CONQUERORS IN JEHOL

Evening Star, Issue 21518, 16 September 1933, Page 2

CONQUERORS IN JEHOL

[By Peters Fleming, in the ‘Spectator.’] The aeroplane drops down through, a pass in the sharp, fantastic mountains, and the city is discovered, a teeming undecipherable pattern n grey. Temples stand ‘ outpost to it an the encircling hills. Walls run round them, climbing the steep slopes gracefully] they are like great coloured forts. • • You land in the river bed. The silver plane, an alien toy dwarfed by dark cliffs, glitters with a certain effrontery in the sudden silence. The two Japanese officers who were your fellow-pas-sengers are being greeted by a group of their colleagues; there is a great deal of bowing and clicking and smiling. Everyone begins to walk across the cracked mud towards the distant city; slowly, on account of the heat. Floods have swept away the bridge, and you must make the crossing in a cumbrous ferry. The Japanese officers in their top-boots are carried out to it on the backs of naked coolies. A very old Chinese peasant holds his umbrella over your head against the sun with infinite courtesy. From the huddled houses on the bank a powerful smell drifts out across the tumbling yellow, waters The peacock templ-s cannot be seen from here. Jehol, or Cheng-te, is the capital of the province which the Japanese army, captured last March, after a campaign unequalled in history for the dash with which it was carried out and the feebleness with which it was resisted. The city is still to all intents and purposes a garrison town. Military aeroplanes supply the mail service. Convoys of lorries crawl out from railhead with supplies. In the narrow, pitted streets khaki is as common as the coolie’s blue* The conquerors are not unwelcome.Japanese flags were displayed before the last Chines troops had left the town in flight. Tang-yu-lin, the corrupt and craven Governor of Jehol, oppressed his people vilely. Now the headquarters of the Bth Division of the Kuantung army (the Kuantung army are in effect the rulers of Manchukuo) are established in his walled .palace. A sanitary section has taken over the prorate morphine factory, in his park. On the miniature racecourse where Tang compelled his wives to ride the chargers of the staff are exercised at dawn. Japanese soldiers, sit on the carved bridges angling for small fish in the water lily pools, or go through their training with a terrible seriousness, skirmishing among the pagodas with bloodcurdling yells. From the shade of old trees spotted deer regard the newcomers with faintly puzzled tolerance. At the palace gate incoming coolies —members of a civilisation which has held the military profession in contempt • for manv hundreds of years—are obliged to salute the sentry on duty by taking off their hats. The spectacle has a certain irony. In the city itself, Japanese influence! begins to be apparent. Buildings are being demolished to widen the streets,? Tawdry cafes have sprung up to meet the requirements of a garrison town,(The first civilians to enter Jehol on! the heels of the army were twenty, lorry loads of Korean girls. Trade follows the flag.) There are shops in which the Japanese talent for mim'cry is reflected —not perhaps to_ the best advantage—in bottles alluringly labelled King George Scotch Whisky Buckingum Whisky, and Old Toe Gin. A 3 missionary who has lived Imthqse p- -ta for thirty years will tell you that he has only twice seen a Chinaman the worse for drink. To-day, in a quarter, of an hour’s walk-through the streets at dusk, you can see five times that number of intoxicated men, but not Chinese. The civilians find the Japanese soldiers who are billeted on them- a welcome change after Tang’s innumerably unpaid .ruffians. The Japanese fetch their own firing ? draw their own water* and provide their own rice; and if their, firmest friends are probably the children their hosts have very few complaints to make. Among the educated Chinese resentment burns fiercely, but of necessity in 'secret. Their native element is discontent, and now their bitterness has a racial edge., They are sickened by a parade of altruism where exploitation is the end in view, and their pride will not allow them to admit that the great mass of their people will have a share in Japan’s gains in Manchuria —a share which, although less than what is nominally theirs by right* is larger than they are capable of winning for themselVes. The aspirations- of the intellectuals are like the lama temples which stand round their city, beautiful, empty, and unregarded. They do not count any longer. The squat little sentries, the shining aeroplanes, the lorries panting up the passes—those are the things that count. ;