Professional Practice & Alliance
Chinese Students' Club, Alliance & Monthly, 1917-1918
In April 1917, the US entered the European War. A draft was quickly implemented requiring all men aged 21 to 31 to register – even non-citizens. Han Ho and Han Liang duly did so in Cambridge and New York. Han Ho was recorded as being of medium height and slender build with brown eyes and black hair, while Han Liang was described as short and of medium build with black eyes and hair. Using the terminology of the times, both noted their race as “Mongolian” and claimed exemption as “aliens”. The addresses on their draft cards inform us that Han Liang was living at 1124 Amsterdam Avenue in Columbia's Hartley Hall, next to Hamilton Hall, while Han Ho was living at the YMCA at 820 Massachusetts Avenue halfway between Harvard and Central Squares.
Han Ho was in his third and final year at MIT, a year that had started with three days of festivities to celebrate the university’s move from downtown Boston to a spectacular new campus in Cambridge. The new campus became the impetus for the university to hold its first commencement exercises on June 12, 1917. On that day Han Ho was awarded a BS not only from MIT, but also from Harvard – a technical bonus due to a short-lived merger of the two universities’ engineering programs. Would Han Liang have gone to witness his brother’s success?
For Han Liang, 1916-17 appears to have been a particularly busy year – one where he really put himself forward and cemented many contacts. In April, he was elected president of Columbia’s Chinese Students' Club. In later years he was known to keep a photo of himself with other club members prominently on display. (Unfortunately that photo is now lost.)
Han Liang also seemed to take a more prominent role in the Chinese Students’ Alliance. This was the organization which put on the annual summer gatherings that it’s presumed both he and Han Ho had attended at least a couple of times. The Alliance now had over 1,000 members nationally. It also published the English-language The Chinese Students' Monthly, an important platform for the overseas students to share ideas about China's developments, in which they fully expected to have a hand.
In January, Han Liang was appointed chairman of the Alliance’s “Professional Training Committee” – a new committee which he had initiated to place students “who may desire to acquire some practical experience in their chosen professions”. His appointment was announced by the Alliance’s president, TV Soong (宋子文 Song Ziwen) in the Monthly. There Han Liang confidently explained that his Committee had already “approached several influential businessmen in the City of New York and it is gratifying to know that all of them have expressed their readiness to cooperate with the Committee in securing proper openings for our students”. Possibly his own stint at Jeremiah Jenks’ Far Eastern Bureau had spurred him on – or could Mrs. Hyde have been a conduit to helpful New York City businessmen?
Han Liang also made the effort to pen several articles for the Monthly. These included a trilogy on China’s national debts that foreshadowed issues he would face in future. His piece on the “Development of Popular Loans in China” detailed an oversubscribed government loan of 1914, arranged by the Ministry of Finance and secured on railway earnings, as well as other successful debt issues. With what seems a large dose of wishful thinking, he enthused, “It shows...the increasing confidence and interest which the Chinese people have taken toward the new government....The farmers in the interior of Kansu were just as enthusiastic…as the financiers in the large cities.”
In another piece, Han Liang wrote brightly about “China and the World War”, excited about the possibility for his country to stand shoulder to shoulder with the major powers on the world stage. It's assumed that after all these years in the US, his written English was now better than his Chinese. “China, like the United States, has found it impossible to stand aloof any longer,” he said. He was hopeful that China would prove its worth by supplying manpower support to the European front and munitions to the future republic of Russia. He also hoped that China would win a seat at the peace conference so that it could establish its territorial claims against Japan.
Yet another outlet for his writings was the journal Columbia Studies in the Social Sciences. On another occasion, Han Liang proved a staunch defender of the US. In December 1917 he and fifteen other New York-based students wrote a letter to the Monthly rebutting an editorial that was critical of American political institutions and public indifference. Citing the recent, lively presidential election that had returned President Wilson to office, he and his co-signers praised the “political genius of the American people” and “the spirit of reform, of political experiment and of progressivism, which has pervaded the American nation since, say, Mr. Bryan’s first campaign.” Having met Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan at the SVM conference in Kansas City three years earlier, Han Liang knew of what he wrote.
Han Liang also seemed to take a more prominent role in the Chinese Students’ Alliance. This was the organization which put on the annual summer gatherings that it’s presumed both he and Han Ho had attended at least a couple of times. The Alliance now had over 1,000 members nationally. It also published the English-language The Chinese Students' Monthly, an important platform for the overseas students to share ideas about China's developments, in which they fully expected to have a hand.
In January, Han Liang was appointed chairman of the Alliance’s “Professional Training Committee” – a new committee which he had initiated to place students “who may desire to acquire some practical experience in their chosen professions”. His appointment was announced by the Alliance’s president, TV Soong (宋子文 Song Ziwen) in the Monthly. There Han Liang confidently explained that his Committee had already “approached several influential businessmen in the City of New York and it is gratifying to know that all of them have expressed their readiness to cooperate with the Committee in securing proper openings for our students”. Possibly his own stint at Jeremiah Jenks’ Far Eastern Bureau had spurred him on – or could Mrs. Hyde have been a conduit to helpful New York City businessmen?
Han Liang also made the effort to pen several articles for the Monthly. These included a trilogy on China’s national debts that foreshadowed issues he would face in future. His piece on the “Development of Popular Loans in China” detailed an oversubscribed government loan of 1914, arranged by the Ministry of Finance and secured on railway earnings, as well as other successful debt issues. With what seems a large dose of wishful thinking, he enthused, “It shows...the increasing confidence and interest which the Chinese people have taken toward the new government....The farmers in the interior of Kansu were just as enthusiastic…as the financiers in the large cities.”
In another piece, Han Liang wrote brightly about “China and the World War”, excited about the possibility for his country to stand shoulder to shoulder with the major powers on the world stage. It's assumed that after all these years in the US, his written English was now better than his Chinese. “China, like the United States, has found it impossible to stand aloof any longer,” he said. He was hopeful that China would prove its worth by supplying manpower support to the European front and munitions to the future republic of Russia. He also hoped that China would win a seat at the peace conference so that it could establish its territorial claims against Japan.
Yet another outlet for his writings was the journal Columbia Studies in the Social Sciences. On another occasion, Han Liang proved a staunch defender of the US. In December 1917 he and fifteen other New York-based students wrote a letter to the Monthly rebutting an editorial that was critical of American political institutions and public indifference. Citing the recent, lively presidential election that had returned President Wilson to office, he and his co-signers praised the “political genius of the American people” and “the spirit of reform, of political experiment and of progressivism, which has pervaded the American nation since, say, Mr. Bryan’s first campaign.” Having met Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan at the SVM conference in Kansas City three years earlier, Han Liang knew of what he wrote.
Reaffirming his preference for the Democratic Party, Han Liang and his fellow writers also objected to another writer’s assumption that educated Chinese would favor the GOP. They pointed out that a straw poll of Columbia’s Chinese students had favored Wilson over his Republican rival, Charles Hughes, by a margin of two to one.
One of the letter’s co-signers was “Fo Sung” – presumably Sun Fo (孫科 Sun Ke), the eldest child of Sun Yat-sen, the now ousted first president of China. Sun Fo would remain a close friend of Han Liang and significant future contact. What this all meant was that in the halls of academe, Han Liang was operating on an equal footing with both the son of China's most famous man, Sun Yat-sen – an early revolutionary, now with founding father status – and also the son of Sun Yat-sen's biggest financial backer, Charlie Soong. Never mind that the elder Sun and Soong had fallen out two years previously when Soong's daughter and TV's sister, Soong Ching-ling (宋慶齡 Song Qingling), had eloped with Sun, a married man a quarter-century her senior. |
All of Columbia's Chinese students must have had lofty aspirations, but by virtue of their families, these two were in another league. Sun Fo was headed back to help his father form a government that could unify China. With a Harvard degree in his pocket, TV Soong was so confident that he was not even pursuing a further degree. While in New York, his Columbia coursework was just a sideline to a job with the International Banking Corporation, a subsidiary of the largely Rockefeller-owned National City Bank. |
Although Han Liang couldn't match their pedigrees, in the spring of 1917, with his PhD in sight, he might well have considered himself the intellectual superior of both Soong, who it's said he loathed, and of Sun Fo. Could he have had any inkling that his continued friendship with Sun Fo would vault him to the heart of Chinese politics, while the well-heeled and well-connected Soong would become both his and Sun Fo's political nemesis?
As those two returned to China in 1917, Han Liang's just-graduated brother moved on from MIT to Pittsburgh where he found work that let him send home money to their mother. A year later in the fall of 1918, Han Ho enrolled at the University of Illinois in Urbana, serving as a graduate research assistant in mining engineering at the Engineering Experiment Station. The university not only had a state-of-the-art facility for the teaching of mining engineering, but also a president who promoted the idea of hosting students from China. At the time that the Indemnity scholarships were under discussion, Edmund James had written an influential private memo to President Roosevelt to press the case for educating young Chinese. As a result, Illinois became one of the first schools to receive Boxer Indemnity scholars in 1909 and up to the 1950s became the fifth largest grantor of degrees to Chinese students, ranking right behind Columbia, Michigan, MIT and Harvard. But Han Ho did not stay to complete a degree. It's believe he returned to China in 1918 or 1919. Is it possible that he decided to cut his studies short and return home at the same time as his older brother?
Han Liang's own commencement took place on June 6, 1918. Out of eighty-three Columbia students earning PhDs that year, he was one of only two Chinese recipients. He was certainly ending his academic career with a level of distinction worthy of his beginning, seven long years ago, when he topped the list of Tsinghua students. One of his biographies specifically notes that he did not go back until the winter of 1918. He must have continued to work at Jenks' Far Eastern Bureau, or found another job to put some experience under his belt and cash in his wallet – or maybe just to prolong his stay.
Han Liang's own commencement took place on June 6, 1918. Out of eighty-three Columbia students earning PhDs that year, he was one of only two Chinese recipients. He was certainly ending his academic career with a level of distinction worthy of his beginning, seven long years ago, when he topped the list of Tsinghua students. One of his biographies specifically notes that he did not go back until the winter of 1918. He must have continued to work at Jenks' Far Eastern Bureau, or found another job to put some experience under his belt and cash in his wallet – or maybe just to prolong his stay.