REALITIES OF WAR IN CHINA

Evening Star, Issue 19664, 17 September 1927, Page 19

REALITIES OF WAR IN CHINA

DEVASTATED PROVINCES A MILLION EMIGRANTS TO MANCHURIA For seven years 1-have watched the Chinese war lords deprive the countryside of the fruits and the tools of its labor. Fields in many regions have been turned into wildernesses (writes the Peking correspondent of tho 'Observer’)- , , A report just to hand says that over two-thirds of a district in Honan of an area equal to that of an average English county has been deserted. The land is devastated: a strange fate in a country where every available inch or soil is supposed to- be cultivated. Other countries would have gone down in a morass of anarcljy with half the-provo-cation these people have sustained, Yet they struggle on, clinging to their rock of self-government and self-discipline. ■Wherever there is a fighting chance of subsistence left they resume their tasks, with a recuperative power little short of miraculous. Where have tho ravaged villagers gone? The ‘ Chinese Economic Journal ’ for July shows that at the end of the current immigration season in Manchuria it will he found that over a million persons have left war-torn lands of Shantung and Chihli to start new homes in Manchuria. Nowhere in the world can be found such a wholesale movement of population as this. And it is not restricted to North China. Says the Commissioner of Customs for Amoy (Fukien province), in his 1925 report: “Banditry and the impressment of farmers and coolies for service as military porters led to a large exodus to foreign lands, to which labor was attracted by reports of peace and steady employment.” More such evidence could be furnished from other parts of tho country where w-ar and banditry flourish. MILITARY MARAUDERS.

The immigrants have left their ancestral homes partly because of population- pressure, but principally because they cannot maintain the uneven struggle with tho encompassing forces of, destruction. : Others in the devastated areas are continuing the fight, but not from their homesteads on the plains; they have taken to. the hills, and are using their few remaining pruning hooks and agricultural implements to wage, guerilla warfare with the military marauders. Their forays on to the plains are of daily occurrence over an increasingly wide area. So extensive are they that they really amount to a buffer between North and South, a civil war within a civil war. The Red Spears,, as tho enraged farmers of Honan are called, fought the recent Mukden’ invasion like wild beasts.' Isolated units were torn limb from limb. Retribution came with equal ferocity. Whole villages were wiped out. The Mukden forces marched through Honan, along _ a trail, of burning villages. To tho lulls again_ retired the Red Spears, reinforced by the freshly despoiled. Their turn came again when the Mukden army fell back in retreat from its disastrous expedition. Mukden executioners, decapitating rifleless soldiers on the banks of tho Yellow River, had competitors in their fell work in the Red Spears, who fipnrcfl none limb gob within ijlicir clutches UNCHANGING CHINA. Lord Pannoor ami other sentimentalists who look at China through colored glasses may bo shocked by these side-

lights on the surging forces that are screened from the public eye by the ebb and flow of the war between North and South. But they are not new to China, nor inconsistent with'her civilisation. The great mistake made by critics at home is that they imagine a China inetamorpbosed. They visualise the Nationalists as . modern Roundheads or American revolutionists. They miss tho atmosphere of-China. Nothing is more misleading in trying to get at the truth than to take the Chinaman, southerner or northerner, at his face, value. This is the Chinaman of tho Labor Party bulletins. What about policy in the meantime? In the course of the last month we have shown that, in the expressive American phrase, wo do not intend to “ hold the baby.” That means the suspension of policy while China remains in the grip of animosity and chaos. For there is only one thing that the Powers are agreed upon while this_ state of things lasts, and that is inaction. This diplomaitc paralysis was vividly exemplified by the breakdown over Nanking. DANGER OF DISAPPEARING TRADE. " But is that any reason why oar trade should go into voluntary liquidation? We had our traders in this country before our Consuls. Then there was no waiting upon the manoeuvrings of high policy. The path was plain; seek your trade and you found it, , and it is because we had such daring seekers in those days that British commerce came to dominate tho foreign trade of China. Yet the successors of these pioneers are now bottled up in the coast cities, most of them withdrawn because of the dam ger in the interior, but many called in because of the possibility of strong action over Nanking. A paralysis of policy has led to a self-imposed paralysis of our trade! There may be good reason for the suspension of policy, but there is none for the continued resignation of our trade while we in China amuse our minds with speculations on the desiderata- necessary before policy can get into harness- While wo flap our wings and beat the air over the political situation trade is slipping away from ns by default. Whole areas are deprived of British contact. Boycott or no boycott, tho Chinese, being realistic and commercially minded, demand many varieties of our goods and products. Their commercial activity recovers quickly after the armies have passed on. Immense areas are still free from the despoiler. But this _ pulling up of our roots may have a disastrous effect on our holdings. We must keep our hands on this potentially tremendous market; otherwise our competitors will not only take what is now offering, but freeze us out when policy _ dictates a return to commercial activity. ,-

This, I am assured by many commercial men, is what is happening.,