Part 4

"A wind of blight From the mysterious far North-west we came, Our greatness now their veriest babes have learned."

It was the day after Tung-Chow had been occupied by the Allies. I was riding along a sunken road between the city wall and some high ground on which houses were built. There was a sheer drop of considerable height between the walls of the houses and the stony road below. The shouts of Russians mingling with screams could be heard proceeding from the houses. At the base of the cliff two Chinese girls were lying. Their legs were bundled under them in a way that showed they had jumped from the height above. From their richly embroidered silken tunics and trousers, their elaborate coiffure, and their compressed feet, they were evidently ladies. They were moaning piteously, and one of them appeared to be on the point of death. Their legs or hips had apparently been broken, or dislocated, by their jump. As I went towards them, the one who appeared least injured shrank from me with an expression of loathing and horror until I offered her a drink out of my water-bottle. Her delicate, childish little hand trembled violently on mine as she drank eagerly from it. The other was almost too far gone to swallow. The hoarse cries of the soldiers, mingled occasionally with a sobbing scream, came from the houses above, telling what they had tried so desperately to escape from. They lay there helpless, evidently in excruciating pain, under a brazen sun that beat down on the deserted dusty road. There was no one within reach to come to their assistance. And there was nothing for it but to leave them there, as many under similar circumstances had had to be left during our previous march of several days. This scene was typical rather than singular. In a large number of Chinese houses in the villages we passed through on our way up, at Tung-Chow, and in Pekin itself, it was no unusual sight to see an entire family lying dead side by side on the Kang, where they had suffocated themselves, or to see them suspended from the rafters of their houses, where they had committed suicide by hanging.

In the burden of corpses which the river Pei-ho carried downwards from Pekin towards the sea were to be seen the bodies of many Chinese girls and women. One day I myself counted five. There is no question whatever that they had committed suicide. And close to Tung-Chow girls were actually seen walking into the shallow water and deliberately holding their heads under the surface till they were drowned. Such a tale seems very terrible. But to any one who had the opportunity of judging of the conduct of portions of the Allied troops it was not in the least surprising. Under similar circumstances our sisters and wives would have done likewise.

The Russians and French carried off the palm for outrages on women during the original march, and subsequently the Germans similarly distinguished themselves. This was more particularly the case with small bodies of men who were detached from the main force. In a village on the way to Paoting-fu, for instance, through which a body of Germans had just passed, three girls were taken by our troops out of a well, into which they had been thrown before the Germans left. They were still alive. This method of disposing of their victims was frequently adopted by the soldiers as the safest way of hiding their misdeeds and escaping the consequences.

News travels fast in China, and in advance of our march the people seemed to be thoroughly aware of the fate that probably awaited them. Although nearly the whole population cleared off before our advance, there were many, especially women, who could not get away, and who were unable to travel with their tiny compressed feet except in carts or on the backs of their servants. And it was principally these who finally, in the last extremity, committed suicide.

As the Chinese have agreed to erect a monument to Baron von Ketteler in Pekin in commemorative apology for his murder, it appears to me that there is an opportunity for the Allies to erect one also. It might be of pure white jade, which the Chinese women love, which in its translucent depths seems to hold the bright Eastern sunlight with the detaining lingerage of a caress, and might bear an inscription saying that it was erected in honour of the memory of the women and girls of the province of Pechili who had sacrificed their lives to save their honour.

All the way from the sea to Pekin, and for miles around Pekin itself, the whole country was deserted by the inhabitants. A wave of fear and horror preceded the advent of the Allies to such an extent that hundreds of miles of what was the most thickly populated part of China was absolutely deserted. After the relief of the Legations, the people who ventured timorously to return were inspired with fresh fear owing to the conduct of the Germans, who made up for being late for the original expedition by availing themselves of every possible opportunity of starting punitive expeditions on any possible pretence. Coming at the time of the autumn harvest, the actual loss of money to the inhabitants has been enormous.

From August to November a great tract of country was left deserted by the inhabitants, who should have been employed in gathering in the harvest. When I came down from Pekin in November there was no sign whatever of life across the plains on either side as far as the eye could reach. Thousands of acres of millet lay prone on the ground, and their carefully-tended vegetable gardens were scored with black lines, showing where the produce had rotted. When the Germans arrived in September I heard one of their officers saying to Major Scott, who was in charge of the river station at Tung-Chow, pointing to the fields of millet which surrounded the camp, "Why don't you burn down all these crops?" Major Scott replied that, besides not wanting to make life harder for these unfortunate farmers, they wanted the fodder for their own cattle. But, as a matter of fact, the destruction effected by the absence of the people was just as great as if the wish of that German had been carried out.

In all the discussions of the question of the amount of indemnity we never hear anything of the amount of counterclaim which the Chinese might rightfully make against us. The greater part of all this destruction was absolutely contrary to every rule of civilised warfare. In a district of about the extent of from London to Oxford the inhabitants have lost the entire produce of the harvest, all the villages and towns on either side of the river have been burned, so that on the march up our path at night was literally torch-lit with burning villages.

As was natural to expect, and as we have subsequently learned, many of the inhabitants have been forced by the absolute necessities of subsistence to band themselves together in companies of brigands, whose depredations afford a fresh excuse to the Germans for continuing hostile operations. The losses inflicted on the country in this way are entirely outside the irreparable losses which were inflicted by the destruction and despoiling of temples and innumerable works of art which it will be impossible to replace. As regards these last outrages, there was no officer in command of any section of the Allies who personally exerted himself to a greater degree for the preservation, or at least to prevent the destruction, of the art heirlooms of the country than did General Sir Alfred Gaselee.

Some curious things happened in his efforts in this direction. On the Paoting-fu expedition, for instance, when the troops were to pass in the neighbourhood of the Imperial Tombs, a few British soldiers were sent on in advance, and quietly informed the custodians that the Germans were coming. Readily acting on the information, they removed all the jewels and easily portable valuables from the tombs, and they were kept concealed in a village on the other side of the hill under the guard of a few Bengal Lancers until the Germans had passed. In recognition of this friendly message the Chinese wanted to make a present of some magnificent strings of pearls to Captain Maxwell, a nephew of Lord Roberts.

In civilised warfare there is generally some little respect shown for the priests and places of worship of the conquered people, but here there was none whatever. Horses were stabled in the temples, and the art heirlooms of thousands of years of the nation's life to be found therein were frequently mutilated and destroyed when they were not stolen. In the street where I lived in Pekin for a whole week were to be seen, day by day, carts passing backwards and forwards laden with books which were being brought to be consumed in a huge fire kept burning in a yard outside the palace wall. Thousands of books were thus treated, so that the whole street was littered with their fluttering leaves to such an extent that I could not get my little Chinese pony to pass there without getting off and leading him, for he shied continually at the fluttering papers. Day after day this literary holocaust continued. When the wind was in the direction of my house a fine black snow kept perpetually falling, and covered the roofs and courtyards with these ashes of dead thoughts. Hundreds of the books were written in the quaint characters which showed that they belonged to, and were written by, Lama priests; many of them had probably found their way there from the bleak steppes of far Tibet.

They were printed with those wooden blocks by which these barbarians practised the art of printing for centuries before the time of Caxton. Many of them also were in manuscript, which must have meant years of labour, and hand-painted pictures illustrating some were occasionally to be found. They were all alike consigned to the same funeral pyre, and thousands of volumes of unascertained, but perhaps considerable, value were thus lost to the world for ever. As the bleak, cold winds from the plains swept down the deserted street at night, and moaned dolorously through the ruined houses, rattling doors, and flapping paper windows, it lifted these torn book-leaves, and swirled them round in a fantastic dance of death, until one could almost imagine one heard the lamentation of the ghosts of their long-dead authors--priests, hermits, and scholars--mourning over the ashes of their life-work.

The whole of this campaign is the reverse of flattering to our Western civilisation. Many of the details of the conduct of the Russian, French, and German soldiers do not bear publication. But what it broadly amounts to is the treatment of a venerable civilisation absolutely foreign to our own as if its members belonged to a low class of pestiferous beasts whose most desirable fate would be extermination.

VIII

CERTAIN COMPARISONS

After spending five months with the British forces in the early part of the war in the Transvaal, and then having an opportunity of campaigning with the allied forces in China, it was extremely interesting to make comparisons between them. The greater number of the troops we employed in China were drawn from the Army of India. As regards the French forces, they, at all events during the original march to the relief of the Legations, were drawn from the troops which were stationed at Tonkin. But the French troops that subsequently arrived direct from France, as well as the German contingent, may naturally be taken as average samples of their respective armies. It is true that outside the siege of Tientsin there was very little serious fighting. The engagements on the march up were not severe ones, except that outside the eastern gate of Pekin itself. The action here, however, was entirely confined to the Japanese. If this campaign did not afford opportunities of observing the various troops under severe strain of battle, it made up for it in a way by testing their qualities, resources, and equipment for campaigning under exceptionally trying circumstances. The weather during August, when the march for the relief took place, was exceptionally hot, far surpassing anything that I experienced in South Africa. The roads, where there were any that might be dignified by that name, were extremely bad, the dust was intense, the supply of water of the most inferior quality, and the expedition, not being under the command of one general, added irksome difficulties by the uncertainty of the movements of its constituent parts from day to day.

Fighting is not the sole duty of soldiers in the field, and in almost all their other duties apart from that we had ample and varied opportunities of contrasting their merits. The Japanese infantry were a surprise and a revelation to most of the Allies. Notwithstanding the enormous trouble they have taken with their cavalry, it is immensely inferior to every other arm of their service. This is not to be wondered at when we reflect how little the Japanese are accustomed to horse-riding at home, and what small opportunities they have of acquiring that knowledge of the management of horses which comes instinctively to the English groom, to the Irish farmer's son, or to the field labourer. The defect of a want of efficient cavalry is with the Japanese largely compensated for by the extreme mobility of their infantry. They appear to do everything at the double. All their soldiers seem to be perpetually kept in the best of hard training. If they have not horses at home, they have plenty of rickshaw men, who consider thirty to thirty-five miles of running not an excessive day's work.

Often watching the Japanese manoeuvring in the field, it occurred to me that if the men of her entire army had not served an apprenticeship between the shafts of the rickshaw, they must at least have passed through some training equally severe. On the expedition to Pekin they carried with them a number of light calibre guns, which they pulled into action, without horses, right into the firing line. In every detail of their camp equipment, food-supply, and field hospital corps, there was a neatness of packing and arrangement which apparently resulted in their carrying all their requirements in about a third less space than any of the others. The simple fare of the Japanese soldiers was ideal for campaigning. Broadly speaking, it consists of rice, with what might be called a flavouring of strong-tasting dried fish and mysterious brown condiments suggestive of curry. As they have modelled their fleet on our own, so they have drawn from the French and German armies a selection of their uniform and equipment. The colour of their uniform at home is dark blue. But during the expedition to Pekin their uniform was white, which would have been murderously conspicuous in operations against any force that was composed of less bad marksmen than the Chinese. This is now to be abandoned, and is to be replaced by something in the nature of khaki, as will be the heavy round German caps by something in the nature of straw hats or helmets, which will give more protection against the sun, although not looking so smart.

Although the officers of all the Allies were immensely struck by the discipline and equipment of the Japanese, close observers were still more attracted by the underlying soldier spirit which animates them. An inherent spirit of soldiering seems to possess every little Jap as a natural heritage. They seem to love fighting for fighting's sake. They appear to enjoy the whole thing like schoolboys do their games. They take their killing much more kindly than the others, and appear to be much more familiarised with the idea that it is part of the game. Indeed, there is a zest and a verve and go about them when in action that I have never seen in any other troops. There were numerous instances in the siege of Tientsin of disregard of death. And outside the gates of Pekin ten men who were killed in their attempts to blow it up might apparently have been indefinitely multiplied at the command of their officers without any danger of faltering. When at ten o'clock at night they advanced to take the gate by assault which they had failed to force in the morning, it was immensely attractive to observe the gaiety, almost amounting to hilarity, with which they advanced to the attack. All movements such as this they accompany with singing. And after forcing the gate, when they met with opposition going along the wall and had to lie down before a hot fire from the Chinese, who made a final stand about half a mile from the gate, the Japanese buglers stood up and played some of their quaint war-songs.

At night, in the camps on the way up, what I had mistaken for some Buddhist evening prayer, when the soldiers tramped round like a human prayer-wheel, was, I subsequently discovered, the chanting of a war-song which had been composed by General Fukushima himself.

The interesting thing to observe will be to see how the Japanese behave when they are getting the worst of it, how they will conduct themselves when they are outnumbered, or when under the strain of a losing fight. From a sporting standpoint, I'll be inclined to lay six to four on a Japanese against a Russian regiment. I met some people on the way to Pekin who regarded the Russians as the best war soldiers of the lot. The Russians were intensely like the preconceived idea one is inclined to form of Russians. Solid, deep-chested, heavy and hardy, they gave one the idea of big, heavy farm labourers with a rifle instead of a spade upon their shoulders. They never moved with anything like the quickness which characterised the Japanese, yet they plodded on with a dour stubbornness which gave the impression that if their movements were not quick, they represented a weighty momentum difficult to arrest. Although uncouth, and frequently savage in their behaviour, they yielded a child-like, or almost slavish, obedience to their officers, and on these officers should lie the blame of the innumerable outrages committed by them, from which they might have been restrained if kept properly under control.

Of the many tips which one force got from another, the Russians had an admirable system of carrying with them on the march a sort of locomotive kitchen, which consisted of a huge cauldron underneath which was a coal fire. The contents of the cauldron, which appeared to be the Russian equivalent for Irish stew, were hot and ready for the men at any halt in the march. How delightful such an institution would have been to Tommy in the miserably cold hours between two and four o'clock on the veldt of a South African morning!

As regards the French force on the expedition to Pekin, in discipline and in equipment and the conduct of the men composing it, it was absolutely beneath contempt. Unless the art of foraging and looting can be considered soldier-like qualities, they appeared to me to lack every one.

I looked forward to seeing great things from the Germans. But I must say that I was immensely disappointed. As far as parade-ground drill was concerned they were admirable; as the mechanical and automatic resultants of the efforts of the drill-sergeant they were possibly unequalled. But they appeared to be heavy and slow in their movements. On one little expedition outside Pekin for the purpose of surrounding a body of Boxers, which was undertaken by a combined force of British, Americans, Japanese, and Germans, the encircling movement proved a failure owing to the Germans arriving an hour late at their appointed position. Discussing the Germans one day with a Japanese officer, his criticism on them was, "Very good soldiers, but I tink too much drill drill."

If the Germans suffer from too much mechanical "drill drill," the Americans certainly suffer from the opposite. Self-reliance, independence, and individuality of action are all very desirable qualities, but the Americans suffer immensely from the want of discipline and drill. Perhaps the democratic feeling of the States does not lend itself so easily to discipline. Each one of Napoleon's soldiers was supposed to carry a marshal's baton in his knapsack. The American soldier has taken it therefrom, and is rather inclined to be a marshal unto himself, thinks himself quite as good as his superior officer, if not better, and, more than any other soldier, is given to grumbling, and spends a lot of his attention, which should be concentrated on merely obeying, to expressing his individual opinion. The United States soldiers are far and away the best fed in the world. Their standard of comfort, not to say luxury, is immensely higher, and would be absolutely ruinous in an army the size of any of those of Europe.

Comparing the various forces--as I had an opportunity of observing them in China--with those of our own in South Africa, I am filled with a much higher idea of the latter than before I had such a standard of comparison. Our army, composed as it is in part of Colonial regiments, is now a combination of various admirable qualifications. The resourcefulness and individuality of action, which is the most admirable thing to be found in the American army, was quite equalled by men who composed such regiments as the Imperial Light Horse, the South African Horse, Brabant's Horse, the New Zealanders, and the Canadians.

The inspiring, ingrained fighting spirit of the Japs is to be found in the Irish regiments, who are probably the best fighting men in the world; the chivalrous gallantry of artillery in action, which Zola wrote of in La Debacle, I saw in quivering vitality at Elandslaagte and Rietfontein, and not by the hastening of a step was the old tradition of our artillery (to go into action at a gallop and come out at a walk) forgotten in actions outside Ladysmith. Superior-speaking, long-range critics talk disparagingly of our soldiers in the Transvaal. Germans talk of how things should have been done, forgetting that the little expedition they sent out to China was kept waiting for a month at Tientsin before the men could start for Paoting-fu, owing to the non-arrival of some essentials of their equipment.