China and the West

Baring, Maurice. With the Russians in Manchuria [ID D32572]. (3)
The retrat from Haichen
The next morning I sent my ponies on by road and resolved to wait for the train. Nobody seemed to know what was happening. Firing was heard now and again. Some people said Haichen was to be evacuated immediately, and others that the decisive battle of the war would take place there. It was evident that a rear-guard action was being fought The station was crowded with people. Food was still to be obtained. The lines were blocked with trains. A train was going to start for Liaoyang, but nobody knew when. After many hours' waiting I began to regret that I had not gone by road, when I heard suddenly that the train for Liaoyang had been made up and would set off immediately. I found that the train consisted of trucks and vans, only one or two of which seemed to be open to the public, and were being rapidly filled with soldiers and members of the Red Cross Service. Into two of the only other open vans — what was in the shut vans, of which there were about thirty, I did not ascertain — two soldiers were hurling bits of furniture, matting, and various odds and ends. I tried to find a place in one of the vans, but was met with the cry, "There's no room here !" and, indeed, for once the exclamation was evidently founded on fact.
Next door, on the end of a shut van close to the buffers, two soldiers were standing with bayonets, guarding, apparently, a large bag of bread. "You can sit on this bag if you like," one of them said. I climbed up and watched the process of furniture-hurling which was going on in the next van. It was being carried on by two soldiers who were calling each other names which would not only be quite unprintable but seemed to be the last word of all abusive language. Since, however, the terms employed formed part and parcel of the every-day language of those men all their sting had gone. The coins were so debased by constant circulation that their intrinsic value had been long ago lost sight of. The process went on good-naturedly enough until one of the men called the other a sheep. This seemed to me to be the first harmless word which had been bandied during the conversation. The effect produced was tremendous. The man who was called a sheep threw down a plank he was handling and declared to the world at large that that was more than human nature could bear, that he refused to work with a man who called him a sheep, and that a man who called another a sheep without any reason or justification was fit to be killed. All this was bawled out at the top of his voice and interlarded with terms of abuse to find equivalents for which it would be necessary to have recourse to the language of the East, and which reflected slightingly on the pedigree of the man addressed.
But again, these words were accepted as part of the vehicle of conversation, as indispensable ejaculations, such as ''Good gracious!" The infuriated soldier finally called everyone to witness and exclaimed that here was a man who had called him a sheep, and who was a sheep himself. This seemed to me rather to spoil the argument Two officers arrived and told the men to go on with their work, but the argument was still going on when the train started, and the last words I heard were " Sheep ! sheep I He called me a sheep ! "
Three other soldiers climbed up to the small platform where I was standing before we started.
They went to sleep almost directly, and so did I. We arrived in a short time at An-san-san, the first and only station between Haichen and Liaoyang, without a stop, the distance being twenty-seven versts. Just before we got to the station I awoke with a start, and in so doing knocked one of the soldier's rifles out of the train. He was asleep, and as it took him a minute or two to awaken, neither he nor I realised immediately what had happened. When he did realise his loss his consternation was tremendous. He was like Little Bill, the lizard, in "Alice in Wonderland," when his pencil was taken away during the trial ; and the soldier took the rash course of jumping out of the train. I felt I was going to be responsible for his life when I saw him leap from the carriage to the line ; but fortunately, we were not far from the station, and the train was not going much faster than a quick omnibus.
I arrived at Liaoyang in the evening, and stayed there till Sunday, the 31st July.
On Friday I heard rumours of fighting south, but I was prevented from starting by the fact that my pony was sick. I started on Sunday morning early for Haichen. The distance from Liaoyang to Haichen is fifty versts. It proved too hot to accomplish the journey in one day, and I passed the night at a small station — not a railway station — where the soldiers who guarded the line lived.
"Can I spend the night here ?" I asked.
"Possible," was the laconic answer.
I rode up, unsaddled my pony, and let it graze. The sun had set, and it was almost dark, except for a hot red glow in the west The earth seemed still to be breathing out heat On either side of the house stretched an interminable green plain, intersected by the railway line. I lay down on the grass, not expecting anything further. I had had nothing to eat except four Chinese pancakes and some Chinese tea, which I had obtained in a Chinese village with great difficulty, after a long argument among the Chinamen as to whether or not I was a Hun-hu-tse.
I will return to the question of the Chinese and their dealings with travellers later.
The soldier in charge of the station — he was the "starshe," the "senior man'', the man in charge of the post of frontier guards, and he presently came and invited me to supper. It consisted of soup, meat, and brown bread, followed by tea. Five men partook of it The senior man, my host, apologised for the insufficiency of the meal, and said it was the best he had to offer. He then went and brought his last remaining delicacies, some cucumber and two bits of sugar, putting both bits into my cup. I cannot give an idea of what a delicacy sugar was at this time at the front or on the march. The man also produced a still greater rarity, a small crystal of lemon extract, and insisted on giving it to me. I never enjoyed a supper more. I asked my host whether or not he had been a long time at this station. I thought he would say a week or so, but to my surprise he said four and a half years. Then all at once I realised the man's life, the life of a man in a land lighthouse, isolated in a plain in the south of China, at a place where the trains never stopped, and where European travellers must have been rare before the war.
We began to talk of various places and things. He was one of the most simple-minded and transparent characters I have ever met, with a gift of hospitality which made me feel solemn. Is there not a line in Byron's Don Juan where "an Arab with a stranger for a guest" illustrates something ineffably sacred. That line came into my head. The man was not in the least like an ordinary soldier. He had a wide and at the same time a confused education, a bewildered knowledge of remote things and places. He told me about some hot springs which were near, and then said he had been at Aden, and talked of the Red Sea as being quite close. I said the Red Sea was near Egypt One of the other men then remarked that he knew better, because he had been to school, and that I was thinking of the Yellow Sea.
I said I had been to school also, and had likewise been to Egypt A third man observed that the Yellow Sea was a small sea which. flowed into the Black Sea, and that the Red Sea lay indubitably between Japan and China.
"It is near Colombo," one of them explained. "I have been to Colombo."
"Does Colombo belong to Great Britain" asked one. "Yes I" answered the other ; "there are Englishmen in Colombo. Everything belongs to Great Britain, and they have now taken Thibet". "No" rejoined another," Colombo is near America, and belongs to America — at least so I have been told."
I was too exhausted to take any active part in the conversation or even to ask the senior man who and what he was. I could only drift on the stream of talk that was going on. After supper they made me a most comfortable bed with some hay and a blanket and a pillow out in the field.
''You will be more comfortable here than indoors," remarked the senior. "There are too many insects indoors."
He then brought me some more tea with his last litde crystal of lemon extract, and wished me good-night I thanked him for his hospitality. He then crossed himself, and bade me welcome in the name of heaven and the saints. I felt that I had met one of the characters in Hans Andersen's fairy tales. This man might have come, for instance, into that beautiful story of the "Travelling Companions." He had just that transparent, simple and infinitely benignant character which Andersen alone could depict. The fact struck Siacco, who was with me alone this time, and who remarked with awe that it was extraordinary to see what infinite trouble these people took to do honour to a guest.
I started at dawn the next morning, and arrived at eight o'clock at a village where the Red Cross was established. I had already met men belonging to the transport, who said they were retreating from Haichen and that there had been incessant fighting during the last three days. I was entertained by the Red Cross representatives and given tea and eggs, and while I was there they arranged to retreat north at five o'clock that evening. I reached Haichen about nine o'clock. I found the place full of movement and excitement There had been fighting during the last two days; fighting was still going on ; the Commander-in-Chief and the Staff were there, and exciting events were expected.
About eleven o'clock firing was heard from a battery due south and quite close to Haichen. I rode out to it, but by the time I had arrived at the distance whence operations were visible the firing ceased. Another battery still nearer opened fire and ceased firing almost immediately. The batteries then retreated, and there was no more firing that day.
When I arrived at the station I was told that Haichen would not be evacuated, but that a big battle would take place on the morrow. In the meanwhile everything except the actual troops was rapidly clearing out of Haichen. At the same time the wounded were being brought in from the field ambulances to the sanitary train which was in the station. There were a great many wounded. Some were being brought in on stretchers, and others walked supported by soldiers on each side. Their wounds were quite recent. The manner in which this transport of the wounded was managed was admirable. It was done quietly, quickly and effectually.
This was the first time I saw the ghastly spectacle of maimed soldiers being carried in with their fresh bandages, recent wounds, white and yellow faces, and vague wondering eyes. Some of them were being carried on stretchers, others were walking, supported by soldiers on either side. The scorching sunlight beat upon them. ''Non ragioniam di lor ma guarda e passa."
I have often heard the Red Cross organisation abused by Russian officers, but they seemed to me to ask a great deal. The sanitary trains, everyone admitted, were admirably organised, clean, comfortable and cool. Everyone admitted that the hospitals at Kharbin were beyond praise ; and that the field hospitals were satisfactory. What was lacking was a sufficient means of transport to convey the wounded from the field of battle to the field hospitals, and to the ambulances; but since my return I have been told by military men here that that is a defect which it is almost impossible to remedy.
There existed what was called the Evangelical Red Cross Society, which consisted mostly of Germans from the Baltic provinces. This was an admirably managed institution. There were also flying columns of the Red Cross who bandaged the wounded under fire. Personally, I only came into contact with two of these columns, one of which I saw doing good work at Ta-shi-chiao, and at Liaoyang. On the whole, they came in for a fair measure of abuse, it being said that they were never where they were wanted. Whether this is fair or not, I have no means of judging. The columns with which I was acquainted certainly did admirable work at Liaoyang. During the battle of the Sha-ho, the field hospitals were sometimes very far from the field of action, as when. Lonely Tree Hill was taken; but I will come to that in due time.
To go back to my narrative. At noon on the 1st of August, a big battle was expected on the morrow. Everything seemed to point to this, and everyone seemed to be prepared for it. I spent the night in a small village about half a mile north of the station, and made all preparations for the next day. With me were Brooke, and M. Dourkovitch. We had scarcely laid ourselves down on an improvised bed in the yard of the small Chinese cottage where we were staying, when we were roused by a noise of shouting and cheering, which subsided after a time. About a quarter of an hour afterwards a rumour reached us — where and how it started I do not know — that the Japanese were in the village, and that we must make haste to get away, or else we should be cut off. We got ready, and rode out not very far from the village, and waited on a road in the moonlight I sent Siacco the Montenegrin to find out what was the matter, and he managed to get himself arrested as a Japanese, and only returned late on the following afternoon.
Siacco was a fair-haired individual with blue eyes. He was less like a Japanese than any one I have ever seen. But the Russian soldiers judged a man's nationality by his clothes and Siacco wore a straw hat. If you wore gaiters or spats the soldiers thought you were a Japanese. One day when I was wearing Stohwasser gaiters I was stopped by a frontier guard and asked in a tone of suspicion where I had bought that leg-gear. I answered Tokio, and was allowed to pass. If I wore a Russian shirt I was invariably taken for a Russian private. If I wore a Caucasian cloak (bourka) I was taken for an officer and saluted. The Chinese judged one by one's saddle if on horseback ; that is to say, if one rode on a Chinese saddle they put one down as a Mafoo. Otherwise they were extraordinarily discerning even in the small villages in determining nationality — one might be dressed from head to foot like a Russian, and the Chinamen in passing by would say Englishman, Frenchman, or German, as the case might be.
Soon we met transport carts and Cossacks, and various detached soldiers. We gathered from the absolutely conflicting accounts of the troops, that somewhere — some accounts said half a mile off, and others five miles off— a false alarm of a night attack had been raised, which had caused slight confusion in one part of the camp. Whether or not there had been an attack of any kind I never ascertained; but I think not. Certainly no shots were heard. What appeared to have happened was that the rumour of this false alarm had reached the retreating transport men who had exaggerated the occurrence, and thus created a panic. There were no troops in our village at all. In about a quarter of an hour all was perfectly quiet.
We were tempted to march to Liaoyang in the cool of the night, but on the chance of there being interesting events we remained at Haichen. I spent the night with a regiment of Siberian Cossacks. One fact appeared quite evident, namely, that the expected battle was not to happen, and that Haichen was to be evacuated. The next morning we rode back to Haichen Station ; the infantry were retreating, and the evacuation was being carried out I started back alone about noon, retreating with the infantry, men who had been under fire without ceasing for the last three days.
It was again a swelteringly hot day, and it was interesting to compare the retreat of the infantry compared with that of the transport It was carried out in perfect order. When I arrived at the frontier guards' post, where I had spent the night on the way to Haichen, I found a whole regiment resting. I had had nothing to eat, and I too lay down to rest I was joined at four o'clock by Brooke, Dourkovitch, and Colonel Potapoff, who was one of the many Press censors. Later in the afternoon, Siacco the Montenegrin, turned up. I reached An-san-san about nine o'clock in the evening. The heat was torrid during the whole day. The wells had by this time become thick with mud after being stirred up by many hundreds of troops. I passed the night on the platform of An-san-san and started for Liaoyang the next day with Brooke, Colonel Potapoff, Siacco and two Cossacks. We could not find any food on the road. We told the Cossack to go and loot, but he returned empty-handed, and if a Cossack cannot find food, nobody can. While we had halted to rest at a clump of trees, a soldier suddenly turned up in a ragged shirt. He was a prisoner who had escaped from the Japanese. We asked him what the Japanese were like. He said they were "nichevo," meaning they were all right.
Later in the afternoon Siacco crowned his inglorious career by three times falling off his pony ; and when reproved for lagging behind, he insuited Colonel PotapofF. He was finally made to walk home, and we left him swearing that he belonged to the Orthodox Church, had fought the Turks, and would complain to General Kouropatkin. We reached Liaoyang at eight o'clock in the evening. I had never known what exhaustion meant until that evening. Among other things I had caught a slight sun-stroke. The next day I was laid up with sun-fever, and had to stay in bed for three days with ice on my head. I was again cured by Dr Westwater.
Siaco was finally dismissed.

Davantientung [near Anshan, Liaoning]
On Monday, August 8th, I started once more on horseback with a new servant, Dimitri, a Caucasian, a dark-eyed brigand, with a black beard and a hawk nose, dressed like a Caucasian in a loose brown skirt with silver trimmings, cartridges on his breast, a revolver at his waist, and a large scimitar. I was in search of General Kossogovski's division. At An-san-san I met a volunteer, who was also bound for the same destination. We slept at An-san-san, and started early the next morning for Davantientung, a village about ten miles south-west of An-san-san. It was not very easy to find the way; after we had passed through the first two or three villages we emerged into an ocean of kowliang. Fortunately there was a field telegraph, and Dimitri and I both insisted that it would be wise never to lose sight of it It led us by strange pathways, over ditches, and through swamps ; the volunteer fell into a ditch which his pony refused to jump, and I was nearly drowned in a swamp, but ultimately we arrived at Davantientung. Owing to the temporary indisposition of General Kossogovski the division was under the order of General Sichoff.
The general was sitting in a very small and incredibly dirty room of a Chinese fangtse (cottage). A telegraph was ticking in the next room, and flies were buzzing everywhere. "Have you brought us any food? We have nothing here, no bread, no sugar," were the general's first words. He told me to make myself at home, and to settle down where I liked. Some of the Staff lived in the cottage, in which there were two rooms, and others lived in the garden. I chose the garden, and during the first two days I thought I had chosen the better part, but after a time, as the Staff increased to its full complement, the garden was filled with horses and Cossacks, and there was little left but standing room. Life at the front consisted, if you except the battles, of bracing and exhaustive movement, or of complete and most languorous idleness.
I should like to be able to give some idea of these days of inaction and waiting in a Chinese garden or house during the entr'actes of the war. Everything was green and yellow. The weather was very hot to begin with ; when it rained, which it did once every ten or twelve days, it was hotter. The roads and houses were made of yellow baked mud, on each side of which were endless stretches of kowliang fields of a very intense green — too green. One was reminded of the Frenchman's description of St Moritz, "Ce lac beaucoup trop bleu, ces arbres beaucoup trop verts." Along the horizon there was perhaps a range of mountains, or hills, very soft and blue and beautiful, so that one was reminded at the same time of Scotland and of Egypt. It is a strange country ; it is also a beautiful country. That is to say, at every moment one is confronted with landscapes, and effects of light and shade which are intrinsically beautiful. Near Davantientung there was a lake of pink lotus flowers which, in the twilight, with the rays of the new moon shining on the floating, tangled mass of green leaf (the leaves by this light assumed a kind of ghostly grey shimmer), and the broad and stately pink petals of the flowers, made a picture which if Monet, the impressionist, could have painted, the public with one voice would have declared to be an exaggerated impossibility. But neither Monet nor any other painter could ever succeed in reproducing the silvery magic of those greys and greens, the phantasy wrought by the moonlight, the twilight, the radiant water, the dusky leaves, and the delicate lotus petals.
Yet, in spite of frequent beautiful sights, it was hard to enjoy the beauty of the country. Perhaps it was owing to the war — to the "pomp and circum- stance of glorious war !" One recognised that the country was beautiful, but the beauty did not steal on one unawares, and fill the spirit with peace. I am talking not only of my own experience, but that of many men military and civil, whom fate threw together there. During these idle days the country seemed to overpower one with irresistible languor. In the yard outside the horses were munching green beans in the mud. Inside the ''fangtse" all the flies in the world seemed to have congregated. One took shelter from them,, in spite of the heat, under anything— even a fur rug. To eat and sleep was one's only desire, but sleep was difficult and food was scanty. Insects of all kinds crawled from the dried mud walls to one's head Outside the window two or three Chinese used to argue in a high-pitched screech about the price of something. One lay stretched on the "k'ang," the natural hard divan of every Chinese house. There was perhaps a fragment of a newspaper four months old which one had read and re-read. The military situation had been discussed until there was nothing more to be said ; nowhere was there any ease for the body, or rest for the eye.
An endless monotony of green and yellow, of yellow and green ; a land where the rain brings no freshness, and the trees afford no shade. The brain refused to read ; it circled round and round in some fretful occupation, such as inventing an acrostic. A French poet has described this languor in the following verses, which seem made for these circumstances : —
"Je sui l'Empire à la fin de la décadence,
Qui regarde passer les grands barbares blancs,
En composant des acrostiches indolents.
D'un style d'or ot la langueur du soleil danse,
L'âme seulette a mal au coeur d'un ennai dense,
Là-bas on dit qu'il est de longs combats sanglants."
But then, after all, the entr'actes, though they seemed as long as those of a French theatre, were in reality short, and how richly one was compensated, not only by the culminating moment of the battle, but by all the action which lead up to it, as soon as the curtain rose again. There was another side even to the days of languor. In the first place one got used to it. In the second place, it was often great fun. The officers were friendly, somebody used to arrive from civilisation with some sugar and some cigarettes, or with some exciting news. There was a constant stream of arrivals and departures to and from the Staff. I have memories of pleasant dinners outside, under a trellis-work covered with melon leaves, of delicious pancakes cooked by the Cossacks, and of many amusing incidents too trivial to tell. Above all, I have recollections of the general atmosphere of friendliness and good nature. During the whole of these periods, there was never a moment when I would have elected to be transported permanently elsewhere if such a thing had been possible.
General Sichoff himself, to begin with, was as friendly as possible. He was a knight of St George ; that is to say, he had the St George's cross of an officer. A private soldier can get the St George's cross of the fourth class for general good conduct in action. It merely shows that he is a good soldier. The officers' St George's cross is the highest Russian order, equivalent to our Victoria Cross. General Sichoff had seen many campaigns ; he was a soldier of the old school ; a man of great personal courage, and the universal verdict was that he was a "molodjetz" (which means a fine fellow). On his staff I found my friends of Ta-shi-chiao, including Alexander Ivanovitch Egoroff. We shared a small matting shelter, which did duty for a tent in the garden adjoining the general's fangtse. If Napoleon had commanded the Russian army, he would have put that man in command of an army corps.
There was also a young fellow called Dimitri Nikoliaevitch, who had lived some years in Turkestan, quite a young man, who struck me as being like one of the young officers capable of holding positions of great responsibility, such as Rudyard Kipling describes. I thought he was likewise remarkable for the sense that he talked, and his utter lack of swagger, and obnoxious "panache" of any kind.
After spending six days with the Staff, a change came about in my fate. One of the Staff officers had been transferred to another division, which was under Colonel Gourko, in a neighbouring village.
On the following day the doctor, another officer, and myself, set out on an expedition to visit a neighbouring village where we heard there was a Roman Catholic Church and a Roman Catholic Chinese priest. After some difficulty we found the village, and entered the vicarage. It was a scrupulously clean Chinese house, and there sat an old, bronzed Chinaman, reading his breviary. He greeted us in French, which he spoke hesitatingly, with an admixture of Chinese, but with the purest accent, a provincial accent smelling of the French soil. He gave us a glass difine champagne, which had come from Monsieur Lestapi at Bordeaux, and was of the epoch of Louis Philippe. I was the only time I tasted anything good to drink during the whole time I was in Manchuria. It was wasted, however, on the doctor of the battery, because brandy, old or new, made him sick. He was obliged to drink it, so as not to offend. The priest then told us that he had never been in France, but had been taught by the French. There were many Catholics, he told us, in the neighbourhood. During the Boxer revolution he had been put in prison, and condemned to death, and led ignominiously to the scaffold ; then he had been rescued or pardoned for some unknown reason, and eventually set free. We asked him if the Boxers would be likely to repeat such conduct. Bothing, he said, was more likely, but whatever they did they would be unable to make a single Chinese Catholic repudiate his fait ; once converted, always converted, in spite of any inducement such as torture. The English missionaries told me the same thingk about the Chinese Protestants, or Presbyterians, or Nonconformists. Once they are converted nothing will repervert them. They become invicibly obstinate. He gave us his blessing, and then we departed.
There was not a single European anywhere near the neighbourhood.
On the following day the battery received orders to move into the village of Davantientung, which I had just left. We moved into the village, and occupied and gently dismantled a large Chinese house. The owner cried quietly while we did so. He was comforted with roubles, after which he cried on every possible occasion, even when his own hens clucked in the yard. Here began another pause, a new entr'acte which was the prelude to a most exciting act. This was the first time I had actually lived with a regiment, a battery being the same as a regiment.
The commander of the battery, Colonel Philemonoff, was absent in hospital when I arrived.
His place was taken by a Lieutenant Malinovski, a man who knew everybody in Manchuria, and who was as fat and jovial as Falstaif. Besides him there were Lieutenant Kislitzki, about whom I have much to say later; Lieutenant Kabwilkin, a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy from Transbaikal ; Lieutenant Brand, a young European who had been transferred from a Russian regiment ; Michel Pavlovitch Glinka, the doctor ; and a veterinary surgeon. Besides them there was a young Polish volunteer, Count Tyszkiewicz, who, at the time I arrived, was a bombardier.
The remaining officers of the battery I met later.
He invited me to go with him. The rain had begun to fall in torrents, and I was rather glad to leave our garden, which had been converted into a swamp. The village was not far off, and it was comforting to find a shelter in a house. At last, I thought, the famous rainy season has begun. The rainy season is supposed to last a month, and to happen either in June, July, or August. Whether the year 1904 was abnormal or not I do not know, but the rainy season turned out to be like an exceptionally dry English summer, when it only rains from Saturday to Monday. During the month of August I noted that it rained on August 4th, 8th, and 9th (showers); again on August 14th, 15th, 17th, 27th, 30th (evening only). When it rained it poured, and during the intervals the weather was broiling hot, with the exception of three cold days — August 19th to 22nd.
I was most hospitably entertained by Colonel Gourko that evening, and, quite by chance, I also made the acquaintance of the officers of the 2nd Transbaikal Battery (Horse Artillery) of Cossacks, which was also st^itioned in the same village. On the following day the battery asked me to stay with them. I accepted their invitation. The following trivial incident led to my being invited to remain permanently with this battery. I had had supper with the officers, and we retired to bed. I unrolled my Wolseley valise on the floor of the fangtse. The doctor, who was looking on, said : "You mustn't sleep on the floor, you must sleep on the k'ang." I said I preferred to sleep on the floor, my reason being that I did not wish to crowd the officers on the already crowded k'ang. The doctor then called a Cossack, and said : ''Lift Mr Baring in this bed on to the k'ang." Whereupon one of the officers, seeing that I really preferred sleeping on the floor, countermanded the order. This led to a discussion, as to whether he had the right to countermand the doctor's order, which lasted nearly all night, the question being complicated by the fact that the doctor said he had medical reasons for giving the order. The discussion was most violent, and ended in an arbitration, which in its turn ended in a compromise, and it was settled that the officer was technically right and morally wrong in cancelling the doctor's order; "but, since," they said to me, " you are the cause of all this, the least you can do is to stay here with us." So I did.
We all lived in one room of a Chinese fangtse; our beds were stretched side by side along the k'ang. We got up at sunrise, and the ceremony of washing used to begin, a ceremony which I used to cut as short as possible. It is rude in the Russian army to shake hands with anyone before you have washed, and if you attempt to shake hands with an unwashed man he will withdraw his hand, saying that he has not yet washed. The washing ceremony is done in this fashion. You take off your shirt, and a Cossack pours water over your head and your hands out of a pewter cup, while you use as much soap as you please. After that tea used to be brought, a large kettle of boiling water with the tea made in it The Cossacks used to cook a kind of thick pancake rather like a crumpet.
At twelve we used to have dinner, consisting of large chunks of meat, for hors d'oeuvres, soup with rice and meat in it, and one dish of meat. This was followed by tea. The battery cook had one dish of which he was proud. He called it ''Boeuf Strogonoff." It consisted of bits of meat cut up, and mixed with bits of chopped potatoes ; the whole served in a pail. I recommend this recipe to Mrs Earle for inclusion in her next "Pot-pourri."
After a time, the battery struck at the constant repetition of this dish, and the cook was forced to vary his menu, and make cutlets, or something else ; but when left to himself he always went back to "Boeuf Strogonoff."
I used sometimes ironically to ask him whether there was going to be "Boeuf Strogonoff " for dinner ; and he then used to answer confidentially, that on that particular evening it was impossible, but that I was to cheer up, as he would give it on the next day.
After dinner we used to lie on the k'ang, and talk, and sleep. There used to be more talk than sleep. The day used generally to be spent in one of those very long and very heated discussions, such as Tourgeneff describes in his novels; generally the conversation used to begin on the subject of the war, and wander off into Russian internal politics, zemsivos and all the things about which we have been hearing so much lately. I remember one day I was trying to write a letter to the Morning Post ; but the discussion going on around me was so heated and so universal that all possibility of concentrating one's thoughts vanished. I finally ended by incorporating a part of the conversation in my letter and writing as i\ were to dictation.
The doctor was holding forth on the horrors of war and the absurdity, and the sickening spectacle of seeing all the complicated arrangements for the succour of the wounded.
The doctor argued as follows : —
"We create engines of destruction with the object of inflicting the most deadly injury possible to our fellow-creatures, and at the same time we take the greatest possible pains to organise a system by which these same men, whom it is our object to destroy as swiftly as possible, may be restored to activity as soon as they have been once in any slight degree injured by our instruments of destruction. To carry on war on humanitarian principles is, if one comes to think of it, an absurdity. Your object in war is to kill, destroy, and damage the enemy as rapidly as possible, to let those who are whole and hale fight for all they are worth, and let the weak and the wounded go to the wall. Logically Red Cross organisations and field hospitals are a great hindrance and an unnecessary expense. If the fact of war be admitted, it should be waged as barbarously as possible, since a humane war is a contradiction in terms. It is like a humane boxing match — or a humane bull-fight".
"But," objected someone else, and I continued writing as if it were an afterthought of my own, ''just as to fight and to wage war are an ineradicable instinct and a raison d'être of mankind, to succour the wounded is likewise an ineradicable instinct, and as long as armies exist Red Cross Societies will exist."
Then another, who knew his English and European history, broke in : "The battle-field of Creçy," he said, " after the battle, was probably as gruesome a sight as a modern battle-field, yet the English," he said, pointing at me, " would no more part with the name of Creçy than we would part with any of the jewels of our national inheritance."
Here I could not help breaking in and saying that : "There was no more an ambulance or a hospital at Creçy than there would now be at a football or a cricket match in England at the present day. The French and the English fought for fun then, in the same way in which they now play foot-ball War was then an aristocratic game. Witness the despatches of the correspondent on the French side — namely, Froissart Was there ever correspondent more impartial, less blind to the faults of his own side, more enthusiastically appreciative of the enemy's qualities ? But now nobody could say that the Japanese and the Russians were fighting for fun. Such incidents as the loss of the Petropavlavsk and the Hatsusi were merely desperately and fruitlessly deplorable and no more inspiring than a railway accident."
"Then," said the doctor, " you agree with me that if there is to be such a thing as war, it is illogical to have Red Cross organisations."
"No," I replied, "it seems to me the only redeeming feature of war."
"Why ?" he asked, "You are exceedingly illogical."
''Possibly," I answered, "but it is so," — and everybody agreed with me and the discussion was closed.
In the cool of the evening we used to stroll out or go for a ride ; at eight o'clock we had supper, consisting of one dish, and tea afterwards. Songs used generally to be sung, and then we went to bed early, and slept as long as the flies gave one peace.
During this time the Hun-hu-tses began to be troublesome. I thought when I was in Manchuria, that the British public must have been told and re- told till they were sick of it what the Hunhu-tses are, and no longer think them a special race of beings, like the hairy Ainus, with red beards, as I did when I left London in the days when I used to call them "Chan-chuses," but it seems to me on my return that the same impression still remains, and they are still called ''Chan-chuses" which means nothing at all.
It has been explained, I suppose a thousand times, that ''hun" means red and ''hutse" beard, or Tnce versd. The Hun-hu-tses, who used to be a corporation of polite blackmailers of the rich mandarins, utterly indifferent to foreigners, respectable, advanced in opinions, and wanting in cohesion, like the Liberal party in Great Britain, have, since the war, changed their character, and increased their recruits. But up to this moment they had been little heard of. In August, however, in the whereabouts of Davantientung, they began to be troublesome, and fired on the lonely traveller, on the isolated Cossack, and, indeed, killed three gunners.
A subtle change had come over the Chinese in this district I said in the preceding chapter I would allude later on to the attitude of the Chinese in the villages. The Russians have treated the Chinese as friends and brothers, and have paid them six times too much for everything, have felt no antipathy for their yellowness, and been a great source of profit. As long as Russian prestige was intact, such treatment merely made everything smooth. But after a few Russian reverses the Chinaman became insolent Riding to Haichen, I found the Chinese most hospitable in the villages — hospitable at once. On my return with the retreating army it was only by explaining that I was an Englishman I could get a morsel of millet ; in fact the Chinese would open their doors to the French, Germans, or Americans, to any one except the Russians — and the Swiss and the Belgians, for whom, for some unexplained reason, they have a mysterious aversion.
The Russians began to say "What fools we are. We treated them far too well," But where the trouble lay was not in the question of treatment — consistent or inconsistent — but in the fact that the war was continuing, causing increased distress among the Chinamen, and the prestige of Russian arms was diminishing.