The Chinese of It

October 26, 1924
I HAVE had no mail for weeks. Postal transportation has completely broken down. In Tangku — the transshipment port for all mail from and to Tientsin, Peking, and the interior — there is a grand total of one mail clerk still reporting for duty. The railroad staffs have abandoned the railroads, which is just as well, for the military have every single car and engine between Mukden and Peking, except the International Train.
We have been lying on the PekingMukden line; so we have seen all the troop movements of both armies, including the looting of the villages. The war is altogether too large a topic for any letter; I can only say that I have been both instructed and amused, and that as an entertainment and from the scenic standpoint it is quite the best war I have ever seen.
Chao Heng-ti, whose activities were suppressed at Yochow, was a mere barnstormer; and I am informed that Sun Yat-sen’s latest performance was even more amateur than Chao’s.
Under Wu Pei-fu, the care given every detail extended even to the executions. Wu tried a number of his officers for cowardice, and sentenced them to be beheaded. On going to execute the sentence, it was found that one of them was already dead. A squabble much like that over the Cheshire Cat, in Alice in Wonderland, ensued, and ended in the King’s famous decision, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and you were n’t to talk nonsense. So the poor old corpse was dragged to the grounds and put through its paces with the rest.

November 5
I am going to try to give you some idea of what has taken place, for the whole thing is most typical of Chinese wars. The political situation you will find quite accurately outlined in various issues of the Literary Digest, together with some excellent maps. You really should look up these things to get the full drift.
It all started with an attack on Shanghai by the adherents of the Peking Government, which is contained in the Chihli party. For all practical purposes, that means Wu Pei-fu, and him alone. Americans have been fed so much bunkum on the subject of the Chinese republic that it is hard for them to realize that there is no such thing, and never has been. There are a number of political parties of purely geographical origin; and from time to time one or the other gets possession of the seal and seat of government at Peking. There is never any other means than bribery and armed force. There are sometimes farcical elections, but it is never really necessary to count any votes; and, in fact, if a member of Parliament betrayed any idea of voting against the party in power he would be run out or executed. The Peking Government has no power outside the territory that it controls geographically, anyhow; the other parties just retire behind their natural frontiers and ignore the mandates from Peking. The Central Government cannot so much as promote a post-office clerk beyond the borders of the provinces it controls when out of power as well as in.
Why, then, all this pother and fighting about who shall sit and hold a meaningless rod, and pass unnoticed laws? Simply because the customs, salt, and other main revenue taxes of China are collected by an international commission of foreigners. This has been found imperative because of the natural tendency of any Oriental to retain for his own use any public or other money that comes his way, so that foreign nations cannot carry on commerce at a profit with the customs in native hands. This is all very deplorable and a source of great agitation to the idealists; but it works, and no other plan will; so that is how they do it. In fact, when a return to native officials is attempted, the merchants themselves come out flat against it.
Now this foreign commission does not care a whoop about Chinese politics. It has one job, and does it: to collect the money and send it to Peking. Thus it comes about that, though the Central Government is a joke on all other counts, it is in clover when the rents come round.
Do I mean that a region which does not owe any allegiance to Peking has to pay taxes to Peking, and that the collection of all the taxes is in the hands of, and enforced by, the united powers of all the foreign governments?
That is exactly what I mean. For if any local Tuchun could gain the customs revenue, by the always simple plan of rebellion against Peking, there would be no limit to the questions that would arise as to just who was the local power. Also it would inevitably break China up into even smaller pieces than at present; and that, every nation distrusts every other nation too much to permit. Most important of all, the Chinese owe great sums of money to foreigners, both bonds and Boxer funds, and no security based on China in any way would be worth the paper it is printed on if the local Tuchuns, here to-day and gone tomorrow, were allowed to receive the money. The whole general fabric depends on keeping as much of this money as possible in useful channels; and while the present system is in most ways unsatisfactory it cannot be lightly condemned, because there is no other plan whereby even a portion of China’s funds can be kept out of purely predatory hands, and devoted to railroads, famine relief, education, and so forth.
Now, while there is a petty local satrap for every little mud village in China, and every provincial government has its Tuchun, or military governor, who is more absolute over his own special territory than the Tsar used to be over Russia, there are two great war-lords, to whom every other lesser power must bow if it comes to a showdown. These measure their might in various ways, and the ups and downs between them are too fast and furious to follow. However, be it remembered that, whichever is in power, it is due to the territorial strength of his political party, and to the number and efficiency of the mercenary troops in his personal army. There is, of course, no such thing as ‘the Chinese Army.’
Each Tuchun recruits, organizes, and pays his own men, whom he holds by no other loyalty than the fact that they must have pay from someone, or starve; there is never any question of personal loyalty or patriotism.
This fact accounts for the many peculiarities of Chinese warfare, about which the foreign newspapers are so fond of making ‘amusing’ remarks. The soldiers of any Chinese army are simply poorly paid day-laborers whose trade is war. Naturally they will take no unnecessary risks or endure no unavoidable hardships when a retreat will settle any predicament in which they may find themselves. Chinese warfare, therefore, becomes a question of position, with never any bitterly contested battles.
If an army is boxed, or outnumbered, it simply goes away from that place, and no officers in the world could prevent. Why should they stay and die for no benefit to anything but the personal fortunes of their patrician employer? Of course they get killed from time to time; but this is looked upon as one of the risks of their trade, and if the death list rises high they get up and leave that dangerous vicinity, for the same reason, and just as commendably, as miners refuse to work in a shaft that is not properly braced. To assume that Chinese have no courage or patriotism on account of the many seemingly ludicrous incidents of this particular form of warfare is to show ignorance of both China and Chinese. No question calling upon them to display either is involved in these commercial or personal wars. In the Japanese War the lowest type of ignorant coolie furnished examples of courage and devotion to duty that any nation, white or yellow, might be proud to have in its military annals.
In these hired armies the soldiers do not even dislike the enemy, any more than a man selling Packer’s soap feels impelled to take arms against Pears’s representative. They do not even aim at enemy trenches except when under the eye of an officer who stands to lose his head if he is defeated and cannot escape from his vengeful employers. There is, of course, no stigma attached to desertion, any more than a carpenter would be disgraced if he found he could get better pay and shorter hours from Brown than from Smith. Indeed it is nothing for a Tuchun to enlist a poor coolie, march him hundreds of miles from home, and there, meeting with reverses, abandon him, without food, pay, or transportation. A defeated army has but two things it can do to escape starvation, for out of their home village there is no place the Chinese can work or farm. China is so thickly settled that no man may find food away from home, and not always there. They can either join the victorious army or turn bandit. It is the usual thing for a victorious army to be joined by their late enemy en masse.
For the foregoing reasons there is a peculiar quality to Chinese wars that makes them like nothing else in the world at present. I suppose Europe saw their like in the mercenary armies of the petty princes in the Middle Ages. Indeed there is much about them that reminds me of the mediaeval novels of Conan Doyle, especially their truces about nothing at all, their punctilious courtesy about not fighting at unreasonable hours, and the way in which friend and foe drop the battle at some interruption, to return at leisure. But, at that, things happen here which could not happen outside of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, except in China.
I may instance the fact that all the armies wear the same uniform and distinguish the side to which they belong by a colored arm-band held on by a safety pin, so that, in the stress of battle or the pinch of hunger, they may join the enemy with the minimum of formality and delay. The troops refuse to wear distinctive uniforms. Indeed they would be foolish to do so, for in a single campaign they may belong to six or eight, different armies.
The two big leaders to whom I referred above are Wu Pei-fu, of the Chihli party, supported by Central China and the Yangtze Valley, and Chang Tso-lin, supported by Mongolia, Manchuria, the royalist element of the old regime, and suspected by some of being more than friendly with Japan. South China is a sort of Feudal State, though there exists in the fevered imagination of Sun Yat-sen a South China Republic, of which he is the dictator. Actually he controls Canton only, as far as the city limits, and they are very sick of him there.
When the war opened, Wu was practically on the ‘throne’ in Peking, though the Presidential chair was nominally occupied by one of his puppets, Tsao Kun, who began life as a coolie in a stable. Most of the military men were of equally low origin. Chang was a border thief with a bandit father. Parliament was filled with the adherents of Wu, but there were various flies in the ointment; the largest was the fact that his old enemy and rival, Chang, whom he defeated and drove into Manchuria two years ago, was knowm to be drilling a large army.
The fighting began around Shanghai, when it was attacked by one of the provincial governors. This was because the city, while it is actually within this governor’s territory, was in fact garrisoned by troops from another province, who held it for the other province against the will of its lawful lord. Shanghai is, of course, rich picking for whoever is in office there; so it was decided by the ousted province, backed by Wu, to try to take it back into the fold. This war had been brewing for a long time. When Wu’s friends moved on Shanghai, the defender, Lu, appealed to Chang, as Wu’s enemy, to help him out. Chang at once sent money, and promised to move to Peking and run Wu out.
In less than no time the river at Shanghai was crammed with men-ofwar of all nations, and wise travelers took the added precaution of booking on a ship that did not stop at Shanghai. It should be understood that at no time was any attack contemplated on the European part of the city. The dispute was over the arsenal, dry dock, and shipyard, a mile up the river. The danger to foreign lives and property was all from wild shots, and from the large bodies of troops collected there. The defeated army was certain to be deserted by its officers; and besides, no organization would refrain from entering and looting the to them fabulously rich foreign section if they could.
Shanghai is, of course, old in this sort of thing, and has an excellent volunteer defense-corps. They barricaded the white section with barbed wire and machine-guns, established armored auto-patrols and sentries, mounted field-guns, and those not actually on watch wore their arms and uniforms to business. Nevertheless there was a period of wild alarm that was changed to huge relief when the warships arrived and threw strong parties ashore. After that, the only epochal event was the captioning of a destroyer picture in a local paper as: ‘Silent Sentinels Safeguarding Shanghai Settlement’s Shore.’
Shanghai fell to Wu’s troops. Chang had been mobilizing, but owing to the fact that all the North country had been badly flooded he had not made much headway. You may remember that when I was in Peking it was raining part of the time as I never saw it rain before; the whole country round could not be traveled except one line to the sea. Chang was digging in behind the Great Wall, but Wu was holding him. Every day made it appear that a really big war was brewing. One by one warships began to gather wherever there were foreign lives to be protected. It was realized that the fall of Shanghai released many troops to Wu; but it soon appeared that Chang was not stopping for that; also the land was drying off. Then Feng deserted Wu Pei-fu, ran out Tsao Kun, and the whole thing blew up! This coup d’état at Peking had in it the makings of the juiciest international uproar since the Peace Conference. . . .

November 10
At this point you had better get out your map of China or you cannot follow me.
Due west of Korea — or Chosen, as the Japs call it — is the Yellow Sea, so called because it is really yellow. Its western branch is the Gulf of Pechili, where more trouble can start per square inch than on most of the rest of the earth together.
Now from Peking to the gulf runs a railway, through Tientsin, reaching the water at Tangku. Tangku is also on the Pei Ho, or Peking River, which runs from Peking, near the railroad all the way, emptying into the gulf below Tangku, at Taku Bar. From Tangku the railway runs along the shore northward to Mukden in Manchuria, which is the capital of Chang’s province. Because of the gently shelving nature of the bottom, ships can connect with the railway at only one place between them. This is at Chingwangtao; and a few miles north is the natural border between China proper and Manchuria, inhabited by a hardier and more warlike race than the lowland Chinese.
This natural barrier is a vast and rugged mountain chain, whose highest and most impassable points are linked by the ruins of the Great Wall. The mountains are impassable to artillery and baggage trains except at a few natural breaks, the most important of which is at Shanhaikwan, where the railroad goes through. At these passes battles have been fought for the Empire of China since the earliest dawn of history. You can see at any of them earthen barriers and stone towers of all ages, from modern saps and trenches to the rude lines behind which the wild men of the great migrations hid.
The fact that he had plenty of warning allowed Wu to occupy the railroad pass at Shanhaikwan, from which Chang must dislodge him before he could get a gun or a man into Wu’s territory. It was a position of great natural strength, and supplies came both by rail and by sea to his base at Chingwangtao. Being the representative of the Peking Government, Wu controlled the navy vessels, all four of them! Chang could not get round by sea, and also suffered in diplomacy by being technically a rebel and an invader against the Chinese Republic.
As I have said, there really is n’t any such thing as the Chinese Republic, but by legal fiction all the foreign Powers are bound to act as if there were, and it makes a tremendous difference.
Chang used bombardment and aerial bombing, among other devices introduced to the heathen by the Christian nations, but made no impression on Wu’s line, until Wu’s left flank, which was apparently in as good a case as any army ought to hope for, suddenly fell back. The old fox took personal command at the endangered spot and, though he could not win back the ground, by one of those strokes of genius which he has always displayed he manned the heights above the lost pass, and the enemy dared not come beneath him.
The corps which had given way was under the command of one Feng, a loudly professing Christian, regarded by most if not all of the missionary element as a sort of cross between Saint George and the dawn of a new day. He has had more missionary publicity and support than any other man, white or yellow, and has yet to miss a chance to lean on it. The rest of the foreigners never thought so much of him; especially after one time, last year, when he entered a forbidden part of the legation quarter and brutally assaulted a native policeman who tried to reason with him. Many considered it a bid for the support of the antiforeign element.
Anyhow, a few days after the first disaster, and during the temporary absence of Wu, Feng and his whole army left the line and retreated to parts unknown. Before Wu could rally, he was pushed back to his second line at Chingwangtao, and the Manchurians were through the pass. Then it became known that the traitor, Feng, had returned to Peking and occupied it, during the night.
He forced the puppet President to sign a mandate making peace with Chang and ordering Wu to return to Peking and be tried as a disturber of the peace of the realm. The richness of this is the more apparent when you remember Wu had left Peking as the defender of the Central authority, even if it were only a vest-pocket government. Wu, of course, ignored the mandate, and so was proclaimed rebel against the government he himself had put in Peking. Feng continued to lay plans to attack him from the rear, but was delayed by the restlessness of Peking.
Meantime news continued to come telling of more dirty work at the crossroads. Shanghai was, of course, by this time thoroughly quiet, the last stragglers of both sides having been gathered up and enlisted by the victor. The force that Wu had sent to Shanghai was preparing to come back and help him out. Incidentally, they never did come north, for Feng cut the Peking — Shanghai railroad.
After the disaster at Shanhaikwan, Wu had put his best troops into transports at Chingwangtao and left. It was generally supposed he had fied. Judge of everyone’s surprise when he landed at Taku and set out up the track, not only to keep Feng from striking his rear, but to take Peking away from Feng, and then return and mop up Chang. It was a plucky scheme, and the way he faced about by sea to cover his own tracks was masterly as well as bold. His transports ran on regular schedule; he was dug in on two fronts, and in full possession of Tientsin.
The foreign element in both Peking and Tientsin, if the newspapers are any indicators, were scared white. Both places wanted more troops than there are in the whole foreign marinecorps. The missionaries who threw themselves on the protection of their friend Feng could be counted on the fingers of one shoulder-blade. Feng prepared to sell his life dear; for if he lost there was no place to run. It looked as if the place was going to bust wide open, and the issue was too desperate for either side to worry about what happened to the foreigners. In fact handbills were scattered through the legation quarter picturing the happy day when a white head should decorate every spike on its walls.

Here let me digress, and hark back to the Boxer War. After that was a thing of the past, the Powers put a gun to China’s head and made her sign a protocol which was to cure her of everything from rebellions to mumps. All the powers of foreigners in China date back to that day. The major provisions of the section which was meant to keep the road from Peking to the sea follow: —

1. The forts at Taku and Tientsin never to be rebuilt.

2. Strong guards to remain in the legation quarter at Peking, and garrison of foreign troops to be kept at Tientsin.

3. The legations to be rigidly segregated; for instance, no Chinese, however noble, can even stroll on that part of the wall which bounds the legations.

4. If the railroad between the sea and Peking should shut down, the Powers to take it and run it themselves.

5. Chinese troops could pass through Tientsin, but could not get off their trains; marching troops not to pass within ten miles.

Now when Wu made Tientsin his base, with thousands of soldiers, it was a clear and open violation of the protocol; and, while the papers wrote silly editorials, nobody knew just what to do. The railroad was so crammed with troop trains — which amounted to another violation of the protocol — that although the Powers proceeded to operate an allied train it took days to creep a few miles.

Now the Peking River is not navigable above Tientsin; so if the line to the sea became a battle-ground Peking would be cut off, the Shanghai railroad being already cut.

What everyone was afraid of was that with a defeated army thrown back into Peking they might take it into their heads to do for the foreigners before they scattered. I am no judge of the probability of this; but I do know that Peking put up a howl that would have awakened Tyre. Possibly you and I would have joined the chorus had we been there.

The whole railroad, with the exception of the one allied train, was in military hands, the employees having fled. In all the towns along the way the post-office staffs had likewise gone. The telephone, by some miracle, was still going.

Hsinho, a little village where the Standard Oil works are, seems to be at about the focal point of the trouble; but you never can tell a day ahead of time in a Chinese war what will happen next. If persistent rumors are true, and Wu Pei-fu has really fled from China, then either the war will speedily subside, or else a new war will break out among his conquerors. Even if there are no more wars, there is in one province alone a huge defeated army, mostly untrained rabble or ex-bandits, and in any case they will be abandoned by their officers, and utterly without organization. This means looting and murder in wholesale quantities.

The railroad is in the wildest confusion. Wu Pei-fu’s troops, defeated at Shanhaikwan, being chased through Peking have no other road open to them than this. They are cut off from Peking by Feng’s army, and are being closed in on from all sides. Trains carrying troops, loaded beyond belief, dash up the line and back again. Off Taku Bar are many of Wu’s transports, some of which steamed up as far as Tientsin, but were not allowed to land by the foreign troops stationed there. Tientsin has been a safety port since the Boxer War, and no Chinese troops are allowed there.

Sometimes, as I think I said before, the same boat goes up and down the river three and four times. At Hsinho transports come up to the railway dock and unload; then the same soldiers get back on again, and go on. It is all utter turmoil; no central control, with trains, ships, launches, and junks being seized by troops and taken off by whoever happens to get them. Sometimes a train will get on the main line and lie there, the soldiers refusing to let anything go by either way, and yet being unable to agree on which way they want to go themselves.

It is much like Kipling’s story of the Bandar-Log, starting one project after another, without finishing anything. Transportation and supply have absolutely broken down. The railroad yards are jammed with trains, the stations occupied, the warehouses broken into by troops, and every place not actually foreign ground looted. Tanku was picked clean of everything to eat. There are no supply trains, so the troops forage like locusts.

Most telegraph wires are cut; and even if they were not, all telegraphers and station staffs have fled, leaving the railroads throughout this district without so much as a section hand. The only person in the post office at Tangku is the superintendent, who could hardly handle all mail from Peking, Tientsin, and way stations personally, even if there were trains to put it on.

This is really a magnum war. Troops have been passing by the thousand. People around have been ‘hearing heavy artillery fire’ from every conceivable direction; but as I have never heard any I think it must be their nerves.

About six of Wu’s transports were tied up along the river at various places. If I had not seen it myself, I could not have believed that so many people could be loaded in such little space. In addition, they carried some very businesslike baby tanks, and a few field-pieces.

At Hsinho they had one large warehouse full of Chinese from the neighboring villages, who were coming out there with what stuff they could carry; they were paralyzed with fright.

Every night the destroyers on the river played their searchlights around, and that alone kept the whole countryside pacified. The Chinese have a great fear of the lights, which they think are the eyes of devils. They will run out of the beam like rats.

Once the light was thrown on a train which some mutineers had captured and were looting, and the whole push took flight. Another time the light fell on a switch-engine, and it backed all the way down to Taku. One night a whole convoy of troops, in about thirty junks (the Swede in charge said sixty, but I don’t believe he was calm enough to count), tied up at the wharf of the K.M.A. compound a long way up the river. The Swede was just about to send up distress rockets when the lights were thrown. The troops, which were in retreat from Shanhaikwan, and were all set to loot the place, never even left their boats, not even to get water, but got the coolies to bring it to them. They told each other that the devileye would see anything they did, which was fervently corroborated by the distracted Swede, who went down to the ships next day loaded with gratitude and fresh vegetables.

The country was rather wild just at this time; for the troops which Wu had in Tangku mutinied, and started to flee up the railroad to Tientsin. They were Shensi troops, all ex-bandits, and had been badly handled at the front by the energetic Manchurians. When they ran wild, Wu sent an armored train down, and penned them in Tangku, where they soon ran out of food and places to loot.

This train was near. I visited it often. It was made of coal cars lined with railroad ties, and was really quite effective. The living-accommodations consisted of straw spread in the bottom. The general in charge of the loyal troops was also quartered near. The mutineers were finally pacified and admitted to Tientsin, when the front at Shanhaikwan went all to pieces.

The enemy got around Wu’s left flank while he was building up his other line. They captured Lanchow on the Tangku-Chingwangtao line, which took that whole front in the rear and cut Wu in two pieces. The Shanhaikwan forces went all to pot and fled wildly, on transports, junks, commandeered trains, and on foot. Chang took more prisoners than he could send to the rear. Troops in every stage of disorganization began pouring into Tangku. Trains and ships would be seized and taken to one place; then the troops would change their minds and the same gang would come tearing back.

At Tientsin the track was jammed with a solid mile of trains. Many transports full of panic-stricken soldiery went up to Tientsin; but of course the guards of the foreign settlements would not let them off. It would have been suicidal to let that howling mob crowd their way in. Some boats made the trip four or five times, for the crazed soldiers would not listen to the captains when told it was no go.

I could fill a book with descriptions of the awful confusion. There was a mule-train that was found later on, abandoned, and all the animals had died of thirst. That is merely typical; and the neglect and suffering of the wounded was absolutely indescribable. There was not so much as one clean bandage nearer than Peking, and that not accessible. The physicians of Tientsin stated that the percentage of wounds that developed infection was just one hundred.

Where I was I saw the whole flight by land, afoot, and up the river. The fleeing troops even then could not give up the natural tendency to loot. I suppose the poor devils had some hazy idea of taking at least a little to show for all they had been through. A transport tied up to a dock just long enough for all hands to run across the field and loot a mud village; then they all piled back aboard and went on.

After Chang had got so close to Tangku that in another day he would have cut Wu off from the sea and finished him up in short order, Wu piled what few men he could collect on shipboard, and departed for parts unknown. It was a great relief to everyone; for if the clash had come at Tientsin there is no telling what would have happened.

Feng now forced the President to sign an abdication, and himself went ahead, scooping up the tons of stores and the troops that were now penned between two fires. There were some wild scenes in Tientsin for a while; but for the most part the vanquished went over to the victors peaceably. Plans were laid to put one Tuan, loudly hailed by Chang’s faction as a compromise candidate, in the vacant chair.

I saw trainload after trainload of Chang’s troops go by; I used to go to the station and pass the time of day, just as with Wu’s gang. It was n’t my war. They mopped up Wu’s men as they went, and left the land empty and peaceful.

There seems to be some doubt as to what capacity the navy now occupies with regard to Wu. Of course it used to be part of his forces when he represented the Central Government. But he is now in the status of a rebel; and besides, the province of Shantung has promised not to receive Wu, and that is the province that is in charge of the navy. On the other hand, the present governor of Shantung is not the same as the one who used to administer the fleet, for while it was north, helping Wu, they revolutioned him out of a job.

Wu has n’t the least desire to land in Shantung. What he is evidently going to do is go into the Yangtze Valley, which is, and always has been, hostile to Manchuria, where Chang’s crowd comes from. Whether he can there heal him of his grievous wound and return from Avalon is hard to say.

November 11
Since I wrote last night, Wu has left Chefoo, after filling his ships with coal and supplies. He found ready assistance, as Chefoo is a strong Wu port. In fact, all his transports are the entire line of a Chinese company which his adherents confiscated for him at the beginning of the war, whose home port is Chefoo.
Certainly the way of a Chinese war is devious and unpredictable. One of the foreign advisers in Peking has broken into glad clarion cries about what great foresight he has. It seems he predicted at the very start of this war that one army would corrupt the other by bribery. He is indeed a prophet; but I will go him one better — so will everyone out here — and make that a standing prophecy for the next ten wars.

November 25
There were three executions here, last week, of bandits. They were shot, which is much better than the old system of beheading. Where that is in vogue, the executioner goes privately to a condemned man’s family and demands to be bribed into making a clean slice. If refused, he hacks away for several strokes. I saw a photograph, taken less than twelve years ago, of a woman who was suffering Ling Chee. I came very near being sick, and I am no Clara Vere de Vere. When you think that this, and worse, goes on in the interior every day, you wonder what on earth the Oriental can be like.
The international situation has not changed much since I wrote. Wu made good his escape to the Central provinces, and although they had announced before he arrived that they would support the new government he seems to have found means of altering their minds.
Whether his reasons clinked in purses or in scabbards is not known. At any rate, a military dictatorship has been set up at Nanking, the proclamation signed by all the Tuchuns of the Yangtze. Some of these, it is alleged, did not learn that they had signed till they saw their names on the list.
Chang reached Peking, reduced Feng to office-boy, second-class, and called Dr. Sun for a conference on ‘how best to secure a United China,’ which might be interpreted loosely to mean, Will you move north on Wu if I move south on him? Sun made several speeches full of noble sentiments and departed for Peking, where, at this writing, he has not yet arrived.
Meanwhile the Peking forces are at a standstill, several tactful hints to Feng that it would be a glorious thing for China if he and his army invaded Wu’s territory having so far produced no result. Feng knows in just what form this benefit to China would be most likely to arrive, and claims to be too young to die.
Chang is waiting for more solid conditions in Peking before he leaves it. The young Emperor has been ejected from the Forbidden City for starting a counter-revolution. It may seem strange that these two hundred troops should choose to restore the monarchy in the presence of eighty thousand hostile troops who had just taken the city. It would be strange if they had.
The so-called government then went through the form of making Tuan Shijui (pronounced Wan Shee-ray for no apparent reason) temporary President, or something. He seems to be the sort of man who would n’t harm a fly, and has n’t even a political enemy, and is being boomed for these same reasons.
Wu created quite a furore when he was in Chefoo. It seems that not all the money that was contributed was a freewill offering. It is also said that the local commanding general was in terror during the whole of Wu’s visit, and wanted to be allowed to hide in the customs warehouse. The poor general is not used to war’s alarm, his rank of general being the only one he ever had. Previous to his appointment as general he was a merchant, and he sought the Chefoo office only because it was the most peaceful in China. He claims to have been misled.

December 2
The Chinese situation continues to simmer slowly. If this were an ordinary war, it would be safe to say the fighting was over, for the Chinese won’t fight when it is cold. But Chang’s soldiers are Manchurians, and they delight in icy blasts and frozen toes. Especially since the Chinaman freezes first.
Wu Pei-fu is making no headway in the Yangtze Valley; but on the other hand the job of fetching him out of those regions is a case of ‘somebody’s got to git dem cats,’and the Tiger Man is sick in bed. Feng is evidently in nobody’s good graces, Chang refusing to trust him; and, so far as anyone can tell from the outside, his desertion of Wu has got him no reward. He states that he intends to take a trip abroad, since the peaceful settling of China’s problems has been accomplished by his recent efforts.
This statement is Chinese etiquette for counting noses. Anyone who feels that he has work for Feng to do is now supposed to prevail upon him to give up his trip. It is the same as when a Native Son announces that in no circumstances will he accept the nomination. Coming from a Chinese, it generally indicates that the lid is about to be unscrewed from something.
Sun Yat-sen stopped off in Japan for a visit. The young Emperor fled to the Japanese legation. He issued the usual proclamation in which he explained his flight by saying that he anticipated no danger. The assumption is he needed the exercise.
The work of clearing the railways around Peking continues briskly. In pulling in the military trains, which were abandoned all over the line wherever there was a siding, they opened up one car, and found the bodies of thirty impressed coolies who had been locked in to keep them from running away. The poor devils had been forgotten in the flight, and had starved to death on some lonely siding.
I should have explained that a Chinese army carries no stevedores or other labor battalions. They pick up coolies as they go along. Sometimes they carry them far from home, and their unsupported families starve before they can get back. The margin of life is so low in China that if the daily income is cut off there is no reserve to meet the shortage. There is no way to borrow, for nobody has it to lend; and no charity to save them, for their fellows are only one day ahead of the game themselves.