CIVILISING CHINA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 9299, 29 July 1901, Page 6

CIVILISING CHINA.

Russian Barbarities. The desolation and destruction that marks the occupation of China by the allies, the petty pelt, the brutal massacres, that should make Christian civilised Europe blush with shame, are vividly depicted by the special correspondent of The Times, in an article entitled " Pekin Revisited." The region traveled by the railway between the mouth oFthe Peiho and Pekin presents a scene of desolation far wor-e than any presented by the devastated country in the FrancoPrussian war or in the Russian campaign in the Balkans. At the mouth of the river the wreck of the Bolidar recalls the first of many instances of Russia's wanton brutality. The Bolidar was a lighter in which 300 unarmed cooiies, seared by the bombardment from their homes, were crossing the river to return to their peaceful avocations. From the fort they occupied the Russians turned a heavy gun on to the Hβ hter, sank it, and then as the unfortunate Chinamen struggled in the water subjected them to a murderous fusillade from the adjoining rampart. No one is believed to have escaped. It was a brutal deed and a stupid deed. These were some of the coolies employed for years by foreign shipping companies loading and unloading vessels in the river, and their labor would have been invaluable to the expeditionary forces then on their way north.

This was no isolated incident. Here is another typical of Russian methods. " A few days after the occupation of Pekin a Chinese woman with two small children, one a baby in arms, was crossing the Beggars' Bridge, when a party of Russian soldiers came along. The woman was not quick enough apparently in getting out of the way, so they prodded the mother and the baby with their bayonets, and threw them over the parapet ot the bridge into the canal bfilow, and as the other child, a boy of about five or six, lay screaming on the ground one of the Russians seized him by the heels, dashed his brains out on the marble flags, and then flung the body headlong after the others. When such things have happened in Ci'i-li, under the eyes, as it were, of the other allied Powers, one can hardly affect to hope i hat there has been much exaggeration in the ghastly etory of Blagovestehensk, and otherepisudes of the" Russian campaign in Manchuria." From the worst horrors the writer turns to the excessive wanton destruction and pillage which has laid waste the fertile agricultural country from the mouth of the Peiho to Tientsin, and from Tientsin half way to Pekin. "In normal times it would at thisseaEon have been covered with winter crops ready to burst forth into fruic at the first approach of spring. To-day it is a wilderness. Not a furrow breaks the monotony of the drab-colored waste. The once busy roads over which long strings of heavy Chinese carts and beasts ot burden ploughed their way unceasingly from market to market, are deserted, the once crowded villages' are empty. The whole population seems to have disappeared save the coolies i actually impressed into the service of the allied forces." The writer goes on to show how the restoration of the railway to British control is helping to restore confidence, and then passes on to Pekin, where as you alight from the railway carriage opposite the Temple of Heaven, you see that a contractor has boaided up the central archway cf the adjoining gate into the great sacred park, and turned it into a coffee and liqueur stall. The " black patches of ruin" in Pekin are forcibly described, and then the wholesale pillage and official looting, the petty vandalism, the petty pelf and piecemeal destructon is scathingly condemned. ,; Much as the Russians have carried off, thdy have left behind them in one of the rooms of the Emperor a piece of silver plate, which should have been of peculiar interest to them. It represents '• Russia the Liberator restoring freedom to the Bulgarian people." It was originally made by order of the Tsar Alexander 111. for presentation to the Sobranye of Sofia, but before its completion Prince Alexander of Battenburg had lost favor in the eyes of his Imperial kinsman, and the gift was never forwarded to its contemplated destination. But in 1897 an.opportunity was at last found of putting it to a new use, when Prinoe Ukhtomsky was sent out with presents from the Czar to the Son of Heaven. The d&te and inscription were filtered, and although many of ihe Bultfarian accessories still betrayed its identity, it was p»psed on to the Emperor of Chii.A as a symbolical representation of Russia the Liberator restoring to him the If the Emperor Kvf ang Hsu has any seuse of humor, he must have app'cciated' the grimness of the joke vvhoi Kus-sia the Liberator relieved him a few n» nths later of all fui ther anxiety aboufe the future destinies of Leao-tong "

The squalor of Pekin has been brought to the surface Dy recent, events. The Germans govern with a heavy hand, and the inhabitants make a brave spread of bunting, but in the British quarter where the Chinese appear tv be relatively friendly and contented, not a Bingle Union Jack is to be seen. Bud though the people are temporarily cowed, " the old spirit still lurks beneath th<j surface, a doi late especially the belief has been reported i o bs rife amongst the populace that the heroes of the Boxer movement, are not dead but only asleep, and will wake up aaain to smite the foreigners as soon as thq sap arises in the trees." It v* satisfactory to learn that in the worst excesse-i neither the British nor the Anglo-Indian soldier nor our American cousins had any hand. A comparison of Anglo-iVaxotr methods with those of other Euiopean nations in China should show the latter why the AngloSaxon race can co'onise successfully where other nations fail.