he commanded a dragoon regiment and from 1886 to 1897 he was the head of the officers' cavalry school in St. Petersburg, having meantime in 1890 been promoted to the rank of general. His next appointment was as commander of the loth Cavalry Division. In 1899, while commanding the troops of the Kiev military district, Gen. Dragomirov appointed him as his chief- of-staff and later as his assistant. His close connexion with Gen. Dragomirov, who enjoyed enormous prestige in the Rus- sian army, ensured Sukhomlinov's future career. After the death of Dragomirov, he was appointed commander in Kiev.
From 1909 to 1916 he was Russian war minister, and it was under him that two Russian orders for mobilization were given at the outbreak of the World War. Self-confident and ambitious Sukhomlinov played a disastrous r61e in the administration of the Russian army. Notwithstanding the discovery, even in Oct. 1914, that there was an insufficiency of shells, rifles and cartridges, he assured the Duma that everything was all right. It was only in 1916, under strong pressure of public opinion, that the Tsar Nicholas II. dismissed him from office. Finally he was brought up for trial on a charge of treason. The court found him guilty of offences in office, and he was sentenced to penal servitude. Later Sukhomlinov was freed by an amnesty granted by the Bolsheviks and went to Finland. In 1921 he began the publication of his memoirs. (N. N. G.)
SUN YAT-SEN (1867- ) , Chinese leader of the revolutionary
movement which ended in the abdication of the Manchu dynasty
in Feb. 1912, was born in Kuangtung province, the son of a
native Christian. He studied at the College of Medicine in
Hong-Kong from 1887 to 1892, and there took his degree in
medicine and surgery. He practised his profession first at
Macao and then at Canton, but from the outset of his career
displayed more interest in politics than in medicine, being by
temperament an iconoclast, an organizer of secret societies and a
leader of conspiracies against the established order of things.
Inspired by his semi-European training, with bitter resentment
against the Manchus, whom he regarded as responsible for China's
humiliation at the hands of Japan, he first raised the standard
of rebellion and of Cantonese independence in 1895; but the
coup failed and Dr. Sun was compelled to seek safety in exile.
Henceforward all his energies were directed towards stimulating
the anti-dynastic movement, first by the collection of funds from
the Chinese communities in the United States, Hawaii and the
Straits Settlements, and then by organized propaganda work
conducted by secret agents throughout the Empire. He received
considerable assistance and encouragement in Japan, where he
founded a society known as the Tung Men-hui, which played
a prominent part in Chinese politics after the establishment of
the Republic. Although an exile, he was generally regarded
by the "Western-learning" section of Young China as its
leader, especially after the Chinese Government's attempt to
kidnap him in London, in 1896. In 1911, when the revolution
broke out prematurely at Wuchang, Dr. Sun was in England;
but he hurried back to China and arrived at Shanghai on
Christmas Eve, in time to be acclaimed as the originator of the
Republican programme and elected Provisional President by
the delegates to the National Convention assembled at Nanking.
On Jan. 5, after having taken the oath of office, he issued a
Manifesto (countersigned by Wu Ting-fang as Minister for
Foreign Affairs) in which the purposes and policy of the Republi-
can Government were proclaimed. On Feb. 12 an Imperial
edict announced the abdication of the Emperor; it surrendered
the reins of government to the representatives of the sovereign
people and declared that henceforth the constitution should be
Republican; at the same time, the organization of the new form
of government was entrusted, "with full powers," to Yuan
Shih-k'ai. On the I4th, Sun Yat-sen resigned the Presidency and
in the name of the Nanking Assembly invited Yuan to accept the
position of Provisional President. His action was applauded
by Young China at the time as evidence of patriotic self-abnega-
tion, but events proved that it was chiefly inspired by recognition
of the fact that he and the Cantonese group of politicians who
had joined him as leaders of the Republican movement, did not
yet carry sufficient weight to justify them in attempting to form
a national government.
Relations between Sun Yat-sen and Yuan Shih-k'ai were never cordial, but until the ejection from Peking of the Kuo Min-tang Radicals by the President Dictator in 1913, they preserved the appearance of goodwill, and towards the end of 1912 Sun accepted a highly paid appointment as Director of National Railways at Shanghai. After the failure of the Kuo Min-tang's " war to punish Yuan," Sun wandered again in a wilderness of conspiracies. Eventually, after the death of the Dictator (1916) he became one of the Cantonese group of politicians which waged continual warfare against the party in power at Peking. Because of the futility and sordid intrigues which characterized the independent Military Government at Canton, he, whose reputation in 191 2 had stood high at home and abroad, came gradually to be regarded as an irreconcilable con- spirator, whose personal ambitions were largely responsible for the continuance of the senseless civil strife between the North and the South. By the vehemence of his rhetoric, by the fervour of his grandiose schemes for the remaking of China at the time of the revolution, he captured the imagination of considerable sections of the public, especially in the United States; but his subsequent career failed to justify his own belief in himself as a heaven-sent reformer. In April 1921, a special session of the Southern (Canton) Parliament elected him to be President of the Chinese Republic, his supporters declaring the Canton " Military Government " to be the only lawfully constituted government in the country; but the influence of these Cantonese " Constitu- tionalists " over the other southern provinces had then become almost insignificant, and the " Military Government," prohibited by the Foreign Powers from interfering with the revenues of the Maritime Customs, was confronted by financial problems of a kind which threatened not only its reforming activities but its continued existence.
SUPAN, ALEXANDER GEORG (1847-1920), Austrian geographer, was born at Innichen, South Tirol, March 3 1847. He was educated at the Laibach gymnasium, and in 1870 took his doctor's degree at Graz, afterwards becoming a teacher in the Oberrealschule at Laibach. In 1872 he left Laibach and studied geography at Vienna, Dresden and Halle, returning in 1877. In 1881 he was appointed professor of geography at the university of Czernowitz, and in 1884 became editor of Petermanns
Mitteilungen, retaining this post until 1909, when he accepted the chair of geography at Breslau. Under Supan's editorship
Petermanns Mitteilungen was more concerned with reports and
accounts of geographical work in every sphere than with original
papers and records of discovery, and a feature in which the
editor was much interested was the publication of supplements
to the Mitteilungen. An account of the economic produce of
N. America, 1880-5, appeared in this manner in 1886, and
Die Bevolkerung der Erde, founded 1872 by Hermann Wagner
and Behm, was continued by Supan as a supplement from 1890
to 1910. In 1889 he became editor of the statistical calendar of
the Almanack de Golha. His original contributions to geographical
science are chiefly concerned with climatology and oceanography,
and his published works include Lehrbuch der Geographic
(1873); Statistik der unteren Luftslromungen (1881); Grundzitge
der physischen Erdkunde (1884); Deutsche Schulgeographie (1895;
latest ed. 1915) and Die territorialische Entwicklung der euro-
piiischen Kolonien (1906), besides many papers in Petermanns
Mitteilungen. He died at Breslau July 6 1920.
SUPPLY AND TRANSPORT, MILITARY (see 26.113). During
the World War, the administrative services i.e. the management of transport, supply, welfare and salvage became of vastly increasing importance. The struggle was between groups of nations bending to the task of war the whole of the resources of a highly complex scientific civilization, and using in its prosecution every material and moral factor at their command. Some note of the working of the administrative machinery (especially
at the culminating point of the struggle) is necessary to give a true picture of the war. Attention will be given here in the main to the British organization in 1918 with illustrative references
