LIFE AT LIAO-YANG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 12661, 15 September 1904, Page 6

LIFE AT LIAO-YANG.

Liao-tang, and at delightful, almost ir credible discovery-visible, uiuni ßt(l l £a j. 1 „ ' ' signs of war! The station is full of trains and bustfe j • soldiers and baggage, It has only on * e J* 1 * . > form but many sets of rails, and on {,*, sides the fall stream of the traffic has o- '-• flowed its banks, and trickled out upon *ih~ 't* plain in fadings. At the single long p ] a * I form a long Red Cross train halts on it wa i north. " "^ 'A long, long train of neat hospital w |1 govs filled with wounded. Calm-faced Uursf pass by the communication gangways 'ro S carriage to carriage, and young dosto* 15 ** grave arid earnest of manner, are seen ;' I' consultation. Out upon the 'platform *» ■■ cluster of soldiers from one of the tt«; 1 halted on its way to the fighting t,/ i* peering over one another's shoulder,'; Vhl I an air of intense personal interest at 'i ut « I group of wounded officers who are bo; * fi photographed. 'f . i War! And yet, for all its wounds "it I tram of victims hardly strikes the note r I well-ordered look, its sun-blinds and filt ** 1 the even linos and regular interval* S If which m each waggon ward the two ««•«-* I stretcher beds are set, the white pillow?. 0 !■ * the folded linen, the gray neatness of W I nurses with their Red Cross brassard* .5 1 their quiet, kind eyes, the cool comfort of tk 1 striped cotton hospital clothes in the bla * 1 sunshine, the smooth set of the well-laid 1, 8 $ .dages—all this suggests not the horrid fef" I banty of war, but the luxury and refiuem I ' of a. Highly-organised society. With the am " I blazing down upon the cheerfully.™,,,;,*" 1 i voyagers, lam reminded—though suVhi« ? § foreign enough to the idea—of theZSl I trainloads of gaily expectant people S I down to Ascot. B " U! 8 | But there is no Cup Day air about *i I teams standing on the other rails wait!* 8 1 their turns to go south. The open S 8 laden with guns, the big horse-waggons *t f - trucks of ammunition carts, the truck* *lt '& with pontoons and other engineering £$ 1 anoes, the heavily-laden cars of all Lft & stores, but, above all, the cars and car, an C ' V covered box-cars— oar«o«? . the square-jawed, short-nosed, sturdr S? "' benan soldiers—these tell of war On ♦?" further side of the lines there is, *a™» 4 I booths hke a fair where the Chinaman t '- making hw speedy fortune by selling all sort! ifi of rubbishy food and other wares to «£ 1 passing soldiers. S »■«». ;, .Outside the railway station, away to tt, '• right, a distant mountain marks the Win •' rung of the series of hills which li7\J£E?~ t - Wyang and the fighting to ■&. St? I On the west no mountains, but a fltt,2 I plain every visible square inch of it CU W 1 rated- lik. a nursery garden, 8 lw& ' I «fK>othly aw» to the horiion, beyond tfl ' the broad Liao stretches its impassable lZ I ner. To the northward, again I -only the long Liao valley through whieW I low embankment, like a single upturned * I ' row hold up the railway line aboye t£ ' mud,., and th» floods, of the '■ rainy season. Little culverts ianuiSK • intersect it and here and there coaaSbu fete* "k e ™7 at «ooura* and rivers com! ing j;rom the hills to the eastward make the£ way across the valley to the LiacT T* " wttoreourses are dry now, but the stones 3 boulders baa* strew the dee channel, ,£J the force with which the waters rush daws I from the mountain sides. Ts Liao-yang is ani ancient Manchurian city with » Russian official ■ suburb of gray fiS fc detached houses, built in a sort of {,£$ square by the railway station. Into opt . comer of the square a couple of railway Jd ' uim run, housing two well-appointed trains —the residence conveyances of GeneS I? Kuropatkm and the Grand Duke Boris I 1,.- .* ° he i arger houses in fc n» square '' has a couple of sentry-boxes and a Koirdld '- walk in front. This i 3 the Grand Dufe I house. The sentries bring their riflL tort,! t salute, th.re is a dank of\purred bott ,Z "* a man in general's uniform 'wi §■ a bearded, resolute face """""a. witt £, i War! I feel that I can no longer com '' Plain of the remoteness of war when I Z W took round and see the figure of Gone«' ' Kuropatkin himself-the very personuS , | Between the official suburb and the mo / ?ns undw th *> h o 1 " city is the Liao-yang pagoda, an elongated I dome of stone, with the upper half • • . - i serrated It was,erected as a mem 3ei 1 | the expulsion of the, Ooreans ftom'M 1 ; chuna; a trifle the worse for wear by now I as it well may be, when two other nation ? r are struggling for the oounlry, and the co™-'! querors ol the Coreans are doing tire cooli* I work for them both. The city, foamfcuriK ), ancient capital, is full of life and deeav- « the kind of teaming life that is th.> product I of decay. - The citv wallit marks an ir- : ' regular square about a mile each way-is * the only feature that tvssgesta solidity and I u- 'ilc OI J h side * ? ate > through whioh the road makes painful zigzags, gives or rather obstructs, entrance and exit. The practical Russians, who have much transport work to do in and through the city, iiavt, found these gates rather insufficient for their f: ' ne*ds, bo_ they have simplified the problem by knocking great breaohes in the wall at ! convenient points, with; the result that th* I Piaoe has a sort of suggsstion of an old London theatre that is trying to arranw its exits according to the requirements ol! ! ' the County Council. , ,„- $ Narrow streets, squalid booths and hovek I unspeakable filth and stench and dust, teem- • mg life all flooded in sunshine—that isLiao- - yang, Tlie Chinese seem to be hatched iik« 1 , flies by the sunshine out of the decav of their country. Through the long central ■ street a supply train is making its slow and e painful way, the heavy wheels of the lum- '■ bering Chinese oarts cutting deep into, th« crumbling earth. Soldiers everywhere; through every compound gateway the sight of soldiers billeted; at evsrv booth front and before every street vendor's stall & group of the thick-set. big-boned, hoayy-jawsd, • good-humoured Siberian -soldiers. The social centre of Liao-yang in the daytime is \the big buffet diningroom down at ; ; the railway station. This 13 the club and ?! the news exchange, i Here old friends raissi ', after many years. Brought from far-dis-tant parts of the Empire by the ccca«ion of the war—from the Caucasus, from Finland, from lonely Siberian towns?—men who have not seen each other since they fought fiEfo' f l | by, side in the Turkish war now meet again • as veterans, throw great arms round oas - r another's burly figures, and cover one an- f other's bearded faces with the kisses of Robsian comradeship. »- Here they exchange their news and viewt j about the war. They know surprisingly little about the course of events, but thfty' j make up for the scantiness of their news by { th© confidijnoe of their opinions. A busf i place day and night here, for every train \ that passes on its way south fills if; anew, : | and night and day trains are always in the I stations. . ' | At night there is another- gathering pUtts 'i ;— the walled enclosure around the ftgoda, which an enterprising Greek has con* J verted into a sort of beer garden. Here * I band plays sometimes, and officers meet -it 1 the little tables, .and such ladies a - * the: population includes chat gaily with their | friends. . ... j But across the waggon-crowded space, | where the pyramids of stores are piled. I comes a sudden burst of timed milifciff cheering. It comes from the barrack squ&n* of official houses; too. What can it nwin? Some momentous _ announcement— -per'bir'S the news of a decisive Japanese defeat. The band stops; the officers spring ft* j their feet. The cheering breaks:out again j in well-ordered military regularity. The"the deep hoot of a railway engine's whisfit» and then a confused roar of individual spDS- . taneous cheering, in whioh the occupants of ■ the garden join. What does it all mean? I ask. , "Our friends the. Japanese will soon -few |s|v out," an officer tolls me in French; "if! •' Kuropatkin himself who goes down there toth» front." *• ■ To the front! I have to make toy W further still, it seems.—Charles E. Hand' In the Daily Mail of August 2. ' r \