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Government House,
what we want most, and this proposal for borrowing British officers
is a demonstration on those lines.
When he was here, he sketched his views to me somewhat on these lines, "Unification by force is impossible. Unification by
consent will take a long time owing to the selfish ambitions of Wụ Pei Fu. We can only proceed gradually. I want to begin by making
Kwang Tung a model province, an object-lesson to China. When other
provinces see the result they will want to follow our example and will not put up with military government any longer, and so gradually
the reign of order will be established and unification will come of
itself."
Personally I believe this to be true and that it is the
only way since there seems no prospect of a strong man arising to
pacify China by force.
It seemed to me therefore that not only in our own interesta
but in the interests of China and of the world in general it would be
well for us to try to help Sun to establish this model province, and
when Eugene Chen brought me a definite request from Sun asking me to
advise him as to the appointment of British experts to organize the
departments of the Provincial Government I thought it desirable to
telegraph the proposal that we should lend men. I told Zugene Chen et
the time that I thought H.M's Government would not agree and when he
left
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