82 Bubai¢dou Men Surrounded and Shot: 600 Others Branded as Warning to Troops From Our Own Correspondent, Harbin, Sept. 4.
The 700 men of the 4th Regiment at Buhaidou who, shortly after jthe recent mutiny, surrendered. when starvation was staring them in the face, were first sent under escort to Hailar, by onder of the Commander of the troops of this district, General Wong, who was personally conducting operations against them. There an inquiry was held and, by order of Tuchun j Wu, they were afterwards sent to Tsitsihar, where 86 of the ringleaders, including some officers, were sentenced to be shot. The; condemned men were' taken in a railway car some five versts from Tsitsihar, where the car was survoundéd for a radius of two versts by cavalry, artillery and infantry. The condemned men, learning what fate awaited them, started to run' away from the car and the troops immediately opened fire on. the fugitives, a number of whom were killed close to the carriage, whilst others suffered a similar fate further away. When th corpses were collected, 82 bodies were counted, so evidently four men managed to escape.
By order of Chang Tso-lin the remaining 600 mutineers were expelled from the amny and ordered to be sent to their homes, the men principally hailing from Shantung. Before being sent away from Tsitsihar, each man was branded on the chest with acid, by the senior officers of the Tsitsihar garrison, so that it would be impossible for them to try and rejoin the army. The severity of the sentence is meant to be warning to others as to the fate that awaits them should they rise up against their commanders. Just the reverse hap-pendd to the soldiers who rebelled at Pogranitchnaya, for these, after the revolt was over, were given money and sent home, all the blame being placed upon their Commander, Col. Li Yuan-kwei, who, with others, suffered the extreme penalty. 5
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.