I was at' Rungcheng again last week and find that the batch of defeated troops who had been in the country since they arrived—there after the defeat of Chi's troops just before the New Year, were not of Wu Pei-fu's 24th Division, but were lof the An Kum of Ma Tuli. Some 3,000 of them came into the city while Twas there in fairly good order, Although living on the people they had been moderately fair to their victims and asserted that they had paid for all they got, though frequently with only "a scrap of paper." One of them told me they had been absorbed into Governor Hw's army at Kaifengfu. He also toll me that Honan. province has about 200,000 men under arms! No wonder China is in straits! As far as I remember, this is 30,000 more than even the Republic of the United States keeps under arms!
T learned also while at Rungcheny that the man Sino of whom T have written several times as alternating between a bandit chief and leader of government troops, had, at the fend of last year, knowing that, the] tufei were again' well in the saddle, left his position in the city and gone off to the robbers, Almas: immedi: Jately afterwards he war found dead:
opium pipe, but it is who had killed him. 1 hear and that his wife and daughter do not dare to return into the city to get the personal property he left.
The Much-Enduring Despite all the war and the dead-nese of business in many ways, the people seem to be going quietly along in their little affairs. They! tell me the taxes have been collect~ Jed for a year or two ahead, but: toxing is a matter they cannot help. They also say they have to pay over: 1,000 coppers: for each assessed Jciunce of silver, which is easily more than double what it cane boughs for in the she orth of Rungcheng where the tufei did such awful work in the early winter, severe suffering is now reported, Many women and children jert Tie ubout in the streets and by the walls starving, with nothing to feat but tree bark or the young sprouting wheat! In not a few vil-ages they say these fiends, the bands, left not a single house stand-me
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.