Peking, Aug. 25.
Whenever Chang Tso-lin's propagandists want to tell the world of their master's greatness, his fitness to be a great governor of a great territory or his eligibility for some higher job, they find corroboration in the loyalty of the foreign residents of Mukden to the great man and in the great prosperity of Manchuria. They sometimes go further and boast of thit 30 million dollar war chest, arguing that the government which can mulct so much from the people and still leave them enough to eat, must be a good one.
is true. that in Mukden and all the other railway towns on the South Manchuria Railway where, by coincidence perhaps, there are Wapanese garrisons and large Japanese communities, there are highly articulate groups of foreigners of all nationalities who are ever chanting pans in praise of peace and plenty. It. is also true that, either because of or in spite of the government, Manchuria produces lavishly, as a great undeveloped frontier country should, and that tne people do seem to eat. As to the war chest we cannot have any doubts; Chang Tso-lin admits it, THe Susy Sipe.
Side by side with this evidence, however, we are constantly faced with newspaper reports of Hunghutze activities on a huge scale. Overtaxation and official extortion seem to be as common and to be practised on as big a scale as everything else in this big land. "One never meets a Chinese from eastern, western or northern Manchuria that does not tell us tales of banditry, omnipresent, everlasting and unthinkably bold, which sound like Arabian Nights tales What is more disconcerting, one never hears from a_foreigner who lives. at a point in Manchuria far enough removed from the great pre sence in Mukden to be diverted by routine business cares from adulatory contemplation, who does not give us the impression that these Arabian Nights tales are indeed fact and then only one-tenth told, that official extortion is an incidental io trade, and that on the whole there is no territory in China in which the forces of disorder and bad government make things livelier for the agriculturist and the trader, no place like it for demonstrating what the average Chinese can endure and yot live and do business.
Isolated instances can never do the Hunghutze justice. One would have to travel widely in "Manchuria to get the: material for '2 composite picture of bandit activities which would convey an adequate impression, or be in a position, as the writer is, to have Ghinese, Russian and Korean Iviends constantly pouring into his car stories of doings which would seem extravagant on the cinema green. The latest contributions a¥e a series of scrappy picture from a Chinese caller, three short Chinese letters, and a dispassionate end casual letter from a British merchant in Harbin who writes to tell "how things are going." The latter says:
"Communicafion with the interior is ceedingly risky owing to the numerous Dands of robbers, who stoop so low as te rob even hawkers and carters, while rich farmers and merchants do not dare to leave their homes.
"The position in Heilungkiang province is especially bad, and the officials appear powerless to cope with the situa. tion, which daily grows worse. Another cause of dissatisfaction in this province rin) is the extortionate taxation—taxes from 8} to 11 per cent. being imposed en the purchase price of practically all raw materials, a fact which renders the export of such commodities to Europe and America almost impossible, reducing business activities to a negligible quantity. The harvest this year shows every promise of being an abundant one, and soya beans and wheat, for example, wilt not only be plentiful but of good quality. Tpst year-much of the grain rotted in the fields through the farinas being afraid to work on account of the bandits molesting them."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.