'They had lists of the inhabitants of each village through which they passed, carefully prepared before hand by some local sympathizer, showing the incomes of all the wealthier people, Against each such name was' appended. the figure that the victim was probably good for. If the amount was paid up, they departed In peace, without " inter. fering with the other inhabitants a +1, In act they paid the poorer. villages for any food or drink thes took, often at double the ordinary prices, Only if anyone resisted payment, was his place ransacked and hho Mable to be shot. But this does not appear to have happened very frequently.
this way they are said to have collected enormous sums that had been hidden away by the parsimony fous, Shans! peasantry, for' generations perhaps. Tt is estimated that their oral takings amounted several million dollars." And some} cynics suggested that it was alla deep-laid scheme of the Central Government to extract funds for the war against Japan from the province of Shansi. whose people have a. rep-Utation for stinginess all over China. Anyhow, the general verdict of the people in those parts through which the Reds passed was: "They were. hard on the wealthy, but good to the poor." militia Defend Cities Another curious feature was the! entire lack of preparation by the Shansi authorities. Although they had plenty of warning, no effort was made to send troops to threatened Places in the south. Shans! troops only reached Fenyang, for instance, which Is 80° miles from Taiyuan, six hours before the Reds arrived. The important walled city" of -Linfen, although promised a whole division, only received a garrison of 300 reg: ular troops atthe last moment. The other towns were all defended hastily-raised local militia, who, fas they were literally fighting for hearth and home, appear to. have done better anyhow than the Shansi troops. Some people thought that the rapid advance of the Reds had taken the Shansi government surprise, but local Chinese opinion held the somewhat uncharitable view that the neglect was of set purpose, in the hope of "keeping the Reds away from Taiyuan, by offering them easier prey in the south.
Strangest of all in this strange story was the tremendous concentration of troops against these few thousand badly-armed Communists, At one time there were over a dozen Central Government divisions between Taiyuan and the Yellow River, not to mention the Shansi armies, say all together well over 300,000' men, In spite of this, hardly any fighting took place. The! Central Government troops. advanewith extraordinary slowness, never properly engaging the Reds ai all. Had it not been for the fact of foreign missionaries being locked up in some of the towns, they would probably have advanced even slow-ex. As one southern soldier told me Jaughingly: "Hughl, we didn't come fight the Reds, we came to throw out old Yen."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.