LANTERN-LIGHT EXECUTION.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3378, 13 June 1927, Page 8

LANTERN-LIGHT EXECUTION.

Slock and prosperous, smiling at the recollection of honours heaped upon him at the capital city of Mukden, and happy to he back in his home city where he owned a luxurious mansion, where he was a heavy investor in real estate and a theatre magnate, _ and where his Russian wife was awaiting him, General Yang-cho, the Chinese vice-pio-sident of the Chinese Pastern Railway, alighted from his special car at Harbin. Next morning his body lay in a rude coffin set oqt on the bleak plain at the edge of the city used as a garbage dump. Tbe wealth that was his is confiscated to the coffers of Chang Tso-hn. His titles, rank, and positions were stripped away, and he died before a firing squad a convicted traitor.

Information had reached Chang J soldi that tbe man he had trusted and placed in high office in Harbin was plotting a revolution, had received a large sum of money to carry out Ins plan from Moscow and bad ben axed China to Russia in matters connected with the Chinese Eastern Railway. The suspected general was accordingly invited to Mukden to confer with Chang Tso-lin, who entertained him and generally kept him busy long enough for the Harbin Chinese military authorities to seize his xvife, search his house and secure documentary and other proof.

lie was arrested as he was stopping into his healed limousine and hurried to military headquarters, where a special court martial, sent secretly from Mukden by Chang TsoJin, was sitting on his case. He was confronted with the documentary evidence, broke down, and confessed.

Sentence to death xvas passed upon him, confirmed by telegraph by Chang Tso-lin, and carried out. The firing squad consisted of a single soldier, who put a bullet into the general’s head at close quarters, shooting by the light of a lantern field close to the condemned man’s face by another soldier.

Yang-cho was known to every foreigner in North Manchuria. He was well educated, spoke English and Russian perfectly, and entertained extensively in Ids beautiful borne. Recently he bought a controlling interest in Harbin’s three largest moving picture theatres and had announced his intention of starting a string of such theatres.