RAILWAYS “IN RUIN.”

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5084, 4 February 1927, Page 4

RAILWAYS “IN RUIN.”

TIIE COLLAPSE OF LIFE IN CHINA.

CONFISCATION AND STARVATION. Twelve months ago (states the Peking correspondent of the London Observer) a local writer argued that the Chinese railway system had come to the end of its tether o'f productiveness and usefulness. It would soon prove a curse, to the people, he said, and so he 'urged a 'return .to more primitive means of transport. He presented the campaign with the slogan of “Back to he Barrow.” Facetious though this seemed, events have proved the writer’s fore.knowedge. If the people had taken his suggestion seriously we should not now be faced with a coal famine, as .well as a shortage, in other necessities o'f a winter life. Prospects are so alarming, indeed, that the dipomats have had to resort to representations. But to no purpose ; if you want things done in present-day China the worst possible, method is to enlist diplomatic support. The Chinese flout the diplomats nowadays out of sheer cussedness. The coal-dealers have been more practical; they have started a camel service with Shansi province—the source, of production. This, after all efforts to obtain waggons from the military had failed.

The war lords have practically closed the railways under their control to coal conveyance, and only very grudgingly allow any facilities tor the transport of 'foodstuffs. What little coal comes in is subject to extra, imports for military expenses, as well as to such “squeeze” as the soldiers care to place on its release to the merchants. In consequence prices are mounting ; with the help of falling values in silver, they are overwhelming a population already reduced to misery by civil war.

Much of China’s production has alfeo to yield its quota to the military at the source.- -Farmers and traders have to pay dearly for the privilege of feeding .and looking after the cities. Obstacles are sometimes insuperable, and then the citie,s have to starve. Mars hjs to be served first, and even when he is satisfied, he is always likely to go Cin the rampageland indulge in wanton destruction of the portion left over. The entire country ministers to him, and he has at least three million minions, o secure that allegiance. RAMSHACKLE ENGINES. Tn o.nej of the eighteen provinces Is was 'recently computed that a sixth of the population, or 300,000, we,re under arms. The estimate was made by independent observation, for the investigator, who admitted quite (frankly that he was ignorant of the strength of his command, and would be glad to get exact figures for himself. When the soldier is king it is much more advisable .to attach your-> self, however, loosely to the side of the despoilers than to that of the despoiled. - That is the philosophy of tjie countryside in Cina to-day.

Common sense should apparently dictate some care of the 'railways at a time when they are such a valuable, adjunct to the machinery off warmaking. But 'the war lords are notoriously deficient in common sense. Their railways are hopelessly mismanaged and in a deplorable state of disrepair No receipts are allowed to come to the Ministry of Communications, the organ nominally responsible for China’s nationalised system, and c,n .foreign supplier will now supply materials until some attempt has been made to clear existing indebtedness. So grievous is the state o'f things on the Peking-Hankow line that several trains are. allowed to run with impaired brakes. The drivers manage to stop the trains at the stations by shutting off steam a mile outside. MORIBUND MASSES. The adject suffering of the Chinese people is beyond conception by the West. A Chinese sociologist, comment- ; ing recently on China’s populationproblems, says that over-population i has reduced the people to a state of 1 semi-lifelessness. Present conditions are plunging them deeper into thisi moribundity. Where the countrymen arc virile enough they enlist on the. side df the despoilers : where they are-' fatalistic enough they wait until the’, soldiery have had their fill of thefruits of agricultural labour, and then apply themselves once more to recuperation.