The China Squadron of the British Fleet visits the port every summer. The fact that Weihaiwei is under British rule gives the Naval commander-in-chief perfect freedom to carry out target-practice or other exercises ashore and afloat under highly favourable conditions. But the greatest advantage that Weihaiwei possesses—from the naval as from the civilian point of view—is its good climate. It is perhaps not so superlatively excellent as some writers, official and other, have made out: but none will deny that the climate is "a white man's," and most will agree that it is, on the whole, the finest on the coast of China.
The rainfall is not, on the average, much greater or much less than that of England, though it is much less evenly distributed than in our own country. This is perhaps an advantage; there is no doubt that the average year in Weihaiwei contains a greater number of "fine days"—that is, days when the sun shines and no rain falls—than the average year in England. The other side of the shield shows us droughts and floods; how frequent and how destructive are these calamities may have been gathered from statements made in the last chapter. The winter is much colder and the summer much warmer than is usually the case in England: in addition to which both cold and heat are more steady and continuous. But there are not the same extremes that are met with in Peking and other inland places. The temperature in winter has been known to fall to zero, but the average minimum may be put at about 6° (F.). The snowfall is not great and the roads are rarely blocked. Skating, owing to the lack of rivers and lakes, can only be indulged in to a minute extent.
The winter north winds are intensely cold: even the Chinese go about muffled up to the ears in furs. The autumn months—September to November—are the most delightful of the year. The heat and rains of summer have passed away and the weather at this period is equal to that of a superb English summer and early autumn. The spring months are often delightful: but this is the season of those almost incessant high winds that constitute one of the chief blemishes of the Weihaiwei climate. Yet they are as nothing compared with the terrible dust-storms of the Chihli plains, such as make the European resident in Peking wish himself anywhere else. July and August are the months of rain, damp, and heat: yet the temperature rarely goes higher than 94° (F.), and the summer climate is much less trying than that of Hongkong or of Shanghai. It is during those two months, indeed, that Weihaiwei receives most of its European summer visitors from the southern ports.
When the British Squadron and the European visitors leave Weihaiwei in or about the month of September, the place is left to its own resources until the month of May or June in the following year. From the social point of view Weihaiwei suffered severely from the disbandment of the well-known Chinese Regiment, the British officers of which did much to cheer the monotony of the winter months. A pack of harriers was kept by the Regiment, and hunting was indulged in two days a week during that period. From November, when the last crops were taken off the fields, and cross-country riding became possible, until the end of March, when the new crops began to come up and confined equestrians to the roads, hunting the hare was the favourite recreation of the British community. The Regiment itself, after undergoing many vicissitudes, was disbanded in 1906. During its short career of about seven years it proved—if indeed a proof were needed, after the achievements of General Gordon—that the Chinese, properly treated and well trained and led, could make first-rate soldiers.
The appearance of the rank and file of the Chinese Regiment on parade was exceptionally good, and never failed to excite admiration on the part of European visitors; but their soldierly qualities were not tested only in the piping times of peace. They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900 they behaved exceedingly well both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking. Among the officers who led them on those occasions were Colonel Bower, Major Bruce, Captain Watson and Captain Barnes.[55]
At its greatest strength the Regiment numbered thirteen hundred officers and men, but before the order for disbandment went forth the numbers had been reduced to about six hundred. With the Chinese Regiment disappeared Weihaiwei's only garrison. A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors. These men, in addition to an already-existing body of eight Chinese on Liukungtao and twelve in the European settlement at Port Edward, constitute the present (1910) Police Force of the Territory, which now numbers altogether fifty-five Chinese constables and three inspectors.
Weihaiwei, then, is entirely destitute of troops and of fortifications, and in the long months of winter—when there is not so much as a torpedo-boat in the harbour—the place is practically at the mercy of any band of robbers that happened to regard it with a covetous eye. This state of things cannot be regarded as ideally good: yet—to touch upon a matter that might once have been regarded as bearing on politics, but is now a mere matter of history—it may be admitted that from the imperial point of view the abolition of the Chinese Regiment was a wise step. This view is not shared by most Englishmen in China: and as for the British officers, who had given several of the best years of their lives to the training of that regiment, and had learned to take in it a most justifiable pride, one can easily understand how bitter must have been their feelings of dismay and disappointment when they heard of the War Office's decision. Similar feelings, perhaps, may have agitated the mind of the "First Emperor" when the beautiful bridge to Fairyland, on which he had spent so much time and energy, began to crumble away before his sorrowing eyes. The position of the Chinese Regiment was not analogous to that of the native troops in India and in our other large imperial possessions. Its very existence was anomalous. The great majority of its men were recruited not in British but in Chinese territory,[56] and as their employment against a European enemy of Great Britain was scarcely conceivable, their only function could have been to fight against their own countrymen or other Orientals.
To persuade them to fight against China would necessarily have become more and more difficult as the Chinese Empire proceeded in the direction of reform and enlightenment. The Boxers, indeed, were theoretically regarded as rebels against China, so that Chinese troops in British pay could fight them with a clear conscience, believing or pretending to believe that they were fighting for the cause of their own Emperor as well as (incidentally) that of Great Britain. But the Regiment outlived the Boxer movement by several years, and the maintenance of a considerable body of troops (at an annual cost to the British taxpayer of something like £30,000) with a sole view to the possibility of a similar rising at some uncertain date in the future was hardly consistent with British common sense. Moreover, its position in the event of an outbreak of regular warfare between England and China would have been peculiar in the extreme, inasmuch as the men had never been required, under the recruiting system, to abjure their allegiance to the Chinese Emperor. They were, in fact, Chinese subjects, not British. Even over the inhabitants of Weihaiwei, from whom a small proportion of the men was drawn, the Emperor of China retains theoretical sovereignty. This has been expressly admitted by the British Government, which has declared that as Weihaiwei is only a "leased territory," its people, though under direct British rule, are not in the strictly legal sense "British subjects."[57]
The officers of the Regiment would no doubt have denied that the loyalty of the men to their British leaders was ever likely to fall under suspicion, but the fact remains that in the event of an outbreak of regular warfare between China and Great Britain the Chinese authorities might, and probably would, have done their utmost to induce the men of the Regiment to desert their colours and take service with their own countrymen. Many methods of inducement could have been employed, over and above the obvious one of bribery. It is only necessary to mention one that would have been terribly forcible—the imprisonment of the fathers or other senior relatives of the men who refused to leave the British service, and the confiscation of their ancestral lands. The men who deserted,