BRIGANDS' PARADISE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 114, 18 May 1925, Page 3

BRIGANDS' PARADISE

CHINESE WAR HORRORS CHRISTIANS SPARED FIENDISH CRUELTIES INDULGED IN. What war means to the Chinese in the provinces is something beyond belief. Cold-blooded politics, national hatred revenge, and such motives were responsible for horrible atrocities in the European war, but there is no comparison between the circumstances of that struggle and tho chaotic conditions in China, writes the Pekin correspondent in a dispatch to "The" Times. I Chinese brigands and troops when they break loose on a countryside are not compelled by passion, or politics to deal evilly with their fellows. They have no motive but loot, and in pursuit of it they display a fiendish cruelty and a destructive wantonness worthy of savages of the lowest degree. ■ The following account of doings in Honan, from the pen of a missionary correspondent, appeared in the "Central China Post," a reputable foreign paper published in Hankow, and there is no' reason to suppose that the writer has indulged m exaggeration, ■ for similar things have been common in China in recent years.: As wo know, Hu Chun"yi has been appointed Military Governor of Honan—Tuchun having become a discredited title, the woTd used in these days is Tuli or Tntung or Tupan—and on swarming into the province with his soldiers found himself confronted by another personage named Han Yu-knn, a military commander suddenly arisen during the troubled time • following the defeat of Wu Pei-fu. Each of these two men has an army of nearly 50,000 men and they are disputing control of the province, it being no restraint on Han JTu-kun that his adversary' is the nomine© of the Government. The Governor and the would-be Governnor bein°- engaged on a campaign for supremacy, the territory at stake has become a paradise for brigands. WITH FIRE AND SWORD. _ A large band of these'gentry marched into the city of Juchow, 50 miles west of the Pekin-Hankow Railway and a similar distance south of Loyan"- They StoJ° d-jii 9 ', dayS robbi n5-'^wealthy and middle-class people, and when they left they shared some of the loot with the poor of the city They next move,d 20 miles east to Kiahsien, which resisted vigorously, but the usual thing happened and. the attackers, assisted .by traitors withm, scaled the city walls at night and obtained full possession. They signalised their entry by butchering hundreds of the inhabitants. In one well were found corpses of 42 men, women, and children who m terror of the invaders had drown- - ed themselves The brigands spent a month iii Kiahsien, and a few. days after .they left the writer visited the place and his own words tell the tale -—"It is impossible to describe Uie desolation, the wanton destruction, the/devilish brutality exhibited everywhere. The city is just an empty shell of drab mud and brick nouses, many of these ruined beyond rePair. Everything of any value was'taken and what they could not take they destroyed. Furniture, doors, and windows they used in liea of fuel to keep them--1 selves warmed arid fed." Mission (Lutheran) property suffered severely, and after spending a day smash ing_ an iron safe, the brigands were so furious to find it empty of anything of value that they set fire to the house btrangely enough, the missionaries and their converts were protected, testimony that the prestige of the foreigner is not entirely destroyed, even in this lawless region. . "^ .'"jo?* .remarkable and the outstanding f ac t m this dreary story of murder and rape and wanton destruction is the way the Christians, have .been spared S"" 11*"!* and, *««>, while their tieathen neighbours have experienced the tortures of helL During all these weeks of robber outrages on a large section of our field, there is no record of'a single Christian being killed., or seriously in? jured. This is most rema-rkAMe »ffd . clear testimony to the power of prayer of God SIOD and ihe G^ce "When the brigands captured KiahS .en one of the robber chiefs made his headquarters at the mission station. He ordered all the. Christians to be assembled at the mission station and to be kept there, and he would see to it that no harm would befall them. About 500 persons, men women, and children, who •all claimed they were Christians, while formerly many of them had scorned that name, now sought this place of refuge. •This was the only place in the city where there was any order, where murder, rape and pillage were-hot the rule of the day Meanwhile, conditions were becoming nnbearable^even: in this place of refuge! Think of hundreds of persons crowded into a chapel and a couple of schoolrooms, shut in day after day! Two babies were born and three persons died durinjr this time. Binally, the'evangelists and the school teachers prevailed ■• upon the robber chief to permit the majority of the Chilians to get away. The robber chief himself, with a bodyguard, escorted them out of the city, lhis to me appears as much of a miracle as Peter escaping out of the prison as^ related in ,Acts XII. "The brigands have now all been taken into Han Yu-kun's army, according to reports. His regular soldiers .ire now patrolling the city of Kiahsien. and are acting fairly decently. Th e people are gradually emerginjj out of their hidingplaces, and returning-to their homes. But when they find nothing but their empty houses, and these often ruined, a feeling of hopelesness settles over them, and they just sit down and cry Truly their plight is pitiable. "The robbers, when they left, carried with them a number of the leading gentry as hostages. In. a number of cases, when they found the living members of leading families had escaped, they dug up the graves of their dead, and carried off the remains, knowing full well t^at the relatives would rather redeem the dead than the living. Unspeakable instances of torture are given. One of the leading gentry received a letter with his son's ear enclosed, threatening .if. money was not forthcoming the other ear would follow. In another wealthy' scion's home they found only the aged grandmother. They firsi lashed her black and blue, and. then they poured hot water into her ears till she died Others had oil poured on their clothes oncl were then set on fire. Still others were branded with hot irons;" A DEATH TRAP. The brigands next made for Yuchow i>nly 15 miles from the railway Thi» city was strongly held by troops, who demanded a large payment from the Chamber of Commerce!as the price for protection. When/this was refused the soldiers mutinied, burned a large section of the city, and looted nearly all the shops and houses. A missionary and his wife escaped over the-wall. "The Red Spear Society and the cityi militia gave determined resistance to the soldiers. The struggle raged wildly for three days till tho soldiers were reinforced ■by a battalion from Hsnchow, when the soldiers just slaughtered the Red Spears and the militia, who bad no way of escape from tho death trap of s. walled-in city. The latest report

to hand is that ov«r 7,C00 were killed. Iho mission station was not touched. 1' lnis is the sort of thing-that has happened recently, not only at the places pecified, but -at many other cities, towns, and villages in East and West tionan. alley are characteristic of civil war in tho provinces, where foreign inUuence X not widely established. Tfc would be unfair to generalise about the conduct of Chinese troops, for they can 6e very well-behaved when the circum-fwCou-aw favou«ible, but knowing wiat Chinese armies are recruited from tne same class "a*: the brigands, and usually contain a large proportion of temporarily reformed brigands, it is not surprising' that (he troops of the bestdisciplined armies are never really to ba trusted. - • ■ '■-.'.'