Impressions of a War Correspondent

by George Lynch

From what I have seen in South Africa and China, I feel and know it—luminously know it in the marrow of my intelligence—that for that South African job, if it were to be done over again, I would select the British; that they have done, not alone as well, but better than any other nation would have done. Many things might have been done better. But apart from the question of transport, when I saw the others there were everywhere signs of their probable failures being infinitely more numerous.

There are only two armies that, granted the possibility of their being landed in South Africa, could have conceivably tackled the job. These are the Japanese and the Germans. The Japs would probably have failed from their want of efficient mounted infantry or cavalry; the beer-blown Germans would have been worn down by men of better physical training. The war-knowledgeable brain, looking out through spectacled eyes, would droop tired in its physical limber until it was brought on a level with the less scientific but more practical weapon of the polo-playing, cricketing, footballing British officer.

The Chinese had reached that ideal which we, at the end of the past century, were making an initial attempt to attain to in the calling together of the Hague Conference. For they had reached the stage of advanced development where the pen is really mightier than the sword—where the highest class in the community is that of the scholar, the next that of the man who tills the soil, and the last that of the man whose occupation it is to kill his fellow-man. Thus the Orientals were naturally at the mercy of the Western countries, the largest expenditure of whose revenue is absorbed by the cost of killing-machines and men to work them.

The Chinese have a saying that, as the best iron is not made into nails, so the best men are not made into soldiers. With our Western civilisation, the best men and steel and soldiers found them an easy victim. There are no people in the world who have a higher regard for abstract justice and right than the Chinese. It is admitted by every man who has had large commercial dealings with them that there are no people who have a greater regard for straightforward, honest dealing. In our dealings with them, as regards this campaign, right and justice in every case have given place to might.

When the German officer I have referred to above pointed towards the fields of millet which he wished to have burned, I was strikingly reminded of a certain mysterious picture which some years ago had been inspired or drawn by his Emperor and Kaiser. It had been called by some "The Yellow Peril," and depicts the figure of Germania, surrounded by the nations of Europe, standing on a pinnacle, and pointing to a broad plain below traversed by a river, and from the plain volumes of smoke rose skywards. No one seemed to know quite definitely what the actual meaning of the picture was. But since this latest crusade towards Pekin, the real meaning of it is suggested. In this campaign of revenge, with the Germans as the leading performers in it, animated and inspired by the speeches of their Emperor, the picture, now illustrative of recent history, might bear a more actual meaning.

"And Cæsar's spirit raging for revenge,
With Até by his side, come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice,
Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial."

IX

THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA

It was the garden of the Mission of Peitang. Not a blade of grass was showing above the ground. The roots of the grass itself had been torn up, eaten by the last few starving animals within the besieged compound before they had been killed, and the trees were absolutely stripped of their bark as high as the beasts could reach. At one side of the garden a great open crater, fringed with the ruins of buildings, showed where a mine had exploded. The cross on the Cathedral hard by was broken, and its Gothic architecture additionally fretted by the scoring marks of shot and shell. But I think nothing told more forcibly the tale of the ordeal through which the garrison had passed than did these gnawed, naked tree-trunks.

I was shown round the day after its relief by one of the Sisters, which, by the way, was effected by the Japanese, but not until the third day after the Legations had been relieved, although it was only twenty minutes' ride distant from them. The Mother Superior, seventy-four years of age, who had spent thirty-eight years of her life in Chinese mission work, lay dying—a daughter of Count Barais, of Château Barais, near Bordeaux. She had belonged to the Order of Sisters of Charity since her eighteenth year. Three mines had exploded within the Mission enclosure, and walls and roofs were riddled and lay tossed about in grotesque confusion. I went into the Cathedral church, which they were using as a hospital.