Chapter VIII: In Neutral Territory

There is a portion of the Chinese Empire outside the Great Wall which was tacitly regarded by both Russians and Japanese as beyond the legitimate sphere of war. It lies west of the Liao, and extends to the Mongolian boundary. Its length is about 250 miles, and its greatest width less than a hundred; the eastern portion comprises much of the Liao plain, swampy land, with barren stretches and salt-pans in the south, and well cultivated grain lands in the north. On the west are the Hai mountains, a chain of rugged rocks with fertile slopes and excellent corn and grazing ground, where they rise from the plain.

Nominally, this territory is governed by Chinese authorities; actually it is domineered by Russian troops foraging for supplies, by Japanese agents, and by the chiefs of independent mountain villages, whose inhabitants are usually regarded as robbers, bandits, Redbeards, or Hunghuses.

The Imperial Chinese Railway has a line running north from Shanhaikwan to Hsinmintun, with a branch east from the main line at Kaopantze to Yingkow. The railway has British subjects superintending the engineering, traffic, locomotive, and construction departments; but it has a board of Chinese directors, and is essentially and actually a Chinese railway run by and for the Chinese. You step into a vestibuled dining-car on the mail train: you note the automatic couplings, the bogie waggons, the large grain trucks, and read that all are constructed in China, at the company’s own workshops. You see Chinese engine-drivers, station-masters, pointsmen, brakesmen, and telegraph clerks, and you may be on that train for hours, running smoothly at forty miles an hour, and be the only European, not only on the train, but at and about the stations at which it stops. The trains are punctual, but they do not run at night, for the simple reason that Chinese passengers will not travel in darkness; so the working day is from 7 to 7, unless emergency trains are necessary. This railway is excellently managed, and it is perhaps the only real controlling factor in the government of the neutral territory. At each station there is a guard of from ten to forty of the Viceroy Yuan-shi-kai’s soldiers. They are fine men, in clean, neat uniforms; they carry small-bore Mauser magazine rifles and sword bayonets; they have plenty of ammunition and get their pay regularly. A detachment will fall into line and stand to attention on the arrival and departure of each passenger train. In wet weather they wear long oilskin coats and sou’westers; when they don these slickers they invariably leave their weapons at home. At many stations there is, in addition, a guard of soldiers from the regular standing army, mostly from General Ma’s force, but they are armed only with old-fashioned rifles, and are not nearly so smart as the others, but doubtless are as good fighters.

The railway running parallel to the Russian west flank, and communicating with their posts at both Yingkow and Hsinmintun, it could be of great service to them as a means of communication, and also for the conveyance of supplies; if it were in the hands of their enemies, the Russian positions from Yingkow to Kaiyuen would be jeopardized. They could not control the line absolutely unless they seized it from the Chinese. Its neutrality was their only safeguard; and if regarded by them as neutral, then its usefulness was lessened. That the railway was untouched by either of the belligerents is in a large measure due to the firm diplomacy of Mr. Cox, the superintendent at Yingkow, who in difficult circumstances maintained the independence of the railway corporation and satisfied both the Russians and Japanese that strict neutrality could be and was always observed.

Contraband of war could not be conveyed through neutral territory, and in order that there might not be any mistake as to what was contraband, the Chinese authorities scheduled almost everything. Hogs’ bristles, I think, were the only notable exception. The Russian officials did not object to anything conveyed, so long as it was intended for the Russian army, but the Japanese objected, and their agents kept a close watch on everything and everybody going north from Shanhaikwan; all the same the Russians smuggled with success.

Then an attempt was made by the Russians to obtain their object by legitimate means. The Russian doctor in charge of the Red Cross establishments supposed he was right in believing that supplies for the Red Cross hospitals were not in any circumstances to be regarded as contraband of war. The railway authorities confirmed him in the belief. He wanted 120,000 fire-bricks and a thousand tons of fire-clay. Now, these bricks and such clay make excellent facings to fortresses, and were contraband of war. But, if he wanted them? He would not get them.

Then after dusk one evening some trucks, filled high with bales of hogs’ bristles, arrived at Yingkow, and they were shunted down to the wharf. Something about these bales attracted the attention of one of the English inspectors: he made a closer examination, and discovered that the hogs’ bristles concealed cases of ammunition. Those trucks went back before daylight broke and before the consignee knew they had arrived.

At Shanhaikwan, when suspected goods had to be examined, or refused, or confiscated, the work fell invariably to one or other of the young railway guards, all time-expired, short-service men from the British army. The Chinese officials will never face a determined European. I doubt whether they ever will acquire the courage to do so.

One day a Russian political agent, known to every one on the line, arrived with a lot of baggage he was taking north on the morrow. Some of the contents of his luggage had been manufactured in France, its shipment had been notified by a Japanese agent, and its subsequent movements followed with fidelity; now, when within a few hours’ journey of the Russian lines, was it to be stopped by a British stripling? The great man expostulated, threatened and fumed to no purpose. He went on without his luggage, complaining to every railway official he met of the absurdity of seizing his uniforms. He could not appear before the Viceroy Alexeiev dressed like a British tourist! Everyone promised to do what they could in order to get that baggage sent forward, and the diplomat even communicated with Peking, so sad was his plight. In the course of a few days the decisive answer came; the gentleman could _not_ have his war balloon. Shortly afterwards a dispirited French aeronaut took his way south.

The smugglers of provisions, wines, and delicacies for the Russian officers travelled to and fro so often that they became known, and were suspected and stopped. There were many genuine refugees using the line; they came from Port Arthur and Dalny, and wanted to get back to Russia. They had always a lot of baggage with them; but as this was going towards China it did not matter. Some of these parties were personally conducted by an Orthodox priest. After a time Russian refugees began to arrive from China; they had come from Port Arthur and Dalny, and were wanting to get back to Russia by the Tashichiao route. They also were unkempt, had plenty of baggage, and were often accompanied by a Russian priest. One day a surprise examination was sprung upon these refugees bound north, with the result that no owners could be found for heaps of luggage, all more or less contraband of war.

As a rule all the Russians at Yingkow were courteous to the British passing through, and to the few British residents, all of whom were connected with the railway service. One night a British officer dressed in _mufti_ came from Shanhaikwan. There were about a dozen at dinner that evening, and later the officer joined our company, and we talked of the war and its prospects. There were no Russian officials present, but one of the guests was a Russian, and so frequently a visitor that I suspected him, and warned the officer. He returned to Shanhaikwan early the next morning. Later that day the Russian guards made a thorough search of the settlement, believing him to be still in hiding amongst us. During this quite Russian domiciliary visit, one of the soldiers lingered too long in the bedroom of one of the railway men, who became impatient, and told him to go. The man would not, so the Briton threw him and his rifle not only out of the house, but through the fence of the compound. Shortly afterwards an officer with a guard arrested the Briton, and took him to Newchwang, where an interpreter was found. They brought the Briton before the administrator, and endeavoured to impress upon him the enormity of his offence: to touch a soldier was to touch the Tsar. What had he to say? The old soldier thought it time to plead guilty.

“I can only say I’m sorry I killed him; I did not intend that.”

“Killed him? You haven’t killed him; he is there! Look!”

“I don’t seem to have hurt him. Ask him, please, if I hurt him?”

The soldier was asked: if he had been hurt, he would not have owned to it, and he laughed at the suggestion, and denied it emphatically.

“Then why am I here?” asked the Briton.

“Oh! go away, all of you--don’t bother me with such little matters.”

The incident closed, and never after that was there any trouble between British and Russians on the Yingkow side.

Out in the east, when top-dog, the Briton is bad, but the Russian much worse, as the Chinese are well aware. Sometimes I would ride out alone through villages in this neutral territory, and as I galloped towards the group of trees by the temple, I would see in the distance women, children, and men hurrying into their compounds and barring the gates. The village streets and the cultivated land surrounding the village would be deserted by the time I arrived. Not a living soul would be seen--only the black pigs routing in the mud, and the half-wild village dogs walking along the mud walls and barking loudly. If I rode straight through, and, after going a little way, looked back, I saw the people coming out and staring after me. If I pulled up on the lee side of one of their wretched mud dwellings, took out my pipe and filled it, then smoked, some bold man would put out his head and say, “Yingwa,” whereon a crowd of the inquisitive would gather rapidly and gaze at me wonderingly. There is no fear of the English; the Russians are beheld with terror by these simple villagers, who have lost much through their depredations.

The first time I stayed in a Chinese inn up in this country I was surprised at the consideration shown to Englishmen. The innkeeper sent one of his men to conduct me to the place I wished to visit, and men with lanterns to bring me back safely. They fed me well, pressed me to take cocoa--the only English food he possessed--gave me cigars, provided me with a private room--a luxury in small country inns--arranged with a carter to convey me on the next stage of my journey, and absolutely refused to accept any payment. I was, he said, the first Englishman to visit his inn, and that was honour. His servants also refused to accept gratuities--for the same reason.

That was north, a country possessing great agricultural wealth. The district is but a score miles from the Imperial cattle reserve, and the supply is so great as to appear illimitable. Naturally, the Russians have been drawing upon it for their increased needs. But they have lost ground in this territory, as they have where the Japanese have attacked them. Amongst my notes of February, I have: “Three hundred Cossacks from Liaoyang crossed the Liao plain, and rode to the mountains. They visited I-chow and Kuan-ning, then by way of Tung-na-ku and Hsiao-hei-shan went to Lao-ta-tsu, where a post is established.” This town was in the southern district much nearer established Chinese authority than is Hsinmintun. At the end of April the Cossacks had commenced to denude the country of cattle, going out in troops of fifty, each accompanied by a Chinese interpreter. Each troop considered it an unlucky day when a bullock apiece had not been captured. The Russians also requisitioned cattle from the Tartar generals, and if sufficient were not forthcoming, at once renewed their demand for all the Chinese troops in the Fengtien province to be disarmed.

The Chinese of these parts were simply bullied by the Russians into parting with everything they possessed, and their Chinese officials were dispossessed of the little authority which had been allowed to remain. The same harsh rule was applied in even greater force in the north, and the Tartar general at Kirin is supposed either to have died of broken heart, or to have committed suicide in order to avoid dishonour.

Another note of mine of much later date shows a different state of affairs in this neutral territory. In August thirty Cossacks were seen near Hsiao, riding two on each pony; two miles behind a force of about three hundred bandits were in hot pursuit.

To obtain further meat supplies the Russians purchased at Kulan Fair and Ha-lao, on the Mongolian frontier. In neutral territory they seldom paid for their supplies, merely gave a receipt for the beasts they took away, and sometimes tied that to the horns of the cattle driven into the Russian lines. The extent of the enormous traffic may be judged from the fact, that as many as a thousand head of cattle have been delivered in Mukden in one day from the Hsinmintun road alone.

The villagers were powerless to protect their property, so bought the aid of the hill men, all of whom are more or less engaged in horse and cattle dealing. Hence after the raids, there were counter raids and border warfare. The hill men number between fifty and eighty thousand, and from them soldiers are recruited. Their leaders are all known to the Chinese government, at least by name; some have been and some still are in government service, acting as independent police for the protection of the frontier and for the purpose of preventing cattle raids.

The conditions were bad before the war began; they have since grown increasingly worse. Russian outposts were attacked, and had to be abandoned, and with the exception of the road between Hsinmintun and Mukden, which the Russians must keep open to get through supplies from China, it is doubtful if there are now any Russian soldiers stationed in neutral territory. The hill men grew bolder as the Japanese successes followed each other, and in the summer they agreed upon common action and scoured the country, driving the Russians before them and killing all whom they could capture.

At first they had their own leaders, two of whom I met, but latterly they have been organized and commanded by Japanese, who wear Chinese dress, and have queues fastened inside their caps. The hill men are now an irregular force of raiders, quite free from Chinese control, and are being used to annoy the Russians, and where possible to break up the line, hinder railway communications, and hamper the Russians in getting through food supplies from Mongolia.

They are all well armed, mostly with modern German magazine rifles. They lead a wild, free life, preying on those villagers who will not employ them, upon well-to-do native travellers and traders, and most of all upon the Russians, for a Hunghus is as proud of having slain a Russian soldier as an American Indian was of a Sioux scalp.

For Chinamen they may be considered brave, that is to say, when they are superior in numbers, about five to one,--they will attack openly Russians conveying cattle, and they are sufficiently daring to make night attacks on villages known to be harbouring Chinese who favour their foes. In no circumstances would they make such attacks as the Japanese have made at Port Arthur, Tashichiao and Liaoyang.

The Russian political agent to Mongolia, a Siberian named Gromov, whom I met in Harbin and at Port Arthur, has been trying through his Mongolian acquaintances to win over some of these Chinese hill men of the north to the Russian side, but apparently without any success. The bandits attacked Tehling, got away with some stores, and set fire to more, but in my opinion their finest recorded exploit is their successful attack on the Russian gunboat _Sivouch_, which, in order to escape the Japanese, went up the Liao to Estahbien on high spring tides. The _Sivouch_, an old vessel of 943 tons register, steamed down to Liao bar when H.M.S. _Espiègle_ arrived from Chenwantao to render assistance to British residents, and, according to the Chinese version current, drove the British warship away. The Hunghuses attacked by night, firing upon her at short range from the high _kowliang_ growing on the banks, and from behind the many embankments made in that district to keep flood-water off the land. Each night the attack became more serious; the rifle bullets pierced the ship’s sides, and she was then blown up and sunk by her crew, who escaped by way of old Newchwang to Liaoyang.

When the Japanese, three days later, sent their gunboat up the river to engage her, they found only a newspaper correspondent in possession, and with him a number of Chinese soldiers intended for her protection. The Japanese arrested the correspondent, and gave him a passage on their vessel down the river, but not before he had managed to acquire and secrete the gilded Imperial Eagle from her bows as a souvenir of his excursion.

The homes of these hill men are up in the mountain fastnesses, to which there are only rough paths up which their sturdy Mongolian ponies will scramble at a fair pace. Many of their leaders ride on donkeys, and Wang, one of the smartest, when last I met him, was riding a fine dark brown jackass, which, he informed me, he would not exchange for any pony in the country. In Manchuria and North China the richest men ride mules, and ordinarily a good saddle mule is worth more money than a pony of equal quality.

The Hunghus towns and villages are surrounded with a low wall, have gates, and small forts with jingals at frequent intervals, commanding all the approaches. It is one of the ordinances of China that even every village must have its surrounding wall. Though this fence may be of mud and only a few feet high, without gates, and used as a promenade in muddy weather, it nevertheless exists. In some of the villages on the plain the walls also have forts; these forts have cannon about as large and very much of the shape of an old blunderbus barrel. And there is always a diminutive flag over the fort, whose walls and moat, or trench, there is not a correspondent’s waler could not jump easily, and a clever horse would jump both in and out of the fort, as an Irish horse jumps a stone wall. The forts are just such toys as enterprising boys make on the sea-beach for their amusement, and of no greater military importance.

The strength of the Hunghuses lies in their bravery; they do not fear their own countrymen; of foreigners they have a wholesome dread.

The Russians were so uneducated they knew not what to do, nor what to want. Ordinarily you could pass through their lines with ease. When it was difficult, or the correspondent too lazy, a Chinaman was employed. One I sent into the fort to see what was being done there, to find out how many guns were in position and what they were. He was an educated man, but passed in as a coolie, and as a coolie was detained until he had done a day’s work with the others.

There was a spy who wished to get plans of the fort and of the fortifications around it. He stayed in a Chinese village near by, went in and out and about; hid when necessary in the hollows where Chinese coffins have fallen in on the corpses, and when hard pressed he came back to Yingkow. The authorities, aided by their English secretary, were after him there, but it did not suit the correspondents to have one who had posed as of their profession to be caught thus red-handed. He was hidden among Chinese in a riverside village, and as the train was searched for him every morning, he had to get underneath one of the cars before dawn, and hang on to the gear there until the train reached the next station.

This was an exceptional case. Ordinarily the correspondent and the Chinese helpers were equal to every occasion. For a monetary consideration commensurate with the risk they ran, they would take the correspondent almost anywhere. He got into a covered Peking cart, and left the rest to his men. The cart would dawdle along when nearing a Russian picket, until a number of native carts joined the procession. At the post there would be a crowd; if you kept your cover down, other Chinese carts with native passengers did so; whilst they were being examined your driver contrived to get into the line of those passed as correct. At most you wanted only two or three carts. Those in advance acted as scouts, their drivers warning your carter what was happening ahead. Success in spying depends not so much in ability to get out of difficult situations as in having the good sense to avoid them.

For most of the mistakes the correspondents made they were themselves to blame. The credulity with which they absorbed rumour was equalled only by the avidity with which they sought news. Some might consider their colleagues to be their worst enemies. One would ask another what he thought of the serious position created by General Ma bringing 40,000 Chinese soldiers outside the Great Wall of China. He questioned to get the speaker’s idea of the extent of the seriousness, not daring to own that he had not received the news, or questioning the fact itself. After a general talk all round, some one of the crowd was as likely as not to wire off as news what was only an assumed state of affairs. In this way the Japanese were reported to have torpedoed a pilot boat, to have captured half South Manchuria before they left Korea, and to have achieved numerous impossibilities.

The Russian officials were not guiltless. The cabling of a little false news afforded them an excuse for being rid of a correspondent when his presence was not desired. Trap after trap was set, and he was indeed wary or inactive who escaped them all.

There was one item of somewhat sensational interest most adroitly launched. An officer at Yingkow heard from two army officers who had arrived from Liaoyang that an American newspaper correspondent, who had gone there without having his papers in order, had sought refuge with a countrywoman of his resident there, and that for harbouring him she had been flogged by the order of the commander-in-chief. The alleged victim was a Miss Alice Clery, who had been for some years in the Orient, and was one of the few persons of American nationality who were heart and soul with the Russians in their struggle against the Japanese. At Port Arthur, in order to be with them, she had volunteered for Red Cross work, and through the influence of friends on the Viceroy’s staff had been found quarters at Liaoyang. That much was true, and it was also a fact that the correspondent had made her acquaintance. The remainder of the story was open to question. The manner in which it was started was quite clever. In course of general conversation with a British trader in Yingkow, a hint was dropped by an army officer that British and American correspondents, and those who helped them, had not much favour at the hands of General Kuropatkin. The man mentioned the fact to a resident, who told me jocosely what I might expect. Thereupon I interviewed the officer, who, most reluctantly, informed me of what his brother officers had told him. He believed them. It was a possible story. He did not, and could not, vouch for the facts, as he was not at Liaoyang at the time, but he knew this, that, and the other which corroborated everything he had been told. I went to the censor and asked him to be good enough to straighten out the story, if I had the details wrong. He had heard the officers tell the same story, heard that the woman received twenty-five lashes, and had no reason to doubt the statement at all. He deplored the occurrence, but it was not for him to question any action of the commander-in-chief.

Here was a story which an American journalist could turn into a rousing article--and it was vouched for sufficiently.

It lacked probability. Russian officers would not be guilty of such barbarity. Sooner or later such an occurrence would be known, for there were American military attachés and newspaper correspondents at Liaoyang, and when it was known, the political consequences would be such that any officer guilty of an act of that kind would have trouble. For every offence, short of crime, which a foreigner of either sex may commit the Russians have one penalty--the offender is banished from Russian territory. It is a short and effective way out of many difficulties, one unlikely to lead to a diplomatic incident or cause future trouble. This report needed more evidence than hearsay to substantiate an event so improbable, and the correspondents again saved themselves.

Etzel had repeatedly suggested to me that by getting a junk we might reach Kaiping or Port Adams or Port Arthur, and find out what the Japanese were doing. It was a proposal I negatived. The risks were greater than the results appeared to promise. He was very keen on the scheme, and ultimately made the attempt in the company of the _Daily Mail_ representative. A few days before he embarked he accompanied me as far as Kaopantze, in the neutral territory, where he was getting together the necessaries for his voyage. The matter was kept quite secret. Instead of going to Messrs. Bush Bros., or Bandinel & Co., and having a junk and crew known on the river, or even obtaining the protection of their house flag, he chartered through an Englishman a small, light, fast-sailing junk of the type known locally as “sea swallows”; it also resembles unfortunately some of the piratical craft with which the waterways are infested. At the last moment he was implored not to go, and almost persuaded. He seemed to have a presentiment of approaching catastrophe. One of his friends bidding him good-bye said he never expected to see him alive again, so he woke up that friend between three and four the next morning to reassure him of his mistake. Then he started--taciturn, glum and oppressed with foreboding.

At first all went well, but long before the “sea swallow” was out of Chinese waters the strange craft was sighted by soldier guards on the watch for pirates, smugglers and blockade runners. These guards bore down on the vessel and in Oriental fashion fired first and inquired afterwards. They were informed that there were foreigners on board, and they hastened away. But the deed had been done. Etzel, whilst performing his duty, had been killed accidentally in a volley fired from behind by men with whom he had no quarrel, by men who would have risked their lives to save his.