RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p
119

it should be remembered, travellers to England needed no passport or travel document, so that Lock had no problems about residence or work. Liverpool, as a great port, had a long-established Chinese colony — a small 'China-town' as it would now be termed — so one infers the young Lock did not feel too cut off from his homeland.

Because of his maritime experience, he became the European representative of the Chinese Seamen's Mutual Benefit Society, formed in 1914 among Chinese seamen on ocean-going vessels.* This society was registered in Hong Kong under the name of the 'Seamen's Philanthropic Society'. It was more than a mutual-aid society; it had political aims. Lock was also a member of the T'ung-meng-hui (Sworn League), the secret revolutionary party organised by Sun Yat-sen and others in 1905, which later became the Kuo-min-tang. Sun used seamen as couriers in his revolutionary activities and, it is claimed, Lock worked for Sun as a secret service agent in England. Lock also founded the Chinese Republic Progress Club (a significant designation) in Liverpool in 1918 and became the leading figure in the Liverpool Chinese community. At his trial it became known he had convened a secret court to punish a Chinese for beating his English wife (but we do not know what punishment, if any, was meted out to the callous husband). Lock was thus highly respected in both the English and Chinese communities and was a spokesman for his compatriots. He became that well-known figure: a Chinese community leader. He was also a British subject: a naturalised Englishman.

Edward Marjoribanks affirms that ‘... he was not the sinister "King of Chinatown" of detective romance; a kindly, gentle person, he distributed much in charity and hospitality, giving Christmas treats to the poor children of Birkenhead and Liverpool, and renting a shoot where he entertained his English friends'.5 All his affairs prospered until 1923 when he launched out on a large commercial undertaking and lost most of his investment. As a consequence, he was forced to file his own petition in bankruptcy, although he continued to live with his wife and children in some style. Friends said that after these events he became moody and his behaviour erratic, flying into sudden rages and weeping uncontrollably. He also began to drink heavily,
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
64

on earth had induced me to make such an appalling selection of colours. When I explained that the selection had very kindly been made by Mrs. L..... the temperature quickly rose to boiling point. As the ladies said, "Why, Mrs. L. . . . hardly ever comes to the Club; and she never plays bridge". I beat a hasty retreat to drown my sorrows at the bar, and soon after found it convenient to give up bridge altogether.

In the Club the consumption of liquids, refreshing or otherwise, varied. Sometimes it led to peculiar situations. There was the occasion in 1924 I think when late one night the two other members of the Municipal Council, by which the small affairs of the Concession were managed, took offence at the vinous truculence of their Chairman, and called in the police to remove him to cool his heels in the cells. Unfortunately the two strong-minded, but junior, members of the Council on the following morning, when they awoke refreshed by a night of comfort at home in bed, had quite forgotten the events of the previous evening; and it was not till later in the day, after he had himself come to, that they received a plaintive reminder from their Chairman requesting that he might be released from his own police cells.

Throughout the period of 1911-1926 the Treaty Ports, such as Kiu Kiang, provided harbours of refuge, to whose security hundreds of thousands of Chinese threatened by the tide of civil war, fled.

Kiu Kiang had had its share of recent disturbances. For Sun Yat Sen, having applied to British officials for help and having met with a refusal, based on the correct British attitude of non-interference in the internal affairs of a friendly country, had turned to Russia. Michael Borodin with a group of Bolshevik advisers had consequently proceeded to Canton to advise the Kuo Min Tang Revolutionary Party and there, with consummate skill, had created the intellectual cohesion necessary to the effort of unifying China. Borodin appealed to the deep-seated exclusive instincts of the sons of Han, the inhabitants of a kingdom, which from time immemorial had been called the Middle Kingdom, because all other peoples existed only in outer darkness.

The instrument was the Chinese Revolutionary Army, led by officers indoctrinated with Kuo Min Tang ideology at the Whampoa Military Academy, of which General Chiang Kai Shek was principal. By October of 1926 this army, fighting staunchly through incredible hardships against
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
66

Another time the alarm went, due to a slight misunderstanding at one of the gates. It was approaching dusk and the sailor sentry, who had no doubt been standing guard at this particular gate at the back of the Concession for some time, was beginning to get bored. The gates, of wood, with a small window through which persons on the far side could be inspected, were open. Outside stood a row of hawker's stands, for the most part purveying cooked foods to the coolies who passed in and out. The stand nearest to the sentry held a large copper pan, of the sort in which rice is cooked, over a small fire. At the moment the pan was empty, and the sentry, being of an enquiring mind, wondered what would happen if he put a rifle cartridge in it. The experiment produced a loud bang and several holes through the bottom of the pan. An infuriated hawker, supported by increasing numbers of excited fellow tradesmen, shouted curses at the sentry and loudly demanded large sums of money in compensation for the damage done. At the sound of the explosion the naval guard in a near-by house turned out. The petty officer in charge was a great barrel of a man, an old tarpaulin of long service in many parts of the world where opportunities for cultivation of that diplomatic tact, in which the Royal Navy is so accomplished, must have been numerous. In less time than it takes to tell he had the situation well in hand, had paid one dollar compensation for the damage done, had closed the gates, and had nipped an incipient riot in the bud. It was considered unwise to allow a "matelot" of such an enquiring mind ashore again, and for the remainder of that destroyer's stay at Kiu Kiang he was confined to his ship.

Late on an afternoon early in January, 1927, as the river water swirled past the hulks under the hard light of the wintry sun, a strange tall man walked down the Bund, accompanied by a number of Chinese dressed in civilian clothes. He wore the collarless buttoned-up jacket, the knee-high black leather boots, and the little leather-peaked brown cap, of one of Borodin's officers. His companions were members of the Revolutionary Kuo Min Tang party. They moved along looking at the houses, at the cross-roads, and at the foreshore, talking and gesticulating. Outside the Consulate they paused to read the pink posters and the green posters. They were planning the organisation of riots, the object of which would be to draw fire from the British sailors guarding the gates. The bodies of a few dead Chinese rioters, shot by the blackguard Imperialists, would provide excellent fuel to inflame still further the feelings of an excited populace; and would at the same time give ammunition for the
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
74

Concession". We even opened offices on board and transacted business, which for the most part was concerned with collecting monies due against outstanding accounts. A large proportion of the foreign import trade with China was done on a basis whereby credit was allowed to the Chinese merchant, until he in his turn had time to collect the proceeds of the sale from the final customer or consumer. The foreigner thus injected into the stream of Chinese trade a stimulant, which was certainly not without advantage to the recipient.

The disturbances at Kiu Kiang and Hankow received world-wide publicity, and led to the Chen-O'Malley negotiations under which it was agreed to return these two Concessions to China. Photographs had been taken of the looted interiors of the houses in Kiu Kiang, providing evidence, which could not be refuted, of the damage; and the new Chinese government of General Chiang Kai Shek agreed to pay compensation of 40,000 dollars, Chinese currency,

On March 24th part of the Revolutionary Army under General Cheng Chien entered Nanking, and there looted and committed excesses, which included the murder of several American and British subjects, the violating of women, and the wounding of the British consul. To cover the escape of the remaining foreigners, who were being attacked in a house on Socony ridge, British and American cruisers, from the river, put down a barrage round the hill. These demonstrations of uncivilised behaviour, coming on top of the incidents at Kiu Kiang and Hankow, caused the Revolutionary Government a severe loss of face.

A few days after, a split occurred between the conservative wing of the Kuo Min Tang party, led by Chiang Kai Shek, and the Russian influenced Communist elements. In Shanghai some thousands of Communists, who had provided the spearhead for the almost bloodless occupation of the Chinese city, were executed or murdered through the agency of two powerful secret societies, the Green "tong" and the Red "tong", with whom Chiang Kai Shek appears to have had a close affiliation.

Other members of the Kuo Min Tang, who had remained with the seat of government at Hankow, where Russian influence was strongest, declared their wing of the Kuo Min Tang to be the only legitimate one, and they proceeded to expel Chiang Kai Shek from its ranks. They were, however, unable to carry the army with them, and by July the situation
================================================================================
RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h
75

had developed to a point where Borodin and the other Russian advisers found it expedient to depart hurriedly overland for Russia.

In Kiu Kiang, though situated in between these centres of disturbance, the local tension eased and we returned to the shore in April; it was not, however, until the end of the year that the British authorities considered conditions sufficiently stable to justify the return of the women and children who had been evacuated.

Kiu Kiang is a small, relatively unimportant place: the interest in the change of the status of the Concession lay rather in the new precedents set than in the local readjustments. A Chinese Commissioner was appointed to supervise the various municipal services, and if the change resulted in the removal of a long-felt grievance in the alleged loss of sovereignty, the advantage outbalanced such small inconveniences as the fact that the drains smelt a bit more, the police force was a little less efficient, and the number of clerks in the municipal office increased five-fold.

The political disputes in the ranks of the Kuo Min Tang party before the end of the year brought about no less than three changes of the official appointed to administer the Kiu Kiang Concession; and each change also involved a complete displacement of the municipal staff and police, as the new man always had his own henchmen to provide for. In one instance the departing official went in such fear of his life that he applied for a safe-conduct on a British gunboat and hurriedly left for Shanghai.

In August revolt broke out in the Revolutionary Army in Nanchang, a hundred miles south of Kiu Kiang. Two divisions under Generals Yeh Ting and Ho Lung mutinied and marched south to establish a communist state on the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan provinces. These communist forces, while guilty of the grossest cruelty to any rich Chinese "capitalists" they might catch, were able to attract the support of the poor, and more particularly of the landless peasantry to whom the communist policy of agrarian reform greatly appealed.

Consequences of importance to the future of China flowed from these events. In the first place Chiang Kai Shek looked more and more for his support to the wealthy Chinese merchants and bankers of Shanghai.

In the second place, the seeds were then planted of the irreconcilable
================================================================================