We went to the station to look about and make further inquiries as to armoured trains, and -again I was not surprised to be told that none had come in but that one er another would show up in the evening. The station was crowded with soldiers, and from the various camps on both sides columns were filing out to the south, presumably to take up posit the front lines. On walls and buildings all about were the shredded remai of highly coloured posters put there that he would himself take our cards to his chief and try to arrange an interview as soon as possible. And he was as good as his word for within 15 minutes he returned to say that Hsu K'un was at the moment busy writing despatches but that as soon as he had finished he would send for us, and half an hour later we were asked to the station building where he had his headquarters.
General Hsu K'un was originally. Jcommander of the 7th Shantung army' und is still nominally its leader but he is also the Northern appointee as Tupan of the province of Anhuei and so is, in a marine of speaking, "fighting for a throne" as well as for the re-establishment of northern authority north of the Yangtze. He is also the front line commander-in-chief, under Tupan of Chihli Chu Vu-pu, of all the Chihlu Jarmies engaged in the present often ive, but he is never called general and is always addressed and spoken of as Hsu Tupan. He received us jin quite informal fashion seated at. the head of a plain wooden table jin a small bare room the only other furniture of which consisted of two Wooden benches against opposite walls on which he requested us to be seated and immediately began the conversation, while looking over our cards, people against the wealthy land owners and appropriate their land holdings. But they do levy large sums what accounts to blackmail from the {landed gentry and wealthier classes, and with the money they organi and arm bandit hoards who -do oppress the people terribly, robbing: and killing without restraint, and in the end the peasants are the grax: est sufferers, though blame for the more recent miseries that have come upon them atthe hands of bandits. "But," the Gén-eral continued, "we now have this sort of thing better in hand. We have gent armies through the whole width of the province from north to south to comb out the country from time to time, we know where they are and we have reserve fortes in the rear at strategic points to $00 it they do not ravage the country'
the same manner that they have been doing for the past few weeks, For some time we tive Woon handicapped by pressure on "the flanks from these behind the ae" allies of the Nation:
But when General Fang, with the fourth army, took Ishow on the 9th the whole of eastern Shantung wes back for duty at headquarters, so that left only two of us. The General arranged comfortable accom. modation for Betts on a passenger car that would be returning with train of empties sometime during the night, and Nielsen and I said good-by and made our way into the walled city to seek out the Catholic father to whom we had been referred by the Bishop at Yenchow.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.