Any attempt to give accurate details with regard to Chi various armies ends in inaccuracies and uncertainty. The writer has, in this instance, gone through reports and accounts from what. might usually be regarded as. authentic sources and has compiled figures which are probably as clo to the facts as one can hope paper soldiers and_cooli The fighting soldiers fessional class who usually fight under their immediate commanders, who are disciplined and armed and who will always find employment even if their commanding officers are defeated. For instance, many of Marshal Chi Hsieh-yuan's Sg} ing soldiers have found positions under the Fengtien or retained Kinngsu commanders. General Yang. Hua-chao's fighting soldiers hire themselves out as best they might. The tools of a fighting soldier are rifles and ammunition, to which he clings irrespective of the defeat or victory of his commanding general. He does not regard the commanding general as thie chief. His chief is always the officer directly under whom he Aghts, For instance, the reina of Chi's army in Soochow never regarded Chi Hsieh-yuan as their chief nor will they so regard General Yang Vu-ting. Their general, the officer who is with them and directly pays them, is their chief. To betray him is treason. To betray Chi Hsieh-yuan or Yang Yusting or any other Tuchun or Tapan upon instruction of their own officers is only the business of mercenary soldiers. puzzled to know how many of them fare paper soldiers, how many cool-fes and how many fighting soldiers. In the following estimates, an attempt has been made to avoid the extras, to pare the armies down to fighting soldiers. Each commander will probably say that his army is cut to half, but when the totals. appear it will be seen that on the two sides, omitting Feng Vu-hsiang, about whom too little is known, there are more than half a million men, which is an enormous fighting Ly, emi and Ins trains coaly muir. This does not inelage paper-coolie-fighting force of one Feng Vu-hsiang, Canton, Red and_ anti-Red, Hunan, Szechuan, Yunnan, Kueichow and the extreme northwest. From his totals, therefore, the writer is led to believe that yht-ihis figures represent a fair and approximately accurate statement of fact.
The Fengtien Force The Fengtien army is said to consist of eighteen divisions. More accurately stated the Fengtien forees consist of the following: From shunghal to Chibi 50,000 The forces in Mancharia 310,000 Total +260,600 This army is on the whole well armed and equipped but, it is reported, poorly paid. Some of the: soldiers include absorbed defeated armies which might not be re-Jiable in actual warfare,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.