WHERE INVADER RULES

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 May 1937, Page 6

WHERE INVADER RULES

JAPANESE IN JEHOL. “Less than a year ago it was quite an adventure to visit Jehol. To-day it is a matter of buying a railway ticket (writes Harrison Brown in. the “Daily Telegraph”). “The train leaves Milk'd en at midnight, the sleeping cars are good, more comfortable than the European type and much cheaper. The same goes for the restaurant service. The 400-mile journey from Mukden to Jehol cost me 24/-, which included sleeping berth, clean kimono and slippers, green tea served every few hours, hot damp towels, in fact everything as served with second-class accommodation in Japan proper. “There are many soldiers travelling, chiefly soldiers in fact. Japanese soldiers or Japanese mercenaries. One begins to notice things. The first thing that strikes one is the parade of force. Each station is a small fort. The coalyard and stores- are inside high barbed-wire entanglements. The station ' buildings themselves are solid structures of brick, or st-One and cement. There are armed guards on every station ‘platform.

ORDEAL FOR A CHINESE. “At another station a Chinese was being roughly searched by a Japanese N.C.O. and some soldieris. He was pushed and pulled about as they went through his pockets. A dig in the stomach made him collapse on the ground.' with comical suddenness. His shoes were jerked off and shaken, making him fall backwards. There was nothing in the shoes and they were thown aside. The man wriggled away to retrieve them, pulled them on and struggled to. his feet. With little respectful bobs and smiles the fellow asked if he could now go. He was given a contemptuous slap across the face and told to go. Still smiling, he hurried towards a train. “It was the only ‘incident’ I saw, and, though typical enough of the respective attitudes of the two great nations, need not be exaggerated; there are brutal N.C.O.’s everywhere.

“Certainly the Japanese are not beloved in Jehol, indeed they appear to have a genius for making themselves disliked wherever they set their , feet So much is this true that one hears it used by foreigners as one argument against the likelihood of a ‘real outbreak of war’ in Suiyuan. The theory is that if Japan starts trouble so far from her base, she will soon require very large garrisons to keep the rest of Manchuria quiet, and perhaps even Korea.

“In my opinion, however, this is not an argument which is likely to weigh with the Kwantung army, who invariably act first and count the cost afterwards, finally leaving the bill to be settled by the nation at home. But Jehol is not badly run, and the Governor is, by repute, much better than most of his confreres among Japanese army administrators. “At one of the- larger stations the authorities seemed prepared to repulse an attack. On each side of the train six or eight soldiers stood with their backs to us, loaded' rifles held at the ‘ready’ and pointed at the countryside. I saw nothing to warrant such a display. A mud-walled village lay in a hollow some 500 yards away; between it and • the station a small group of Chinese watched us. They did not look dangerous.

“AIT day the train rolled on, slowly but smodth'ly, as’ though feeling its way. Covering every bridge and both ends of all tunnels are new cement pill-boxes, unoccupied, however. The chief intermediary station on this new strategical line is Pingchuan which was the railhead until a few months ago. Until then the only road on to Jehol was a mountainous donkey track requiring several days’ journey and quite impracticable for military purposes. Pingchuan is an untidy village in a valley, consisting of one street which stretches two miles.

“Beyond Pingchuan the mountains crowd in and become even more grotesque in shape. In this most difficult section of the line the railway must often squeeze through the canyon perched on a cliff above the river. Just before reaching Cheng Te, or Jehol City as the foreigners call it, the valley broadens out and the line ends, at present a mile from the town.

The Japanese have tried, and not unsuccessfully, to'make Jehol station fit its surroundings architecturally. They have also installed there a semiEuropean hotel, with a Japanese bath and good catering arrangements. They say they are going to spend money repairing the damage wreaked on the famous temples by their predecessors, the bandits. They say that Jehol is now on the world tourists’ map.

NO PARADISE FOR TOURISTS. “This last I find doubtful. Despite tho dilapidated marvels of Chien Lung’s temples neither the present atmosphere nor the future prospects seem to me likely to induce the shipping companies to send their valuable customers for world cruises uji to Jehol. It sounds to me as optimistic as last year’s statement by the Kwantung army, regarding the clearing up of the bandit situation in Manchuria generally. It was ‘all over’ last, year, the bandits were ‘cleaned up.’ This year they have been more active than ever.

“The word ‘bandit’ in the Far East is a term covering all who are unpopular. Real bandits there are also in plenty, but all who are called So are not highway robbers. In Manchuria many* of the ‘bandits’ are patriots fighting the Japanese, and it is they who appear to provide the headwork and organisation. The rest are made up of dispossessed peasants, discontented Koreans, remnants of Chang Hseuh-liang’s former army and deserters from the Japaneseformed ‘Manchukuoan’ army. The troops of the puppet Emperor Pu Yi are not very reliable!

But in Jghol Province, at least there are no bandits, in the Japanese sense ol the term. It is,‘on the other hand, the recruiting ground and dispatch centre for those 'irregulars’ now massing for attack on Inner Mongolia. To the Chinese, however, and even, it would seem by a recent statement, to the Japanese Ambassador in Nanking these mercenaries are all ‘bandits’ in the purest sense of the term.

“Jehol is a strategic centre for the Japanese. It is important alike in her schemes for further invasion of North China and for her dreamed-of attack upon Russia through Outer Mongolia. Japan would like to push the railway much farther. If there is time she will do so. Meantime troops and stores go up through Jehol to Dolon Nor in Chahar Province. Dolon Nor is. at the head of n pass, the eastern

gateway to the Inner Mongolian plateau. “From Jehol, also, Pekin can be reached in a few hours by road. The Japanese have established a daily bus line between the two cities. As far as Ku Pei K’ou, on the Great Wall, the road is in good order and the bridges maintained. Beyond that point passengers change buses, a Chinese driver takes over, and the ‘road’ runs mostly in river-beds. But the whole thing is operated, and at a loss-, because few Chinese will ride on it, by the South Manchurian Railway, the arm through which Japan exploits her new colony.

“Japan, however, already has some 20,000 soldiers in the neighbourhood of Pekin. It is for Mongolia that Jehol is important. Japan, it would seem, has by no means abandoned her dream of an ’independent Mongolia.’ It costs money, however, to keep on buying Princes, and Japan is hampered ' for money. So she presses on with the idea of stretching a cordon of outposts south of the Gobi Desert, across Chahar and Northern Suiyan to Ningsia.

“Thus China would be shut off from Outer Mongolia and one step further taken toward the encirclement ol Russian Asiatic territory by the Japanese. That may sound rathei like a gnat ‘surrounding a camel,’ but the idea is that of the Kwantung army, and the Kwantung army is famous for its ideas. In any case, I doubt if Jehol will be much visited by tourists next year!”