[Enclosure]
Dr. Sun Yat-sen
to President Harding
Your Excellency: I have just issued a
Manifesto to the Friendly Nations13 but I am impelled, on behalf of my countrymen,
to make a particular appeal to Your Excellency, for the reason that
we regard America as the Mother of Democracy, and the champion of
liberalism and righteousness, whose disinterested friendship and
support of China in her hour of distress has been demonstrated to us
more than once. China is now in the most critical time of her
existence. Whether democracy triumphs or fails much depends upon the
decision of America. This time we look again to America to support
righteousness and help uphold the will of the Chinese people.
As I have shown in my Manifesto to the Friendly Nations, the
so-called Northern and Southern war in China is not a war between
the different sections of the country, but a national struggle
between militarism and democracy and between treason and patriotism.
That the people in the North are sympathetic and are working in
cooperation with the South has been demonstrated by the fact that
they have spontaneously organized demonstrations and boycotts in
order to fight against the foreign oppressor who supports those
traitors.
When at the end of the Great War, the Powers advised us to cease
fighting and bring about the unification of the country, the South
complied by meeting the North at a Conference in Shanghai. The South
was ready, for the sake of early restoration of peace, to yield in
practically everything on one condition, namely that the Peking
Government should repudiate all the secret treaties and, in
particular, the Twenty-One Demands of Japan, which were contracted
after the illegal dissolution of Parliament, and which was merely
the bait offered by the Emperor Yuan Shi Kai for the recognition of
his abortive empire. But this simple and just demand of the South
was rejected. The South being unwilling to sacrifice national
independence for a nominal unification, the Peace Conference came to
a deadlock, and the state of war continued.
Furthermore, it was simply the weight of public opinion in China that
forced China’s delegates to the Peace Conference at Paris to present
an appeal for the restoration of Shantung to China. The Northern
militarists, however, worked secretly against this appeal for should
Japan be forced to return Shantung, they would lose the material
support of Japan.
The internal condition of China has gone from bad to worse. While the
people of North China are dying by the millions from starvation,
plenty of food are cornered immediately around the [Page 339] Famine Districts by these militarists
for the sake of self-gain. This is proved by the fact that while
some foreign philanthropists offered a large quantity of rice to
relieve the famine situation, the Chinese Famine Relief Society
declined the offer in kind, but requested in its stead the
equivalent in money, since plenty of food can be gotten even in the
famine areas.
Such is the state of affairs in China that unless America, her
traditional friend and supporter comes forward to lend a helping
hand in this critical period, we would be compelled against our will
to submit to the Twenty-One Demands of Japan. I make this special
appeal, therefore, through Your Excellency to the Government of the
United States to save China once more, for it is through America’s
genuine friendship, as exemplified by the John Hay Doctrine, that
China owes her existence as a nation. The John Hay Doctrine is to
China what the Monroe Doctrine is to America. The violation of this
Hay Doctrine would mean the loss of our national integrity and the
subsequent partitioning of China. Just as America would do her
utmost to keep intact the spirit as well as the letter of the Monroe
Doctrine so we in China are striving to uphold this spirit of the
John Hay Doctrine. It is in this spirit, therefore, that I appeal to
the author of the John Hay Doctrine to befriend the Chinese nation
again in this hour of her national peril, by extending immediate
recognition to this Government.
With assurances [etc.]
