BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE WAR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8351, 24 June 1905, Page 2

BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE WAR.

(By F. A. M'KENZEB, in the "Daily} Mail.") ■ : • -™. "He showed no "sign of emotion.*^ said an enthusJaefcio friend when ae^ scribing to me the farewell of a famous, officer from the Shimbasi Station, Tokio. "His wife knew that be was; going to almost certain death, yet she. and her children too^ bade farewell openly and bravely without a sign vz grief." . ' ' " Why did death seem so oertein?'\ I asked. "Soldiers come back front the war." ' "Yes, >J my friend replied, "but he was going to organise the Hung-hutxe^ behind Harbin, and while he may d©< stroy the Russian railways, he oan[ scarcely hope to save late own life* 1 If the Russians catch him they will, hang hjm without delay." I For more than, a year past the name! of the Hung-hutze— Chung Chutie. tie he is often called— the' Bed-beard, OM been familiar to English readers. He is popularly spoken of in England, as a brigand. He is sometimes that, butl he is very much more. He is the mam in revolt against the powers that be. The successful Hung-hutze of to-daj| may be, if he plays his cards well, the! highly-honoured Chinese general of to* morrow. The organisation of the Hung-hutad bands is elaborate and far-reaching, and yet at the same time worked inde*. pandently from different localities. Primarily, the Red-beard leagues were a combination of village leagues or organisations, for self -protection anoag* gression. Out of this has grown the present network of secret societies. A COTCfTETT OB 1 OUTLAWS. Manchuria, it is well to remember, has never been, save in the limited territories immediately under Russian control, a land where life and property are over-secure. Each district has to organise as best it can, and it has few, means of defence save what it creates for itself. In hundreds of little villages you will find a great, strong, roomy? keep, with high castellated walls run-* ning twenty feet or more from the ground, with gigantic, iron-shod doors,' .with gun embrasures, and with out-j standing turrets commanding the re-, mainder of the walls. These seepe are prepared for deliberate sieges. Food., is kept in them, and there is abundi ant room for the storage of the pro-( perty of the people around. Neatf, the tops of the walls parapets axe built, along which bowmen and rifle-j men can stand in safety and fire down: on any attacking force. | Places such, as these have not beeaf. built for amusement. In a land where, winters are very severe, and wherej crime meets with hideous punishment when punished at all, there axe many, temptations for a poor man to become; a permanent outlaw. In a bad winter^ I a usually honest peasant is driven i/Oi. \ steal. He yields, and knowing tlhub discovery may mean a life-time in at wretched torture prison, he flees to that hills and becomes a robber by wo^j fession. Joining others of his Hnd^ I he settles in one of the large waste tracts in the northern mountains, and establishes a permanent nomad oom«j munity. He and his allies marry; they | have their own system of government, and they strengthen their position and increase their means by occasional raids lon distant villages. The villagers, who. are organised to resist them, hare a succession of bad seasons. They, too, are tempted and use their d*f«no6f organisation to plunder their neigttW bours. i DABINO BAXDS. The bands are incredibly bold. "When" I was last in Liapyang, although the, city waslield by Japanese guards, rob* bers came down night after night from the hills and penetrated the _ Chinese quarter, exchanging -shots with the soldiers. A band of horsemen will pick ! its "time and ride into a large city and raid it as boldly as a gang of desperadoes I will hold up a Western mining town. ( 1 Your Chinanfan is eminently practical. If the robbers enter and surprise a large town, as they often do, the au-s thorities submit, pay their' ransom, and are immune for a time. Villages — weak* er, and> therefore, more subject to plundering—have had to erect their keep* to protect them. If a robber band is very troublesome the Government sends out 6oldiers against it. If it fights and overoomes the soldiers once or twice the authorities begin to think that the services of such t>rave men are worth securing, and probably offer the leader a generalship in the army of the Governor of the province. The Chinese business men found the Hung-hutze interfered with trade, making transport unsafe. . To obviate this, the robbers very kindly placed trustworthy agents in several of the big towns. If you are at Newchwang and desire to despatch a stock of valuable goods inland, your Chinese" numv ber ono boy" go^3 to the Hung-hutze representative there, and either nires one or two or more men as a guard, or arranges to pay a certain allowance for safety, a form of "burglary insurance." Once this is done the goods are as safe as though travelling through England, for any outsider who dared to lay hands on them would have quick vengeance wrought on him by the robbers themselves. Without question many of th< robber bands are linked together, al< though how cannot be told. . One chief boasts that he can bring 20,000 men intq th^ field whenever he wants to. Probably

lie is a lying boaster, but bis strength is certainly considerable. - the ex;ng-hi;tze brigade. The Japanese, always ready to take Advantage of any means of strengthening their hands, early realised that the Hung-hutze might become valuable allies in the campaign against Russia. Accordingly, three or four years before the war broke out, a number of Japanese ilon-commissioned officers and others were informally sent into Northern Manchuria. Their business was to settle there, to ' earn the language, to become acquainted with tho people, and to make friends. They were followed 'by still higher officers, and I have been told, although naturally it is a subject on which exact details are impossible to obtain, that a well-known Japanese majorgeneral proceeded to take chief command. The work of the Hung-hutzes under Japanese control was simply to break up the railway and prevent supplies coming through from Europe to the Russian forces at the front. Their doings have been a mystery. "We all know that their presence has compelled the Russians to maintain substantial guards far along the railway line. . How often their raids have l>een a success, and how •often a failure, none can say. At best, fche raiders can do little more than inflict temporary and easily repaired injury on the Siberian road, unless they place a fiarticularly happy charge of explosives on a favoured spot on bridge or culvert. A train wrecked, a few sentries murdered, the railway guard stormed, are j»lmost the most that can be expected. # . Thus the Hung-hutze has not been diYectly the powerful factor that some anticipated. Indirectly, however, he has accomplished one great result. He has forced the Russians to treat a thousand miles of their line of rear communications as though running through an enemy's country, and he has diverted the energies of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers who might otherwise have 'been fighting with tho Japanese. The Russians, not slow to learn from their foe, have now in turn their agents among these robber bands, and are themselves enlisting the aid of some of them. .