Wandering in Northern China

by Unknown

The Russians under Ungern, justly known as the “Mad Baron,” entered Urga in October, 1920, and with the aid of Mongol troops chased the disorganized Chinese corps over the southern border of Outer Mongolia. It was then that the Paris-to-Peking telegraph line ceased to function for lack of poles. Bleached Chinese skeletons still lay scattered along the road to Kalgan when I made the journey to Urga. Ungern was one of those products of generations of Russian brutality who seem to find their keenest pleasure in bloodthirsty acts. In Urga he grew more and more mad, indiscriminately killing Mongols and Russians suspected of “Red” sympathies, and topping this off one February day in 1921 by a general slaughter of the Jewish inhabitants. Every Russian, he explained, hates a Jew; besides, the Bolshevik régime with which he was at swords’ points was and is still mainly in the hands of Jews, a fact not fully realized in our land because of the muffling Jewish hand on our press, but which it is essential to keep in mind in any study of present Russian problems. So deep was his hatred of these people that he refused to waste ammunition on them; they were despatched instead by splitting open their skulls with sabers. Foreigners still living in Urga describe the streets as shambles, strewn everywhere with the corpses of Jewish men, women, and children, even of babies with their brains oozing out amid the dust and rubbish. All speak of the curious fact that many bodies lay for days where they had fallen, without a dog’s coming near them, as if even these brutes had been frightened by the madness of the baron—or had eaten to satiety. As the soldiers reveling in the pogrom depended mainly on a hasty glance to identify their victims, not a few foreigners whose physiognomy was deceiving passed some very unpleasant moments. Such sights as two Mongols and a white woman hanging from the same gatepost, the woman a poor part-witted creature who maintained even in death a ludicrous expression of inane hauteur, are still recalled by the surviving foreign residents.

At length the Bolsheviks, having first, according to their own assertions, pleaded with the Chinese for several months to join them in the expedition and catch the “Mad Baron” between them, sent an army into Mongolia. The personal amusements of the baron do not seem to have had much weight in bringing about this decision, for the “Reds” themselves have a well developed taste for flowing blood; but they had begun to worry lest the Ungern group become the nucleus of a “White” force large enough to jeopardize their own security. Moreover, being true fanatics, they were eager to bring Mongolia the dismal gospel of their strange faith. The “Reds” entered Urga in July, 1921, and have been there ever since. In those notes for publication with which governments of all colors attempt to fool their neighbors, their own people, and even themselves, the present rulers of Russia assure us that they have only a corporal’s guard in Urga, merely as a protection against a new “White” gathering, and that the Mongols rule themselves without outside interference. Even the handsome and polished Jewish gentleman who under the title of Russian consul represents the Soviet in Urga, will tell you in any one of half a dozen languages, if you take the trouble to call at his perfectly consular office adorned with a large signed portrait of Lenin in a building flaunting a faded red flag, that he is only a lone foreigner in town, like you, and that he has little influence with the Mongol Government. But if he keeps from visibly smiling as he makes this assertion, it is a sign that the urbanity which he displayed at the time of his expulsion from the United States has improved rather than diminished.

It is true that there are not more than two or three hundred Russian Soviet soldiers in Urga. Having painted the town “Red,” and seen to it that a Mongolian “People’s Government” of that color was installed, no great force is needed to see that the ideas of Moscow are carried out. The cabinet ministers ostensibly ruling the country are all Mongols, but at their elbow, just out of sight, sits a Russian “adviser” whose advice is never scorned with impunity. I still recall the scene when a Russian subaltern from the military staff brought the foreign minister a document that needed his signature to make it legal. As the minister began perusing it, the expression on the face of the subaltern said as plainly as if he had spoken the words, “Read it, you old beggar, if you want to waste the time, but you will sign it whether you wish to or not.” Thus the “advice” reaching Urga through the telegrams from Moscow that pour in upon the “powerless” Russian consul in a steady if slender stream seeps down through all grades of the “People’s Government” of independent Mongolia.

It has been a long way around, but we have at last come back again to that example of amateur diplomacy in which my simple prayer was denied, and a backhanded fillip given incidentally to all citizens of “the great American nation.” It is true, even as the document alleges, that an American named S—— did come to Urga a few months before my arrival, and he does not deny that he had conversation with some of the fifteen Mongols, one of them the former prime minister, another a saint high in the lama hierarchy, most of them as splendid fellows as could be found in Mongolia, who were shot a fortnight before I got there, on the charge of conspiring to overthrow the “People’s Government.” That he “called himself an American consul” is not surprising, in view of the fact that our State Department does also, and pays him a salary accordingly. Nor is there any cause for astonishment in the fact that he hobnobbed as much as possible with the most polished Mongols with whom he could come in contact, if only to avoid still greasier robes. In short, S—— is our consul at Kalgan, in whose district all Mongolia is included. Neither China nor the United States, nor in fact any nation except Soviet Russia, has ever recognized the independence of Outer Mongolia. By the law of nations, therefore, so far as any such thing exists, it is still a province of China and a part of one of our Chinese consular districts, where Americans are still entitled to extraterritorial rights and subject to trial only by their own diplomatic or consular officers. Soon after his appointment S—— hurried up to Urga to study the situation. The Mongols in power evidently hoped that his visit was inspired by an intention on the part of our Government to recognize their independence. When nothing of the kind followed, they became more and more resentful. The animosity of the “Reds,” who look upon the United States as the chief of the “capitalistic nations” opposed to their sad scheme of things, served to increase this feeling, at least with the “Red” Mongols just now in the saddle; there are many evidences that among the Mongols at large nothing has “made to perish the name of the great American nation.” That any American consul would promise a minority group in a foreign country that he would “put them in touch with the enemy of our people on the east” (by which was meant the Chinese in general and Chang Tso-lin in particular) “and give his assistance in the liquidation of the existing People’s Government of Mongolia and the restoration of the old régime,” as was charged in the reply to my request, is as silly as that document itself.

But enough of politics, which to my simple mind is usually a bore. I might add, however, as a personal chuckle, that my case came perilously near causing a ministerial crisis and overturning the Mongol cabinet. Not that this is anything to boast of in these days when cabinets almost daily stump their toes on this or that insignificant pebble and sprawl headlong; but it was some satisfaction to know that, if I could not snap-shot Urga, at least I could put it in an uproar. The cabinet, it seems, deeply resented the action of the upstart Okhrana, both in replying to me direct and in reversing the decision of the ministers, and the question of resigning en bloc as a protest was, I am creditably informed, debated long and vigorously. I could not of course, even as an unofficial representative of the slandered American nation, take such an attack as the Okhrana document lying down. I replied to it sternly, therefore, in proper diplomatic form, addressing myself to the foreign minister, who received my reply in due humility. But my hope that by thus again stirring things up I might still succeed in being the cause of a national crisis did not, according to the latest reports from Urga, materialize.

There can be no other reason than pique or pure ignorance for refusing any one permission to take photographs in Urga. It has no fortresses or works of defense surrounded with secrecy; as far as the presence of Soviet soldiers and “advisers” is concerned, the lens could catch nothing that could not be told as effectively in words. Simple, rather brute-faced young Russians in shoddy gray uniforms with a red star sewed upon them were about the only outward evidences of Bolshevik occupation. Here or there one or two of them stood on guard with fixed bayonets which they were even more careless than the average soldier in flourishing about unoffending ribs. Others, off duty, prowled about singly or in small groups in quest of anything appealing to their rudimental appetites which might turn up. Out toward the wireless station erected by the Chinese, where the Russian soldiers used the war-ruined office of an American mining company as barracks, detachments of fifty to a hundred of them might be met marching in close ranks at a funeral pace and singing in chorus, a rather engaging custom inherited from czarist days. It was evident, not merely from their appearance but by the way any suggestion of authority went quickly to their heads, that almost all these uncouth youths were of the peasant or the lowest city class. Though I had business in the Okhrana several times a day during all my stay in Urga, never once was I permitted to enter it, even when officially summoned, until whatever dull-faced soldier happened to be on guard at the door had halted me long enough to emphasize his authority and his dislike of the class which still dared to wear white collars. What was worse, as in every case of evil example copied by still lower strata of society, was the studied rudeness, the childish yet overbearing insolence of the Mongol soldiers, who were much more numerous, in their efforts to outdo in “redness” their Russian models.

It was common rumor that there were many “radishes” among the Russians stationed in Urga, which would account for the exceptions to the general rule of simple, plebeian faces among the soldiers as well as among those in more important positions. A “radish,” obviously, is a man who is red on the outside but white within, and the term has of late years become one of every-day speech in Russia. Many former officers of the czar, many a member of the old aristocracy whom one would least expect to find backing the new proletarian doctrine, have no other means of earning their bread than to accept some small position under the Bolsheviks and pretend to be in sympathy with their program. How many of these there are in Russia and adjoining lands who will turn upon their present rulers when they show definite signs of falling is a question not without interest to the outside world, but one which no casual visitor can answer. It is said, also, that men are very glad to be assigned to duty in Urga, where there is at least plenty to eat, in contrast to Russia where nearly every one is more or less starving. Yet there are Russian civilians even in Urga who know the pangs of hunger. Such utter poverty and abject beggary as may be seen in Harbin or Vladivostok among refugees from the Bolshevik régime are not found in this bucolic land of comparative plenty, but barefoot children and the leanest faces were never those of the Mongols. I recall in particular the widow of an official wantonly killed by the “Mad Baron,” a young woman who might have been charming under happier circumstances, who dwelt with her lanky little daughter in a kind of two-room hut occupied by at least half a dozen other persons, and who shivered past our window every morning and evening to and from some sort of physical toil that had already given her the hands of a peasant woman.

Far be it from me to condemn any honest attempt to work out a new and better form of government, for certainly I should pin no blue ribbons on any which so far exist. But even a few days in Urga under “Red” rule could scarcely fail to convince any one not hopelessly prejudiced in its favor that the “Red” system does not improve human felicity, which after all, though that fact seems almost completely to have been lost sight of the world over, is the only justification for any government. Bad as opposing systems may be, this one was patently worse, if only because it brings the dregs and sediment of society to the top and submerges the purer liquid. It places the ignorant over the more or less instructed, the rude and the malevolent over those who are at least polished enough to be somewhat tolerant; it brings to the surface the residue of savagery in the human race and immerses many of the improvements that have been accomplished by long centuries of effort. I was particularly struck by this aspect of things on the evening when I attended the weekly Spektakl with which European Urga is permitted to attempt to amuse itself. That, like the government which sponsored it, was as if the stokers had come up and taken possession of the cabin and insisted on using only the meager talents to be found in their own ranks, though those who had given their best efforts for generations to providing better entertainment still tarried in the obscure corners into which the irruption had driven them.

While they might as easily have led these childlike people of the Gobi toward better things, the “Reds” seem only to have improved the natural cussedness of those Mongols upon whom they have had any influence whatever. The two races have, to be sure, many qualities more or less in common, and a history which dovetails here and there. The Mongols under Jenghiz Khan defeated the Russians, destroyed Kieff, and made almost all Russia tributary to them. Out on the edge of Urga stands a long row of European barracks built by the Russians in czarist days as a part of their program of training a great Mongol army. In other words, it has been give-and-take between these neighboring races for centuries, and, shading together as they do through the intermediate Buriats and Kalmucks, they seem much more closely allied than Europe and Asia in general. In fact, seeing the two side by side, one was more and more struck with how Oriental are the Russians. They are Oriental, for instance, in their cruelty, and while they can perhaps teach little of that quality to a people who until yesterday placed condemned criminals in stout boxes and left them out among the skulls and dogs to die, they have certainly done nothing to soften their innate barbarism. Surely it is no worse to cut open the body of an executed felon in quest of some organ of fancied medicinal value than to sentence two of the most cultivated and charming young Russian ladies in Urga to serve the “Red” army in Siberia for five years in punishment for the atrocious crime committed by one of them in being the wife of a “White” officer—for “serving” a “Red” army in this sense means something quite different from sewing on buttons by day, something which makes a five-year term easily a life sentence.

Though they were on the whole surly now toward strangers in general and Caucasians in particular, one felt instinctively that this was not natural Mongol behavior. For they are a simple people, close to nature, a race with lovable traits for all their obvious faults. Three years ago, say those who knew it then, Urga was as free as air, a delightful place to visit, for all its filth and superstition. Hardly a Mongol but had a smile and a cheery, jocular greeting for any one, of whatever race, be it only at a chance meeting in the street. If now the atmosphere of the whole place kept the nerves taut, it was rather because of things that had recently been imposed upon them from the outside, things which they might or might not wish, but which they have no choice but to accept. In the olden days the visitor to Urga came and went, carried on business or loafed, and never met the slightest interference with his personal freedom. Now, though the European colony may stroll at sunset a few times back and forth along the noisome stream oozing past the market-place, no one may go out at night without imminent danger of spending the rest of it in clammy durance. This rule, added to the double windows of most houses, covered with wooden shutters, Russian fashion, gives the nights a deathly silence, only occasionally broken by the barking of foraging dogs, hoarse-voiced as if they all had heavy colds from sleeping outdoors. A humorous touch may soften this general atmosphere of apprehension, for the “Red” and Mongol idea seems to be that only those who sneak noiselessly along the dark streets can be bent on mischief, and the small non-Russian foreign colony have found it efficacious in returning from their dinner-parties to sing and whoop at the tops of their voices to convince prowling soldiers that they are innocent of any evil intent.