always under Japanese protection. There were Chinese bandits, he said,
along the short cut that we wanted to take, and there had been many
murders and robberies along that road. Just the same, we took that road.
So away we went, with carts, coolies, interpreters, and servants--they
in the road and I stepping the ties of the Siberian Railway. One hundred
yards ahead I saw two Japanese soldiers coming toward me on the track.
When they saw me--they mistook me for a Russian, I suppose--they jumped
from the track and ran back along the edge of a cornfield--disappearing
every now and then. I was a little nervous, for I thought they might
take a pot shot at me from a covert somewhere, but they were only
dashing back to announce my coming to a squad of soldiers, and as I
passed them on the track the major in command grinned slightly when he
answered my salute.
We had a terrible pull that day through the mud, and we reached a
Chinese village at dusk. The Irishman, with the subtle divination that
is his only, found by instinct the best house in the town for us to
stay. It had around it a garden full of flowers, clean mats and antique
chairs within, and there was plenty of good cold water and nice fresh
eggs. My last memory that night, as I lay on a cot under a mosquito-net,
was of the Irishman and our aged host promenading up and down the
garden-path. The Chinaman had never heard a word of English before in
his life, but the Irishman was talking to him with perfect gravity and
fluency about the war and about us, giving our histories, what we had
done and what we had failed to do, and all the time the old Chinaman was
bowing with equal gravity, and smiling as though not one word escaped
his full comprehension. How the Irishman kept it up for so long, and why
he kept it up for so long, I do not know, but they were strolling up and
down when I went to sleep.
The next day we had another long pull through deeper mud. For hours and
hours we went through solid walls of ten-foot corn; sometimes we were in
mud and water above the knees. Once we got lost--anybody who followed
that Irishman always got lost--and an old Chinaman led him and Davis and
me for miles through marshy cornfields. Sometimes we would meet Chinamen
bringing their wives and children back home--now that both armies had
gone on ahead--the women in carts, their faces always averted, and the
children dangling in baskets swung to either end of a bamboo pole, and
carried by father or brother over one shoulder. By noon the kind old
Chinaman connected us with our caravansary in another Chinese town.
There the Irishman got eggs by laying a pebble and cackling like a hen,
and the entire village gathered around us to watch us eat our lunch.
They were all children from octogenarian down--simple, kindly, humorous,
and with a spirit of accommodation and regard for the stranger that I
have never seen outside of our Southern mountains. After lunch we took
photographs of them, and of ourselves in turn with them, and the village
policeman--he did not carry even a stick--was a wag and actor, and made
beautiful poses while the village laughed _in toto_. This would not have
been possible in a Japanese town. Nearly all of them followed us out of
the village, and they seemed sorry to have us go.
Soon I tried a Chinese cart for a while, and in spite of its jolting I
almost went to sleep. As I drowsed I heard a voice say:
"You'd better tell him to keep awake." Another voice answered:
"I will take care of him," and I lifted my hat, to see the ever-faithful
Takeuchi stalking along through the deep mud by me, with a big stick in
his hand. But we saw no bandits. It was the middle of the afternoon now,
and we began to meet column after column of Japanese troops moving
toward the front from the new point of disembarkation--Newchwang.
Somehow, on the wind, a rumor was borne to us that there was a foreign
hotel in Newchwang which had bath-tubs and beer and tansan; even a
wilder rumor came that the Russians had left champagne there. We held a
consultation. If all those things were there, it were just as well that
some one of us should engage them for the four as quickly as possible.
The happy lot fell to me, and I mounted Dean Prior's great white horse
and went ahead at a gallop. That horse was all right loping in a
straight line, but if there was a curve to be turned or a slippery bank
to descend, his weak back drew mortality for the rider very near. Then
he had an ungovernable passion for lying down in mud-holes and streams,
which held distinct possibilities for discomfort. Twice he went down
with me on the road, though he walked over a stream on a stone arch that
was not two feet wide in perfect safety. In one river, too, he went
down, and we rolled together for a little while in the yellow mud and
water; but I ploughed a way through columns of troops, and, led by a
Chinese guide, reached Newchwang at sunset. I went to the Japanese
headquarters, but could learn nothing about that hotel. I asked
directions of everybody, and when, going down the street, I saw coming
toward me through the dust a boy with a tennis-racquet over his shoulder
and a real white girl in a white dress, with black hair hanging down her
back, I asked directions again, merely that I might look a little longer
upon that girl's face. It seemed a thousand years since I had seen a
woman who looked like her. I found the hotel, and I got rooms for
ourselves and quarters for our servants and horses. Looking for a stable
in the dark, I turned a corner, to see a Japanese naked bayonet thrust
within a foot of my breast. Naturally, I stopped, but as it came no
nearer, I went on, and not a word was said by the sentinel nor by me.
None of my companions came in, and I ate dinner in lonely magnificence,
put beer, champagne, and tansan on ice, gave orders that the servants
should wait until midnight, and sent guides out to wait for Davis and
Prior and the Irishman at the city gates. Then I went to bed. About two
o'clock there was a pounding on my door, and a little Japanese officer
with a two-handed sword some five feet long came in and arrested me as a
Russian spy. He said I would have to leave Newchwang by the earliest
train the next morning. Now, if I had had wings I should have been
cleaving the Manchurian darkness at that very minute for home, and with
a little more self-control I should have hung out the window and laughed
when he made that direful threat. But I had ridden into that town on the
biggest white horse I ever saw, and I looked like an English
field-marshal without his blouse. I had gone to the Japanese
headquarters. I had registered my name and the names of my three friends
on the hotel-book. I had filled out the blank that is usual for the
passing stranger in time of war. I had added information that was not
asked for on that blank. I had engaged four rooms, had ordered dinner
for four people, and had things to eat and things to drink awaiting for
the other three whenever they should come. I had my war-pass in my
pocket, which I displayed, and yet this Japanese officer, the second in
command at Newchwang and a graduate of Yale, as I learned afterward,
woke me up at two o'clock in the morning, and in excellent English put
me under arrest as a Russian spy. I was robed only in a blue flannel
shirt and a pair of "Bonnie Maginns," but I sprang shamelessly from out
that mosquito-netting, and I said things that I am not yet sorry for.
Over that scene I will draw the curtain quickly--but just the same, a
Japanese soldier sat at my door all through the night. The next morning
I heard a great noise, and I saw our entire train in the street below. I
called my sentinel to the window and pointed out to him four carts,
twelve horses and mules, eight coolies, and eight interpreters and
servants, and I asked him if Russian spies were accustomed to travel
that way--if they did business with a circus procession and a brass
band? He grinned slightly.
Half an hour later Davis and I went down to see the Yale graduate, and
he apologized. He said graciously that he would remove the guard from my
door, and I did not tell him that that intelligent soldier had
voluntarily removed himself an hour before. We told him we were very
anxious to get back to Yokohama to catch a steamer for home. He said
that we probably would not be allowed to go home on a transport, and
that even if we had permission we could not, for the reason that no
transports were going.
"There is none going to-day?"
"No."
"Nor to-morrow?"
"No."
"Nor the day after?"
"No."
We said good-by. Just outside the door we met another Japanese
officer who had been sent into Manchuria with a special message from
the Emperor, and had been told incidentally to look in on the
correspondents. He had looked in on us above Haicheng, and he was
apparently trying to do all he could for us. He was quite sure if we saw
the Major in Command there, that we should be allowed to go. "Is there a
transport going to-day?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "I am taking it myself." I kept my face grave.
"And to-morrow?"
"Yes."
"And the next day?"
"Yes."
Three of them--all useless--nailed within five minutes from the lips of
a brother-officer and within ten steps of the Yale graduate's door! It
was to laugh.
I took a Chinese sampan, and with sail and oar beat up that yellow river
for an hour to find the Major in Command. When I got to his office, he
had gone to tiffin. Where did he tiffin? The answer was a shake of the
head. Nobody could disturb the gallant major while he was tiffining, no
matter how urgent the caller's business was. When would he return?
Within one hour and a half. Well, we would have just a little more than
another hour in which to catch that transport, even if we got permission
to take it. And somehow cooling heels in the ante-chamber of the Major
while he tiffined had no particular charm for me just then, so I decided
very quickly to start back by Chefoo and Shanghai, even if it did take
five extra days and perhaps cause us to lose the steamer for home.
So we gathered our things together and took passage on a British steamer
for China. A Chinese sampan took the ever-faithful Takeuchi and me with
our luggage to the ship. I handed Takeuchi two purple fifty-sen bills
that the army issues in Manchuria as scrip--to give to the Chinaman--and
started up the gangway toward the Captain's cabin. Takeuchi thought I
had gone, but I looked around just in time to see him thrust one of the
bills in his own pocket, give the Chinaman the other, put his right foot
against the Chinaman's breast, and joyously kick him down the gangway
into the sampan. Selah!
The joy of being on a British ship with the Union Jack over you and no
Japanese to say you nay! Never shall I forget that England liberated the
slave. She freed some of the White Slaves of Haicheng.
To avoid floating mines we anchored that night outside the bar, but next
morning we struck the wide, free, blue seas, with an English captain,
whose tales made Gulliver's Travels sound like the story of a Summer in
a Garden. Without flies, fleas, mosquitoes, or scorpions, we slept when
and where we pleased and as long as we pleased. Once more we wore the
white man's clothes and ate his food and drank his drink, and were
happy. In the afternoon we passed for miles through the scattered
cargoes of Chinese junks that had been destroyed by the Japanese while
on their way to supply the Russians at Port Arthur, and that night we
saw the flash of big guns as once more we swept near the fortress we had
hoped to see. A sunny, still day once again and we were at Chefoo, where
in the harbor we saw--glory of glories!--an American Man-of-War. Ashore
Chefoo was distinctly shorn of the activities that lately had made the
town hum. There were only a Russian or two there from a destroyed
torpedo-boat, a few missionaries in rickshaws and dressed like Chinese,
a few queer-looking foreign women in the streets, and a lonely,
smooth-shaven young man from Chicago, who ran a roulette-wheel and took
in more kinds of Oriental currency than I knew to exist.
"I am sorry the Russians have gone," he said; "they were great
gamblers."
There we learned that fighting was going on at Liao-Yang--real,
continuous fighting; and a melancholy of which no man spoke set in
strong with all of us. But there was that American Man-of-War out in the
harbor, and Davis and I went out to her and climbed aboard. We saw nice,
clean American boys again, and pictures of their sisters and
sweethearts, and we had dinner and wine, and we made that good ship
shake from stem to stern with song.
Two days later we were threading a way through a wilderness of ships of
all the nations of the earth into Shanghai. Shanghai--that "Paris of the
East"--with its stone buildings and hotels and floating flags; its
beautiful Bund bordered with trees and parks and paths, its streets
thronged with a medley of races and full of modern equipages, rattling
cabs, rattling rickshaws, and ancient Chinese wheelbarrows each with one
big wooden wheel, pushed by a single Chinaman with a strap over his
shoulder, and weighted, sometimes, with six Chinese factory-girls, their
tiny feet dangling down--and all this confusion handled and guarded by
giant, red-turbaned Sikh policemen--each bearing himself with the
dignity of a god. There was gay life in Shanghai--good and bad; town
clubs and country clubs, with tennis, cricket, and golf. There were
beautiful roads, filled with handsome carriages and smart men and women
on smart horses, and there were road-houses with men and women who were
not so smart seated around little tables all over the verandas, with
much music coming from within. Along that Bund at night were house-boats
anchored, on the decks of which people dined among red candles to the
music of a brass band in a park near by--brilliantly lit. And there was
a Chinese quarter not far away, thronged with strange faces, with
narrow, twisting streets, some murky and some gay with lanterns that
hung from restaurants, theatres, opium dens, singing and gambling halls,
while through those streets coolies bore high on their shoulders gayly
dressed Chinese singing-girls from one hall to another.
On the ship for Nagasaki were many young Chinese boys and girls going to
other lands to be educated, and I was given two significant bits of
information: "Ten years ago," said a man, "a foreign education was a
complete bar to political preferment over here. Things have so changed
and a foreign education is now such an advantage that rich Chinamen who
have political aspirations for their sons purposely send them abroad to
be educated."
"On this ship," said another, "and the two ships that follow her, many
hundred young Chinamen are going over to Japan to get a military
training. And yet, according to some observers, there is nothing doing
in China--even on the part of Japan."
We landed at Nagasaki and had a three nights' ride to Yokohama in a
crowded car in which it was possible to sleep only when sitting upright.
On the third day the long train came to a stop at daybreak and every
Japanese soul in it--man, woman, and child--poured out, each with a
towel, scrubbed vigorously at a water-trough and came back, each sawing
on his teeth with a wooden tooth-brush. Such a scene could be paralleled
nowhere else. I suppose the Japanese are the cleanliest people in the
world.
Tokio at last--and a request from the Japanese: Would we consider going
back to Port Arthur? We would not.
"Please consider the question." We considered.
"Yes," we said, "we will go."
"You can't," said the Japanese.
Right gladly then we struck the backward trail of the Saxon. The Happy
Exile went aboard with me, and so did Takeuchi, who brought his pretty
young wife along to say, "How d'ye do?" and "Good-by." Takeuchi brought
a present, too--a little gold mask of a fox, which he thought most
humorously fitting--a scarf-pin for Inari-sama, which is the honorific
deistical form of my honorable name in Japanese. Later, in this country,
I got Takeuchi's photograph and this card: "I wish you please send me
your recommondation which is necessary to have in my business." He shall
have it.
All my life Japan had been one of the two countries on earth I most
wanted to see. No more enthusiastic pro-Japanese ever put foot on the
shore of that little island than I was when I swung into Yokohama Harbor
nearly seven months before. I had lost much--but I was carrying away in
heart and mind the nameless charm of the land and of the people--for the
charm of neither has much succumbed to the horrors imported from us;
Fujiyama, whose gray head lies close under the Hand of Benediction;
among the foot-hills below the Maid of Miyanoshita--may Fuji keep her
ever safe from harm; O-kin-san the kind, who helps the poor and welcomes
the stranger--her little home at the head of the House of the Hundred
Steps I could see from the deck of the ship; the great Daibutsu at
Kamakura, whose majestic calm stills all the world while you look upon
his face and--the babies, in streets and doorways--the babies that rule
the land as kings. I did have, too, for a memory, Shin--my rickshaw
man--but Shin failed me at the last minute on the dock. Yes, even at
that last minute on the dock, Shin tried to fool me. But I forgive him.
Of this war in detail I knew no more than I should have known had I
stayed at home--and it had taken me seven months to learn that it was
meant that I should not know more. There can be no quarrel with what was
done--only with the way it was done--which was not pretty. Somehow, as
Japan sank closer to the horizon, I found myself wondering whether the
Goddess of Truth couldn't travel the breadth of that land incog.--even
if she played the leading part in a melodrama with a star in her
forehead and her own name emblazoned in Japanese ideographs around her
breast. I think so. I wondered, too, if in shedding the wrinkled skin
of Orientalism, Japan might not have found it even better than winning
a battle--to shed with it polite duplicity and bring in the blunt
telling of the truth; for if the arch on which a civilization
rests be character, the key-stone of that arch, I suppose, must be
honesty--simple honesty.
Right gladly we struck the backward Trail of the Saxon.
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the
speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
unless otherwise noted.
On page ix, "Liaoyang" was replaced with "Liao-Yang".