From a Col respondent.
We have received from a correspondent a series of interesting articles on the ways of a Chinese army when in retreat. They were written in connexion with the flight of Chang T'so-lin last year from the victorious Wu Pei-fu and "as @ history of that time may be somewhat out of date, but there rs seldom a month when there is not a-war somewhere or other in China, and the ways of most Chinese armies in victory or defeat being very much the same, the articles have @ present interest as showing something unusual.
"T guess if we had that guy here we'd torture him!" My American escort was examining the body of ganger Sun Bao-chun, late of the Chinese Government Railways..'The soldier's comment embraced most views. Ganger Sun was the first chance victim of the ever recurring civil war for which feudal istic rule has always been responsible. He had been shot not once but thrice, through the head an through each breast.
The reasons for so brutal a murder were' by no means apparent. I had replaced four other rails that morning and here there were two more pulled out, which showed that the man had carried out the orders of the retreating soldiers. The mian's father, a howed heap of misery, with a face of old ivory and a grandfather's sparse chin beard, was useless. Him I comforted by saying that the railway would give money, much money as compensation. That magic word silenced his wailings og abruptly as a bottle does a hungry baby. Thereafter he merely gossiped to those who would listen, telling them the price of the caftin and the fine points of the bargaining. I wanted a witness, but all that large horizon -of dead flat salt-blotched grey plain there was only a heron changing fishing grounds and bewailing the fact. Not a man stirred anywhere.
There was a village of mud hovels nearby, a village of shut dumb doors at noon-day: a village which even the dogs seemed to have left. Obviously that village expected to be involved in the calamity, to thus display the portents of it. I went across and addressed one of the doors, saying a man or boy must be produced at once or I should come and fetch one. Almost instantly a youth was thrust out of an evil smalling darkness. The door slammed to again with the swiftness of a camera shutter, leaving at my feet an incoherent incubus apparently expecting instant death, whom my Chinese could not restore to sanity. At long length my interpreter anounced him fit to be questioned.
When was this man shot?—At the time of the evening train yesterday.
By whom and why!—I do not know.
You do not know and yet you mew when-the man was shot. You can see where it was done from: your door? We were in the houses. The doors were shut as now.
Has your door no eyehole? I will jgo and see.—Oh' no! They Were horse soldiers.
How many?—About 200.
Who helped the dead man to throw the rails in the ditch. Were they men of your village!—They did it themselves.
Hudu (idiot)! Did a soldier ever do aught but sit in the sun, eat other people's food and take other men's wives!—They came from that village over there. It is but three /i away.
Fool! Would soldiers ride when the doors of your village could ko kicked in? Get me one of the men and quickly.
This cross-examination so typical in its purposeless and childish mendacity ended in the production of my witness. From him I learnt that Sun was the only railway man among those impressed to break the line, After the work was done a non-commissioned officer had asked him I suppose these stupid ones (the villagers) could not put back the rail]—No. The bolts are broken and they cannot use the hammer to drive the big nails. Only I can do that.
Are there no other bolts and nails in the hut you brought the tools from!—None.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.