2
hensible how a civilized race like the Japanese can be indifferent to such a national degradation. On more than one occasion I have seen Chinese coolies treating them with a contemptuous familiarity they would not display to their own women.
North of Mukden the Japanese are of course much in evidence at all the railway stations. At Tieh-ling they have an exceptionally large and apparently flourishing Settlement, covering the ground between the station and the city, but away from the railway they are not much in evidence, except at Kirin.
Going west-north-west from Ssu-p'ing-chieh station I did not see any till I reached Chêng-chia-t'un, where, not counting a party of Japanese surveyors, there is a Japanese shop, in which I bought a tin of biscuits, with the well-known pattern and the side notice of "Hundley and Palmier's Superior Reading Biscuits." At K'u-lun-chieh two Japanese merchants from Hsin-min Fu have recently been investigating the conditions of trade. At Fa-k'u-men there are two Japanese doctors who—with a race addicted to medicine like the Chinese—are able to carry on a thriving trade, besides several low-class shop-keepers. I did not see any more Japanese till I reached Hsin-min Fu, where the Japanese have a Consulate and gambling dens.
Wherever I went in Manchuria, I was told trade was in a bad way. In Fa-k'u-men many firms, affected by the big failure of a Chinese bank at Newchwang last year, had come to grief, whilst in Kirin Province the native banks, who are under no Government supervision, had issued too many notes. The country people, owing to lack of funds, were making no purchases, and business was generally at a standstill. The Japanese were therefore suffering by the general depression of trade.
3. Robbers in China. The Hung-hu-tzu are generally armed with modern rifles. At K'uan-ch'eng-tzu the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha sells rifles to the Chinese farmers, much against the wishes of the Chinese officials, and many of these rifles find their way into the hands of the robbers. The Hung-hu-tzu, who are indiscriminately Chinese, Manchu, or Mongolian (in the west), are often old soldiers, and generally belong to the farmer class. Often a family elects to send one member to join a neighbouring band, so as to enjoy the benefits of its protection. Wherever I travelled in Feng-tien Province the country was reported to be tranquil, but I was informed that small parties of robbers were still giving trouble some 12 or 15 miles north of Feng-hua Hsien, and that Mongol mounted bandits had been raiding the country to the west of K'u-lun-chieh earlier in the year. In Kirin Province, which is more thinly populated, I heard they were still giving some trouble in the hills, 80 or 100 miles to the south of Kirin.
Generally when Chinese soldiers are sent out against robbers, they complain very little, and the Chinese often secure repose by promoting the robber chiefs to official rank and taking their bands into their service. Thus the Hung-hu-tzu chief, named Chang-tso-lin, was given the Hsin-min Fu military district last year. To show his zeal he invited a brother chieftain, called Tu-li-san, to a feast, and then treacherously put him to death. He has now been promoted to a red button, and given the command of the Chêng-chia-t'un district. Feng-ling-kê, well known before the war as the great robber chief of Liao-yang, was captured by the Russians and sent to Saghalien, whence he escaped, and worked for the Japanese during the war. He is now commanding the district of Chang-wu Hsien, to the west of Fa-k'u-men. Unfortunately, he was absent from the city when I passed through. Many of the soldiers of the provincial armies of Manchuria (viz., Feng-chün, Chi-chün, and Ch'i-chün) have been Hung-hu-tzu, who have now changed sides with their chiefs, and settled down to the reposeful life of a Chinese soldier. As the soldiers of the Lu Chün are Manchus of the cities, or Chinese from other provinces, there are probably no ex-Hung-hu-tzu amongst them. A soldier told me that the reason why they were recruiting only Manchu soldiers for the local Lu-chün at Kirin and Mukden was because if a Chinese deserted he could probably escape, but the Manchu could not desert so easily. This is probably partly the case,
Another difficulty in Manchuria is that the Chinese police themselves often rob and squeeze the inhabitants.
During the Manchurian campaign, the Hung-hu-tzu were of considerable use to the Japanese. The Russians used to have large supplies of cattle, &c., sent across Mongolia to them, and the Hung-hu-tzu were employed to waylay these convoys and divert them to the Japanese.
I do not think that Japanese officers would do well in command of Chinese soldiers, as they would be too harsh and unsympathetic, whilst the Chinese have the old prejudice against the Japanese, whom they always looked upon as inferior to themselves till they were partially disillusioned fourteen years ago. On the other hand, I believe that the mounted bandits of Western Manchuria, if trained and led by European officers, who knew their language, could be made very useful in guerilla warfare.
1
3
4. The Chinese in Manchuria.—The population is mostly composed of Chinese, who have emigrated from Shantung and Chih-li Provinces during the last 200 or 300 years. Some have been settled so long that they call themselves natives of Manchuria, so they can always tell how long it is since their families emigrated. The Manchus are principally found in the big cities like Mukden and Kirin.
As the population of Shantung and Chih-li increases, the necessity for emigration grows greater, and this overflow finds an outlet in Manchuria or Mongolia. In the past, the population of China has often been kept in check by wholesale massacres, such as the appalling destruction of the Tai-ping rebellion, the Mahommedan rebellions in Yunnan and Kan-su, and the more recent disturbances in Kuang-si, also by great famines and the inundations of the Yellow River; but as civilization increases, railways are built, and European methods of engineering adopted, these evils should be reduced, and the population will increase more rapidly than at present. The colonization of Manchuria is still in its infancy. Taking a line roughly from Tieh-ling to Fa-k'u-men in the south, I was struck by the smallness of the villages and the scantiness of the population as I proceeded north. In Kirin Province, this was still more apparent. On the main road between Kirin and K'uan-ch'eng-tzu, the two principal towns of the province, a distance of 77 miles, there are only 3 villages with over 40 or 50 houses, viz., one with 250, another with 100, and another with 60 houses. Sungari, between the railway and Kirin, the country is even more thinly populated.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are gradually pushing forward the boundaries of Chih-li to the north, and of Manchuria to the north and west, buying land from the Mongol Princes, and pressing the Mongols back. Within the last twenty years, a great tract of land on the western side of Manchuria, called the Shu-lu-huang, or Imperial grazing ground, has been thrown open to colonists, and the land is now mostly given up to cultivation. Towns, as they become of sufficient importance, are granted official status, and Chinese Magistrates are sent to govern these budding colonies.
On the
Whilst natives come and go in Manchuria with much noise, drawing the attention of the whole world upon themselves, the Chinese peasants quietly push on unnoticed, armed only with the primitive agricultural implements used in the time of Abraham; but they have arrived with the full determination to stay, until necessity compels their descendants to push on still further ahead and carry on the silent and real invasion of Manchuria. The Mongols are a very different race from the Chinese, and are stupid and indolent, readily offering themselves as victims to Chinese cunning and craft.
5. The disputed Territory of Ch'ien-tao.—I was unable to visit this region. The Japanese Consul at Kirin told me the Chinese had already sent four battalions of infantry of the Lu Chün (about 2,000 men) to the neighbourhood of Yen-chi Ting, and that they proposed sending the rest of the Kirin Lu Chün brigade (another 2,000 men) there this autumn.
In addition to the Lu Chün, the Chinese have one part of their Kirin provincial troops (Chi-chün Chien-lu), nominally 1,566 officers and men, stationed in the district. The latter are really untrained constabulary, employed for service against the Hung-hu-tzu, and unorganized for war, whilst of the Lu Chün 3,000 out of the 4,000 belong to the Kirin Brigade, which only started training last spring. The remaining 1,000 men belong, apparently, to the 3rd Lu Chün Division, which is scattered around K'uan-ch'eng-tzu, Kirin, and Ch'ang-t'u Fu, and is commanded by a very inefficient Major-General, Ts'ao-k'un. The division, when it was at Pao-ting Fu two years ago, shared with the 1st Manchu Division the honour of being the best division in the Chinese army, but it has deteriorated very much since it was sent to Manchuria.
G. PEREIRA, Lieutenant-Colonel,
Grenadier Guards, Military Attaché.
(Signed)
Peking, July 4, 1908.
553