Manchuria

“ The untold afflictions of the Korean immigrants coming into Manchuria will doubtless never be fully realized, even by those actually witnessing their distress. In the still closeness of a forty below zero climate in the dead of winter, the silent stream of white clad figures creeps over the icy mountain passes, in groups of tens, twenties and fifties, seeking a new world of subsistence, willing to take a chance of life and death in a hand-to-hand struggle with the stubborn soil of Manchuria's wooded and stony hillsides. ”

“ But as it is autumn in the park, we gathered the red [Pg 20] berries and the men ornamented the jinrickshas with them and we ride home across the plain in a glory of red that out lasts all. The sun is a perfect disk magnified by the perspective of the plain into a gigantic size, worthy of Manchuria, and there is the Japanese flag! May it bring better days to this land of toil and patience! That is the heart’s wish for this colossal country of Manchuria!
Over the mountains sky high, over the plains of Moukden, over more mountains, and you approach the city of Dalny. ”

“ The settlers, on the contrary, have made the country their home. They are a fine, healthy, and vigorous race. Driven from China by poverty or famine, they regard Manchuria as a land flowing with milk and honey. ... Whether it be the rigour of the climate which softens their manners, or the absence of the Chinese Mandarin, or living under the sway of an alien race which humbles their pride, or a combination of all these elements, it is difficult to say, but the people are far less hostile to the foreigner than those in China proper. ”

“ MANCHURIA, the name by which the territory in the east of Asia occupied by the Manchus is known in Europe. By the Chinese it is called the country of the Manchus, an epithet meaning “pure,” chosen by the founder of the dynasty which now rules over Manchuria and China as an appropriate designation for his family. Manchuria lies in a north-westerly and south-easterly direction between 39° and 53° N. and between 116° and 134° E., and is wedged in between China and Mongolia on the west and north-west, and Korea and the Russian territory on the Amur on the east and north. ”

“ When account is taken of the areas in South Manchuria and certain valleys in the south and east, such as the Sungari, Liao and Mutan Valleys, it is clear that, from the purely agricultural point of view, Manchuria can still absorb numerous colonists. According to one of the best experts on the staff of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the population of Manchuria could reach in forty years a figure of 75,000,000. ”

“ Russia has been in real, though not nominal or legal, possession of Manchuria since 1896. She has absorbed in times past many stony deserts and barren solitudes, but in Manchuria she has for the first time acquired a rich territory with an all-important sea-base and a virile population, whereby her dominant position in Eastern Asia has been rendered inexpugnable. China lies at her feet. ”

“ The stragetical importance of Manchuria happens to be of very little importance to anybody except Russia, China and Japan. It is the extreme northern province of the Chinese Empire, lying next to Siberia, and populated by a nomadic half-barbarian people, and therefore the whole country is of small consequence from a commercial point of view. ”

“ The mists on the heights in early morning are most exquisite. We pass military posts and one where there are rich coal mines. Being the only European on the train, and a woman, we are the “chief animal of the show.” We afford great amusement to the sightseers of Manchuria. Huge woods, men cutting logs, or at their arduous toil, it is [Pg 26] all reciprocated and we part the best of friends, the sturdy mountaineers and the woman, strange indeed. They are, in their uncouth way, chivalrous, and as chivalry is dying out in every country we may yet have to seek it alone in Manchuria! ”

“ In itself the sheer creation of such a country--larger far than Great Britain and Germany, as rich as Illinois and Manitoba--would appeal at once to American commerce and industry, but you have only begun to grasp the significance of Manchuria when you compare it to the creation of such an empire in some favored portion of the sea. ”

“ III LINGERING IN TOKIO
I might as well confess, I suppose, that these "Hardships of the Campaign," pleasant as they are, ecstatic as they might be to an untroubled mind, constitute a bluff pure and simple. Here goes another, but it shall be my last, and I shall write no more until the needle of my compass points to Manchuria. A month ago the first column got away when the land was lit with the glory of cherry-blossoms. We have been leaving every week since—next week we leave again. One man among us now calls himself a cherry-blossom correspondent. ”

“ If we want to obtain the wealth of North Manchuria and to build up the New Continent according to the will of Emperor Meiji, we must rush our people into North Manchuria first and seek to break the friendship between Russia and China. In this way, we can enjoy the wealth of North Manchuria and hold at bay both Russia and China. In case of war, our immigrants in North Manchuria will combine with our forces in South Manchuria and at one stroke settle the problem forever. ”

“ The millions of Chinese farmers now settled permanently on the land have made Manchuria in many respects a simple extension of China south of the Wall. The Three Eastern Provinces have become almost as Chinese in race, culture and national sentiment as the neighbouring Provinces of Hopei and Shantung, from which most of the immigrants came. ”

“ The possibilities of such an empire situated in the fairest portion of Asia's temperate zone are simply illimitable. No one who has been through the fruitful lands of the American Corn Belt and Wheat Belt and goes later through Manchuria can fail to note the similarity between them in physical appearance and natural resources, and it may well be that what the settlement of the West has meant in America these last fifty years the development of Manchuria will mean in Asia these next fifty. ”

“ The Chinese, therefore, regard Manchuria as a frontier region, capable of affording relief for the present and future population problems of other parts of China. They deny the statement that the Japanese are principally responsible for the economic development of Manchuria, and point to their own colonisation enterprises, especially since 1925, to their railway development, and other enterprises, in refutation of these claims. ”

“ Manchuria is undoubtedly one of the richest countries in the world. The soil is excellent, the hills are thickly wooded, the mountains abound in minerals. Along the route we passed farms where maize and beans seemed to be chiefly cultivated, and all the people, men, women, and children, were at work in the field.
The landscape is rather monotonous. We traversed a wide plain enclosed by mountains which touch the horizon; but although the [110] scenery cannot be called picturesque, it is not devoid of a certain grandeur. It has a charm peculiar to itself, an atmosphere of vague melancholy. ”

“ I have tried to show in the foregoing pages how the Manchus won their position in China, and also how the southern part of Manchuria, including Moukden, was originally Chinese. Those who wish to wrest it from China are seeking to take an integral part of the empire. No one who visits Moukden can fail to see that it is a thoroughly Chinese city, with its magnificent walls and gateways, and the big drum tower and bell, like the one at Peking. ”

“ After about an hour’s drive we reached the group of Mission buildings, hospitals, schools, and dwelling-houses situated on the river bank, which is radiant with lotus blossom in the summer-time. But I must not begin describing the charms of Moukden at the end of a chapter: it demands one to itself. As the relation of Manchuria to China is but little known, it may be of interest to the reader to have the brief account which forms the beginning of the next chapter, but after this warning it is easy for those who are not interested to skip the next four pages. ”

“ The progressive military occupation of the Three Eastern Provinces removed in succession from the control of the Chinese authorities the towns of Tsitsihar, Chinchow and Harbin, finally all the important towns of Manchuria; and following each occupation, the civil administration was re-organised. It is clear that the Independence Movement, which had never been heard of in Manchuria before September 1931, was only made possible by the presence of the Japanese troops. ”

“ At the close of the Russo-Japanese war Baron Komura tried to induce the Chinese Government to open Manchuria to Japanese colonists, but as Manchuria is imperatively needed by China for her own surplus population, which are pouring into it daily by thousands in the early spring, it was only natural that she should resent the proposal, and refuse to grant the desired [xiv] permission. Hence the present attitude of Japan. “If you do not allow our people to colonise Manchuria peacefully, there is only one thing for us to do: to enter it anyhow.” ”

“ The world depression added to the effect of an unavoidable local crisis. Once this, economic crisis is over and order has been re-established, Manchuria may once more serve as an outlet for the population of China proper. The Chinese are the people best adapted for the colonisation of Manchuria. An artificial restriction of this migration by arbitrary political measures would be prejudicial to the interests of Manchuria, as it would be to the interests of Shantung and Hopei. ”

“ In the middle of the sixteenth century there was no Manchu Empire, and the Manchus themselves were wild, uncultured barbarians without any written language, living in caves which they hollowed in the earth, and engaged in constant warfare with other tribes living like themselves in the northern part of that country which we call Manchuria, the central and southern part being inhabited by the Chinese. In the year 1559 Noorhachu was born, with the prospect of becoming ruler over six little hamlets ”

“ Conditions in Manchuria unparalleled elsewhere.Japan controls a railway and a strip of territory running from the sea right up into the heart of Manchuria, and she maintains for the protection of that property a force of about 10,000 soldiers, which she claims the right by treaty to increase, if necessary, up to 15,000. ”

“ To the east of the north and north-west of Manchuria rises a chain of lofty mountains, which separate the valleys of the Amur and its tributaries, the Argun and the Ussuri, from the great inland and very marshy plain watered by the Sungari and its tributary rivers. ”

“ As regards the Chinese, few of the rich merchants make Manchuria their home. They come to the country for a definite number of years, and the same applies to their agents, managers, and staff generally, who leave their families in China. ”

“ Manchuria is far less hostile to foreigners than the rest of China, and the name “devil” may even be used as a polite address with the prefix of “honorable”! No European women had previously passed through the gate of the inner wall and through the city on foot, but I not only was able to do so without molestation, though several times only attended by my servant, but actually was able to photograph in the quieter streets, the curiosity of the crowd being quite friendly. ”

“ Similarly, in the Three Provinces, as in China proper, credit performs an important function in such local trade. One can even say that the resemblance in commercial organisation in Manchuria and China proper is found not only in local countryside trade, but also in trade in the towns.
In fact, the social and economic Chinese organisation in Manchuria is a transplanted society which has kept the customs, dialect and activities of its home. The only changes necessary are those required to meet the conditions of a land more vast, less inhabited and more open to outside influences. ”

“ About the feelings of the people of Manchuria towards the present regime there can really be no doubt; and China would not voluntarily accept as a lasting solution the complete separation of her Three Eastern Provinces. The analogy of the distant province of Outer Mongolia is not an entirely pertinent one, as Outer Mongolia is bound to China by no strong economic or social ties, and is sparsely inhabited by a population which is mainly non-Chinese. The situation in Manchuria is radically different from that in Outer Mongolia. ”

“ There is also an opinion, held by others, that the building of the main line through northern Manchuria should be regarded not merely as the first of our active enterprises in the Far East, but as the basis and foundation of them all, because if we had carried the road along the Amur, through our own territory, we should never have thought of occupying the southern part of Manchuria and the province of Kwang-tung. ”

“ Without exaggerating the economic dependence of Japan on Manchuria beyond the limits ascribed to it in a previous chapter, and certainly without suggesting that economic relationship entitles Japan to control the economic, still less the political, development of those provinces, we recognise the great importance of Manchuria in the economic development of Japan. ”

“ We will not recognize the rights that Japan claims through her treaty made in 1915. It really was a treaty with Old China, still alive in our Republic. It was wrested from us by cunning and bribery. There are twenty million Chinese in Manchuria. They have made that province grow more rapidly in wealth in recent years than any other part of the land. They are converting the wilderness, raising such a crop of soy beans as no other part of the earth has ever seen. We propose to stand by our people. We cannot give Manchuria to Japan, nor can we give her Mongolia. ”