The soldiers spoke little of the war. One of them said the Japanese were a savage race, upon which the sailor who had been to Nagasaki, cut him short by saying: “They are a charming, clean people, much more cultivated than you or I.” One of the soldiers said it would have been a more sensible arrangement if the dispute had been settled by a single combat between Marquis Ito and Count Lamsdorff.
The night before we arrived at Manchuria station the passengers sang songs. Four singers sang some magnificent folk-songs, and among others the song of the Siberian exiles: “Glorious Sea of Holy Baikal,” one singing the melody and the others joining in by repeating or imitating it. But the song which was the most popular was a ballad sung by a sailor, who was taking part in the concert. He had composed it himself. It was quite modern in tune and intensely sentimental. It was about a fallen maiden, who had left the palaces of the rich and died in hospital. It was exactly like the kind of song I heard bluejackets sing on board an English man-of-war years later. At Manchuria station we had a lot of bother owing to the commercial gentleman, and I annoyed him greatly by talking in front of him to a Greek merchant, who was at the buffet, in Greek—a language with which he was imperfectly acquainted. The commercial gentleman tried to prevent us going farther, but he did not succeed, as our papers were in perfect order. But he succeeded in having us put under arrest, and two Cossacks were told to keep watch over us during the remainder of the journey. In the meantime the officers had telegraphed for information about us to Kharbin, and the next morning they received a satisfactory answer, and their whole demeanour changed. From Manchuria station to Kharbin the journey lasted three days and two nights, and we arrived at Kharbin after a journey of seventeen days from St. Petersburg.
I have forgotten the latter part of that journey, but I recorded at the time that a crowd of Chinese officers boarded the train at one station and filled up the spare seats, especially top seats, whence they spat without ceasing on the occupants of the lower seats, much to the annoyance of a French lady, who said: “Les Chinois sont impossibles.”
Kharbin was a large, straggling place, part of which consisted of a Chinese quarter, an “Old” Russian quarter which was like a slice of a small Russian provincial town, and a modern quarter: Government Offices, an hotel, restaurants, a church, and the Russo-Chinese bank.
The sight of Kharbin when I arrived—the mud, the absence of vehicles, the squalor, the railway station, a huge art nouveau edifice, the long vistas of muddy roads or swampy trails, the absence of any traces of civilisation, and then the hotel, which was dearer than any hotel I have ever stayed at before or since, with its damp, dirty room and suspicious bedstead, and its convict squinting waiters still redolent of jail life, and its millions of flies—filled me with despair. At the beginning of the war Kharbin was the centre of everything that was undesirable in the Russian army and in the civilian populations of the whole world. Later on, Kuropatkin forbade officers to go there except under special circumstances. When we arrived, there were a certain number of officers on their way to the front, and of officers who had escaped from the front for a few days’ leave. The restaurants were full of noisy, shouting crowds, and nondescript ladies in cheap finery, about which everything was doubtful except their profession.
There were a number of Greek traders in the town; and wherever there is a war, in whatever part of the world, Greek traders seem to rise from the ground as if by magic, with sponges and other necessaries, for sale. At Harbin, there was also a local population of engineers and soldiers, who had jobs there, but these I only got to know a year later. I made the acquaintance of Colonel Potapoff at Kharbin. He was one of the press censors who had to look after the correspondents. He had been to South Africa. We became friends with him at once, and I saw him frequently during the next ten years.
I only stayed a week at Kharbin. I travelled to Mukden in great luxury in a first-class carriage reserved by General Kholodovsky. The General entertained me like a prince. He was extremely cultivated, courteous, and well read; a collector of china; an admirer of Tolstoy; a big game shooter. I stayed in his carriage a week after we had arrived at Mukden.
At Mukden we were plunged in China proper. It was as Chinese, so I was told, as Pekin—even more Chinese. The town was a long way from the station, and one drove to it in a rickshaw pulled along by a Chinese coolie. The drive took nearly an hour. But I made this interesting discovery, that if everyone goes by rickshaw it is just the same as if everyone travels by motor-car. You are not conscious of life being slower. The day after I arrived, I called at a house where some of the other war correspondents were living. There was Charles Hands of the Daily Mail, and there I made the acquaintance of M. de Jessen, a Danish correspondent. At the station I had already been met and welcomed by Whigham, who was also correspondent for the Morning Post. He had rooms in Mukden, and he asked me to come and share them. I did so. I moved into the town, and arrived at the Der-Lung-Den (the Inn of the Dragon), a large courtyard surrounded by a series of rooms that had no second story. I was shown one of these rooms and was told it could be mine. It seemed suitable, but it had no floor but earth, and no paper on the walls; in fact, it was not more like a room than the stall of a stable. But the Chinese hotel-keeper said that would be all right. An architect, a builder, and an upholsterer were sent for, and that very day the stall was converted into a comfortable and elegant bedroom, with a floor carpeted with matting and an elegant wall-paper, and was ready for use. Apparently the Chinese did not make a room inhabitable in an hotel until they knew someone was going to inhabit it. The next thing was to get a servant. I had brought a servant from Russia, but he had complained of the hard work. In fact, he had said he was not used to work at all. As he had been a trooper in a cavalry regiment this seemed a little strange, but he explained that the work had always been done for him. He was not one of the World’s Workers. He showed signs of grumbling, but Colonel Potapoff made short work of his grievance and packed him off home by the next train. I engaged a Chinese servant, called Afoo, who came from southern China.
The next thing was to buy a pony and engage a groom, a Mafoo. When it became known I wanted a pony, the whole yard seemed to swarm with ponies. I bought one with the assistance of the hotel-keeper. It seemed to be a fairly amenable animal, but the Mafoo, whom I engaged afterwards, at once pointed out to me that it was almost blind in one eye. I soon made the acquaintance of all the other correspondents: Ludovic Naudeau, who was writing for the Journal; Recouly, who was writing for the Temps; Archibald, who was photographing for I don’t know how many American newspapers; Millard, who wrote for the New York World; Simpson, who was the Daily Telegraph correspondent; Colonel Gaedke, the representative of the Berliner Tageblatt, and Premier Lieutenant von Schwartz, who wrote for the Lokal Anzeiger.
M. de Jessen has written a chapter of sketches on all these characters, and the life we lived at Mukden, in a book called Men I Have Met, published in Copenhagen in 1909. The best writer of all these was probably Ludovic Naudeau. Charles Hands could have rivalled him, but he wisely never, or hardly ever, put pen to paper.