THE BATTLEFIELD
Many men with but one heart;
Many lives to sell as one.
Foes and Nature interlock;
Sands arise; hills join the shock.
Rivers, death fills like a flood;
Red, Wei’s Great Wall too with blood.
Slaves ye shall be if ye yield;
Dead men if ye fight the field!
Fled no warrior; name on name,
Ghosts approach me, starred with fame.
With such Spartan poetry the early Chinese were able to fire the race with militarism. The ideograph is virile and laconic in the highest degree, just as the Anglo-Saxon of “Beowulf” is more condensed than our later Latinized speech.
Confucius believed in revenge upon a murderous enemy of one’s family. He replied to a question of a pupil on this matter: “Have only your weapons for a pillow.”
Two of the promising colonels in the southern republican army are graduates (1909 class) of the American West Point Academy. They were admitted on the personal recommendations of President Roosevelt. One is Colonel Wen Ying Hsing, a nephew of Wen Tsung Yao, who is assistant minister of foreign affairs of the Nanking Republican Assembly. Colonel Wen has seen hard service as military adviser of the Canton Provincial Assembly. The other “West Pointer” is Colonel Chen Ting, brother of Doctor Chen Shin Tao, minister of finance of the Nanking Republican Assembly.
On one of my rambles through the narrow streets of Canton I dropped into an artist’s shop on Yuck Tsze Street and selected some treasured, delightful opal-colored paintings, full of spirit, of the old picturesque three-masted Manchu war-junks which in the early days one saw sometimes beating into the reaches and broads of the flooded waters of Kwangtung province. The yellow shields, emblazoned with ideographs, hang over the midship bulwarks of the ship. The latticed red rudder is high above the water so that it may drag the unwieldy keelless boat around. The great blue sweeps, with yellow eyes, stretch from the galley-ports. The ship itself has eyes on the bow. The overhanging cabin in the high stern is crowded with men, stores and bronze cannon. The low red prow cuts the olive green sea into white foam. The red triangular flags flaunt challenge from all the masts. The great square brown matting sails spread like clouds above the blue-gowned leadsman in the bow. Dipping under the horizon are the fleeing black banners of the enemy, and the sea-gulls scatter in terror. Only the serrated blue hills are brave along the iron shores.