum.’ Morrison remained celibate; venereal disease was endemic at court, and there were other health problems as well. ‘Haemorrhoids are the commonest non-venereal diseases which afflict the suffering ladies of the harem’,


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he wrote. ‘Their life is sedentary and voluptuous . . . they habitually overfeed . . . everything conduces to that unladylike complaint—piles.’ Morrison met Harry Maclean, the British mercenary who commanded the Moroccan Army. Maclean told him that enemy prisoners were given a choice: either serve the Sultan or have their heads cut off. He had seen 11 rebels choose decapitation one after the other. A soldier would draw a scimitar across the throat, sever the muscles at the back of the throat and twist the head around until it dropped into a sack. The Sultan paid his troops on a per capita basis—literally. Morrison parted company with Dassoy in Fez and returned to the Barbary Coast, unarmed and apparently unconcerned about encountering bandits. Crossing over from Tangier to Gibraltar, he spent the next few months living out his Spanish fantasy, ‘going from one end of the Peninsula to the other’. Madrid, he told his mother, was a magnificent city ‘and licks Geelong into a cocked hat’. His board cost 3s 7d a day, including morning chocolate, and he visited the Prado to view its fine collection of Spanish art. His travels eventually took him back to Huelva, where he embarked for England. He stayed in London only a short while before deciding to go to Paris to study under Professor Charcot at the Salpetriere. ‘Unfortunately the only day that I went to the hospital, Charcot was not there’, he wrote, ‘but I can truthfully say that I did go to Paris to study at the Hospital Salpetriere’. Morrison dallied in Paris for several weeks and met his match in a young French woman named Noelle, who spent the remainder of the money he had saved in Rio


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Tinto then dumped him for a waiter. Disconsolate, Morrison decided to return to Australia and booked passage to Melbourne, pledging to pay the £63 fare when he got there. He had to borrow the money from his family on arrival on 3 December 1890; his worldly wealth after an absence of five years and eight months was just seven francs. Morrison celebrated his twentieth-ninth birthday with his family. His mother, hoping he would settle down somewhere close at hand, pointed out an advertisement for a resident surgeon at Ballarat District Hospital at a salary of £31 3s 4d a month. ‘This was in some ways the most coveted hospital appointment in Australia, for the city is interesting, the climate glorious and the pay was generous’, Morrison wrote. He went to Ballarat for an interview with the hospital’s committee and decided to pay a pre-emptive visit to its most aggressive member, George Smith, a market gardener. ‘Weren’t you the young man who walked across Australia?’ Smith asked him. Morrison said he was. ‘We all admired that plucky feat,’ Smith said. ‘I don’t think we’ll go far wrong if we appoint you.’ Morrison met the committee for a formal interview and was appointed on 21 April 1891. ‘In giving me the appointment the committee paid attention to other factors than mere vulgar medical knowledge’, Morrison wrote. ‘The press notice, while generously referring to my going to Paris to study at the Salpetriere, laid special stress upon the circumstances that I carried my swag across the Continent of Australia.’ ‘The most coveted hospital appointment in Australia’


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rapidly turned into one of the worst. The hospital was bankrupt and, having run up an overdraft of £3290, decided to lay off some of the nursing staff. Morrison refused to allow this to happen, arguing that such retrenchments would impair the hospital’s efficiency. He compromised by agreeing to a 5 per cent cut in salaries and, although the cost of feeding patients and staff was a mere 6d per person per day, sanctioned a cut of £24 a year in the annual budget for fish and poultry. He introduced radical measures such as reducing the risk of infection by isolating typhoid cases from all contact with visitors and other patients. The Ballarat Courier welcomed the move: ‘Anxious and sympathetic friends of patients have doubtless felt aggrieved at their rigid exclusion from the typhoid ward, but the Resident Surgeon, Dr G.E. Morrison, and his very able and successful staff of nurses, can confidently appeal to the results of that policy fully to justify it’. But when relations between Morrison and the committee deteriorated even further he took his grievances to the press, writing signed and anonymous letters for publication. These only increased the tension and in February 1892 the committee told Morrison that his services were no longer required. He refused to budge and stayed in situ until 21 April 1892, exactly two years after his appointment. Morrison omits any reference to this unpleasantness in Reminiscences, writing only, ‘For two years I remained in Ballarat. Then other arrangements were made’. Perhaps the fact he was dismissed, despite the rightness of his cause in standing up for his staff and patients, was too hurtful to include in his life story.


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Morrison’s experiences in Ballarat hardened his attitude against staying in Australia and he never again took up an appointment in his own country, even when highly paid jobs were offered to him. Instead, he travelled to Hong Kong in the steamer Tai Yuan and made his way to the Philippines, believing that his knowledge of Spanish and an authorisation from his time in Rio Tinto to practise medicine in Spanish possessions would enable him to find work. He was mistaken; no work was available and he returned to Hong Kong. It was at this point that Morrison decided to try his luck in China, a decision which would revolutionise his life and make him one of the most famous Australians of his time. ‘I went up the coast to Shanghai and then crossed over to Tientsin and Peking’, he wrote in Reminiscences, mentioning three of the key places with which his name would forever be associated. China had been ruled since 1644 by the Ching Dynasty, the royal house of the conquering Manchus who had streamed south from Manchuria and overwhelmed the Chinese in battle. The Manchus had taken over the civil service apparatus of the deposed Ming Dynasty and recruited Chinese volunteers to run important posts in the empire. The Celestial Kingdom’s enormous population was ruled with a rod of iron, however, with males of the subjugated race forced to shave their heads and wear a queue or pigtail as a sign of subservience. The Manchus spoke their own language and had their own traditions; for example, unlike the Chinese they refused to bind the feet of their women. To ensure complete dominance in all areas of Chinese life, they retained control of the armed forces and the mandrinate.


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Manchu candidates automatically passed to the second stage of the examinations which controlled all official appointments—the system of writing a traditional eightlegged essay. Over the centuries, however, the Manchus had fallen under the pervasive influence of Confucianism and, numbering five million in Morrison’s time (compared with 350 million Chinese), had become less warlike and more peaceable, indolent and pleasure-loving. The Ching Emperor Kuang-hsu, the Son of Heaven, had formally assumed the throne in 1889 but the real power rested with his aunt, the Dowager Empress Tz’uHsi, who had acted as regent throughout his youth. Tz’u-Hsi, daughter of a low-ranking Manchu bannerman,1 had been brought to the palace at the age of 16 as a concubine for the sickly Emperor Hsien-feng. Just five foot tall with black hair that was never cut and pointed nail-protectors shielding four-inch-long nails on her third and little finger, she had originally seized the throne through the agency of their son, the boy emperor T’ungchih. Thirty years later she was still there, still as deadly as a black widow spider, ever alert at the centre of her web, sensitive to the slightest touch, poised to strike. From a distance, Peking looked like a multi-coloured jewel set against a tapestry of green hills to the north and west. Its physical beauty was deceptive, however. The streets were filthy, the people ragged—even the mandarins’ glorious robes were often soiled—and scenes of disease and decay assailed the visitor from every quarter. Morrison found Christian missionaries hard at work saving the heathen from further torment—the agonies of


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Hell in the afterlife. He described a visit to the China Inland Mission House in a letter to his mother on 15 September 1893: You will be delighted to hear what a blessed time I am having with the Missionaries. Today, for instance. Called 7. Breakfast 7.30. Prodigiously long grace then prayers, including psalms, bible-reading and prayer for 20 minutes. Then to hospital. Address by Doctor to outpatients kneeling down in outpatients’ room among a lot of dirty Chinamen. Then lunch with grace and then a special prayer for one of the seven missionary divisions of China. Then afternoon tea with grace and special prayer for the conversion of all Unitarians. Then to dinner with Doctor—grace, and in the evening, music, hymns, etc, a most blessed conversation concerning the conversion of a sea captain by the Doctor’s sister and then family prayers. Then home or would have had more. Total 10 hours, having sung 26 hymns, 25 being out of tune, have had prayers 17 times and have put in gracious word for Heathen of all lands and of every colour. I am making up for lost time with a vengeance.

The high point of Morrison’s visit to the Celestial capital was to conceal himself in the London Mission Chapel and watch the melancholic young Emperor/Deity and his cortege pass by on his return to the Purple Forbidden City from the rebuilt Summer Palace in the Western Hills. But security was so tight that Morrison had no chance of following the Emperor’s progress into the Imperial City through its magnificent southern entrance, the T’ien An Men (the Gate of Heavenly Peace—now rendered as Tiananmen Gate, just north of Tiananmen Square).


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The Emperor then passed through the Wu Men (the Gate of the Zenith) into the Forbidden City, where his throne in the Winter Palace faced southwards, the source of his holy powers. Immediately north of the palace was the green sward of Prospect Hill, a manmade mound which prevented evil spirits from reaching him from the inauspicious north. The only time he deliberately turned his face to the north was when he made sacrifices at the Altar of Heaven; on that occasion, he was the supplicant himself, worshipping a higher authority. The full panoply of the Ching Dynasty aroused Morrison’s curiosity but did not delay him for long. Returning to Shanghai, he pawned his boots, hat and socks for about two shillings and crossed over to Japan. ‘Most of my time in Japan was spent in the Seaman’s Refuge in Kobe, the cheapest place I have yet stayed in’, he wrote. ‘The manager of this home was an ancient Englishman who had, he declared, fought in the Battle of Chilianwala.’2 Unlike hapless, antiquated China, Japan was rapidly turning into a modern nation capable of competing with the Western powers. This revolutionary program of reform had been launched in 1868 by the brilliant Meiji Emperor, who had taken the best that the West had to offer and adapted it to Japanese needs. Scribbling down the old Englishman’s florid account of the Battle of Chilianwala, in which he had apparently played a conspicuous role, Morrison conceived the idea of crossing China to Burma and writing about his adventures in a travel book. F irst, however, he had to get back to China and then raise enough money to finance this vast overland enterprise.


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‘I was really hard up in Japan’, he wrote. ‘In Kobe when I sold my telescope for $12 I truthfully wrote to a friend in Australia telling him that I had come round from Yokohama on my shirt studs, that I was at present living on my telescope, and that I hoped to return to Shanghai on my surgical instrument case. And that happened.’ He wrote to his mother: ‘Japan has been a very costly experience to me and when I arrive in Shanghai I will hardly have anything. I could raise a good many dollars on my books which I have picked up for a trifle, but I am not going to do that’. He returned to Shanghai with 15 shillings in his pocket but minus his handkerchief and umbrella which had been stolen en route. He telegraphed home for £30 and his mother wired him £40, which he exchanged for $362. ‘I always pay my debts’, he told her in a thank you letter, ‘and I will of course return with 5% interest every penny of the money sent to me’. Then he took out a map of China and planned the route of his long, long march across the country from east to west.


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A PLEASANT JOURNEY

In the first week of February 1894 I returned to Shanghai from Japan. It was my intention to go up the Yangtse River as far as Chungking, and then, dressed as a Chinese, to cross quietly over Western China, the Chinese Shan States, and Kachin Hills to the frontier of Burma. The ensuing narrative will tell you how easily and pleasantly this journey, which a few years ago would have been regarded as a formidable undertaking, can now be done.

So begins one of the monumental travel books of the English language. Already the delightful ambiguity of tone so characteristic of Morrison is discernible—the straightforward declaration spiced with the charming undertone of gentle irony. The journey was almost without precedent. It traversed some of the most challenging 99


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topography in Asia; it passed through areas where banditry went virtually unmolested by civil authority; and for half its 4800 kilometres the traveller would be completely cut off from any possible assistance in time of need. Moreover, as Morrison said, it was being undertaken ‘by one who spoke no Chinese, who had no interpreter or companion, who was unarmed, but who trusted implicitly in the good faith of the Chinese’. It is this last sentence that holds the key. In an important sense, the journey was a rebuttal of the overwhelming official view of the time that the Chinese did not quite meet the European definition of humanity. It was a time when every Australian political party embraced the White Australia Policy as a fortress against the ‘yellow hordes’ of Asia; when European and American colonialism were presented as a righteous mission to bring civilisation to the heathen celestial. It was important to Morrison, accordingly, to present his feat as one which might be accomplished by almost anyone. However, at least in the first part of the journey, as well as wearing Chinese winter clothing—wide sleeved tunic, flowing skirt, sandals and a somewhat incongruous umbrella—he also attached a pigtail to the inside of his little silk cap. He never quite explained why. Perhaps he wore it to denote his loyalty to the Emperor and so fall within the responsibility of the imperial officials who kept what law and order there was in the lands through which he passed. Certainly, it was not part of a deliberate disguise. The tall, fair, blue-eyed stranger attracted massive curiosity and wonderment wherever he went. His other mission—never articulated but quite unmistakable—was to expose the utter futility of the


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enormous effort mounted in the hallowed halls of Christendom east and west to carry the message of Jesus to the Chinese. And here the gentleness of his irony often gave way to a rich sarcasm. During the time I was in China, I met large numbers of missionaries of all classes, in many cities from Peking to Canton, and they unanimously expressed satisfaction at the progress they are making in China . . . their harvest may be described as amounting to a fraction more than two Chinamen per missionary per annum. If, however, the paid ordained and unordained native helpers be added to the number of missionaries, you find that the aggregate body converts nine-tenths of a Chinaman per worker per annum; but the missionaries deprecate their work being judged by statistics. There are 1511 Protestant missionaries labouring in the Empire; and estimating their results from the statistics of previous years as published in the Chinese Recorder, we find they gathered last year (1893) into the fold 3127 Chinese—not all of whom it is feared are genuine Christians—at a cost of £350 000, a sum equal to the combined incomes of the ten chief London hospitals.

There is little doubt which of the two expenditures Morrison thought the more fruitful. He caught a regular British steamer up the Yangtse to Hangkow and after a brief stop took a second steamer to Ichang where today the great river craft rise in massive locks to the upper levels of the stream. Between Ichang and Chungking, the capital of central China, is a distance of 659 kilometres through the famous Three Gorges and in Morrison’s time it was navigable only in junks and


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smaller craft hauled over the rapids by teams of trackers. These men led a perilous existence as they worked, often in their hundreds, to drag the boats against a rushing tide and unpredictable wind shifts. All too often they were dragged into the flooding waters and were lost. Others died of enlarged hearts, rampant tuberculosis and simple exhaustion. Morrison first wanted to walk the route but was persuaded by an English customs official to hire a small boat (a wupan) and a crew of four young men. He negotiated a written agreement with the team leader. Next morning, ‘with a clear and sunny sky, the river flowing smoothly and reflecting deeply the lofty and rugged hills which fall steeply to the water’s edge, a light boat, and a model crew, it was a pleasure to lie at ease wrapped in my Chinese pukai and watch the many junks lazily falling down the river, the largest of them dwarfed by the colossal dimensions of the surrounding scenery to the size of sampans, and the fishing boats, noiseless but for gentle creaking of the sheers and dip-net, silently working the still waters under the bank’. Such was the relaxed pace that there was time for the healthy 32-year-old Australian to consider the charms of the Chinese woman. ‘I have seen girls in China who would be considered beautiful in any capital in Europe. She is head and shoulders above the Japanese; she is more capable of intellectual development; she is incomparably more chaste and modest. She is prettier, sweeter, and more trustworthy . . .’ At the time, foot-binding was common, painful and even crippling to most Chinese women.


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The small feet of the Chinese women, though admired by the Chinese and poetically referred to by them as ‘three-inch gold lilies’, are in our eyes a very unpleasant deformity—but still, the walk of the Chinese woman is more comely than the gait of the Japanese woman as she shambles ungracefully along with her little bent legs, scraping her wooden-soled slippers along the pavement with a noise that sets your teeth on edge.

Soon, however, he was in the rough water between the soaring cliffs and there was no time for sensual dalliances . . . The boat danced in the rapid; my men on board shrieked excitedly that the towrope was fouling—it had caught on a rock—but their voices could not be heard; our trackers were brought to with a jerk; the hindmost saw the foul and ran back to free it, but he was too late, for the boat had come beam on to the current. Our captain frantically waved to let go, and the next moment we were tossed bodily into the cataract . . . a wave buried the boat nose under and swamped me in my kennel; my heart stopped beating and, scared out of my wits, I began to strip off my sodden clothes; but before I had half done the sail had been set; both men had miraculously fended the boat from a rock which, by a moment’s hesitation, would have smashed us in bits or buried us in the boiling trough and, with another desperate effort, we had slipped from danger into smooth water. Then my men laughed heartily. How it was done I do not know, but I felt keen admiration for the calm dexterity with which it had been done.

It is not surprising, with such feats in mind, that Morrison would have resisted the prevailing view that the


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Chinaman was an inferior creature. Everywhere they landed, Morrison’s appearance attracted attention. Usually, he handled it with great good nature. And because of his Chinese garb the novelty was not so great. However, when he reached Wanshien, he had been recently dunked in the Yangtse and forced to don his Western dress: ‘Boys and ragamuffins hanging about the shipping saw me and ran towards me yelling, “Yang kweitze, Yang kweitze (foreign devil, foreign devil)”’. Soon a crowd joined in, surrounding him and taunting him. ‘I had to walk on as if I enjoyed the demonstration’, he says. However, in typical Morrison fashion, he found a leavening humour in what, to others, might have been a very threatening situation. ‘I stopped once and spoke to the crowd’, he says. ‘And as I knew no Chinese, I told them in gentle English of the very low opinion their conduct led me to form of the moral relations of their mothers . . .’ He stayed the night in Wanshien, as he did in several other cities, with the earnest missionaries of the China Inland Mission. The mission leader, the eponymous Mr Hope Gill, was a sad but quixotic figure who preached the imminence of the Second Coming to a bemused and unresponsive audience throughout the city, but who also, during a recent cholera epidemic, ‘never refused a call to attend the sick and dying and, at the risk of his own, saved many lives’. Mr Hope Gill had become disheartened. ‘Gratitude,’ he told Morrison, ‘is a condition of heart, or of mind, which seems to be incapable of existence in the body of a Chinaman.’ Morrison held his tongue. The Wanshien Inland Mission—of five earnest preachers—had been established since 1887. Since then,


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‘with brave perseverance’ the team had delivered their call to the heathen. There are, unfortunately, no converts, but there are three hopeful ‘inquirers’ . . . One of the three was shown to me and described as the most advanced in the knowledge of the doctrine. Now I do not wish to write unkindly, but I am compelled to say that this man was a poor wretched, ragged coolie, who sells the commonest gritty cakes in a rickety stall round the corner from the mission, who can neither read nor write, and belongs to a very humble order of blunted intelligence. The poor fellow is the father of a little girl of three, an only child, who is both deaf and dumb. And there is the fear that his fondness for the little one tempts him to give hope to the missionaries that in him they are to see the first fruit of their toil, the first in the district to be saved by their teaching, while he nurses a vague hope that, when the foreign teachers regard him as adequately converted, they may be willing to restore speech and hearing to his poor little offspring. It is a scant harvest.

As Morrison reached Chungking, the traveller met his first countryman, the Customs collector whose junk was moored near the bank. ‘Where from?’ the official asked. ‘Australia.’ ‘The devil, so am I. What part?’ ‘Victoria.’ ‘So am I. Town?’ ‘Last from Ballarat.’ ‘My native town, by Jove! Jump up.’ Morrison gave him his card. He looked at it and said,


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‘When I was last in Victoria I used to follow with much interest a curious walk across Australia from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne done by a namesake. Any relation? The same man! I’m delighted to see you.’ Morrison stayed the night at the Customs quarters and inevitably the conversation turned to opium. The drug trade was the other great compelling issue of the day and Morrison struggled with it without deciding where the final blame should lie. Indeed, he seems at one stage to excuse the British policy of importing thousands of tons of the demoralising drug from India on grounds that the Chinese, having been seduced and addicted, had come to accept it as their drug of choice. And he scoffed at the critics who claimed that it was devastating the country. To their credit, the fiercest of the trade’s opponents were the missionaries. He quoted the Rev. F. Storrs Turner, secretary of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, declaiming, ‘The poppy is certainly surreptitiously grown in some parts of China, not withstanding the laws and frequent Imperial edicts prohibiting its cultivation’. ‘Surreptitiously grown in some parts of China! Why, from the time I left Hupeh till I reached the boundary of Burma, a distance of 1700 miles, I never remember to have been out of sight of the poppy.’ As to charges that the drug was forced on the Chinese: ‘They do not want our opium, but they purchase from us 4275 tons per annum [and] of the eighteen provinces of China four only—Kiangsu, Cheh-kiang, Fuh-kien and Kuangtung—use Indian opium, the remaining fourteen use exclusively home-grown opium . . . The Chinese do not want our opium, it competes with their own’.


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He did, however, uncover a particularly nasty byproduct of the trade: Morphia pills are sold in Chungking by the Chinese chemists to cure the opium habit. This profitable remedy was introduced by the foreign chemists of the coast ports and adopted by the Chinese. Its advantage is that it converts a desire for opium into a taste for morphia, a mode of treatment analogous to changing one’s stimulant from colonial beer to methylated spirit. In 1893, 15 000 ounces of hydrochlorate of morphia were admitted to Shanghai alone.

In Chungking he left his boat and began his land journey accompanied by two coolies to carry his modest luggage and to buy and cook his food. ‘On the morning of 14 March I set out from Chungking to cross 1600 miles over Western China to Burma. Men did not speak hopefully of my chances of getting through. There were the rains of June and July to be feared apart from other obstacles.’ These ‘other obstacles’ included mountainous pathways, rock slides, rushing waters, bandits, virulent diseases and the ever present danger of physical accident or food poisoning. But Morrison had an extraordinary capacity to stay in control of an unfamiliar situation and to find pleasure in it. ‘At nightfall’, he wrote, ‘we always reached some large village or town where my cook selected the best inn for my resting place, the best in such cases being the one which promised him the largest squeeze [kickback]. All the towns through which the road passes swarm with inns for there is an immense floating population to provide for’. A few days out of Chungking he found a typical night’s accommodation:


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Late in the evening I was led into a crowded inn in a large village, where we were to stay for the night. I was shown into a room with three straw-covered wooden bedsteads, a rough table lit by a lighted taper in a saucer of oil, a rough seat and a naked earth floor. Hot water was brought me to wash with and tea to drink, and my man prepared me an excellent supper. My baggage was in the corner; it consisted of two light bamboo boxes with Chinese padlocks, a bamboo hamper, and a roll of bedding covered with an oilcloth. An oilcloth is indispensable to the traveller in China, for placed next to the straw on a Chinese bed it is impassable to bugs.

He walked at a very brisk pace, regularly covering 48 kilometres a day over undulating and rough terrain. When he reached Suifu, a city of 180 000, he took a day’s rest and confided some final thoughts on the missionary conundrum to his diary. The message they sought to spread, he had realised, was utterly foreign to the Chinese view of the world. That a parent would sacrifice his son, for whatever reason, was simply incomprehensible. And Jesus’s call to the young—‘If any man come to me and hate not his father, he cannot be my disciple’—offended the very heart of China’s patriarchal system. Patricide was the ultimate crime. Anyone found guilty—and the cases were exceedingly rare—would be tortured to death, his younger brothers beheaded, his house razed and the earth beneath it dug up, his neighbours severely punished, his principal teacher decapitated, his district magistrate hounded from office and the higher officials of the province reduced in rank. Yet the missionaries continued to preach rebellion— and worse—against the Chinese concept of family as an


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honoured Christian tenet. Moreover, they were faced with the terrible paradox that, having introduced the heathen to the word of God, a new and fateful paradigm had come into being. While ever the Chinese were ignorant of The Way, God would deal with their eternal souls as he saw fit at the time of their death. But once they rejected the teachings of Christ, they were forever damned to perdition and the fires of Hell. The effect on the missionaries themselves took various forms, none of them pleasant. In Suifu he found a young English girl who had been more than a year in China and who told him she had never felt the Lord so near her. Poor thing, it made me sad to talk to her. In England she lived in a bright and happy home with brothers and sisters in a charming climate. She was always well and full of life and vigour, surrounded by all that can make life worth living. In China she is never well; she is anaemic and apprehensive; she has nervous headaches and neuralgia; her only relaxation is taking her temperature; her only diversion a prayer meeting . . . Her lover, a refined English gentleman who is also in the mission, lives a week’s journey away in Chungking. In England he was full of strength and vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn tennis player. In China he is always ill, anaemic, wasted and dyspeptic. But more agonising than his bad health is the horrible reality of the unavailing sacrifice he is making—no converts but ‘outcasts subsidised to forsake their family altars’. No man with a healthy brain can discern ‘blessing’ in the work of these two missionaries.

From time to time, Morrison would hire a sedan chair


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and bearers to ease the way. Such services could be obtained for a derisory payment. Indeed, his entire journey from Shanghai to Mandalay cost him no more than £20 and at the end he felt he could have done it for three-quarters of that amount. At lunch time on one particularly hot day with 27 kilometres to travel before the next town Morrison decided to take a chair. Bargaining set the price at 320 cash (eightpence), but just before he embarked the coolies decided it wasn’t quite enough and sought 340 cash. Morrison was willing enough, but the missionary who had accompanied him as a break in the routine was unrelenting. ‘Walk on,’ said the missionary, ‘and teach them a Christian lesson.’ Morrison wrote, ‘So I walked the seventeen miles in the sun to rebuke them for their avarice and save one halfpenny. In the evening I am afraid that I was hardly in the frame of mind requisite for conducting an evangelical meeting’. Beyond Chungking the wealthy Szechuan province gave way to Yunnan where the soil was poor and rocky, the tea inferior, the food less nutritious. Here, too, the Buddhist faith was joined by the followers of Islam, who had rebelled in 1857 and had been subdued in a series of battles ending 16 years later. Then in 1881 another flareup brought the wrath of empire down upon them. The missionary stations became less frequent. Morrison and his coolies formed a pleasant bond. ‘My two coolies were capital fellows’, he said, ‘full of good humour, cheerful and untiring. The elder was disposed to be argumentative with his countrymen, but he could not quarrel. Nature had given him an uncontrollable stutter and if he tried to speak quickly a spasm seized his tongue and he


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had to break into a laugh’. Morrison was in awe of their physical prowess. We who live amid the advantages of western civilisation can hardly realise how enormous are the weights borne by those human beasts of burthen, our brothers in China. The common fast-travelling coolie of Szechuan contracts to carry 80 catties (107lb) forty miles a day over difficult country. But the weight carrying coolie carries far heavier loads than that . . . The average load of salt, coal, copper, zinc and tin is 200lb. I have seen men ambling along the roads under loads that a strong Englishman could only with difficulty raise from the ground.

High in the mountains he once again hired a sedan chair with three bearers. All day they toiled zig-zag up an almost vertical slope in the hot sun, resting briefly then pushing on. ‘They were always in good humour’, said Morrison, ‘and finished the day as strong and as fresh as when they began it’. However, his point was that, ‘within an hour of their arrival all three men had their daily smoke of opium’, and that they did so without any apparent physical harm. Two of them were middle-aged, the third a strapping young man of about 25; it was almost certain that the older men had used the stimulant since their youth yet ‘all three were physically well developed with large frames showing unusual muscular strength and endurance’. This was in stark contrast to the common caricature of the opium smoker as a ‘resurrected corpse’. Again, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Morrison is seeking to excuse his British forebears from the horrors of mass drug addiction they had conspired


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to visit upon the nation. It is an odd quirk in the man, particularly given his medical training. Indeed, he wrote of being called to a case of opium poisoning in Chaotong. A son came in to seek our aid in saving his father who had attempted suicide with a large overdose. He had taken it at 10 in the morning and it was now two. We were led to the house and found it a single small unlit room up a narrow alley. Two men were unconcernedly eating their rice and in the darkness they seemed to be the only occupants; but lying down behind them on a narrow bed was the dim figure of the dying man who was breathing stertorously. A crowd quickly gathered round the door and pent up the alley-way. Rousing the man, I caused him to swallow some pints of warm water and then I gave him a hypodermic injection of apomorphia. The effect was admirable, and pleased the spectators even more than the patient.

In the mountainous country Morrison bought himself a mule which, in mocking mood, he wrote, ‘saved me many miles of walking and increased my importance in the eyes of the heathen’. However, before turning in he looked in to see how his mule was faring. He was standing in a crib at the foot of some underground stairs, with a huge horse trough before him, the size and shape of a Chinese coffin. He was peaceful and meditative. When he saw me he looked reproachfully at the cut straw heaped untidily in the trough, and then at me, and asked as clearly as he could if that was a reasonable ration for a high spirited mule who had carried my honourable person up hill and


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down dale over steep rocks and by tortuous paths a long spring day in a warm sun. Alas, I had nothing else to offer him.

Morrison’s next stop was Yunnan City (now Kunming), where his journey intersected that of Marco Polo in 1283. Other redoubtable travellers had passed through on their way from Tibet or toward French Indo-China. He made a courtesy call on Li Pi Chang, the Chinese manager of telegraphs and a mandarin of the old school. He was soon to take up another post from which, he told Morrison, he expected to save roughly ten times his official salary by way of the ‘squeeze’, the system of kickbacks by which Westerners judged the Chinese to be incomparably corrupt. As was his wont, Morrison made the comparison with the West and found the situation to be worse, for example, in Chicago, where he quotes a well known authority of the time: ‘Mr Stead tells us an alderman there receives only $US156 a year salary but enjoys practically unrestricted liberty to fill his pockets by bartering away the property of the city. ‘It is expected of the alderman as a fundamental principle that he will steal. In a fruitful year the average crooked alderman makes $15 000 to $20 000. Squeezing in China may be common, but it is a humble industry compared with the monumental swindling which Mr Stead describes as existing in Chicago’. But he remained ever ready to turn a baleful reporter’s eye on Chinese flim-flam when it arose. For example, he reported that one of the chief impediments to the extension of the telegraph in China was the belief


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that the telegraph poles spoiled the feng shui—that they diverted good luck from the districts through which they passed. It last revealed itself in the extreme west of the line from Yunnan. Villages who saw in the telegraph a menace to the good fortune of their district would cut down the poles—and sell the wire in compensation for their trouble. The annoyance had to be ended. An energetic magistrate took the matter in hand. He issued a warning to the villagers but his warning was unheeded. Then he took more vigorous measures. The very next case that occurred he had two men arrested and charged with the offence. They were probably innocent but under the persuasion of the bamboo they were induced to acquiesce in the magistrate’s opinion as to their guilt. They were sentenced to be deprived of their ears and then they were sent on foot that all might see them, under escort along the line from Yunnan City to Tengyueh and back again. No poles have been cut down since.

Before leaving Yunnan he exchanged his mule for a pony and as usual engaged new coolies for the next stage of the journey. As he travelled south he made good progress through open glades with clumps of pine and mighty banyan trees in the villages. He was troubled by the incidence of goitre and ascribed it to the poverty of the diet. This part of the country had been devastated by the religious uprising and it appeared to have been ‘a war of extermination’. Whole towns and villages had been razed and the conflict resulted in the death of tens of thousands. However, it was now the very picture of peace. ‘The valley-plains sparkled with poppy flowers of a


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multiplicity of tints. The days were pleasant and the sun shone brightly; every plant was in flower; doves cooed in the trees and the bushes in blossom were bright with butterflies . . . and everywhere a peaceful people who never spoke a word to the foreigner that was not friendly.’ However, having passed through the substantial town of Luho his little party was overtaken by a puffing, panting official remonstrating with Morrison and demanding that he return to the town. The Australian pressed on, deaf to his pleas—and even berated him for the audacity of his request—until, ‘he seized me by the wrists, his feet fell from under him and he fell down . . . and burst out crying. I turned back at once for the tears of a Chinaman are sadly affecting’. Back in the town in the company of a solicitous official, he stayed the night in a perfectly pleasant inn, more than a little bemused by the incident. He wrote: ‘I subsequently found that I had been sent for to come back because the road was believed to be dangerous, there was no resting place, and the authorities could not guarantee my safety. Imagine a Chinese in a Western country acting with the bluster that I did, although in good humour; I wonder whether he would be treated with the courtesy that those Chinamen showed to me!’ His next stop was Tali (now Dali), 490 kilometres from Yunnan. He had covered the distance—mostly on foot—in only nine days. Snow-capped mountains lay about the hinterland to the west and north of this former redoubt of the Muslim leader Tu Wen Hsiu. At its recapture, with the assistance of French artillerymen, the carnage was appalling—of 50 000 inhabitants, an estimated 30 000 were put to the sword.


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From time to time, local mayors provided him with an armed escort if there had been outbreaks of banditry in the area through which he was travelling. Invariably the barefoot ‘soldiers’ carried useless, rusted rifles. They had no ammunition because none could be used in their weapons. However, there was never the slightest brush with lawlessness. On the contrary he was met with politeness and deference at every turn. When he reached the Shan country at Burma’s northern border he rode into the village of Ganai and up to the best inn where the best room was already occupied by a group of Chinese travellers. With a graciousness that charmed the young journalist, they gathered their belongings and moved out to give him more than his share of the space. ‘They smiled and nodded pleasantly to me as they left the room’, he said. ‘They may be perishing heathen, I thought, but the average deacon or elder in our enlightened country could scarcely be more courteous.’ As he crossed the border he was joined by an escort of Shan soldiers, small and nimble fellows in neat uniforms—green jackets braided with yellow and dark blue knickerbockers—armed with Remington rifles which could actually fire bullets. However as they forded a swift mountain stream, ‘We all crossed safely but to my tribulation, the soldier who was carrying my two boxes tripped in the deepest channel and let both slip from the carrying pole into the water. All the notes and papers upon which this valuable record is founded were much damaged’. It is the reporter’s abiding nightmare. Whether the notes are on paper or in a portable computer, they are the raw material of history and they are irreplaceable.


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However, no one knew this better than Morrison, who had a presentiment that an accident would happen, had waded back into the stream and was in a position to rescue them. ‘But for this’, he wrote, ‘the papers would have floated down to the Irrawaddy and been lost to the world—loss irreparable’. There is a touch of self-mockery in his tone which is characteristic of the younger Morrison and it finds expression in his meeting with the hereditary prince of the region. ‘I had never met even a lord before, or anyone approaching the rank of lord, except a spurious Duke of York whom I sent to the lunatic asylum.’ The prince, by contrast, was a pleasant and kindly fellow, about 35, who expectorated on the floor with easy freedom. ‘I showed him some of my photographs’, wrote Morrison, ‘and he graciously invited me to give him some. I nodded cheerfully to him in assent, rolled them all up again and put them back in my box. He knew that I did not understand’. His arrival in Burma was celebrated by the commanding officer of a British encampment, one Captain Iremonger of the Third Burma Regiment, who telegraphed to headquarters in Rangoon the news of his successful journey. The captain was surprised that he had made it through unscathed. Morrison was impatient with the fellow, as he was with the ignorance of all those who would traduce China as a barbarous country. ‘Many missionaries have said so, and it is the fashion so to speak’, he wrote. But let us look at the facts. During the last twenty-three years foreigners of every nationality and every degree of tempera-


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ment, from the mildest to the most fanatical, have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the empire. Some have been sent back, and there has been an occasional riot with some destruction of property. But all the foreigners who have been killed can be numbered on the fingers of one hand and in the majority of cases it can hardly be denied that it was the indiscretion of the white man which was the exciting cause of his murder. In the same time, how many hundreds of unoffending Chinese have been murdered in civilised foreign countries?

The journey to Rangoon and thence by ship to Calcutta was uneventful, though once in the great Indian metropolis he almost died from malarial fever. Two English doctors attended him and he paid them a warm tribute. But while they evoked his gratitude, there was another whose presence at his bedside penetrated more deeply to the heart of the man. He ended the book with a vision of her before him: ‘What shall I say of that kind nurse—dark of complexion but most fair to look upon—whose presence in the sick room almost consoled me for being ill? Bless her dear heart! Even hydrochlorate of quinine tasted sweet from her fingers’. For the first time, Morrison was in love. His nurse’s name was Mary Joplin, a Eurasian girl, and he wrote that ‘It did my heart good to watch the animation of her beautiful features, it inspired me with enthusiasm to witness the charming grace and noiseless celerity of her movements’. When he had recovered sufficiently to travel, she accompanied him on a trip to a French settlement in the hills where they became lovers. Shortly afterwards, Morrison shipped home to Australia via New Zealand, reaching Geelong at the end


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of November 1894. Several letters from Mary awaited him. In one she wrote: Darling—I received both your loving letters . . . Darling, I promised to give 10R[upees]s for the Holy Souls but I have not been able to do so as I have been out of work all this month . . . Will you dear one give the Rs 10 to some priest in Australia as the promises I made were more in fact all on your account and myself. Darling, give it to God and God will bless you for it—and do get married to some good girl of your own station in life who in safety can be at your side and care for you. I love you but us living together will be a sinful life and when we will be dying death would taunt us much, do not be angry sweet one darling . . . but if I were to live with you I would be unhappy . . . those few short days so enjoyed in the little home along the river bring me one unhappy thought of sin . . .

With these melancholy words, Mary Joplin drifted out of Morrison’s life but not out of his thoughts. ‘What to do?’ he wrote. ‘Two alternatives were before me.’ He had been offered £1000 a year to stay in Victoria as a doctor in private medical practice, or he could return to England as a ship’s surgeon and arrive in London with £30 in his pocket and the manuscript of his journey across China. ‘There was never any doubt as to the decision’, he wrote. ‘I had never seriously contemplated the discomforts of medical practice. I decided to go home.’ He meant to Britain, home of his forebears, the journalistic capital of the Empire.


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Part II

1895–1911


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On the day Ernest Morrison arrived in London— 15 February 1895, the 58th year of Victoria’s reign—The Times carried a review of Oscar Wilde’s new play, The Importance of Being Earnest, at St James’s Theatre. ‘The public took very kindly last night to this further instalment of Mr Oscar Wilde’s humour’, the Times theatre critic reported. ‘The result is an harmonious whole which is not unlikely to entertain the public of Saint James’s for many months to come.’ Morrison would have enjoyed the play with its plot about a young woman with a passion for men named Ernest, but it was shut down soon afterwards when Wilde’s homosexuality became the subject of legal proceedings and he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour. 125


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As he had predicted, Morrison had just £30 in his pocket when he arrived in London, but his prospects were good. ‘I took a room in Mornington Crescent at 6s 6d a week and lived within my means’, he said. Mornington Crescent was at King’s Cross, a bustling, down-at-heel district where smoke and soot from the steam trains at King’s Cross and St Pancras stations billowed into the thickly polluted air. Scores of hotels and boarding houses offered cheap accommodation to a vast migratory population and no one paid much attention to the fair-haired Australian dressed in what he described as ‘a meagre outfit’. On the two-month voyage to England as ship’s surgeon in the SS Warrego Morrison had completed the manuscript of An Australian in China, Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma, writing in his small, hurried hand as the ship crossed the Indian Ocean and made its way up the Red Sea. There were no passengers on board, so Morrison’s medical work was restricted to the crew, whom he quickly convinced that he was no soft touch. The very first malingerer to report sick was handed a nauseous mixture of quinine, castor oil ‘and everything abominable I could find in the medicine chest’, and ordered to drink it on the spot. ‘I had no further trouble with the sailors during the voyage’, he wrote. Once settled in London, Morrison set about finding a publisher for his book and was delighted when, in April, Horace Cox, publisher of The Field, offered him £75 for it. Morrison pronounced himself ‘well content’ with the money, which enabled him to spend the next few months in the British Museum writing a thesis for his doctorate on


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the subject of Hereditary Transmission of Various Malformations and Abnormalities. ‘These weeks were among the happiest of my life’, he said. ‘My thesis was accepted and on 1 August I graduated MD in Edinburgh.’ Morrison had dedicated An Australian in China to John Chiene, ‘who gave me back the power of locomotion’, and the book was well received. The Times found it ‘lively’, the Saturday Review ‘very entertaining’, the Saint James Gazette ‘fascinating’, the Lancet ‘delightful’. Sir William Gowers, a neurologist at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and the Epileptic, was struck by the author’s observations regarding the blunted nerve sensibility of the Chinese. Sir William prescribed cannabis to dull the pain of migraine sufferers and was interested in Morrison’s research into the Chinese use of opiates. He invited Morrison to visit him. Asked by his host what he intended to do next, Morrison confided his desire to find a job in journalism. George Buckle, editor of The Times, was one of Sir William’s patients and he mentioned Morrison to Buckle at their club, the Athenaeum in Pall Mall. Buckle passed his name on to Moberly Bell, the former Cairo correspondent who was now the Times manager. Consequently on Tuesday, 22 October, ‘to my profound astonishment’, Morrison received a letter from Bell asking him to call on him ‘at about 3.30 on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday’. ‘When I received the letter, I was worth considerably less than one sovereign’, Morrison wrote. ‘Every day, therefore, was of importance and I purposed calling on Wednesday, but confiding my intention to Thomas Watters, a retired British consul-general from the China Service, whom I had got to know in London, he said to


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me, “That would be bad policy. They will think you too eager. Better go on Thursday”. So I went on Thursday.’1 The Times bore the royal coat-of-arms on its masthead and carried the legend ‘Printed and published in Printing House Square and Playhouse Yard in the parish of St Ann, Blackfriars’. As Morrison walked into these grimy, smokeblackened environs for the first time in the autumn of 1895, he was following in the footsteps of Jonson, Shakespeare and Defoe and, in more recent times, the great Times editors Thomas Barnes and John T. Delane. For the preceding one hundred years the home of the most famous newspaper in the world had been in a cobbled maze of lanes and alleyways between St Paul’s Cathedral and the River Thames on the south-western fringes of the City of London. Originally, it occupied the premises of the King’s Printing House in Printing House Yard, which the paper’s founder, John Walter I, had the foresight to rename Printing House Square. In late-Victorian times PHS, as it was known, had grown into an undisciplined huddle of inky print shops and newsprint stores which served the thundering presses of The Times, housed in the bowels of the fivestorey Times building on Queen Victoria Street. The founder’s grandson, John Walter III, had constructed the newspaper office in the 1870s, crowning the façade with an imposing pediment into which was set an emblematic clock and a scroll of The Times past, present and future. John Walter III had died in 1894 at the age of 76 after completing 47 years as Chief Proprietor. He had presided over The Times’s most glorious years, but had also witnessed its inexorable decline in profits and circulation. Realising a decade before his death that drastic action was


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needed, he had appointed one of his sons, Arthur Walter, as joint manager in 1885, but the decline was unstoppable. In 1890, the paper was forced to pay £250 000 (at least $40 million today) in legal fees as a result of the commission into the disastrous Parnell Affair.2 That year the profits shared among the various members of the Walter family to have been named as co-partners in the will of John Walter I was a lowly £36 866, compared with £90 000 20 years earlier. After assuming control in 1894, the fourth Walter to hold the title of Chief Proprietor leaned heavily on his manager, Moberly Bell, to correct this unsatisfactory situation. Morrison met Bell in his office, where he sat behind a massive roll-top desk. He was a thick-set man of 48 years, with a strong face, tremendous domed head and short, thick moustache. He was dressed in the traditional City uniform of wing collar and tie, waistcoat, striped trousers and flowing frock coat. Moberly Bell had been born in Egypt on 2 April 1847, the son of an English merchant in Alexandria. He had impressed the shy and retiring Arthur Walter, who had visited Egypt with his wife in 1889, not only with his outgoing personality but also with his grasp of business practices. Walter offered him the job of assistant manager at Printing House Square in 1891 and he readily accepted. Bell had lost an ankle bone after his leg had been trapped in the points of an Egyptian railway track when he jumped off a platform to catch a troop train heading to the relief of General Gordon in Khartoum. He had the bone set in the handle of his walking stick, so that he could say it still supported him as he limped around his new domain.


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On the death of the Times manager, John Cameron MacDonald, Bell moved into the manager’s office and took command of hiring staff and running the paper’s foreign service, as well as handling the day-to-day accounts. His door was always open and, as he had no secretary, anyone could walk in to discuss matters relating to work. On the day of Morrison’s visit Bell was looking for a new Peking correspondent and he took a liking to the young Australian doctor. The History of The Times says: ‘Morrison was strikingly handsome, tall and well built—a magnificent specimen of Australian manhood. Morrison, moreover, was scientific in his power of observation, scrupulous in his thinking, and equipped with a remarkable memory. He was expert with the gun and the canoe, uniquely self-reliant and invariably unaccompanied on his explorations. His mind was candid, his writing fluent and balanced’. But, the historians also noted, when he arrived at Printing House Square, Morrison was ‘dressed in a manner more appropriate to King’s Cross than to the City’. This didn’t bother Bell, however. Puffing clouds of smoke from an ever-present cigarette, he greeted Morrison warmly and offered him a job on the spot. ‘I don’t know where I heard of you,’ he said, apparently forgetting Buckle’s role, ‘but I have read your book. Would you care to go to Peking as our correspondent?’ ‘I will have to think over the matter,’ Morrison replied. ‘If you went,’ Bell said, ‘what salary would you require?’ Morrison told him that in his two previous appointments he had been paid the equivalent of £400 a year.


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‘You will have at least that,’ Bell assured him, then asked: ‘Why do you hesitate to go?’ Morrison said: ‘I have been studying the subject of Siam and French Indochina. Relations between England and France regarding Siam have been critical. My hope was that I might be sent there as correspondent.’ ‘Compared with China, Siam is of minor importance to us,’ Bell informed him. ‘Will you come in and dine with us quietly one evening?’ ‘I am in an embarrassment,’ Morrison admitted, ‘because I have no dress clothes. I was hard up,’ he added hastily to show he knew he should dress for dinner, ‘and I sold them.’ Bell laughed. ‘Never mind about your dress clothes, but come and dine with us.’ Morrison agreed. Bell then asked him whether he had read a series of letters from a special correspondent in China, which had just been published in The Times warning that Britain had been replaced as the dominant power in China by a Franco–Russian alliance. Morrison said that he had. ‘If you come to dinner, you will meet the author of those letters,’ Bell promised. The author was Valentine Chirol, a curate’s son who had joined the paper after four years in the Foreign Office. Ten years older than Morrison, he was now assistant to Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, head of the paper’s prestigious Foreign Department. Morrison told Bell: ‘I wish you to understand at once that I could never hope to approach the standard of excellence, the power and the literary ability displayed in those letters.’ But Bell had already ascertained from


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An Australian in China that Morrison was not only an instinctive reporter but also a fine descriptive writer. Bell lived with his wife Ethel and six children at 98 Portland Place, Marylebone, a brisk walk along Euston Road from Morrison’s lodgings at King’s Cross. ‘This was the turning point of my career’, he later wrote. In the Bells’ drawing room he met Valentine Chirol, a brilliant though edgy man with a pointed, reddish beard and piercing blue eyes; Flora Shaw, The Times colonial editor who later named Nigeria when she became Lady Lugard, W.F. Monypenny,3 the paper’s monocled leader writer, and George Earle Buckle himself. Buckle was 6 feet tall and burly with a fine red beard and a booming laugh. He had become a barrister after eating his dinners at Lincoln’s Inn and was a Fellow of All Souls. He had become assistant editor of The Times in 1880 at the age of 25 and editor four years later. He was custodian of the paper’s reputation for good English, accuracy and fair-mindedness, but left the direction of foreign policy to Bell and Sir Donald Wallace. Morrison wrote to his mother: ‘I dined in a friendly way with G.E. Buckle and other famous people who treated me well. Don’t think I am boasting when I tell you that one man said I was a “delightfully modest man” ’. The timing was opportune for his appointment as Peking correspondent. Only the previous year Japan had sent an expeditionary force to Korea, a Chinese vassal state, after China intervened to quell a rebellion against the Korean Throne. Armed with the latest Western weapons, Japan had inflicted a succession of humiliating defeats on China’s army and navy. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki of April 1895, Japan seized the Chinese


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island of Formosa (now Taiwan) and, on Korea’s western flank, the Chinese Liaotung Peninsula, including China’s pride and joy, the fortified, warm-water harbour of Port Arthur on the Yellow Sea. The Japanese also demanded a £35 million indemnity. But Japan’s triumph was short-lived. Posing as China’s protectors, France, Germany and Russia forced the Japanese to relinquish most of their gains on the mainland, including Port Arthur. At the time of Morrison’s dinner at the Bells’ house, The Times had just published a news story claiming that Russia and China had reached a secret agreement which gave Russia anchorage rights at Port Arthur, as well as granting her a railway concession in Manchuria which would shorten the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, then under construction, to Vladivostok. If this were true, the implications for Britain, which had enjoyed the run of the Yangtsze basin and the lion’s share of Chinese trade, were enormous. The Times, however, was disquieted when the Russian Government denied that any such treaty existed. Wallace interrogated the part-time correspondent who had cabled the story, T.H. Whitehead, a bank manager in Hong Kong, only to discover that he was uncertain about the details. His services were promptly terminated. It was an embarrassing situation for the paper but one which, fortuitously for Morrison, highlighted the need for a permanent Peking correspondent. There was also the question of British interests in the south. One of the ways for British traders to penetrate further into the vast Chinese market was through Yunnan City (now Kunming) via British-held Burma, the


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end point of Morrison’s recent journey. And the best way of approaching that inaccessible south-western region was through Siam, the very place Morrison had set his heart on exploring next. ‘In a few days it was arranged that I should have my wish’, he wrote, ‘that I should leave for Siam and Indochina on 21 November on probation for six months’. At Printing House Square the reporter was formally introduced to his proprietor, Arthur Walter. He also visited Sir Donald Wallace at Saint Ermin’s Mansions, Westminster. Wallace, a former Times correspondent in St Petersburg, was one of those exceptionally worldly nineteenth-century newspapermen who were skilled in the art of working closely with the Foreign Service in progressing British interests abroad, while at the same time maintaining their editorial independence and personal integrity. To much official disdain, however, Wallace and the paper’s most celebrated correspondent, Henri de Blowitz, had pulled off one of the most sensational scoops in Fleet Street’s history when they sewed a copy of the Berlin Treaty from the 1878 Congress of Berlin into the lining of Wallace’s coat and smuggled it to Printing House Square. The treaty had been published in The Times (both in its original French and in its English translation) before the delegates had even signed it. Morrison could not have had a better mentor. Wallace told him that the point of his journey was to note and describe the conditions which underlay the existing friction between France and Britain in the Far East. He was to make his way through Burma, cross the Chinese frontier into the interior and then return to Siam.


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The need for secrecy was paramount. ‘I was to travel as an Australian doctor interested in the commercial development of Siam’, Morrison said. Moberly Bell instructed him ‘to maintain this character and appear to have no connection with The Times’. Morrison’s real job was to spy on the French. ‘I was to report especially upon the truth of the alleged action of the French Government in registering the Cambodians as French subjects’, he said. Wallace gave him letters to Sir Thomas Sanderson, Permanent Undersecretary of the Foreign Office, and an official in the India Office, and they in turn provided him with letters of introduction to the British consul in Saigon and the British chargé d’affaires in Bangkok, although neither diplomat was told that Morrison was to write articles for The Times. Equipped, he told his mother in a letter, with ‘a nice Kodak, good dress clothes and letters of introduction that would surprise you’, he set sail in the French mail steamer from Marseilles for Cochin China (now Vietnam) on secret assignment for The Times. He warned his mother: ‘Guard strict silence about this mission of mine’.


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In the dome at the top of the grand staircase of Her Britannic Majesty’s Foreign Office, exquisite painted figures represent the diverse territories that made up the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. By the time Morrison had completed his ‘trial run’ through South-East Asia as secret agent for The Times, his name had reached the highest councils of Whitehall. Sir Thomas Sanderson, Salisbury’s Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, wrote to Moberly Bell on 14 November 1896: ‘We are greatly indebted to Mr Morrison [sic] for the information which he has forwarded’. It was probably unprecedented for a journalist, especially one still to be given a staff job, to receive such an accolade from the Foreign Service’s most senior panjandrum but Morrison had already proved that he was no 136


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run-of-the-mill reporter. During this trip he filed 20 long dispatches in the form of ‘Letters to the Editor’, more than half of which were published, and only space limitations prevented the others from getting into print. Morrison had reached Saigon on 23 December 1895 and sent his first report to London five days later. It presented the representatives of France’s colonial service in an unflattering light: ‘fat, wheezy, middle-aged gentlemen, sipping absinthe, and perspiring even with the effort of speech, as they mopped their close-cropped heads and double chins. They were not only inefficient but corrupt’. The day after filing this report Morrison took the train to My Tho, where he caught a river steamer to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. He was long gone before his words rebounded around the walls of Saigon’s watering holes. ‘Naturally I was looked upon with a considerable amount of suspicion for relations between England and France were in a state of high tension’, Morrison wrote. This had been the case since July 1893 when the French fleet had precipitated the Mekong Crisis over Siam. France had declared war on the Asian kingdom in May 1893 and on 20 July that year had served an ultimatum demanding huge concessions. Lord Rosebery, Gladstone’s Foreign Minister, stood firm against the French demands and on 31 July she backed down and agreed to maintain Siam as a buffer state. France, however, had taken over a large part of eastern Siam and was still creeping west of the Mekong, as well as east of the river into the Chinese Shan State of Kiang Tung. Morrison feared that she would annex all of Siam and, in


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his Times report, he urged Britain to use all her power to preserve Siamese independence. Lord Salisbury had swept back into office at the head of a Conservative/Unionist coalition in June 1895 and, acting as his own Foreign Minister, was unwilling to hold Rosebury’s tough line against France. While Morrison had been sailing across the Indian Ocean, the Foreign Office had been secretly negotiating a compromise deal with the French. Salisbury wrote to Lord Curzon, the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on 3 December: ‘If no agreement is come to, France will swallow up Siam in ten years, and I greatly doubt the English being disposed to run any risk in its defence’. These talks were on the point of reaching a successful conclusion, although that was unknown in Indochina at the time of Morrison’s visit. According to the reporter, French colonial authorities were ‘exceedingly hostile to the British for their support—their moral support only— of Siam’. At Phnom Penh, Morrison was supplied with an interpreter by the French whose duty, it was patently obvious, was to spy on him. ‘He was master of all the vices’, he said. ‘He drank, smoked opium and lied unblushingly.’ Together they crossed the Great Lake (Tonle Sap) into the Cambodian-populated provinces of Siam, stopping first at Siem Reap to visit the ruins of Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom, ‘the most remarkable monuments of Eastern Asia’. When they reached Battambang, Morrison sent his untrustworthy companion packing and carried on alone to the ruby and sapphire mines of Pailin, where an elephant was provided to convey him to the port of Chanthaburi. There he boarded


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a rusty little steamer for the trip to Bangkok. Morrison was still in transit when the Anglo– French Treaty was signed by Lord Salisbury and the French Ambassador Baron de Courcel. While guaranteeing the integrity of the central portion of Siam, it recognised all Siamese territory to the east as the French sphere of influence and all Siamese territory to the west as the British sphere. But Morrison was well pleased. ‘Practically, the agreement stayed French aggression and guaranteed the integrity of the whole of Siam’, he said. China, however, was less than enthusiastic with another section of the treaty which carved up commercial privileges in two of the Celestial Kingdom’s provinces, Yunnan and Szechuan. Her south-western borders were also altered to accommodate colonial needs in Burma and Indochina. In Bangkok, Morrison stayed for two weeks in the British Legation with the British chargé d’affaires, Maurice de Bunsen. His host was ‘a statesman–diplomatist who had left grateful memories in Siam of his tactfulness, his wisdom and his ready sympathy’. Morrison wrote to his mother: ‘I am here with letters of introduction from the India Office, the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, from Scott, the Former Minister, and many others. Sir Thomas Sanderson wrote privately to Mr de Bunsen about me. I have been treated everywhere with the greatest attention by the Royal Princess and the Siamese authorities. I did the work I was asked to do, whether satisfactory or not remains to be seen’. Having completed the Siamese phase of his expedition, he was now heading for Yunnan. He hired two servants: a Luk-chin, or Chinese-Siamese, named Ah Heng, a man of exceptional courage who spoke English,


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Siamese and three other dialects, and Mom Luang Sook, a gentlemanly Siamese from the Survey Department in Bangkok. They travelled to Korat (Nakorn Rathchasima) along the partially completed railway from Bangkok but had to finish the journey on horseback. Morrison then struck north-west across Siam to Chiang Mai, Siam’s second most important city, using modes of transport which varied from bullock cart to horseback to elephant, with long walks in between. ‘Every kindness was shown to me by the people’, Morrison said, ‘the letters given me by Prince Damrong and other Siamese authorities ensuring me every consideration and assistance. From Chiang Mai, I rode in two days to Chiang Rai and two days later I reached Chiang Saen on the banks of the Mekong’. Provided with elephants again, Morrison and his two servants crossed the frontier into Burma, intending to push north to Yunnan City, but they reached a point on the mountainous track where the elephants could go no further. He was unable to obtain horses and even though he offered liberal amounts of money had considerable difficulty in engaging coolies to carry his kit. ‘Keng Tung, the point for which I was now making, is the chief town in the most important of the southern Shan states: it is the farthest eastern garrison of the British Empire in India’, he wrote. ‘It lies in a valley which seemed to me the fairest spot I had seen in Asia with its sequestered villages in picturesque woods on the edge of the hills, with the town itself with its mat grass thatched houses, its red-tiled temples and gilded pagodas, with its busy commingling of the most picturesque races of Eastern Asia.’


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The town was six days’ march and Morrison made most of it on foot, much of it barefoot because of an injured ankle. ‘I could not wear a boot’, he said. ‘I arrived in Keng Tung somewhat lame.’ He found that the town was garrisoned by a Gurkha regiment under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Pressgrave. The British Commissioner was Mr G.C.B. Stirling, an official of exceptional experience, whose melancholy duty was to hand Mong Haing, the small state east of the Mekong, back to France. ‘I retain a vivid recollection of his kindness to me, especially during the attack of fever by which I was prostrated’, Morrison said. When he recovered, he planned his hazardous entry into China and it was at this time that he parted company with one of his servants. Unable to sustain the rigours of the journey, Mom Luang Sook turned back; Morrison later learned that he had died before he reached Chiang Mai. Morrison’s intention was to cross the Chinese frontier and march through the Chinese Shan states (Sipsong panna) and Yunnan Province to Yunnan City. But there was a catch: he could not get a visa. Britain’s agreement with China stipulated that a British subject wishing to make this journey should have a passport written in Chinese. There was, however, no one in Keng Tung who could write Chinese. Morrison wired Thirkell White, acting Chief Secretary of the Government of Burma, and White wired back: ‘Is not journey risky at this unhealthy season?’ Morrison replied that it was impossible for him to wait until the season became healthier and, breaking his cover, revealed that he was travelling for The Times and appealed to


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White to expedite the necessary papers. ‘I was permitted to proceed on the understanding that if any objection were shown to my crossing the frontier I would return.’ Stirling gave him a document written in English and two dialects—Shan and Lu—calling upon the Chinese frontier authorities to allow him to travel to Yunnan City. ‘This missive I put into the largest envelope that I could find and I then decorated the outside with a large seal stamped from the top of a Van Houten’s cocoa tin’, Morrison said. Thus fortified but otherwise unarmed, he set out on 12 June 1896 in the company of his remaining servant, Ah Heng, two ponies and seven coolies for the frontier, which lay 86 kilometres from Keng Tung through rain-soaked jungle. From there, the Chinese town of Keng Hung (Jinghong) on the Mekong was a further 130 kilometres. ‘When I reached the frontier the chief of the district called upon me and squatted down with me on the floor of the wat’, said Morrison. ‘With reverence, I showed him the document and asked him to help me reach the town of Keng Hung, where there resided a small Chinese frontier official. He was very friendly and did all he could to help me.’ Setting off again, Morrison soon regretted he was unarmed. ‘There was no need for arms in Siam or Burma but once I had crossed the border into the Shan States of China I would have been more secure, my journey would have been more interesting and I should have been saved much anxiety had I been armed’, he said. It was hard going, though in his inimitable way he describes it as ‘not unpleasant’. As well as the incessant roar of the monsoon, the streams and fields were full of


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leeches that clung to any exposed flesh and swarms of mosquitoes hovered everywhere. It was the planting season, every available man was working in the paddy fields and there was a shortage of labour to help with Morrison’s baggage. Pressing coolies into service from one village to the next, however, he reached the township of Keng Hung. ‘The country is rich, fertile and well peopled’, he wrote. ‘Cultivation is highly developed. The people are thriving, prosperous and contented.’ Every village had its temple and guesthouse, where he was made welcome. His fellow travellers were Chinese traders heading south from Yunnan—‘Mohammedans all who had knowledge of foreigners and were always cheery and hospitable’. ‘Keng Hung itself is a straggling village scattered around the steep western slopes of a jungle-crowned promontory that projects into the Mekong’, he wrote. ‘High up on the hill slope is the palace of the Sawbwa commanding a splendid view of the great river as it comes into view from the mountains to the north, sweeps away to the east past the promontory and then rolls on in majestic volume southwards to the sea.’ On the second day after his arrival Morrison visited the Sawbwa of Keng Hung, a 32-year-old opium addict. ‘His town was steeped in opium’, he said. ‘I met no man, not even a priest, who did not smoke opium.’ Morrison was received politely in a large hall and given a Westernstyle easy chair to sit on, while the Sawbwa sat at a table on which his opium lamp was burning. Villagers sat on their haunches in rows, filling the hall, with the more important headmen being grouped near their chief. Outside, torrential rain thundered down.


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Morrison had brought a clerk from Keng Tung with him to act as interpreter, but the man ‘spoke in tones so respectfully humble and so low as to be inaudible’. ‘I interrupted him’, Morrison wrote, ‘and called upon my Luk-chin. Ah Heng spoke in a loud and confident tone as became the interpreter of one whom he persistently referred to as the “Chao Luang”. “No damn fear,” he explained to me afterwards, “but I make these buffaloes (thus he referred to the Sawbwa and his court) know that my master is a No 1 big man.” Chao Luang is, I believe, the title due to the Chief Commissioner of Burma’. Then the Sawbwa began to speak. Was Morrison aware that the route he had chosen was the worst possible way of reaching Yunnan? Morrison replied that he found this hard to believe as it was the one chosen by Chinese caravans in their annual journey from Yunnan to Keng Tung. Ah, but did Morrison know that this was the worst time of the year to travel along it? ‘It is true,’ Morrison said, raising his voice against the deluge, ‘that a few drops of rain have fallen but then how cool it is. To one coming from a cold country, the summer heat is intolerable.’ ‘True,’ the Sawbwa sighed. ‘True.’ Morrison pressed for permission to continue on to Yunnan City. The Sawbwa replied that this was a question for the Chinese commissioner, whom he would see tomorrow. Moving on to the political situation, the Sawbwa wanted to know which nationality now possessed Bangkok, the English or the French? ‘Neither,’ Morrison replied. ‘The Siamese, whose independence has been forever guaranteed.’


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The following day Morrison met the Chinese ‘Commissioner’ and discovered that he was ‘a humble official of slender authority’—nothing more than the Sawbwa’s clerk. He wanted Morrison to stay in Keng Hung until he had heard from his superior officer at Simao. Morrison insisted that he should be allowed to continue his journey and the man gave way. ‘He was suffering from an irritative skin affection of the neck for which I gave him an elixir in the form of a cake of muchadvertised soap’, Morrison wrote. ‘He was grateful and gave me the necessary letter authorising me to proceed.’ With a little creative prompting, the letter effusively described its bearer as ‘Chao Sala, a Prince Doctor specially sent by the Queen of England at the urgent entreaty of the Viceroy of Yunnan to save the sick and dying’. The most difficult part of Morrison’s journey still lay ahead. He had to traverse the Sipsong panna, the congeries of 12 small Shan states on either side of the Mekong stretching as far as the border of Yunnan province. Each state was self-governed but its chief and headmen all owed allegiance to Keng Hung, which was itself a Chinese vassal state. The ferry over the Mekong was five kilometres above the town and although the stream at this point was more than 300 metres wide, with a powerful current running, Morrison got across safely. He found the village of Ta Kaw in a bamboo grove near the river bank and camped for the night in its splendid wat. ‘The Prince Doctor may travel all through the Sipsong panna and not find another temple like this,’ the chief priest told him. It had been built by grateful Chinese traders who had survived the dangerous crossing.


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But there was trouble in store. In the morning, guides deliberately led Morrison and Ah Heng away from the main track and into the hill country, where they were abandoned in a backward village. ‘For days I was wandering about these hills among the aborigines, zigzagging from village to village’, Morrison wrote. This unexpected detour, however, enabled him to study the abundant local anthropology. The Khalaws had no priests or temples, spoke their own language, dressed in their own style, could neither read nor write, and were armed with crossbows and poisoned arrows. Men and women climbed the hillsides like goats. They did not smoke opium but were fond of home-distilled samshu, smoked home-grown tobacco and drank home-grown tea. Morrison rode his pony from one mud-hut village to the next, with fields of maize plants waving high above his head. ‘All the talk was of a man-eating tiger’, he said. ‘It was said to have killed thirteen men and many buffaloes and bullocks. My men declared that they could hear it mewing in the jungle. We saw its fresh footprints. I measured them but never saw the tiger.’ If a local man killed a tiger, he was compelled to sell the skin and bones to the Sawbwa for seven rupees, although the skin was worth 25 rupees and the bones even more. Ground into a powder, they were sold as a remedy for failing courage, ‘in accordance with the primeval idea that the body imbibes the qualities of the thing eaten’. As Morrison and his companion travelled along the valley that ran up to the southern gate of Saumao, the appearance of the villages improved and the people were turned out in home-woven cotton garments adorned by coloured turbans bought from Upper Burma. On 7 July


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they entered Saumao, gateway of south-western China. It was an alarming experience. ‘People poured into the street to see us pass, jeering at us as foreign devils’, Morrison wrote. ‘But for the speedy intervention of the officials it might have gone hard with me and my solitary companion. No sooner, however, had the magistrate heard of our arrival than he came over personally to see us to welcome us in a comfortable inn.’ After a couple of days the excitement of the people about the stranger in their midst subsided and Morrison was allowed to wander about the town unmolested. He found it idyllic. ‘One could wish to live in no pleasanter spot than Saumao’, he said. ‘The plain is a lake of paddy, gleaming green and gold, skirted by thickly wooded hills recessed with valleys of paddy. Across the plain a paved road winds, temples gleam white from groves of pines and bamboo.’ On 14 July Morrison set forth for Yunnan City, 580 kilometres distant, accompanied by a Chinese merchant who had forfeited all his money by trying to smuggle opium into the town without paying duty. He also had a Chinese interpreter, an escort of two soldiers, and two coolies and a pack pony to carry his baggage. The magistrate at Saumao had given him a letter which guaranteed safe conduct as far as the next town, Pu’er, famous throughout China for its tea, but here he ran into trouble when the district magistrate asked to see his passport from Peking. ‘I have no passport from Peking,’ Morrison said. ‘I have come from Burma, provided with letters of application from the British Commissioner.’ The man was intransigent. ‘You have no passport


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from Peking,’ he said, ‘then you will go back tomorrow.’ Morrison protested but to no avail. ‘You have been put to great expense in coming thus far and the sum of twenty taels (about £3) will be given to you to defray your expenses back.’ Morrison had no intention of calling off his mission and the manner in which he dealt with the problem was sheer poker player’s bluff. ‘I scornfully laughed off his offer and ostentatiously sat down and began writing a number of figures on a piece of paper’, he wrote. The room was crowded with townspeople and everyone was keenly interested in this little charade. The magistrate could not contain his curiosity. ‘What is the teacher doing?’ ‘I am making a note of the expense I have been put to in coming thus far and the loss I have sustained, and the estimated cost of the affront now being inflicted upon the high British official who had give me letters of application.’ ‘What does it amount to?’ ‘My heart is in sorrow and I will not speak now, but I will tell you in the morning.’ In the morning the magistrate and the same crowd returned and Morrison was handed a packet containing 20 taels of silver. With his stick he disdainfully pushed it off the table. Then he handed the official two large envelopes, one addressed to the Viceroy of Yunnan and the other to the Tsungli Yamen, the Chinese Foreign Office, at Peking. Both letters had been written overnight and contained a detailed statement of his case and claimed compensation. Handing them to the magistrate, Morrison explained the contents and added


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that the compensation would no doubt have to be paid by the local authorities. How much was he claiming? ‘Knowing how poor China is, I have only asked for ten thousand taels (£1500),’ he replied airily. The amount seemed to astonish the magistrate. The crowd took it up. ‘Ten thousand taels!’ was whispered from man to man until the news had been passed out on to the street. Morrison packed his belongings and, under escort, returned to Saumao, where he was visited by the magistrate and by the local military commander. Both men were distressed about what had happened and when Morrison declared that the very next day he was returning to Burma to report his case to the British frontier commissioner, they begged him to delay his departure for three days to give them time to rectify the regrettable mistake which had been made. ‘I yielded to their entreaties and consented to remain’, he wrote. On the third morning a message arrived from Pu’er begging the stranger to return and continue his journey to Yunnan City. Morrison retraced his steps to Pu’er and consented to take back his two letters. He was offered money to defray his expenses but said that, as he had been so well treated, he could not accept any payment. The trek to Yunnan City took 11 days, and a few days’ march from the safety of the city walls Morrison’s little party was set upon by brigands. They made off with his medicine chest and the rest of his belongings. Morrison was unhurt but, shortly afterwards, was struck down by a form of bubonic plague. Lacking even the most basic medicines, he decided to sweat out the virus by lying


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down on the hot bricks of the long, flat stove in a Chinese house until his skin was scorched and blistered. ‘It was something like the old compurgation by fire’, he wrote, ‘but I came out of the ordeal triumphantly, and it is probably the most original cure I ever effected’. He recuperated in the home of Christian Bensen, director of telegraphs in the province of Yunnan. After buying new kit and replenishing his medicine chest, he set off again in late September, heading south-east to the treaty port of Mengzi, the most far-flung of Peking’s Maritime Customs Stations at that time. He and Ah Heng were mounted on horses and had two coolies and a pack pony to carry their belongings, as well as an escort of two opium-smoking soldiers to ward off brigands. All seemed well. On 1 October the little party swung westward along the base of the Yunnan plateau towards Saumao. Here, Morrison left the main track and turned into the hills, following mountain paths previously unseen by Europeans. Among the shady woods and running streams he encountered long files of native people, the men in Chinese garb and the women in multi-coloured dress, with silver earrings and beaded necklaces. They were gentle and spoke softly. Yet the further he went the more hostile the terrain became. The coolies were having difficulty and when Morrison remonstrated with them they replied: ‘Are we horses that eat grass?’ One of the soldiers deserted on 15 October and the following day Morrison and Ah Heng were separated from the other three men. It started to rain. ‘The country became a tangle of jungle, ravines and watercourses and we never saw our coolies again’, he wrote. ‘Fortunately,


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distrusting the men I had transferred to the pack pony all the indispensable articles for our journey’. Delayed by flooded rivers but treated with unfailing friendliness by the hill people, Morrison finally reached Saumao on 31 October. The trading season was in full swing and Morrison’s inn was packed with Chinese Muslims preparing for their annual journey to Chiang Mai, Siam. Morrison headed for Mong Hsing, the tiny state on the Mekong which had brought Britain and France to the brink of war and which had been handed back to France. He reached the town of Mong Hsing itself after 16 days’ travel and was astonished to discover that ‘this paltry village of 160 native wooden houses was the chief town of a jungle-covered malarious district, scantily peopled by an enfeebled race steeped in opium’. There were tigers in the forests and leeches on every blade of grass. ‘Truly’, he wrote, ‘the quarrels of nations have often strange origins’. In November, Morrison travelled southwards to the Siamese border and on to Chiang Mai, where he sold his horses. Boarding a native boat, he sailed down the Me Nam Chao Phaya to Bangkok, arriving in the Siamese capital almost a year to the day after he had set out on his trial run for The Times. To his great surprise, Valentine Chirol was there to meet him. Chirol was on a world tour to prepare himself for taking over from Sir Donald Wallace when he retired as Foreign Editor. He delivered a message from Moberly Bell that Morrison should proceed at once to Peking: many of the stories he had filed en route had been published; he had passed his probationary period with flying colours and had been appointed to the staff.


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During a two-week delay in Bangkok prior to his departure for China, Morrison suffered another outbreak of fever after falling into the river at midnight when returning from dinner at the American Legation. Still accompanied by Ah Heng he took a steamer to Hong Kong and thence up the coast of China, calling at the treaty ports and spending a few days in Shanghai. On 15 March 1897 he arrived in Peking. ‘My new life was now to begin’, he wrote.


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Riding a sturdy Chinese pony and with Ah Heng supervising his baggage, Morrison entered the Northern Gate in the huge, 50-feet-thick, battlemented walls of Peking to begin his labours as The Times correspondent. After the emptiness of the plains on his riverboat journey up the Peiho River from Tientsin, he was suddenly engulfed by the hubbub of the imperial capital’s two million souls, the overwhelming majority of them Taoist, Buddhist or Confucian and all of them anti-barbarian. Morrison knew from his earlier visit that Peking was made up of four walled cities. The Chinese or Outer City to the south abutted the Tartar or Inner City to the north, while in the middle of the Tartar City stood the Imperial City, its walls and state buildings covered with distinctive pink tiles. In turn, the Imperial City enclosed the purple154


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walled Forbidden City, comprising the pavilions, pagodas and palaces, all topped with dazzling Imperial yellow tiles, of the Ching Dynasty. Through long, noisy alleys and crowded, aromatic bazaars Morrison’s route gave way to open spaces, some of which accommodated well-tended market gardens but were mostly given over to ancestral resting places, shrines and foul-smelling rubbish dumps. Two years earlier the scholar Kang Youwei, who had come to Peking from the southern city of Canton (now Guangzhou), had been appalled at the capital’s inhumanity to its own citizens. ‘No matter where you look in Peking, the place is covered with beggars’, he wrote. ‘The homeless and the old, the crippled and the sick with no one to care for them fall dead on the roads.’1 Morrison saw the suffering, the neglect and the degradation at the heart of the Celestial Kingdom, but he also passed through more salubrious neighbourhoods where coaches containing high-born painted ladies trundled down wider, slightly cleaner streets. Sandwiched between the walls of the Imperial City and the Chinese City neat rows of European-style shops and buildings announced Morrison’s arrival in Legation Street, the main thoroughfare of the diplomatic quarter. Halfway down the wide, shady, paved boulevard, Morrison crossed a bridge over a shallow canal, known because of its sluggish green waters as ‘the Jade River’, and reached his destination, the walled compound housing the British Legation, which was set amid sweetsmelling rose bushes in a fair imitation of an English country garden. Eleven legations—Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Holland,


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America and Japan—were corralled in an area threequarters of a mile square and bounded on three sides by high city walls. This was the foreign devils’ village where some 250 expatriates, about half of Peking’s entire foreign community, lived in each other’s pockets. Inhabitants of an extraterritorial enclave surrounded by a vast, incomprehensible puzzle, they behaved like blind men touching different parts of a dragon and trying to make sense of the whole beast. ‘That first summer in Peking I recall with shuddering’, Morrison wrote in Reminiscences. ‘Everything was in darkness. The work was unfamiliar. Ignorance of the springs of Chinese action was universal and I was the most ignorant of all.’ Albert Edmonds, the correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, met Morrison on his first day in Peking. ‘The next day he devoted himself to his first communication’, Edmonds wrote. ‘There was a reception at the Russian Embassy that night to which we were all invited. Morrison would not come. He was too keen on his first dispatch. He sent me a note to the Embassy. “Come round and see me when the show is over. I am damned miserable.” ’ Morrison’s lack of experience, coupled with an earnest desire to impress his masters in London, had induced an outbreak of self-doubt. Edmonds continued: I dropped in to find him immersed in his manuscript doubtful as to whether to send it or not. He asked me to give him my frank opinion on it. I read it and found it to be a perfect diagnosis of the then troubled condition of China, masterly in its phrasing, luminous in its broad conception of the general situation. I said to him, ‘Moberly Bell will be delighted. It’s great


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stuff.’ This was the first of the long series of brilliant contributions which made Morrison the most far-seeing foreign correspondent of his day and generation.

Morrison wasted no time in using letters of introduction to Sir Robert Hart, the Irish-born Inspector-General of the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs, to the German, Japanese and British Ministers and to various military attachés. Britain’s Minister to China (in other words, her Ambassador to the Manchu Court) was Sir Claude MacDonald, a 45-year-old soldier who had replaced Valentine Chirol’s old friend, Sir Nicolas O’Conor. ‘Everyone denounced the appointment’, Morrison wrote of MacDonald in Reminiscences. He was attacked as imperfectly educated, he was weak, flippant and garrulous, he was described as the type of military officer rolled out a mile at a time and then lopped off in six foot lengths. His only claim to the post was the fact that some years before he had been gunnery instructor in Hong Kong for a period of one year! Such were the criticisms levelled against a British officer of singular charm of manner, who had not sought the post thrust upon him by Lord Salisbury, and who quickly inspired to an unusual degree the confidence of his famous chief.

Unfortunately MacDonald was absent from Peking at the time of Morrison’s arrival, but he wrote to his mother on 30 March that he was making good headway: Last evening I dined at the legation with Beauclerk [the British chargé d’affaires in Peking] and the legation men. Beauclerk had received a letter from Chirol in which the latter


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said that I had won golden opinions in Bangkok. Today I lunch with Pritchard Morgan MP who has undertaken to introduce me to Li Hung-chang. This afternoon at 4 I meet Sir Robert Hart, the most powerful man in China, and afterwards visit Baron von Heyking, the German Minister.2 My work here will be very hard, my salary ought to be a good one and I have no doubt I will be well received by everyone.3

Li Hung-chang, a member of the Tsungli Yamen, the Chinese Foreign Office, had been the country’s most prominent statesman for 25 years, an extraordinary feat of survival for a Chinese in the treacherous Manchu Court. He had been Viceroy of Chihli, the metropolitan or home province, at the time of the Sino–Japanese War and his procrastination had made him a convenient scapegoat for China’s defeat. In fact, the Dowager Empress had been largely to blame, having squandered the Navy estimates on rebuilding the Summer Palace. Li had negotiated the iniquitous Treaty of Shimonoseki in Japan and the terms would have been even more severe if a would-be assassin had not shot him in the cheek, the bullet just missing his eye. Following Western protests over the shooting, Japan had been forced to modify her demands. Morrison duly called on Li at his home, formerly the Temple of the Worthies, and was startled when his host ‘had the impudence to ask me if a money payment would induce me to write to The Times advocating a doubling of the import dues without compensation’.4 Morrison noted with apparent satisfaction that ‘the crafty old man is failing, he now looks his face age 76, and it cannot be long before he must be laid aside from physical infirmity’.


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Morrison expended much shoe leather doing the rounds of the legations where schemes and intrigues abounded, but he found news gathering hard going; he had received no instructions from Chirol about what to write and was experiencing the novice’s dilemma in which everything that seemed important to people in Peking appeared to be of no interest to his newspaper. ‘I am trying to inform myself of what is passing in Peking’, he wrote to Moberly Bell, ‘but it is extremely difficult to sift the truth’.5 Sir Robert Hart could have helped but, like Li, he was a slippery customer. On first meeting him Morrison noted he had ‘limitless capacity for work, considerable ambition and love of power’. Hart, a blue-eyed Ulsterman, had been appointed to the post of Inspector-General in 1863 and had become the most powerful ‘barbarian’ in China for the simple reason that his Customs revenues provided the Manchu Court with about a third of all revenues collected by the Chinese Government. Known as ‘the IG’, Hart was 62 when Morrison met him and he had lost none of his native Ulster cunning. ‘For a quarter of a century at least’, The Times wrote of him in 1900, ‘the final instruction given successively to every British Minister on his appointment to Peking might be summed up in half-a-dozen words: “When in doubt, consult Sir Robert Hart” ’. Hart had also provided an invaluable social service to the Diplomatic Corps by forming a Western-style band of 20 Chinese musicians known as ‘IG’s Own’. For the enjoyment of all members of the corps, IG’s Own performed weekly concerts in the gardens of the Customs Compound during the cool season. Hart himself,


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however, was elusive. ‘Most of the men I see here frequently but I rarely meet the IG’, Morrison admitted to J.O.P. Bland, The Times correspondent in Shanghai, in a letter on 26 May.6 ‘He has I know to be extremely cautious and guarded beyond measure in what he says.’7 Morrison took a liking to Sir Claude MacDonald, a veteran of campaigns in Egypt and the Sudan, tall and spare, with long and extravagant waxed moustaches. MacDonald became one of his most important contacts and although Morrison acknowledged that he received ‘help and encouragement’ from him, there was always the proviso that the diplomat’s first loyalty was to Whitehall, while Morrison’s was to The Times. Within a year, that difference would be eloquently defined in the House of Commons. The British Legation, most enviable of the Peking compounds, formed the north-western boundary of the diplomatic quarter. Visitors, though rarely ever a highranking Manchu or Chinese official and certainly never anyone less important, entered through an imposing gatehouse crowned with the royal coat-of-arms and found themselves in a complex of buildings and gardens covering a little more than three acres. MacDonald’s large two-storied house, its green-tiled roof testifying to the importance of its former occupant, a Manchu aristocrat, was the grandest of all, with consular staff housed in smaller buildings of Chinese or European design. Services were held in an Anglican chapel and, for entertainment, the legation players could stage their own productions in an ample theatre. Staff exercised with horseback- or bikeriding, lawn tennis, fives or bowling. For £153 Morrison bought himself a 26-roomed


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house, which also served as an office, in the Chinese quarter near the Customs Compound in the Tartar City. He wrote to his mother about his residence: I live in a Chinese house which I have converted into a European one. I am alone with my books on China, cut off by dirty streets from the rest of the foreign community. I have a cart and horse and driver—£2 a month. A No. 1 Boy—£1 a month. No. 1 Cook—£1 a month. No. 2 cook—12/- a month. A coolie at 14/- a month, two horses and two grooms, together at £3 a month. No 2 groom is paid by No 1 groom.

Morrison addressed his staff in pidgin English. Although he later took Chinese lessons, he never mastered the language as well as he had mastered Spanish, and he certainly could not write it. However, he could make himself understood in Chinese and could recognise certain Chinese characters. Communications, the reporter’s most vital requirement, were rudimentary. Morrison wrote his stories by long hand in the abbreviated English known as cablese and filed them at the telegraph office in the Chinese City. The office was cut off from the Tartar City when the gates were closed by Manchu guards at sundown every night. Morrison also wrote much longer and more detailed dispatches, firstly by hand and later by typewriter, which were mailed to The Times and took at least two months to reach London. In the summer months, incoming mail reached Peking in steamers calling at Tientsin, but when the harbour was iced up during winter letters and copies of The Times showing Morrison’s work had to make a tortuous detour from Shanghai up


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the Yangtze River and thence to Peking by horse and cart. Morrison found Peking hot, dusty and claustrophobic, and after only a few weeks he was planning one of his epic trips to reconnoitre the north-east as soon as the rainy season started in June. Meanwhile, he took note of the comings and goings of the Celestial capital: strings of camels laden with Mongolian hides and furs; prisoners in chains, with their heads in a kang or square wooden board which they wore like a pillory; coolies bearing unimaginable loads on the queues wound around their heads; scruffy soldiers with ancient weapons, pedlars, magicians and girls with ‘lily-feet’; and, in the Chinese City, shops, theatres and tea-houses displaying bright signboards and flags to attract the Manchu elite. As the source of imperial edicts, Morrison dealt with the Tsungli Yamen, which was located several blocks north of Legation Street in the Imperial City and which he described as ‘the most cumbrous body that ever mismanaged the affairs of a nation’. The Chinese officials were infuriatingly slow and uncommunicative, not surprisingly as their instructions were, first and foremost, to obstruct the barbarian whenever possible. The insularity of the Diplomatic Corps depressed him. Foreign nationals had their own shops, Imbeck’s and Kierulff ’s, stocking the latest European goods; their own banks, such as the Hong Kong & Shanghai (the Honkers & Shanks); their own chapels, club, post office and sports ground; as well as a splendid hotel, the Hotel de Pékin, run by a 33-year-old Swiss, Auguste Chamot, and his American wife, Annie. Morrison disliked the set-up intensely. ‘The life here is singularly unattractive’, he complained to Bland. ‘Nor have I lived in a more God


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forsaken place than this. There is no female society, no pleasure of any kind whatever.’8 He spent an uncomfortable evening celebrating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee at the British Legation. In sweltering heat, guests sat down to steaming bowls of Jubilee soup, followed by oyster patties, roast beef, macaroni, boiled ham, tongue in jelly, roast lamb, spring chicken, plum pudding, citron ice cream and cheese. Then they charged their glasses and raised their voices in praise of Her Majesty: Thou Who for threescore years In Sunshine, cloud and tears, Has kept our Queen. Still be her guide and stay Through life’s uncertain way, Till dawns the perfect day, God save the Queen. Morrison loathed such patriotic humbug. He believed in the more militant sentiments of George Curzon, who dedicated his 1894 book, Problems of the Far East, ‘to those who believe that the British Empire is, under Providence, the greatest instrument for good that the world has seen, and who hold, with the writer, that its work in the Far East is not yet accomplished’. Morrison would have added that Britain was in danger of losing out in the greatest Oriental land grab of the century. The ‘Battle for Concessions’, as Lord Salisbury described it, was at its height, with Europe’s great powers involved in a tug-of-war over the financial and political control of China through the granting of loans


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and the building of railways. Only the United States favoured a less chauvinist policy based on the concept of the ‘open door’ in which all nations could compete equally. Morrison had been in Peking for only two months when he wrote to Bland in uncompromising terms about a contract favouring the French: Our action in this matter must be very strong and determined. We cannot recede. If we do not insist upon the rescission of the contract our prestige is gone and our interests vitally affected. If we can carry out our protest with effect and checkmate this unholy action of M. Gerard [the French Minister to China] our power and influence here will be enormously strengthened. And they need strengthening.9

He was referring not to The Times but to Britain, which was seeing the unrivalled commercial superiority it had enjoyed in China prior to the Sino–Japanese War ebbing away. The biggest story on Morrison’s beat was the huge gamble that China’s ministers had taken by placing their trust in their one-time enemy, Tsarist Russia. ‘On my arrival in Peking and for long afterwards Russian influence was paramount in North China’, he wrote. ‘Russia, combining with France and Germany, had taken the lead in compelling Japan to relinquish the chief fruits of her victorious war against China, and still further playing upon China’s fears, had been amply rewarded for so doing.’10 This diplomatic coup, subtly engineered behind the scenes by Li Hung-chang, who worked on the principle of playing one barbarian nation off against another, had


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elevated Russia into the role of benevolent protector of China’s interests. She then stood guarantor for a French loan on generous terms which had enabled China to pay half her war indemnity to Japan. At the heart of Russia’s advantage was a document supposedly bearing the name of Count A.P. Cassini, Russian Minister in Peking from 1891–97. ‘The authenticity of the Cassini Convention, the secret treaty signed by Li Hung-chang in Peking and carried back by Count Cassini to Russia, though questioned at the time, was abundantly manifest’, Morrison wrote in Reminiscences.11 Coming hot on the heels of China’s defeat in the Sino–Japanese War, the treaty bound Russia and China to defend each other against Japanese aggression. It also granted Russia the right to extend a branch of the TransSiberian railway, which she had started to build in 1891, across Manchuria to the sea and, furthermore, it sanctioned that troops and military supplies could travel along that line not only in times of war with Japan but also in times of peace. As Russia sought to further exploit its favoured position, Morrison heard that a Tsarist heavyweight, Prince Esper Oukhtomsky, President of the RussoChinese Bank and a director of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), was on his way to Peking. ‘I have arranged to have a message sent on when he leaves Tientsin and I shall casually go down and see the kind of reception accorded him by the Chinese’, Morrison told Bland. ‘There is no doubt that his visit, semi-regal in its splendour, is intimately connected with the creation of the new loan of £16 000 000.’ Thus on 21 May, Morrison rode out through the


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South Gate to the rail terminus just beyond the city walls at Machiapu to see the arrival of the first passenger train to reach Peking on the new railway from Tientsin. Among the passengers was indeed Prince Oukhtomsky. ‘An immense concourse of people swarmed in serried masses across the dusty plain’, Morrison wrote in Reminiscences. ‘Charles Denby Junior, who in the absence of his father was in charge of the American Legation, rode with me to the platform.12 “What is it?” asked Mr Denby of the Chinese as we threaded our way through the crowd. The answer came back in every case the same, “It is the brother of the Tsar who brings tribute to the Emperor.” ’ The previous year the Manchu Court had dispatched the indefatigable Li Hung-chang to Moscow with gifts for Tsar Nicholas II on the occasion of his coronation and now the Prince, an intimate friend of the Tsar, though not his sibling, was bringing return gifts to the Emperor and his aunt, the Dowager Empress. The special relationship between the two countries was emphasised at the Prince’s audience with the Emperor in the Forbidden City when the Son of Heaven actually rose from his seat to take some of the presents out of the Prince’s hands. ‘No similar mark of Imperial condescension had been recorded in China since her gates were first forced open to foreign intercourse’, Morrison wrote. The most important outcome of Prince Oukhtomsky’s mission was that Russia officially sanctioned the articles of association between the two countries for the construction of the Russian railway through Manchuria. The crucial unanswered question was where would the railway end? Which town would be chosen for its Chinese terminus? ‘The attention of the world was


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directed to this railway by which the pacific conquest of Manchuria was to be achieved’, Morrison wrote. ‘To inspect the course of the railway and to report upon its possibilities was now imperative.’ At the end of July he set off for Siberia, accompanied by his servant Ah Heng, to carry out that mission. It was necessarily a roundabout journey. Morrison planned to cover some 4800 kilometres by travelling around three sides of Manchuria in Russian territory, cutting across Mongolia and then exploring the entire width of Manchuria itself until he reached the sea. He went first to Nagasaki, Japan, where he boarded the Russian steamer Kostroma for Vladivostok, the Pacific terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway. There he caught a train along the main line to Iman on the River Ussuri and took a river steamer to Khabarovsk in Eastern Siberia. ‘Letters of introduction had been given to me by M. Pavlov and these insured me a correct if not cordial reception’, Morrison wrote in Reminiscences.13 He continued his journey by steamer up the Amur, travelling 2560 kilometres to Stretensk, the limit of steam navigation. There he borrowed a tarantass, a springless four-wheeled Russian cart, and drove eastwards as far as Nerchinski Zavod, where he handed over the borrowed vehicle and hired a fresh one in which he headed southwards through steppes swarming with partridge and wildfowl until he reached the Mongolian border country, ‘as treeless as the plains of Australia’. He had thus travelled around the northern, eastern and western boundaries of Manchuria. Exchanging the tarantass for a high-wheeled Mongol cart at Hailar, he drove eastwards across the width of


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Manchuria, travelling over the steppes and through the forests of the Khingan mountains to Tsitsihar in the Nonni valley. ‘Russian engineers and Russian guards were everywhere in evidence’, he wrote. ‘There was still uncertainty as to the railway route. Engineers were searching for the easiest alignment.’ Once again he changed his mode of transport, swapping the Mongol cart for a heavy, springless Peking cart. He proceeded along the banks of the Nonni River to Petua, then crossed into the Chinese province of Kirin. His journey had been an expensive and uncomfortable undertaking but it had paid dividends in journalistic terms. ‘Every Russian engineer of authority [I] met on the journey had spoken of Port Arthur as the hoped-for terminus of their railway’, Morrison wrote in Reminiscences. Port Arthur! This was sensational news. Reaching Vladivostok on 22 November, he hastily cabled The Times with his scoop that ‘a preliminary survey for the projected railway was about to be made to Port Arthur’. Fearing, however, that the words ‘Port Arthur’ would not be permitted to pass over the wire, I wrote instead its Chinese name ‘Lu Hsuan Kao’. But the name was unfamiliar; it was printed as ‘Lu Ksuan kan’ and was unintelligible. No attention was given to the announcement, and in view of what happened shortly afterwards, this was unfortunate.14

Morrison posted a long supplementary report to The Times from Vladivostok which warned that Russia’s projected railway would intrude well to the south, ‘so as to loop on to Russian territory an ever-increasing area of Manchuria’. The Russians, he said, spoke with ‘unconcealed derision’


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of Japanese hopes in Manchuria and added presciently that ‘the importance of Japan in relation to the future of Manchuria cannot be disregarded’. Morrison had been absent from his Peking base for four months but he still had one more call to make and it put him on the trail of the biggest Chinese news story of the year. He travelled by steamer through the Sea of Japan, round the foot of the Korean peninsula into the Yellow Sea and landed in the treaty port of Chefoo on the same protruding spur as the ports of Kiaochow and Weihaiwei in Shantung province. The British consul in Chefoo told him that two German missionaries had been murdered by Chinese bandits three weeks earlier and that Germany had seized the opportunity to occupy Kiaochow, one of the finest harbours in Eastern China, on 14 November. Noting that ‘a new chapter in Far Eastern history had opened’, Morrison hastened back to Peking. From his legation contacts he discovered that Baron von Heyking had provided the masterful hand behind the seizure of Kiaochow. Before ordering the occupation, however, Heyking had ascertained ‘with uncommon dexterity’ that Russia had no prior claim to the harbour. He had done so by casually telling Li Hung-chang at the Tsungli Yamen one day in September that Germany wished some of her ships to visit Port Arthur, Weihaiwei and Kiaochow during the coming winter months. ‘I understand there is no difficulty in regard to the first two,’ said the German minister, ‘but as I believe Russia has some prior claim to Kiaochow we shall ask her if there is any objection.’ Li Hung-chang fell into the trap. ‘What has Russia to do with it?’ he demanded.


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‘I understand that some arrangement exists between Russia and China over Kiaochow,’ Heyking said blandly. ‘None exists,’ stormed Li. ‘The matter does not concern Russia. It has to do with China only.’ Heyking had learned all he needed to know. Germany knew she had nothing to fear from China’s reaction; she had only been concerned about upsetting Russia. On 8 October Heyking put his plan into action. He steamed south from Shanghai in the Prince Heinrich to Kiaochow, where divers were sent over the side to check the harbour bottom on the pretence that they were examining a mechanical fault in the ship. The harbour was found to be ideal for naval purposes. Heyking then went to Hankow, where he heard about the murder of the two Shantung missionaries. Events had played into his hands. Returning to Shanghai, he briefed Admiral von Diedrichs on his plan and two German ships under the Admiral proceeded to Kiaochow. German marines had gone ashore and taken possession of the port on 14 November. ‘The Baron told me that the only man to suspect German action in Kiaochow was Henry O’Shea, a clever Irish journalist in Shanghai’, Morrison wrote. ‘M. Pavlov was furious. The Russian Foreign Office were furious but could do nothing.’ When the German marines had landed in Kiaochow, the Chinese garrison had been quite ignorant of their intentions. Turning their jackets inside out to conceal their military character, the Chinese troops had run down to the docks to earn a few cents by lugging German kitbags ashore. Morrison commented sadly: ‘Could any illustration be given more significant of the absence of Chinese national spirit?’15


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Back in Peking, Baron von Heyking began negotiations with China’s two representatives, Li Hung-chang and one of Li’s political opponents, Weng T’ung-ho, ‘to strengthen the bonds of friendship uniting the two countries’—or, in plain language, to squeeze the maximum number of concessions out of China.16 The other powers acted accordingly. ‘Peking became the centre of international activity’, Morrison wrote. ‘Russia, England and France were aroused. No sooner had the Kiaochow landing been effected and the “friendly overtures” begun for the cession of the harbour than it was announced that the Russian fleet would pass the winter in Port Arthur.’ At Lord Salisbury’s urging, Sir Claude MacDonald indignantly demanded that Weihaiwei, a vastly inferior anchorage to either Port Arthur or Kaiochow, should be leased to Britain as soon as the Japanese war indemnity had been paid and the port cleared of Japanese forces. The amount still owing was £16 450 490 and Salisbury proposed to lend China £12 million on terms that were so favourable to the Chinese that they aroused great suspicion in the Tsungli Yamen. These suspicions seemed to be confirmed when on 9 January 1898—the very day that MacDonald had handed over the terms of the loan to Li Hung-chang in Peking—two British warships dropped anchor in Port Arthur. Morrison asked: ‘What other interpretation could the Russian Government give to this action than that it was minatory to enforce compliance with the terms of the loan and to gain some advantage in Port Arthur in return for advancing China money on such suspiciously favourable terms?’ Li Hung-chang consulted Dmitri Pokotilov, manager


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of the Russo-Chinese Bank, who advised him to reject the loan. The terms quickly became common knowledge throughout the Diplomatic Corps; Pavlov officially protested against them to the Tsungli Yamen on behalf of the Russian Government and the local weekly newspaper in Tientsin commented on them editorially. ‘The terms having become public property I cabled them to London on 16 January and they were published in The Times on 17 January’, Morrison wrote. Seventeen days later on 3 February, China formally turned down the British loan in deference to the Russians. The Foreign Office was outraged. It accused Morrison of sabotaging the loan by ‘premature disclosure’ of its terms. ‘My telegram did nothing of the kind’, Morrison wrote. ‘It was not a disclosure, it was not premature and Britain did not lose the loan.’ The redoubtable Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank stepped in and offered China the whole £16 million on terms even more favourable than those of the British Government. This offer was gratefully accepted and a preliminary contract was signed on 19 February. The Russians, however, were still not defeated. Pavlov handed Li Hung-chang a list of demands that Port Arthur and the nearby merchant port of Talienwan should be ceded to Russia immediately and that she should be permitted to extend the Trans-Manchurian Railway southwards through Mukden to these two ports. China was given a time limit of five days to comply; otherwise Russia threatened to cancel the Cassini Convention. Morrison was drawn into the intrigue when he received a note from William N. Pethick, Li Hung-


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chang’s American secretary, on 5 March asking him to call. ‘I went over at once’, he wrote. ‘I found him walking up and down his room in a state of suppressed agitation. He asked me if I was prepared to do a service to China.’ Pethick wanted Morrison to write an article revealing the contents of a telegram which Li Hung-chang was sending to Prince Oukhtomsky in which he begged the Prince to intercede with the Tsar on China’s behalf and induce him to withdraw the Russian demands. The snag was that Morrison would have to give his word of honour that he would not reveal his source for the story ‘as any indiscretion on my part would imperil his future’. Morrison agreed. The following day he cabled the substance of Li’s telegram to The Times. By a twist of fate, his report was put on to the wires immediately after a telegram from Baron von Heyking recording a personal triumph. He informed his Government that he had that day—6 March 1898—signed the Kiaochow Convention under which Kiaochow was leased to Germany for 99 years. She was also granted railway and mining rights throughout Shantung, ‘a province’, Morrison noted, ‘as large as England and Wales’. Morrison’s story about the Russian demands was published in London on 7 March and created ‘an immense sensation’. With immaculate timing it appeared in the same issue as his long dispatch describing Russia’s activities in Manchuria which he had posted from Vladivostok in November. With panic threatening the Stock Exchange, Guy Hillier of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank told Morrison that he was mistaken and beseeched him to modify his message in the interests of the Chinese loan. Sir Robert Hart summoned him to the Customs


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compound and strongly assured him that he had been misled. Hart said he had been convinced by Sir Chentung Liang, confidential secretary of the Tsungli Yamen, that Russia had made no threat, only a friendly proposal. ‘Sir Robert Hart begged of me, if I wished to avoid wrecking my reputation at the outset, to withdraw my message’, Morrison wrote. ‘When I left him I walked up and down outside his garden wall for a few minutes, thinking the matter over, and then I walked over to the telegraph office and wired The Times.’ Morrison’s message, published on 10 March under the byline ‘By Our Peking Correspondent’, read: ‘The Chinese Government, while admitting that it has received Russian demands, denies that they are pressing or in the nature of an ultimatum. Despite this denial, I reassert the correctness of my message of Sunday’. Morrison had covered his back in one important respect: before sending his report to The Times he had informed Sir Claude MacDonald of his intentions, ‘since the question was one of national importance’. For reasons of confidentiality, however, he had been unable to reveal his source to the Minister and, in the absence of that knowledge, MacDonald urged caution ‘and did not give full credence to the story’. When asked by the Foreign Office for confirmation of Morrison’s story, MacDonald could only venture that there had been negotiations but there was ‘no indication of anything in the shape of an ultimatum, nor, as far as he was aware, had any time limit been given for a reply as represented in the press’.17 The Foreign Office, more concerned about the immediate effect that Morrison’s story might have on the Chinese loan rather than the long-term future of Manchuria,


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moved into damage limitation mode. As a result of MacDonald’s official disclaimer, it accused Morrison of having indiscriminately accepted the information of ‘a Mandarin probably prompted by the Russian Legation for the purpose of hampering British negotiations by the premature publication of incomplete information’. The Chinese loan was offered for public subscription in London on 22 March and was woefully undersubscribed. China subsequently agreed to all the Russian demands: Port Arthur and Talienwan were leased to her for 25 years, with all mining and railway rights thrown in. According to Count de Witte, the Russian Foreign Minister, he had paid a bribe of 500 000 taels to Li Hungchang to help him make up his mind in Russia’s favour. Morrison filed the story of Russia’s success to London on 24 March and it was published on 25 March. That night Curzon told the Commons: ‘We have had no confirmation of the rumours referred to.’ The absence of any official confirmation, however, did not deter Salisbury, who cabled MacDonald after reading Morrison’s report, instructing him to demand the lease of Weihaiwei on the same terms as the lease of Port Arthur to Russia ‘in order to restore the balance of power in the Gulf of Pechili’. Confirmation of Morrison’s report swiftly followed. The Port Arthur Convention was signed in Peking on 27 March by Pavlov, Li Hung-chang and Chang Yin-huan, the leading Cantonese in China and a member of the Tsungli Yamen. On the 29th, Curzon rose wearily to his feet in the Commons again after being asked to explain why The Times had on several occasions been able to publish facts of the utmost public importance several days before the


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Foreign Office had obtained any information on those matters. ‘I think the explanation asked for is not far to seek,’ he said. It is the business of Her Majesty’s representatives abroad to report to us facts of which they have official cognisance, and to obtain confirmation of them before they telegraph. I hesitate to say what the functions of the modern journalist are, but I imagine they do not exclude the intelligent anticipation of facts even before they occur, and in that somewhat unequal competition I think the House will see that the journalist, whose main duty is speed, is likely sometimes to get the advantage over the diplomatist whose main duty is accuracy.

Those inhabiting Westminster’s corridors of power who did not already know the identity of The Times Correspondent in Peking were soon informed that it was George Ernest Morrison, an Australian doctor. Morrison had celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday in Peking on 4 February in the middle of what The Times had called ‘a time of exasperating doubt and perplexity’. But his job—and his fame—were now assured. Morrison’s only regret was that his father had not lived to see it. George Sr had passed away in Geelong on 15 February.


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While the Great Powers were squabbling over how best to carve the Chinese dumpling, a political convulsion shook the Manchu Court to its core. The ancient and elaborate edifice of the Ching Dynasty had started to sway with China’s humiliating defeat in the Sino–Japanese War. The Chinese had realised then that their Manchu rulers were not only fallible, but also extremely foolish. And when the Government caved in to German demands over Kiaochow, the birthplace of Confucius, and to Russian demands over Port Arthur, the very foundations started to crack and crumble. To a rapidly growing band of Chinese reformers, led by Kang Youwei, the Cantonese scholar who had written several critical memorials about conditions in the Middle Kingdom to the Emperor since 1895, nothing less than national survival was at stake. 179


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Morrison, meanwhile, was receiving plaudits from many quarters for his reporting. Valentine Chirol congratulated him on his work and said that Buckle and Wallace ‘share the same indebtedness to you’. ‘Everybody at Printing House Square, I can assure you, does full justice to the excellent work you have done for the paper’, Chirol wrote. In fact that recognition is by no means confined to PHS. There is a very widespread feeling that without you the country would have been kept in the dark with regard to events of the greatest public interest. The Govt are in a hole and they feel very sore with you for having carefully measured day by day their descent into said hole.1

Chirol’s words were to be expected; as he said, ‘the way in which you have distinguished yourself has been a great personal satisfaction to me’. Baron von Heyking, however, was also fulsome in his praise. The German diplomat described Morrison as a ‘kindred spirit’, not a phrase which would have been echoed in the Reichstag, where Morrison was regarded as one of Germany’s most implacable foes in all Asia. Heyking went further with a swipe at the German press, declaring that he had had to exert himself on Germany’s behalf because he did not have in Peking ‘a correspondent of my nationality who would do the work you have been doing for your country’.2 Despite these tributes, Morrison was nursing a grievance; that old enemy, financial insecurity, had returned to haunt him. ‘I came to China worth £440, the most I ever had in my life’, he grumbled to Bland. ‘At the end of one year’s service I had £320 and it looks to me very like as if


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on Feb. 15 1899 I should be worth under £200. It is impossible to live here on $415 a month. Travelling is all right— then everything is paid me but here I am monthly a loser and this annoys me because I give up all my true pleasure and peace of mind to the service of the paper.’ And again: ‘I wonder is Moberly Bell not a little ashamed sometimes to read the praise that is given occasionally in his leading articles to the “own correspondent” in Peking who is losing money in the service of the paper. Mr Bell promised me “at least £500 a year and everything found”—I have the £500 but nothing found’. Morrison told Bland ‘in the strictest confidence’ that he would resign and return to Australia unless his position improved.3 Had he done so, he would never have forgiven himself: the biggest news story of the age was about to break in the Forbidden City. The first tremors in the reform movement which would become known as the Hundred Days were felt on 11 June 1898 when the Emperor, Kuang-hsu, now a sickly 27, wielded the Vermilion Pencil, the sign of his authority, and promulgated the first in a shower of Imperial Decrees ordering a vast number of radical changes throughout the Empire. F ive days later, the Emperor summoned Kang Youwei to an audience in the Summer Palace during which Kang urged the Emperor to shake off the bondage of his court, dispense with the services of staid conservatives and appoint bright young reformers in their stead. Expecting the existing officials to promote change, he said, would be ‘like climbing a tree to catch fish’.4 The Emperor responded to Kang’s fervour by abolishing the traditional ‘eight-legged essay’ system of advancement within Chinese bureaucracy, founding a


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national university, converting temples into schools, and establishing local bureaus to shake up agriculture, commerce and industry. He also appointed Kang as a secretary to the Tsungli Yamen. One of the tenets of Kang’s doctrine was that China should become allied with Japan; that reforms should be adopted on the Japanese model; that Chinese officers should be trained in Japan; and that the Chinese fleet should be reorganised under Japanese officers. Kuanghsu wholeheartedly agreed. ‘No one doubts the sincerity of the young Emperor’, Morrison wrote, ‘no one denies the wise tendency of the reforms. But the pace was too fast’.5 Nevertheless, the Reform Party had an impressive following. One of its earliest converts was Weng Tunh-ho, the imperial tutor, who had argued in favour of Westernstyle change and had introduced the Emperor to the writings of Kang Youwei. Another supporter was the diplomat Sir Chang Yin-huan. He had represented the Emperor at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, where he had met Lord Salisbury and been invested as Grand Commander of St Michael and St George (GCMG). At first the Dowager Empress Tz’u-Hsi, known as Old Buddha, appeared to accept the reforming process, but when the Emperor abolished the sinecures on which the Manchu ruling caste depended for their livelihood, she joined forces with court reactionaries. Her first action was to banish Weng Tung-ho from Peking for having launched the Emperor on his progressive path in the first place. No one was more alive to what was happening than Sir Robert Hart. ‘The events of the week are important


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and significant’, he wrote to Morrison on 18 June. It means the abandonment of a too conservative policy: it was feared it might mean a court quarrel and the ejection of the Emperor by the Dowager Empress—but the Chinese say it is not so. I am sorry for poor old Weng who had many fine points, but he presumed on his position as tutor to interfere with the Emperor too much they say or so thought the folk on duty. Pity the Emperor did not go about it more gently!

The Emperor, however, was unable to restrain himself. In an edict on 12 September he declared: ‘In revitalising the various administrative departments our Government adopts Western methods and principles. For, in a true sense, there is no difference between China and the West in setting up government for the sake of the people’. Thus he abandoned at a stroke the accepted idea that the wellspring of all reforms should be China’s traditional Confucian teaching and opened the floodgates to subversive barbarian tendencies. Tz’u Hsi was outraged. Her nephew, it appeared, intended to dump filial piety and ancestor worship. By September the shock waves emanating from the heart of Peking had hit the provinces and rebounded back to the capital. The Board of Rites expressed its outright opposition to the abolition of the ‘eight-legged essay’; the Tsungli Yamen opposed the setting up of the new administrative bureaus; and most provincial governors, knowing that Tz’u Hsi was the real ruler of China, either delayed or ignored the Emperor’s edicts. The reform movement was in serious trouble. Fearing that Tz’u-Hsi would do exactly as Sir Robert


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Hart had predicted and depose the Emperor, the reformers plotted to strike first and exterminate the Old Buddha. Tan Sitong, a 33-year-old philosopher who had just been appointed secretary to the Grand Council at the Emperor’s command, was deputed to enlist the help of Yuan Shi-k’ai, commander of the only modern army in China and a known sympathiser of the reform movement.6 Tan was to urge him to besiege the Summer Palace and, to prevent the imperial forces from intervening, to execute their commander Jung Lu, the Viceroy of Chihli. Tan’s fellow conspirators would then move into the palace and assassinate the Dowager Empress. Yuan Shi-k’ai’s Newly Created Army was based one day’s march from Tientsin. It was the only positive result to emerge from China’s defeat in 1894–95 when Li Hungchang had entrusted Yuan with the task of building his own army in the north. There had been opposition to his appointment. One jealous colleague wrote: ‘He is conceited, extravagant, lecherous, ruthless and treacherous’. All might have been true but none of these qualities were inconsistent with military distinction. Indeed, the main impediment to Yuan’s promotion was his flirtation with the reform movement. He had joined the Society for the Study of National Strengthening which sought constitutional reform and the modernisation of China. Nevertheless, Yuan had been made commander of the new army at the relatively tender age of 36. He then used all his diplomatic and manipulative skills attained as commissioner in Korea prior to the Japanese takeover to develop his army along German lines. He imposed a stern code of conduct—theft, rape, rioting and desertion all carried the death penalty. Opium smoking was banned.


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‘The discipline of his force was admirable’, Morrison wrote. ‘He ruled his men with a rod of iron.’ At the time of the projected coup in September 1898, Yuan Shi-k’ai had a well-drilled and formidable force deeply loyal to its commanding officer. In the power plays of the reformers and the conservatives contending for influence in the Manchu Court, Yuan was now a force to be reckoned with. And he was a man divided between loyalty to his Emperor and to a nation that was falling into disarray. On the night of 18 September, Tan Sitong called on Yuan at his quarters in Peking and, having established the commander’s absolute fidelity to the Emperor, dramatically outlined his plans for the elimination of Tz’u-Hsi and Jung Lu, the Manchu bannerman who commanded the armed forces. But Yuan Shi-k’ai was a wily fox and, while tactfully urging caution in these uncertain times, avoided making any commitment. Although he sympathised with the reformers’ overall aims, he realised he had more to gain if he threw in his lot with the reactionaries. Moreover, his army numbered only 7000 while Jung Lu had 100 000 troops in Tientsin and Peking. Tan reported back to Kang Youwei that his mission had failed and Kang prepared to leave Peking. On 20 September, Yuan had an audience with the Emperor, who made no mention to him of arresting his aunt or killing Jung Lu. Yuan therefore travelled to Tientsin and betrayed the conspiracy to Jung Lu, who dashed to the Summer Palace and informed Tz’u-Hsi. At daybreak the following morning Tz’u-Hsi had the Emperor arrested by her own guards and eunuchs and incarcerated him on an island in the lake of the Forbidden


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City. ‘He had failed to calculate the forces against him’, Morrison wrote. ‘Princes and officials, mandarins and literati were trembling. The Dowager Empress trembled. Urged by the reactionaries, she suddenly resumed the office from which she had retired ten years before and seized the throne.’ Tz’u-Hsi’s third regency was proclaimed that same day in the Peking Gazette, which explained that the Emperor had fallen prey to a serious illness, forcing his aunt to take over the reigns of power. The Gazette also published the first in a series of edicts annulling one by one the 38 major decrees issued by the Emperor. Only the national university was allowed to remain. ‘There was universal excitement among the Chinese and great anxiety among the foreigners’, Morrison wrote. ‘On the morning of the 22nd [of September] we were shocked to hear of the arrest of Chang Yin-huan.’ Chang Yin-huan was held on trumped-up charges in a temple and Morrison and several other British worthies, including British diplomat Hugh Grosvenor, offered to rescue him and place him in the safety of the British Legation. ‘We claimed the right to rescue one who had been decorated by the Queen’, Morrison wrote. ‘Sir Chentung Liang, to whom we disclosed our plan, approached Chang Yin-huan and afterwards informed us that it was not his master’s desire to interfere with the course of Imperial justice.7 Two years later, under circumstances of great barbarity, Chang Yin-huan was put to death in Tihua fu, the capital of the New Dominion, his place of exile.’ Tan Sitong and five other young reformers including Kang Youwei’s 25-year-old brother, known collectively as


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The Six Gentlemen, were seized, charged with treason and summarily beheaded on 27 September. The reform movement had been successfully crushed in a little under a week. The ringleader, Kang Youwei, was still at large, however. The Manchu authorities launched a manhunt for him and offered rewards for his capture, dead or alive, but he escaped from Tientsin on board a British steamer, the Chungking. This ship was met on her way to Shanghai, where police were waiting to arrest him, and Kang was taken off and transferred to the British mail steamer Ballarat, which travelled to Hong Kong under cruiser escort. Kang went into exile in Japan, where he denounced the Dowager Empress for her savage despotism and for her illicit relations with a ‘spurious eunuch’. ‘Of her minions, he impeached no one more passionately than Yuan Shi-k’ai, charging him with perfidy to the young Emperor whose person he was in duty and honour bound to support’, Morrison wrote. ‘His view prevailed for many years. But his judgment of Yuan Shi-k’ai has been reversed by history.’ According to Yuan Shi-k’ai in a written statement to Morrison, Tan Sitong had claimed during his visit that the reformers’ plot had the Emperor’s approval. Yuan Shi-k’ai replied that there was no Imperial Order for him to undertake the task. Tan then claimed to have the Imperial Order with him and produced a document written in black ink. Yuan read it and objected that the document was not an Imperial Order since it was not written in vermilion. Furthermore, it referred only to a ‘sound plan of


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action’ without mentioning the execution of Jung Lu or the arrest of the Dowager Empress. Tan claimed that the original order had been written in vermilion ink and that the document in his possession was just a copy. Then he departed, telling the General: ‘We depend on you.’ ‘Yuan decided that at his audience on the 20th to which he had already received the summons, he would sound the Emperor on the subject by referring to the reform movement’, Morrison wrote. ‘Accordingly, he spoke of the new reforms and their difficulties, and the Emperor was much affected by Yuan’s words but made no reference to the “sound plan of action”.’ Yuan claimed that Jung Lu had already been informed of the conspiracy by secret emissaries from Peking when he spoke to him later that day. Whatever the truth of Yuan Shi-k’ai’s role in the downfall of the reform movement, he was very well rewarded by the Dowager Empress—within a week of the coup he was named acting Viceroy and the following year took up the post of Governor of Shantung province. Similarly, Jung Lu was promoted to the Grand Council and given the rank of generalissimo. Morrison was later handed a copy of an assessment of Yuan Shi-k’ai’s character made by Captain J.W.N. Munthe, a Norwegian officer who had been seconded from the Imperial Maritime Customs Service to the Chinese Army after the Sino–Japanese War. ‘He will undoubtedly set his mark on Chinese history’, Munthe had written in 1897, ‘but whether he will die with his head on his shoulders or not remains to be seen’. Following Tz’u-Hsi’s coup d’etat, Morrison noted that the most reactionary form of Chinese conservatism had


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set in. ‘Anti-foreign feeling had been aroused’, he wrote. ‘All foreigners were looked upon with suspicion.’ The situation in Peking was considered so unstable that Ministers ordered troops up from Tientsin on 7 October to guard the legations. This multi-national force travelled to the capital in a special train provided by the Tsungli Yamen and the foreign community turned out in welcome. It was the first time since Peking had surrendered to the Anglo-French force which had torched the Summer Palace in 1860 that the city had been entered by foreign troops marching in military order. Rumours were rife that the Emperor’s life was in danger in his island prison. Sir Claude MacDonald warned the Dowager Empress that Britain and other governments would view the murder of her nephew ‘with extreme disfavour’. He suggested that a foreign physician should visit His Majesty ‘to knock the bottom out of all this Shanghai rumour’.8 Morrison was greatly disappointed that the job was given to Dr Detheve, the French Legation doctor, on the grounds that he was the only medical man attached to a legation in Peking at that time. ‘I was out of court because I was Times correspondent’, Morrison lamented. Detheve was not permitted to examine the Emperor but got close enough to report that he was still alive. Lord Charles Beresford, a visiting British admiral involved in drumming up business opportunities in China, paid a call to Yuan Shi-k’ai’s camp outside Tientsin and suggested a foolproof method of dealing with the Old Buddha. Yuan, he said, should tie her in a blanket and suspend her over a well. A mandate decreeing her retirement should be handed to her. ‘Sign that’, she would


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be told and if she refused she would be lowered into the depths of the well. She would, His Lordship argued, soon see reason. Beresford was so pleased with his scheme that he cabled Lord Salisbury requesting permission to be allowed to accompany Yuan Shi-k’ai should he elect to march on Peking and seize the Dowager Empress. Once she had been removed, Yuan could then conduct the Government under the direction of Sir Claude MacDonald in the interests of all nations. Salisbury replied testily on 8 November: ‘The idea would have been attractive at the beginning of the century. But any attempt to take over the Government of China in defiance of the vast mass of the Chinese and all the European Powers would be too exhausting a task for England’. MacDonald forwarded the Prime Minister’s telegram to Beresford, adding his own terse postscript: ‘Better stick to trade and commerce’. Tz’u-Hsi was determined that China would make no more concessions to foreign powers and, as a result, Italy’s first appearance at the Chinese banqueting table in February 1899 created a dangerous international incident. Having lagged behind the other powers, she was anxious to make up for lost time and solicited the help of the British Government in presenting a list of demands to the Chinese. Salisbury agreed to help: Sir Claude MacDonald would assist the Italian Minister, Signor de Martino, in executing any diplomatic steps which did not require armed support. The Times sometimes collaborated with the Foreign Office in such matters and Morrison was ordered by his newspaper to help the Italian cause. ‘I had received instructions as to the course I was to follow in the


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laconic message, MORRISON PEKING REMEMBER MACARONI FRIENDSHIP TIMES’, he wrote. The Macaroni Friendship ran into trouble the moment he met Martino. ‘Temperamentally, no man was ever more unfitted to succeed in a task of this kind’, he wrote. Signor de Martino was a highly strung, excitable man, superstitious to a degree, who was guided in all his actions by omens and portents. On one occasion he was proceeding to an important engagement in Rio de Janeiro to sign a convention at the Foreign Office when a squint-eyed woman crossed his path. He hurriedly returned. No inducement would make him sign an agreement on a day of such ominous portent.9

This precaution would have been applauded by the more credulous members of the Tsungli Yamen; at any rate Martino received a polite hearing when he appeared before that body on 28 February 1899. Speaking through an interpreter, he demanded the lease of a bay on the coast of Chekiang, the right to construct a railway from there to Poyang Lake and preferential mining rights along the course of the railway. He submitted the same demands on 2 March in a petition in which he flamboyantly reminded the Chinese Government that Italy was one of the great powers and that, owing to her place in the Concert of Europe, she was entitled to a sphere of influence in China. This was where Martino’s mission ran into difficulties. The nearest Chinese characters for the phrase ‘sphere of influence’ were equivalent to those of ‘protectorate’, which Italy was not seeking. To make matters worse, none of the Ministers of the Yamen could recognise the


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name of the bay which Italy was demanding—the petition referred to San Moon Bay instead of Sanmun. Furthermore, they appeared to be uncertain about Italy’s international status. ‘Astonishment filled the Chinese when they received the Italian demands’, Morrison wrote. ‘Wholly ignorant of the place of Italy among the Great Powers, they had some vague impression that it was a minor state whose troops had been defeated by some black barbarians in Africa.’10 Morrison made light of the situation by joking in his report to The Times that the characters used for ‘European Concert’ in the Italian petition were those normally reserved for theatrical performances. His words were taken seriously in Italy and, to Morrison’s regret, Baron Guido Vitale, the Chinese Secretary at the Italian Legation and a noted linguist, received a stern ticking-off from Rome. The Chinese, meanwhile, were wondering how best to respond to Martino’s baffling petition. ‘They discussed the dispatch with ponderous gravity’, Morrison wrote, ‘and then accepted the suggestion of one of their wiseacres that the most friendly act they could do to save the face of the Minister who had presented such an unprecedented petition was to send it back to him’. And this they did the following day, 3 March. Martino, however, was absent from Peking on that day visiting his mistress, a Japanese woman whom he had discreetly installed in Tientsin. It happened that Baron von Heyking and Sir Claude MacDonald were also attending to diplomatic business in Tientsin. When Martino received a telegram from Vitale saying that his petition had been returned, he called on Heyking at the


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German Consulate to discuss the situation with him. Heyking urged the Italian to inform MacDonald, who had yet to submit his dispatch in support of the Italian petition. Martino, however, refused to do so. Consequently, MacDonald telegraphed instructions to Peking to send in his dispatch and it duly reached the Yamen on 4 March, the day after the Chinese rejection. ‘Our note caused the Chinese even more astonishment than did the Italian’, Morrison wrote. ‘What policy is it, they asked, which offers to protect China from the aggression of Russia and now aids Italy in her aggression upon China?’ The Chinese, however, continued to play the barbarians’ strange game without pretending to understand the rules. They sent a courteous note to MacDonald expressing the impossibility of acceding to the Italian demands. Martino was by now in a state of high excitement. On the evening of 10 March he took the extraordinary step of delivering an ultimatum to the Tsungli Yamen demanding acceptance of Italy’s claims and setting a time limit of four days after which, it was implied, military action would be taken. Then he skipped off to Tientsin again to spend more time with his mistress, declaring that he could not transact any business on the thirteenth; he would not even mention that inauspicious date, referring to it as ‘the day of the fox’. Having created a dangerous situation, he returned to Peking on 14 March where Morrison, alerted by Vitale that ‘much has happened’, went to see him at his house. Martino would not receive him. Morrison wrote him a brusque note and was admitted to the house. He found the Italian Minister prostrate on a sofa.


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‘Why did you send me that ultimatum?’ Martino groaned. ‘Ultimatums seem the order of the day,’ Morrison replied, ‘but it was not meant to be an ultimatum. I have instructions to give you support and I naturally want to know how things are going.’ ‘But you need not have written me in those peremptory tones,’ Martino said, inviting sympathy. ‘You know I am always glad to see you.’ Martino then proceeded to read a prepared statement: everything was going well; the Chinese had consented to take back his petition; he had sent no ultimatum, only affixed a time limit because he understood that was customary in China. Morrison knew he was being misled. He had received information from a Japanese contact who was in the confidence of the Minister’s mistress which contradicted every word of the statement. He stamped his foot on the floor in indignation. ‘I will tell you what they say outside, M de Martino,’ he said. Martino pricked up his ears. ‘They say that your action has been repudiated by your Government and you have been recalled.’ Martino jumped to his feet. ‘Ah, which of my dear colleagues told you that? Was it my friend MacDonald?’ Morrison had got his story. Excusing himself, he cabled The Times that Martino had been recalled and that the British Minister would take charge of Italian interests in Peking. Personally, Morrison had developed serious doubts


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about MacDonald’s fitness for office. He wrote to Chirol, who had taken over the Foreign Department of The Times from Wallace on 1 January, that he had ‘a poor opinion of both his judgment and his firmness’. His chief defect is his weak memory. In good faith he will make statements two days running, the one entirely conflicting with the other. He is entirely wanting in discretion and secretiveness. In one important matter I gave him some valuable confidential information, and he disclosed that I was his informant, thus closing to me one of the legations where I had been very friendly. Surely the FO now recognise their folly in selecting an ill-read half educated infantry major, without brains, memory or judgment, for this most difficult post.11

In September Morrison returned to London for a holiday. His first call was to The Times office. He had departed less than four years earlier as an untried foreign correspondent and was returning a world-famous reporter. Arthur Walter paid him a compliment: ‘I need hardly say you’ve been a most tremendous success. You have done what no other man, we believe, in the world could have done. Your telegrams carry tremendous weight in the City. If you were to telegraph a flat lie, it would be believed because it came from you’. Walter invited Morrison to dine with him and his wife at Bear Wood, his neo-Tudor pile in Berkshire. After buying some new evening clothes for the occasion, Morrison caught the 4.45 to Wokingham on 5 November as the autumn mists gathered and night was falling. ‘Miserable day’, he recorded in his diary.


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Spent £21.15.0, plus 8/- plus £1 . . . for clothes plus ticket 9/- return etc., all to spend one months’ salary in getting an outfit to take me to Arthur Walter’s, the amiable philistine who spoils me. Carriage at the station, two horses. F ine park, magnificent house. Splendid picture gallery where I was received by Mrs Walter, a majestic queenly woman, very sympathetic and regal.

Over dinner Morrison could not restrain himself from telling of his encounter with Li Hung-chang when the old devil had asked him how much he was paid by The Times as a prelude to offering him a bribe. It was, Morrison admitted, ‘scarcely polite’ to bring up the subject of his salary with his proprietor and, he noted, ‘Mrs Walter looked rather queer’. After dinner, Morrison retreated to a pokey upstairs bedroom and early next morning returned to London after a poor breakfast which left him hungry. To add insult to injury, he had to tip Walter’s servants as custom required: four shillings to the footman, six shillings to the ‘paunchy butler’, and four shillings to the coachman. He stayed with Chirol in his bachelor set at Queen Anne Mansions but was frequently invited to dine out. None of his experiences improved his opinion of English cuisine or late-Victorian society. Lady Warrington received the diary entry: ‘Infernal bad dinner, cooking atrocious. And the company was obnoxiously dull’. At a dinner party for the Crown Prince of Siam, he met Lady Westbury, an ‘old cat with great hair and acid tongue’, and Lady Ashburton, who ate salt by moistening her finger and dipping it in the salt cellar. He also noted she had dirty fingernails.


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Morrison had great difficulty getting a decent meal in London and the more his gastric juices rebelled, the more splenetic his diary entries became. He noted regretfully that his perception in other people’s eyes as ‘a superior person of much gravity of demeanour’ was a distinct handicap when it came to meeting attractive women. He complained to his diary that ‘I am not seated next to a beautifully-bosomed woman of lax morality like Mrs Carl Meyer, but I am stationed gravely between her husband and a grim old duchess long past the climacteric called Saint Albans’. After the theatre one night he went backstage hoping to meet ‘the beautiful Irene Vanbrugh’, but was gravely presented to the elderly manager John Hare. He had another disappointment when Guy Boothby, a popular Australian crime novelist, invited him to spend Sunday with him in the country. ‘Usually some actors and actresses come to see me on Sunday,’ Boothby said. ‘Some are coming on Sunday, but I’ll write and tell them not.’ ‘For God’s sake,’ Morrison entreated him, ‘don’t do that. I’d rather they came than not.’ The actresses, however, did not materialise and he had to make do with the company of two members of the Stock Exchange instead. Things were more congenial at Moberly Bell’s house in Portland Place, where Morrison was introduced to his boyhood hero, Sir Henry Stanley, and his wife Dorothy. Morrison was thrilled to meet the ‘lion-headed and whitehaired’ explorer who told him that one of his biggest problems on his African journey was paying endless tolls to cross from one tribal boundary to another. Stanley died five years after their meeting, but Morrison kept in touch with Lady Stanley and she became a firm friend of him and his family.


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Lord Rosebery, the former Liberal Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, invited Morrison to call on him at 38 Berkeley Square. ‘You were in Peking during stirring times,’ Rosebery said. ‘You have a very effective news service.’ ‘I have none,’ Morrison replied. ‘I never did, as was implied in the papers, forestall the Government. Always I told Sir Claude MacDonald anything important I happened to hear. The difference was he did not believe things which I credited.’ ‘But one would have thought he would soon discover that your information must be credited. I should have been extremely annoyed if I had been in the Foreign Office not to have been better informed.’ Morrison explained that he was in the habit of mixing with Chinese people while officials at the British Legation made every effort to avoid any contact with them. ‘That is very extraordinary,’ Rosebery said. ‘Why is that?’ ‘It is one of the traditions of the service.’ ‘Then the sooner the tradition is forgotten the better.’ Morrison described Rosebery as ‘very grey with a weak, ill-formed mouth and somewhat prominent upper teeth—the same kind of mouth as Oscar Wilde’s. [His] [n]ame [is] closely associated with that of Oscar. Viscount Drumlanrig, elder brother of Lord Alfred Douglas, was his private secretary and committed suicide. He fainted when report brought him of punishment of Oscar’. Rosebery failed to redeem himself in Morrison’s eyes when he turned the conversation to Japan. It was obvious, he said, that if Japan were to take on Russia she must act before Russia had completed the Trans-Manchurian


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Railway. ‘I think it would not be inadvisable to draw closer to Japan, to make an alliance with Japan even. To continue the friendly action and encouragement given by us—for which action,’ he added, referring to Britain’s non-intervention in forcing Japan to disgorge her spoils of war, ‘how they attacked me when we refused to join the other Powers in the Liaotung Peninsula.’ Morrison noted in his diary: ‘Thus the act of laissezfaire and muddle-headedness is now to be interpreted and we are to take credit ourselves for great political foresight’. Lord Garnet Wolseley, whom Morrison met at the Author’s Club, was equally ill-informed when Morrison told him that war between Japan and Russia seemed imminent. ‘Then Japan will go to the wall,’ the great General opined. Chirol, who was pro-Japanese, told Morrison he was pleased that Wolseley had said that because ‘he is always wrong’. The sweetest words Morrison heard during his month-long stay in England came from Moberly Bell as he was about to depart on 2 December 1899. ‘I cannot guarantee it,’ Bell said, ‘but you may count upon having £100 a month.’ Twelve hundred pounds a year! So his ‘scarcely polite’ mention of his salary at Arthur Walter’s table had apparently paid a handsome dividend. Morrison paid £70 for a first-class passage to Melbourne but broke his journey in Calcutta and made a five-day steamer trip to Assam to see Mary Joplin. Mary could find no work and was hard up. He gave her 150 rupees (£10 12s) and ordered professional cards


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advertising her nursing services for her to distribute among doctors and chemists. He also left £10 with an English friend to give to Mary in instalments during winter. He spent ‘the dullest and stupidest Christmas for many years’ at sea on board the SS Ville de la Ciotat en route to Australia and on 31 December—the last day of the century—compiled his annual inventory: House and furniture in Peking £250, library of 2500 books £250, amount in London bank £600, and amount in Peking bank £10, making with other odds and ends a grand total of £1249 10s. Morrison enjoyed an uneventful, 22-day holiday in Australia during which he ‘found all well at home and my family prosperous’. He gave interviews to The Age and The Argus, telling the latter that Britain’s successes in China owed much to the diplomatic expertise of Sir Claude MacDonald. He was not pleased with the article which appeared in print. ‘Very stupid interview and many errors’, he noted in his diary, ‘but glorified MacDonald, which was all I wished—political necessity, quite insincere, though personally attached to the man’. After four days in Sydney, Morrison took a ship to Hong Kong. Back in Peking, he found the Old Buddha plotting schemes for the extermination of the foreign barbarian. Soon she would lead her country to the brink of destruction.


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THE BOXER UPRISING 1900

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was an historic quirk that more than half the world’s population was ruled by two women, Queen-Empress Victoria of the United Kingdom and Dowager Empress Tz’u-Hsi of China. Victoria’s empire was slightly the larger, with 400 million subjects compared with Tz’u-Hsi’s 350 million. The two women had never met or corresponded, although Victoria had once sent a personal plea to Tz’uHsi through diplomatic channels to spare the life of a Chinese diplomat who had offended the Dragon Throne and been sentenced to death by beheading. As a measure of her admiration for her English counterpart, Tz’u-Hsi had granted the man a reprieve.1 Furthermore, it was said that she kept Victoria’s portrait in her quarters at the Winter Palace. 201


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While both women were grandiose and high-handed, the greatest similarity between them was their unremitting love of imperial power. Victoria’s most pressing concern in January 1900 was to smash the republican aspirations of the Boers in South Africa and incorporate the wealthy Transvaal and Orange Free State in a British dominion. Tz’u-Hsi’s driving ambition was to retain her grasp on the Dragon Throne, while at the same time ending China’s humiliation at the hands of the foreign barbarians. The Times of 26 January 1900 reported: ‘While the attention of Europe is riveted on South Africa, the masterful old woman who has ruled China for nearly two generations, under two successive Emperors, her puppets, has quietly carried out another Palace revolution at Peking’. The Emperor Kuang-hsu, now 29, had been compelled by his aunt to take a step equivalent to abdication and nominate as his successor a boy of nine. ‘The accession of a child, of course, involves a regency, and the only regent possible is the Empress Dowager’, The Times added. The child who had been chosen as Crown Prince was Po Ching, son of the arch-nationalist Prince Tuan. To defeat the Boers in South Africa, Queen Victoria was relying on the British Army, backed by troops from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. By contrast Tz’uHsi, supported by Prince Tuan, Jung Lu and other Manchu aristocrats, turned to a fanatical provincial outfit, the Boxer Movement, to achieve her objectives. Morrison first noted the presence of the Boxers in his diary soon after he returned to Peking via Japan and Korea after his trip to Australia. On 17 April he wrote: ‘The danger of the Boxers is increasing. The danger is


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scarcity of rain which is attributed to the disturbance of the feng shui2 by foreigners. If rains come, the Boxers will soon disappear’. While it was true that a drought had caused the rice crop to fail for two successive years, creating widespread starvation, there were other reasons for the rise of the Boxers. Morrison later listed two of them as the strutting arrogance of the Germans in Peking, Chihli and Shantung, and Russia’s hard-edged aggression in Manchuria. Westerners also demanded privileges and special treatment, such as parity for bishops with the mandarin class, while remaining immune to Chinese laws. In the breasts of many Chinese, there was a growing sense of injustice and a righteous yearning for revenge against the foreign oppressors who had ridden rough-shod over the Celestial Kingdom. Following the demise of the reform movement in 1898, the peasantry’s only recourse against these abuses was to join one of the militant secret societies which proliferated throughout the provinces. Members of China’s most notorious secret society, which emerged in its latest incarnation as an anti-foreign force in Shantung in the 1890s, called themselves the I-ho ch’uan, or the ‘Righteous and Harmonious F ists’. They were nicknamed ‘the Boxers’ by missionaries because they practised shadow boxing as part of an elaborate ritual to make themselves bullet-proof. Flawed though this concept might have been—their leaders simply fired blank cartridges at them to convince the populace of their invincibility—the Boxers successfully captured the country’s mood of suppressed rage. Thousands of dispossessed and starving peasants, most of them patriotic young men, flocked to their banner, while


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the more elderly followed in their wake to pick up the crumbs as they swept northwards towards the capital. Moreover, the Boxers’ avowed aims of ridding China of foreign devils and preserving the Ching Dynasty made them popular with the leading lights of the Manchu ruling caste. The Chinese in general found body hair repellent and the Boxers classified those to be eliminated by ethnic cleansing into three categories of ‘Hairy Men’: male and female foreign devils were called ‘Primary Hair Men’; Christian converts—the ‘rice Christians’—and Chinese providing services to foreigners were ‘Secondary Hairy Men’; and Chinese who used foreign products such as clocks or watches were ‘Tertiary Hairy Men’. All were to be killed. The hoped for rains did not eventuate and in the middle of May Morrison’s servant informed him that eight million men would descend from Heaven and exterminate the foreigners. ‘Then the rain will come,’ he said. There were a few showers on 17 May but not enough to break the drought and the Boxers’ fury intensified. ‘French priests report 61 men, women and children suffered death at Kaolo, midway between Peking and Paotingfu’, Morrison wrote in his diary. ‘Some burned alive. The whole village of Kaolo is destroyed.’ One of China’s most stubborn reactionaries, Grand Secretary Kang Yi, threw in his lot with the Boxers and persuaded the Dowager Empress to invite them to Peking, where their so-called immunity to bullets could be used to drive out the foreigners. The Manchu nobility opened their gates to the Boxers and many thousands of imperial troops joined their ranks. Yuan Shi-k’ai was one


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of the few leading figures who opposed them. After shooting several of them dead with live ammunition, he had driven them out of Shantung province into Chihli, only to receive an imperial reprimand for his troubles. No one knew more about the Boxer menace than Monsignor Alphonse-Pierre Favier, Roman Catholic Bishop of Peking, whose cathedral, the Peitang, was in the western section of the Imperial City. He warned the French Minister, Stephen Pichon, that a mass exodus of Christian refugees was taking place from the countryside. Many had been killed and thousands were fleeing towards the capital, where the Boxers intended to destroy the churches then attack the legations. The date for the attack on the Peitang, the largest and most despised symbol of Christianity in Peking, had already been fixed. Pichon dismissed Favier’s warning as ‘alarmist’ and refused to call up French troops from allied warships which had anchored off Tientsin. Sir Claude MacDonald concurred with this ‘waitand-see’ policy, informing the Foreign Office: ‘I confess that little has come to my knowledge to confirm the gloomy anticipations of the French father’. Morrison, however, ominously noted on 23 May that the Boxer movement had ‘the cognisance and approval of the Government, as shown by them drilling in the grounds of Imperial barracks and royal princes’. The following day he and William Pethick observed a Boxer at prayer. ‘He pretends to receive a spirit from Heaven and in a trance slashes the air with sword and knife’, Morrison noted. ‘He is impervious not only to the foreign bullet and the foreign sword, but the foreign poison . . . with which the foreigner is infecting the native wells.’


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That night an excruciating formal dinner party was held at the British Legation to celebrate Queen Victoria’s eighty-first birthday. After dinner, IG’s Own tootled away while guests danced on the tennis courts. Such scenes of European elegance, however, were about to vanish. On 28 May Morrison, armed with a revolver, and two companions rode out to the railway junction at Fengtai, 24 kilometres from Peking, after hearing that the station was ablaze. ‘As we approached the black smoke was rising and the whole countryside was afoot, streaming towards the station’, he wrote. ‘The engine sheds were on fire . . . and the villagers from all around were looting. We could do nothing, though we should have shot a Chinaman who threatened us with swords and swore to cut our throats. It will always be a regret to me that I did not kill this man.’ Morrison was about to head back to Peking to cable his story to London when he remembered that Harriet Squiers, wife of Herbert Squiers, the American F irst Secretary, and her three young children were spending the summer in a converted Taoist temple in the Western Hills. With them were an American guest, Polly Condit Smith, two nannies, one French and one German, and forty Chinese servants. ‘Our position now was critical’, Miss Smith recalled as gangs of Boxers armed with spears and swords roamed the vicinity. Not a foreign man on the place to protect us; a quantity of badly frightened Chinese servants to reassure; three children and ourselves to make plans for. We did what women always have to do—we waited; and our reward came when we saw


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down in the valley a dusty figure ambling along on a dusty Chinese pony, crossing from the direction of Fengtai . . . It was Dr Morrison.3

Morrison studied the villa’s defences and was preparing to barricade the balcony when Herbert Squiers arrived with a Cossack he had borrowed from the Russian Legation, which was permitted under the terms of a treaty to keep a small force in Peking. Squiers decided to evacuate the women and children back to Peking in the morning. Polly Condit Smith wrote: ‘At 6 am we were en route for Peking, an enormous caravan—most of us in Chinese carts, some riding ponies, mules or donkeys, the forty servants placing themselves wherever they could. The three protectors, heavily armed, rode by us’. Sir Claude MacDonald, now ‘very much alarmed’, led the other ministers in gaining the permission of the reluctant Tsungli Yamen to call up the legation guards from Tientsin. The first detachments arrived on 31 May and 3 June and consisted of 81 British soldiers, mainly Royal Marines led by Captain B.M. Strouts, 75 Russians, 75 French, 50 Americans, 40 Italians and 25 Japanese. Morrison noted that the Americans came in first with the ‘pleasant and agreeable’ Captain McCalla at their head. In the same entry, Morrison wrote: ‘The Chinese are callous in consequence of constant kicking. Converts must be supported; if not, then there will be the greatest setback yet of the Christian religion . . . Prince Tuan, father of the Crown Prince, is head of the Boxers. Others are Kang Yi and Hsu Fung. All these men should be removed’. The Boxers, however, grew in strength and daring.


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On 3 June they cut the railway line between Peking and Tientsin to prevent further reinforcements reaching the capital, and hacked two British missionaries to death 60 kilometres south of Peking. Three Frenchmen, three Italians, two Swiss and a Greek were reported missing. British diplomat Henry Cockburn went to the Tsungli Yamen to protest. He was in the middle of his speech when he noticed that one of the Chinese ministers had fallen asleep. He angrily walked out. ‘There you have China,’ he told Morrison. ‘What are you to make of such people? The Empress Dowager is giving a theatrical performance while the country is in serious stress and strife.’ On 9 June, the grandstand and stables of the Peking Race Course to the south of the Chinese City were burned down. This act of vandalism and the belief that the Boxers intended to kill every foreigner in Peking spurred MacDonald to send an urgent appeal to Admiral Sir Edward Seymour in Tientsin, asking for a relief column to be sent to the capital at once. On 10 June, Seymour set out by train at the head of 500 men. Four other trains carrying another 1376 troops followed shortly afterwards. The situation in Peking was rapidly deteriorating. Escorted by the Muslim extremist General Tung Fuhsiang and his savage, white-turbaned Kansu warriors, Tz’u-Hsi returned from the Summer Palace and immediately sacked the moderate Prince Ching as President of the Tsungli Yamen, replacing him with Prince Tuan. ‘One reasonable Chinese removed and four rabidly antiforeign, ignorant Manchus appointed’, Morrison noted. Ching had been ‘the last hope of any wisdom in the Tsungli Yamen’.


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Morrison cabled his report to The Times in the usual way from the telegraph office to Tientsin, but it was returned to him and he learned that the Boxers had cut the line. He managed to send the cable through a line running north into Russian territory via Kiatka at exorbitant cost. It was published in The Times on 12 June. Seymour’s troop train was expected at the Machiapu rail terminus outside the city walls on 11 June and an expectant crowd of Europeans rode out to meet it. Morrison was with them. ‘The people were frightened [but] very friendly’, he wrote. ‘They waited but the troops did not come.’ In fact the relief expedition had been stopped in its tracks by the Boxers halfway between Tientsin and Peking. Hemmed in on all sides, Seymour decided to make a fighting retreat back to Tientsin. After a fruitless wait at the station, Morrison and the diplomatic contingent headed back to the city. At the main southern gate, the Yung Ting, the Chancellor of the Japanese Legation, Sugiyama Akira, was dragged from his cart by Kansu soldiers and hacked to death. Morrison heard the news at the Peking Club. ‘I had seen him this morning with the Japanese guard in a bowler hat and long-tailed coat’, he wrote. ‘The Japanese Minister made no attempt to recover the body. It was mutilated, the heart was cut out and . . . sent to General Tung Fu-hsiang himself.’ Morrison filed his report via Kiatka at 2 p.m. on 12 June and news of the murder was published in The Times on 13 June. But the Kiatka line was cut soon afterwards and from then on Morrison’s only method of communication was to smuggle dispatches to Tientsin by courier. The Celestial capital itself was cut off, isolated.


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On 13 June a ‘fully-fledged Boxer’, a red bandana around his head, red ribbons on his wrists and ankles, and a flaming red sash holding his loose white tunic in place, boldly drove a Peking cart down Legation Street. He was sharpening a knife on the heel of his boot while displaying a slogan saying, ‘This is good for eight foreigners’. The outraged German Minister, Baron Klemens von Ketteler, ‘a firebrand’ according to Morrison, attacked the intruder with his walking stick and the Boxer jumped off his cart and ran up an alley. Ketteler found another Boxer, ‘a mere boy’, in the cart and gave him a sound thrashing. The boy was imprisoned in the German Legation and, despite official Chinese requests for his release, kept in custody. This was a serious mistake. Later that day, Morrison wrote, ‘the Boxers came down in force from the north of the city, and the burning of foreign buildings began’. The Boxers had swarmed into the eastern section of the Tartar City through the Ha-ta Gate that afternoon and set about exterminating the ‘secondary devils’, Chinese converts and servants, and shopkeepers supplying goods to the foreigners. They chanted ‘Sha! Sha!’ (‘Kill! Kill!’) as they went about their grisly work. Wave after wave of terrified Chinese swept down Legation Street to escape the holocaust, but many others were caught and butchered. Shops and houses were burned, often with helpless victims trapped inside. As night fell, the sky was illuminated by leaping crescents of flame and the terror spread to the west of the Tartar City. Morrison returned to his house, which was connected to the Customs Compound by a lane. His diary entry read: ‘Attack of Boxers. Cries of Boxer incantations. Passing the French


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Legation I found all on guard. “The Boxers are coming.” Then rush home . . . Then I went to the Customs [compound]. Kept watch all night . . . Awful cries in the west part of the city all through the night. The roar of the murdered. Rapine and massacre’. At the Austrian Legation on the eastern fringe of the diplomatic quarter, troops opened fire with a Maxim machine gun at a torch procession of Boxers heading towards them, but they aimed too high and succeeded only in bringing down telegraph wires. ‘Much of the confidence with which the Boxers faced the guns was due to this idiocy’, Morrison noted. He had spent part of that long night, he said, listening to ‘the IG’s tremulous reminiscences of Gordon’.4 Morrison’s final cable to reach London was dated 14 June, two days later than the last diplomatic dispatches to get through. He paid a messenger 20 taels to take it to Tientsin. This report, published in The Times on 18 June, read: A serious anti-foreign outbreak took place last night when some of the finest buildings in the eastern part of the city were burnt and hundreds of native Christians and servants employed by foreigners were massacred within two miles of the Imperial Palace. It was an anxious night for all foreigners who were collected under the protection of the foreign guards. The Boxers burned the Roman Catholic east cathedral, the large buildings of the London mission, and the American Board of Missions, and also all the buildings in the eastern part of the city occupied by the foreign employees of the Maritime Customs. If the troops reinforcing the foreign


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guards fail to arrive today further riots are expected. It is believed that no European has been injured.

Edmund Backhouse, the Oxford-educated son of a baronet who had been Morrison’s translator for some months, mourned the destruction of Peking’s homosexual scene. Backhouse, who later perpetrated one of the biggest literary frauds of the period, lived in his own house with Chinese servants, but was a frequent visitor to the gay quarter which, he wrote in his highly pornographic memoirs, Decadance Mandchoue, went up in smoke that night after the Boxers set alight a foreign chemist shop.5 During daylight hours on 14 June Morrison inspected barricades which had been hastily erected at the British, American, Italian and Austrian legations. At 7 p.m. he heard firing on the wall of the Tartar City and discovered that German troops under Ketteler had stalked and killed eight Boxers while they were performing their exercises. ‘Strouts [the senior British officer] killed a Boxer’, Morrison also noted, ‘[and] another was killed by Sergeant Preston, armed with a halberd from a temple’. All that night furious Boxers attacked the British barricade at the canal bridge and several were shot dead. Morrison’s main priority now was to protect the many hundreds of ‘rice Christians’ who had been abandoned to their fate by missionaries and diplomats. Travel writer Henry Savage Landor described the events of 15 June: At two in the afternoon Dr Morrison, who has a nobler heart than many of the selfish refugees, on hearing that many Christian converts were still at the mercy of the Boxers near


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Nan-tang church [in the Imperial City], applied to Sir Claude MacDonald for guards to rescue them. Twenty British were given to him, and were joined by a force of Germans and Americans. Morrison guided them to the spot, and it will ever be a bright spot in the record of the doctor’s life that he was the means of saving from atrocious tortures and death over a hundred helpless Chinese.6

The Reverend Roland Allen, head of the Anglican mission and one of the British Legation’s inmates, continued the story: Dr Morrison returned with a large convoy of Roman Catholic Christians and brought the most ghastly stories of the state of affairs . . . He said it was the most horrible sight he had ever seen. They found the Boxers going about from house to house cutting down every Christian they could find and the place was running with blood. The rescue party marched through the streets, calling upon the Christians to come out and join them, and many did so. Among them many were wounded and some were sick. They were escorted over to the East City and placed in Prince Su’s palace, commonly called the Fu [or park] by the care of Dr Morrison and Mr Huberty James [an American citizen who was professor of English at the Imperial Chinese University], and there tended with the utmost care by these two men assisted by a few volunteers.7

Polly Condit Smith wrote: ‘Prince Su was most suave. He vacated the same day leaving all his treasures and half his harem. Thanks are due to Dr Morrison’.8 Morrison’s actions had led to around 3000 Chinese Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, finding shelter in the ornamental


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grounds of Prince Su’s palace, which was built in a highwalled compound across the canal to the east of the British Legation. Morrison wrote that on his rescue mission he had witnessed terrible scenes of devastation and carnage: ‘Acres of buildings. Slaughtered and burning people. Horrible sights. One young man and young woman lying hand in hand nearly dead, bleeding but rescued. Came back dead tired’. The following morning, 16 June, he was off again: Up early very much refreshed. A walk round, then [prepared] a long telegram. Had a chit from Sir Claude MacDonald asking, Will I go out? Captain Wray [was to lead a party of] 20 British, 10 Americans and 5 Japanese with an officer and Captain Shiba [the Japanese military attaché]. We made a raid on a temple 30 yards from the Austrian outpost, the Austrians coming up afterwards.

Inside the temple a gang of Boxers was performing human sacrifices on Christian converts. ‘[We found] 45 [Christians] killed—butchered; and Christian captives, with hands tied, being immolated. [We caught the Boxers] while actually massacring: 5 [of the captives] were already dead; we rescued three. One was accidentally killed. All the Boxers were killed; only one dared to face us. I killed myself at least six . . . Back tired having paraded city and witnessed devastation in many places.’ At 1 a.m. the Emperor’s personal gate into the Imperial City, the irreplaceable Chien Men, was set ablaze. Morrison watched its destruction from the city walls, ‘the pall of smoke portending the ruin of the


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Imperial House’. The Peking fire brigade, waving flags and beating drums to appease the gods while spurting water on the flames, could do little to save the immense gated tower. Later, Morrison wrote in The Times that the inferno had consumed ‘the richest part of Peking, the pearl and jewel shops, the silk and fur, the satin and embroidery stores, the great curio shops, the melting houses, and nearly all that was of highest value in the metropolis’.9 Meanwhile, the Boxers were scouring the city using information from a religious census of the previous year to identify converts. ‘The Boxers commandeer carts and carry off Christians to slaughter in the temples: the scenes are quite devilish’, Morrison wrote. ‘Bredon was unable to give me men [to rescue them]. He had his men on the lookout on the wall day and night; piffling nonsense.’10 With equal ferocity, the Boxers had also attacked churches, shops and foreign residences and killed Chinese Christians in Tientsin. Morrison’s courier returned to Peking on 18 June with a note from E.B. Drew, Commissioner of Customs at Tientsin, saying it was ‘urgently necessary’ for foreign troops to occupy the Taku Forts which guarded the approaches to the city. After bombarding the forts on 16 June, the allies overpowered the garrison the following day. On 19 June an ultimatum from the Tsungli Yamen was delivered to Sir Robert Hart and each of the 11 Ministers, declaring that the threatened bombardment of the Taku Forts was tantamount to a declaration of war. The forts had already fallen but the Chinese chose to ignore that fact because, according to Morrison, ‘they never like to say what is distasteful to them’.


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He learned from Sabbione, a member of the Italian Legation, that the Ministers had been warned by the Tsungli Yamen that unless all foreigners were evacuated from Peking within 24 hours their safety could not be guaranteed. If they agreed to leave the capital, they would be escorted to Tientsin by imperial troops. Morrison attended a meeting of Ministers summoned by Cologan, the Spanish Minister, to discuss the crisis. While Sir Claude MacDonald dithered, Baron von Ketteler argued hotly that it would be suicidal to accept the Yamen’s offer. The diplomats and their families would be massacred by the very troops supposed to protect them. However, the highly strung Pichon and the American Minister, Edwin Conger, were in favour of quitting the capital. ‘[It was decided] to accept the ultimatum’, Morrison wrote. They had been given their passports by the Chinese Government; what other course of action was open to them?—‘The Chinese [converts] will be massacred to a man.’—‘That does not regard us,’ said the sympathetic doyen [Cologan] with a shrug. A more disgraceful determination I have never heard of. I went home and could not look my servants in the face.

The arguments for and against evacuating the capital raged into the evening. Morrison stormed into the British Legation and confronted Sir Claude MacDonald, who wavered, then claimed that acceptance of the ultimatum was ‘a big bluff’: the Diplomatic Body had written to the Yamen asking for transport to gain an extension of the deadline. ‘Conger, to his everlasting dishonour, asked for 100 carts’, Morrison wrote. ‘As he said to me, “The Chinese


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have guaranteed us safe conduct.” [I replied,] “And if you place your confidence in the Chinese guarantee why do you have your Legation guards here? Did they not promise to protect you?” ’ Tempers flared at one meeting as those in favour of deserting the Chinese converts attempted to justify their decision. Polly Condit Smith wrote: At one time Dr Morrison took the floor, he being the spokesman for the vast crowd of intelligent individuals— engineers, bankers, trades-people and missionaries, who one and all were in favour of waiting. He looked the Ministers square in the eyes and said: ‘If you men vote to leave Peking tomorrow, the death of every man, woman and child in this huge unprotected convoy will be on your heads, and your names will go through history and be known for ever as the wickedest, weakest and most pusillanimous cowards who ever lived.’

Early the following morning—20 June, a Wednesday— Morrison went to the American Legation and confronted Conger again. ‘Well, Doctor,’ the bearded Civil War veteran and one-time US congressman asked, ‘how do you feel this morning?’ ‘I feel ashamed to be a white man,’ Morrison snapped. ‘Of all the inhuman, barbarous, pusillanimous decrees I have ever heard of, the decision of the eleven Ministers yesterday is the worst.’ The two men argued but got nowhere. ‘Well, Doctor, I don’t agree with you,’ Conger finally said.


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‘But the world will agree with me.’ ‘Much I give for the opinion of the World.’ Conger thought Morrison was referring to the New York World, a racy tabloid. Later that morning Morrison saw ministers assembling at the French Legation to plan the evacuation, while two green-and-red sedan chairs waited outside the German Legation on the other side of Legation Street to take Baron von Ketteler and his interpreter, Heinrich Cordes, to the Tsungli Yamen. The recalcitrant German Minister intended to protest in the strongest possible terms against the Chinese ultimatum, according to Morrison, ‘in direct opposition to the wishes of the Diplomatic Body’. Having given the Yamen notice of his intentions, Ketteler set off in some style accompanied by two liveried Chinese outriders and four armed German guards. The streets were packed with excitable hordes and, fearing that the presence of the German guards might incite a riot, Ketteler sent them back to the legation and proceeded with just his Chinese outriders in the hope that he would be mistaken for a Mandarin official. As he passed a guardhouse, however, a number of imperial troops loyal to the Dowager Empress rushed out and surrounded his chair and a Manchu bannerman shot him dead through the head with his rifle. Herr Cordes was also badly wounded but managed to escape. He told Morrison: ‘I affirm that the assassination of the German Minister was deliberately planned, premeditated murder, done in obedience to the orders of high government officials.’ The killer, it was later learned, had been promised 70 taels and promotion by his superior officer if he carried out the assassination.


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All support for an evacuation of the city instantly evaporated. ‘We realised, perhaps for the first time, the horror of our position’, Polly Condit Smith wrote. The Siege of the Legations had begun. At the same time the Boxers launched a savage assault on the Peitang, Bishop Favier’s cathedral in the Imperial City. The British compound on the western side of the canal opposite Prince Su’s palace was well placed to withstand a protracted battle. To the north, its walls abutted the Hanlin Academy, China’s Oxbridge which contained the world’s oldest library; to the west, it spanned the Imperial Carriage Park and the Mongol Market, where horses and ponies were sold in peaceful times. The main buildings, including the Minister’s grand residence built in the shape of a rectangle with a courtyard in the middle, Henry Cockburn’s two-storey villa and the student interpreters’ quarters, were soundly constructed of brick and stone, although there were also many inflammable wooden structures. The canal itself had dried up during the drought but there was a plentiful supply of fresh water from five wells in the legation’s spacious grounds and adequate food and wine supplies, which were quickly topped up by raids on abandoned stores in Legation Street. With barricades at strategic points and all windows partially blocked by sandbags, the compound would be relatively secure. Within the first 24 hours of the siege a hospital was set up under the legation’s medical officer, Dr Wordsworth Poole, in the chancery, while committees were formed to deal with fire, fortifications, supplies and sanitation. Bulletins were posted on noticeboards at the Bell Tower in the centre of the compound.


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Sir Claude MacDonald’s biggest defensive headache was that the entire diplomatic quarter was overlooked by one of the walls of the Imperial City and by the great Southern Wall of the Tartar City. These positions would have to be held at any cost, as would the Fu across the canal. Shooting had been expected to start with the expiration of the 24-hour ultimatum at 4 p.m. and Morrison duly recorded: ‘At 4 precisely shooting began . . . one Frenchman was killed, shot in the forehead’. A Royal Marine sergeant marched up to his commanding officer, Captain Strouts, and saluted. ‘Firing has commenced, sir,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Murphy.’ The next to die was the gallant Huberty James. At 7 p.m. on the first day of the siege he was about to cross the north bridge over the canal after visiting Chinese converts in the Fu when he was challenged by hostile Chinese soldiers. Relying on an assurance of safe conduct from Jung Lu, the kindly professor threw up his hands to show he was unarmed and was immediately seized and dragged away. He was never seen again. All that evening diplomats and missionaries streamed into the British compound after the exposed Austrian legation, the Customs buildings and the Methodist Episcopalian Mission were all abandoned. As the lane linking Morrison’s house with the danger zone was now unguarded, he was forced to seek refuge for himself and his servants. ‘I took my silver, my provisions etc and went off to the British Legation’, he wrote. ‘Here all the Ministers had assembled. There was an immense crowd—missionaries, Catholic, who had left their flocks, Chinese nuns and


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crowds of Chinese, Customs people, Russian ladies and others.’ The grieving Baroness von Ketteler, an American, was also among them. At the end of that incredible first day, a total of 473 civilians, 409 troops, 2750 Chinese converts and 400 Chinese servants were incarcerated in an enclave comprising the Fu, the Hotel de Pekin, several banks, shops and houses and, in an L-shaped wedge, the legations of Britain, Russia, America, Spain, Japan, Germany, France and Italy. Morrison described his fellow defenders as ‘a seething, polyglot mass’. The most eccentric was Nestergaard, a Norwegian missionary known as ‘Nearest to God’, who roamed the compound in a black cassock and top hat shouting for the King of Norway to clear his good name of unspecified slanders. Stephen Pichon, the French Minister, took to moping about while mournfully intoning: ‘C’est excessivement grave,’ ‘Nous sommes finis,’ ‘Nous sommes perdus!’ Morrison described him as ‘a craven-hearted cur’. Pichon’s pessimism was rivalled only by that of Robert Bredon, Sir Robert Hart’s deputy and brother-in-law, whom Morrison delighted in labelling the ‘Knight of the Rueful Countenance’. There were, however, some splendid volunteers: ‘The great danger in the Legation is the Carving Knife Brigade, the cosmopolitan brigade of Frenchmen and refugees’, Morrison wrote. ‘They are armed against treachery within . . . Thornhill’s Toughs are the legitimate successors of Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. This unit was a formidable danger—armed with pea rifle and elephant gun . . . and slicing knife. At the sound of alarm they gather under the Bell Tower.’11


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Morrison himself was in good shape to withstand the exigencies of a prolonged siege. He was given a berth in a pavilion with employees of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, from where he made daily rounds of the perimeter to help out where he could and to gather information. Eighteen days after the siege began, he would tell his diary: ‘I am still having splendid food with the Squiers, feeding as an actual fact better than I did before the siege’. The Squiers had access to the best larder in the compound and, while stocks lasted, dished up Californian fruits, macaroni, corned beef and coffee. Polly Condit Smith described Morrison as ‘the most attractive at our impromptu mess. He works where a strong man is needed, and he is as dirty, happy and healthy a hero as one could find anywhere’. Morrison had an abiding faith that the relief expedition would eventually break through and rescue them. The alternative was too gloomy to contemplate. He realised he was in the middle of a huge international news story and his main frustration was that he could not get word to the outside world. He was in robust good health and equipped with a positive mental attitude which enabled him to cheer other people up, even if his humour was sometimes of the gallows variety: Bredon came early to see me, Knight of the Rueful Countenance, very gloomy in his forebodings. I said, ‘A siege does not occur to any individual but once in a lifetime. Our lives are marked by few landmarks. Let us, while we will, have a siege that will be recorded in history, a siege where half the garrison will perish by the sword, and the other half be reduced to the utmost privation from starvation.


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Bredon did not find this prognosis at all comforting, but he stopped complaining to Morrison. In addition to rifles and small arms, the defenders had four pieces of light artillery, the Austrian Maxim gun, an American Colt with 25 000 rounds, an Italian onepounder with 120 rounds, and an old five-barrelled Nordenfelt machine gun which jammed after every four shots. An American gunner also fashioned a cannon out of an 1860 iron cannon barrel which was uncovered in the blacksmith’s shop. Mounted on a spare set of wheels and loaded with shells provided by the Russians, it was nicknamed ‘the International’ and performed exemplary service in demolishing enemy barricades. Such was the paltry force which faced thousands of Boxers backed by up to five armies of Chinese troops camped in the Peking region. The defenders could have been overwhelmed at any time simply by weight of numbers had the order been given for a ‘human wave’ attack. But it was not given.12 It was also baffling that the Chinese were armed with modern three-inch Krupp field guns which could have pulverised the legations to rubble within a matter of days, yet these guns fired just 3000 rounds during the course of the siege, causing great damage but not inflicting total destruction. Instead of exploiting the firepower at their disposal, Tz’u-Hsi’s commanders indulged in a deadly game of cat and mouse. The Dowager Empress declared war on all of the great powers on 21 June and one possible explanation for leaving the initial attacks to the Boxers was that she had diverted the bulk of China’s armies to the Battle of


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Tientsin, where the allied relief expedition threatened to overwhelm the city’s garrison. Morrison’s most immediate concern was to rescue his library of Chinese books. On the third day of the siege, 22 June, he slipped over the canal bridge to reach his house on the other side of the Fu and, helped by one of his ‘very cool and brave’ Chinese servants and the paranoid preacher Nestergaard, retrieved his books in three trips and stored them in his pavilion. There had been mayhem at 7.30 that morning when the Austrian contingent, fearing imminent attack, bolted from its position in Canal Street, causing a stampede among the Italian, French, German and Japanese guards. According to Morrison, the panic had been started by the Austrian commander, Captain von Thomann of the Imperial Austrian Navy, whose premature retreat from his legation had already created strategic difficulties for the defenders. Thomann heard an unsubstantiated rumour that the American Legation had been abandoned and, anticipating that he might be confronted with hordes of howling Boxers at any moment, ordered all forces east of Canal Street to fall back to the British Legation. Canal Street was a vital artery running from north to south through the diplomatic quarter and its abandonment meant that three-quarters of the line was now undefended, including the Fu where the Chinese converts were gathered in conditions of abject misery. As soon as Thomann’s mistake was realised, the troops were ordered back to their positions, but there had been a period when the Chinese could have stormed over the barricades and taken the whole of Canal Street with devastating consequences for the defenders. As it was, they settled for


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setting fire to the Italian Legation and occupying a barricade in Customs Street. MacDonald and other cooler military heads were mystified as to why there had not been an all-out attack. Thomann, who had once captained an Austrian cruiser and was holidaying in Peking when the siege started, had insisted on becoming commander-in-chief on the grounds that he was the senior military officer present, but it was clear from this episode that he was hopelessly out of his depth. He was replaced by MacDonald, the former Army major and gunnery expert whose coolness under fire and unflappable manner with his fellow diplomats, some of whom were in a highly volatile state, became a feature of the defence. Captain Strouts acted as his chief of staff. There were now seven legations to defend, the more remote Belgian and Dutch legations having been deserted at the outset of the siege, along with the Austrian and the Italian. The besieged section measured some 700 yards east to west and 750 yards north to south. Throughout the siege the head of the fortification committee, Frank Gamewell, an American missionary who had graduated in engineering from Cornell University, rode around the perimeter on a bicycle plugging the many gaps until the whole of the besieged area was defended by an impressive system of barricades, embrasures, loopholes, earthworks and bombproof shelters. On the fourth day of the siege, 23 June, a hot dry wind blew down from the north and the Boxers, who were expert arsonists, saw a chance to burn out the British Legation. Some of the buildings of the Hanlin Academy backed on to the British compound and Morrison and the


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other defenders watched horrified as the Boxers set fire to the most sacred building in Peking. The flames spread quickly through the tinder-dry wooden structure, fuelled by the thousands of priceless, silk-bound volumes. MacDonald had had the foresight to have a hole gouged in the compound wall and he immediately sent a detachment of marines into the Hanlin to fight the inferno. Chinese soldiers opened fire to prevent them from doing so. As bullets whizzed overhead, a long chain of firefighters was formed inside the British compound to carry water from the legation wells to the blazing Hanlin buildings. Polly Condit Smith was in the line with the wife of the French Minister ‘and many other well-known women’. When the wind changed direction it seemed that the main library might be saved but the fire broke out again that afternoon and the firefighters tossed many books into the courtyard and the lotus pond to prevent the fire spreading. Morrison wrote: . . . the combustible books, the most valuable in the Empire, were thrown in a great heap into the pond around the summer house . . . a heap of debris, timber in ashes, sprinkled with torn leaves, marked the site of the great library of the Middle Kingdom. Other great libraries, the Alexandrian and in Rome, have been destroyed by the victorious invader, but what can we think of a nation that sacrifices its most sacred edifice, the pride and glory of its country and learned men for hundreds of years, in order to be revenged upon foreigners? It was a glorious blaze. The desecration was appalling.

Some of the less scrupulous among the defenders salvaged books for their own purposes. Edmund Backhouse, who


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claimed to have been incapacitated by a pulled muscle since the siege began, ended up with six volumes of the Yung Lo Ta Tien, an encyclopedia completed in 1408 by 2000 Ming scholars and comprising about 12 000 volumes. Morrison had some harsh words for some of his comrades: Ministers show up badly, Joostens [the Belgian Minister] and Pichon especially . . . De Giers slouches around, squint-eyed Podsnaieff [sic] and swarthy Pokotiloff work despairingly . . . American missionaries work splendidly. Catholic priests drink wine, eat, live and are happy . . . Bredon is the picture of woe and misery . . . Knobel [the Dutch Minister] had urged that a dispatch might be sent to the [Tsungli] Yamen. Cologan wiped the floor with him. ‘We are writing a page of history,’ he said, ‘let us not sully it.’

However, the day following the fire Morrison joyfully recorded that a Mrs Moore had given birth to a son— ‘the first siege baby!’—and that women were sewing sandbags out of ‘such lining as was never seen, of silks, satins and embroideries, carpets and bed curtains’. On 27 June, after the Customs Compound was destroyed, Morrison noted: It was instructive to see Sir Robert Hart, after 40 years of service, cooped up in the Legation, living on horse flesh and exposed to bullets of Chinese soldiers; all his papers, records and books and all the accumulated treasures of many years being burned under the very eyes of the Imperial Palace . . . All the beautiful ponies are in the Su Wang Fu. One


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of them is brought out every day and shot. Racing ponies are made into cutlets . . .

Morrison’s own house suffered the same fate as Hart’s on 28 June. ‘My house [just to the east of the Fu] in flames, burned as a measure of precaution by the Japanese themselves’, he wrote. ‘Shiba came in very apologetic; my house had been burned, sacrificed to the common weal.’ The following day he recorded several setbacks for the defenders: ‘Daily the cordon is drawing closer. Our two vital points are the City wall and the Fu. One third of the Fu has today become Chinese’. Two manned barricades had been set up across the top of the Southern Wall to prevent the Chinese from firing down into the compounds, but on 1 July Chinese soldiers captured one of the barricades without firing a shot: the German guard had turned tail and run down the ramp to safety when the Chinese made a surprise attack on their position. This left the back of the second barricade further along the wall dangerously exposed and its American defenders also deserted their posts. Once again the Chinese failed to press home their advantage and a mixed force of Russians, British and Americans quickly reoccupied the American barricade. Meanwhile, Chinese marksmen hammered the defenders with incessant rifle fire. One night alone it was estimated that they discharged 200 000 bullets at the legations, yet they aimed so high that only minor damage was done. The death toll, however, continued to mount. So far 38 legation guards had been killed by Chinese snipers and 55 had been wounded. On 3 July, the Americans decided to drive out the


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Chinese who had pushed forward on top of the Southern Wall and built a small fort within 25 feet of the American barricade. At 3 a.m. a commando team of 60 Americans, Russians and British assembled at the Bell Tower under Captain Jack Myers, the 28-year-old commanding officer of the US Marines. After a briefing, they quietly made their way up the ramp to the wall and when Myers shouted ‘Go!’, they scrambled over the barricade, dropped 10 feet to the other side and charged at the Chinese. ‘The Chinese were so close that it was only a couple of jumps from one barricade into the Chinese fort’, Morrison wrote. ‘The Chinese were taken by surprise and fled incontinently, as with a wild rush the Americans and British charged them. We in the Legation heard the wild cheer and the shouting and then Conger came hastily in saying that the position had been taken . . .’ Armed with rifles and bayonets, the raiders had seized the fort and the barricade behind it, killing 60 Chinese who were identified as Kansu warriors at a cost of three allied soldiers killed and six wounded. Myers sustained a thigh wound from a Chinese spear. In his honour, the position was named Fort Myers. Another hero of the siege in Morrison’s eyes was Auguste Chamot, the Swiss proprietor of the Hotel de Pekin, who ‘deserved the Legion d’Honneur for his admirable courage and foresight’. He had led a valiant rescue mission to save some trapped engineers and was ‘cheerful, amusing and untiring’. Morrison added: ‘The missionaries are making some 300 loaves a day of wheaten bread and Chamot as many. Chamot, the marvellous, feeds the Russians, French, Germans and Austrians . . .’ And again: ‘4 July: At 5 pm I went my rounds. Three-inch


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shells are still crashing into Chamot’s [hotel]. It is a big building and a good mark and has been shot through. Mrs Matthieu and Mrs D’Arc are still there doing good work’. Back in Printing House Square, Valentine Chirol laboured to overcome the unnerving silence from Peking. ‘There is still no news either from Peking or from Admiral Seymour’s force’, The Times informed its readers on 25 June in a long article reprising the dramatic events of the past month. ‘The telegram from our own Correspondent dated the 14th and sent by runner to Tien-tain constitutes, we understand, absolutely the last authentic news which has reached the outer world from European sources in the Chinese capital . . . That even the wellknown resourcefulness of The Times Correspondent should have failed since then to get any additional news through is in itself not one of the least disquieting symptoms of the situation.’ On 6 July, Morrison made a desperate attempt to smuggle a new report to his newspaper. He wrote a dispatch in neat, small writing on both sides of a piece of thin, waterproofed paper measuring five inches by less than two-and-a-quarter inches. It read: ‘Whoever receives this please forward it by special messenger to E.B. Drew, Esq. Commissioner of Customs, Tientsin. I will defray all expenses. Mr Drew will then forward the following telegram to The Times, urgent, if necessary’. Since January 20 [sic] been besieged by Chinese troops all communications cut isolation complete stop for ten days unable communicate even with Pietang cathedral where


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Monseigneur Favier priests sisters 3000 Christians in one enclosure guarded by 30 French 10 Italians their position great peril enemy encompassing fire starvation stop Enemy daily shelling British legation which crowded all foreign ministers women children Christian refugees danger extreme position being commanded from city wall also wall Imperial city working day night desperate efforts strengthen defence barricades sandbags loopholes nightly furious fusillade all quarters thousands one marine killed inside legation stop Italian Dutch Belgian Austrian legations burned French legation abandoned but retaken severely bombarded wall opposite American Legation held by 35 Americans British Russians stop princes grounds palace east British legation bravely defended by small number Japanese whom seven killed thirteen wounded British two killed also David Oliphant student interpreter of 414 men and 20 officers besieged area 2 officers killed Japanese Ando French Herbert six wounded including Halliday severely doing well 43 men killed 56 wounded civilians five killed included Wagner Frenchman son consul general six wounded stop ammunition carefully husbanded supplies insufficient great anxiety prolonged delay arrival troops we unprovided field pieces general health good Morrison Peking July sixth.

Morrison folded his report into a small ball, placed it in a bowl of gruel and gave it to a young Chinese volunteer, who went over the Southern Wall with orders to make his way to Tientsin. Unfortunately, the youth was caught by Chinese soldiers and sent back. At daybreak he re-entered the legation quarter through the Water Gate at the end of the canal and returned Morrison’s report to him. Morrison pasted it in his diary. He had made only one


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mistake in his report, giving the date of the start of the siege as 20 January rather than 20 June. On 8 July, the Austrian von Thomann was shot dead by a bullet through the heart and soon afterwards Morrison reflected on the random nature of good fortune which keeps one man alive while another dies: Many remarkable escapes are recorded such as must occur wherever a small body of people are shelled and fired upon from close range. Captain Percy Smith, holding a bottle of vermouth, had the neck of the bottle whipped off by a bullet. A sergeant while stropping a razor had the razor carried out of his hand. Colonel Shiba had a bullet through his coat. Strouts was grazed in the neck by a bullet fired at close range.

They were fortunate; but for Strouts—and Morrison— luck was about to run out.


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RESCUE AND RETRIBUTION

Sir Claude MacDonald had insisted at the beginning of his command that the Fu must be held ‘at all hazards’. Apart from the shelter it provided for Chinese Christians, the artificial hills in the palace grounds overlooked the east wall of the British Legation and covered the rear of the Spanish, Japanese and French Legations. If the Fu were to fall, those garrisons would surely follow. Morrison had made many sorties across no man’s land to visit the Fu since 20 June, often accompanying Captain Strouts on his tours of inspection. For safer access, a stone barricade had been erected slightly south of the British Legation’s main entrance and a deep cutting gouged into either bank of the canal. On the eastern side a second stone barricade led to the entrance of the Fu. Once inside, there was a scene of desolation, deprivation and danger. Many of 234


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the Chinese converts were diseased and starving; many of their children were dead. The drought had broken at the end of June and the intense, humid heat of mid-summer was broken only by torrential downpours. The place stank like a refuse tip. Furthermore, Chinese soldiers had breached the Fu’s eastern wall which abutted the burned-out Customs compound, and the defenders had fallen back behind loopholed barricades which stretched diagonally across the estate from north to south. ‘In the Fu we were still holding our own’, Morrison wrote after an inspection on 15 July. ‘The Chinese were directing all their energies to shelling the barricade which they themselves had strengthened, due north of the main entrance to the Fu.’ More than 50 shells exploded during Morrison’s visit in an attempt to drive the Japanese from their posts. The shelling continued after he returned to the British Legation and then the Chinese, blowing horns and yelling loudly, stormed a salient corner held by two Japanese sentries. But instead of fleeing, the guards had held their ground and opened fire. ‘Shiba sent Hatori for reinforcements’, Morrison wrote. ‘Sir Claude at once sent some British and ordered five Russians, but before reinforcements could arrive the attack had been repulsed and Shiba was here smiling to say that reinforcements were not needed.’ The danger remained, however, and Morrison was not surprised to be roused early on the morning of 16 July with the following words: ‘Are you up for the Fu?’ It was Strouts, and raining. He had a cup of tea at the Customs mess while I slipped on my things,


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and I went over with him. We crossed by the deep cutting and stone barricade to the south of the Legation and in the Fu kept well under the wall while making our way to the outpost. The wall was pitted with shot and shell. It was difficult to imagine how I could have passed it unhurt yesterday amid that hail of bullets. At the outpost there was not much change. The cutting had been made a little deeper rendering access less dangerous, but I observed with alarm that no attempt had been made to heighten the barricade above what I had myself made the other day. Col. Shiba joined us; then he and I went alone and passed from the cutting along the direction of fire a short distance, then turned up over the brow of the slope into the Japanese trench. Shots were fired at us. We were evidently within view of the barricade not 35 yards away. There we waited, when Strouts came along. ‘Come and see the Japanese line,’ I said. He replied that he must go back to the Legation. ‘Then I will go with you,’ as I was bound to do, for I had accompanied him across. ‘And I will go too,’ said Shiba. We three then descended the few paces into the line of fire and were walking towards the barricade when suddenly I heard some shots, how many I cannot tell, but I think three, and felt a cut in my right thigh. At the same moment ‘My God,’ said Strouts, and he fell over into the arms of Shiba, who was on his left. Then I jumped forward and with Shiba dragged Strouts out of fire, though shots were still coming whizzing by us; and then he lay down while Shiba ran off for the surgeon. In the meantime I tried to slip my handkerchief round his thigh and stepped out to find a twig with which to use it as a tourniquet. But the result was not good. I could see the fracture and the bone projecting against the trousers. Then Nakagawa came up and we two tried to staunch the bleeding by compressing the external iliac. The body was


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soaked in blood, but the poor fellow was conscious and asked me where I was hit. I said mine was unimportant. Then I fainted. In a little while the stretcher bearers came up and the captain was carried away. Then I started to walk, but was getting faint and was carried into the Legation, Caetani coming with me. Then it was found that another bullet had splintered and some of the fragments struck me. Poole cut this out and while he did so I fainted again and then vomited, the pain being intense, though I have no reason to think that it was one half as great as other pain I have suffered. In the ward Strouts was brought in. He was dying. He said nothing, but by and by he gave a few sobs of pain, then his breath came quickly, and then he sank away into his death.

Morrison was placed on a straw mattress in a makeshift ward in Sir Claude MacDonald’s library. He was very much alive, but that same day, 16 July, readers of later editions of The Times were appalled to read a report headlined ‘THE MASSACRE IN PEKING’ which stated that Morrison and every other foreign defender in the diplomatic quarter had been wiped out. The report was published ‘by the courtesy of the Editor of the Daily Mail’, who had received a telegram to that effect from his newspaper’s special correspondent in Shanghai. This telegram, dated 15 July, claimed that the defenders had held out against a frenzied attack of Boxers and Imperial troops on the night of 6 July, but at 5 o’clock on the morning of the 7th General Tung Fu-hsiang had pitched his Kansu warriors into the fray. ‘By this time the walls of the legation had been battered down’, the telegram continued, ‘and most of the buildings were in ruins from the Chinese artillery fire’.


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Many of the allies had fallen at their posts, and the remaining small band who were still alive took refuge in the wrecked buildings, which they endeavoured to hastily fortify. Upon them the fire of the Chinese artillery was now directed. Towards sunrise it was evident that the ammunition of the allies was running out, and at 7 o’clock, as the advances of the Chinese in force failed to draw a response, it was at once clear that it was at length completely exhausted. A rush was determined upon. Thus standing together, as the sun rose fully, the little remaining band, all Europeans, met death stubbornly. There was a desperate hand-to-hand encounter. The Chinese lost heavily, but as one man fell others advanced, and finally, overcome by overwhelming odds, every one of the Europeans remaining was put to the sword in a most atrocious manner.

The story, a mixture of rumour, half-truths and fabrication, had been filed by an American conman named Sutterlee, who was working as a journalist in Shanghai after trying his hand at gun-running and various other nefarious activities. The telegram had been passed to The Times in good faith by the Daily Mail, which also published it. The report seemed plausible to Buckle and Chirol because earlier that night The Times had published in its first edition an official telegram from Yuan Shi-k’ai, Governor of Shantung, stating that ‘the breach in the defences of the Legations in Peking has been made, and that after a gallant defence, during which the ammunition gave out, all the foreigners were killed’. Once it had accepted that the massacre had actually occurred, The Times did not spare its readers the gory details, borrowing some of the Daily Mail’s more florid prose. ‘The Europeans fought with calm courage to the


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end against overwhelming hordes of fanatical barbarians thirsting for their blood’, The Times reported the following day. When the last cartridge was gone their hour had come. They met it like men . . . They have died as we would have had them die, fighting to the last for the helpless women and children who were to be butchered over their dead bodies . . . Of the ladies, it is enough to say that in this awful hour they showed themselves worthy of their husbands. Their agony was long and cruel, but they bore it nobly, and it is done . . . All that remains for us is to mourn them and avenge them.

In the same issue, the paper carried long obituaries on Morrison, Sir Claude MacDonald and Sir Robert Hart. The tribute to its correspondent said: ‘No newspaper anxious to serve the best interests of the country has ever had a more devoted, a more fearless, and a more able servant than Morrison’. The obituary had been penned by Valentine Chirol, who also wrote a leading article in which he described Morrison as ‘characteristic of the best type of Colonial Englishman’. He added: ‘Dr Morrison has had so many hair-breadth escapes in the course of his most adventurous life of thirty-eight years, and possessed such infinite resources in moments of emergency that we cannot quite relinquish the hope that he may possibly have escaped in the confusion of the final slaughter. At any rate, if any European does survive it seems not unlikely to be he’. Morrison had indeed escaped and, despite his incapacity, was hard at work. Propped up on his mattress in the British Legation library he recorded daily events in his


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diary, as well as preparing a much longer report on the whole siege for publication in The Times once the relief force had arrived. He was certain that hour was fast approaching. Hopes among the besieged had risen after a letter purporting to have come from ‘Prince Ching and colleagues’ arrived at the British Legation suggesting a ceasefire. Sir Claude MacDonald replied that such a measure would indicate China’s goodwill and an odd sort of truce duly began on 17 July. Shelling continued intermittently but rifle firing was heavily reduced. Chinese soldiers sunned themselves on top of their barricades. The English took the opportunity to play cricket. Morrison wrote that night that although the so-called armistice was holding, the Chinese were ‘pressing forward barricades, one being 20 yards in front of the Russian barricade in Legation Street’. The following day he wrote: ‘Last night was perfectly quiet and tranquil. It is certain that relief is at hand . . . The only possible explanation is that the troops are near’. In fact the Allied Relief Expedition of 18 000 British, American, French, Russian and Japanese troops was still being assembled in Tientsin, which had fallen on 14 July after weeks of fierce fighting. The relief force was far from ready to start the 128-kilometre march to Peking. Meanwhile, Tz’u-Hsi sent a telegram to Queen Victoria stating that, as one woman to another, they should understand each other’s difficulties and that Britain should remain on friendly terms with China to protect her trade links. She did not receive a reply, but the very dispatch of such a telegram was a sure sign that Tz’u-Hsi was trying to wriggle out of her dilemma.


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At a similar time, Morrison wrote: 21 July: Intensely hot. China has sewn the wind—now she will reap the whirlwind! Today passed quietly, uneventfully. Some stores came in . . . eggs sufficient to give one apiece to the women and children, and some vegetables. Squiers sent a messenger to Tientsin, who took with him a message from me to E.B. Drew. There was nothing in it.

Unknown to Morrison, the messenger had got through. After some delay in transmission, his dispatch reached Printing House Square. Carrying the byline ‘From Our Correspondent’ with a Peking dateline, it filled twothirds of a column in The Times on 2 August. Despite his opinion that ‘there was nothing in it’, this was the first eye-witness account of the siege since the middle of June. Coming shortly after the confusion caused by the Daily Mail’s report of a massacre, it provided welcome reading to an anxious nation: There has been a cessation of hostilities since July 18 but, for fear of treachery, there has been no relaxation of vigilance. The Chinese soldiers continue to strengthen the barricades around the besieged area and also the batteries on top of the Imperial City Wall, but in the meantime they have discontinued firing, probably because they are short of ammunition. The main bodies of the Imperial soldiers have left Peking in order to meet the relief forces. Supplies are beginning to come in, and the condition of the besieged is improving. The wounded are doing well, the hospital arrangements being admirable. One hundred and fifty cases have passed through the hospital, none of them septic. The Tsungli Yamen have


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forwarded to the British Minister a copy of a dispatch telegraphed by the Emperor to the Queen attributing all the deeds of violence which have been committed to bandits, and requesting her Majesty’s assistance to extricate the Chinese Government from its difficulties. The Queen’s reply is not stated, but the Chinese Minister in Washington has telegraphed that the United States Government will gladly assist the Chinese authorities. This dispatch to the Queen was sent to the Tsungli Yamen by the Grand Council on July 3, yet the day before the Imperial Edict was issued calling upon the ‘Boxers’ to continue to render loyal and patriotic services in exterminating the Christians. The Edict also commanded the Viceroys and Governors to expel all the missionaries from China, and to arrest all the Christians and compel them to renounce their faith. Other decrees applauding the ‘Boxers’ speak approvingly of their burning out and slaying the converts. Their leaders are stated in a decree to be Princes and Ministers. On July 18 another decree which was issued made a complete volte-face, due to the victories of the foreign troops at Tien-tain. In this decree, for the first time, one month after the occurrence, allusion was made to the death of Baron von Ketteler, which was attributed to the action of local brigands, though it is undoubted that it was premeditated and that the assassination was committed by an Imperial officer, as the survivor, Herr Cordes, can testify. The force besieging the Legations consists of Imperial soldiers under Yung Lu and Tung-fuh-siang, whose gallantry is applauded in Imperial decrees, though their gallantry consisted in bombarding for one month defenceless women and children cooped up in the Legation compounds, using shell, shrapnel, round shot, and expanding bullets. The Chinese undermined the French Legation, which is now in ruins, but the French Minister was


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not present, M. Pichon having fled for protection to the British Legation on the first day of the siege. The greatest peril we suffered during the siege was from fire, the Chinese, in their determination to destroy the British Legation, burning the adjoining Hanlin Academy, one of the most sacred buildings in China, and sacrificing the unique library, which has been reduced to ashes. The Chinese throughout, with characteristic treachery, posted proclamations assuring us of protection and the same night made a general attack in the hope of surprising us unawares . . . All the Ministers and the members of the Legation and their families are in good health and the general health of the community is excellent. We are contentedly awaiting relief.

Meanwhile, the Chinese had become more conciliatory. Sir Robert Hart received a letter from Ministers at the Tsungli Yamen on 21 July saying that they had not heard from him for a month and expressing concern about his welfare. They had just learned, they said, that the Customs houses had been burned down and they hoped that he and all members of his staff were well. Morrison suggested that Hart should reply that ‘all was well with the Customs staff, except that one had had his head blown off and two others had been badly wounded’. On 23 July, firing was heard in the direction of the Peitang which had been under siege for as long as the legations. Morrison asked himself: ‘Can this building with its thousands of Christian refugees, its priests, sisters and Bishops, hold out till relief comes, protected as they are by only 30 Frenchmen and 10 Italians under two officers?’ The following day 2000 Boxers attacked the cathedral compound, but largely through the supreme military


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skills of the French commanding officer, 23-year-old Sub-Lieutenant Paul Henry, were beaten back with heavy losses. The Boxers attacked again on 30 July and the heroic officer was shot dead after climbing onto a firing platform to repel an invasion of the compound’s north wall. The Allied Relief Expedition finally got underway on 4 August to fight its way to Peking and six days later, after overcoming strong opposition from Chinese troops, the longed-for message arrived by runner at the British Legation. ‘Strong force of Allies advancing’, the commander, General Sir Alfred Gaselee, wrote. ‘Twice defeated enemy. Keep up your spirits.’ On 13 August, four columns of Allied troops arrived at the outer walls of Peking for the final assault. Inside the Tartar City the Chinese made a frantic, last-ditch attack on the Legations to try to wipe out all witnesses to their crimes. ‘For the last two days we had to sustain a furious fusillade and bombardment, and our casualties were many’, Morrison wrote. One shell burst in Sir Claude MacDonald’s bedroom and a life-sized portrait of Queen Victoria in the dining room had been peppered with shot. Then at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 14th Morrison was awakened by ‘the booming of guns in the east and the welcome sound of volley firing’. With other members of the beleaguered garrison, he hobbled up the ramp onto the Southern Wall to watch the shelling of the Tung Pien Gate by Russian forces. At 2.30 p.m., the first British troops arrived in the Tartar City. ‘The stalwart form of the general and his staff were entering by the Water Gate, followed by the 1st Regiment of Sikhs and the 7th Rajputs’,


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Morrison wrote. ‘They passed down Canal Street and amid a scene of indescribable emotion marched to the British Legation. The siege had been raised.’ The Sikhs were astonished to be kissed by grateful British women amid scenes of jubilation in the shattered compound. ‘It looked like a garden party’, Lieutenant Roger Keyes of the Royal Navy wrote. ‘All the ladies looked nice in clean white and nice-coloured dresses.’ All around, however, the scenes of destruction left nothing to the imagination. In the surrounding streets acre after acre of palaces, temples, houses and shops had been reduced to smouldering rubble. On hearing the news of the relief on 17 August, Valentine Chirol wrote a letter to ‘My dear old Morrison’, saying ‘It is just a month ago today since we published what we believed to be your obituary notice, and I hope that when you read it, so strange an experience will at any rate make you realise how warmly and sincerely we value you, and how hearty is the friendship and admiration of the writer’. Morrison did not react as Chirol had hoped. He later described his obituary as ‘eulogistic to a grotesque degree and I read it with pain . . . [It] was fulsome and nauseating and rarely have I been more disgusted’.1 On 18 August, Morrison informed The Times that the Peitang Cathedral, under the gallant Bishop Favier, had been relieved and that Peking was now entirely under foreign control. Looting is proceeding systematically. The French and Russian flags are flying over the best portion of the Imperial domain, where it is believed that the Imperial treasure is buried. The


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Forbidden City is respected by international agreement, although the punishment will be ineffective unless it is occupied. The Japanese have seized a hoard amounting according to rumour to half a million taels silver. The Dowager Empress, the Emperor, Prince Tuan, and all the high officers have escaped to Tai-yuen-fu, in Shan-si, whence they will proceed to Si-ngan-fa. The Peking Gazette ceased to appear on the 13th. There is no Government.

Sir Claude MacDonald, whom the Foreign Office had decided to exchange for Sir Ernest Satow in Tokyo, mentioned in dispatches that Morrison ‘acted as lieutenant to Captain Strouts, and rendered most valuable assistance. Active, energetic and cool, he volunteered for every service of danger and was a pillar of strength when matters were going badly’. Morrison had wasted no time in finishing his detailed report of the siege. It ran to 30 000 words and he posted it to The Times on 15 August, just three days after the siege ended. ‘Gibbon could not have told the story better’, The Spectator commented when it was published in October. But The Times gently chided him: ‘He has left us to learn from private sources of the manful part he himself played in the defence, and of the severe wound, which, we regret to hear, still prevents him from walking save with pain and difficulty’. Arthur Walter wrote him a letter: So far as my knowledge and judgment go no other correspondent of The Times ever did so remarkable a piece of work as your description of the siege of Peking, and no other correspondent ever gained as completely the confidence of the


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Public as you have done . . . The service you have rendered to the paper surpassed any expression of value I can use . . . I am proud . . . to associate the paper with the great reputation you have made for yourself.

Morrison, however, was unforgiving about the ‘massacre’ story and did not exempt his own newspaper from blame. ‘I see that The Times whitewashed the Daily Mail and bore witness to the good faith with which they had published that disgraceful telegram from Shanghai which caused misery to so many families’, he wrote to Moberly Bell. The man who sent the telegram was, I understand, F.W. Sutterlee. This man was manager of the firm of Kern Sutterlee & Co. of Philadelphia who in January 1896, after the failure of the firm, sold thrice over by means of forged warehouse certificates, the same stock of wool, and then skipped with the proceeds to Tientsin under the name of W.F. Sylvester . . . [He] has been living as Sutterlee in Shanghai at the Astor House and acting as the trusted correspondent of the Daily Mail.2

When he was more mobile, Morrison surveyed the ruin of his former home, then searched the devastated streets of the Tartar City for suitable new premises for himself and his library. He chose a Manchu prince’s house on Wangfujing, a street running north and south just beyond the western boundary of the British Legation. The house had been occupied by Imperial soldiers during the siege and, knowing their penchant for loot, he dug up the garden and was rewarded with two chests packed with ‘gold things of much value’. Morrison kept it. In honour of his


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find, he christened his new home ‘Klondike’. That name was soon forgotten but, in time, the street itself came to be called Morrison Street. In the Imperial Palace, Morrison picked up ‘a beautiful piece of jade splashed with gold and carved in the form of a citron, the emblem of the fingers of Buddha’. Despite its exquisite appearance, it had a flaw and was ‘of no value’. However, another souvenir which he described as ‘the finest piece of jade in Peking’ came into his possession and he sold it to Herbert Squiers for 2000 taels. He also lodged a claim for compensation against the Chinese Government amounting to £5804 11s 3d, which included £1500 for his house and £2625 for his wound. Many hundreds of Boxers were rounded up and beheaded and their villages razed in punitive expeditions into the countryside. Australia had a small but unpleasant part to play. At the request of Joe Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, an Australian naval brigade had sailed for China and, arriving just after the siege had ended, was involved in rounding up Boxers for execution. One member of the party remarked that he found that he and his comrades were growing callous. ‘Until you can bring yourself to regard the Chinaman as something less than human, considerably less, you are at a disadvantage,’ he said.3 The Boxer leader, Prince Tuan, escaped with his life but was banished to a remote province. The moderate Prince Ching and that crafty old campaigner Li Hungchang returned to the capital to negotiate a peace settlement on the Emperor’s behalf. It was a long, slow process and in the meantime the looting and the reprisals continued remorselessly. A Chinese teacher told Morrison that


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his sister had been raped by Russian soldiers and as a result seven members of his family had committed suicide. ‘This is a common story’, Morrison noted. On 24 September, he cabled The Times: ‘The systematic denudation of the Summer Palace by the Russians has been completed. Every article of value is packed and labelled’. His main targets for attack, however, were the French and the Germans. After a long and glorious send-off in Europe, F ield Marshall Count von Waldersee of Germany reached Peking on 17 October to replace General Gaselee as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces. Waldersee had orders from the Kaiser to inflict such terrible revenge for the death of Baron von Ketteler that no Chinese would ever dare look askance at a German again. He moved into Tz’u Hsi’s palace in the Forbidden City and methodically set about exterminating the enemy. As well as Boxers and their sympathisers, however, many innocent Chinese perished under his mailed fist. Two hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians were wiped out in just one town when 1000 German troops opened fire without warning. When he wasn’t smiting the enemy, the 68-year-old Prussian roué was taking his pleasure with a young Chinese maiden. He also authorised one of the greatest acts of vandalism of the foreign occupation by dismantling the Imperial Observatory. Morrison wrote: In pursuance of its regrettable policy of appropriation, the French and German generals, with the approval of Count von Waldersee, have removed from the wall of Peking the superb astronomical instruments which were originally erected by the Jesuit fathers and have been for more than two centuries


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one of the chief glories of Peking. They are so beautiful that even the Chinese, who wrecked every other evidence of foreigners within reach, left the instruments untouched throughout the recent outbreak. Half of them go to Berlin, though Germany has no possible claim whatever except by the appointment of Count von Waldersee, and half to Paris.

There was much satisfaction among the British when a trainload of booty which had been carefully earmarked for the Kaiser was destroyed in a mysterious fire in the Imperial Palace. On 24 November Morrison reported: ‘German expeditions continue to harass the neighbourhood of Peking, mainly in search of loot. Such raids are incorrectly described in German official communications as important military operations’. Morrison pointed out that the Chinese ‘were already conquered before the Germans arrived in China’, and suggested that British soldiers should be removed from Waldersee’s command. Describing Morrison as ‘a wretched scamp’, the German commander threatened to have him court-martialled. ‘The lead is taken by The Times, that arch liar, the articles of which emanate from a Mr Morrison [sic] who, probably, in true English reporters’ megalomania, believes I ought to take notice of him. I am no more impressed by press attacks than by the barking of a dog.’4 As though to prove his point Waldersee mounted up and reviewed the Allied troops on New Year’s Day 1901 in a grand parade in front of the Imperial Palace. Morrison watched the parade with some amusement, then attended a lunch in honour of the New Year and the founding of the Commonwealth of Australia. ‘All


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Australians were there’, he wrote. ‘Colonel O’Sullivan made a stupid speech at which all laughed.’ William Pethick informed Morrison that German severity in Chihli ‘more than anything else has brought dismay to the Empress Dowager’. Morrison was dubious. However, he enjoyed a burlesque performed by Allied troops at the Temple of Heaven which parodied Tz’uHsi. The performance was said to have greatly scandalised the Chinese and the War Office cabled General Gaselee asking for an explanation. ‘Nonsense’, Morrison wrote. ‘I thought of wiring that it depicted the more genial side of her nature and did not portray the inhuman treachery, cruelty, etc of this monstrous woman.’ On 22 January, the other empress, Queen Victoria, died at the age of 81. Just as Tz’u-Hsi had failed to destroy the hated foreigner in China, Victoria had not lived to see her army triumph over the Boers in South Africa. Morrison was feeling the strain. He was overworked, jaded, depressed. February 4. [Monday]. My birthday. Spent mainly by myself. Damnably dull and sick beyond measure of being in Peking, anxious to go away and change the scene.

The following day he chided himself about the quality of his news service: Am falling back frightfully in my work, e.g. my failure to telegraph the Chinese letter to the Ministers. 2). My failure ditto re Waldersee’s letter. 3). Even on Sunday when I knew that China would pay the interest on the railway loan I failed to wire it, only sending it late in the evening of yesterday.


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The Peace Protocol between China and the Allies was finally signed on 7 September 1901, inflicting severe penalties on the conquered nation. Foreign troops would be stationed at twelve key centres throughout the Middle Kingdom, and China was forbidden thereafter from importing arms for her own defence. She also undertook to pay indemnities of £67 million to the Allies over a period of 40 years. Throughout this period of reprisal and humiliation, the Dowager Empress and her court had lived an untroubled life in Sian, a city 1120 kilometres north-west of Peking. When her astrologers deemed it auspicious for her to return to the Celestial capital, a great caravan of yellow sedan chairs and a huge horse-drawn baggage train was assembled to transport Tz’u-Hsi, the Emperor, the Chief Eunuch, the ladies of the Court, high officials, servants, and her vast number of possessions a distance of 400 kilometres to the railhead at Chengtingfu, where she would board a steam train for the first time in her life for the trip back to Peking. Morrison wrote in The Times: Throughout its entire distance the road over which the Imperial palanquins were borne had been converted into a smooth, even surface of shining clay, soft and noiseless under foot; not only had every stone been removed but as the procession approached gangs of men were employed in brushing the surface with feather brooms.

The Dowager Empress entrained safely but there was an incident at Paotingfu which, Morrison said, threw a strong light on her malignant character.


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The high Chinese officials who travelled in the first-class carriage between the Emperor’s special car and that of the Empress, finding themselves somewhat pressed for space, consulted the railway officials and obtained another first-class compartment, which was accordingly added to the train. Her Majesty, immediately noticing this, called for explanations, which failed to meet with her approval. The extra carriage was removed forthwith, Yuan Shi-k’ai and his colleagues being reluctantly compelled to resume their uncomfortably crowded quarters.

The Empress reached her capital on 7 January 1902, entering through the Yung Ting Gate. On the route to the Imperial Palace she could not have failed to see the devastation wreaked on most areas of Peking, including the most sacred inner sanctums of the Forbidden City. Morrison wrote that she slept that night in a bed of European design, comforted by an opium pipe ‘of luxurious yet workmanlike appearance’. The most significant political event of the New Year was the signing of an Anglo–Japanese treaty under which Britain was committed to intervene on Japan’s side in the event of war between Japan and Russia if a third power joined in on Russia’s side. This gave Japan the freedom to come to blows with the Russians without interference from France or Germany. At the height of the Siege of the Legations Morrison had scribbled in his diary: ‘There must be war. There shall be war. May the Lord grant it that war shall come round between the alert, keen, active, prepared Japanese and the sodden, dull, stolid, unprepared Muscovite’.


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Ever since he had arrived in Peking in 1897 Morrison had identified Russia as Britain’s most implacable enemy in China and he had lost no opportunity to urge resistance to Tsarist encroachment in Manchuria and, now, Mongolia. It was little wonder that the conflict, when it happened, would be known as ‘Morrison’s War’.


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With the exception of the ageing Henri de Blowitz in Paris,1 ‘Chinese’ Morrison was now the most famous Times correspondent in the field and, after Nellie Melba, the most recognisable Australian on the international stage. He was also handsome and, as Polly Condit Smith and other survivors of the Siege of the Legations would testify, incredibly brave. Yet it was a source of concern to him that he had never developed a lasting relationship with any woman except his mother, Rebecca. He was, he admitted to his diary, ‘Oppressed by invincible shyness’. And he asked himself: ‘Why is it that I can never overcome this?’ There seemed to be no reason for it. Willard Straight, an American interpreter in the Imperial Customs Service, 255


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wrote a pen portrait of Morrison in his fortieth year which has rarely been bettered: He is a most charming man to meet—in appearance, stocky, with sloping shoulders and big head, though a short neck supports it. His features are very pleasant indeed, regular and clean-cut, eyes blue-grey and twinkling, and a strange wandering smile plays about the corners of his mouth. His hair is never brushed or at least, if it is, never looks it. He has a happy faculty of getting acquainted with every one, and what is more to the point, finding out all about them without telling anything about himself.

This reticence stemmed partly from his desire to play down his achievements rather than appear as that most despised creature, the braggart. Morrison had been in the limelight since the age of 16 and, ever mindful of his reputation, had developed a form of modesty which manifested itself as shyness, particularly in the company of women. Comparing all women with his mother, it was also true that he found many of them wanting. His diary is peppered with criticisms and putdowns of members of the opposite sex. The admiring Polly Condit Smith, for example, was ‘fat and gushing’, while Mrs Archibald Little, a feminist and philanthropist, was ‘detestable’ and ‘that awful woman’. Gertrude Bell, the distinguished Arabist and traveller (and a close friend of Valentine Chirol), also evoked strong loathing. ‘My God she’d talk the leg off an iron pot and she has the cheek of the devil’, he wrote to Bland.2 Morrison may have noted these deficiencies in the hope of identifying the qualities he required in his elusive ideal woman. But it seems more likely that his devotion to


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his mother was the problem; it is arguable that he suffered from the madonna/whore syndrome. It was not easy for him to form a sexual relationship with a woman he respected because she reminded him of his mother. Sexual feelings towards such women were ‘sinful’, so he could relate sexually only to loose women, that is, to those who had already fallen from grace. Here, Morrison showed little restraint in indulging his libido. On his trip to England in 1898 he had landed in Marseilles and patronised a brothel in the Old Port, discreetly recording his sexual experiences in Spanish. The need for secrecy was apparently paramount: the name of the establishment was the Maison Rebekah. On holiday in Australia in January 1903 he took a room at the Metropole Hotel, Sydney, and entertained a stunning German actress of his acquaintance, noting their intimacy in his diary like so many notches on the bedpost: 22 January X X X 9.30 a.m. 11.30 a.m. 6 p.m. 23 January X X 11.30 a.m. 3 p.m.

Morrison had no qualms about this liaison, although the actress involved was married, albeit to a ‘silly, half-witted’ German merchant; he may actually have enjoyed cuckolding the man. Even so, Morrison could be quite censorious about the lack of morals in women who could be expected to know better. Nellie Melba, the toast of Covent


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Garden but not yet a dame, was appearing in her home town of Melbourne and Morrison noted in his diary: Since she landed in Australia, she made £30 000. She is exploiting little Miss Clarke, the Governor’s daughter. Miss Clarke goes behind the scenes, is received by Melba who sends her carriage to the station. Yet Melba drinks and uses foul language and at her table permits a ribald conversation that would shock any decent woman. The Governor ought not to let his daughter be on terms with Melba.3

Yet Morrison found immorality in some women highly seductive. He conducted a turbulent and, for him, egobruising affair with May Ruth Perkins, a 24-year-old blonde whom he described as ‘the most thoroughly immoral woman’ he had ever met. As well as being the well brought-up daughter of a millionaire American senator, Miss Perkins was also a nymphomaniac. Morrison met her in Peking in December 1903 and confessed he was ‘immensely taken’ with her. She was ‘a type that pleased me infinitely, that excited me passionately’. He consummated their affair three months later, after unexpectedly meeting Miss Perkins and her chaperone, Mrs Ragdale, while he was dining with his friend, Colonel Charles Ducat, near the Great Wall: It was a night of limpid moonlight almost as light as day. Maysie said she would like to go to the Great Wall. I offered to accompany her and Ducat when he found that he could be useful and take away Mrs R. agreed to join us. Maysie and I went together; he kept at a distance, we climbed the wall [and] sat down on the crest . . .


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Here, Maysie disclosed her charms to him and Morrison admitted that the experience left him ‘astounded’. Over the next few months he became infatuated with her and accumulated a file on her bewildering sex life: Accustomed as long as she can remember to play with herself every morning even when unwell, even after passing the night in bed with a man. Seduced by Jack Fee, a doctor, in the French restaurant in San Francisco known as the Hen and Chickens or the Poultry or some such. Pregnant . . . Went to Washington, got out of difficulty (after abortion) . . . slept constantly with Congressman Gaines . . . Four miscarriages. ‘Kissed’ all the way over in the Siberia after leaving Honolulu by Captain Tremaine Smith. Had for days in succession by Martin Egan [an American newspaperman based in Tokyo] . . . Mrs Goodnow had told her that once she was kissed by a woman she would never wish to be kissed by a man. Her desire now is to get a Japanese maid to accompany her back to America and to kiss her every morning . . . In Tientsin she was kissed by Zeppelin the Dutch consul . . . In Shanghai she wired me Please come Japan be good . . . That same evening she met C.R. Holcomb who had her 4 times in two hours . . .

At their next meeting Miss Perkins described Holcomb’s lovemaking in clinical detail and Morrison ‘suffered pains greater than any that have racked me since I was in Paris with Noelle in 1890’. He concluded that his lover was ‘a born prostitute without desire for money or present’, although she gladly accepted from him a silver cigarette case, a silver belt with the Chinese characters for happiness, six embroidered handkerchiefs, an ivory umbrella


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handle and a gold bracelet. He had also donated his head, which had been displayed ‘as a bleeding trophy on the point of Maysie’s lance’. March 30—Came up to Peking distressed and disturbed in my mind. What an individuality to be thrust in my path! And how as usual it comes too late. But I am better in body and mind! May 4—Sleepless night, much brain worry, furious jealousy and every reason . . . My head in a whirl of excitement distraught with passion and with blinding jealousy. The image most deeply impressed on my brain is that of a big man trying to hypnotise the impressionable woman. May 5—Slept a little better but still torn with anguish and haunted by the evil face dominating yielding weakness. What an ass I am and what infatuation it is! No emotion seeing her body clad but hair down and body discovered thrilling every fibre of me. June 6—Diary neglected for 3 days and neglected because of Maysie. Why can I not remove her from my memory? It fills me with pain to think of her in the arms of Martin Egan as she will be in a day or so. June 9—Due to arrive in Kobe tomorrow . . . What is the morrow to bring forth? Where am I to meet Maysie? Does she still love me or care for me or am I forever excluded by the lucky Martin?—that is the problem and I am worried and restless. But will accept what is given to me. June 10—Maysie was on the telephone. Martin Egan left this morning and would not return till tomorrow. Would I come down to dinner? . . . afterwards . . . I had an interview in her room 105, one of the most staggering I have ever suffered. It ended happily or I should have perished.


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The affair ended when Miss Perkins decided to return to the United States. Morrison sent her a farewell telegram: MISS PERKINS GRAND HOTEL YOKAHAMA JUST STARTING FOR SHANGHAI MAY YOUR VOYAGE HOME BE ALL SUNSHINE YOUR RETURN WHILE LEAVING MANY DESOLATE IN THE ORIENT WILL SURELY MAKE GLAD THE HEARTS OF THOSE DEAR TO YOU IN OAKLANDS WHO ARE SO EAGERLY WAITING TO GIVE YOU WELCOME I TRUST THAT AMID YOUR DISTRACTIONS YOU WILL SOMETIMES FIND LEISURE TO WRITE TO ME AND WILL NOT LET ME SLIP ALTOGETHER FROM YOUR MEMORY I KNOW NOT IF FATE WILL PERMIT US TO COME TOGETHER BUT WHATEVER HAPPENS I SHALL ALWAYS TREASURE YOUR MEMORY AND GRATEFULY RECALL THOSE HAPPY MOMENTS WE SPENT TOGETHER GOODBYE MY DEAREST ERNEST.

Miss Perkins, however, had moved on to new conquests and did not reply. Morrison, apparently deluded about the nature of their relationship, declared himself ‘much disappointed’. He would make many similar mistakes before he found his elusive ideal woman. During his Australian sojourn, Morrison had been given a rousing reception by leading members of the new Federal Government in Melbourne. He was feted as The Times Correspondent in Peking wherever he went and gladly gave interviews to several newspapers. But an unpleasant feature of the trip was that he discovered that Federation had not succeeded in cleansing Australian


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politics of sleaze. The worst offender, he noted, was Sir Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister. It was ‘always the same story—the corruption of our public men, especially Barton who ought never to have been Premier’. One well-placed source told him that Barton was ‘a drunkard and a man of low life who never pays his debts’. Morrison, however, found Alfred Deakin, David Syme’s protégé and now Australia’s first AttorneyGeneral, ‘very pleasant and complimentary’. In fact Deakin replaced Barton as Prime Minister less than six months after Morrison left Australia. Deakin later wrote that ‘the gifted Australian Dr Ernest Morrison’ had attained ‘a quasi-ambassadorial authority, occasionally overshadowing accredited representatives of the King’.4 Morrison noted in his diary that Deakin had told him that 1903 could be a dangerous year for the Empire and that the British Government was sending Lord Kitchener to India to prepare the army for trouble from Russia. This was music to Morrison’s ears. Russian foreign policy under Tsar Nicholas II was designed to create difficulties for Britain along a line stretching from the North-West Frontier to northern China, with the ultimate aim of expelling the British from India. Manchuria, meanwhile, was the testing ground for a great new Eastern empire incorporating Northern China and Korea.5 Having all but wiped out the Chinese population of Siberia by massacring 80 000 Chinese men, women and children, the Russians had forced the local Chinese authorities to sign a secret agreement in November 1900 which amounted to a virtual Russian takeover of the three Manchurian provinces. Morrison learned about the treaty, the Alexeyev–


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Tseng Agreement, and promptly exposed its existence in The Times. Hostility from the other powers was so great that it was never ratified, but this piece of Russian chicanery showed Morrison that he had been correct in considering Russia to be Britain’s arch enemy in China. Further anti-Russian stories from his Peking redoubt hastened the signing of the Anglo–Japanese treaty in January 1902 and shortly afterwards Russia agreed to withdraw her troops from Manchuria in three stages over a period of 18 months. The first detachment pulled out in October 1902, but when Morrison visited Manchuria in April 1903 after his trip to Australia he discovered that further withdrawals had been deferred while Russia haggled with China over a new set of demands. His exposé of this latest act of Tsarist perfidy was so blistering that Chirol wondered ‘why the Russians did not take advantage of your absence through winter to play their tricks while the cat was away’. China, supported by Britain, America and Japan, refused to comply with the new demands and Russia retaliated by pushing along the Yalu River, the frontier between Manchuria and Korea, thus threatening Japanese interests in that country. Morrison’s belligerence now knew no bounds. He believed that Britain should encourage Japan to declare war, ‘knowing that a victory over Russia would enormously diminish Russian prestige in Asia’. He was identified so closely with the build-up to hostilities that he was known in British diplomatic and military circles as ‘the author of the Russo–Japanese War’. Chirol had previously softened some of Morrison’s attacks on Germany lest they create difficulties for Britain


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while the Boer War was still raging. In May 1903 he cautioned Morrison to temper his war-mongering against Russia. ‘Nothing would injure the Japanese alliance in this country more than the suggestion that Japan was going to lug us into an unpopular war’, he wrote. ‘I want you not only to understand why we thought it necessary to tone down to some extent your rather bellicose message of the 15th, but to be thoroughly acquainted with the considerations of general policy which govern our attitude towards the Manchurian question.’ At Britain’s urging, Japan attempted to solve the impasse peacefully by diplomacy and continued to press for the Russian evacuation of Manchuria. ‘I am profoundly disappointed with Japan who, influenced by our Government, seems likely to throw away its last and only chance of grappling with Russia’, Morrison grumbled to Bland in July. ‘Why did our Government make this alliance with Japan if the result of it was to be the strengthening of Russia’s power in Eastern Asia? I still hope and pray there will be war.’6 To Morrison’s delight, Japan’s diplomatic efforts ran into a brick wall in Saint Petersburg, where the Tsar clearly preferred provocation to peacemaking. His Royal Highness kept even his own Foreign Minister, Count Lamsdorff, in the dark about what was happening and, in August, sacked his F inance Minister, Count de Witte, for opposing his Far Eastern policy. That month, Chirol wrote presciently to Morrison: ‘I think Japan would be justified in selecting the moment most convenient to herself without reference to our convenience and as far as I can judge Russia is likely to give her every opportunity of doing so’.7


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Morrison replied to Chirol in September that Russia was stalling: Lamsdorff had assured the Japanese Minister to Russia, Kurino Shin’ichiro, that Japan’s proposals would be communicated to the Tsar without delay, but a month had passed without a reply. Instead of giving the matter his attention, Nicholas had shunted Japan’s suggestions off to his Far Eastern Viceroy, Admiral Alexeyev, the very man who had negotiated the failed Manchurian agreement. Morrison wrote: ‘If there is war then you will see the Power of Russia in the Far East shattered; if there is no war the strength of Russia will be alarming’.8 He also confided to his diary on 3 November that he would consider his work in the Far East a failure if war did not come. 17 November—Lady Susan [Townley, wife of Walter Townley, British chargé d’affaires] said: ‘If there is a war, it will be your doing!’ 18 November—Feel today greatest elation for war seems assured.

Russia’s obstinacy continued to frustrate the Japanese into the New Year and, after issuing a final warning on 3 February 1904, the Japanese Minister Kurino quit St Petersburg. F ive days later the Japanese launched a torpedo attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur without the formality of declaring war. Morrison received the news with such joy that he could ‘hardly write with the excitement’. The Russians were not expecting an attack, even though they had been alerted to the Japanese Minister’s recall to Tokyo. Japan was a newly emergent military


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power with a population of 46 million, compared with Russia’s 140 million, and it was generally believed that the Russian army was the best in the world. But Russia had only 150 000 troops in the Far East and despite the TransSiberian Railway could only reinforce them slowly along a single, incomplete track. Her Pacific navy, however, boasted seven battleships to Japan’s six. At midnight on 7 February the Russian Far East Squadron was peacefully at anchor outside the harbour walls of Port Arthur, while the Russian admiral’s wife held a ball in the township. As couples waltzed around the ballroom, Russian sailors snoozed beside their guns. Two destroyers were on routine patrol and searchlights played across the freezing waters. It was the searchlights which told Admiral Togo’s striking force that it had found its target. By now it was 12.20 a.m. on the 8th and the moon had not yet risen when the Japanese raiders suddenly attacked. Over the next 90 minutes Japanese destroyers launched a total of 16 torpedoes at the inert Russian squadron, two of which damaged the newest battleships, the Retvizan and the Tsesarevich, putting them out of action for weeks. A third torpedo incapacitated the cruiser Pallada, with heavy loss of life. All the other torpedoes either missed their targets or failed to explode. The audacity of the attack traumatised the fashionable world of St Petersburg, which had hitherto refused to see the Japanese as anything more than a bunch of Asiatic barbarians. Tsar Nicholas was attending the opera when first reports of the disaster arrived. His courtiers delayed breaking the news to him until after the final curtain lest they spoil his enjoyment.


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Togo had hoped for a knockout blow, but although the results were not as devastating as he had intended his surprise attack won the war for Japan. Russia had lost her battleship superiority and for several months the Japanese fleet was able to land troops and supplies unopposed in Korea and Manchuria, while the demoralised Russian squadron could only watch from the safety of Port Arthur. In recognition of his support, the Japanese Legation in Peking supplied Morrison with regular bulletins on the progress of the war. Moberly Bell had arranged for Lionel James to cover the fighting and Morrison, after his initial excitement, complained that he had been left on the sidelines. One week after the outbreak of war he wrote to Moberly Bell: ‘There is little for me to do here now, for we hear only the echoes of the reports that reach England from the seat of war’. Three weeks later he complained to Chirol: ‘There is no good my staying here for Russian intrigue has ceased for the time being, and there is little for me to discover’. With his bosses’ blessing, Morrison set off on a series of trips to different parts of China during which he took every opportunity to disparage Russia’s chances of victory and to ensure that Japan received a favourable press. His travels also took him to Tokyo, where he tried unsuccessfully to salvage one of Moberly Bell’s more ambitious schemes to cover the war with a chartered wireless ship. The plan was for Lionel James to radio war news from the ship to another Times man, David Fraser, at the British concession at Weihaiwei, using the most advanced transmitting and receiving equipment. The Japanese, however, censored James’s reports so heavily that the vessel might as well have stayed in port.


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The great fortified anchorage of Port Arthur was besieged by the Japanese on 19 August 1904 after General Nogi, the Japanese commander, launched the first of many frontal assaults on its defences. When these failed to make much headway, he called in huge siege guns—18 11-inch howitzers which could hurl 550-pound shells a distance of 9000 metres into the Russian defences from one of the surrounding hills. These guns, which fired a total of 36 000 rounds during the siege, also put the blockaded Russian fleet out of action. General Stoessel, the portly Russian commander, handed over the town to the Japanese on 4 January 1905 and, after posing for a group photograph with the victors, was permitted to return to Russia. He had cabled the Tsar that the garrison had run out of food when in fact it had supplies for several more weeks. The Japanese now rewarded Morrison with the chance he had been waiting for. One of their military leaders, Marshall Yamagata, told a Japanese correspondent: ‘We are much indebted to Dr Morrison for he counselled us to go to war against Russia, never doubting the result’. The Japanese invited him to accompany General Nogi on his triumphal entry into the captured fortress. Morrison rode in on a borrowed pony, recording the scene in his diary: Japanese carrying Russian sick on stretchers—much humanity. Russians doing nothing of the kind but witnessing procession . . . Past all the wrecked fleet burned and perhaps past repair, a sight for French creditors, a fleet destroyed by incapacity . . . All British officers spoke contemptuously of the Russian surrender and of the trenches paved with vodka bottles.


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The following morning Morrison attended a Japanese thanksgiving service and lunched with Nogi and his staff. ‘Lunch wonderfully organised. Saki, claret, rice dishes of Japanese food, aluminium cups, cake etc. Excellent. Fireworks and rockets. Nogi on stand. Banzai which rent the air . . . Some soldiers dressed up, one fooling [about] as a Russian officer . . .’ After inspecting the battlefield and interviewing some of the combatants, Morrison wrote a scathing report for The Times in which he accused the Russian defenders of cowardice, stripped them of every shred of honour, and described the surrender as ‘the most discreditable in history’. Morrison discovered many years later that the Russian surrender had been even more disgraceful than he had thought at the time: the Japanese had actually bribed Stoessel to throw in the towel. Lionel James thought that Morrison’s report changed Europe’s perception of Russia and Japan as world powers. Morrison returned to Peking via Tientsin, where he met a Russian general who claimed that the war would last another two years. ‘My opinion is that the war will be over in three months,’ Morrison replied. ‘Your troops will be defeated at Mukden and then the peace will be in sight. You have not a chance of victory.’ The Russian stiffly thanked Morrison for his ‘informations’. Mukden, like Port Arthur and other battlefields, was in Chinese territory and the Russians took steps to protect ancient relics and tombs of the Manchu dynasty before the fighting began. Japan duly won another stunning victory when Mukden fell in March after a horrendous 12-day battle in which almost half of the Russian force of 380 000 were either killed, wounded or captured. The


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Russo–Japanese War was the first modern conflict in which weapons of mass destruction were used and the death toll was rising alarmingly. But Morrison did not want hostilities to cease because Russia had not yet been completely vanquished. That happened when the Tsar’s so-called Second Pacific Fleet arrived in the Tsushima Straits between Korea and Japan to engage the enemy after steaming halfway around the world from the Baltic. On 28 May, Japan’s warships won a resounding victory in what became known as ‘the Trafalgar of the East’. Although she was clearly winning the war, Japan’s resources were almost exhausted; she was heavily in debt to foreign banks and running short of war materials. For that reason, campaigns to take Harbin and Vladivostock were postponed when President Teddy Roosevelt, fearing that Japan might become ‘puffed up with pride and turn against us’, offered to mediate between the two warring nations. ‘Poor little Japs’, Morrison wrote in his diary on 6 June. ‘Neither the United States nor Great Britain want them in Vladivostock.’ Two weeks later, Morrison received a telegram from The Times instructing him to attend the peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as one of the paper’s three representatives. Moberly Bell envisaged that Morrison would represent Japan’s point of view, while Russia’s case would be put by Sir Donald Wallace, a personal friend of the Tsar. Wallace had been working on Supplementary volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica for The Times since relinquishing the foreign editorship to Chirol and was still on the payroll. The third member of the team, the paper’s American correspondent, George


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Smalley, would act as moderator in this unusual tussle for the hearts and minds of the reader. Smalley would also be responsible for cabling all stories to London. Morrison did not take the news well. ‘Could not sleep. Much worried about going’, he told his diary. ‘Feel damned sick.’ To his mother, he wrote: ‘The mission was quite unexpected and though a compliment to me I dislike exceedingly the going’. But on 4 August he checked into New York’s grand Holland House Hotel (‘$6 a day—about four times what I can afford’) and his first call was on his two colleagues, who were staying at the Netherlands Hotel. They were an odd bunch, the Times trio. Morrison knew Wallace of old—‘a dapper Jew having complete false set uppers and lowers’. He was ‘a very kind man, and an intimate friend of King Edward, of the Tsar, the German Emperor, and nearly everyone in Europe. He was extremely kind to me and could not have been more intimate’. On the eve of his departure Wallace had been summoned by the King and given messages for Roosevelt and Count de Witte, the formerly disgraced minister who had been chosen by the Tsar as one of Russia’s two delegates. Smalley was a new acquaintance. Morrison found himself looking at a ‘very Irish, snub-nosed’ man of 72 who was, he soon discovered, a ‘grumpy old devil’. This was the ill-matched band of brothers who travelled to leafy Portsmouth for the Presidential peace initiative. Morrison discussed the peace talks with Baron Komura, head of the Japanese delegation, who told him:


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We reduced our terms to the smallest possible . . . Our Government would fall if these terms were abated. Witte says such terms are incompatible with the dignity of Russia and will never be accepted by the Russian people. But the Japanese people must be considered and their wishes consulted. That is the fundamental difference. The Russian people have no voice in the matter [but] the Japanese people have a voice.

Count de Witte—‘a man of splendid stature . . . [who] towered over me’, said Morrison—threw himself energetically into the role of everybody’s favourite peacemaker and quickly won the public relations war by giving interviews and posing for photographs, while the Japanese remained unnoticed in the background. ‘It is impossible to get anything out of the Japanese’, Morrison wrote to Moberly Bell. ‘They have not the art of making themselves popular, and it is already noticeable how much more liked are the Russians who were hearty and friendly and jovial with everyone.’ Morrison hoped that the conference would ‘end in failure. The time has not come for peace. Russia still holds two-thirds of Manchuria and the greatest trade mart in all the provinces, Kwan Chengtze’.9 That night he scribbled in his diary: ‘So excited with everything that I cannot compose myself. But to my great joy there is every hope that the conference will fail . . . Russia will not accept the terms of peace and if Japan will not modify them the conference must close’. He discussed the situation with Witte: ‘We spoke of the war. I told him if it continued Harbin would be isolated and Vladivostock captured. He granted it possible


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after enormous losses, 50 000 at Vladivostock, 150 000 in Manchuria. “Lives,” I said, “are cheap in Japan.” ’ Morrison did not like the way things were going. Smalley had switched from being a moderator to promoting the Russian cause; any hint of impartiality was tossed aside as he slanted his reports in Witte’s favour. He had blatantly thrown in his lot with the Tsarist delegation because they were willing to leak the greatest amount of news to him.10 Smalley told Morrison: ‘I am here to get news. I am not concerned with policy.’ As he was in charge of the paper’s cabling facility, he could send whatever ‘news’ he chose. Smalley’s lack of neutrality drove Chirol, the master diplomatist, to distraction, while Morrison wrote to Moberly Bell, ‘I wholly dissent from his views regarding his duties as correspondent’.11 Suddenly, there was a breakthrough. Komura dropped Japan’s demand for a war indemnity and was granted the southern half of the disputed island of Sakhalin, off Siberia. Both powers agreed to pull their forces out of Manchuria, except the territory affected by the lease of Kwantung on the Liaotung Peninsula, where Japan took over Russia’s concession. Russia also agreed to recognise Japanese rights in Korea. ‘The news fairly made me stagger’, Morrison wrote. ‘It is a complete surrender.’ He was so disgusted that he left New Hampshire on 31 August while the peace treaty was still being drawn up. Back in New York, he sent an introduction from W.W. Rockhill, the new American Minister in Peking, to the President and he was invited to call at Roosevelt’s country cottage on Long Island on Labour Day, 4 September.


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Teddy Roosevelt, he discovered, was ‘very powerful, vigorous, with energy incarnate’ and very pleased with his handiwork; his first words were, ‘Bully that peace, wasn’t it?’ Morrison wrote in his diary: He thought it was well and that Japan was wise to give up the indemnity. He argued it £.s.d. If the war had continued there would have been greatly increased expenditure and the certainty that Russia would not have been able to pay an indemnity. ‘I could not get the Japanese to see this. I pressed them but they would not give way. Till 48 hours before giving way I was doubtful of success.’

Morrison then ‘saw clearly’ that only huge pressure from Roosevelt had forced Japan to drop their claim for reparations. It was a bitter blow. ‘And the greater seemed the injustice in view of his knowledge that Russia could for purposes of peace pay the indemnity.’ Morrison returned to New York dispirited. He was entertained by the millionaire Robert Sterling Clarke, who took him to dinner and the theatre. Afterwards, he steered Morrison into a bordello which Morrison found ‘dull as well as vile’. He walked out. ‘A rotten misspent evening’, he wrote in his diary. He was relieved that his American assignment was over when he sailed in the Oceanic for England on 5 September—the day before the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed to the sound of a 19-gun salute. Out on the high seas Morrison was spared the sight of Count de Witte shaking hands with Baron Komura.


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16

THE NORTHCLIFFE TOUCH

Two months after his arrival in England on 13 September 1905, Morrison wrote to his mother that Sir Donald Wallace, his Portsmouth ally, was spending a week with King Edward VII at Sandringham. ‘It would, of course, be to my advantage if I could see the King’, Morrison wrote, ‘but I have not yet made any overtures in that connection’.1 Morrison’s social standing would have benefited from a meeting with his Sovereign, but after listening to gossip about the conduct of ‘Good Old Teddy’ he had decided not to pursue the matter. The King, he was told, was ‘a miserable specimen’ who set a ‘rotten example’ to the nation. He was a drunkard, a gambler, a glutton and an adulterer. Under the nose of his wife, the muchadored Queen Alexandra, the 64-year-old monarch was 275


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conducting an affair with Alice Keppel, dumpy wife of a compliant army officer, Colonel George Keppel (and great grandmother of Prince Charles’s wife, the former Camilla Parker Bowles). But the thing which most offended Morrison’s sense of honour was that the King was selling titles and pocketing the money for himself and his mistress. One of his middlemen in this nefarious trade was Sir Thomas Lipton, the Irish grocer who owned plantations in the East and after whom a popular brand of tea was named. At the King’s prompting, Lipton offered a baronetcy to C. Arthur Pearson, proprietor of the Daily Express and The Standard. Morrison reported the exchange in his diary: ‘The King has many private charities [Lipton] said tentatively. It gives him much satisfaction if contribution is made to them. The long and short of it was this:—The baronetcy would be given if Pearson would give £25 000 to the private charities of the King!—for Mrs George Keppel doubtless’. Other leading citizens referred to the King as a ‘damned bad lot’ and spoke to Morrison of ‘his debts, his disreputable associates, his wealthy Jew money-lenders’. When Morrison visited Valentine Chirol at Queen Anne Mansions, he was scathing about His Majesty: Chirol began by expressing his despisal of the King—such an unmitigated blackguard. When he went to Paris in order to bring about, his deluded subjects believe, the Entente Cordiale [between France and Britain], he really went to dally with Mrs George Keppel at a house especially rented for the purpose by Sir Ernest Cassel.2


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One of the chief beneficiaries of the King’s largesse had been Alfred Harmsworth, the newspaper genius who owned the Daily Mail, the Evening News, the Daily Mirror and many magazines and periodicals. Edward had written to the Conservative Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, Salisbury’s nephew, on Christmas Day 1903 that: . . . the name of Mr Alfred Harmsworth has been mentioned to me for an Honour. It seems that Lord Salisbury offered him once a Knighthood, which he declined; but I understand he is most anxious for a Baronetcy. He is a great power in the Press & strongly supports the Government as well as Mr Chamberlain’s policy. Should you wish to recommend his name to me, I will certainly give my consent.3

Chamberlain was the high priest of imperial preference, while Balfour was a moderate Free Trader who claimed never to read newspapers. He acceded to the King’s wishes, however, and in 1904 the newspaper proprietor duly became Sir Alfred Harmsworth, Bart. With the Conservatives irredeemably split over tariff reform, Balfour resigned without dissolving the Commons in early December 1905 and when he presented his Resignation Honours List to the King, his Sovereign intervened once again and suggested that Harmsworth should receive a higher honour. Balfour pointed out that he had only recently received a baronetcy but to no avail; Harmsworth, at the age of 40, was created the youngest ever peer of the realm: Baron Northcliffe of the Isle of Thanet.4 The reason he had chosen that name was that he could now sign himself with the Imperial Napoleonic ‘N’.


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Harmsworth noted curtly in his diary on 8 December: ‘Heard today the King had conferred a peerage upon me’. Enemies recalled his boast that ‘when I want a peerage I will pay for it like an honest man’ and it was claimed that the King and Mrs Keppel had each benefited to the tune of £100 000. Northcliffe was unconcerned. He received a telegram from his mother, Geraldine—‘I am feeling very proud today. Fond love’—and that was all that mattered to him. Morrison noted ‘the scandalous barony of Harmsworth following so soon upon his baronetage’. But he was intrigued. On 19 December he lunched with, among others, the newly ennobled press baron’s wife, Lady Harmsworth. ‘Lady H excellent woman, quite bright and clever’, Morrison noted. In the general election on 13 January 1906, Balfour’s Conservatives were routed by the Liberals under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. While Daily Mail magic lanterns flashed the results to the Embankment and Trafalgar Square, Morrison watched the postings in the nearby National Liberal Club. ‘The Liberals are sweeping the polls’, he wrote in his diary later that night. ‘Winston Churchill is in by a huge majority; Arthur Balfour is defeated by 2000 in a constituency which in 1900 he carried by a majority of 2500. Retribution indeed and I am overjoyed, though I may not say so.’5 Earlier that evening Morrison had spotted his editor: No wonder Buckle looked sick and downcast when I saw him heavily lumbering through the crowd by Piccadilly Circus. He has good reason to be cast down. Nothing could exceed the virulence and animus of The Times as conducted by him against the new Government. Narrow-minded,


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parochial, opinionated, he is a fit colleague of Arthur Walter and an entirely unfit editor of the greatest paper in the world. Entirely out of touch with liberal public opinion, he can now see the result of his handiwork, and party that he has supported though evil [has been] pulverised and beginning with Balfour scattered to the winds.

On 18 January the Daily Mail labelled the Liberal landslide the ‘Revolution of 1906’ and Morrison’s disenchantment with Buckle was complete. When Morrison was invited by one of his friends to meet the rising star of British journalism, Lord Northcliffe, over lunch at the Savoy he readily accepted. The two men shook hands and took stock of one another. Northcliffe had a heavy build with massive features and a large cranium; he had once tried on Napoleon’s hat at Fontainebleau and found to his immense satisfaction that it was a perfect fit. His face was handsome and youngish, with intense blue eyes and a tuft of unruly fair hair which tumbled over his forehead. Indeed, he looked a bit like Morrison; he was also his mother’s eldest son and her most fervent admirer and, in his youth, had been a notable athlete. Morrison recorded the meeting thus: January 24: Lunch at 1.30 at the Savoy with Arthur Barry to meet Lord Northcliffe (who M.B. thinks is nearly as great a liar as Lord Lonsdale).6 He came bustling in and was very cordial. While at lunch he got a telegram saying that his brother had won some seat by 1000. Nothing very new. I spoke chiefly about China. At an adjoining table was the Sultan of Johore, an ugly looking mongrel and his English wife, Nellie. Barry says that in Johore he has a privy purse of £20 000 a year, in


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England £40 000 and that he has enriched Nellie with jewels and other assets to the value of £40 000. She has been seen wearing £30 000 of jewels . . . would that I had this to give to Toni.7

Toni was the new love of Morrison’s life and he could not dispel her from his thoughts. Morrison had made a favourable impression on Northcliffe, who regarded The Times as ‘a glittering prize’ and was fascinated by its ‘supreme journalistic position’.8 Shortly afterwards, he would attempt to poach Morrison for the Daily Mail, the very newspaper which had killed him off during the Siege of the Legations. But first, Morrison was given an opportunity to make a comparison between the dynamic Northcliffe and his faltering editor when he visited the latter at his home: Afterwards I walked with Barry to his office and then drove along to 64 Warwick Sq. to an uncomfortable interview with Buckle. Quite unworthy of the position he fills—rough, genial and boisterous. Ignorant of men and parochial, untravelled and ignorant of foreign affairs, he is not the man to guide a paper, except to failure.

His diaries are filled with similar complaints: 5 December: Buckle’s incapacity and absence of all journalistic instinct must be a heavy cross for The Times to bear. Arthur Walter knows nothing of accounts. He expressed surprise at the remarkable coincidence that the two sides of a balance sheet amounted to two exactly equal sums! Moberly Bell wants £500 000 and could make The Times a power in the land. The


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building should be rebuilt. The present building was designed by John Walter and combines the smallest comfort with the greatest waste of space. Nothing that mind could conceive could be worse arranged. [Bell] surprised me by saying that his income had not come within £1000 of his expenditure any year since he joined the management in London in March 1891.

Ethel Moberly Bell made no secret of her contempt for Buckle. ‘I want you to become editor of The Times,’ she told Morrison. ‘You have the qualities which Mr Buckle lacks. You have knowledge, you know men, and have good judgment.’ Coming from the wife of the Times manager, this was akin to treason. Morrison, however, was in no condition to advance the case for his editorship. He had unwisely fallen under the spell of a 22-year-old Hungarian adventuress, Antonia Sofia Victoria Steaffan—Toni for short—on whom he had lavished a vast array of expensive gifts in exchange for sexual favours. Morrison had met the grasping femme fatale on 9 October 1905, several weeks after arriving in London, and she had informed him on their very first date that her current lover was a generous though elderly Indian civil servant. Morrison absorbed a huge amount of information which he recorded in his diary: Antonia born in Budapest 27 March 1883. Beautiful and dark. Has lost weight since she came to London. Fears consumption . . . Well educated in Professor Krausse’s Boarding School in Berlin . . . Was the friend of an Indian official living in Mayfair, 60 years old. Man of great stature. Her life a sad one. She loved a man of her own country and of a suitable age resident in Berlin where he makes leather jewellery cases.


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Under promise of marriage he seduced her. She had a miscarriage at 7 months. She was at that time in employment in the millinery department of Wertheim & Co. in the Leipzigstrasse . . . (Toni says of 800 girls in Wertheims there is probably not one virgin) . . . The work was too hard and she resigned the post. Then she discovered the perfidy of her lover and found him involved with another girl. She was desperate and would have drowned herself but was frustrated by her lover who divined her intention. Then she came to London, having with her about £25. That spent, she seems to have had the good fortune to meet that Indian official. No wonder she is thin and emaciated. Her heart is broken and she is pining away. [The Indian who is] tall, slight with moustache, forbade her to divulge his name and she has loyally kept her promise . . . He took her once to the Grand Hotel in Paris.

Having established her bona fides, Toni had then regaled Morrison with stories about the Indian gentleman’s generosity: how he had paid for her to visit her sick sister, Emile, in Munchen Gladbach; how he had given her £50; how he had sent her ‘two or three letters and £25’. F inally, she informed Morrison that she had not heard from her Indian benefactor for two months and feared that he might have died. The message was obvious: she was available, but would be expensive. Morrison could hardly wait to get her back to Colonel Ducat’s rooms which he was renting at 22 Jermyn Street and when she responded to his embraces he was instantly besotted. Wide experience and advancing years—he was now 43—had given him no protection against the wiles of a Toni and he behaved like a lovesick young buck. During the next 109 days he saw her no less than 59 times.


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He escorted her to restaurants such as Frascati’s and Alphonse’s, took her to the National Gallery, Madame Tussaud’s and to the theatre to see The Blue Moon. At the end of each evening Toni accompanied him back to his lodgings and confirmed his opinion that she was well worth the attention he was paying her. When he wrote to his mother on 10 November, however, he failed to mention his new girlfriend: Many invitations have been sent to me since I came home, and I have dined and met all kinds of celebrities . . . I have met at dinner Lord Cromer [and] Lord Minto, have lunched with Lord Milner, have had a long interview with Lord Lansdowne, have dined with the Chamberlains, have spent a day with the Rudyard Kiplings, have been entertained at the Oriental Club which I have now joined and yesterday took lunch with Lord Percy, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I have been to the Theatre several nights, and took the Moberly Bells to hear Melba in Rigoletto . . . I have seen a good deal of Dr Jameson of South Africa and dined with him the other evening to meet Mrs Alfred Littleton [sic], the wife of the Colonial Secretary.9

This list was a veritable Who’s Who of Empire politics. Morrison had met Mr and Mrs Joseph Chamberlain and Mr and Mrs Rudyard Kipling over dinner at Moberly Bell’s house in Portland Place—‘food very bad, simply atrocious and badly served’. He thought Joe Chamberlain looked ‘extraordinarily young’, while his wife was ‘remarkably fresh and attractive, with the most delightful manners’. Sir Thomas Barlow, the royal physician, ‘listened respectfully while I spoke to Chamberlain as if


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he were a first-year student and I a President of the Royal College of Surgeons’. Morrison visited the Kiplings at their old stone house in Sussex (‘the modern part of which is dated 1634 and the old part is 13th century’). Kipling’s wife was ‘a very pretty clever energetic little woman’ and they had two children: ‘one dark daughter, one dark complexioned son’. Rudyard was ‘very cordial and pleasant. Constant wit. Such brilliance, such lightning flashes I have never before experienced’. Nellie Melba, on the other hand, was ‘stout, matronly, unbecoming, but voice absolutely divine’. Sir George Clarke, the former Governor of Victoria, told him that Australia had produced only two people of international repute, Morrison and Melba—and he put Morrison first. But Morrison was too besotted with Toni to make the most of these introductions. To escape from the social round he booked into the Esplanade Hotel, Seaford, on 20 November. Toni was due to accompany him down to the Sussex coast but cried off owing to a sudden illness—‘poor girl’, Morrison wrote, ‘looked ill’. He travelled alone, but two days later Toni had recovered sufficiently to join him and they enjoyed five rapturous days together. The reason for her indisposition, however, was not sickness at all but holy matrimony: on 19 November, Toni had married a German barber named Loth and had to spend a couple of days with her new husband. The unsuspecting Morrison, however, was too good a catch to let go and she had hastened to his side at the first opportunity. Morrison could hardly bear to tear himself away from his seaside tryst, but he had to undertake a short European tour for The Times, starting in Paris and


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proceeding to Vienna, Berlin and Copenhagen. He visited Wertheim’s in Berlin, scene of Toni’s earlier misery, and bought her a piece of jewellery. He sent it to her in London and was ‘much disappointed’ when she did not reply. But she was forgiven when Morrison returned to London on 8 December and invited her out to dinner and the theatre. They dined at Frascati’s, then watched a ‘most amusing bioscope’, The Christmas Cheese, at the Hippodrome. To Morrison, it was ‘a delightful meeting’, but to the predatory Toni it was just another means of extracting more ‘presents’ from him. Two days later she wrote that she was getting married; she was sorry but it was too good an opportunity to miss. For Morrison, it was ‘bitter, staggering news’. A very unhappy day. To say that it stunned me is truth. I sat down and wrote a reply. Ran across to the Army and Navy [department store] and bought a gold watch for £7.1.0, and forwarded it by express. Bless her. She is the most honourable and true of all the girls I have ever met. True as steel. It is better to end up thus for she has her chance and it would have been cruel to have counted a few days with me as equal to loss of such opportunity.

Two days later Toni dropped in to see him. She had, she explained, met a grey-haired English broker of around 50 who lived in St James’s Court, Buckingham Gate. He had proposed to her and she had decided to accept because it might be her best chance to make such a match. Morrison listened sympathetically and took her out to dinner. She also returned with him to his lodgings and promised to call again the next day.


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On 14 December, Morrison deposited £50 in ‘true-assteel’ Toni’s savings account and two days later gave her £10 after she spun him another yarn that her sister Emile had died in Germany and she had to attend the funeral. Toni continued to string him along. Morrison sent her a ‘beautiful Christmas card with hand-painted pansies’, but she did not respond and he was in a mood of ‘great distress and apprehension’. Is she going to leave me again and shall I receive a letter saying we must part? I am nervous and distraught for truly I love that maid so sweet and beautiful, so tender and true. I cannot sleep. I cannot think of anything but her. After breakfast a mail, but no letter from Toni, only a letter from Buckle asking me to write at once for The Times on the situation in China. How can I think of the situation in China when I may have lost Toni?

To compound his misery, Morrison was spending Christmas with the Arthur Walters at dreary Bear Wood. ‘They don’t find it easy to get people to come here,’ sighed W.F. Monypenny, a fellow guest and Times colleague. Morrison found the experience ‘damned dull again’ and missed Toni terribly. On a typical day he rose at 7 a.m. for a walk before breakfast—‘fog with a slight drizzle just sufficient to make the roads pleasurably slippery’—then walked again before lunch. In the afternoon, he visited Mrs Walter’s rhododendron sprouts and had afternoon tea. At dinner, the conversation was about the Athanasian Creed ‘and other enlivening topics’. While the others played bridge, he retired to his room, swearing quietly.


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25 December: We are having rollicking fun . . . In return for services to The Times and in recompense for raising the paper to a position regarding the Far East such as no other paper ever held I have been given a very handsome sealing wax holder, nickel plated, luckily secured by my hostess in a window in the Tottenham Court Road where all goods are at one price—sixpence, also a small bottle of cold cream the use of which I cannot imagine. I shall give it to my niece for her complexion. It is all very exciting and absorbing.

Morrison’s niece was, of course, Toni. He vented his frustration on a pharmacist who offered him a business opportunity: 2 January: I received a letter from William Martindale one of the prominent chemists in London asking me to launch the sale of his goods in China and offering me a commission if I required one. Voila my reply: Sir, I have received your impudent letter of today’s date. The fact that you would offer to give me a commission on its sale is sufficient evidence to my mind of the doubtful nature of the patent that you desire to foist upon the ignorant people of China. Yours truly, G.E. Morrison.

The love-lorn bachelor was perplexed until Toni got in touch with him—‘What shall I do?’ he wrote. Then he spent most of January with her. She fed him ever more tantalising details about her mythical fiancé: he was 53 years old, with a centre part in his thin hair, a bulbous nose and a small, pointed beard. His initials were HHC. He had bought her a mink jacket costing £14 14s. ‘She


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laughs when she speaks of him’, he wrote. ‘But he seems in earnest.’ Morrison cancelled his passage back to China in the Mongolia on 12 January—‘I shall remain here for I cannot bear to miss even an hour of companionship’. His only joy was to be with her. ‘The more I see of her the more I admire her simplicity, her truthfulness, her sincerity, her kindness and gentleness.’ Toni kept the story going and Morrison snapped up every morsel: ‘Yesterday she was with the unknown one who has honourably asked [for her hand] in marriage. Her eyes twinkle when she speaks of him. She can’t bear to think of him and says it is impossible that she can marry him, certainly impossible that she can ever hope to love him’. And then: ‘Another lover awaits her in Munchen Gladbach, but he is a Catholic and she cannot change her religion. For she is a devout Protestant’. Morrison could delay his return to China no longer. On 25 January, he was about to catch the train from Victoria when Toni hove to: ‘Just 5 minutes before train left came Toni in tears, depressed and looking the picture of sadness, beautiful as a dream, sweet and pure if ever there were purity and sweetness in woman. She said she would be brave and we kissed good-by’. Morrison had Moberly Bell’s company in the Mooltan as far as Port Said and they had plenty of time to discuss the parlous financial state of The Times and the shortcomings of its Chief Proprietor. One of the most staggering secrets revealed by Bell was that Arthur Walter had been opposed to The Times reporting the war in South Africa because he thought the war was ‘unnecessary’. ‘Alarm seized [Bell’s] editorial bosom’, Morrison wrote. ‘For one


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day the paper hedged.’ Then Walter announced he was going to see Chamberlain and would be guided by his views on the importance of the war. Bell immediately dashed off and reached Chamberlain first, begging him to convince Walter of the war’s necessity and the need for assistance from The Times. ‘Walter went and on his return wrote an elaborate memorandum in which he instructed the Editor to go even further than the Editor had contemplated’, Morrison wrote, adding with underscores, ‘Thus is the chief organ in Great Britain tuned. Now I can understand the Parnell case’.10 Morrison reached Peking on 15 April 1906 after an absence of nine months. Despite his heavy schedule in London and the obsessive affair with Toni, he had achieved three major objectives. He had successfully lobbied the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, about the appointment of Sir John Jordan to replace Sir Ernest Satow as British Minister in Peking, and he had succeeded in obtaining the Order of the Garter for the Emperor of Japan. At Morrison’s suggestion, it was agreed that the King’s brother, Prince Arthur of Connaught, would lead a special delegation to Tokyo to present the honour. This was purely a diplomatic move; on this occasion no money had changed hands. Morrison had also raised the subject of China’s opium problem at the highest levels. ‘I spoke to Moberly Bell as I had to Buckle and Arthur Walter of our leading a movement in favour of the abolition of the opium trade with China’, he wrote. ‘I have pointed out how cordially such a policy would be supported by the churches in England and America.’ He had taken the matter further


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with two members of Campbell-Bannerman’s ‘Ministry of All the Talents’, the new Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and the Secretary of State for India, John Morley, telling Morley that India’s ‘accursed’ opium trade with China should be gradually abolished. An ‘especially friendly’ Curzon told Morrison it was important that he should return to China ‘to guide the opinion of the world’. Japan’s victory in the Russo–Japanese War had shaken things up; that an Asiatic nation could humble the European colossus gave heart to the Chinese that they might be able to achieve the same degree of power and independence as Japan. Students who had been educated in Japan and the United States returned home to question why China had given away her birthright in the form of railway and mining concessions to Western countries. There were stirrings of Chinese nationalism; the slogan ‘China for the Chinese’ had become a watchword. Morrison was pleased to note signs of progress in the capital, where new buildings, new roads and a reorganised police force testified to ‘a developing city pride’. Sir Ernest Satow told him, ‘China is awaking to a consciousness of her nationality’, while Sir Robert Hart confirmed that a ‘new-born national spirit’ was abroad in the land. From all of Morrison’s sources, the name of Yuan Shik’ai was linked with the new mood of optimism. Yuan commanded the most modern army in China, with troops in Peking and Shantung, had his own nominees as Viceroys in Mukden and Nanking, and could rely on two allies on the Grand Council. It could be argued, some said, that he was making a play for power. One of Morrison’s key sources was Tang Shao-yi, Yuan’s secretary, who had befriended the general in Korea


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as long ago as 1884. Tang was recovering from an addiction to opium and supported Morrison’s campaign to have the trade banned in China. The Times, however, continued to trot out the inexcusable argument that India stood to lose £3 million a year if its opium was prohibited. Morrison was not deterred. He had lost his respect for Buckle, Chirol and Arthur Walter and actively opposed his newspaper’s policy. On 20 September 1906, less than six months after his return to Peking, the Opium Edict was passed, providing for the abolition of the use of opium within ten years. Chirol’s comment was that the measures outlined in the edict were ‘grotesquely overdone’.11 Morrison’s immediate concern, however, was Japan’s aggressive takeover in Manchuria and it was over this question that a schism opened up between him and Printing House Square. The trouble surfaced after Morrison made a 25-day visit to Manchuria, where he found that the Japanese were ‘hated with a fervour that you can hardly imagine’. They were swindling the Chinese with imitation Western goods and encouraging gambling and prostitution. ‘Manchuria swarms with Japanese prostitutes who are found even over the Mongolian border’, he wrote to Chirol. ‘There is no justice. The Japanese defender is always right.’12 For the first time Morrison realised that China’s real threat might well come from the east. Morrison’s remarks annoyed Chirol. Britain had just renewed the Anglo–Japanese Alliance and he toed the official line: while there might be an element of ‘genuine patriotism’ in China, he feared there was also ‘a great deal of the old element of obstruction and of corruption’.13 ‘Altogether the tone of your letter with regard to the


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Japanese has taken me entirely by surprise’, he told Morrison. Furthermore, he accused him of ‘inconsistencies’ in his reporting.14 Tempers were at boiling point when Morrison received a letter from the Canadian war correspondent Frederick A. McKenzie, one of Northcliffe’s star reporters on the Daily Mail. ‘I spent last Sunday with Lord Northcliffe at his home, and we had a long talk over Far Eastern affairs’, he wrote. ‘He wants the best living man to direct his Far Eastern Service. In other words, he wants you. Is there any chance that you would consider a formal offer? Lord Northcliffe would be prepared to give you an agreement for as many years as you wished—if you desired an agreement—and he would name a figure for salary far above what The Times can give. Every facility would be afforded you for the building up of a great Far Eastern service.’15 Morrison turned down the approach. He was a Times man through and through and, despite his current difficulties, would not consider working for any other newspaper. The Thunderer, however, was becoming ever more mute. The circulation had plummeted to a lowly 38 000, more than 22 000 copies fewer than 30 years earlier, and Arthur Walter was in danger of losing Bear Wood. The paper was being kept afloat by The Times Book Club, which was selling an average of 1400 books a day, and its future seemed to depend on the success of a new edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica and a Times Universal History. The paper’s impecunious state dragged on until July 1907 when Mr Justice Warrington in the Chancery Court consented to a minority shareholder’s petition that The Times partnership should be dissolved and the property


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sold under the supervision of the court. There was a proviso that proposals for restructuring the company had to be submitted by one of the shareholders. Arthur Walter, the Chief Proprietor, was appointed receiver. In August, Moberly Bell penned a letter to Morrison which dangled the prospect of the Foreign editorship in front of him as part of a major reorganisation: I want to ask you confidentially a very straight question. Would you be disposed to give up China and come to London as Foreign editor of The Times? I do not make you the offer because there is no vacancy but we shall probably have to make a good many changes in the course of the next six months and I should like to know your views and as to whether I can rely upon your coming if offered to you. I may say that you would get the first offer—I am writing to no one else but you and no single person knows that I am writing to you nor will know. After considering this letter will you wire me any word you like beginning with Y which I shall take as Yes or any word you like beginning with N which I shall take as No or any word beginning with D which I shall understand as Dubious or implying that you are writing me more fully on the subject.16

Morrison received the letter on 29 September 1907 and wrote in his diary: ‘Now there was a staggerer: What am I to do?’ The next day he continued: ‘Was thinking all day of the offer of Moberly. My instinct is to refuse. How can I live in London? Best thing I can do is to go home and see what it all means and what is the reorganisation’. The following day he cabled Bell for permission to leave Peking and he arrived in London on 23 October.


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After booking into the Hotel Windsor he called on Bell, who informed him that Chirol was in a state of ‘hyper-excitation and exceedingly jumpy’. Buckle had had an operation for cancer of the tongue and other key staff members were overworked and close to breaking point. Bell thought Morrison would be a great success as Foreign editor in his own right or, alternatively, he could share the duties with Chirol. Morrison raised the matter with Chirol, saying that his ambition was to become British Minister in Peking and, in so doing, disclosed a little of Moberly Bell’s strategy. Chirol was astounded. He knew nothing about the planned reorganisation and frostily replied that he had no intention of retiring. ‘What is going to happen?’ Morrison wrote gloomily. ‘[The Times] is being hopelessly badly run.’ He received a letter from his old friend H.A. ‘Taffy’ Gwynne which pointed him in a different direction: ‘I am particularly anxious to talk to you about Australia; your true destiny is there, old chap. It wants a man and a statesman. I have some idea of the wrench it will be to you to leave China but there is a bigger career for you in Australia’. Morrison’s future was uncertain but his sense of humour had not deserted him. He dined with the Duchess of Saint Albans: ‘and damned bad table manners had her Grace, eating her food like a bosun on a limejuicer’. His chance to speak up for China arrived when he was invited to address the annual dinner of the China Association at the Metropole Hotel. According to The Spectator, he ‘vigorously deprecated scepticism as to the


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sincerity of the progressive movement in China’. Regardless of his newspaper’s policy, Morrison broke cover as the unappointed advocate of the Chinese people. He also had a dig at the King’s German-born friend, Sir Ernest Cassel, which provoked laughter among the well-informed audience: It was natural that we, who were the most superior of all God’s people, whose mission it was to pry into the internal affairs of other less favoured countries, should condemn procedure in China that would never be tolerated here. It was natural, for example, that the system of purchase of rank in China, still so common in that Empire, should be condemned by those nondescript capitalists of alien origin whose entry into their ranks was adding so greatly to the dignity and prestige of our hereditary aristocracy.

Morrison returned to Peking in December to a warm reception from influential Chinese, but his relations with Chirol became increasingly toxic. Over the next few months the Foreign editor used every means at his disposal to distort the meaning of Morrison’s reports. It was a tense time for everyone at the newspaper: The Times, voice of the Establishment, was up for sale and the Chief Proprietor’s dullard half-brother, Godfrey Walter, was secretly touting it to potential partners. In the New Year, the bombshell was dropped. Morrison noted in his diary on 8 January 1908: ‘The most astonishing thing today is the Reuter’s telegram saying that The Times had become a limited liability company with Arthur Walter as Chairman and C. Arthur Pearson as Managing Director’.


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The Reuter’s report was based on a statement published in The Times but was not strictly true. The agreement under which Pearson would seize effective control of the newspaper’s management to the exclusion of Moberly Bell still had to be ratified in the Chancery Division. But it was true enough to startle not only Times correspondents like Morrison in every quarter of the globe, but also every employee in Printing House Square. The man who had set the cat among the pigeons was Lord Northcliffe. The following day, 9 January, he cabled Morrison: SHOULD REORGANISATION INVOLVE CHANGE PLEASE REMEMBER NORTHCLIFFE RITZ PARIS. While this cryptic message did not necessarily mean that Northcliffe was bidding for The Times, it was fascinating in view of what was about to happen to note that one of the first people he should contact was Morrison; no one else on the Times staff, including Buckle and Chirol, was treated with such deference. The press baron had discovered from a financial source that Pearson had reached provisional agreement with the Walters to merge The Times with The Standard. Northcliffe badly wanted The Times, had done for years, and, a master of the mischievous use of his own columns, his first move was to insert a paragraph in The Observer, which he owned, on Sunday, 5 January: ‘It is understood that important negotiations are taking place which will place the direction of The Times newspaper in the hands of a very capable proprietor of several popular magazines and newspapers’. Many readers assumed that the ‘very capable proprietor’ was Northcliffe himself. Moberly Bell, who knew nothing about the Pearson


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agreement, wrote to Arthur Walter to say that he must at once contradict the Observer report as ‘however ridiculous, there are idiots who will believe it’. A few hours later he went into the Editor’s Room and found Buckle ‘as white as the sheet of paper he was reading’. This was the statement naming Pearson which had duly appeared in The Times and which had been the subject of the Reuter’s telegram. It had been foisted upon Buckle by Godfrey Walter in the absence of Arthur, who was confined to Bear Wood with influenza. Moberly Bell wrote to him there: ‘Forgive me if I say I cannot help feeling deeply hurt at the want of confidence you have shown in one who has tried to serve you faithfully and who regarded you as a friend’. Bell now considered himself a free agent to save The Times from the catastrophic Pearson deal in any way he could. ‘He saw the greatest fight of his career opening out before him, and his eyes glittered with the lust of battle’, Harcourt Kitchin, Moberly Bell’s assistant, wrote: ‘[The Pearson notice] turned Moberly Bell from a faithful servant into a formidable enemy’.17 ‘What are you going to do about this Pearson business?’ Kitchin asked him. ‘Smash it,’ Bell replied. As a sign of his intent, he shaved off his famous moustache. It was an unequal fight. Pearson—he was still plain mister, having turned down the King’s offer to make him a baronet—never really had a chance. From the Paris Ritz Northcliffe ordered a profile of his rival proprietor to appear in the Daily Mail, even though Pearson had declined to be interviewed and wanted to remain in the background. The article included Joe Chamberlain’s


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devastating description of him as ‘the greatest hustler I have ever known’. In Northcliffe’s Observer a few days later, Pearson was portrayed as a yellow journalist who had successfully sensationalised several publications. This was the Northcliffe touch: heap praise upon his rival and thus embarrass Pearson’s socially superior associates. Times shareholders who had previously supported the Pearson deal began to have second thoughts. Arthur Walter finally came to the office on 20 January, where Moberly Bell told him that he would work to defeat the Pearson agreement. Walter replied lamely: ‘I don’t think you ought to.’ Northcliffe quietly returned to London and Bell went to see him at an office in Sackville Street. ‘I want to tell you, Mr Moberly Bell, that I am going to buy The Times.’ ‘With what object?’ ‘To make it worth 3d.’ ‘How are you going to do that?’ ‘By making it better in appearance, better in get-up, and leaving it in essentials exactly what it is—the finest newspaper in the world.’18 Bell agreed to help Northcliffe with the takeover. He was surprised when the press baron insisted on anonymity. ‘No name must appear but your own,’ Northcliffe told him. ‘I offer you money and advice.’ After discussing the value with Bell, he agreed to pay £320 000 for The Times, a figure far in excess of Pearson’s offer of £150 000 worth of shares in the Standard. Not being a Times shareholder, Moberly Bell had no status for presenting his proposals to the court. He found a


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collaborator in retired General John Sterling, the largest single shareholder after Godfrey and Arthur Walter. ‘He behaved like a brick,’ Bell told Morrison.19 Valentine Chirol also played a useful part, going to see Lord Lansdowne. ‘I was with Walter at Eton,’ Lansdowne said. ‘He was an ass then. I often told him so. I will tell him so again if it is any good.’ Lansdowne sent for Walter and persuaded him to drop the Pearson agreement. As shareholders deserted Pearson in droves, Bell put his offer before Mr Justice Warrington in chambers. The Times would become a limited liability company with Arthur Walter as chairman, Bell as Managing Director and Buckle, Chirol and Monypenny as directors. On 16 March, Bell counted out to the judge 320 Bank of England notes of £1000 each. The court approved the contract and Moberly Bell was, nominally at least, proprietor of The Times. Northcliffe had been referred to throughout the negotiations as ‘X’; his name was not revealed to the staff for several months. ‘Pearson was invaluable in blowing up his own craft,’ Bell told Morrison. ‘I had assumed him to be a clever, unscrupulous journalist but he proved himself simply an ignorant windbag.’20 Throughout this critical period, the feud between Morrison and Chirol had intensified. On 21 January, Chirol declared that a telegram of Morrison’s on China’s foreign relations was so opposed to the paper’s policy ‘that we felt bound to exercise our right of control’. He added: The most serious matter however is the tone of open and bitter hostility you adopt towards the Japanese—which you


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must know to be at variance with the policy both of the paper and the Brit. Govt . . . I heard after you had left England that you had been talking rather freely about your views concerning Japan, and the necessity of smashing her as you had smashed Russia . . . I am, I must say, entirely at a loss to account for your complete volte-face with regard to Japan, for which I can discover no adequate public grounds.

He urged Morrison to see things in a truer light from the imperial point of view ‘and not merely from the local Chinese point of view’.21 Morrison replied with an ‘emphatic and unqualified denial’ that he had ever suggested he could ‘smash Japan as he had smashed Russia’. ‘I never made any such statement’, he said. ‘Such views never entered my head. I have been grossly and maliciously misrepresented.’ He accused Chirol of writing ‘in a state of hyper-excitation, [of being] overworked and suffering from anxiety and worry so that your judgment for the moment was obscured’. He prided himself on being calm and open-minded, whereas Chirol was ‘too often guided by sentiment and by emotion’. ‘I have an innate love of scientific precision of statements of fact and I am absolutely impervious to all sentimental or personal considerations. My one wish is to tell the truth as I believe it . . .’22 Chirol accepted Morrison’s assurances ‘without any reservation’, but the damage had been done and their correspondence ceased for many months. Morrison raised the matter in paying tribute to Moberly Bell for his role in The Times takeover: I am deeply indebted to you for the splendid way you fought for the best interests of the paper. Never has the paper been so


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good. I hear nothing but praise of it and I am sure that its financial success must be most gratifying to you . . . My relations with Chirol during the two years ending with my last visit home were extremely disagreeable to me for I hardly ever received a letter from him that did not anger me with its gross injustice. He seemed to set himself the task of worrying me out of The Times. The past year since he discontinued writing to me has been the most pleasant I have spent in your service.23

As Northcliffe finally showed his hand, big changes were reshaping Printing House Square. New Monotype machines and modern Goss presses were installed to streamline production for the massive surge in sales which he envisaged. But these changes were nothing compared with the events which were unfolding in China. Morrison left Peking for a hunting trip in Kwantai on the Yellow River on 10 November 1908 and when he returned on the 15th he found the Celestial capital in deep mourning. In his absence, the Emperor and the Dowager Empress had both died.


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On the occasion of the Dowager Empress’ seventy-third birthday, Yuan Shi-k’ai, Viceroy of Chihli, presented his illustrious patron with two foxfur-lined gowns, two pearland-filigree phoenixes, a piece of calambac studded with jewels and a branch of coral 6 feet long. The Old Buddha had suffered a stroke the previous year and Yuan wanted to remain in favour until the very end of her life. With the acquiescence of doddering Prince Ching, who had been appointed head of the Grand Council following Jung Lu’s death in 1903, he hoped to rule China as co-regent for Ching’s young son. Tz’u-Hsi, however, had other ideas. Suffering from an attack of dysentery after indulging a passion for cream and crab apples at a picnic for the visiting Dalai Lama, she struggled from her bed on 13 November 1908 and named 302


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three-year-old Pu-Yi, son of her nephew Prince Ch’un II, as Crown Prince. Simultaneously, the sickly Emperor, Kuang-hsu, was afflicted by a serious new malady which confined him to bed in the protective care of the Dowager’s eunuchs. Kuang-hsu died on 14 November and, as night follows day, Tz’u-Hsi passed away less than 24 hours later. The suspicion among the legations was that the Emperor had been poisoned by his malevolent aunt to prevent him from resuming his interrupted rule. Others blamed Yuan Shi-k’ai on the grounds that, had Kuanghsu outlived her, one of his first acts would have been to order Yuan’s execution for betraying the reform movement in 1898. The result of Tz’u-Hsi’s death-bed machinations, however, was that she had retained her grasp on the Dragon Throne even beyond the grave: Pu-Yi was her great-nephew and his mother was Jung Lu’s daughter. The plotters Yuan Shi-k’ai and Prince Ching had been swept aside; Prince Ch’un II would now rule as regent until his son turned 18. Moreover, Tz’u-Hsi’s niece, the Empress Lung-yu, whom Kuang-hsu had been bullied into marrying, would now become the new Dowager Empress. While Morrison had been out hunting, these sensational events had been covered for The Times by Bland, who had moved to Peking from Shanghai. Bland, however, was house-bound with fever and had to rely on Morrison’s translator, Edmund Backhouse, for most of his information. Morrison was back in the capital on 15 November, the day of Tz’u-Hsi’s death, and worked hard ‘trying to retrieve my blunder’ but he was ‘mighty


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sick’ at having missed much of the big story and some of his competitors were delighted at his discomfiture. No one would be more gleeful than Backhouse’s biographer, Hugh Trevor-Roper, a British historian who later evinced an almost pathological hatred of Morrison. Trevor-Roper claimed that Morrison’s inability to foresee the two imperial deaths was the second time he had been ‘caught napping’: the Siege of the Legations had also ‘taken him completely by surprise’. As Curzon had noted in the Commons, Morrison was capable of the ‘intelligent anticipation of facts even before they happen’ but he was not actually clairvoyant.1 Suspicious of Yuan Shi-k’ai’s dynastic ambitions, the new Manchu Court took steps to neutralise him. On 4 January 1909, Morrison was handed a copy of an imperial decree which stripped Yuan of all power: Unfortunately, Yuan Shi-k’ai is now suffering from an affection [sic] of the foot, he has difficulty in walking and it is hardly possible for him to discharge his duties adequately. We command Yuan Shi-k’ai to resign his offices at once and to return to his native place to treat and to convalesce from the ailment. It is our resolution to show consideration and compassion.

Sir John Jordan had a radical solution to the problem. He asked Morrison: ‘Why can’t Yuan Shi-k’ai put himself at the head of 10 000 men and sweep the lot out?’ Yuan, however, decided to bide his time and, at 52, ‘retired’ to his home in Tientsin to convalesce in his Garden for Cultivating Longevity, together with his wife and sufficient concubines to produce no fewer than 16 sons and


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14 daughters. Morrison sent a telegram expressing his best wishes to Yuan and the warlord replied that he was greatly moved to have received it. Morrison’s relations with Chirol were further damaged by more Japanese provocation in Manchuria. Under the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan had acquired control of the South Manchurian railway from Changchun to Port Arthur and was now refusing to allow China to extend her own rail system in that region. Morrison cynically noted in his diary that publication of his reports on this issue ‘depends upon whether Chirol has been entertained at the Japanese Embassy within the last few days’. His hostility moved Moberly Bell to write to him on 4 February with a plea to bury the hatchet. ‘This is your birthday and I want you to make me a birthday present’, Bell wrote. ‘It is the surrender of your bitter feeling about Chirol.’ Bell had explained that Chirol had suffered a nervous breakdown during the Northcliffe takeover and ‘had got to look over 70 and feeble at that’. During that time he had upset many people, Morrison included, but he had returned to work after a six-month rest cure and was now ‘a totally different man to what he was a year ago both mentally and physically’. As a favour to Bell, Morrison wrote a conciliatory letter to Chirol but, although the language of their exchanges became more restrained, the two remained at loggerheads over Japan; so much so that in April Chirol arranged with the Japanese Ambassador, Viscount Kato, for them both to go to Tokyo to discuss Morrison’s grievances with members of the Japanese Government. ‘Tomorrow begins the round of visits etc, and boredom and lies’, Morrison wrote on arrival in the Japanese


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capital. He knew he was being got at and even an audience with Mutsuhito, the Meiji Emperor, failed to placate him. He described the great symbol of Japan’s resurgence as ‘a man of about the ordinary height in the most illfitting uniform ever seen, with white kid gloves’. He had a ‘tremulous, bleary, pimply face sodden it seemed to me with alcohol’. He was very nervous, stepped one step forward and shook me by the hand’. Morrison exited backwards, ‘feeling somewhat ashamed to render so much homage to bibulous Royalty’. Morrison expounded his journalistic beliefs at the annual dinner of the Yokohama Foreign Board of Trade: Twelve years ago I was sent to Peking, having had no previous journalistic work. The instructions given to me were simply that I was to tell the truth without fear or favour and during the time that I have been in the Far East, I hope that I have carried out these instructions and that I have endeavoured to allow no personal prejudice or predilection to interfere with my work or to colour any cable that I have been able to send the great journal I am serving. I feel indignant when I read in the papers that I am pro-this or anti-that country. I am an Englishman and all I think about and all that I desire to serve are the interests of my own country.

The ten-day trip destroyed his brief rapprochement with Chirol. He was now ‘that infernal, ill-natured, disagreeable, discourteous brute’ who had acted ‘like a sneaking cur in Tokyo’ by linking Morrison’s name with his own in pro-Japanese cables to The Times. But Morrison acknowledged that the long journey and the intense diplomatic


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pressure had taken its toll on Chirol’s fragile health. ‘He is sorely stricken and will probably commit suicide’, Morrison noted. ‘He is breaking up and is not long for this world.’ Morrison’s own health had been causing him concern for some time. He suffered from recurring nose bleeds, probably as a result of being speared in New Guinea, and from rheumatic attacks, a liver complaint and lumbago. But these ailments did not prevent him from setting off on the most arduous trip of his time in China: an overland journey from Peking to Moscow through the vast and shifting landscapes of Central Asia. For months he planned the trip in meticulous detail, even making a trial run to Sian. When everything was in place, he took a train from Peking to Honanfu, where he mounted a pony and, with another in reserve, set off at the head of a small baggage train consisting of three Chinese servants and two horse-drawn carts loaded with provisions and books, including the Anthology of Australian Verse (which made him ‘quite homesick and melancholy’). The date was 15 January 1910, just 19 days short of his forty-eighth birthday. Morrison recorded his impressions in his diary and 12 long letters to The Times which, taken together, clearly depict the harshness and brutality of life in China in what was to be the final phase of Manchu rule. ‘Everyone keeps prostitutes and a large section of their earnings is the perquisite of the priests who farm them out’, he noted. ‘China is, I believe, the only country in the world which deals in a slave traffic among its own people.’ He saw prisoners ‘cruelly chained to heavy rods of iron like a crowbar, bound by rings of iron to the neck and to the ankle’.


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On the way to Kashgar (Kashi) in Chinese Turkestan he passed through a region which had once supported a population of thirty million. Hundreds of towns and villages had been wiped out by General Tso Tsung-t’ang in suppressing the Moslem rebellion in 1873. ‘He is one of the greatest curses that have ever blighted China’, Morrison wrote. ‘Yet he is glorified not as a scourge who reduced a whole province to a desert but as a hero.’ It was mid-winter and the weather was as bleak as the countryside and as brutal as its history. At night, temperatures plunged below zero and Morrison’s writing ink froze solid; by day it was baking hot on the high, unprotected plateaux and, with his various ailments causing him distress, the burning sun inflicted ‘real suffering’. ‘And yet I used to boast that I had never seen the sun that was too hot for me!’ He was relieved to reach Kashgar three days ahead of schedule—158 days after leaving Peking. At Kuldja (Yining) on 18 May he discovered that the flags were flying at half-mast in honour of Edward VII, who had died 12 days earlier. The King’s passing left him unmoved. The most hazardous part of the journey was through the Musart Pass on China’s most westerly flank. He reached the summit of the pass after a long, steep climb: The dividing ridge is 12 000 ft above sea level. The descent down the glacier is the chief danger. Covered with debris, the surface is broken into millions of tiny tent-shaped knolls . . . deep crevasses yawn on each side of the irregular and slippery track which zig-zags down the glacier. The way is strewn with the skeletons of dead pack-animals.


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Morrison found that Ulugchat, supposedly an important outpost on the border of Chinese and Russian Turkestan, was manned by four unkempt Chinese soldiers. ‘I formed the opinion that this frontier stronghold would fall before the resolute attack of three old ladies armed with broomsticks.’ At Andizhan in the Fergana Basin, he paid off his servants and, suffering from diarrhoea and piles, boarded a train to Moscow via Tashkent, arriving on 17 July. In his twelfth and final dispatch, he summed up his 174-day journey spanning 6000 kilometres between the railway systems of the two countries: I was entertained by native Princes, by Viceroys and Governors, and Tartar Generals. I met all manner of people from the humblest carter to the most powerful Mandarin, and by all I was treated with equal civility, friendliness and respect. I found, as I have always found in my travels in China, that I was well treated because I belong to a country which is known to sympathise with every movement in China that has for its object the advancement of the people, the encouragement of education, and the extension of liberal ideas, of methods of truth and justice and fair dealing. To me the suggestion is preposterous that British influence is waning in China. On the contrary, I think the British prestige has never been higher than at present.

Morrison arrived in London on 25 July and found that big changes had swept through Printing House Square while he was en route. Arthur Walter had died on 22 February; his son, ‘the pompous’ John Walter IV, was now chairman; and Lord Northcliffe had not only revealed


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himself to the Times staff as their mysterious saviour ‘X’ but was also taking a disconcertingly professional interest in the editorial content of the paper. Morrison met ‘the Chief ’ in London and later at the Paris Ritz. ‘I think there is little use of my going back seeing that I have done no work for two years,’ Morrison told him. His view confirmed one of Northcliffe’s fears about the paper’s mismanagement at the hands of what he called ‘the Three Monks’—Bell, Buckle and Chirol. ‘What is the use of paying a man £1200 a year and keeping him at the end of a silent wire?’ he asked. Reginald Nicholson, whom Northcliffe had moved to The Times from the Daily Mirror as Bell’s assistant in place of Harcourt Kitchin, told Morrison: ‘The Times resents the active interference of Lord Northcliffe.’ It was, Morrison noted, a ‘devilish fine muddle’. Ralph Walter, John and Godfrey’s brother, had slashed foreign service costs from £62 000 to £41 000 a year and when Morrison talked to him he concluded he knew nothing about newspapers: ‘Ralph Walter and his views. Early telegrams no advantage in making the paper sell . . . It is the leading articles which sell the paper, not news. What The Times wants is that people should ask themselves in the afternoons what will The Times say next morning’. John Walter tried flattery to win over his disgruntled Peking correspondent. ‘Before it was Blowitz of The Times’, he gushed. ‘Now it is Morrison of The Times.’ Chirol was ‘very friendly and sympathetic. One would never realise that he has been my most bitter opponent for years and had done me harm in the Far East that has been almost irreparable’.


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Morrison’s friend Mackenzie King, a Canadian politician and sociologist, revealed that he had suggested Morrison as British Minister in Peking and that Sir Edward Grey had approved the appointment but, on consulting Chirol, he had been told that Morrison was ‘too pro-Chinese’. Morrison commented: ‘Really, I presume, because I was too anti-Japanese’. Chirol, however, had discovered to his cost that Japan was not to be trusted. She had reached a secret agreement with Russia which enabled both countries to carve up Manchuria as they wished and, despite assurances to the contrary, had annexed Korea. The Liberal Government under Asquith did nothing about these blatant acts of colonisation but a furious Chirol had stormed in to see the Japanese Ambassador and accused him of deception.2 Morrison advertised in The Times and the Daily Telegraph for a secretary to work for him in Peking. One of the applicants was Jean ‘Jennie’ Wark Robin, a darkly attractive 21-year-old New Zealander. Morrison hired her on the spot. Jennie Robin spoke French and German, and had been private secretary to Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who served as Scottish Secretary in Arthur Balfour’s government. As a sign of the revolution taking place in transportation, Morrison’s journey home to Peking took less than a month. He left London for St Petersburg on 16 February 1911 on his way to Moscow, where he boarded the TransSiberian express for Harbin. He was back in Peking on 12 March after 15 months’ absence. Jennie Robin had sailed to China in the Mongolia and reported for work at Morrison’s house half a mile west of the Legation quarter on what was now known as Morrison Street.


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Her famous employer lived in a typical Chinese house, with an outer lodge facing the street and a big courtyard within. The main dwelling was on one side of the courtyard and the long, low, fire-proofed building which housed his library on the other. The house had electric light, a telephone and there were eight mail deliveries a day to deal with Morrison’s copious correspondence. Moberly Bell wrote to Morrison on 20 March about some of the difficulties he was experiencing with his costconscious lordship and ended: ‘I have been dieting myself and have reduced myself by 18 pound in seven weeks without any inconvenience. I calculate that if I can continue at this rate it will take me exactly a year and a half to vanish altogether. I hope The Times will last as long!’ Bell celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday on 2 April and, three days later while he was writing yet another letter ‘in his usual firm and legible hand’, he gave a sigh and pitched forward on his desk. His great heart had given out and his secretary Miss Mills (for he now had one) discovered that he was dead. The Times had lost its greatest warrior.3 Meanwhile, the first cabinet in China’s history had just been formed by its Manchu rulers, ‘an undoubted advance towards constitutional government’, Morrison noted. China was taking its first tentative steps towards a system of government similar to Japan’s in which the emperor, although an absolute monarch, operated within a constitutional framework. Then on 10 October an explosion ripped apart a house in the Russian concession of Hankow, the first thunderclap in a convulsion which would sweep away the


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Manchus and their Ching dynasty. Police who searched the house found that a bomb had gone off prematurely. They also discovered a cache of arms and a list of men who were planning an uprising the following week. Some of the conspirators were officers of the local Ching garrison who, once their plot had been uncovered, took up arms and seized Wuhan, the tri-city area comprising Hankow, Hanyang and Wuchang. The Revolution was under way. F ierce fighting broke out in Wuhan between the revolutionaries and loyal Ching forces and, although the rebels suffered several defeats, mutinies and uprisings broke out throughout China. Morrison was in his element with a big breaking story and fired off one tightly worded cable after another to The Times, where D.D. Braham, the former Russian correspondent, was standing in as Foreign editor for the stricken Chirol.4 Between 11 October and 24 November, Morrison wired 8113 words at a cost of £591 11s 5d, and proved that he was indisputedly the greatest reporter in all China. ‘The Manchu dynasty is in danger’, he cabled on 13 October. ‘The sympathies of the immense mass of educated Chinese are with the revolutionaries.’ Braham congratulated him: ‘We are grateful for your most excellent telegrams. We have left every other paper standing’. Yuan Shi-k’ai had been idling his time in the Garden for Cultivating Longevity for two years and ten months when he received an urgent summons from the Regent, Prince Ch’un. The former warlord was informed that he had been appointed Viceroy of Hupei and Hunan and was ordered to suppress the rebellion forthwith. But Yuan was in no mood to hurry. He saw his chance to exploit the


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disorder. When he was approached by the revolutionaries with a counter proposal, he listened. They would, they said, make him President of the Chinese Republic if the Revolution succeeded. Yuan thanked them for their offer and went back to his garden. Morrison spent five days in Hankow to assess the situation for himself and, back in Peking, his vast experience and unimpeachable contacts gave him the edge over rival reporters. ‘The Government is scared out of its wits but is acting with considerable resolution’, he wrote on 17 October. ‘But I cannot meet anyone, Chinese or foreign associates of the Chinese, who will not tell me the same thing privately—that they wish for the success of the revolution.’5 Seven days later, financial panic threatened to engulf the capital. ‘The Treasury has less than one million taels, and it is certain that it will not be able to pay the official salaries’, he wrote. ‘Failure will increase the panic. Chinese are leaving in large numbers, or sending away their families, because they fear Manchu reprisals. Manchus are leaving because they fear the future. Treasure of all kinds is being sent out of Peking to places of safety.’6 Braham responded: ‘Your telegrams have been excellent and are exciting much comment. You must feel like old times again writing the telegrams that are “the” news of the day’.7 Morrison interviewed the Japanese military attaché, General Shuzo Aoki, who told him: ‘This revolution is the end of the dynasty. Every hour the power of Yuan Shik’ai is increasing. He will end up with dictatorial powers’. Indeed, Yuan told Prince Ch’un that he would come out


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of retirement only if the Government made him supreme commander of the armed forces, with adequate funds and supplies; replaced the existing cabinet of princes with a more representative one and set up a national assembly in a year; and pardoned the revolutionaries. The Regent prevaricated, but with more army units joining the Revolution he agreed to make Yuan imperial commissioner in charge of the army and navy. This was not sufficient inducement and Yuan stayed at home. To demonstrate his power, he ordered his army to recapture Hankow from the revolutionaries. At the same time, the Manchu Court received a demand from the Ching 20th Division in North China that a constitutional monarchy should be set up within a year. Faced with the prospect of a large armed force descending on Peking, the court meekly agreed. Prince Ch’un announced he was abdicating as Regent and on 1 November Yuan Shi-k’ai was appointed Prime Minister in place of Prince Ching. Morrison was having a good revolution. His spirits had revived to such an extent that he started a new love affair. Throwing caution to the wind, he fell for an Australian girl named Bessie who dyed her hair and was popular with the diplomatic young bucks. ‘So bright, attractive, winning, kind and sympathetic’, he rhapsodised in his diary, ‘so sweet to look upon, so exquisitely formed, so natural . . . all day in a haze that fair image was ever before me, that beautiful voice ringing in my ear’. The following day he asked himself: ‘What have I done to deserve such happiness and how horribly I will suffer when such happiness is taken from me’. Alas, a few


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months later Bessie’s jealousy and nagging were driving him mad. ‘What a virago! It will be an immense burden lifted from my shoulders when Bessie departs for other clients.’ Desperate for love, he had made yet another error of judgment in his quest for the ideal woman. On 13 November Morrison was on hand when Yuan Shi-k’ai arrived in Peking by special train protected by ‘wild-looking halberdiers carrying long two-handled swords’. The man who would become his great rival, Dr Sun Yat-sen, the peasant’s son who was leader of the Revolutionary Alliance, had been in Denver, Colorado, on a fundraising trip when the revolution broke out and had played no part at all. It was purely a military uprising and Yuan had the stage to himself.8 On 14 November, Buckle joined the chorus of praise about Morrison’s work: We are greatly your debtors for your admirable cables about the Revolution. The whole world has to go to The Times to find out what is really going on in China; and your work is widely admired and quoted . . . We are watching the momentous drama which you unfold to us in breathless expectation . . . we feel sure you will see the Paper safely through this troubled period. More power to you!

On 16 November, Morrison had a long talk with Captain Tsai Ting-kan, a member of the Navy Board who was one of Yuan Shi-k’ai’s most devoted followers. Tsai had taken part in a meeting in Wuhan with the revolutionaries under General Li Yuan-hung and Morrison formed the impression that Tsai himself had joined the revolutionary cause. ‘While defending constitutional monarchy


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in theory, he is as strongly anti-Manchu as the men with whom he was sent to parley’, Morrison noted. This insight opened up some interesting possibilities. Several days later Tsai informed Morrison that Yuan Shi-k’ai wanted to meet him and he drove in a carriage to Yuan’s residence, the former temple inhabited by Li Hung-chang. He was greeted by Yuan’s son, K’e-ting, who begged him to urge his father ‘to cease his stubbornness and become President or even Emperor’. Morrison noted: ‘Not lacking in ambition is the son, but very stupid’. He found that Yuan, always stout, had cultivated quite a few more pounds during his retirement. He was ‘very cordial and complimentary’, however. Speaking in a harsh bronchial whisper, Yuan said: ‘If there were more pressure, perhaps the Court would leave for Jehol.’ Morrison left the meeting convinced that the court was planning to leave Peking and that Yuan was conspiring to achieve that end. ‘All the people around him are revolutionary’, Morrison noted. ‘Tsai Ting-kan and his own son and others . . . Young Yuan almost violently Republican and anti-Manchu but not strong in the wits.’ On 4 December, Prince Ch’un retired. The new Dowager Empress instructed Yuan Shi-k’ai to negotiate a peace settlement with the revolutionaries. One of Yuan’s first moves was to invite Morrison to Hankow in a complimentary railway carriage in which he was ‘fed and wined with sybaritic luxury’. His inspection of the ruined city led to the conclusion that ‘China is indifferent whether Yuan Shi-k’ai makes himself President or Emperor; the Manchus must go. There seems absolute unanimity about this’.


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On 18 December, Dr Wu Ting-fang, one of the leaders of the various revolutionary factions, proposed a fourpoint peace plan: the abdication of the Manchus, the establishment of a republic, a generous pension for the Emperor, and relief for aged and poor Manchus. Yuan sent Tang Shao-yi at the head of a delegation to discuss the plan with Dr Wu and his comrades in Shanghai. Tang Shao-yi, who had lopped off his queue as a sign of defiance to the Manchus, informed the Republicans that he was in sympathy with their aims and sat down to hammer out the details of a settlement. Morrison was reporting the conference first hand and was greatly helped by Dr Wu’s confidential secretary, W.H. Donald, a fellow Australian, ‘patriotic Britisher’ and Shanghai correspondent of the New York Herald. Morrison noted that he ‘knows more about the inside of the revolutionary movement than any other foreigner’. Donald, a native of the coal-mining town of Lithgow in rural New South Wales, had earned his stripes in the rambunctious world of Sydney journalism. After a brief stint in Melbourne, he had gone to Hong Kong in 1903 where he joined the China Mail. He rose through the editorship to become the managing director in 1906; it was in Hong Kong that he had met Morrison and they had become firm friends. And, like Morrison, he was soon enraptured by China. In fact, when forced to choose between the Middle Kingdom and his Australian wife the result was predictable. The peace talks were continuing on 25 December when Sun Yat-sen suddenly arrived in the city to great jubilation among the revolutionaries. He had been in Europe trying to extract guarantees from the powers that


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they would not intervene to defeat the Revolution. As a compromise between the different cliques, Sun was elected President of the provisional Government. But Morrison told the Republican leaders that neither Sun Yat-sen nor Li Yuan-hung could ever persuade the foreign powers to recognise the Republic; the only man who could achieve that was Yuan Shi-k’ai. The Republicans assured him that Yuan would certainly be offered the Presidency and they were prepared to give that undertaking in writing. Morrison wrote to Braham on 29 December: Now the question is: ‘Will Yuan Shi-k’ai accept this appointment?’ He has told Sir John [Jordan] emphatically that he will not do so, and he has caused a similar communication to be sent to all other foreign governments. He said that he and his ancestors have served the Manchu dynasty faithfully, and he could not go down to the future as a usurper. But suppose the Manchus themselves should desire his appointment? Their interest would be better safeguarded with him in the Presidency than with other Chinese in the Empire, for other possible Presidents have fought against the Manchus, whereas he has loyally done what he could to maintain them on the Throne. This seems to me the best possible solution. I do not see why it cannot be arranged that the Manchus themselves shall support his appointment should it be offered to him by a National Convention. This is my own idea. I have not yet had time to develop it.9

Two days later on 31 December, Morrison outlined the plan to Tsai Ting-kan, who eagerly passed it on to Yuan Shi-k’ai. On 10 January 1912, Morrison got the scoop of


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the Revolution when he predicted the abdication of the Manchus in a dispatch headed ‘A Republic by Imperial Decree’. It was an historic feat. The Times Peking correspondent had provided the warring factions with the modus operandi which would lead to one of the most important events of the twentieth century—the creation of the Chinese Republic.


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Part III

1912–1920


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As the Western New Year broke Sun Yat-sen was sworn in as the first President of the provisional government in Nanking. But the oath was worded—at Prime Minister Yuan Shi-k’ai’s insistence—not so much to define his duties but to describe his departure from office. ‘. . . I will faithfully obey the wishes of the citizens, be loyal to the nation and perform my duty in the interest of the public, until the downfall of the despotic government . . . then I shall relinquish the office of provisional president. I hereby swear this before the citizens.’ After the ceremony he telegraphed Yuan to confirm his promise to stand down once Yuan announced his support for the republic. Meanwhile, it was Yuan’s task to secure the downfall of the last dynasty with the least possible bloodshed and the least damage to China’s fragile international reputation. 325


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Once this was secured, there was little doubt in Morrison’s mind that Yuan would accept the presidency, but with one proviso. In a dispatch to The Times he said he would take the title of President ‘if to the wishes of the Convention were added the wishes of the Manchus, whose dynasty he has served so faithfully’. As Morrison well understood, the issue went beyond personal loyalty. Yuan was more concerned that authority, which had always been conferred from above—indeed, from Heaven itself to the Emperor as Son of Heaven—should be seen to have fallen as a mantle upon his broad shoulders. Let the revolutionaries from the south theorise about the mandate of the people as the wellspring of presidential power. Yuan knew that to most of the people he would govern, this was an alien and perhaps incomprehensible concept. Indeed, it was not one that he had ever embraced intellectually or emotionally. As a professional soldier he knew that power flowed naturally from top to bottom. That was the way advances were made and goals achieved. It brought unity of purpose and action. But he also had a breadth of mind and celerity of expression that could at least give a nod in the direction of a republic. He wrote at the time: If we are to elevate our people to the status of citizens of a republic, we must use law to assist virtue. Having consulted scholars of various countries, I come to this definition: a republican government is one that has an all-embracing system of laws based on the wishes of all and to be strictly observed by all.


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Morrison would have found nothing objectionable in these sentiments; not least because he was undoubtedly one of the ‘scholars’ consulted. While he was still on the payroll of The Times, the journalist was in the process of metamorphosis. The keen observer and meticulous recorder was fast becoming a participant in the great game. And he was developing an association with Yuan that would have historic consequences. It was by any measure an odd coupling. Morrison was about to turn 50. He was at the peak of his fame and, though childless, he was becoming deeply attracted to the beautiful young Jennie Robin, who could well remedy that. He was in every sense a man of the world: a Scot by breeding, an Australian by birth and experience, a British imperialist by choice, and a Sinophile by compulsion. Yuan Shi-k’ai in 1912 was in his fifty-fourth year and though his roistering with his military colleagues and his manipulative exertions on behalf of the Dragon Throne had taken their toll he was perfectly aware that there were only two powerful political forces in China—the revolutionaries and his own Northern Army. Yuan alone stood between the rebels and the overthrow of the Manchu Government. Both sides had continuously solicited his support, the revolutionaries with offers of the presidency, the Imperial House with his appointment as Prime Minister of China. On his acceptance, Yuan delivered a policy speech that should have alerted the republicans to the real attitudes of the man they were courting. ‘If one compares the system of constitutional monarchy, which restricts the power of a king, with one or another of the various systems that our people want to


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try in China,’ he said, ‘one must come to the conclusion that the former is the only lasting solution . . . all I am trying to do is prevent China from breaking into pieces.’ In the end, it mattered little to Yuan what label was given to the form—republican or monarchical—the essential requirement was ‘a strong government’. And both he and Morrison were convinced that this strength of purpose and action was the one ingredient that Sun Yat-sen could not provide. On the evidence before them, their judgment was well founded. Even Sun’s revolutionary comrades did not consider him fit to be president of the republic; they agreed to Yuan’s being offered the permanent post before Sun returned from the United States and would not countenance any change in course once he arrived. As a figurehead and as a fundraiser Sun was a very valuable asset to the movement. But those who knew him best were convinced that he would be far too weak and vacillating to hold a government together, particularly if he were opposed by Yuan’s Northern Army. By 1912, Donald had almost given up on Sun. He told Morrison that Sun was ‘a willing instrument in the hands of a crowd of wirepullers who have nothing to lose and everything to gain’. Politically, he said, he was fed up with his ‘imbecility, his downright wickedness and his attempt to bluff foreigners as well as the Chinese’. This was a particularly cutting judgment from one who had been so close to the revolutionaries and Sun Yat-sen himself. While Morrison was helping to develop the means for Yuan to secure the abdication of the Manchus and his elevation to the presidency, Donald in Shanghai was writing the manifesto that went out in the name of Sun


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Yat-sen and his revolutionary confederates. It was a situation unique in the annals of journalism—two Australian reporters operating in tandem to facilitate the overthrow of a 2000-year dynastic history and replace it with what would eventually become the world’s most populous and diverse republic. Like Morrison, Donald was by now the victim of ‘the strange thing’ noted by American Minister Calhoun: ‘Foreigners who have lived long in China,’ he said, ‘are apparently bitten by some kind of bug which infuses a virus into their blood and makes life in that country the only thing endurable.’ The two reporters did much more than endure. In the early months of 1912 they absolutely rejoiced in their astonishing opportunities to make a difference. The sheer pleasure of it illuminates the correspondence between them. Morrison was plagued by the fractious nature of his relations with head office—an occupational hazard of the foreign correspondent exacerbated by the prickly Morrison personality. And after 15 years he was beginning to identify more with his hosts than his British employers. It was at this time that Morrison bent his mind to a scheme that would secure the downfall of the Manchus and the elevation of Yuan Shi-k’ai and gain quick foreign recognition of the new government. The method he chose would so delight Yuan that he would not only act upon it but, according to his confidential secretary Tsai Tingkan, would be ‘tickled to death’ to do so. As Sun Yat-sen showed signs of reneging on his initial willingness to step down from the provisional presidency, Morrison, at Donald’s urging, sent a message confronting


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the revolutionaries directly. It was absurd, he said, to expect that a government headed by Sun could obtain recognition from the foreign powers. Their response was immediate and unequivocal. They could not agree more. But then Yuan himself was unsatisfied by Sun’s promise. In a telegram to the revolutionaries he claimed that his trusted confederate, Tang Shao-yi, who was negotiating on his behalf, had exceeded his authority in signing the agreement on the proposed national assembly and the method of nominating delegates. He ordered T’ang to resign and Yuan himself took charge of the negotiations; but with no one in authority at the scene they quickly stalled. He was then beset by a flanking movement from his own troops when 68 officers of the Northern Army publicly declared their support for the dynasty. Their timing could hardly have been more awkward for their commander. Yuan was in the final stages of fulfilling Morrison’s plan: the voluntary transfer of power from the Son of Heaven to the new President-in-waiting. On 16 January, Morrison wrote to Braham: ‘We are living in the midst of excitement. The abdication decree should be issued tomorrow or the next day’. Excitement indeed—for that was the day chosen by an underground cell of the revolutionary party in Peking to assassinate Yuan himself. They learned that on 16 January Yuan would be travelling to the Winter Palace to present an important memorial to the Dowager Empress. Four small groups of party members were stationed along the route and at 11.15 a.m., as Yuan returned from his audience, they attacked, throwing four homemade bombs at his carriage. What they did


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not realise was that Yuan’s memorial had strongly urged the Manchus to abdicate; the republic was now virtually within their grasp. At least two bombs exploded, killing 12 guards, but none hit the carriage directly. As it happened, Morrison had escorted Jennie to the gate of his house to watch Yuan pass by in his carriage. As it reached the corner, he told Braham, ‘there was a loud explosion and a burst of smoke’. At once I knew a bomb had been thrown. A riderless horse dashed past, other men riding after it then after a moment of suspense the carriage was seen coming round the corner. It paced quickly past giving us a glimpse of Yuan seated. Nothing had happened to him, thank God. I ran to the corner . . . in the middle of the road lying face downwards was one of the officers of the bodyguard sobbing out blood like a stuck pig. He was quickly dying . . . in a short time one of the bomb throwers was captured and soon after another and later a third was brought along the street, a young man in a Chinese dress and Inverness cape with a small moustache. He looked markedly Japanese but he was not . . . Apparently I and a Bible seller from Mongolia were the first there.

The three captured plotters were summarily executed. Seven other suspects were taken into custody, but Peking’s foreign correspondents applied some public pressure and they were subsequently released.1 Morrison recorded in his diary: ‘Sir John, with whom I walked this morning is still depressed. These outrages by fanatics who are willing to sacrifice their lives in the attempt are very disconcerting!’


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Yuan immediately turned the incident to his advantage by accusing the revolutionaries in Shanghai of being behind the attempt on his life. Then he asked the Dowager Empress and her court for special leave to recover from its effects. It was a political chess move worthy of a grandmaster. The revolutionary leaders who had not known of the attempt were thrown on to the defensive. And the Manchus knew that if he absented himself from duty they would be at the mercy of a rising tide of anger at their very doorstep. The Dowager Empress hugged the young Emperor in her arms and wept.2 Morrison, too, was suddenly confronted by a crisis from a totally unexpected quarter. His ‘treasure,’ the lovely Jennie Robin, announced on 17 January that she had become engaged. Her intended was Herbert Phillips, a relatively lowly member of the British Consular Service, a man who Morrison considered hardly worthy of her consideration. While he might have ‘good prospects of rising in the service’, he was ‘exceedingly mean and selfish and not popular among men nor as far as I have known among women’. Given her subsequent actions there must be some doubt about the bona fides of Jennie’s commitment to Phillips. Morrison’s diary reveals his growing pleasure in her company and a sense of affectionate partnership. He dictated his Reminiscences to her. They frequently lunched together and she clearly took the role of hostess when dealing with the journalist’s socio-professional engagements at home. They walked and talked over the day’s events in the afternoons and Morrison’s on-againoff-again relationship with Bessie must have been partic-


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ularly galling to the young woman, who was clearly in his thrall. The engagement to Herbert Phillips might well have been just the spur she needed to bring her true matrimonial choice up to the starting gate. If so, she read her man particularly well. Within days he had seen through Bessie as ‘a virago, a champion sponger who bores me almost beyond endurance’. But for the moment at least, Jennie remained betrothed to Phillips while Morrison was swept along in the drama of a toppling dynasty and the rise of his political champion. On 18 January, Yuan played another card—a proposal that he establish a provisional government in Tientsin upon the abdication, thus wresting the initiative from the revolutionaries and giving the country the symbol of a new beginning. The Chinese capital had been located in a wide range of cities over the centuries. Tientsin had much to recommend it; it was the military headquarters and metropolitan provincial capital with a vital strategic location in the disputed region between the Russian and Japanese areas of interest, the German concession and the vital Taku Forts on its seaward approaches. Yuan sweetened the pot by offering the court more favourable terms for the imperial ‘retirement’. But the Manchu princes were more interested in his second proposal: a request for 12 million taels to prosecute the war against the rebels if a military stand were to be made. They knew the public treasury was bare. They also knew that they had feathered their own nests with millions deposited in foreign banks. This was their chance to redeem their honour and that of their dynasty. But in truth that cupboard too had long since been gutted and abandoned.


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Tsai Ting-kan, Yuan’s confidential secretary and now a commander in Yuan’s army, kept Morrison fully informed of the situation. In January 1912 they began negotiating the terms on which Morrison would transfer from The Times to the role of adviser to the President, and Tsai took the opportunity to escort the correspondent into conversations with Yuan himself as negotiations with the Manchus reached their climax. On 22 January during one of his regular visits to Morrison’s house, Tsai reported that the Dowager Empress was sending Yuan daily gifts. ‘He can’t decide which will last longer—the dynasty or his old boots!’ The next day Morrison wrote in his diary: ‘Tsai telephoned to tell me that Yuan has been made Marquis by the despairing throne’. At the palace, Yuan saw to it that a telegram from more than 40 high-ranking officers from his Northern Army—many of whom had so recently pledged their loyalty to the dynasty—reached the Dowager Empress personally. It called upon the child Emperor to abdicate immediately. The threat to their physical safety was bold if implicit. The Dowager Empress screamed hysterically to Yuan’s deputies: ‘My own and the boy’s lives are in your hands. Go and tell Yuan Shi-k’ai he must save us!’ It was then that Yuan played his final card—the one designed and drafted by Morrison that so ‘tickled’ Yuan—in the form of an edict under the name of the Dowager Empress ending the Chings’ dynastic rule, which had lasted 267 years. Morrison showed a copy to Sir John Jordan, who gave his approval. Britain, he said, ‘cared not a damn whether there was a republic or a monarchy’. But because of the alliance with Japan he was able to bring Tokyo to heel despite initial


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Japanese resistance to a republican movement which they feared had the potential to threaten their own imperial system. That evening Morrison wrote in his diary: ‘Edict to come out on 4th Feb., my birthday!’ In fact, it would not happen until eight days afterwards. On 12 February, the Prime Minister led the whole cabinet into the Yang-hsin Hall, the ceremonial inner sanctum of the Forbidden City, to pay their last tribute to their liege and to witness the closing moments of an empire. The Dowager Empress and the boy Emperor arrived and slowly ascended their thrones. A eunuch presented the abdication edict to Her Majesty for final approval. As she read it, tears streamed down her face; all her courtiers prostrated themselves, many wailing and sobbing in grief and fear. The Empress herself wept bitter tears then recovered herself and handed the document to the cabinet members, who duly signed their names, Yuan first among them. The document included the following: Because of the uprising by the Army of the People, with the co-operation of the people of the provinces, the one answering the other like an echo, the whole empire is in turmoil and the people have endured much tribulation . . . It is clear that a majority of the people favour the establishment of a republican form of government. This universal desire clearly expresses the Will of Heaven and it is not for us to oppose the desires and incur the disapproval of millions of the people merely for the sake of the privileges and powers of a single house . . . We hereby hand over the sovereignty to the people as a whole and declare that the constitution shall henceforth be republican . . . Yuan Shi-k’ai, having been elected


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Prime Minister some time ago by the Political Consultative Council, is able at this time of change to unite the north and the south. Let him then, with the full power so to do, organise a provisional republican government . . . that peace may be assured to the people and that the complete integrity of the territories of the five races—Hans, Manchus, Mongols, Muhammadans and Tibetans—is at the same time maintained in a great state under the title of the Republic of China . . .

Immediately after the abdication Yuan sent a telegram to each of the provincial governors claiming that a return to political life had, until very recently ‘never entered my mind’. Laying it on with a Celestial trowel, he said, ‘I have prayed for death and begged for permission to relinquish my duties; yet both were in vain. I and my colleagues have been deeply anxious and have often wept together . . . Though exhausted in both body and spirit, I could not but give my first consideration to the interests of the country’. To Sun Yat-sen, he wrote that much as he would like to come south to listen to his counsel, his presence in the north was necessary lest the whole country fracture. This was a direct repudiation of his assurance that the capital— and the president—would transfer to Nanking. He then called on Sun to ‘co-operate in the work of consolidation’—in plain speech, a demand that he resign the provisional presidency in Yuan’s favour. Sun complied and in Peking Morrison was able to telegraph The Times a full report of the public proclamations followed by Yuan’s unanimous election as provisional president by the Nanking gathering. There was no hint in his report of the role the journalist had played


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behind the scenes; but it was common knowledge in the Peking legations and among the Chinese intellectuals, many of whom were quite sure that China was totally unprepared for a republican form of government. One of the more outspoken of this elite, Yen Fu, wrote to Morrison in English: ‘China is unfit for a totally different new form of government such as the Republic of America’, he said. ‘A republic has been strongly advocated by some harebrained revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen himself and others; but it is opposed by everyone who has some common sense.’ For his part, Sun was concerned at Yuan’s reliance on the transfer of power from the imperial house. Morrison wrote to Jordan, ‘[Yuan] has received a telegram from Sun Yat-sen virtually repudiating his promises, insisting that Yuan cannot hold any power from the Manchus’. Sun demanded that Yuan travel to Nanking, Morrison said, but he was out of step with the more senior revolutionary figures. ‘Apparently it is only Sun and his callow young men who are thus insistent’, he said. To his diary he confided, ‘The uncertain factor is Sun Yat-sen. What will he accept? Tsai says he knows nothing about China, “this Hawaiian Chinese”, “this so called Christian with his single tax” ’. Meanwhile, Morrison’s social life was taking the course intended for it by the lovely Jennie Robin. J.K. Ohl, correspondent for the New York Herald, hosted a ball and pointedly declined to invite the Times representative. ‘I am a social failure’, Morrison told his diary. But he was immediately drawn from his despondence by Jennie. ‘Miss Robin told me tearfully today that she had decided to break off her engagement this evening. I advised her to


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see Lady Jordan and have a good chat with the motherly old soul and I arranged a meeting. And it is done.’ However, Phillips did not take his rejection lying down. In the days following he pressed his suit and on occasion Jennie seemed as if she might recant. Morrison would have none of it, especially when Phillips arrived at the house for a ‘heart to heart talk’ with his beloved. He had received a letter from Jennie intimating that she still loved him. And now she had changed her mind again. Morrison told his diary, ‘She was run down and hence the letter. Phillips does not realise that it was because she was run down and her fibres slack that in a weak moment she accepted. I feel in no way sorry for him; 90 per cent of his chagrin is wounded conceit. I think myself she is well quit of him. He is not worthy to be found dead in the same street with her’. At the palace, Yuan took the symbolic step of removing his queue, the ancient symbol of the Manchu rule. But rather than entrust the act to a professional, he asked Commander Tsai to do the honours. Tsai told Morrison with a smile: ‘It is agreed that I shall clip the President’s topknot. This is your scoop!’ Only one impediment remained to complete the transfer of power to the satisfaction of Yuan and his advisers—the repudiation of Nanking as the capital in spite of Yuan’s commitment to the southern revolutionaries. Commander Tsai told Morrison flatly, ‘Yuan will not leave Peking!’ But he needed some pretext for the change of heart. Morrison was equal to the task. Drawing on the classical history lessons drummed into him at Geelong College, he suggested Yuan emulate the stratagem of


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the Athenian General Miltiades prior to the battle of Marathon. When a commander in chief was to be chosen, all the generals were invited to put their first and second choices. Each chose themselves first and put Miltiades second. Thus he had the casting vote and became the commander in chief. So, let all the major cities of China be given a first and second choice—Peking would undoubtedly come through, as all would vote their own first and the imperial capital second. Tsai replied: ‘Thank you for your capital suggestion . . . You should be styled in future “The Australian Hero of the Chinese Reform Movement”.’ Yuan also saw some value in the idea, but the devious old soldier preferred to work with more familiar tools over which he had a more assured control. Soon after a delegation from Sun Yat-sen arrived to press the case for Nanking, there was a sudden ‘mutiny’ from the most trusted corps of Yuan’s Northern Army. They rampaged through the city and, no doubt to ensure maximum public impact, endangered the legations. Shops and other Chinese buildings in the area were set alight. Morrison’s medical skills were called on as two wounded shopkeepers were carried into his house. ‘They were made as comfortable as possible in stretchers. Air was coming through their wounds and I did not think they would live until morning.’ Other reporters and friends arrived seeking shelter and advice. Morrison struggled to help where he could but at the same time his journalistic instincts prevailed. He pounded out a ‘rotten bad message amid the excitement, the noise of flames and people rushing in’ and sent it off to his paper.


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Tsai tried to telephone, but was unable to get through. However, he was quite upbeat about the event. ‘Felt for your life and then thought of your books,’ he said, ‘but eased in mind when told your premises intact. ‘Sorry affair happened but would not have missed it for anything. It adds another chapter to life’s experiences. Had a good study of Yuan under a sudden crisis.’ Later a note was delivered from Yuan expressing his ‘thanks and admiration’ for Morrison having turned his quarters into an improvised hospital. He replied formally and set out to walk the devastated streets where indigent ‘looters’ were shot out of hand or roped together awaiting execution while Yuan’s soldiers stashed their stolen treasure in their quarters with perfect impunity. Morrison protested volubly to a British colleague, Major Menzies, who was attached as an adviser to Yuan’s forces. ‘Yesterday there was a house to house visitation by Yuan Shi-k’ai’s men demanding money by menaces. I myself turned two out of a friend’s house and four out of another. It was all preconcerted. The whole future of China depends on how this situation is handled. I hope you will use your great influence to induce the authorities to punish these soldiers with death.’ It was not to be. Yuan apologised profusely to the foreign legations for any inconvenience, but the ploy had worked. The men from Nanking withdrew their demands and instead attended the inauguration of Yuan Shi-k’ai as second provisional president of the Republic of China in the Palace with the outgoing Manchus. Morrison’s ambivalence toward the man who would soon become his employer is reflected in his diary description of the ceremony. ‘Yuan came in wobbling like a duck


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looking fat and unhealthy, in Marshal’s uniform, loose flesh of his neck hanging down over his collar; hat too large for him, nervous and uncomfortable.’ Both the president and his chronicler would soon have much to be nervous and uncomfortable about.


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By April 1912 the despised Herbert Phillips had retired defeated from the matrimonial field and Morrison realised he had fallen hopelessly in love. But he was 50 and Jennie only 23. ‘I long to take her in my arms and tell her I love her’, he wrote in his diary. ‘But there is an awful disparity in our ages.’ He wrestled with the dilemma. ‘Why has this cruel fate been mine to fall in love for the second time in my life?1 I wonder does she care for me?’ After days of agonising, he finally mustered the courage to declare himself one afternoon as they walked along the Wall. To his overwhelming relief she responded in kind. He was astonished to hear that the match had been pre-ordained. She had consulted a fortune-teller in London prior to her great adventure in China and 342


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discovered that she would go abroad to a distant part of the world and marry a famous man.2 Clearly, the prophecy had been all but fulfilled. The joy of it set him spinning dozens of plans—to retire from The Times, to return to Australia, to sell his library—his diary providing a vivid and rapturous sounding board: My God, how I do love her—better than anything on this earth. And her coming to me was most strange. Her mother was holding before the fire a sheet of the Daily Telegraph upon which was my advertisement [for a secretary]. This caught her eye whereupon she showed it to her daughter and advised her to communicate with the writer. She did and I was struck by her and engaged her and there we are—she entwined round my heart and I’m going to sacrifice everything to have her come with me to Australia.

But first he had to secure her father’s permission and that necessitated a trip to England where they would tie the matrimonial bonds. To protect her reputation he decided the honourable course was to send her home so she could ‘consult’ with her parents before accepting his proposal. In May, they travelled to Tientsin and there he posted a long letter to her father. ‘I spoke of the discrepancy in our ages’, he noted, ‘I younger than my years, she older than her years, thus making the disproportion less. I assured her father that she was under no obligation to me and that the journey home might be regarded as a bonus’. There he received two ‘stupid’ letters from Bessie, one of which informed him that she too was engaged, to a man named Hunt. He took the news with a sigh of relief,


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but was less pleased when Jennie herself received another proposal—from David Fraser, a dour Scot whom Morrison had recommended to be editor of the Tientsin and Peking Times. ‘Fraser calls Jennie “Jinnie” ’, he wrote in his diary, ‘and has proposed. He urges his suit on the ground that she will never get a man to love her as he loves her—the arrogance! But he is very wrong’. Clearly Jennie thought so too; Fraser was kindly but firmly rebuffed. Morrison commanded the field. But while he was thrilled at the prospect of marriage and a family, he was deeply unsettled about other aspects of his future. He poured out his concerns in a long letter to Buckle. In the last 15 years, he said, he had travelled to every part of East Asia on behalf of The Times and in all that time he had cost the paper, including his salary, a mere £19 000, much of which it had recouped by selling his articles to other publications. He had turned down very lucrative offers from opposition papers and had never asked for an increase in salary. Then he went to the nub of the matter. ‘What I want to ascertain from you is this: Can I, on leaving The Times expect to receive a retiring allowance, and, if so, what amount?’ He then revealed one of the avenues beckoning. ‘It is my wish to leave China and return to Australia, and there, if opportunity should be given to me, to enter political life for which in some degree my experiences in the Far East have fitted me.’ Buckle’s response was sympathetic but hardly comforting. Pensions were reserved for those who started young and ended in the sere and yellow. There were occasional exceptions—of a substantial monetary gift—


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‘where the service has been both of some duration and of an exceptionally brilliant character, as yours has been’. But even this was dependent on the financial position of the paper; and at a time when ordinary shareholders were not receiving any dividend whatever, a policy of ‘strict economy’ applied. Morrison had mentioned the possible sale of his library and Buckle encouraged him. In fact, Morrison had it on the market for £40 000 and would eventually sell it to a Japanese aristocrat. But in his reply he let the matter pass. Neither did he press his claim for a golden handshake since by then he was able to report a munificent offer from the Chinese Government. His friend Tsai Ting-kan had secured a very attractive package—a three-year contract, all travelling expenses, a £250 annual housing allowance and a salary of no less than £3500, almost triple his Times pay. The reporter could not resist telling his editor that ‘it was the unanimous wish of both the Southern and Northern Parties that I should be the first foreigner to be approached with a view to the securing of his services’. If so, it was one of the very few areas of agreement between the forces of Yuan Shi-k’ai and Sun Yat-sen. Yuan had appointed Tang Shao-yi as Premier in May despite—or perhaps because of—their differences over the negotiations with the republicans. Tang was a Yale graduate and thoroughly acceptable to the South. He had joined the Revolutionary Brotherhood and was one of five Cabinet members—half the total—identified with the southerners. But almost immediately there was friction between President and Premier and this was exacerbated when the


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Brotherhood combined with other revolutionary groups in August to form the Kuomintang—the National People’s Party. The new party immediately issued a manifesto pledging itself ‘to adopt the principles of social service to prepare the way for the introduction of socialism in order to facilitate and better the standard of living, and to employ the powers and strength of the Government quickly and evenly to develop the resources of our country’. To the militarist Yuan facing an empty treasury, a fractured nation and a hostile international environment this was at best meaningless and at worst obstructionist. Socialism had never been any part of his understanding of the nascent republic. Shortly afterward he forced the resignation of Premier Tang, thus ending a 28-year friendship forged in the battle for the Korean royal family in 1884. Tang said: ‘He is the only man who can unify the country, provided he co-operates sincerely with the Revolutionary Party. But judging from what has happened in the past three months, I fear that disillusionment may come in the end’. Sun Yat-sen revealed no such concern when he arrived in Peking later that month to a royal welcome from the Dowager Empress and a great feast from Prince Pu Lun who, ironically, had been responsible for Sun’s detention by United States’ immigration officers in 1904. Yuan Shi-k’ai had ordered luxurious apartments prepared for him in a government building and day after day the two men met to discuss the great affairs of state— Yuan in his traditional garb of high-soled black satin boots and silken robes, Sun in a tropical English suit in the hot August weather. At their conclusion Sun Yat-sen


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proclaimed the President a great man, ‘and while his expressed opinions were his own, they embodied very largely my own views on the various topics. Almost to the last word . . . my own views were in accord with those of the President’. These included Sun’s new role as Director for the Construction of All Railways in China, a title almost as grandiose as the plans he had developed for it—120 000 kilometres of government railway to be built in five years using two million labourers and at a cost of $3 billion in gold. ‘Madness!’ cried Donald in a letter to Morrison. He is absolutely unpractical, without common sense and devoid of the most elementary ideas he professes to be now fathering. Sun sat down on the floor [with a large map] to explain things to me and as he sat there I thought that never could such a scene as this be drawn to depict the ineptitude of this, the first President of the Chinese Republic. He is mad . . . You must pardon the state of exasperation I am in for my blood boils when I think of the fanatic who thinks he can preach anti-foreignism, socialism, and a dozen other isms in this benighted country and then think all the financiers of the world will pull open their purse strings.

The letter confirmed Morrison’s fears. But at least Sun Yat-sen was sidelined from the principal concern of the young government—raising a foreign loan that would pay the military and keep them from mutiny while the process of national reconstruction began. Once Morrison had decided to break with The Times, this loan would become his first professional priority.


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In the meantime he was becoming concerned that Jennie’s father, Robert Robin, had not replied to his letter. Doubts about their age difference resurfaced and he confided his fears to his diary in the evenings as each day’s mail passed without the paternal response. He knew that Robert Robin had been brought up in Glasgow in a wealthy merchant family; he had travelled the world as a young man, even visiting Australia and New Zealand where he prospected for gold. However, the only treasure he unearthed was the lovely Margaret Cadigan, whom he met and married at Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand. They remained there until Jennie was born in 1889, but afterwards lived in a variety of locations, from British Guiana where Robert was again involved in the gold industry to Bordeaux where he worked with a wine firm. F inally they settled in London where Robert had an executive position with a whisky company. They had devoted themselves to Jennie’s upbringing—the more so after their second daughter died—and she was sent abroad to Germany to study before returning to England in 1910 where she lived at home in Croydon until her mother noticed Morrison’s advertisement in the Daily Telegraph. Mother Margaret, Morrison knew, had been born in 1864, only two years after himself. Perhaps she was the impediment . . . ‘[Jennie] is a refined pure-minded English girl’, he wrote in the days of waiting. ‘My life for a long time has been very lonely.’ F inally it arrived. He was approved! ‘She expressed such love for you’, Robert Robin wrote, ‘we could not well oppose it’.


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Morrison was thrilled. Suddenly, his way ahead seemed clear—all the terrible solitary pressures of the foreign correspondent’s life would be put aside and in its place he would build a life with Jennie as an official adviser to a government responsible for almost 400 million souls in a nation whose potential was almost unlimited. All the hard travel, the never-ending quest, from those earliest days when he took off from Geelong College to walk to Queenscliff, when he forged the mighty Murray River in his canoe, when he sailed the South Pacific to expose the slavers, tramped alone and unaided across his own great continent, sailed and walked beside the Yangtse and down to Rangoon then covered the great Middle Kingdom like no other man before him, all the perils of the Boxer uprising, all the battles to break the big stories, all of it would culminate in this. He had made a great mark as a journalist. And he knew it—not just because everywhere he went he was known and respected—but because he knew that he had never spared himself in the effort to gather the facts, never been tempted to take a bribe or curry favour, never placed his own interests above that of the story and never submitted a report that did not represent his best effort, whatever the circumstances of his private life. He was proud, but not without cause; for his achievements in his chosen field were without parallel. But now it was time to move to the next level, to become a participant in the greatest and most far-reaching drama taking place on the world stage. He telephoned Commander Tsai and gave his decision. Three days later Tsai wrote and confirmed his appointment. ‘It is neither an Agreement nor yet a Contract nor yet a Compact’, he said. ‘It is a free and


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spontaneous Invitation from the Government and People of the Chinese Republic to you who has kindly signified his consent and approval by the attachment of his signature. It is the most honourable invitation ever extended by China to any foreign gentleman.’ Tsai arranged for a long meeting with Yuan Shi-k’ai where they discussed the twin threat of Russian and Japanese incursions and the desperate need for the international loan. Morrison’s medical antennae were aroused by Yuan’s condition and he suggested a daily massage to help his circulation. Yuan tendered his ‘heartiest congratulations’ on the forthcoming nuptials and presented him with four bolts of the finest silk for Jennie. As Morrison set forth to London to begin his life anew, ‘There never was a happier man’, he wrote in his diary. The sea voyage was uneventful and Jennie was at the wharf to greet him. Then shortly afterward they went together to meet his mother and sister Hilda, who had travelled from Melbourne. There was no way that Rebecca Morrison would miss the marriage of her eldest boy. For Morrison’s part, his mother’s presence would make the occasion complete. By then his father had been dead for 14 years and his brother Norman had succeeded him as Principal of Geelong College. Norman had transformed the college with modern kitchens and plumbing, a library named after their father and another wing for boarders. In 1908 the family sold the school back to the Presbyterian Church, though Norman remained as headmaster. But the following year he died in a shooting accident. His younger brother Arthur had also taught there for a while but his engineering career had by now taken him to South


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Africa. Mary Alice, his older sister, now the wife of the President of the Arbitration and Conciliation Commission, had only one child, Mervyn, and he would die four years later in Egypt. Reggie was a doctor in Melbourne and doing well, while Clive had set up his law practice in Tatura, northern Victoria. Violet and Hilda were still single but within three years would marry the Gaunt brothers, Lancelot and Clive, of Ballarat. Not only had Morrison arranged for Rebecca and young Hilda to be in England for the wedding, they would also return to Peking to stay with Jennie and himself for a month. That prospect he found ‘somewhat awkward’, not least because Jennie was 12 years younger than Hilda. Rebecca arrived with her son at the Emmanuel Church, South Croydon, on 26 August at 10 a.m. It was the simplest of ceremonies and Morrison was gently reproved by the local Daily Chronicle, which noted that ‘the bridegroom had not worried over dress. He was in a light grey check suit with soft felt hat and as he alighted carried a mackintosh over his arm’. Morrison noted that the minister’s brother had worked in the Customs Maritime Service at Foochow for 24 years. He gave the vicar five guineas and tipped the verger—‘the worthy father of 10’—a sovereign. ‘He seemed overwhelmed’, he wrote. The previous day he had taken a train to Haslemere, ‘the most beautiful part of England I have yet visited’, and booked a hotel in nearby Hindhead for the honeymoon. Immediately after the wedding he and Jennie set off in their hired ‘motor’, stopping at Guildford for a delightful lunch, where he found two editions of


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Robinson Crusoe to add to his library. They reached the hotel an hour later. Jennie had an afternoon nap while Morrison ‘went for a lovely walk through the heather, a glorious blaze of colour . . .’ On his return to London, the news was well and truly abroad—the legendary Peking Correspondent of The Times was leaving the paper to advise the Chinese Government in their hour of need. The public response was astonishing, even to Morrison with his healthy selfregard. Congratulations poured in. The Times responded graciously. Cartoonists pictured him as the wise and even dominant adviser guiding a grateful presidential hand. Newspapermen sought him out for interview and commentary. For the most part, he was happy to oblige. His great concern was to present ‘the New China’ as a stable and progressive political entity readying itself for a great leap forward into the mainstream of the twentieth century. As his diary makes clear, he believed implicitly in his most optimistic prognostications. He was encouraged by an interview given by Sun Yat-sen to the New York Sun and reprinted in London on 24 September: President Yuan Shi-k’ai is the head of the nation, the strong, worthy leader of his people [and] the Chinese nation has joined the great family of republics . . . Now that the country is again at peace, excepting in certain remote and unimportant districts, I look for a big increase in commerce, domestic and foreign, with consequent well being in agriculture, manufacturing and the various other industries. With the people everywhere working, with peace at north, south, east and west, the country is bound to be prosperous and the Government


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stable and substantial. The most pressing need of China today is her establishment on a sound financial basis. The country is in need of a large sum in order that the wheels of government machinery may revolve without friction.

However, despite Sun Yat-sen’s rosy glow, in Peking the business of government was becoming entangled in plot and counter-plot as the loose confederation of Kuomintang republican and socialist enthusiasts clashed with the oriental Machiavelli in the presidential suite. Yuan’s Government was being internationally recognised, but behind the formalities China was still regarded as the giant dumpling at the feast. In an attempt to ward off the scavengers, Yuan and his staff sought out other foreign advisers who would join Morrison in building the necessary economic and military defences. They turned first to America, which had been the least avaricious of the foreign powers and, with its ‘open door’ policy, the most inclined to deal squarely with the new government. Washington took the lead in giving official recognition and at Morrison’s suggestion provided one of its most distinguished scholars, Professor Frank Goodnow, to help draw up a new and permanent constitution. Other French, Japanese and Belgian experts were also engaged to assist with administration, military and civil infrastructure. All came to their tasks with great enthusiasm. However, nothing was more urgent than the international loan and Morrison used all his persuasive powers in London to bring it to fruition. But, not for the first time, he found himself at odds with the British Government. Sir John Jordan in Peking was following settled British policy in working through


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the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank as part of a five-power consortium—with France, Russia, Germany and Japan.3 In London, Morrison met with Charles Birch Crisp’s corporation and in short order a loan of £10 million was arranged at a discount of 2 per cent and an interest rate of 5 per cent. Morrison was delighted, believing it was necessary to break the stranglehold of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank—with its strong German shareholding— and that it would actually improve British trade with China. The first £500 000 was remitted immediately and kept Yuan’s government afloat. However, Jordan was outraged and roused the governments of the other powers to protest officially, even threatening to withdraw recognition of Yuan’s regime. And at the time, the political bickering in the National Assembly reached new dimensions of disorder as a second attempt at cabinet government failed with the fall of Premier Lu Tseng-hsiang. Back in Peking, Morrison was able to press his point directly. On 16 October, Tsai, now promoted to Admiral, sent him a note: ‘In this, the first day of your sitting with a portion of the Cabinet you have made a most favourable and profound impression. You command the attention of all and all spoke of you in the highest terms before the President who would very much like to have you stay to dinner—and he would have kept you were it not for Mrs Morrison’. Nevertheless, Yuan caved in under pressure, cancelled the Crisp loan, and another proposed by Belgium with a railway as collateral, and returned to the five-power proposal. Morrison was quick to anger; indeed he was momentarily outraged that his advice had


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not been taken. ‘My job is becoming an impossible one’, he wrote in his diary. He was also deeply concerned about several elements of Yuan’s modus operandi. However, this did not prevent his revelling in the opportunity to include his mother and Hilda in the Morrison party to a ‘whirligig’ of a dinner at the presidential palace with Yuan himself in attendance. The tall, charming Tsai Ting-kan made a great fuss of Rebecca Morrison and the President was filled with courtly charm. Nor did it prevent him from accepting a high honour from the President’s hands—The Order of the Excellent Crop (Second Class). ‘Time’, Morrison reflected in his diary, ‘has its revenges’. Nor did it prevent him from attempting to provide ‘guidance’ to his successor as Peking Correspondent, David Fraser. In the manner common to the journalist-turned-advocate, he wrote to Fraser’s superior, Foreign editor Braham: Several times I have begun a letter to you but I have put it aside finding that it tended [to take] exception to the work of David Fraser. Seeing that it was I who recommended him for the post, it seemed rather absurd that I should be criticising the views of one whose views I had presumably ascertained before recommending you to appoint him. Unfortunately, I hardly ever see Fraser though our personal relations are quite friendly. He does not care to associate with the Chinese or those employed by the Chinese for fear, I imagine, of hearing the other side of the question. I only mention this because I regret that I can be of no service to The Times so long as your Correspondent finds it unwise to communicate with me.


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Once his mother and sister left for Australia Morrison became preoccupied with the politics of the capital and Yuan’s increasing impatience with the republican process. His one consolation was the ‘wonderful news’ that Jennie was pregnant. It provided an effective antidote to the frustrations of ‘working with people who pay me nearly £4000 a year yet keep me in complete ignorance’. The Kuomintang saw the President’s accession to the five-power demands as a symbol of both his dictatorial style and his weakness in the face of foreign pressure. With Sun Yat-sen effectively sidelined, their chief spokesman and agitator was the attractive young figure of Sung Chiao-jen. As chairman of the Kuomintang’s executive committee, Sung was setting off from Shanghai station for Peking on 20 March 1913 when he was shot by an assassin described as ‘a short man in black’. As he lay dying in hospital Sung asked for pen and paper and wrote, ‘I hope the President will rule our country with sincerity and justice and strive to protect the rights of the people. In so doing, he will help the assembly make a permanent constitution. If that can be done, my death will not have been in vain’. The martyr’s challenge galvanised public sentiment and when a few days later indisputable evidence emerged tying the Yuan regime to the killing the whole political complexion changed. Morrison was asked to serve on a board of inquiry into the killing but wisely declined. As an official employed by the government, ‘it would not be appropriate’, he said. Sun Yat-sen was being feted in Japan, where he had


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spent so much time gaining adherents to the revolutionary cause. Now he was hailed as a hero of the East and the politico-military establishment spared no superlative in its outrageous flattery. It was from Japan that Sun Yat-sen attacked Yuan’s handling of the loan and his likely involvement in the assassination. He followed this in short order with a call to his followers to break with the ‘dictator’. Morrison learned in April that Sun Yat-sen had met an old contact, Robert Waters of the munitions manufacturers Armstrongs, and was seeking ‘millions of pounds worth’ of guns and ammunition for use by the southern provinces against the north. A rebellion broke out in the Yangtse Valley and was quickly and fiercely put down by Vice President Li Yuanhung. Yuan responded with a statement accusing Sun and his close associate Huang Hsing of ‘making a nuisance’ of themselves. ‘If they dare to organise another government, I swear I shall use force to smash them!’ He sought to involve Morrison in the propaganda war. In June he sent the Australian a translation of a Chinese newspaper article that he wanted published in the foreign press. It asserted that the Kuomintang leaders in the provinces of Hunan and Kwangtung (Sun Yat-sen’s own) were ‘inhumanely and mercilessly persecuting the people’. Morrison replied: ‘I’d never be a party to the publication of such a foolish, undignified diatribe’. However, he excused the old manipulator himself: ‘That it should emanate from the President’s office is evidence itself of the evil influences with which the President is surrounded’.


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He consoled himself with a far more important development. Jennie was delivered of a beautiful little boy, Ian Ernest McLeavy Morrison. They invited close friends—Billy Donald and a few others—to the small christening party. Donald, Morrison noted, was ‘very depressing’ with his gloomy view of China’s immediate future. Yet another Australian journalist, Lionel Pratt, who was working with Donald on the Far Eastern Review in Shanghai, joined the little cabal of ink-stained activists, reporting to Morrison his hiring of a private detective to infiltrate the revolutionaries. ‘What do you think of the scheme?’ he asked in a letter. ‘Personally I take the deepest interest in this. I am a Yuanite and sincerely believe that this factious opposition to him on the part of the radical wing of the Kuomintang is endangering the country.’ His main brief to the Chinese detective was ‘to discover whether Miyazaki Torazo, or any of the other Japanese ex-army officers who advised Sun Yat-sen in 1912 [are] taking part in the present movement’. Morrison did not try to dissuade the young investigator. He knew Miyazaki well—a shadowy Japanese figure whose life’s work was to foment revolts in China and elsewhere in the region to further Japanese aims. He reported directly to his Prime Minister and had ‘advised’ Sun Yat-sen after the uprising in Wuchang. He was the recognised, if unofficial, link between the revolutionaries and the Japanese Government. However, before Pratt’s detective was able to report, events at the centre overwhelmed his investigations at the periphery. The gathering storm frightened the less


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committed Kuomintang members of the National Assembly and day after day the classified columns of the Peking papers carried announcements of party members’ resignations. One advertisement with over six signatures declared that the Kuomintang consisted ‘chiefly of the lower classes of society and lewd persons of the baser sort with whom it is not worthwhile to be comrades’. The renegades joined other parties, formed new ones or remained independent. Donald told Morrison bribes were being offered openly by Yuan’s men to secure the defections. His friend remained ‘very gloomy’ about China’s prospects. He was particularly concerned about the effect of the five-power loan which was just about to be signed and which he believed ‘riveted the foreign chain round her neck’. Morrison recorded his friend’s worst fears: ‘Bloodshed cannot now be avoided. The loan is unconstitutional’. Sun Yat-sen appealed to the foreign powers to end negotiations with Yuan Shi-k’ai immediately. I earnestly desire to preserve peace throughout the Republic, but my efforts will be rendered ineffective if financiers will supply Peking Government with money that would, and probably will, be used in waging war against people. If Peking Government is kept without funds there is a prospect of compromise between it and the people being effected, while the immediate effect of a liberal supply of money will probably be a precipitation of terrible and disastrous conflict.

It was to no avail. The final papers were signed and Donald declared: ‘It is the beginning of the end. Civil


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strife, civil war, bombs, assassination are now inevitable. This is the definite cleavage’. Morrison shared his concern about the loan, but from a different perspective. He wrote to Sir John Jordan, ‘Everyone must admit that the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank is well-conducted but everyone must admit that it is largely under German influence. When it imposed its will upon the Foreign Office it did a wise stroke of business for itself but it inflicted a serious blow to British interests in the Far East’.4 Sun sent a public telegram from Shanghai calling on Yuan to resign: Formerly you were invited to the Presidential office to bear the heavy responsibility of the country, and now you should leave it in order to save the country from being involved in trouble . . . If you can follow my advice, I will persuade the soldiers and the people of the South and East to lay down their arms. If you reject my sound advice I shall adopt the same measures against you as those used against the absolute monarchy. I have made my mind up now. This is my last advice and I hope you will consider it well.

Yuan Shi-k’ai chose to strike before his enemies had time to assemble their forces. He removed the four remaining Kuomintang governors from their provinces5 and installed his own men. On 14 July, Huang Hsing declared Nanking ‘independent’ and issued a proclamation calling for a ‘punitive expedition’ against the President. Four provinces joined the revolt—Kiangsu, Kiangsi, Anhwei and Kwantung— and on 20 July the insurrectionists tried to seize the


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telegraphs in Shanghai. This brought foreign forces into the affair and the British threw a military cordon around the city. On 23 July, Yuan officially dismissed Sun Yat-sen from his beloved railways commission and accused him of using railway funds to finance the rebellion. As soon as the guns began firing the President issued a statement branding the rebels ‘outlaws’ and prescribing ‘military pacification’ as the only possible response. The Japanese press reported Sun Yat-sen’s arrival there on 8 August and that of Huang Hsing and other Kuomintang leaders shortly after. In the field of battle the republicans proved no match for the government forces, who were paid and reequipped by the five-power loan, and by the beginning of September Yuan’s troops were attacking the last rebel outpost, Nanking. On 6 October Yuan’s men, acting in the name of a ‘Citizen’s Association’, surrounded the parliament building in Peking and declared they would not leave until the two chambers of the Assembly had elected a permanent president and vice-president. Yuan Shi-k’ai and his vice presidential nominee Li Yuan-hung were duly chosen. Four days later, on the anniversary of the 1911 revolution, Morrison wore his flamboyant decoration—two metres of yellow silk ribbon embroidered with Chinese characters—and drove in the rain with the ubiquitous Admiral Tsai to Peking’s Hall of Great Harmony. There he encountered the Japanese Minister Yamaza, ‘our most inveterate inebriate’, and heard Yuan—in F ield Marshal’s uniform with kneelength boots and sabre—read his inaugural address. The new American minister, P.S. Reinsch, was quite


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taken with the 53-year-old Yuan: ‘His expressive face, his quick gestures, his powerful neck and bullet head gave him the appearance of great energy. His eyes, which were fine and clear, alive with interest and mobile, were always brightly alert. They fixed themselves on the visitor with keen penetration, yet never seemed hostile’. Morrison contented himself with recording the idiosyncratic English menu: ‘. . . the food is made of swollow—the food is made of fine fish—the boiling chickens, the spinach and fine meet, boiling duck, the cake is made of yellow hen’s eggs . . .’ The day afterward, Reinsch journeyed to Nanking and on 4 November recorded his impressions: ‘They had sacked the town, ostensibly suppressing the last vestiges of the “Revolution” . . . Everywhere charred walls without roofs, the contents of houses broken and cast on the street, fragments of shrapnel on the walls—withal a depressing picture of misery’. In Peking on that day Yuan outlawed the Kuomintang. Morrison himself was becoming a similarly depressing picture of misery. At times he would rail against Yuan and his ‘cohort of unscrupulous Chinese jealous of the foreigner’, and his moods were affecting his private life. ‘Jennie more than anything fears that I will lose all energy and ambition and think only of my salary. But if this inactivity continues I am bound to deteriorate, bound to find my energy and ambition sapping away.’ At other times he would be galvanised into action over an issue such as Tibet, where once again he was siding with China against Britain’s ambitions to control the traditional suzerainty. This dichotomy was nicely, if


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embarrassingly, reflected in an item attributed to Donald which ran in The Bulletin magazine in Sydney: I see Dr Morrison daily, and he does not know whether to be tired of his job or not. He has a hard time of it. Advice is easy to give: the Chinaman listens to advice, but will do what he thinks he wants to do. Morrison feels that, frequently. During the Revolution he asked me, in Shanghai, why I did not enter the service of the Government. They were then offering me £250 a month. My reply was that, once a man entered the paid service of a Chinese his influence was gone. Morrison scoffed—now he admits it. Bitter proof. As Times correspondent he had twice the prestige and three times the influence.


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‘Billy’ Donald was mortified when his unguarded views about his friend and mentor appeared in The Bulletin. He held Morrison in respect bordering on awe and was appalled that his comments in a private letter to an Australian editor had found their way into print. He wrote to Morrison immediately, offering abject apologies, and Morrison—who had been outraged by the indiscretion—accepted them and soon welcomed him back into the intimate circle. In truth, Donald had reported his friend’s situation accurately. Morrison’s main concern, as he told his Chinese confidant Tsai Ting-kan, was the effect the item would have on his reputation at home. However, the matter was quickly forgotten and they resumed their close association as the rumblings of an approaching war in Europe reached the small foreign 364


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enclave in Peking. Indeed, the strength of their friendship would play a vital role in one of the great behind-thescenes dramas of that conflict. By early 1914 Japan had risen meteorically in power and international prestige. Unlike China, she was unified beneath a constitutional monarchy—vigorous, militaristic, single-minded and unencumbered by flabby notions of truth and honour in international dealings. And she was determined to develop her empire still further. While the Russo–Japanese War had quite properly been dubbed ‘Morrison’s War’, since then he had become increasingly concerned at Japan’s ambitions on the Asian mainland. In 1910 she had formally annexed Korea. In the 1911 Chinese revolution Mongolia became virtually independent, and Japan turned her attention to the eastern and inner portions of that province which bordered the Japanese possessions in Southern Manchuria. The obvious target for further territorial gain was the wounded dragon itself from which Japan had originally taken her written language, her arts and much of her civilisation. And from 1902 she was armed with the Anglo–Japanese Alliance that Chirol had so favoured— and Morrison had come to distrust—to serve these ends. The Alliance, which had been revised and extended in 1905 and 1911, provided that, ‘If by reason of an unprovoked attack or aggressive action, wherever arising, either of the High Contracting Powers should be involved in war in defence of its territorial rights or special interests . . . the other High Contracting Party will at once come to the assistance of its ally and will conduct the war in common and make peace in mutual agreement with it’.


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As a European war beckoned, Morrison believed the Alliance was the key to Japan’s utter determination to unlock the natural treasures of China—her vast coal and iron deposits, her huge agricultural potential and her limitless human capacity—to serve the rising imperial power of the East. In a telegram to the London Daily Telegraph, Morrison warned: ‘The question deeply affects British interests as the Japanese activities are directed principally to the Yangtze valley where adventurous Japanese, during the recent rebellion, secured from the rebel leaders important contracts and concessions. ‘Japan is now increasing her troops at various points in China, particularly at Hangkow . . . and her general policy bears out the Anglo–Chinese apprehensions’. The man who would help the invader fling open the door to Japanese interests, he feared, was Sun Yat-sen himself. When Sun fled to Tokyo following the second revolution he was personally devastated by the turn of events. The great republican transformation for which he had been struggling for nearly 20 years and which had held such promise had suddenly been swept from his grasp. Yuan Shi-k’ai was the demon incarnate at centre stage, but the real villains were the European powers who had given Yuan the five-power loan to be used against the true republican forces. It didn’t matter that Japan had been party to the loan. In his anguish, living in obscurity in Tokyo under the alias Hyashi, he could see only the pale and malevolent hand of the European oppressor pulling the strings of its Asian puppets. However, his debilitating depression was lifted and his spirits revived when a beautiful young Chinese woman, Soong Ching-ling, entered his life.


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The second daughter of one of his earliest supporters, Charles Soong, Ching-ling had been at a Wesleyan college in America (where she was known as Rosamonde) when the 1911 revolution broke out and had followed the events in the newspapers of Macon, Georgia. She graduated in June 1913 and joined her father in Japan where, as Sun’s treasurer, he too was a fugitive. Her elder sister E-ling had been doing some secretarial work for Sun Yat-sen and when she married, Ching-ling was honoured to take her place. Within weeks Ching-ling had also taken the place of Sun Yat-sen’s first wife (Nee Lu), who lived thereafter in one of the family homes in Macao. A reinvigorated Sun took up the cause of revolution once more but from a radically different standpoint. Morrison secured a letter through China’s security services that outlined Sun’s proposal for ‘co-operation’ with Japan. It was addressed to the Japanese Premier Count Okuna and subsequent events put its authenticity beyond question: . . . Considering that Japan and China are nations of the same race and same literature and that the former was also interested in the last revolution, there are weighty reasons for the revolutionists to look for help from Japan. After Japan has assisted China to reorganise her administration and religion and to develop her potential resources, the Governments and peoples of the two countries will be on much more intimate terms than between other countries. China will throw open all the trade centres in the country to Japanese labour and merchants and enable Japan to monopolise the commercial field in China. When the time comes, China will desire to free


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herself from the restrictions imposed by the former international dealings and to revise unfair treaties, she will need Japan’s support in handling diplomatic questions. She will also depend on Japan’s advice to reform her laws, judiciary and prison system. Moreover, Japan can facilitate the abolition of extra-territoriality by giving her consent first. This will be beneficial to the Japanese because it will enable them to live in the interior of China. By the time China restores her control of the Customs, she will enter into a commercial alliance with Japan, whereby Japanese manufactures imported into China and Chinese raw materials imported into Japan will be exempted from paying duties . . .

It went on in this vein for 12 pages and represented a total subordination of China’s interests to those of Japan. Morrison sent it to Lionel Pratt who, by 1914, was editing the North China Daily News. ‘It betrays the most astonishing ignorance of international affairs’, he said in a covering note. But while accepting it as ‘an authentic document’ he would not appreciate its real import until the following year. Pratt duly published it and shortly afterward Morrison sought to take leave in London where Jennie had preceded him with baby Ian. Yuan Shi-k’ai responded with his usual courtly turn of phrase: ‘Since the commencement of your duties you have within your power rendered valuable assistance and have eminently shown diligence and strenuous work. Such services are highly appreciated . . . you are hereby granted three months leave, at the expiration of which you are expected to come back to China so that you may continue to give me assistance and advice’.


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He arrived in London on 25 June 1914 and was plunged into a round of engagements, reporting back in a personal message to Yuan: ‘Immediate result of my interviews published in papers of estimated aggregate circulation of not less than 3.5 million has seen a rise in all Chinese securities amounting in all to some millions of dollars’. His address to the London Chamber of Commerce attracted a full house of distinguished listeners, including leading Government figures. He used the occasion to explain the tortured wrangling of the National Assembly and Yuan’s repudiation of its attempts to write a new constitution. He then summoned a body of seventy picked men to whom he submitted the Constitution . . . and called upon them, with the help of Professors Ariga [from Japan] and Goodnow to amend it. That amended Constitution, consisting of sixty-eight articles, is the present Provisional Constitution of China . . . The powers given to the elected President are much the same as the powers given to the Emperor of Japan.

But that was where the similarity ended. China was barely holding together as a nation state. Its provincial governors wielded enormous power and in Peking the drive for economic reconstruction had faltered almost as soon as it had begun. In Japan, by contrast, there were no political parties, just two clans, one of which controlled the navy, the other the army, and whose ageing leaders provided ‘advice’ through the government of Count Okuna to the mentally enfeebled new Emperor Taisho. But they acted as one on


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the need to expand Japan’s empire into China; and the European war would give them the excuse to make their move. They had 250 000 men under arms in no fewer than 19 divisions. Add the reserves and there were 1.5 million men ready to fight, with another 500 000 available each year for conscription under the universal military training laws. The navy boasted 25 battleships and cruisers and some 60 destroyers, scores of gunboats, torpedo boats and service craft. The whole military machine was primed for war and, once the fatal shots were fired at Sarajevo, they were ready to act. Their target was the German concession in Shantung, where they held a 99-year lease on Kiaochow Bay, with a colony extending in a semi-circle with a radius of 50 kilometres from the central point, incorporating the town of Tsingtao and rising to the 1200-metre peaks of the Lauting mountains. The Germans had also secured the right to build a railway from Tsingtao to Tsinanfu, the Chinese capital of Shantung Province, together with mineral concessions over the coal deposits along the way. They had renamed the peaks Prinz Heinrich, Bismarck and Moltke and built seaside resorts along the bay. They provided work for the 100 000 Chinese residents, farmers and fishermen, built their own small city beside Tsingtao and developed a technical middle school to teach young Chinese to work and repair the latest printing and other machinery. In time they built a polo field and because of Tsingtao’s proximity to Peking it became a popular resort for the foreign community in high summer. Englishmen from Hong Kong and the Yangtse Valley and Frenchmen


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from Yunnan and even Indo-China came up to enjoy the beaches and the rounds of entertainment. The German Admiralty saw Kiaochow Bay with its fine harbour as the major imperial naval base in the East and stationed a cruiser squadron there under the Command of Admiral Graf von Spee. However, his area of responsibility was huge. It included all of Asia, the western coast of the Americas and the Indian Ocean as far as Madagascar down to the Antarctic. His assets were absurdly limited for such a task—two big cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the light cruisers Leipzig, Dresden, Nurnburg and Emden, and a small fleet of older gunboats that were more trouble than they were worth. In any case, he left Kiaochow in the spring of 1914 with the bulk of his force and only the German admiralty knew his whereabouts. The British fleet in the area under Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram was led by the battleship Minotaur and included the cruisers Hampshire and Yarmouth, a light cruiser, Newcastle, no fewer than eight destroyers, six modern gunboats, three submarines and four torpedo boats. Another battleship, Triumph, was refitting in Hong Kong. Jerram waited in nearby Weihaiwei and was prepared to take on the German fleet when and if it returned. But Winston Churchill as F irst Lord of the Admiralty had other ideas; he sent the fleet south to protect Hong Kong and Shanghai, leaving Tsingtao virtually unguarded. Meanwhile, Morrison was preparing to leave London to return to Peking via Canada, and on 13 August the three Morrisons boarded their ship. By then Britain had been at war with Germany for just nine days. The


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European perspective Morrison had gained in the previous two months had stilled his fears about Japanese aggression. Indeed, when he received a telegram from Yuan Shi-k’ai asking him to return via Japan he readily agreed, but was surprised by the President’s concern. ‘What I think is chiefly to be feared in China’, he wrote in his diary, ‘is the scarcity of money, the inability to pay troops and the consequent mutiny of those troops’. Yuan Shi-k’ai was also alive to China’s military weakness and this provided the basis for an immediate decision by his government to declare its neutrality in the European conflict. Moreover, it was no part of the Chinese world view that the Middle Kingdom should concern itself with the squabbles of the Europeans. But he was deeply worried about Japan’s designs on the mainland through Shantung province. Morrison was only two days into his journey when Japan’s Foreign Minister, Viscount Kato, called the German Ambassador von Rex to the foreign office in Tokyo. Just after 7 p.m., and with deep bows, Kato presented him with a note to the Kaiser’s government. It was an ultimatum. Germany must withdraw all her armed vessels from the waters of Japan and the China Sea and hand over the colony of Kiaochow to Japan without condition or compensation. The action was taken after brief consultation with Britain and the form of words altered to include an ‘eventual’ return of the colony to China. But this was mere window dressing and Yuan was perfectly aware of it. Wellington Koo, the Chinese Minister in Washington, complained that the Japanese action was ‘a humiliation to China’. Count Okuna countered with a telegram


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to the press in America, saying: ‘Japan’s proximity to China breeds many absurd rumours; but I declare that Japan acts with a clear conscience in conformity with justice, and in perfect accord with her Ally [China]. Japan has no territorial ambitions and hopes to stand as the protector of the peace in the Orient’. Yuan pleaded with Ambassador Jordan for a joint action to secure the colony for China. He offered 50 000 troops to march immediately on Tsingtao. And, in the wake of the Japanese ultimatum, the Germans themselves initially offered to turn Kiaochow over to China. But Jordan was obdurate—the Anglo–Japanese Alliance had precedence—and Yuan was forced to accept a humiliating loss of face. The Germans withdrew their offer and a joint Japanese–British force attacked Tsingtao on 26 September. Some 50 000 Japanese troops landed on the Shantung Peninsula at Lungtow, 200 kilometres north of the German colony, while a naval force blockaded the port. The 5000 defenders under the command of Governor Meyer-Waldeck prepared themselves, on Berlin’s orders, for a fight to the death. Japanese planes bombed Tsingtao in one of the first aerial warfare actions in the East and as the Japanese troops moved toward the battlefield they gunned down Chinese protesters whose territory they had invaded. A British force of about 1500 troops from the Tientsin garrison, including a detachment of Sikhs, joined up with the Japanese for the final assault. By 7 November, the defenders were overwhelmed. Myer-Waldeck surrendered and within the hour the flag of the Rising Sun appeared atop every fort and major


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public building in Tsingtao. For two weeks after the capitulation the small British force remained in the colony to ensure the Chinese were not mistreated, then they embarked on the battleship Triumph to return to Hong Kong. Morrison had by then returned to Peking, where he was awarded the F irst Class Order of the Excellent Crop, the highest Chinese distinction a foreigner could receive, and was frequently called to the palace to confer with Yuan. ‘He professed the most hearty and sincere distrust of Japan conceivable’, Morrison noted. But they agreed that China’s best tactic was to do nothing to provoke a military response from the invader. Yuan sent his adviser to survey the situation in Manchuria, where the Japanese were consolidating their control over the southern part of the province. On his way back he attended a performance of the Tientsin Amateur Dramatic Club featuring an elaborate pageant entitled Song of the Allies. Soprano Winsome Hunt warbled a message from Japan . . . ‘As Britain’s ally/ in keeping with her solemn vow/ has so assisted the issue/by sweeping them out of Tsingtao . . .’ As the Anglo–Japanese songbird delivered her ditty, the Japanese Minister Hioki was calling on Yuan Shi-k’ai himself with one of the more extraordinary documents in diplomatic history. It was 18 January 1915 and Hioki had been summoned personally to Tokyo to receive it from his Foreign Ministry. It was marked TOP SECRET and Yuan read the preamble: ‘The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, being desirous of maintaining the general peace in Eastern Asia and further strengthening the good neighbourhood between the two nations,


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agree to the following’. There followed 21 demands which bear reporting in full: Group One 1. The Chinese Government engages to give full assent to all matters upon which the Japanese Government may hereafter agree with the rights of the German Government relating to the disposition of all rights, interests and concessions, which Germany, by virtue of treaties or otherwise, possesses in relation to the Province of Shantung. 2. The Chinese Government engages that within the Province of Shantung and along its coast no territory or island will be ceded or leased to a third Power under any pretext. 3. The Chinese Government consents to Japan’s building a railway from Chefoo or Lungkow to join the Kiaochow–Tsinanfu railway. 4. The Chinese Government engages, in the interest of trade and for the residence of foreigners, to open by herself as soon as possible certain important cities and towns in the Province of Shantung as Commercial Ports. What places shall be opened are to be jointly decided upon in a separate agreement.

Group Two The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, since the Chinese Government has always acknowledged the special position enjoyed by Japan in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia, agree to the following articles:


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5. The two Contracting Parties mutually agree that the term of lease of Port Arthur and Dalny and the term of lease of the South Manchurian Railway and the Antung–Mukden Railway shall be extended to the period of 99 years. 6. Japanese subjects in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia shall have the right to lease or own land required either for erecting suitable buildings for trade and manufacture or for farming. 7. Japanese subjects shall be free to reside and travel in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia and to engage in business and in manufacture of any kind whatsoever. 8. The Chinese Government agrees to grant to Japanese subjects the right of opening the mines in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia. As regards what mines are to be opened, they shall be decided upon jointly. 9. The Chinese Government agrees that in respect of the (two) cases mentioned herein below the Japanese Government’s consent shall be first obtained before action is taken: (a) Whenever permission is granted to the subject of a third Power to build a railway or to make a loan with a third Power for the purpose of building a railway in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia. (b) Whenever a loan is to be made with a third power pledging the local taxes of South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia as security. 10. The Chinese Government agrees that if the Chinese Government employs political, financial or military advisers or instructors in South Manchuria or Eastern Inner Mongolia, the Japanese Government shall first be consulted.


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11. The Chinese Government agrees that the control and management of the Kirin–Changchun Railway shall be handed over to the Japanese Government for a term of 99 years dating from the signing of this Agreement. Group Three The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, seeing that Japanese financiers and the Han-yehping Co. have close relations with each other at present and desiring that the common interests of the two nations shall be advanced, agree to the following articles: 12. The two Contracting Parties mutually agree that when the opportune moment arrives the Han-yehping Company shall be made a joint concern of the two nations and they further agree that without the previous consent of Japan, China shall not by her own act to dispose of the rights and property of whatsoever nature of the said Company nor cause the said Company to dispose freely of the same. 13. The Chinese Government agrees that all mines in the neighbourhood of those owned by the Han-yehping Company shall not be permitted, without the consent of the said Company, to be worked by other persons outside of the said Company; and further agrees that if it is desired to carry out any undertaking which, it is apprehended, may directly or indirectly affect the interests of the said Company, the consent of the said Company shall first be obtained. Group Four The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, with the object of effectively preserving the territorial integrity of China, agree to the following special articles:


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14. The Chinese Government engages not to cede or lease to a third Power any harbour or bay or island along the coast of China. Group F ive 15. The Chinese Central Government shall employ influential Japanese advisers in political, financial and military affairs. 16. Japanese hospitals, churches and schools in the interior of China shall be granted the right of owning land. 17. Inasmuch as the Japanese Government and the Chinese Government have had many cases of dispute between Japanese and Chinese police to settle, cases which caused no little misunderstanding, it is for this reason necessary that the police departments of important places (in China) shall be jointly administered by Japanese and Chinese or that the police departments of these places shall employ numerous Japanese, so that they may at the same time help to plan for the improvement of the Chinese Police Service. 18. China shall purchase from Japan a fixed amount of munitions of war (say 50 per cent or more) of what is needed by the Chinese Government; or that there shall be established in China a Sino–Japanese jointly-worked arsenal. Japanese technical experts are to be employed and Japanese material to be purchased. 19. China agrees to grant to Japan the right of constructing a railway connecting Wuchang with Kiukiang and Nanchang, another line between Nanchang and Hangchow, and another between Nanchang and Chaochou. 20. If China needs foreign capital to work mines, build railways and construct harbour-works (including dock-


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yards) in the Provinces of Fukien, Japan shall be first consulted. 21. China agrees that Japanese subjects shall have the right of missionary propaganda in China.

The demands were breathtaking. Hioki is said to have banged his walking stick on Yuan’s dining table. Refusal meant war. Britain must not be told. Secrecy was vital. Yuan Shi-k’ai must obey! For several days Yuan said nothing but then turned to Morrison, who was appalled. ‘They are worse than many presented by a victor to his vanquished enemy,’ he said. Moreover, the similarity between them and the suggestions from Sun Yat-sen were quite apparent. This added another dimension to the plot—the Japanese had the revolutionary leader whom they could play as a trump card should they seek to march on Peking and depose Yuan. The Chinese President was unnerved and still inclined to keep the matter secret. Clearly, he feared the Japanese response should he break silence. But there was also another agenda at play. Yuan by now had reached the view that a return to a monarchical system—with himself as Emperor—was the best alternative open to China. And he wanted Japanese support for his imperial designs. However, Morrison was under no such constraints. He knew, he wrote, that ‘Disclosure was China’s one safeguard and yet it was with the greatest difficulty that I could induce Yuan to reveal the text of the document’. In fact, Presidential permission was never given. Instead, Morrison turned to his friend and compatriot, Donald, who was writing for The Times from Peking, and even


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then he was forced to enact an elaborate pantomime so that he might deny that he had handed the reporter a copy of the document. In his memoir penned by Earl A. Selle, Donald related the scene in Morrison’s home.1 The reporter, who was aware that some demands had been made but could get no confirmation, was ushered into Morrison’s office. ‘George,’ he said, ‘I’ve come to tell you about a plan . . .’ ‘I know,’ Morrison interrupted. ‘It’s risky business.’ He rose and looked strangely at Donald. ‘Would you excuse me? I have to go to the library for a moment.’ Donald tensed . . . while he watched, Morrison straightened a number of papers on his desk. Had his hand stayed longer on those in the centre? Not a movement escaped Donald. He fumbled for a cigar, and then the Yuan Shi-k’ai adviser walked past him without a glance and out of the office. This was it. This was Donald’s chance. He stepped toward the desk. As he did a door squeaked open behind him. He stopped short, then turned. A white-gowned Chinese boy armed with a teapot and cup had entered. Donald relaxed, smiled and waited for him to leave, but the boy lingered. ‘Look,’ Donald said desperately, ‘hurry out and get me a cigar.’ When the boy left, he quickly snatched up the papers which Morrison had seemed to indicate. Footsteps in the hall. Hastily he stuffed the papers inside his coat. Morrison entered. ‘Sorry old boy,’ he said, ‘that I kept you waiting so long.’ ‘That’s all right, George. I’ll be running along anyway . . .’


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At his desk, Donald opened the document. Before him was the translation [of the 21 Demands]. Morrison had played the game.

Donald had his scoop and Morrison had his way. He personally delivered a copy of the demands to Jordan so that Donald’s report could be officially confirmed. The story broke wide open. Other Peking correspondents quickly followed it up and it made headlines around the world. For nearly a month the Japanese said nothing, then claimed that there were only eleven demands and falsified those. Still Yuan refused to reject the demands publicly and Morrison was driven to a mixture of anguish and rage which found expression in his diary. China was getting ‘just the treatment she deserved’, he wrote. ‘Nothing is ever achieved and all the government’s energies are put into regulations and reports that never lead to anything and to obstruction which drives friendly powers frantic.’ Since he had joined ‘this august service’ China had lost Outer Mongolia and Outer Tibet entirely and had surrendered her authority in Manchuria, Eastern Tibet, Shantung, the Yangtse and Fukien. ‘There will soon be nothing left. Since my joining she has accomplished not one single solitary thing.’ This was not the view of the Japanese. Morrison noted in his diary on 9 April that the prominent adviser to the Japanese government, Masami Oishi, had claimed the main impediments to a Japan–China alignment in the Pan-Japanism movement were Sir John Jordan and Morrison himself.


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In May came a further ultimatum. It was accompanied by a general Japanese mobilisation in Manchuria and a declaration of martial law in the southern region of the province. By now, however, exposure of the demands had forced Britain to persuade her Japanese ally to withdraw the more outlandish elements from Group F ive. Jordan told the Chinese President that acceptance of the remaining demands was ‘the best thing to do’. On 8 May, Yuan called a meeting of the Board of Political Affairs and told his ministers of Jordan’s advice. Since China did not have the military strength to resist Japan and was diplomatically isolated she could only bow to the ultimatum. ‘This is both sad and humiliating,’ Yuan said, ‘but let us all remember it and do our best to wipe out this disgrace.’ Morrison wrote, ‘Donald thinks there will be another Revolution. People getting to the limit of their patience. I am disposed to agree with him. We are back to the old Manchu regime’.


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Morrison was closer to the mark than he knew. Yuan Shi-k’ai had already decided by mid-1915 that he would succeed the Manchus with a dynasty of his own. He was urged on by his son K’e-ting—whom Morrison described as ‘half paralysed and half-witted’—his closest confederate, Liang Shih-yi—whom Donald called ‘China’s evil genius’—and the inner compulsions of Lord Acton’s homily that all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yuan had come to identify his own interests with those of his nation and from that position there is no easy retreat. Indeed, the small cabal around him was tremendously active in whipping up the chimera of support for a monarchist movement. By 15 August they had created the Society of Planning for Peace and Stability (Ch’ou-an hui) 383


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to promote their cause in Peking while simultaneously writing declarations of support from tame provincial officials. The first clear signal of Yuan’s intentions had occurred late in 1914 when he re-instituted the ceremony of ‘Worship to Heaven’ similar to that followed by the emperors. At dawn on the winter solstice, 23 December, the President drove in an armoured car to the magnificent Temple of Heaven on the southern outskirts of Peking. The entire route was covered with yellow sand in the imperial manner and was lined three-deep with soldiers who had been stationed there in the biting cold since the previous evening. At the southern gate of the Temple the President entered a vermilion coach which took him into the great enclosure. He was then carried inside the building in a sedan chair where he changed from his F ield Marshal’s uniform into the purple sacrificial robe with its 12 embossed dragons, and a tight-fitting cap beneath an oblong board of ancient imperial design. He prayed to Heaven on behalf of his people and after 90 minutes of ceremonial splendour sped back to the Forbidden City. To the American Minister Reinsch he rationalised the event as a tactic in the event of crop failure: ‘Of course, the worship will not guarantee good crops, but at any rate it will relieve the government of responsibility.’ He was dissembling. Morrison was alarmed by the monarchist movement. Indeed, he was increasingly distressed by the way the country was drifting into ever more abject poverty and disorganisation. ‘It is a humiliation to have foreigners protected by


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extra-territoriality, no confidence being felt in the Chinese administration of justice’, he wrote in his diary. It is a humiliation to permit domestic slavery—the only country in the world where traffic is permitted in its own flesh and blood. It is a humiliation to be unable to borrow money unless foreigners control the expenditure thereof. It is a humiliation to have to get railways built under foreign supervision, no trust being possible in China’s good faith. It is a humiliation to know that the only charitable medical work being done in China is done by foreign missionaries. It is a humiliation to know that in China no protection is given to the subject, no guarantee of law and order, no roads or railways but are foreign built, no protection is given to the worker in dangerous trades, no protection to child life, no hospitals for the insane. It is a humiliation to have to extract evidence by torture.

Like Yuan, Morrison was also beginning to identify with his country of adoption, but without the hubris of presidential power. In fact, the frustrations of the advisory role were beginning to affect his health. He complained of lassitude, ‘a slackness in the fibres’, and when he next met with the President on 17 August he discovered Yuan in even worse condition. ‘He looks puffy and ill with asthmatic breathing’, he wrote. ‘An entirely unsatisfactory interview; gives me despondency to hear such empty talk. Complained that he was much hampered by having to act constitutionally.’


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The only bright spot in the Morrison firmament was provided by Jennie, who seven days later gave birth to a second son, Alistair Robin Gwynne. Jennie had hoped for a daughter but both parents were ‘thrilled’ with the wellbehaved little boy. Coincidentally, Yuan Shi-k’ai was now using his children in an effort to still the fears of those who believed he had imperial aspirations. ‘I am certainly not stupid enough to try it on behalf of my sons and grandsons’, he told a military colleague. People have begun to suspect this because I have restored five noble ranks for the Han Chinese. However, I have postponed the award of such ranks for the moment because of the people’s suspicion. The only possible difference [between a president and an emperor] lies in the succession. But my eldest son, K’e-ting is suffering from a chronic disease; the second K’e-wen, wishes to lead a secluded life; the third is quite unsuited to government duties; the others are still very young. I would hesitate to make any of them a lieutenant, let alone trusting one with the heavy duties of state.

Again Yuan was dissembling. At the urging of K’e-ting he had organised a new northern army known as the Standard Regiments under his personal command, and however busy with other duties he never missed a weekly inspection until September 1915 when he handed over the command to K’e-ting himself. In truth, there were grounds for the reorganisation of government, if only to reduce the power of provincial military governors. But in Morrison’s view this was not


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the time for such a radical change, especially in the wake of the surrender to most of the 21 Japanese demands which had outraged the nation, bringing a spontaneous boycott of Japanese goods and despoiling the presidential image. However, the monarchical movement received an unexpected shot in the arm in November when the American Professor Frank Goodnow, who had returned to China at Yuan’s request, wrote a paper recommending a conditional return to the monarchy. ‘The change from an autocratic to a republican government four years ago was too violent to support any strong hope of immediate success’, it said. ‘The present arrangement cannot be regarded as satisfactory.’ Goodnow recommended a monarchical system provided there was no strong opposition from either the Chinese people or the foreign powers, if the succession were clearly defined by legislation rather than the monarch himself, and if the Crown’s powers were subject to a new constitution. Yuan gleefully trumpeted the American’s support, but without declaring any of the conditions. A statement from the Society of Planning for Peace and Stability said, ‘America is the oldest republic in the world. Yet its great expert in political theory, Dr Goodnow, has declared that as a political system, monarchism is actually better than republicanism, and that China should choose monarchism. Dr Goodnow is by no means the only one who advocates this; scholars of many lands agree with him’. Morrison let his views be known publicly to Reuter’s news agency. ‘Dr Goodnow never gave blank endorsement to a monarchy’, he said, ‘but advised it under certain circumstances’. The report continued: ‘Goodnow’s


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friends consider that the Government is making a fool of him. Reuter’s Agency learns that Dr Morrison opposes the monarchical project, considering that at the present time it is inadvisable’. Morrison wrote directly to the President stating his opposition to the change. Not only was the timing illchosen and unsettling, he said, ‘It is most injurious to your honour, for have you not affirmed in the eyes of the world most solemnly that you would uphold the republic and would be forever bound by the oath you swore in accepting the office of President’. Yuan was not pleased. For two weeks he declined to meet with his political adviser and Morrison’s despondency returned. ‘Fear I am steadily deteriorating’, he wrote. ‘Surrounded by perfidy and rascality in an atmosphere of mendacity tempered by make-believe, how could anyone maintain his self-respect?’ He resolved to try to put the issue to one side and concentrate on what he believed was the fundamental issue confronting the nation—a declaration of war on the side of the Allies. Only this would give China a seat at the Peace Conference and the chance to resist Japan’s demands for Chinese territory. When he finally met with Yuan he found a ready ear. The President was deeply concerned about Japanese intentions. He would deal with it as a matter of urgency. Indeed, he told Morrison that he could facilitate the decision by having the four powers—Britain, France, Russia and Japan—invite China to join the Alliance. He had been rebuffed by Sir John Jordan once over Tsingtao; he would not lose face like that again. Morrison agreed. Jordan’s high-handed action had been unconscionable. But the issue, Yuan said, must not


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be used to divert him from his manifest destiny—to ascend the Dragon Throne. Morrison was disgusted. ‘This is in accord with the prophecy of the Japanese and Sun Yat-sen’, he wrote in his diary. ‘He makes himself, his country and his advisers a byword and a derision.’ But at least he had his mission to pursue. And over the next two years it would become an all-consuming endeavour. Yuan for his part pressed on with the imperial program. Liang Shih-yi set up yet another monarchical front on his behalf, the National Petitioners’ Association, and Yuan’s hand-picked National Council of State accepted a ‘people’s petition’ which had materialised in only 24 hours. They decided to convene a National Congress of Representatives to decide the issue. The monarchist cabal became ever more brazen in garnering evidence of provincial support. They sent telegrams to generals, governors and other nominees stating, ‘The following words must be included in your messages exhorting the president to accept the throne: “We, the representatives of the people, represent the true wishes of the whole nation in urging the present president, Yuan Shi-k’ai, to assume the title of emperor and in giving him all the powers of an emperor. May Heaven save him. May his sons and grandsons inherit this position for a myriad of generations to come” ’. The illusory nature of the campaign was revealed in the subsequent message to all recipients of the telegram. It cautioned that, ‘No matter how careful we are, some of the communications between us might survive as permanent records. Once they are known to outsiders we cannot hope to escape severe criticism and attacks which will mar the opening chapter of the history of the new dynasty’. The


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solution was clear. ‘After careful deliberation, the central government has decided that all communications should be burned. Please supervise the destruction in person.’ In less than a month some 1993 ‘representatives’ from across the nation assembled in Peking and on 21 November they voted unanimously to support a resolution in precisely the words used in the telegram. The Council of State presented a 3000-word memorial to Yuan addressing him as ‘Your Holy Majesty’ and urging him to accept the throne. The President modestly declined the honour. F ifteen minutes later another memorial of equal length arrived, this time demanding that he accept the Mandate of Heaven. Graciously, Yuan acceded. Morrison wrote a diary entry sharp with sarcasm: ‘Today Yuan Shi-k’ai accepted the throne. Quite a surprise! Such is the silly make-believe’. However, in China’s mendicant state no such radical change could take place without the support of the foreign powers. Sir John Jordan, now in his dotage, told Yuan, ‘If the people want Your Excellency to be president, you will be president; if they want you to be emperor, you will be emperor. In any case, it represents the wishes of the people and Your Excellency is [therefore] not acting against your presidential oath’. Japan opposed it but Yuan used Jordan’s words in a note to the Japanese with copies to Britain, France, Russia and the United States. However, the tactic backfired; now all the powers responded with a note advising against the monarchy. Nevertheless, on 31 December 1915 Yuan announced that the next day would begin the Grand Constitutional


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Era and preparations went ahead for the enthronement. Immediately the anti-monarchists under the young General Ts’ai O declared their goals at the very dawn of the new era—‘to protect the constitution of the Republic of China at any cost and to eliminate the traitor; to reconvene the National Assembly to elect a new head of state; and to reconstitute China as a federation of autonomous provinces with governors elected by the people’. Yunnan, where Ts’ai O had been military governor, declared its independence and the young general led his F irst Army into neighbouring Szechwan. Jordan reported that ‘the Yunnan movement is one of those things which have marked the beginning of all dynasties in Chinese history’ and suggested that it would peter out. Morrison went to see Yuan. ‘He is rushing headlong into perdition’, he wrote. But Yuan shared Jordan’s otherworldly insouciance over Yunnan, saying it would be put down in 20 days. Morrison offered to journey south himself and deliver a personal assessment. Yuan happily agreed and the Australian took off immediately, returning in less than a month with a hard-headed assessment: unless Yuan renounced the throne the whole of the south would rise up. His own forces were in a state of disarray. The presidency itself was hanging in the balance. Yuan took the warning soberly, but within days had returned to the Imperial fantasy. Indeed, Morrison was privy to one of the more hilarious sideshows of the crumbling leadership: a dress rehearsal of the enthronement amid a squabbling group of wives and concubines: Yuan sitting with his crown; three crowns at his side for the first, second and third wives on descending levels. F irst wife


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came in arrayed; kowtowed; took her proper seat. Long delay and second wife (the Korean wife) failed to come. Sent for peremptorily. She came in but refused to take her seat saying Yuan had promised her a throne on the same level as the Number One. Hearing this, Number One jumped down from the throne and went for Number Two with her fingers. The Master of Ceremonies, Wang Kan-nien was supervising the Enthronement but he could not lay impious hands on the struggling Empresses, whereupon Yuan waddled down from the throne and tried to separate the two combatants. Order was finally restored but the rehearsal was postponed.

A measure of the desperation and unreality convulsing the palace was revealed on Tsai Ting-kan’s next visit to Morrison’s house when he reported a plan to offer the rebel leader Ts’ai O the Premiership under Yuan. But other advisers had talked it down. On 17 March there was a fateful meeting between the President and his ‘evil genius’, and Liang Shih-yi himself recorded the occasion.1 We sat opposite each other. He [Yuan] dipped his finger in a cup of tea and began to draw maps on his desk, explaining to me the detailed [military] situation and his counteractions. He did this several times and then told me, ‘As things stand, I have made up my mind to abolish the empire. You will perhaps work out a peace formula with Ts’ai O. I will make any concessions as long as there are ways to maintain peace and order’.

But the only sure way, Yuan realised, was to abandon his imperial designs and on 22 March, as President of the Republic of China, he decreed the abolition of the


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Empire. It had lasted 83 days. However, if he hoped that the gesture would allow him to resume his presidential term he was mistaken. The rebellion actually gathered momentum and key commanders surrendered to Ts’ai O, who insisted that Yuan must leave office immediately. In Peking, the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications ceased to pay silver on demand and confidence in their notes was badly shaken. Desperate to rally the people, Yuan proposed sweeping governmental changes that would transfer real power to the Premier and his Cabinet. Yuan himself would control little more than a bodyguard of some 20 000 Hunan soldiers. Tsai Ting-kan continued to call nearly every day, as did Donald and others, keeping Morrison in touch. On 7 April the Admiral arrived at night ‘somewhat perturbed’, Morrison recorded. ‘Evidently he had been getting a wigging from the President. A leading article in The Shanghai Times came to the conclusion that he had failed and must retire.’ Morrison’s own view was not much different, though he retained a charitable affection for the man himself. He might condemn his close advisers, he wrote, ‘but I could not severely condemn Yuan who had failed most lamentably and involved me in his downfall. Truly Liang Shihyi has been his evil genius’. A few days later he noted, ‘Jordan called, doddering and vacant. He thought Yuan must go but what about the future? Reinsch, whom he had just seen, thought that Yuan would pull through’. Then on 29 April Morrison met with Yuan, who received him ‘in the usual friendly way’. He was suffering a toothache and rubbed his teeth with alcohol using a chopstick covered with cotton wool as a cleaner. ‘He has


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lost weight, his face somewhat drawn. He said he was tired in the head and in the body’, Morrison wrote. ‘He would like to retire and have some rest and he looked like it. But who was to take up the responsibility of his post? ‘Walked home with Tsai Ting-kan who virtually admitted that Yuan Shi-k’ai was making arrangements to withdraw.’ A few days later he wrote to G.W. Prothero, editor of the Quarterly Review, summing up his expectations. ‘Yuan Shi-k’ai is still in office’, he said, ‘but his position is daily becoming more difficult. He is prepared to retire but has considerable anxiety as to his personal safety’. By the end of May, all support for Yuan had eroded and his downfall was assured. In anticipation, Morrison and the Admiral decided to call on the Vice President and obvious successor, Li Yuan-hung, who lived on the same street as Morrison. They caught a rickshaw and at the gate sent in their cards. Shown into a side room, they were immediately ushered into Li’s presence—a powerfully built man with a heavy moustache and dressed in a long purple gown. Tsai bowed deeply. Morrison shook hands and Li led them into a sitting room fitted out with Western-style chairs around a central table and in an alcove by one wall a rack of Chinese books. On the table was a photograph of the German general and statesman, Hindenberg. Morrison noted, ‘One could not but be struck by the resemblance borne by the Vice President and that famous Hun. Others no doubt had recognised the likeness, hence the portrait. On the wall was a group of German generals’. Li defended the President and condemned his advisers. Morrison concurred and left the meeting under


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no doubt that should he assume the presidency Li would at least take his counsel. When he finally reached home he went to his study and as usual detailed the momentous events of the day. On this occasion, however, precedence was given to a family occasion. It was 31 May. ‘My darling Ian’s third birthday’, he wrote. ‘God grant that he may grow up to a noble manhood.’ The next day Tsai sent him a hurried note, ‘I saw the President this morning in his bedroom. He is truly sick but not dangerously ill. I said everybody is anxious for his health’. They had good reason. Yuan Shi-k’ai died a few minutes after 10 a.m. on 6 June. He was 56. Tsai told Morrison that on his deathbed he told his son, ‘It is you who have brought me to this’. But there was no truth, as reported in the papers, that he had slapped K’e-ting in the face. In his valediction published the same day, Yuan recommended that the Vice-President succeed him and on 7 June Li became President in a quiet and dignified ceremony. Li praised his predecessor’s role in founding the Chinese republic and restoring peace and order to the country. Morrison was less forgiving of his public failings but was affectionate to the private man, who he remembered ‘clad in his old velvet coat that to my knowledge [had] been in use summer and winter since early 1912. It reached down to near the ankles. Below were seen a pair of ill-fitting khaki pants and common Chinese slippers’. Three days later Morrison and other advisers met with the new President at his home and they spoke at some length in his summerhouse set among a pattern of


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ornate gardens. Morrison ranged over many subjects, but his principal concern was Japan’s designs on China. ‘By one bold stroke China can and must raise herself among the nations and place her relations with foreign countries upon a new footing,’ he said. ‘And she can do this by joining the Allies! ‘This can be done. I am confident and I could help her to accomplish it.’ He had developed a plan to overcome the Japanese veto by confronting some of their leading figures directly and pointing out the consequences of her opposition and the potential benefits to Japan of a change of policy. President Li gave his permission and Morrison prepared to take Jennie and the boys to Tokyo with him. He chose Viscount Kato, the former Foreign Minister and leader of the most powerful faction in Japanese politics, as his point of contact. The Vice-Minister was his brother-in-law and the two chief permanent officials were his son-in-law and his former private secretary. Morrison had known Kato for 17 years and a mutual trust had developed. The current Foreign Minister was his nominee. They met on an August morning at Kato’s home— itself an extraordinary gesture to a foreigner—and Morrison was at the top of his form. The interview, scheduled for an hour, extended into the afternoon as Morrison brought a totally new perspective to the issue. The real question, he said, was the activity of the Germans, who were taking advantage of China’s neutrality to develop commercial enterprises in the Chinese interior that would otherwise be open to Japan and the other powers. Moreover, this was being financed by the indemnity


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China was forced to pay Germany in the wake of the Boxer uprising—some 6000 pounds sterling every day. If China declared war the indemnity would be terminated. The Germans were occupying no fewer than 118 posts in China’s Maritime Customs, many of which could be expected to go to Japanese personnel once the Germans were expelled. But this could only happen in the event of a declaration of war. In the Salt Gabelle, the second highest post was filled by a German. Japan would have an undisputed claim to fill this vacancy. Once China denounced her treaties with Germany a whole new series of treaties would be possible after the war between the Allied powers, Japan chief among them. The Chinese states bordering the subcontinent were strongly Muslim and Germany’s ally Turkey was increasing its influence in the region. A declaration of war would put an end to this and permit other countries such as Japan to pursue their interests in the area. Kato listened intently. In a report of the conversation to Sir William Conyngham Greene, the British Ambassador in Tokyo, Morrison said Kato told him, ‘The case now appears in a different light. Circumstances have changed and the question might be approached anew.’ Morrison leaped at the opening. ‘If the case were reopened, Japan would have to take the lead and herself induce China to join the Alliance and terminate relations with Germany. Surely it is to Japan’s advantage to do so.’ Kato replied: ‘You have set forth the case in a new and interesting light. With the death of Yuan Shi-k’ai circumstances have changed. [In the past] we had to be careful not to raise up dangerous antagonism for the future. The uncertainty is now less.’


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The ‘uncertainty’, Morrison knew, was the outcome of the war. Until then Japan had hedged her bets. Despite having sided with the Allies she had treated all Germans in Japan with the utmost consideration and made no move to engage the German fleet in the Pacific. Clearly, they believed the tide of battle was beginning to favour the Allies. In fact, the British and the Australians regarded Japan’s passivity as the lesser of two evils. An earlier aggressive Japanese move to replace Germany as the colonial power in territories such as Papua New Guinea was firmly discouraged. However, Morrison let the matter pass without comment. By now it was 4 p.m. and he was well pleased with the day’s work. When Kato asked, ‘You will have no objections to my bringing your views before the [Japanese] Ministers?’ he knew his arguments had found their mark. He politely took his leave. On his return to Peking he made a similar appeal to the Japanese Minister Baron Hyashi and with similar results. He then began a letter writing campaign drawing on all his powers to influence events. He sought to persuade Lovat Fraser, who was writing The Times leaders on the Far East, to press the case. I say now that Japan can be induced, provided the British Government will act with reasonable firmness, to join in inviting China to become a member of the Alliance, to terminate her treaties with Germany, to expel Germans from China. And I have not the shadow of a doubt that Japan agreeing to do this there will be no difficulty in obtaining the acquiescence of China. Surely you can help to induce the


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British Government to adopt a new and more resolute attitude both in Tokyo and in Peking.

Frustrated by the daily decline of the intransigent Sir John Jordan, Morrison sought to have him recalled, writing to his friends in the British establishment. ‘We have scrapped some of our useless generals and yet we retain in this important post in Peking a doddering, muddle-headed Minister whose timorousness is proverbial.’ Not for long, however. By the end of the year Jordan had been relieved of his post. But the chargé d’affaires, Beilby Francis Alston, who was first in line to replace him, was ‘regarded by the Chinese as a buffoon. He stammers and has a curiously unreposeful and undignified manner’. And as Morrison got to know him better his opinion of the man sank even further. Meanwhile, his campaign received a welcome boost early in the New Year when Germany announced that her submarines would sink all ships approaching the British Isles whatever flag they carried. America was outraged. More than 120 of their nationals had been killed when a German submarine sank the Lusitania off the Irish coast in May 1915. Since then anti-German sentiment had been increasing. This was the last straw. On 4 February 1917, the Minister Reinsch was visiting with Morrison in his country cottage when a cablegram arrived. The American Government had not only broken off diplomatic relations with Germany but was asking neutral powers to follow her lead. Both men immediately returned to Peking, Morrison to pen an appeal to President Li Yuan-hung and the Cabinet: ‘In the strongest possible manner I urge that China accept with alacrity the


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invitation extended to her by America to join with America in severing diplomatic relations with Germany. It is a heaven sent opportunity. It is the greatest opportunity ever given to China’. Donald was also galvanised by the development and used his contacts in the Chinese cabinet to urge action. But they found the President ‘weak, vacillating and tremulous, obsessed with the idea that Germany would be victorious’. And when Morrison appealed to Beilby Alston, the British chargé changed the subject and told stories of Lloyd George’s womanising, declaring that whenever he opened a Church bazaar ‘he always used to “roger” the Baptist clergyman’s wife!’ Undeterred, Morrison redoubled his efforts within the Chinese government and on 8 February, after a sixhour meeting, the Chinese Cabinet issued a protest to Germany and a threat that ‘diplomatic relations will be broken off unless the present submarine warfare is abandoned’. The Germans were obdurate and on 13 March China broke off all diplomatic relations, seized German ships off Shanghai and, with the exception of Tsingtao, occupied all German concessions on the mainland. It was an important step forward in the campaign, but still a long way from the ultimate declaration of war. And in Tokyo Sun Yat-sen was doing his best to persuade Britain to keep China out of the conflict. He wrote to Lloyd George, ‘I owe my life to England’, he said. ‘It is both as a friend of England and as a Chinese patriot that I have to point out to you the momentous consequences that the campaign undertaken by agents of yours urging China to go to war may have for China and for England.’ The result would be indiscriminate massacres of foreign-


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ers, outbursts of Muslim fanaticism ‘and eventually a state of anarchy as would disrupt the Entente itself and bring it to disaster’. In June he returned to Shanghai and began to foment unrest against the Peking Government. He was not alone. A new threat to stability suddenly arrived the following month in the form of General Chang Hsun, who had risen from the ranks to lead a ‘pigtail army’ in the struggle against the republicans. He was so devoted to the Manchus that even after the fall of the dynasty he insisted his men retain their queues as a symbol of their fealty to the imperial cause. As the insurgents from the south destabilised the polity, demanded changes and protested against President Li’s removal of Prime Minister Tuan Chi-jui, Li turned to General Chang to mediate. Chang entered Peking with his colourful troops on 14 June and almost immediately Li regretted it. Chang, he realised, had become unstable and almost uncontrollable. Morrison was taking a few days away from the baking heat of the Peking summer touring Chihli with the new Premier, Wu Ting-fang. The party included an ornithologist, John David La Touche, and Morrison was indulging an interest in birds that would become almost an obsession with his son Alistair. Jennie had given birth to their third son, Colin George Mervyn, in April and the family was holidaying at their seaside house in Pei-tai-ho. He was just finishing a letter to Jennie when he received a telegram from Donald: ‘Emperor Restored two o’clock Donald’. He scribbled a hasty postscript: ‘I have shown this to Wu Ting-fang. He cannot believe it. He is obviously much agitated. I have wired Donald asking him for conformation saying, “Wu Ting-fang incredulous” ’.


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Only later did Morrison discover the mad events of the previous night in Peking when General Chang in a state of wild inebriation after a banquet decided to personally restore the 11-year-old Pu Yi to the throne. The child Emperor and his entourage had remained in a small section of the Forbidden City as part of Yuan Shi-k’ai’s negotiations ending the dynasty. When the General and a band of his fellow officers arrived, Morrison was told ‘eunuchs in a cold sweat dashed in all directions’. The Lustrous Concubine and the Grand Guardian came out in terror to see what was the matter. Chang Hsun announced in a loud voice, ‘There is to be a restoration today and I have to ask the Young Master to come to the audience-hall without delay.’ ‘Whose idea is this?’ stuttered the Grand Guardian. ‘It’s old Chang Hsun’s idea,’ said Chang with a grin, ‘so you see there’s nothing for you to worry your head about.’ The Grand Guardian rolled his eyes piteously towards the Lustrous Concubine [who] by this time was in tears, and the Grand Guardian could not trust himself to say a word. Suddenly there came a hubbub of voices from the courtyard as Chang’s guards called for the Emperor . . . In a few minutes the Grand Guardian appeared once more, escorting the 11year-old Emperor whom he assisted to mount the Dragon Throne. Chang at once flopped on his knees in a kowtow, imitated by his followers, some of whom seemed a little out of practice. There was a chorus of ‘May He reign for ten thousand years!’2

Two days later Morrison again wrote to Jennie: ‘The monarchy is already trembling, in a week it will totter and


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in a fortnight fall . . . Li Yuan-hung is in the Japanese legation whither he went after being refused admittance by the damned fool sisters of the French hospital’. He was outraged by the events and visited some of his anger on the President of the Foreign Ministry, Liang Tun-yen, whom he had known for at least 18 years. ‘You are an enlightened man, of a different stamp from the illiterate barbarian Chang Hsun’, he wrote, ‘and the feeling of resentment is all the greater thereby. You are in great danger and as a friend I urge you before it is too late to resign your office and get away from Peking’. Two days later, another letter followed news of Liang’s actions toward Morrison’s boon companion, Admiral Tsai Ting-kan. It was somewhat less restrained. Yesterday I learned of your visit to the Japanese Minister . . . Misty as your faculties have become by the prolonged use of opium, you are surely not too muddled to realise how dishonourable is your conduct in causing an issue of an Imperial Decree appointing Tsai Ting-kan. ‘Deputy Imperial Commissioner of the Customs Administration’, a loyal friend to you ever since you were together in America. To make it appear now, as this edict does, that he is willing to serve in the present insane Government is to do that which you know to be untrue. Telegrams will be sent today to try to counteract the evil you are trying to do your friend. Unless you escape, disaster will quickly overtake you. Friends of mine witnessed the ‘battlefield’ of last evening and the flight of the pig-tailed barbarians who are now your only supporters. I again urge you to leave Peking at once. You can take with you that crazy lunatic in the pay of the Germans, the enemies of your country, who you have made Chief Councillor [Ku Hung-ming] . . .


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However, by the following day Morrison had regained his equanimity when he reported to Jennie that the republican forces had surrounded Peking. Liang Tun-yen took refuge in the American Legation and later retired to Tientsin. Chang vowed to fight to the death and Morrison witnessed the scene on 13 July as 30 000 to 40 000 troops clashed. ‘You never heard such a terrific banging’, he said. ‘In my district several thousand fought and one was slightly wounded.’ Chang thought better of his vow and he too retired to Tientsin to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of pillage and corruption. Morrison went to his cottage in the hills to escape the fierce heat of high summer. While waiting for order to be restored in the capital he planned a trip home to Australia and pursued the sale of his library, a massive collection on every aspect of Chinese life and history. There were offers from several universities in the United States, but he much preferred it to remain in the East for the benefit of Asian students. He offered it to the Chinese Government, together with a free gift of the concrete building that housed it, but without success. In August he accepted the £35 000—£10 000 less than the best American offer— from Baron Iwasaki Hisaya, who promised to house it in Tokyo and make it available to all scholars who sought access. ‘I feel deeply parting with my collection’, he wrote, ‘but it would not be right that I, fifty-five years of age with a young wife and three young children and with an uncertain income, should retain possession of so valuable a white elephant as a £35 000 collection of books’. However, once the transaction was completed he


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returned to the fray, pressing the new administration under Prime Minister Tuan Chi-jui, and his nominee President Feng Kuo-chang, to declare war on Germany. F inally, on 14 August—the anniversary of the date on which the Peking Legations were relieved in the Boxer Uprising of 1900—the Chinese Government took the fateful step and in response received ‘cordial congratulations’ from King George V. Morrison was unimpressed with the royal gesture; the King’s dilatory diplomatic representatives, he believed, had delayed the great day by two years. He was, however, deeply gratified by a letter from Jennie before her return from Pei-tai-ho: My dear, I am so glad. Your efforts of the last 2 years have not been in vain. I always remember you saying to Sir John once, ‘I am determined it shall go through’. It’s quite time a little more intelligence was introduced into the Diplomatic Service and a good beginning would be to have you in Peking. You have a jolly good case and I’m pretty sure it can be worked. England will do anything now suggested by her Colonial Statesmen, especially Australians. I am sending out powerful thought waves to [Prime Minister] the Rt Hon Wm Hughes so as to pave the way for you when you go down to Australia! I feel now, with the sale of the library our star is in the ascendant . . .


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Jennie’s optimism was well founded, at least in one respect. The Australians had acquitted themselves so well on the battlefields of Gallipoli and France that Britain was prepared to treat them with more consideration and respect than in the past. In the churning mud of northern France Australia would sacrifice the flower of its nation—some 60 000 young men from a population of only five million would never return—but it had escaped much of the moral opprobrium visited upon European powers. It was in the midst of a period of economic growth and burgeoning self-confidence as the states which had federated in 1901 as the Commonwealth of Australia laid the legislative foundations for the only nation in the world to occupy an entire continent. Morrison was one of its most famous sons. There was 406


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every reason to believe that he and his family would be welcomed and, if he so chose, provided a position in public life commensurate with his achievements. On the other hand, his role as a senior adviser in China, despite a renewed contract to 1919, was ever more tenuous as the power of central government waned, less able figures assumed positions of authority, and Sun Yatsen destabilised the south from his new headquarters in a former cement works in Nanking. ‘His emergence as a Generalissimo provokes derisive laughter’, Morrison wrote in November as he set sail for Australia, ‘but it is one of the most serious indications of the trend of Chinese politics’. On board the SS Aki Maru he wrote to Donald—then editor of The Far Eastern Review—as the ship headed for Zamboanga in the southern Philippines, indicating a possible new role for himself: ‘I am going to advocate the appointment of a High Commissioner of the Commonwealth to reside in Shanghai with proper official rank to take precedence immediately after the British Minister’. It would not be difficult for his friend to guess who he had in mind for the post. Donald’s long reply described the continued crumbling of governmental processes in Peking and a review of Japan’s indefatigable intrusions into the Chinese polity. ‘It would be a sorrowful thing’, he said, ‘if America and Great Britain should knuckle under to Japan at this stage of the war. ‘As to politics in China . . . the situation is more complex than it has ever been. Chang Hsun is still in the Dutch Legation, Sun Yat-sen is still in the cement works, alone, pretty much’.


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Morrison’s first taste of Australia, Thursday Island— where the flamboyant Captain Armit had provisioned his Argus expedition for the assault on the interior on New Guinea some 34 years previously—came as a shock to the expatriate. ‘This is a horrid place known as “Thirsty Island” ’, he noted in his diary. ‘Men were more than usually drunk, this being Saint Andrew’s Day . . . went ashore and had afternoon tea with pleasant spoken Port Director Markwell, the father of two beautiful children, nice wife, kind and hospitable.’ He wired Reuter’s with the news of his arrival and returned to find two drunken constables attempting to take the thumbprints of the passengers and crew. The Japanese captain was not pleased. ‘No more striking sight have I ever seen’, noted Morrison, ‘than the fury of the Captain standing on and watching this administration of the law by a drunken police constable at the first port of entry. It was a humiliating spectacle’. A cruise down the Queensland coast restored his spirits, but when they disembarked at Brisbane he was not only overcharged by the taxi driver but given a room at Lennons Hotel ‘hardly large enough to swing a cat, as hot as blazes with a cheap cupboard and other cheap furniture and a bed with a mosquito curtain. The water is the colour of pea soup for in Brisbane there is no sewage system and no filtration beds in the water system’. A trip to the Botanic Gardens provided a reintroduction to emus and kangaroos and the public library met his approval. However, when he attended a speech at the Exhibition Building by F.G. Tudor, the leader of the Labour Opposition in the referendum on conscription, he


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was less than impressed. ‘To an educated man the speech was quite unconvincing’, he wrote, ‘but spoken in a loud voice that shook the ceiling, it was well received by the large audience at least half of whom were women. ‘Much drunkenness in the streets—especially among the soldiers’. The next day he called on Sir Robert Philp at his Burns Philp & Co. headquarters, where he found him ill with fever but kindly and genial. ‘We spoke of the Marshall Islands1 and he hoped I’d speak to Hughes the Prime Minister.’2 In the afternoon he left his card at Government House and drove around ‘a city of superlative beauty’ and returned to the hotel where he gave the Scottish chauffeur ‘the absurd tip of ten shillings’. That evening another trip to the Exhibition Building produced a performance by a young soprano whose name he could not discover. ‘It seemed to me she had a voice like Melba’s. It was simply beautiful.’ Less impressive was the political speech from Attorney-General Sir William Irvine that followed. The Governor, Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams, responded with an invitation and Morrison reported, ‘Never have I sat down to a more revolting luncheon. I suspect that it was cooked by the gardener’. Fortunately Sir Hamilton himself wolfed down most of it before the platter reached Morrison. Conversation was ‘so flatulent and insipid’ that Morrison’s sense of the ridiculous got the better of him. Asked by the Governor, ‘Is this your first visit to Australia?’ he replied, ‘I first came on February 4, 1862’.3 However, the quip passed over the silver-thatched Vice-Regal cranium and just as Morrison was making his escape he was bundled into a car to accompany the


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Governor to the opening of a dog show. ‘It was a funny sight’, he wrote. ‘Some sheds in a compound. Some yelping dogs and no spectators, no ceremony but one of the men present in a bowler hat with a ribbon did come forward and speak to the Governor, taking his hat off as he did so.’ F inally he was released from the torture and in the evening found congenial company with the editor of the Brisbane Telegraph, Dr Frederick Ward, and his ‘kindly old wife’. ‘He was for some years on the London Times writing from Australia, was for many years on the Sydney Daily Telegraph where he was succeeded by D.D. Braham’, he noted. Next day Morrison left for Sydney, having been presented by the Railway Commissioner himself with a free rail pass and a stout cane, and after an overnight journey was met at the station by a contingent of newspaper reporters. After checking into the Hotel Australia he called on Braham at the Daily Telegraph, talked to his reporters and returned to the hotel to find visitors queuing up. Not least was Alderman R.W. Richards, who ‘wished to have me meet some of Sydney’s leading citizens tomorrow’, he wrote. ‘I consented.’ At the reception hosted by Lord Mayor R.D. Meagher, a Member of the State Legislative Council, he met his successor, J. Joynton Smith, ‘an ex-steward of the &O’. Both men were under a legal cloud. Indeed, the gathering was filled with ‘other men of note with streaky pasts’. The Lord Mayor, he noted, ‘in terms of hyperbole recited my achievements reading my biography from Who’s Who and in stentorian tones praised me to the skies. In my reply I deprecated the praise as undeserved but


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admitted that the words “were welcome to my ear coming as they did from the lips of one of the greatest orators in a nation of great orators!” ’ Later the Mayor ushered him into the Millions Club where the Acting Federal Treasurer, W.A. Watt, gave a fine speech and Morrison learned that the GovernorGeneral, Sir Ronald Crauford Munro-Ferguson, wanted to speak with him. ‘I was quite taken aback when the Lord Mayor called for “Three cheers for Morrison” and the people—for the room was very crowded—did cheer me heartily. ‘In his speech Watt spoke of the lifelong admiration he had for me and compared me with Cecil Rhodes as an empire builder and extolled the work I had done in China. ‘It was all very surprising to me.’ There followed a bewildering round of engagements and meetings with the leading citizens of Sydney and foreign representatives such as the American and Japanese Consuls General. When he ventured into Angus & Robertson’s bookshop the manager loaded him down with free copies of their latest publications ‘which I accepted with much pleasure’. He spoke at the Press Club. ‘I told them the truth about Japan preventing China’s entry into war. Questions were asked me which I answered, rather enjoying this diversion. I was asked after Donald and Pratt.’ Immediately afterward he was escorted to Admiralty House, where the Vice-Regal representatives again proved a disappointment. ‘Lady Helen [Munro-Ferguson] asked me who I was and what I did. She vented much anger on Northcliffe


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and The Times. The Governor-General supported her by saying that The Times was “another Bulletin without its wit”, a foolish thing to say of a paper that attracts to its columns letters from all the famous men of the Empire.’ Morrison lunched with Braham at his Neutral Bay home—‘the most delicious lunch I have ever sat down to’—but learned later the paper was losing money and Braham’s contract would not be renewed when it expired in only two weeks. While staying with his friend Norman Pope at Manly he worked on the ‘favourite’ speech he would deliver— with appropriate alterations for the occasion—throughout the homecoming. After thanking his host for the ‘flattering’ introduction he would tell stories of fellow newspapermen. But then would come the serious assertion, that he was ‘proud to be a journalist’ and he would relate how he entered the profession. The talk would follow his career, ‘my travels and my confidence in the future of China’ and end with a peroration on the importance of voting ‘yes’ in the forthcoming conscription referendum: We will decide whether we as a nation are to follow the path of honour or the path of shame . . . the ideals of the democratic President of the greatest of democracies, or the ideals of the Leninists and Maximalists, the Bolsheviks and the Anarchists, who in an incredibly few months have reduced to degraded impotence the mighty power that once was Russia.

On 17 December—‘The birthday of Confucius’—he delivered it to a packed house of journalists at the Millions Club. Braham had proposed his health—in a ‘quite


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insincere’ speech full of praise—and Premier W.A. Holman introduced him at excessive length, claiming he was going to tell the real, behind-the-scenes story of the machinations of the Japanese, American and Chinese governments. Instead he gave his prepared address and ‘Mrs Holman who was present with some other ladies thought it delightful and the gathering was well pleased’. Then it was off to Melbourne, the New South Wales Railways Commissioner having emulated his Queensland counterpart with another free ticket, and where at last he was reunited with his family. Brother Reggie and his wife Janet, their son Norman and Morrison’s elder sister Mary Alice came to the station to meet their famous relative. Reggie took him off to the Melbourne Club, where he met the Governor, Sir Arthur Stanley, and found a boyhood friend, Stewart McArthur, whose son had lost his thigh during a battle in France and whose married daughter had lost her husband in the war. Then it was home to 6 Fulham Avenue, South Yarra, where he would stay with his mother Rebecca, a very fit and agile 79, in her delightful cottage, Coriyule, ‘well arranged, excellently furnished, with abundant curios’. Mary Alice’s husband, Judge Henry B. Higgins, called and commended his interviews—‘Quite high praise which pleased me greatly’. So too did the gesture from the Victorian Railway Commissioner who, not to be outdone by his northern competitors, presented Morrison with a Distinguished Visitor’s Pass. Next day the Melbourne Club made him an Honorary Member, an honour usually reserved for state governors and ‘visitors like Kitchener’, and in the evening he dined there at a distinguished table chaired by the President, Ted


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Mitchell, and including ‘the little cock sparrow of a Governor’, Sir Arthur Stanley. When the meal ended Morrison gave a speech about Japan and its relations with China and other nations of the region which lasted half an hour and which entranced his audience. ‘All listened with very close attention and seemed much interested and afterward I heard very flattering words of the lucidity of my speech and the clearness with which I presented the case. Sir John Grice told Reggie that never had a more instructive speech been delivered in the Club.’ That night he returned to Coriyule, ‘tired but satisfied that I had done well, for I spoke without any notes but with a certainty that was, I am sure, quite convincing’. When the conscription referendum was lost, Morrison blamed three factors—the activities of the Irish-Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, hostility to Billy Hughes and the war news from France. ‘Most to blame were the wholly misleading optimistic reports from England that on the western front, both as regards men and guns, we were as to the Germans as ten to one’, he wrote. ‘Australians did not and could not realise the need for men. Daily we were doped with stories of Germany’s disintegration!’ His nephews David and Norman escorted him into the city where he bought presents for Jennie and the children, then he lunched with the Chinese Consul General, T.C. Wei, the Chinese barrister, Ah Kit, and a businessman named Liu who had just bought a trading vessel, the SS Gabo, for £20 500. ‘Pleasant lunch’, he pronounced. ‘Ah Kit excellent good sense.’ In the afternoon he visited the leading Australian trading house Grimwade & Co. to encourage the owners


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to trade directly with China, and then took time out at the Sports Depot to buy Christmas presents for David and Norman. On the way home on the tram he was accosted by ‘a horrible looking man named Robb’ who claimed acquaintance with his mother. Reaching home, ‘I learned to my great amusement that he was a predator of Church funds, a drunkard, a wife-beater, was divorced and the woman with him was probably a “tart”. Such was the character he gloried in!’ He spent a few days at Reggie’s farm, about 30 kilometres from the city. ‘Reggie is one of the leading surgeons of Melbourne but is so secretive that I do not know whether he is in a good financial position or not . . . He is a general favourite, is a first class bridge player and certainly is the best motor driver that I have ever seen. ‘But he is unfortunately matched—an irritable, unbalanced feckless wife [Janet] who must make home unbearable.’ His younger brother Clive, the country lawyer, drove down from Tartura—‘A fine fellow and an excellent motor driver also, he is to take Mother, Auntie and myself tomorrow to Dromana where I am to spend Christmas with Mary Alice and Henry’. Clive ran him into Melbourne, where he sent a Christmas cable to Jennie and the boys and the next day took him to the Higgins’s home, Heronswood. It was a serious mistake. For three days Morrison had to endure Mary Alice’s parsimonious table. ‘My sister is an adorable and admirable woman’, he concluded, ‘but the most appalling housekeeper in the world’. He slipped away whenever possible after meals to Dromana, where he ate at cafés and tea shops.


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His descriptions of the Higgins’s fare—cold mutton and dry cheese—are by no means appetising but his constant hunger and extreme irritability could well be the first symptoms of the pancreatitis that would soon make its presence more deeply felt. For the moment, he endured his hunger and prepared his major address to the Wesley Church on 30 December. An astonishingly large crowd— between 2500 and 2800—turned up in the pouring rain to hear him on ‘the China Question’ but unlike his previous orations, this was a disaster. He found it difficult to pitch his voice to be heard and the crowd became restless. The Minister, McCallum—‘a vulgar blatant type of Wesley Gospel grinder’—crowded around with reporters who told him they hadn’t heard half of it. ‘I hated the experience’, Morrison wrote, ‘but would like to try again’. He spent New Year’s Eve with his mother and the family then made contact with the editors of the Melbourne papers. Davidson of The Herald was an American who had two sons at the front with the Australians. Dr Cunningham of The Argus ‘spoke of Braham’s failure which [he said] was inevitable—bold appointment to bring out a man who knew nothing about Australia and nothing about newspaper production!’ A Herald reporter named Collins arrived for an interview. ‘He began by saying, “I am told that Dr Morrison will give either a very good interview or will say nothing!” I gave him a very good one if he is able to handle it. (He couldn’t—made a complete mess of it.)’ After a delightful evening with Clive’s daughters at the pantomime Dick Whittington—‘they laughed most delightfully, play somewhat vulgar but really funny and made me shake’—he prepared for his trip to New


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Zealand where he was treated with great respect. By now he had honed his message to a clear warning of Japan’s expansionist activities, not only in China but down through the Pacific. ‘I spoke somewhat heatedly against the Japanese, against their treachery, their unscrupulousness, their failure to act up to the Alliance.’ All the newspapers carried full reports of his speeches and he endured so many civic receptions that he suffered ‘mal de mayor’. But he struck up an instant friendship with Acting Prime Minister Sir John Allen and judged the visit a great success. On his return to Australia he met with Prime Minister Hughes, the Director of Military Intelligence, Major E.L. Piesse, the Minister for Defence, Senator Pearce, Chief of the General Staff, MajorGeneral J.G. Legge, and the F irst Member of the Naval Board, Rear-Admiral Sir William Creswell. All listened attentively as he warned them of Japan’s downward thrust and he pressed Hughes to have the Japanese keep their promise to quit the Marshall Islands. If he suggested the creation of the Shanghai High Commission he makes no mention of it in his diary. He had raised it earlier with the Managing Director of The Herald, Theodore F ink, who promised to take it up with Hughes. But the Prime Minister made an offer which might well have supplanted it. ‘At lunch Hughes spoke very confidentially to me and asked me to do certain things’, he wrote. Hughes wanted him to use his position to gain intelligence for Australia. He had a prepared code for transmission of messages and Morrison agreed in effect to spy for the Australian Government. He was somewhat taken aback when Hughes sweetened the offer with the promise of a


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knighthood. ‘He volunteered the promise, asking me if it would be any help to me. I said emphatically it would be.’ The busy round of engagements and correspondence continued unabated into March, when he cabled Jennie that his steamer had broken down and he would be delayed further. By then he was feeling distinctly unwell. A few days before his departure a letter arrived from Matt Langtree, with whom he had braved the floods during that long ago walk across Australia in 1882. ‘I am glad to know you have made such progress and wish you all sorts of luck’, he wrote. ‘I am now 62 and getting fever upon fever in the Kimberleys, Western Australia. Coupled with sciatica and hard living, I am bending a bit now Dr., but suppose that’s a natural consequence . . . All my old mates are gone and God knows [you] are a man who will help me a bit . . . for Boyhood’s days and Old Times Sake.’ Morrison sent him £10 ‘in memory of that time long ago’. In April he prepared to depart Australia’s shores with ‘a heavy heart’. He watched as his baggage was loaded aboard—ten wooden cases, three heavy trunks, four suitcases, gun case and various odds and ends. It was clear that his long absence from Australia and his independent cast of mind made it impossible for him to seek political office. Commerce was foreign to his nature and training. Australia’s diplomacy was conducted largely by the British Foreign Office. At 56, he might well be one of Australia’s favourite sons, but paradoxically his celebrity depended on his absence from his homeland. As he said goodbye to his family and embraced his mother, he might well have believed—for the wrong reasons—that it was for the last time.


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There is no record in the National Archives of Australia or in Billy Hughes’s papers of coded intelligence reports from Australia’s man in Peking. Nor does Morrison record any such activity in his diaries, although from mid-1918 there are great gaps in his usually meticulous diarising as his health became more troublesome. But it is quite clear that by the time the war ended and Hughes set out for the Peace Conference in Versailles he had totally adopted Morrison’s warnings about the dangers of an expansionary Japan. Ironically, it would be Hughes’s virulent antiJapanese stance that would undermine China’s plea to the Conference for surcease from its neighbour’s aggressive intrusions. And Morrison would spend his lifeblood in the struggle. 419


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Once China had entered the war in the wake of the Americans the Government in Peking did its best to make its presence felt. In short order, it sent between 100 000 and 175 000 coolies to the Western Front to dig trenches and supply supporting services to the soldiers on the line. Many thousands were killed. When the Armistice was declared on 11 November 1918, there was jubilation in Peking. Morrison went out to watch the Ketteler monument being pulled down.1 More than 60 000 people turned out for a victory parade and everywhere there was a great hope that the Peace Conference would accept President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points to enshrine forever the principles ‘of justice to all peoples and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak’. That, they believed, meant an end to extraterritoriality and, most importantly, to the agreements imposed by Japan in the wake of the 21 Demands. But before that could be accomplished, China had to develop its case and put it forcefully to the Supreme Council which quickly became the Council of Three— Wilson, Britain’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and France’s Georges Clemenceau. Unfortunately, China’s government was itself in disarray. In September 1918 a new President, Hsu Shihch’ang, one of the last Grand Secretaries and Imperial Guardians of the late Manchu dynasty, was chosen as a compromise between the forces of north and south. And after meeting with his new employer—quickly dubbed ‘Susie’—Morrison journeyed to Shanghai to judge the mood. He was appalled at conditions in the interior—


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‘anarchy, no government, chaos, brigandage, piracy, highway robbery’—but he did have a useful meeting with Sun Yat-sen. Indeed, the two men appear to have resolved some of their long-standing differences and mutual antipathy. Sun Yat-sen gave me a very cordial welcome and impressed me . . . by his sincerity and earnestness and by a certain magnetism which I previously did not notice. He was dressed in Chinese clothes, no sign of advancing age and expressed himself forcibly and well. He reminded me that on my previous visit I had urged upon him the advantage of China’s entering the war on the side of the Allied powers and that he was opposed to China’s entry . . . I spoke to him of my plans for China.

Morrison wrote to his friend Admiral Tsai Ting-kan, now Assistant Grand Master of Ceremonies, warning that when Morrison saw President Hsu the following week ‘it is my intention to make a suggestion to him with regard to inviting the good offices of the President of the United States of America in mediating between the contending factions in China’. I have always believed that the present difficulty in China could only be solved by arbitration, the arbiter to be selected by the President of the United States. It was the United States which brought China into the war. America was the first country to recognise the Republic of China. An invitation to the President to arbitrate is an invitation extended to the head of an allied country.


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But the real strength of the proposal was that it would attach Wilson indissolubly to the future of a free and independent China. Tsai understood that perfectly. ‘Success to you in the project!’ he wrote. The meeting with President Hsu ranged over the composition of the Chinese delegation to the Conference and the thrust of the Chinese case. Morrison’s suggestions were accepted. He sent an aide memoire to the President’s private secretary and interpreter, Ju Jen-ho: ‘I ought to have done [this] yesterday but unfortunately yesterday I was taken suddenly ill and could not possibly do any work having to lie down. Today I am much better’. In the note he recorded, ‘His Excellency expressed the wish that I should go to the Conference and give what help I could to Mr Lu Tseng-hsiang.2 I said I would be very pleased to do what I could to help China at this important juncture and would leave as soon as possible after the new year . . .’. Whether President Hsu formally invited the American leader to arbitrate is unclear. The Americans were alive to the implications and publicly espoused China’s cause, particularly Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who encouraged the Chinese Ambassador to Washington, Wellington Koo, to travel to Paris in the same ship as the American delegation. However, the State Department could not allow President Wilson to be involved in China’s internal affairs. In the event, Morrison left before the New Year, having decided to see the Morrison library in Japan and visit influential contacts in Canada and the United States on the way. Jennie and the boys would join him in England and he would visit them from Paris as often as possible.


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‘I hope you will see Northcliffe when you are home’, Jennie wrote to him. ‘I often think (tho’ my intuition tells me you will do so) that if you can’t pull off the job I so want for you in Peking,3 I would like you to take up journalistic work again in Peking . . . Northcliffe might be only too glad to get you back and at a high salary too! I feel your present position here is intolerable . . .’ Morrison, too, was finding his position difficult to sustain. He was concerned about his health. I remember being weary in the same way far back in the 80s. My power of recuperation must be weaker now . . . have malaise and depression and much thirst. Have indeed to carry an overwhelming burden and yet am such a poltroon that I cannot summon sufficient courage to go and see a doctor for if anything is wrong I dread that Jennie should know it.

His own medical studies were too ‘meagre’ to be helpful. Indeed, they had caused him, he felt, to exaggerate his symptoms. ‘It would have been better had I never studied medicine.’ Morrison was sufficiently concerned that he had spoken to his ‘alcoholic broker’, Jimmie Jones, about selling the house in Morrison Street for $60 000. By then he had moved the family into ‘a fine big Chinese house’ about a mile to the north of the place where he had lived so long. Together with his shares in China’s railways and the sale of his library he would be well placed to take a long recuperative rest and then make a new beginning. Indeed, he was met in Yokohama by Mikinosuke Ishida, the controller of the Morrison library, who showed him the new bindings replacing the works damaged by water


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on the journey from China. This was a cause of ‘much satisfaction’, Morrison wrote. But before he could seek a new direction—even the much hoped-for role of British Minister to Peking—he was compelled to make the most of the opportunity provided to China by the Peace Conference. He threw himself into the fray, giving interviews in Canada until he found himself ‘worn out and almost speechless’. But when he reached Washington he was shocked to discover that American support for China’s claims was thoroughly compromised; it was ‘supporting Japan in her attitude towards China, while inveigling China into looking to America for support against Japan’. Moreover, when he arrived in Paris the Chinese delegation under Lu Tseng-hsiang, a former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, was ‘at sixes and sevens’. The southerners led by C.T. Wang were suspicious that Lu had done a secret deal with the Japanese. Brilliant young diplomats Eugene Ch’en and Wellington Koo wildly overstated their case in public addresses. Morrison immediately stepped in to rewrite a proposed speech by Ch’en, ‘written in his most florid style, committing errors of bad taste and of fact’. ‘I cut it down ruthlessly’, he noted, ‘to the wild dismay and indignation of Eugene who is really going to be a danger to the Chinese. He is quite unbalanced and is probably, as the Americans say, a drug-taker’. Wellington Koo, whom Clemenceau described as ‘a young Chinese cat, Parisian of speech and dress’, was instantly besotted by a beautiful Indonesian heiress and began a fierce love affair. At the Hotel Lutetia, where most of the Chinese delegates were headquartered, Morrison discovered the


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delegation’s paperwork in a shambles. ‘It is like being with a circus’, he wrote. ‘Self before country is their motto.’ However, he plunged into the long-winded ‘Claims of China’ to the conference and in two days pulled the document into shape. His arrival was opportune. At the end of January the conference was discussing the key question of China’s demand for the return of Shantung province. ‘Stripped of its minor features’, he wrote in the Claims, ‘the Chinese Question may be said to centre on the preservation of the independence and integrity of China’. Essentially, they sought to abrogate the agreements forced on China by the Japanese following the 21 Demands. The return of Shantung Province was central. And when presented initially—supported by a brilliant speech from the 32-year-old Wellington Koo—it seemed that China’s aims might well be achieved. The Japanese had not made a good impression and the justice of the Chinese case seemed undeniable. However, Woodrow Wilson wanted to deal first with his beloved League of Nations and that involved a Japanese proposal for a clause ensuring racial equality in international affairs. ‘Now is the time,’ said the Japanese delegation leader, Prince Saionji, ‘to confront international racial discrimination.’ It was not an unreasonable assertion. The Japanese, like the Chinese, had been vilified on purely racial grounds ever since the West had forced its attentions upon them. And Wilson, despite his Southern background, sought to develop a compromise. He was immediately confronted by Billy Hughes. The antipathy between the two men was immediate, vicious and deep. Hughes violently rejected a compromise. ‘It may


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be all right’, he scribbled on one attempt, ‘but sooner than agree to it I would walk into the Seine—or the Folies Bergeres—with my clothes off ’. On another occasion he angrily confronted the American camp: ‘Either the Japanese proposal means something or it means nothing; if the former, out with it; if the latter, why have it?’ Wilson shook his head. ‘What can you do with a man who won’t read and can’t hear?’ Morrison met with the Australian delegation. Though he had no argument with their restrictive immigration policies, he had earlier warned both the Australian and New Zealand governments not to pass legislation that discriminated against China and Japan lest they gain forever the enmity of the Asian races. Now Hughes was beyond recall. Japan was all Morrison had warned him of—expansionist, untrustworthy and militaristic. Besides, ‘no government could live for a day in Australia if it tampered with a White Australia’. And when Morrison turned to Lloyd George he found the Prime Minister ‘woefully ill-equipped for settling these important questions’. The immediate result was that the issue was left in abeyance until other more tractable agenda items were resolved. And in the interim, a Japanese publicity campaign for the clause gained powerful support at home and abroad. So when the China Question came up for final resolution Japan’s threat to Wilson could hardly have been more transparent: without the racial equality clause they would not be part of his League of Nations . . . unless, of course, they received Shantung as compensation. As Morrison had feared since his visit to Washington the Americans buckled and on 4 May, as word flashed


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across the world, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Peking to vent their rage. One of them, a young library assistant at Peking University named Mao Tsetung, was inspired by the ‘betrayal’ to his first overt political act and handed out protest leaflets. Morrison was struck by a terrible sense of despair. In the middle of the negotiations he was felled by his illness. Jennie had left the children in England to join him, but by April he was ‘much disconcerted’ to discover that he was losing weight and was so tired and weak he could barely lift his valise. Now he was horrified by the turn of events. ‘There is no shadow of a doubt that President Wilson has played with the Chinese for his own political ends, has befooled them callously.’ At last he sought medical assistance. A Chinese doctor diagnosed catarrh of the bile duct and prescribed saline purgatives. An English doctor confirmed the diagnosis and ordered similar treatments. ‘I am quite unfit to go about and this is especially important for Jennie’, he wrote. ‘Work is impossible for me for I look really ill. My skin is like old parchment. I have never been like this before.’ With Jennie at his side, he arrived in London from Paris on 7 May 1919 to consult more doctors about his mysterious illness. His weight had dropped to 123 pounds and Sir Thomas Jeeves Horder, a cancer specialist at St Barts hospital, diagnosed ‘either malign disease of the pancreas or gall-bladder obstruction’. After examining the patient, Sir W.H. Clayton-Greene, one of England’s leading surgeons, agreed and suggested exploratory surgery. Morrison was admitted to a nursing home on 1 June. ‘Feel in no way agitated, despondent or


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depressed’, he wrote cheerily in his diary. The operation found no evidence of malignancy, just ‘extensive inflammatory adhesions, involving pancreas, left lobe liver, diaphragm [and] gall-bladder’. ‘Somewhat battered, frail and weak, but determined to get well’, Morrison returned to the bosom of his family at their house in Forrest Row, Sussex, on 21 June. It was owned by his sister Violet, who had married Lance Gaunt, a lawyer with a thriving practice in Singapore who had been serving at the Admiralty with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. On his way to Paris, Morrison had reunited with her. Violet showed me her collection of autographs of famous sailors, all the Admirals from Jellicoe to Beatty and all the captains who took part in the battle of Jutland and all the Naval VC’s including Gordon Campbell and Carpenter of the Vindictive. She has had most of the contents of her body removed by a series of operations and her recital of the gruesome details are quite terrifying.

Now she had returned to Singapore and Morrison himself was struggling with a body that would not respond to treatment. His weight dropped further to 118 pounds, but a few weeks later he felt well enough to travel up to London to consult Dr Ernest Young, who diagnosed chronic pancreatitis. The fact that he now had a definite name for his illness gave Morrison ‘much confidence’, but in a cruel twist of fate as Morrison was walking down St James’s Street, he passed J.O.P. Bland, who with Morrison’s former translator, the wretched forger Backhouse, had co-authored two successful books


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on China. He noted that Bland, who had lost no opportunity to criticise the Chinese since returning to London, was looking ‘portly and pompous . . . He healthful and self-satisfied and well-nourished and I nervous, shaken and emaciated’. It did not seem fair. The past kept coming back. On 7 August, he noted: ‘Today, 35 years ago, I left the Royal Infirmary after my 80 days stay during which I was operated on for the spearhead. Would that I had the same bodily health that I had then!’ He discontinued all medication and tried to heal himself with gentle exercise, fresh air and a ‘sensible’ diet. Typical meals were: Breakfast: Porridge, milk and cream, toast and butter, haddock, bacon, sausage, tea and milk. Lunch: Lentil soup, fried whiting, stewed mutton, vegetable marrow, plum tart, oatmeal biscuits, two pints of stout. Dinner: Soup, boiled turbot, stewed chicken, cauliflower, strawberry mousse, oatmeal biscuit, pint of stout. After a few days he reported: ‘Am feeling somewhat stronger, having disregarded all advice, the conflicting nature of which made rational conduct impossible’. But the improvement did not last and he started losing weight again. He celebrated his seventh wedding anniversary with the gloomy admission: ‘What a poor wreck of a husband, sunken-cheeked, mirthless, cadaverous, without a spark of energy, a future of the gravest misgiving. And Jennie so robust and vigorous and fresh and handsome’. Morrison was now so desperate that he travelled to Scotland and placed himself in the hands of a quack, Dr Edmund Spriggs, at a Banff sanatorium named Duff House, where he was put on the same starvation diet as the other patients. After a few days of porridge, milk, stewed rabbit and bread, Morrison complained: ‘Not once


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since I have been here have I been given a beefsteak, not once kidneys, tripe or kipper or anything in fact that I could eat with relish’. His weight dropped drastically by 15 pounds to 97 pounds. ‘All my waking thoughts are [of] food’, he noted, ‘especially suet pudding and jam roll’. Morrison discharged himself from Duff House on 8 October and wrote sadly: ‘My stay must always be the most loathsome of all the recollections of my lifetime’. He vowed to get Jennie and the boys back to China. ‘If I die there, the Chinese Government would probably give Jennie a handsome present of $10 000.’ Reunited with his family in Sussex, he looked forward to some home cooking, but even that was unable to stem the weight loss. On 12 December, he was admitted to Mrs Bateman’s nursing home in Queen Anne Street, Marylebone, where he was fed raw pig’s pancreas to correct the deficiency of pancreatic secretion in his body. He was making no progress whatsoever when, at the end of January 1920, he heard lumbering footsteps on the staircase up to his room and the immense figure of Viscount Northcliffe hove to. ‘The Chief ’, who had health problems of his own, had been advised by his brother Cecil to ‘get a little sunshine into your blood’ and wanted to pass on that advice to his former confidant and foreign correspondent. He informed Morrison that he himself had suffered from pancreatitis in 1910 and could not even digest water. After seeing many doctors and being confined to numerous nursing homes, he had recovered only through the power of his own will. He also passed on his brother’s injunction: that Morrison should place his faith in the healing energies of spring, fresh air and sunshine.


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‘Much wild talk’, Morrison noted. But Northcliffe had not finished helping him. Before setting off for the sunny South of France, the greatest newspaperman ever to walk down Fleet Street followed up his visit with a handwritten letter: My dear Morrison, I have thought much and deeply about you since our meeting. Are you trying all the resources of medical skill? Are not our best men often narrow and ill-informed of what has been discovered elsewhere, in the United States for example? In October last year I said adieu to Lord Grey on his departure for the US. He was very nearly a totally blind man. Last week I saw an entirely different Grey and he saw me. Why? Because Wilmer the great American oculist at once discovered that Grey’s trouble was not eyes but teeth. Grey is younger by 10 years. Our eye men are very angry about this damnably convincing proof of their ignorance. It is a miracle. Have you been out? Have outings had ill effect upon you? Are there methods of feeding by skin absorption? If you continue to debilitate, are there not other treatments or men? I don’t know your men so have no feelings about that. What I do feel is that there is plenty of time for you to get well and that your recovery may be brought about by your own action, in taking your case in hand while you have the strength to travel, if travel is necessary. It may seem to you an impertinence on my part. It is meant only as a demonstration of affection and interest, my dear fellow.

It was, Morrison noted, kindly acts like this which bound men to Northcliffe ‘with hooks of steel’. He wrote back


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that he was determined to follow the suggestion to seek help in America once the warmer weather arrived. ‘I wish to get well’, he wrote, ‘for never have I felt a keener interest in what is going on around me, nor have I felt a keener desire to keep myself in touch with the Far East, especially the Chinese, who, ever since I was taken ill, have treated my wife and myself with extraordinary kindness and consideration’. Jennie went ahead and rented a house on the Esplanade at Sidmouth, a cream-and-white Regency showpiece on the East Devon coast. At the end of April Morrison wrote to Guy Hillier: ‘After months and months in nursing homes, attended by many physicians, each of whom disagreed with his fellows, I have followed a suggestion made to me by Lord Northcliffe, have thrown physic to the dogs, and have come down to the seaside’. George III and Queen Victoria had both spent some time in Sidmouth, giving the fishing village its ‘royal resort’ title. Set between red cliffs and with exposed shingle beaches, it was a poor substitute for the long sandy shores of his native Australia. One day on the wind-blown seafront Morrison met General Sir John Dunne, one of the last survivors of the British force which had captured Peking in 1860. Sir John told him that while looting the Imperial Palace he had found a tiny dog which he named ‘Looty’; he had later presented him to Queen Victoria as one of the first two Pekinese dogs to be brought to England. The meeting struck a poignant chord in the invalid reporter. Fourteen months after he had been taken ill in Paris, Morrison wrote: ‘My one hope is to get back to China. I do not wish


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to die but if I have to die, let it be in Peking among the Chinese who have treated me with such consideration for so many years’. Morrison and his family booked passage to leave England for Canada on 18 June and to catch the SS Empress Russia from Vancouver to China on 29 July. With great misgiving, Jennie left her loved one and went ahead to London to arrange passports and to hire a governess for the boys. Morrison had caught a severe chill which weakened him further, but he commemorated another anniversary on Saturday 22 May: ‘The day of our engagement 1912. Seven years of happiness for Jennie and one year of tribulation borne with exemplary patience and devotion’. The following day Jennie wrote him a letter: ‘You have been in my thoughts all day, my dearest loved one, and that wonderful day eight years ago when you first told me you loved me—blessed day which I shall always remember. Darling, I offered up such loving prayers for you today from the depths of my heart that your health and our happiness may be restored to us, and I feel they must be answered . . .’. But the end was near. Forty-two years after G.E. Morrison had begun his ‘rum sort of diary’ at Geelong College, the veteran reporter scribbled the final entry: Almost can believe death struggle began . . . Temperature 95.4 10 a.m. Almost collapsing. If to die better die now so that arrangements can be made for Jennie in good time.

The date was 27 May. That same day Jennie received a telegram at her lodgings in Cavendish Square informing


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her that her husband was in a critical condition. She caught the first train back to Sidmouth, arriving in time; Morrison’s life force was ebbing away, but he was still alive. She stayed at his side until he gave up the struggle on Sunday afternoon, 30 May 1920. ‘He died as he lived’, she said in a letter to a friend, ‘nobly and with supreme courage’.


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Epilogue

THE NOBLE PROFESSIONAL

Northcliffe’s benevolent sunshine poured down in profusion the day George Ernest Morrison was laid to rest in the little Sidmouth cemetery on top of a hill overlooking the peaceful Valley of the River Sid, far removed from the bustle of Peking or the fierce challenges of the Chinese interior, the Outback or the tropical jungles of New Guinea. A wreath of orchids was placed on the coffin. It bore the inscription: ‘In sorrow and gratitude, from the President of the Republic of China’. The mourners included Ethel Moberly Bell, Sir John Jordan, Sir John McLeavy Brown, General Sir John and Lady Dunne, Sir Pelham Warner, Henry Cockburn, Vice-Admiral Sir Ernest Gaunt, Rear-Admiral Sir Douglas Brownrigg and Sir Ernest Satow. John Walter IV 435


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represented The Times and Ashton Gwatkin the Foreign Office; the Australian High Commissioner sent Major A.W. Arkill in his stead. There was no wreath from the Commonwealth of Australia. The Times, however, claimed Morrison as one of its own: As a medical man, he had known his fate for months and quietly warned friends of what must be expected. But even in the months which daily sapped his physical strength, his enthusiasm for China was undiminished, and even grew. It was a strange experience to see the wasted, ascetic figure propped in a chair or in bed, and to hear the dying man planning for the future of China with a skill of analysis, a breadth of vision in constructive statesmanship, and altogether a mental vigour such as one associates with only a few men in the world, and these in the enjoyment of bodily health. It was then one realised how inadequate to the breadth of the man was even the proud title ‘Morrison of Peking’. His passion was that Great Britain might play her part in China’s development, and even the smallest opportunity became a great opportunity to him if it offered the winning of interest in this theme. China never had a more devoted servant.

Morrison’s former Times colleague, Lionel James, wrote about his friend’s ‘many-sided greatness’, explaining that he had been ‘inspired by his seriousness: elevated by his humour: impressed by his infinite capacity for taking pains: chastened by his manly dignity: delighted by his kindliness of character and love of children: terrified by his unerring memory: appalled by his cold judgment of


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men and matters: enticed by his peculiar vanity: and overwhelmed by his pride in Australia and himself as an Australian’. But James admitted: ‘Even those who imagined that they were intimate would suddenly discover that there was still a Morrison altogether incomprehensible to them’. Jennie commissioned Buckle’s former senior assistant editor, J.B. Capper, the ‘Prince of Accuracy’, to edit her husband’s diaries, but she did not live to see his work completed: she passed away unexpectedly in London on 20 June 1923 at the young age of 34. The trustees of the Morrison estate then decided that Capper’s manuscript, which covered the years 1899 to 1901, should not be published because ‘sufficient time had not elapsed since the events etc. described’. The Morrison name, however, lived on through his three sons: Colin, who found enormous satisfaction in the Morrison family’s tradition as a teacher, and the other two, Ian and Alastair, who became published authors. Ian, who had made his mark in the first rank of war correspondents, was immortalised as the lover of Han Suyin, the author of A Many Splendored Thing, which itself found a secondary expression in the film of that name. George Ernest Morrison was the noble professional. He was to journalism what Don Bradman was to cricket. His Australian background provided an earthy, cleareyed cynicism toward politics and politicians. His British attachments, not least to the newspaper he served, gave him an imperial framework within which he operated quite happily. But he resisted that sense of ineffable superiority of so many of the representatives of Imperial Britain at the time.


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He could easily recognise the absurdities of such people and delighted in regaling his dinner guests with them. He was a generous and attentive host and a much favoured guest at the diplomatic tables of Peking. In Britain, he was lionised and fussed over by the chatelaines of England’s great houses. But he rarely left a table without some delicious scandal or devastating insight for his diary. Yet while Bradman’s exploits on the cricket field resonate down the years and his reputation finds new lustre with each succeeding generation, Morrison has been largely forgotten. This is a great pity. Journalism has never been more in need of an icon of inspiration. The struggle for truth against the obfuscation of vested interests has never been more desperate. Everywhere the journalist is denigrated, the tenets of his or her vocation deliberately despoiled. The life and times of G.E. Morrison provide that essential beacon to guide those who would follow him. Morrison’s record is not perfect, but it is a quantum leap beyond today’s insidious news management. His was a life so crowded with adventure and the reporting of great events that he not only wrote history, he made it.


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Notes

CHAPTER 3 1 More recently, the extent of his contribution to that document has been revised. Griffith, it seems, took more credit at the time than the facts allowed. 2 Thomas Dunbabin, Slavers of the South Seas, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1935.

CHAPTER 6 1 Imperial Yellow was the Emperor’s personal colour and its misuse by his subjects meant summary execution.

CHAPTER 7 1 The conquering Manchu cavalry and infantry were divided into military companies who fought under different coloured banners or flags. In Morrison’s time, bannermen were descendants of these soldiers. 439


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2 The Battle of Chilianwala in which the British troops suffered a humiliating defeat was fought during the second Sikh War in 1849.

CHAPTER 9 1 Reminiscences, Morrison’s incomplete and unpublished memoirs, Morrison Papers, Mitchell Library, Sydney and National Library, Canberra. 2 In April 1887 The Times published a letter purportedly signed by Charles Parnell, the Irish leader, condoning the assassinations of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Irish Secretary, and Thomas Burke, the Undersecretary, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, on 6 May 1882. Parnell denounced the letter, and others published shortly afterwards, as forgeries. Giving evidence to the Government’s official inquiry into the scandal in 1889, a disreputable Irish journalist, Richard Pigott, admitted committing the forgeries. The Times was handed a bill for £250 000 for the whole cost of the inquiry. 3 W.F. Monypenny was the author of The Life of Benjamin Disraeli. Some of the six volumes were completed by Buckle and published after Monypenny’s death in 1912.

CHAPTER 11 1 Kang Youwei, Memorial, May 1895. 2 Baron Edmund von Heyking served in Peking from 1896–99. 3 Morrison Papers, Mitchell Library, Sydney and National Library Canberra. 4 Morrison to Moberly Bell 8 April 1897. Times Archives, News International, London. 5 Ibid. 6 John Otway Percy Bland (1863–1945) was secretary of the


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NOTES

7 8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16

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Municipal Council of the International Settlement in Shanghai at this stage of his relationship with Morrison. Morrison to Bland 26 May 1897. Bland Papers, University of Toronto. Ibid. Bland Papers. Reminiscences. For his efforts in Peking, Cassini was given the plum posting of Russian Ambassador to Washington. Despite Morrison’s certainty, doubts persisted about the Cassini Convention. Russia and China both officially denied its existence in 1895, as did Sir Claude MacDonald to A.E. Hippisley, Commissioner of Customs in Tientsin, in 1898 (Hippisley to Morrison 8 May 1898. Morrison Papers). Historian Immanuel C.Y. Hsu claimed: ‘Some initial discussions apparently took place between the two [Cassini and Li Hung-chang], but no formal agreement was reached, despite the British North China Daily News’s report of a “Cassini Convention”.’ (Immanuel Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, Oxford University Press, 2000.) The History of The Times, published in 1947, admitted that it now seemed probable that the original report in The Times on 25 October 1895 was ‘inexact’. Colonel Charles Denby (1830–1904) was American Minister in Peking from 1885 to 1898. Alexander Pavlov, F irst Secretary at the Russian Embassy in Peking under Cassini, became chargé d’affaires when Cassini moved to Washington. Reminiscences. Ibid. Weng T’ung-ho, a member of both the Grand Council and Tsungli Yamen, the greatest scholar of his time, was Emperor Kuang Hsu’s tutor.


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17 Reminiscences.

CHAPTER 12 1 Chirol to Morrison 24 February and 31 March 1898. Morrison Papers. 2 Von Heyking to Morrison 14 April 1898. Morrison Papers. 3 Morrison to Bland 5 May and 28 May 1898. Morrison Papers. 4 Lo Jung-pang, Kang Youwei: A Biography and a Symposium, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1967. 5 Reminiscences. 6 Yuan Shi-k’ai (1859–1916), Army officer, imperial official, Viceroy, Grand Councillor and Republican President. 7 Sir Chengtung Liang, who was also knighted when he accompanied Chang Yin-huan to the Diamond Jubilee, was Chang’s confidential secretary. 8 Sir Claude MacDonald to H.A. Gwynne, Reuter’s correspondent in Peking, 16 October 1898. 9 Reminiscences. 10 A total of 4500 Italian soldiers were killed and wounded in battle against Abyssinian forces near Adowa in 1896. 11 Morrison to Chirol 21 March 1899. Morrison Papers. Morrison later changed his mind about MacDonald, giving him a glowing memorial in Reminiscences.

CHAPTER 13 1 Manchu nobleman Ch’ung-hou (1826–93) was seduced by Russian flattery during a visit to Saint Petersburg in 1879 and had negotiated a treaty with Russia which was distinctly unfavourable to China. 2 The spirits of wind and water. 3 Mary Hooker (Polly Condit Smith), Behind the Scenes in


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Peking, John Murray, London, 1910. 4 Hart had invited Gordon to Peking in 1880 to advise on methods of defeating China’s then enemy, Russia. He discovered to his consternation that Gordon was ‘not all there’ mentally. 5 Edmund Backhouse, Decadence Mandchoue (unpublished memoirs). 6 Arnold Henry Savage Landor, China and the Allies, William Heinemann, London, 1901. 7 R. Allen, The Siege of the Peking Legations, Smith Elder & Co., London, 1901. 8 Morrison wrote in his diary on 3 July 1900: ‘It is reported today that the wives of Prince Su, left behind in his palace, have committed suicide by hanging themselves. This would be correct procedure and would gain them much merit’. 9 Morrison in The Times, 13 October 1900. 10 Robert (later Sir Robert) Bredon was Sir Robert Hart’s deputy and brother-in-law. 11 Mr T.B. Clarke-Thornhill was a guest in the British Legation when the siege started. 12 Immanuel C.Y. Hsu writes in The Rise of Modern China that Prince Chuang and Kang Yi commanded some 30 000 Boxers while Prince Tuan directed a total of 1400 bands each consisting of 100 to 300 men—well over 140 000 men.

CHAPTER 14 1 Morrison to Bland 10 September 1900. Bland Papers. 2 Morrison to Moberly Bell 20 October 1900. Times Archives. 3 Assistant paymaster G. Wynne quoted in Boxers and Bluejackets by B. Nicholls, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1986. 4 Waldersee, Alfred Count Von: A Field Marshal’s Memoirs, Hutchinson, London, 1924.


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CHAPTER 15 1 After 28 years as The Times correspondent in Paris, de Blowitz retired in late 1902 just a month before his death on 18 January 1903. 2 Morrison to Bland 24 April 1903. Bland Papers. 3 The Governor was Sir George Clarke, later Lord Sydenham. 4 Alfred Deakin in an introduction to David Syme: The Father of Protection in Australia by Ambrose Pratt, Ward Lock & Co., Melbourne, 1908. 5 Richard Shannon, The Crisis of Imperialism 1865–1915, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, London, 1974, pp 320–321. 6 Morrison to Bland 19 July 1903. Bland Papers. 7 Chirol to Morrison 25 August 1903. Morrison Papers. 8 Morrison to Chirol 7 September 1903. Morrison Papers. 9 Morrison to Moberly Bell 11 August 1905. Times’ Archives. 10 The History of The Times: The Twentieth Century Test 1884–1912, The Times, Printing House Square, 1947, p 424. 11 Morrison to Moberly Bell 18 August 1905. Morrison Papers.

CHAPTER 16 1 Morrison to his mother 10 November 1905. Morrison Papers. 2 Sir Edward Cassel, born in Cologne, Germany in 1852, became a leading British financier and close associate of Edward VII. His granddaughter was Edwina Mountbatten. 3 Edward VII to Arthur Balfour. Quoted in Balfour’s Burden by Alfred Gollin, London 1965, p 205. 4 Harmsworth had a home, Elmwood, on the Isle of Thanet, Kent. 5 Churchill had crossed the floor of the Commons to join the Liberals over the tariff reform controversy.


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6 The fifth Earl of Lonsdale, one of Britain’s biggest landowners, was a chronic and habitual liar. Morrison noted: ‘To the Americans he tells that he discovered the Klondike and the Yellowstone Park. To me he mentioned casually the fighting he had seen in the Western States with General Custer and Buffalo Bill . . .’ 7 Nellie, a former Gaiety Girl, had refused to live in Johore so the Sultan had just bought her a mansion at 34 Park Lane. 8 History of The Times: The Twentieth Century Test 1884–1912, The Times, London, 1947, p 119. 9 Morrison to his mother 10 November 1905. Morrison Papers. The Earl of Cromer was Britain’s Pro-Consul in Egypt; the Earl of Minto had just replaced Curzon as Viceroy of India; Viscount Milner was the former British High Commissioner in South Africa; the Marquess of Lansdowne was Foreign Secretary in Balfour’s government; Joseph Chamberlain had been Colonial Secretary until his resignation in 1903 when he was replaced by the Hon. Alfred Lyttelton. Scots-born Dr Leander Starr Jameson, known as ‘Dr Jim’, led the notorious Jameson Raid on the Transvaal in January 1896. He was Premier of Cape Colony from 1904–08 and was later created a baronet. 10 See Chapter 9, Note 2. 11 Chirol to Morrison 6 December 1906. Morrison Papers. 12 Morrison to Chirol 31 July 1906. Morrison Papers. 13 Chirol to Morrison 17 August 1906. Morrison Papers. 14 Chirol to Morrison 18 September 1906. Morrison Papers. 15 McKenzie to Morrison 2 November 1906. Morrison Papers. 16 Moberly Bell to Morrison 15 August 1907. Morrison Papers. 17 F. Harcourt Kitchin, Moberly Bell and His Times, Philip Allan & Co., London, 1925, p 212.


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18 Moberly Bell to Morrison 23 September 1908. Morrison Papers. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Chirol to Morrison 21 January 1908. Morrison Papers. 22 Morrison to Chirol 14 April 1908. Morrison Papers. 23 Morrison to Moberly Bell 14 Jan 1909. Morrison Papers.

CHAPTER 17 1 In 1910, Backhouse and Bland published China Under the Empress Dowager based on diaries expertly forged by Backhouse. Ironically, Trevor-Roper, as Lord Dacre, later authenticated the ludicrous ‘Hitler Diaries’ which were published as fact in the Sunday Times. 2 Asquith replaced Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister in 1908. The Liberal majority was wiped out in the general election of January 1910 and Asquith ruled with the support of Labour and Irish MPs. 3 E.H.C. Moberly Bell, The Life and Letters of C.F. Moberly Bell, Richard Press, London, 1927, pp 313–14. 4 Chirol resigned as Foreign editor on 21 December 1911. He was knighted in the New Year’s Honours List of 1912 and retired shortly afterwards. At Buckle’s suggestion, Morrison wrote to Chirol (9 Feb 1912): ‘There is nothing I regret more in my past career than that any cloud should ever have come over our friendship. It would be a mockery for me to pretend there was no cloud, but it was my fault, and it has long since passed away, and I hope you will forgive me and forget all about it.’ Chirol replied (26 Feb. 1912) that Morrison’s letter gave him ‘genuine pleasure, for the soreness I felt was I confess, very keen. But you may be sure I am quite ready to meet you in burying past mis-


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NOTES

5 6 7 8

9

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understandings . . . So by all means let us be friends again as in the past.’ Buckle himself retired in August 1912. Morrison to Braham 17 October 1911. Morrison Papers. Morrison to Braham 24 October 1911. Morrison Papers. Braham to Morrison 24 October 1911. Morrison Papers. Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) was born in Kwangtung Province. His Chinese education was interrupted in 1879 when he left China to join his older brother in Honolulu. He became a Christian and later studied medicine under the British in Hong Kong. Morrison to Braham 29 December 1911. Times Archives.

CHAPTER 18 1 P.H. Kent, The Passing of the Manchus, Edward Arnold, London, 1912. 2 Jerome Ch’en, Yuan Shi-k’ai, Stanford University Press, California, 1972, p 99.

CHAPTER 19 1 The first, presumably, being Mary Joplin. 2 The prediction also included her early widowhood, a second marriage and an early death. Morrison chose to concentrate on the positive elements. 3 Originally America made the fifth member but withdrew on policy grounds to be replaced by Japan. 4 Jerome Ch’en, Yuan Shi-k’ai, p 132. 5 Ch’eng Teh-ch’uan of Kiangsu, Li Lieh-chun of Kiangsi, Hu Han-min of Kwangtung and Po Wen-wei of Anhwei.

CHAPTER 20 1 Earl Albert Selle, Donald of China, Invincible Press, Melbourne, 1948.


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CHAPTER 21 1 Jerome Ch’en, Yuan Shi-k’ai, p 187. 2 Cyril Pearl, Morrison of Peking, p 340.

CHAPTER 22 1 Then occupied by Japan, much to Morrison’s concern. 2 William Morris ‘Billy’ Hughes, who began as a Labor MP but defected to the conservatives and was fighting a second campaign for conscription. 3 His birthday.

CHAPTER 23 1 Baron von Ketteler was the German diplomat killed in the Boxer Uprising. 2 The leader of the Chinese delegation. 3 British Minister to Peking.


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Sources and Bibliography

The authors are indebted to Alastair Morrison, G.E. Morrison’s son, for his many kindnesses toward them during the writing of this book. Robert Macklin met Alastair in Canberra in 2001 at the very beginning of our research and he remained a constant source of information and encouragement throughout. Of special interest was the Morrison family tree compiled by R.H. Morrison of Burnside, South Australia. Both authors are extremely grateful for the assistance they received from the staff of the National Library, Canberra, who never tired of our incessant inquiries. They provided us with complete copies of Morrison’s diaries, letters and other documents which are stored at the Mitchell Library, Sydney. We also used the National Library’s microfilmed copies of The Times to consult Morrison’s published work, as well as copies of his earlier stories in The Age and The Leader. In London, Peter Thompson was granted access to 449


450

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The Times Archives at Wapping by Leslie Hinton, Executive Chairman of News International plc, owners of The Times. Eamon Dyas and Nick Mays, the archivists, were extremely courteous and helpful in producing letters, galley proofs and other documents related to Morrison’s service as Peking Correspondent for that paper. The books we read included: Allen, R., The Siege of the Peking Legations. Smith Elder & Co., London, 1901. Amery, Leo S., The Leo Amery Diaries, Volume 1 1896–1929. Hutchinson, London, 1980. Bell, E.H.C. Moberly, The Life and Letters of C.F. Moberly Bell. The Richards Press, London, 1927. Buck, Pearl S., Imperial Woman. John Day, New York, 1956. Bulow, Prince von, Memoirs 1897–1903. Putnam, London, 1931. Cameron, Nigel, Barbarians & Mandarins: Thirteen Centuries of Western Travelers in China. Walker/Weatherhill, New York, 1970. Charmley, John, Splendid Isolation? Britain and the Balance of Power 1874–1914. Sceptre, London, 1999. Ch’en, Jerome, Yuan Shi-k’ai. Stanford University Press, California, 1972. Chirol, Sir Valentine, Fifty Years in a Changing World. Jonathan Cape, London, 1927. Crossley, Pamela Kyle, The Manchus. Blackwell, Oxford, 2002. Curzon, George N., Problems of the Far East. Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1894. Egremont, Max, Balfour. William Collins, London, 1980. Ensor, R.C.K., England 1870–1914. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1936. Feiling, Keith, A History of England. Macmillan, London, 1950.


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451

Feuchtwanger, Edgar, Disraeli. Arnold, London, 2000. F itzgerald, C.P., Revolution in China. Longmans, London, 1952. Fleming, Peter, The Siege at Peking. Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1960. Gardiner, John, The Victorians: An Age in Retrospect. Hambledon & London, London, 2002. Gilmour, David, Curzon. John Murray, London, 1994. Harrington, Peter, Peking 1900: The Boxer Rebellion. Osprey, London, 2001. Hibbert, Christopher, Queen Victoria: A Personal History. HarperCollins, London, 2000. The History of The Times, Volume III: The Twentieth Century Test 1884–1912. Written and published at The Office of The Times, London, 1947. The History of The Times, Volume IV: The 150th Anniversary and Beyond 1912–1948. Written and published at The Office of The Times, London, 1952. Holcombe, Chester, The Real Chinaman. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1895. Hooker, Mary (née Polly Condit Smith), Behind the Scenes in Peking. John Murray, London 1910. Hoyt, Edwin, The Fall of Tsingtao. Arthur Barker, London, 1975. Hsu, Immanuel C.Y., The Rise of Modern China. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. James, Lawrence, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Abacus, London, 1994. Kent, P.H., The Passing of the Manchus. Edward Arnold, London, 1912. Kiste, John van der, Crowns in a Changing World. Alan Sutton, Stroud, England, 1993.


452

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Kitchin, F. Harcourt, Moberly Bell and His Times. Philip Allan & Co., London, 1925. Lambert, Angela, Unquiet Souls. Harper & Row, New York, 1984. Landor, Arnold Henry Savage, China and the Allies. William Heinemann, London, 1901. Lo, Hui-Min, The Correspondence of G.E. Morrison 1895–1912. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976. Lo, Jung-pang, Kang Youwei: A Biography and Symposium. University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, 1967. Macmillan, Margaret, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War. John Murray, London, 2001. Morrison, Alastair, The Road to Peking. Pandanus Press, Canberra, 2001. Morrison, G.E., An Australian in China. Horace Cox, London, 1895. Morrison, Ian, Malayan Postscript. Faber and Faber, London, 1942. Nicholls, B., Boxers and Bluejackets. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1986. Pares, Sir Bernard, A History of Russia. Jonathan Cape, London, 1937. Pearl, Cyril, Morrison of Peking. Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1967. Pratt, Ambrose, David Syme: The Father of Protection in Australia. Ward, Lock & Co., Melbourne, 1908. Pratt, Sir John, China & Britain. Collins, London, 1945. Preston, Diana, The Boxer Rebellion: China’s War on Foreigners 1900. Robinson, London, 2002. Reinsch, P.S., An American Diplomat in China. Longmans, London, 1922.


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453

Roberts, Andrew, Salisbury, Victorian Titan. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1999. Selle, Earl Albert, Donald of China, Invincible Press, Melbourne, 1948. Sergeant, Harriot, Shanghai. John Murray, London, 1991. Shannon, Richard, The Crisis of Imperialism 1865–1915. HartDavis, MacGibbon, London, 1974. Sharman, Lyon, Sun Yat-sen, His Life and Its Meaning. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, 1934. Souter, Gavin, New Guinea: The Last Unknown. Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1963. Spence, Jonathan D., The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895–1980. Penguin Books, London, 1982. ——, Treason by the Book, Traitors, Conspirators & Guardians of an Emperor. Penguin Books, London, 2001. Thompson, J. Lee, Northcliffe, Press Baron in Politics 1865–1922. John Murray, London, 2000. Thomson, J.S., China Revolutionized. T. Werner Laurie Ltd, London, 1913. Trevor-Roper, Hugh, Hermit of Peking. Penguin Books, London, 1978. Waldersee, Alfred Count Von, A Field Marshal’s Memoirs. Hutchinson, London, 1924. Warner, Marina, The Dragon Empress. Vintage, London, 1993. Westwood, J.N., The Illustrated History of the Russo–Japanese War. Purnell, London, 1970. Wheeler, W. Reginald, China and the World War. The MacMillan Company, New York, 1919. Wilson, A.N., The Victorians. Hutchinson, London, 2002. Wright, Mary Clabaugh, China in Revolution: The First Phase 1900–1913. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1968.


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Page 454

Index

Note: GM = George Morrison. Page numbers in italics indicate maps. An ‘n’ after a page number indicates a reference to an endnote. Aneiteum, 39 Anglo–French Treaty, 140 Anglo–Japanese Treaty, 253, 263, 291, 365–6, 373 Aoba, 371 Aoki, General Shuzo, 315 The Argus, 55–6, 60–1, 63–4, 70, 200, 408, 416 Ariga, Professor, 369 Arkill, Major A.W., 436 Armit, Captain W.E., 56, 61, 63–4, 70–1, 408 Armstrongs (company), 357 Arthur, Prince, 289 Ashburton, Lady, 196 Asquith government, 312, 446n Australia, Commonwealth of, 250, 406, 436 An Australian in China (Morrison), 26, 126–7

Aborigines, treatment of, 48–9 Adowa, 442n The Age, 18, 28, 31, 49, 53, 55, 200 Ah Heng, 143, 145, 147, 151, 153, 154, 168 Ah Kit, 414 Aki Maru (ship), 407 Alexandra, Queen, 275 Alexeyev, Admiral, 265 Alexeyev–Tseng Agreement, 262–3 Allen, Sir John, 417 Allen, Reverend Roland, 214 Allied Relief Expedition, China, 240, 244 Alps (ship), 83 Alston, Beilby Francis, 399, 400 Amboym, 39 America, 263, 387, 399–400, 421, 424

454


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9:19 AM

INDEX Backhouse, Edmund, 213, 227–8, 303, 428–9, 446n Balfour, Arthur, 277–9, 312 Ballarat District Hospital, 92–3 Ballarat (ship), 187 Bangkok, 140, 152–153 Bank of China, 393 Bank of Communications, 393 Barlow, Sir Thomas, 283–4 Barry, Arthur, 279–80 Barton, Sir Edmund, 262 Battambang, 139 Battle of Tientsin, 224–5 Beauclerk, Mr (British chargé d’ affaires), 158 Beijing see Peking Belford, George, 64 Bell, Charles Frederic Moberly asks GM to bury the hatchet with Chirol, 305 background, 79, 129 becomes manager of The Times, 130 becomes proprietor of The Times, 299 death, 313 discovers Pearson agreement, 296–7 discusses state of The Times with GM, 288 envisages GM’s role at peace conference, 270 expenditure exceeds income, 281 GM complains of lack of action to, 267 GM pays tribute to, 300–1 GM writes to regarding peace conference, 272, 273 GM writes to regarding Sutterlee, 247

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gives dinner party, 283 has own bone set in walking stick, 129 helps Northcliffe in Times takeover, 298–9 hires GM as Peking correspondent, 130 influence on GM’s career, 79 informs GM of salary raise, 199 instructs GM on secret mission, 134–5 instructs GM to proceed to Peking, 152 invites GM to dine with him, 131 meets GM, 130 offers GM Foreign Editor’s job, 293–4 reports dieting progress to GM, 313 reports on siege of Khartoum, 79 scheme for chartered wireless ship, 267 Bell, Ethel Moberly, 132, 281, 435 Bell, Gertrude, 256 Bell, Joseph, 78 Bennett, John Gordon, 9 Bensen, Christian, 151 Beresford, Lord Charles, 189 Bessie (GM’s girlfriend), 316–17, 332–3, 343 ‘blackbirding’, 27–8, 31 Bland, J.O.P., 161, 165, 166, 172, 180–1, 256, 264, 303, 428–9 Blowitz, Henry de, 134, 255, 444n Boer War, 202, 251, 288 Boers, 202 Boothby, Guy, 197 Bosun (expeditionary), 63


456

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Boxer Uprising (1900) 208–48 aftermath, 240–9 foreign legations besieged, 219–48 German Minister killed, 219 Hanlin Academy set ablaze, 226–7 Legation Street attacked, 211–12 Myers storms Chinese fort, 230 rise of Boxers, 202–5, 208–9 Braham, D.D., 314, 320, 330–1, 355, 410, 412, 416 Bredon, Robert, 216, 222, 228 Brisbane, 408–10 Britain accuses GM of sabotaging loan, 174 Anglo–Japanese Treaty, 253, 263, 291, 365–6, 373 attacks Tsingtao with joint force, 373 attempts to lend money to China, 173–4, 177 ‘Battle for Concessions’, 164–5 Liberal landslide (1906), 278–9 Pacific fleet, 371 works through Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, 353–4 Brown, Sir John McLeavy, 435 Brownrigg, Rear-Admiral Sir Douglas, 435 Buckle, George Earle Ethel Moberly Bell’s contempt for, 281 GM dines with, 132 GM disenchanted with, 278–9, 280, 291 Gowers mentions GM to, 127 has operation for tongue cancer, 294

nominated as director, 299 opinion of Sutterlee’s report, 238 praises GM’s work, 317 queried by GM regarding retiring allowance, 344 reaction to proposed merger, 297 The Bulletin, 363 Burke, Robert O’Hara, 44, 46 Burma, 117–19, 141–3 Burns Philp & Co., 409 Cadigan, Margaret, 348 Calcutta, 119 Calhoun, Mr (American Minister), 329 Cambodia, 138–9 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 278 Canada, 81 Canal Street, Peking, 225–6 Capper, J.B., 437 Cassel, Sir Ernest, 295, 444n Cassini Convention, 166, 174, 441n Cassini, Count A.P., 166, 441n Chalmers, Mr (expeditionary), 60, 64–5 Chamberlain, Joseph, 248, 277, 283, 289, 297–8, 445n Chamberlain, Mrs Joseph, 283 Chamot, Annie, 163 Chamot, Auguste, 163, 230 Chang Hsun, General, 401–3, 407 Chang Yin-huan, 177, 182, 186 Chapman & Hall, 61 Charcot, Professor, 91 Cheerful (Malay expeditionary), 63 Chefoo, 171 Ch’en, Eugene, 424 Chiang Mai, 141, 152 Chiene, John, 75, 78, 80–1, 127


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9:19 AM

INDEX Chilianwala, Battle of, 97 China 1911 Revolution, 313–21 anti-foreign feeling in, 189 appeals to America for recognition, 353 British interests in, 133–4 Constitution, 369 declares war on Germany, 405 Empress abdicates, 335–6 first cabinet, 313 GM in (1893), 94–8 GM in (1894), 99–118, 100 GM in (1895), 142–53 Hundred Days movement, 181 nationalism in, 290 occupies German concessions, 400 Peace Protocol with Allies signed (1901), 252 presented with list of demands by Japan, 374–9 reforms (1898), 181–8 relations with Russia, 165–8 republican system, 369 rule by Ching Dynasty, 194–5 sends coolies to Western Front, 420 Tsungli Yamen (Chinese Foreign Ministry), 163, 183, 191–2, 209, 216–17, 219, 241–3 Tz’u–Hsi’s coup d’etat, 185–9 wishes to join Alliance, 388 see also Boxer Uprising (1900); Peking China Association, 294 China Inland Mission House, 96, 105 China Mail, 319

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Chinese Christians, 204, 213–14, 218, 234–5 Ching Dynasty, 94–5, 97, 179 Ching, Prince, 209, 240, 248, 302–303 Chirol, Valentine advises GM to temper warmongering, 264 arranges talks in Tokyo for GM, 305 blocks GM’s appointment as British Minister, 312 criticises GM’s anti-Japanese feeling, 299–300 distorts GM’s reports from Peking, 295 friendship with GM sours, 299–301, 305–7 gives GM no instructions as correspondent, 160 GM complains of lack of action to, 267 GM confides doubts re. MacDonald to, 195 GM loses respect for, 291 GM first meets, 132 GM mends friendship with, 446n GM stays with (1899), 196 on GM’s exposé of Russian policy, 263 helps prevent Pearson agreement, 299 on King Edward, 276 meets GM in Bangkok, 152 opinion of Sutterlee’s report, 238 praises GM’s work, 180 in state of hyper-excitation, 294 sympathetic on GM’s return to London, 143


458

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Chirol, Valentine continued takes exception to GM’s remarks, 291–2 on war between Russia and Japan, 263–4 on Wolseley, 199 worries over lack of news from Peking, 231 writes GM’s obituary prematurely, 239 writes letters on Franco–Russian dominance, 131 writes to GM after Siege of the Legations, 245 Christianity, in China, 204, 205, 213–14, 218, 234–5 Chuang, Prince, 443n Ch’un II, Prince, 303, 314, 315–16, 318 Ch’ung-hou, 442n Chungking (ship), 187 Churchill, Winston, 278, 371, 444n Clarke, Sir George, 284 Clarke, Robert Sterling, 274 Clayton-Greene, Sir W.H., 427 Clemenceau, George, 420 Cleveland, President, 81 Cockburn, Henry, 209, 220, 435 Collins, Mr (journalist), 416 Cologan, Mr (Spanish Minister), 217, 228 Confucianism, 95 Conger, Edwin, 217–19, 230 conscription referendum, 412, 414 Coomassie and Magdala . . ., 8–9 Cordes, Heinrich, 219, 242 Coriyule (house), 413–14 Council of Three, 420 Courcel, Baron de, 140 Cox, Horace, 126

Creswell, Rear-Admiral Sir William, 417 Crisp, Charles Birch, 354 Croll, Junner M., 84 Cromer, Lord, 283, 445n Cunningham, Dr, 416 Curzon, George, 139, 164, 177–8, 290, 304 Daily Mail, 237–8, 247, 278–80, 297 Dassoy, Nicholas, 89–91 Davidson, Mr (journalist), 416 de Bunsen, Maurice, 140 Deakin, Alfred, 28, 262 Decadence Mandchoue (Backhouse), 213 Denby, Charles Junior, 167 Denton, William, 70 Detheve, Dr, 189 Diamond Jubilee, 164, 182 The Diary of a Tramp, 18 Dick (expeditionary), 63, 71 Diedrichs, Admiral von, 172 Disraeli, Benjamin, 11 Donald, W.H. apologises to GM, 364 attends christening of GM’s son, 358 GM confides plans to, 407 GM leaks copy of Japanese demands to, 379–81 helps GM report peace conference, 319 keeps GM in touch with developments, 380–1 on Liang Shi-yi, 383 predicts civil war, 359–60, 382 on strictures of government service, 363–4 on Sun Yat-sen, 328, 347


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9:19 AM

INDEX urges declaration of war on Germany, 400 Dowager Empress see Tz’u Hsi Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 78 Dresden (ship), 371 Drew, E.B., 216, 231, 241 Drumlanrig, Viscount, 198 Ducat, Colonel Charles, 258, 282 Dunne, Lady, 435 Dunne, Sir John, 432, 435 Edmonds, Albert, 157 Edward VII, King, 271, 275–6, 308 Emden (ship), 371 Empress Russia (ship), 433 Encyclopedia Britannica, 270, 292 Ethiopia (ship), 84 Evans, Annie, 13, 20 Fairbairn, Charlie, 53 Far Eastern Review, 358 Favier, Monsignor AlphonsePierre, 205, 232, 245 Feng Kuo-chang, 405 feng shui, 115, 203 Fez, 89–91 The Field, 126 F ink, Theodore, 417 F itzgerald, Sir Thomas, 73, 75, 76 foot-binding, 103 Forbes, Archibald, 7, 13 Formosa, 133 Forward, W. Peploe, 83 France, 133, 138–9 Fraser, David, 267, 344, 355 Fraser, Lovat, 398 Fu (Peking), ix, 214, 225, 234–6 Fukien province, China, 381

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Gamewell, Frank, 226 Gaselee, General Sir Alfred, 244, 249, 251 Gaunt, Clive, 351 Gaunt, Vice-Admiral Sir Ernest, 435 Gaunt, Lancelot, 351, 428 Geelong College, 4–7, 11–12, 26, 73–4, 350 George III, King, 432 George V, King, 405 Germany America breaks diplomatic ties with, 399 China declares war on, 405 concessions in China, 175, 370, 397, 400 during World War I, 370–73, 399–400 forces Japan to relinquish conquests, 133, 165 influence on Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, 354, 360 Pacific fleet, 371 refuses Chinese request, 400 seizes Kiaochow, 171–2, 175 takes revenge for Peking siege, 249–51 Gill, Hope, 105 Gladstone, William, 77, 79 Gneisenau (ship), 371 gold rushes, 6 Goodnow, Frank, 353, 369, 387 Goodnow, Mrs, 259 Goold-Adams, Sir Hamilton, 409–10 Gordon, General Charles ‘Chinese’, 77, 79, 443n Gordon, Reverend, 39 Gowers, Sir William, 127


460

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Gray, Charles, 44, 46 Greene, Sir William Conyngham, 397 Greenwood, Arthur, 12 Greenwood, Rebecca see Morrison, Rebecca (née Greenwood) Grey, Sir Edward, 290, 312, 431 Grice, Sir John, 414 Griffith, Samuel, 29, 31 Grimwade & Co., 414 Grosvenor, Hugh, 186 Gwatkin, Ashton, 436 Gwynne, H.A. ‘Taffy’, 294 Hairy Men, categories of, 204 Hampshire (ship), 371 Han Suyin, 437 Hankow, 313–15, 318 Hanlin Academy, Peking, 220, 226–7, 243 Harbin, 270 Hare, John, 197 Harmsworth, Alfred see Northcliffe, Lord Harris, Mr (missionary), 39 Hart, Sir Robert begs GM to withdraw message re. loan, 176 Chinese Ministers inquire after health of, 243 on Chinese nationalism, 290 cunning of, 160 during siege of legations, 228 forms band for Diplomatic Corps, 160 GM meets, 158–61 invites Gordon to Peking, 443n known as ‘IG’, 160 obituary published prematurely, 239

power of, 160 on reaction to reform in China, 182–3 Tsungli Yamen delivers ultimatum to, 216 Hassan, Sultan Mawlay, 90 Heidelberg School, 20 Henry, Sub-Lieutenant Paul, 244 The Herald, 416 Heronswood (house), 415 Heyking, Baron von, 159, 171–3, 175, 180, 192–3 Hibernia (ship), 81 Higgins, H.B., 74, 413, 415–16 Higgins, Mervyn, 351 Hillier, Guy, 175, 432 Hioki, Minister, 374, 379 Holcomb, C.R., 259 Holman, W.A., 413 Hong Kong, 94, 319 Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, 174, 175, 354, 360 Horder, Sir Thomas Jeeves, 427 How I Found Livingstone (Stanley), 8–9 Hsien-feng, Emperor, 95 Hsu Shih-ch’ang, 420, 421–2 Huang Hsing, 357, 360–1 Hughes, Billy, 405, 409, 414, 417–18, 419, 425–6 Hunt, Mr (suitor of GM’s girlfriend), 343 Hunt, Winsome, 374 Hutton, J.C., 80 Hyashi, Baron, 398 I-ho ch’uan, 203 IG’s Own (band), 160, 207 The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde), 125


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INDEX Iremonger, Captain, 118 Irvine, Sir William, 409 Isabelle (ship), 41 Ishida, Mikinosuke, 423 Italy, in China, 190–3 Iwasaki, Hisaya, Baron, 404 Jamaica, 81–2 James, Huberty, 214, 221 James, Lionel, 267, 269, 436–7 Jameson, Dr Leander Starr (‘Dr Jim’), 283, 445n Japan aggression in Manchuria, 291, 305 ambitions in China, 170–1, 365 Anglo–Japanese Treaty, 253, 263, 291, 365–6, 373 annexes Korea, 312, 365 defeats Russia’s Second Pacific Fleet, 270 GM in (1894), 98 GM in (1916), 396–8 GM suggests war with Germany to, 396–8 gives Germany ultimatum, 372 inflicts defeats on China, 132–3 Legation in Peking, 235–6 link with Chinese revolutionaries, 358 Meiji reforms, 97 military readiness, 370 modernisation, 97 negotiates Russian withdrawal from Manchuria, 264 at New Hampshire peace conference, 271–73 political system, 369–70 presents list of demands to China, 375–9

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rise as a national power, 365–6 Rosebery’s opinion on, 198–9 Russo–Japanese War, 266–70 secret agreement with Russia, 133 wins Battle of Mukden, 269–70 Jerram, Admiral Sir Martyn, 371 Jimmie (Able Seaman), 33 Johore, Sultan of, 279 Jones, Captain, 33–4 Jones, Jimmie, 423 Joostens, Mr (Belgian Minister), 228 Joplin, Mary, 119–20, 199–200 Jordan, Lady, 338 Jordan, Sir John advises Yuan to accept Japanese demands, 382 approves edict written by GM, 334 attends GM’s funeral, 435 becomes British Minister in Peking, 289 GM seeks recall of, 399 GM writes to regarding Chinese loan, 360 Japanese perception of, 381 nonchalant over Yunnan movement, 391 offers solution to Yuan’s problems, 304 receives copy of Japanese demands, 381 takes Japanese side over Tsingtao, 373 works through Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, 353–4 Ju Jen-ho, 422 Jung Lu, 184–5, 188, 202, 221, 302–3


462

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MORRISON OF CHINA

Kanaka trade, 27, 31, 34–5, 37 Kang Yi, 204, 208, 443n Kang Youwei, 156, 179, 181–2, 185, 186–7 Kaolo, 204 Kashgar, 308 Kato, Viscount, 305, 372, 396–8 Keane, Emily, 89 Kelly gang, 10, 12 Keng Hung, 143–6 Keng Tung, 141–3 Keppel, Alice, 276, 278 Keppel, George, 276 Ketteler, Baron Klemens von, 211, 213, 217, 219, 242, 249, 420 Ketteler, Baroness von, 222 Keyes, Lieutenant Roger, 245 Khalaw people, 147 Khartoum, 77, 79 Kiaochow, 171–2, 175 King, John, 44, 46 King, Mackenzie, 312 Kipling, Mrs Rudyard, 283, 284 Kipling, Rudyard, 283, 284 Kirin province, China, 170 Kitchin, Harcourt, 297, 311 Knobel, Mr (Dutch Minister), 228 Knowle House, 4, 6 Komura, Baron, 271–2, 273 Koo, Wellington, 372, 422, 424–5 Korea, annexation of, 312, 365 Kostroma (ship), 168 Ku Hung-ming, 403 Kuang-hsu, Emperor, 95, 181, 202, 303 Kuomintang (National People’s Party), 256, 346, 356–61 Kurino Shin’ichiro, 265 La Touche, John David, 401

Lakono, 36 Lamsdorff, Count, 264–5 Landor, Henry Savage, 213 Langtree, Matt, 418 Lansdowne, Lord, 283, 289, 299 Lansing, Robert, 422 Lavinia (ship), 30, 32 The Leader, 18, 20–1, 24 League of Nations, 425 Ledwick, Amy, 20 Legge, Major-General J.G., 417 Leipzig (ship), 371 Li Hung-chang attempts to bribe GM, 159, 196 consults banker for advice on British loan, 173–4 diplomatic principles of, 165–6 discusses Kiaochow with von Heyking, 171 entrusts northern army to Yuan, 184 gives coronation gifts to Tsar, 167 negotiates concessions with Germany, 173 negotiates treaty after Boxer Rebellion, 248 negotiates Treaty of Shimonoseki, 159 political career, 159 signs Port Arthur Convention, 177 takes bribe from Foreign Minister, 177 Li Pi Chang, 114 Li Yuan-hung, 317, 320, 357, 361, 394, 399, 403 Liang, Sir Chentung, 176, 186, 442n Liang Shih-yi, 383, 389, 392, 393


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9:19 AM

INDEX Liang Tun-yen, 404 Lipton, Sir Thomas, 276 Little, Mrs Archibald, 256 Liu, Mr (businessman), 414 Lively (Tanna expeditionary), 63 Livingstone, David, 9 Lloyd George, David, 400, 420, 426 Lonsdale, Earl of, 279 Loth (German barber), 284 Love, A.G., 53 Lu Tseng-hsiang, 354, 422 Lung-yu, Empress, 303, 335 Lusitania (ship), 399 Lyons, John Wheeler, 62–3, 66–72 Macaroni Friendship, 191 MacDonald, Sir Claude adds postscript to prime minister’s telegram, 190 adopts wait and see policy on Boxers, 205 as British Minister in China, 158 demands Weihaiwei be leased to Britain, 173, 177 denies existence of Cassini Convention, 441n dithers at crisis meeting, 217 during siege of legations, 221, 226–7, 234, 239 GM doubts fitness for office of, 194–5 GM on appointment of, 158 GM praises diplomatic expertise of, 200 GM relays intention to publish loan conditions, 176 GM takes a liking to, 161 on GM’s role during siege, 246 helps Italian Minister in China, 190, 192–3

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house in Peking, 161 obituary published prematurely, 239 seeks permission to call legation guard, 208 shell lands in bedroom of, 244 warns Empress of assassination attempt, 189 MacDonald, John Cameron, 130 Mackay, Hugh, 74 Mackay, Dr J.S., 84–85 Mackay (Queensland), 32 Mackenzie, Robert, 27, 29 Maclean, Harry, 91 Manchu cavalry, 439n Manchu Court, 94–5, 167, 179, 303–4, 315, 333–6 Manchuria, 262–4, 272–3, 291, 305, 375–6, 381–2 Mannix, Daniel, 414 Mao Tse-tung, 427 Markwell, Mr (Port Director), 408 Marshall Islands, 417 Martin, J.E., 11–12 Martin, Malachi, 16 Martindale, William, 287 Martino, Signor de, 190–4 McArthur, Stewart, 11–12 McCalla, Captain, 208 McCallum, Reverend, 416 McCubbin, Frederick, 20 McKenzie, Frederick A., 293 McLeod, Mr (traveller), 16 Meagher, R.D., 410 Mekong Crisis, 138 Melba, Nellie, 255, 257–8, 283 Melbourne Club, 413–14 Melbourne, in the 1880s, 19 Melbourne University, 19


464

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MORRISON OF CHINA

Menzies, Major, 340 Meyer-Waldeck, Governor, 373 Milner, Viscount, 283, 445 Ming dynasty, 94 Minotaur (ship), 371 Minto, Lord, 283, 445n, Mirzapore (ship), 76–7 missionaries, 38–9, 60, 95–6, 101–2, 105–6, 109–10 Mitchell, Ted, 413–14 Miyazaki Torazo, 358 Mom Luang Sook, 141–2 Mong Hsing, 152 Mongolia, 365, 375–6 Monypenny, W.F., 132, 286, 289 Mooltan (ship), 288 Morgan, Pritchard, 159 Morley, John, 290 Morocco, 88–9 morphine, 108, 113 Morrison, Alexander (GM’s uncle), 4, 20 Morrison, Alistair Robin Gwynne (GM’s son), 386, 401, 437 Morrison, Arthur (GM’s brother), 350 Morrison, Clive (GM’s brother), 6, 74, 351, 415–16 Morrison, Colin George Mervyn (GM’s son), 401, 437 Morrison, David (GM’s nephew), 414 Morrison, George Ernest attitudes and opinions on ambition to sail to South America, 17 on Northcliffe’s peerage, 278 on books of travel, 8 on the British election result (1906), 278

on British–French rivalry in China, 165 on the British Legation in Peking, 198 on British prestige in China, 310 on the Chinese, 101, 103, 111–12, 119 on conscription, 412 on corruption, 114 on Edward VII, 275–6 on exam results, 26–7 on first summer in Peking, 157 on first visit to China, 94–7 on food in London, 197 on foot-binding, 103–4 on foreign diplomats in Peking, 163–4, 228 on George Buckle, 280 on Isabella Murray, 12–13 on the Japanese, 272 on killing snakes, 49–50 on leaving Ballarat Hospital, 93–4 on letters of introduction, 168 on London society, 196 on Malachi Martin, 16 on missionaries, 38–9, 60, 96, 101–2, 105–6, 109–10 on Nellie Melba, 258 on operation for spear wound, 77–8 on the opium use and trade, 107–8, 112, 127 on the outdoor life, 51–2 on own obituary, 245 on paddling the Murray River, 24 on the profession of journalism, v, 28


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9:19 AM

INDEX on reform in China, 182 on Russia as Britain’s enemy, 254 on secret Sino–Russian treaty, 166 on Signor de Martino, 191 on Sir Claude MacDonald, 158, 194–5 on travel, 8 on walking across Australia, 55 on war between Russia and Japan, 263, 265 on Wilson’s negotiations with the Chinese, 427 on women, 256–7 as a doctor at Ballarat District Hospital, 92–3 graduates as MD from Edinburgh, 126–7 resigns after discovering fraud, 86–7 ship’s surgeon on the Warrego, 126 in Spain, 85–6 as government adviser addresses London Chamber of Commerce, 369 agrees to spy for Australia, 417 appalled by Japanese demands on China, 379 assesses anti-monarchist move ment in Yunnan, 391 attends Paris Peace Conference, 424–7 awarded honours by Chinese President, 355, 374 concern over Japanese ambitions, 366

Page 465

465 declines to be vehicle for propaganda, 357 declines to sit on assassination inquiry, 356 discussions with Japan re. war with Germany, 396–9 favours declaring war on Germany, 397, 403 finds strictures of service frustrating, 363 frustrated by lack of progress in China, 381, 385 on Goodnow’s idea of a monarchy, 387 Japanese perception of, 381 leaks copy of Japanese demands to Donald, 379–80 meets Sun Yat-sen, 421 negotiates international loan, 353–4, 359–60 opposed to monarchist movement, 384, 387–8 outraged when advice not taken, 354–5 suggests author for Chinese Constitution, 353 vents anger on Liang Tun-yen, 403 on Yuan ascendancy to the throne, 390 on Yuan’s mistrust of Japan, 274 as a journalist accompanies General Nogi into Port Arthur, 260 accompanies Strouts on inspections, 234–7 addresses Millions Club, 412–13


466

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Page 466

MORRISON OF CHINA

Morrison, George Ernest continued addresses Press Club in Australia, 411 appointment as British Minister blocked, 312 argues with American Minister, 218–19 arrives in Peking, 153 attends Russo–Japanese peace conference, 270–4 becomes embroiled in Chinese loan affair, 174–8 becomes The Times China correspondent, 127, 130 begins networking and newsgathering in Peking, 158–60 on the Boxers, 202–3, 205, 208, 241–3 buys house in Wangfujing, 247–8 buys house near Customs Compound, 161–2 cables Chinese loan conditions to The Times, 175–6 chides himself over work, 251–2 on Chinese telegraph poles, 114–15 collects souvenirs, 248 complains about Yuan’s troops, 340 consults Buckle about a retiring allowance, 344 declines offer from Daily Mail, 292 devises means for creation of republic, 320–1 disconcerted by fanatics, 331

discusses Russo–Japanese War with de Witte, 272–3 discusses state of The Times with Bell, 288–9 disenchanted with Buckle, 278–9 drafts edict ending dynastic rule, 334 during 1911 Revolution, 313–21 during Boxer Rebellion viii–xi, 211–33, 238–48 enjoys some fame, 255 exposes injustices in Kanaka trade, 27, 29–43 exposes secret Russian treaty, 263 feted by Japanese, 268 GM’s impressions of foreigners’ life Peking, 163–4 has dinner with The Times proprietor, 195–6 helps evacuate Harriet Squiers, 207–8 hones writing skills, 79–80 informs Russian general of impending defeat, 269 instructed to help Italian Minister, 190–4 investigates fire at Fengtai, 207 investigates Russian penetration into China, 168, 169, 170–1 invited to Hankow in luxury train car, 318 on Japanese aggression in Manchuria, 291 Japanese Legation sends war reports to, 267


27/11/07

9:19 AM

INDEX learns rudimentary Chinese, 162 lectures on Japanese expansionism, 417 lodges claim for damages against government, 248 lunches with Lord Northcliffe, 279 meets Li Hung-chang, 159 meets Teddy Roosevelt, 273–4 meets Yuan Shi-k’ai, 318 negotiates position of presidential adviser, 334 notes massacre at Kaolo, 204 offered three-year contract by Chinese government, 345 officially appointed to staff of The Times, 152 pays tribute to Moberly Bell, 300–1 predicts abdication of the Manchus, 320–1 publishes account of Peking siege, 241–3 publishes Australian in China, 126 publishes Diary of a Tramp, 18 raises issue of China’s opium problem, 289–90 receives salary raise, 199 relationship with The Times head office, 329 on remarkable escapes from bullets, 233 reports dismantling of Imperial Observatory, 249–50 reports distorted by Chirol, 295

Page 467

467 rescues Chinese Christians, 213–15 resigns from The Times, 352 returns to Peking from London (1911), 312 secret mission in Southeast Asia and China, 136–53, 137 sees Ketteler monument pulled down, 420 sends best wishes to Yuan Shi-k’ai, 305 sends dispatches from Peking, 157–8, 162 smuggles dispatches by courier, 210, 231–2 suggests plan for Yuan, 329, 338–9 on Sun Yat-sen, 337 takes exception to alleged bias, 300 takes pride in achievements, 349 threatened with court-martial by Waldersee, 250 tries to revive wireless ship scheme, 267 turns house into makeshift hospital, 340 Wallace becomes mentor of, 134 on whether Yuan will accept Presidency, 320 witnesses assassination attempt on Yuan, 331 work praised by Chirol and von Heyking, 180 wounded in leg, 236 writes full report of Peking siege, 246


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MORRISON OF CHINA

Morrison, George Ernest continued writes scathing report of Russian surrender, 269 writes to Braham about Fraser, 355 on Yuan Shi-k’ai, 187–8 personal life ambition to enter politics, 344, 418 attends Edinburgh University, 79, 80 attends Melbourne University, 20–1, 25–7 becomes a father, 358, 386, 401 becomes moody and irritable, 362 birth, 3 compiles annual inventory, 87, 200 complains about exam result, 25–6 concerned over health, 423 death, 433–4 determines to go to Spain, 82–3 diagnosed with pancreatitis, 427–8, 430 dines with high society, 283–4 early ambitions, 10, 18 entertains mother and sister, 355 excursion to see play, 10–11 experiences self-doubt, 157 extravagance in buying stores, 58 feels jaded and depressed, 251 financial insecurity, 180–1 funeral, 435–6 geniality of, 88, 256

gives speech at Wesley Church, 416 holidays at Pei-tai-ho, 401 holidays at Queenscliff, 7–8 holidays in Australia (1900), 200 honeymoon, 351 independence of, 50, 53 made Honorary Member of Melbourne Club, 143 marries Jennie Robin, 351–2 meets Sir Henry Stanley, 197 obituaries, x, 239, 245, 436 outraged by Donald’s comments, 364 proposes to Jennie Robin, 342 recuperates after surgery, 428 rescues personal library, 225 returns to London to marry, 350 school years, 6–8, 10–12 sells personal library, 345, 404 sexual prowess, 80, 257 shot in leg, 236 spends Christmas with the Walters, 286 sporting prowess, 20 Straight’s description of, 255–6 struck by illness in Washington, 427 struck down by bubonic plague, 150 suffers from liver complaint, 307 suffers from malaria, 119, 153 suffers from nosebleeds, 307 suffers spear wounds, 68–73, 76–8 suffers weight loss, 427–8, 430


27/11/07

9:19 AM

INDEX undergoes exploratory surgery, 427–8 visits bordello, 274 visits jail out of curiosity, 14 writes MD thesis, 126–7 writes to prospective fatherin-law, 343 relationships and friendships with Bessie, 316–7, 332–3, 343 with Billy Donald, 364 with father, 7 with Jennie Robin, 327, 332–3, 342–4, 349, 350 with Mary Joplin, 119–20 with May Perkins, 258–61 with mother, 4, 72, 255–7 with Pepita, 85, 87 with Sir Claude MacDonald, 161 with Toni Steaffan, 280, 281, 282–8 with Valentine Chirol, 294, 299–301, 305, 306–7, 446n with women generally, 9–10, 13–14, 20, 80, 255–7 with Yuan Shi-k’ai, 327, 340–1 travels and expeditions in America, 81, 83, 270–4 attempts to cross New Guinea, 57–75, 59 bluffs his way into Yunnan, 148–50 on board the Lavinia, 32–42 in Brisbane, 408–10 in Calcutta and Assam, 199 in Canada, 81 in China (1893), 94–8 in China (1894), 99–119, 100

Page 469

469 in China (1895), 142–53 in China (1918), 420–1 in Europe (1905), 284–5 from Peking to Moscow (1910), 307–10, 309 in Hong Kong and Philippines, 94 hunting trip in Kwantai, 301 in Jamaica, 81–3 in Japan, 97–8, 267, 396–8, 422, 423–4 in London (1884), 77–8 in London (1895), 125–35 in London (1899), 195–9 in London (1907), 293–5 in London (1910), 310–12 in London (1912), 350–4 in London (1914), 369 in London (1919), 427–9 love of walking, 8, 15 in New York, 83, 274 in New Zealand, 417 in North Africa, 88–91 paddles length of Murray River, 21–2, 23, 24–5 in Paris, 91–2 returns to Australia (1917–18), 408–18 returns to China from England (1906), 288–9 returns to China from England (1914), 372 returns to China from Japan, 98 secret mission in Southeast Asia and China, 136–53, 137 secures passage from New York to Glasgow, 84 set upon by bandits, 150


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Morrison, George Ernest continued in Siberia, 168, 169 in Spain, 85–7, 91 in Sydney, 410–13 travels boundaries of Manchuria, 168, 169 visits Angkor Wat, 139 walks across Australia, 46–56, 45 walks from Melbourne to Adelaide, 15–16, 23 walks from Shanghai to Burma, 99–119, 100 Morrison, George (GM’s father), 4–7, 17–18, 178 Morrison, Hilda (GM’s sister), 6, 74, 350–1, 355 Morrison, Ian Ernest McLeavy (GM’s son), 358, 368, 395, 437 Morrison, Janet (GM’s sisterin-law), 413, 415 Morrison, Jean ‘Jennie’ Wark (née Robin, GM’s wife) advises GM to see Northcliffe, 423 becomes engaged to Herbert Phillips, 332–3 becomes pregnant, 356 birth, 348 breaks engagement with Phillips, 337–8 death, 437 education, 348 GM attracted to, 327, 342 GM proposes to, 342 and GM’s death, 433–4 gives birth to first son, 358 gives birth to second son, 386 gives birth to third son, 401 hired by GM as secretary, 312

marries GM, 351 parents approve marriage to GM, 348 precedes GM to London, 368 rebuffs David Fraser, 344 rents house in Devon, 432 suggests diplomatic career to GM, 405 joins GM in Peking, 312 Morrison Library, 423–4 Morrison, Mary Alice (GM’s sister), 6, 74, 351, 413, 415–16 Morrison, Norman (GM’s brother), 6, 74, 350 Morrison, Norman (GM’s nephew), 414 Morrison, Rebecca (née Greenwood, GM’s mother) GM corresponds with, 28, 61, 63, 69, 71–2 GM visits in South Yarra home, 413 marries, 5–6 nurses GM back to health, 75 suggests GM submits story, 18 travels to London for GM’s wedding, 350 wires GM money in Shanghai, 98 writes to Captain Lilyblack, 29 Morrison, Reggie (GM’s brother), 6, 13, 74, 351, 413, 415 Morrison, Violet (GM’s sister), 6, 74, 351, 428 Morton (school boarder), 11 Mukden, 269 Munro-Ferguson, Lady Helen, 411–12 Munro-Ferguson, Sir Ronald Crauford, 411


27/11/07

9:19 AM

INDEX Munthe, Captain J.W.N., 188 Murray, Isabella, 12–13 Musart Pass, China, 308 Myers, Captain Jack, 230 Nakagawa, Mr (Japanese diplomat), x, 236 Nanking, 336, 338, 339, 360, 361, 407 National People’s Party (Kuomintang), 256, 346, 356–61, National Petitioners’ Association, 389 Nee Lu, 367 Nestergaard, Mr (missionary), 222, 225 New Guinea, GM’s attempt to cross, 57–79, 59 New Hebrides, 39 New York Herald, 9, 319 Newcastle (ship), 371 Newton, W.S., 80 Nicholas II, Tsar, 167, 262, 264, 265–6, 270, 271 Nicholson, Reginald, 311 Noelle (GM’s girlfriend), 91 Nogi, General, 268–9 Norman River, 49 North Africa, 88–91 North China Daily News, 368 Northcliffe, Lord, 277–80, 292, 296–99, 301, 310–11, 411–12, 430–2 Noumea, 37 Nurnburg (ship), 371 The Observer, 296–98 Oceanic (ship), 274 O’Conor, Sir Nicolas, 158 Oishi, Masami, 381

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471

Okuna, Count, 367, 369, 372–3 Opium Edict, 291 opium cultivation and trade, 107, 289–90 edict against, 291 use, 107–8, 112, 144 Orton, Arthur, 84 O’Shea, Henry, 172 O’Sullivan, Colonel, 251 Oukhtomsky, Prince Esper, 166–7, 175 Pallada (ship), 266 Paris Peace Conference, 419–22, 424–7 Parnell Affair, 129, 289, 440n Paton, Reverend John, 39, 43 patricide, in China, 109 Pavlov, Mr (Russian diplomat), 168, 172, 174, 177 Pearce, Senator, 417 Pearson, C. Arthur, 276, 296–9 Pei-tai-ho, 401 Peitang cathedral, 205, 220, 243–4, 245 Peking Boxers set fire to Chien Men, 215 foreign legations prepare to evacuate, 219 foreign quarter, 156–7, 163–4, 189 gay quarter, 213 GM arrives in as journalist, 154, 156–8 GM visits for first time, 95–6 GM’s impressions of foreign life in, 163–4


472

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MORRISON OF CHINA

Peking continued Gordon burns Summer Palace, 77 Hanlin Academy, 220, 226–7, 243 Heyking negotiates concessions, 171–3 layout of city, 154, 155 Legation Street, 156, 211 siege of the Legations (1900), viii, 206, 220–47 Peking Gazette, 186 Pepita (GM’s girlfriend), 85, 87 Percy, Lord, 283 Perkins, May Ruth, 258–61 Pethick, William N., 174–5, 205, 251 Philippines, 94 Phillips, Herbert, 332–3, 338, 342 Philp, Sir Robert, 409 Phnom Penh, 138, 139 Pichon, Stephen, 205, 217, 222, 228, 243 Piesse, Major E.L., 417 Piggy-pig (Santo Islander), 40–1 Po Ching, 202 Pokotilov, Dmitri, 173 Poole, Dr Wordsworth, 220, 237 Pope, Norman, 412 Port Arthur, 170, 173, 177, 265, 268–9 Port Arthur Convention, 177 Pratt, Lionel, 358, 368 Pressgrave, Lieutenant-Colonel, 142 Preston, Sergeant, 213 Pride of the Logan (ship), 72 Prince Heinrich (ship), 172 Printing Square House, London, 128, 130, 134, 180, 291

Problems of the Far East (Curzon), 164 Prothero, G.W., 394 Pu Lun, Prince, 346 Pu-Yi, 303, 402 Pu’er, 148, 150 Quarterly Review, 394 racial equality clause, 425–6 Ragdale, Mrs (chaperone), 258 Rand, Frank, 82 Ranelagh (ship), 46 Rangoon, 118–19 Redmond, G. McLeod, 4–6 Reform Party (China), 182 Reinsch, P.S., 361–2, 384, 393, 399 Reminiscences (Morrison) on ambition to sail to South America, 17 on books of travel, 8 on exam results, 27 on first summer in Peking, 157 on first visit to China, 94 on leaving Ballarat Hospital, 93 on letters of introduction, 168 on operation for spear wound, 68 on paddling the Murray River, 24 on secret Sino–Russian treaty, 166 on Sir Claude MacDonald, 158 on walking across Australia, 55 Retvizan (ship), 266 Revolutionary Brotherhood, 345 Rex, Ambassador von, 372 rice Christians, 204, 213 Rich, William, 86–7 Richards, R.W., 410


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9:19 AM

Page 473

473

INDEX Righteous and Harmonious F ists, 203 Rio Tinto, 84–94 Robb (drunkard), 415 Roberts, Tom, 20 Robin, Hilda, 350 Robin, Jennie see Morrison, Jean ‘Jennie’ Wark (née Robin) Robin, Robert, 348 Rockhill, W.W., 273 Roosevelt, Teddy, 270, 271, 273–4 Rosebery, Lord, 138, 198 Rowlands, John, 8–9 Royal Society of Victoria, 44 Russia ambitions in Manchuria, 174–5 anger at Germany’s seizure of Kiaochow, 172–3 forces Japan to relinquish conquests, 133 foreign policy under Nicholas II, 167–8 loses Battle of Mukden, 269–70 makes territorial demands on China, 174–6 massacres Chinese in Siberia, 262 at Portsmouth peace conference, 271–3 reaches secret agreement with Japan, 133 relations with China, 165–8 Russo–Japanese War, 265–70 Second Pacific Fleet loses to Japan, 270 takes revenge for siege of Peking, 249 threatens Japanese interests, 263 wins Port Arthur and Talienwan, 177

withdraws troops from Manchuria, 262 Sabbione, Mr (Italian diplomat), 217 Saint Albans, Duchess of, 197, 294 Saint George, Mr (police magistrate), 60 Sakhalin, 273 Salisbury, Lord, 139, 140, 173, 182, 190, 277 Salt Gabelle, 379 Sanderson, Sir Thomas, 135, 136, 140 Satow, Sir Ernest, 246, 289–90, 435 Saturday Review, 127 Saumao, 147–8, 150–1 Scharnhorst (ship), 371 Scoop (Waugh), 58 Selle, Earl A., 380 Seymour, Admiral Sir Edward, 209–10, 231 Shan states, 117–18, 141–3, 146 Shantung, 171–2, 175, 188, 203, 370, 373, 375, 425–6 Sharif of Wazan, 89 Shaw, Flora, 132 Sheridan, General Phil, 81 Shiba, Colonel, ix–x, 235–6 Shoebridge, William, 24 Siam, 134, 138–41, 152 Siberia, 168, 262 Sikhs, in Peking, 244–5, 373 Simpson, Alexander Russell, 80 Sino–Japanese War, 166, 179 The Six Gentlemen, 187 Smalley, George, 271, 273 Smith, George, 92 Smith, J. Joynton, 410 Smith, Polly Condit, 207–8, 214, 218, 220, 227, 255–6,


474

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9:19 AM

Page 474

MORRISON OF CHINA

Snow, Edmund ‘Ned’, 62, 67 socialism, in China, 347 Society for Planning for Peace and Stability (China), 383, 387 Society for the Study of National Strengthening (China), 184 Soong, Charles, 367 Soong Ching-ling, 366 Soong E-ling, 367 Souter, Gavin, 58, 61 South Africa, 202, 288 Spain, 82–5, 156, 222 The Spectator, 246 Spee, Admiral Graf von, 371 Spofforth, ‘Demon’, 20 Spriggs, Edmund, 429 Squiers, Herbert and Harriet, 207, 223, 271, 248 The Standard, 296, 298 Stanley, Sir Arthur, 413, 414 The Stanley (canoe), 21 Stanley, Dorothy, 197 Stanley, Henry Hope, 9 Stanley, Henry Morton, 8–9, 21, 197 Steaffan, Antonia (‘Toni’) Sofia Victoria, 280, 281, 282–8 Stephens, George, 73 Sterling, General John, 299 Stirling, G.C.B., 142–3 Stoessel, General, 268–9 Straight, Willard, 255–6 Streeton, Arthur, 20 Strouts, B.M., ix–x, 208, 213, 221, 226, 233, 235–7 Su, Prince, ix, 214, 443n Sudan, 77 Sugiyama, Akira, 210 Sun Yat-sen arrives in Peking, 346

calls for end to negotiations with Yuan, 359 calls on Yuan to resign, 360 detained by American immigration officers, 346 dismissed as railways minister, 361 education, 447n feted in Japan, 356 flees to Japan, 361, 366 foments unrest from Nanking, 407 foments unrest from Shanghai, 401 impracticality of, 347 meets GM, 421 opposes China entering war, 400–1 proposes co–operation with Japan, 367, 379 receives advice from Miyazaki Torazo, 358 on reconstruction in China, 352–3 as provisional president, 319–20, 325, 328–31 resigns in Yuan’s favour, 336 returns to China, 317 takes Soong Ching-ling as wife, 366–7 Sung Chiao-jen, 356 Sutterlee, F.W., 238, 247 Syme, David abhors Kanaka trade, 27–8, 43 accepts GM’s first submission, 18 defends GM, 56 entrusts GM with New Guinea expedition, 56–60, 64 invests in GM’s projects, 25


27/11/07

9:19 AM

INDEX Lyons writes to on GM’s behalf, 70–1 Syme, G.A., 25 Szechuan province, China, 140, 391 Tai Yuan (ship), 94 Taiping Rebellion, 77 Taisho, Emperor, 369 Taku Forts, 216 Talienwan, 174, 177 Tan Sitong, 184–7 Tang Shao-yi, 290–1, 319, 330, 345–6 Tangier, 88 Thomann, Captain von, 225–6, 233 Three Gorges, China, 102 Thursday Island, 46, 408 Tibet, 381 Tichborne, Sir Roger, 84 Tientsin, 216, 269, 333 The Times chided by GM over massacre story, 247 employs GM as China correspondent, 127, 130 exposes Russian–Chinese agreement, 133 Northcliffe’s takeover, 296–9, 301 obituaries of GM in, x, 239, 245, 436 on Oscar Wilde, 125 parlous financial position, 128–9, 292–3, plan to merge with Standard, 295–9 publishes Sutterlee’s report of Peking massacre, 237–8, 247 reports GM’s walk across Australia, 35

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reputation and management, 128–30 reviews Australian in China, 127 titles, trade in, 276 Togo, Admiral, 266 Trans–Manchurian Railway, 174 Trans–Siberian Railway, 133, 166, 169, 170, 266, 312 Treaty of Portsmouth, 305 Treaty of Shimonoseki, 132–3, 159 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 304 Triumph (ship), 371, 374 Ts’ai O, General, 391–2 Tsai Ting-kan, Admiral asks GM to meet Yuan, 318 celebrates 1911 anniversary with GM, 361 discusses military strategy with GM, 338–40 GM accepts offer of, 349–50 GM confides in, 364 GM proposes American mediation to, 421–2 keeps GM updated, 393–4 makes fuss of GM’s mother, 355 negotiates GM’s future position as adviser, 334 passes on GM’s plan to Yuan, 320 plans for premiership, 392 secures contract package for GM, 345 subject of Imperial Decree, 403 on Sun Yat-sen, 337 on Yuan’s delight with GM’s plan, 329 Tsesarevich (ship), 266 Tsinanfu, 370 Tsingtao, 370, 373–4, 400 Tso Tsung-t’ang, 308


476

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MORRISON OF CHINA

Tu Wen Hsiu, 116 Tuan Chi-jui, 401, 405 Tuan, Prince, 202, 208, 209, 248, 401, 405, 443n Tudor, F.G., 408–9 T’ung-chih, Emperor, 95 Tung Fu-hsiang, 210, 237 Turner, Reverend F. Storrs, 107 Tz’u Hsi, Dowager Empress admiration for Queen Victoria, 201 Allied troops perform parody of, 251 awards Gordon the Yellow Jacket, 77 death, 301, 303 declares war on great powers, 224 determines to allow no more concessions, 190 has Emperor arrested, 185–6 lives in Sian during hostilities, 252 names nephew Crown Prince, 302–3 plans to assassinate, 183–4 as power behind the regent, 95, 201 re-enters Peking, 252–3 reacts against reforms, 182–3 rewards Yuan with Governorship, 188 sacks moderate president, 209 seizes the throne, 185–6 sends telegram to Queen Victoria, 240 suffers stroke and dysentery, 302 Ulugchat, 310

9:19 AM

Vanbrugh, Irene, 197 Versailles Peace Conference, 419–22 Victoria, Queen, 201–2, 251, 432 Vietnam, 135–8 Ville de la Ciotat (ship), 200 Vitale, Baron Guido, 192–3 Vladivostock, 168, 170, 270, 272–3 Waldersee, F ield Marshall Count von, 249–50 Wallace, Sir Donald Mackenzie, 131–5, 152, 180, 195, 270–1, 275 Walter, Arthur advises Bell not to resist takeover, 298–9 appointed receiver of The Times, 293 asked by Bell to contradict Observer story, 297 as chair of The Times, 295 consults Chamberlain re. Boer War, 288–9 death, 310 GM dines with, 195–6 GM loses respect for, 291 GM spends Christmas with, 286 knows nothing of accounts, 280 as manager of The Times, 129 meets GM, 134 offers Bell job as assistant manager, 129 opposes Boer War, 288 persuaded to drop Pearson agreement, 299 praises GM for report on siege of Peking, 246–7 Walter, Godfrey, 295, 297 Walter, John III, 128–9


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9:19 AM

INDEX Walter, John IV, 310–11, 435 Walter, Ralph, 311 Wang, C.T., 424 Wanshien Inland Mission, 105 Ward, Frederick, 410 Warner, Sir Pelham, 435 Warrego (ship), 73, 126 Warrington, Justice, 292–3, 299 Warrington, Lady, 196 Waters, Robert, 357 Watt, W.A., 411 Watters, Thomas, 127 Waugh, Evelyn, 58 Wei, T.C., 414 Weihaiwei, 173, 177 Weng T’ung-ho, 173, 182–3, 441n Westbury, Lady, 196 White Australia Policy, 31, 101, 425–6 White, Thirkell, 142 Whitehead, T.H., 133 Wighton, Jim, 14 Wilde, Oscar, 125, 198 Wilkinson, Frank, 64, 69, 71 Williams, Dr (GM’s examiner), 25–6 Williams, Reverend John, 39 Wills, William John, 44, 46 Wilson, Woodrow, 420, 425–6 Witte, Count de, 177, 264, 271–3 Wolseley, Lord Garnet, 79, 199 Wu Ting-fang, 319, 401 Wuhan, 314 Wylie, Sir John, 80 Yamagata, Marshall, 268 Yamaza, Mr (Japanese Minister), 361 Yangtse, 381 Yarmouth (ship), 371

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Yen Fu, 337 Young, Ernest, 428 Yuan K’e-ting, 318, 383, 386, 395 Yuan Shi-k’ai abolishes empire, 392–3 accepts modified Japanese demands, 382 accuses Sun of ‘making nuisance’, 357 appointed Prime Minister, 316 as army commander, 184, 290 arranges apartments for Sun Yat-sen, 346 asks Dowager Empress for leave, 332 asks GM to return via Japan, 372 assassination attempt, 330–1 on authority and power, 326–7 bargains with Prince Ch’un, 314–16 becomes Emperor, 390–3 becomes impatient with republican process, 356 becomes Prime Minister, 335–6 becomes provisional president, 336, 340 chosen as permanent president, 361 death, 395 declines Crisp loan under pressure, 354 denied extra carriage space by Empress, 252–3 denies imperial ambitions, 386 differences with Sun Yat-sen, 345–6 discusses politics with GM, 350 downfall, 392–5


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Yuan Shi-k’ai continued engineers mutiny in Peking, 339–40 GM on, 393 gives Empress birthday presents, 302 grants GM leave, 368 has his topknot removed, 338 ill health, 385 imperial ambitions, 302, 383–4, 386, 389–93 implicated in Sung’s assassination, 356 insists on wording of presidential appointment, 325 invites GM to Hankow, 318 meets GM, 318 moves against Kuomintang, 360–1 negotiates with Manchu Court, 333 nonchalant over Yunnan movement, 391

opposes Boxers, 204–5 ordered to suppress rebellion, 314–15 presented with list of demands by Japan, 374–5, 379 proposes provisional government, 333 relationship with reform movement, 184–8 reluctant to reveal Japanese demands, 379 as sole obstacle to rebels, 327 stripped of power, 304 Times publishes telegram of, 238 vainly hopes to secure Tsingtao, 373 Yung Lu, 242 Yunnan city, 114 Yunnan province, China, 111–12, 140, 151, 391

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