The American soldier--No worse and no better than others--His good
qualities--The delights of smashing China vases--A first-class
fellow--His topic of conversation--Art and lump silver--His
popularity among the Allies--Guarding the Armoury--In the Yamên of
the Commissioner of Salt--A diabolical picture--Several million
dollars--A mountain of silver.
The American soldier is an interesting study. I have seen it reported
in American papers that the American soldiers in China were the only
ones who did absolutely no looting, and this was adduced as an example
showing the superiority of their morals to those of soldiers belonging
to other nationalities. No doubt newspapers of other nations concerned
in the war have written in the same manner about their compatriots,
and it would be very pleasant to believe that the news one reads in
newspapers was always true. In this case the report was particularly
false. In regard to looting the American soldier was no worse, indeed,
but decidedly no better, than any other soldier present, nor was
there any reason why he should have been. Possibly he lacked some
of the feeling and artistic taste to be found in some of the other
nationalities, and as a rule he displayed much determined business
capacity. It must be borne in mind that these remarks are not made in
disparagement, but are merely observations on the characteristics of
the American soldier in general in his capacity as a looter. He is curt
and blunt with strangers at first, but jolly and warm-hearted upon
acquaintance. He does not particularly care for artistic embroideries,
nor for rare bronzes and china ware, nor can he understand why anybody
else does. He will pick up a costly vase which has been preserved for
centuries in the house of a high official, and to save himself the
trouble of putting it gently down in the place from which it came will
drop it on the floor. Its companion piece at the other end of the
sideboard meets a similar fate, the noise of smashing crockery giving
more wild delight to his unmusical ears than the beautiful design, the
patient work of years, on the vase, before it was broken, gave pleasure
to his artistically untrained eye. The visit of the American soldiers
had about the same result on the interior of a Chinaman’s house as a
severe shock of earthquake. The contempt of the American soldier for
art has a redeeming point. His dry if somewhat coarse sense of humour,
his extraordinary remarks on the things he touched and saw, and his
composite oaths, in which no nation in the world except the Chinese
can rival or equal him, made him an amusing study. His manner and
his language may not always fulfil the ideals of European training,
but once accustomed to his “bluff,” most of which is assumed to show
his independence, which he thinks he has no other way of showing, we
shall find him a first-class fellow. From my own observation I can
speak highly of the American as a soldier. He generally impressed one,
nevertheless, as being a person disappointed in life and always on the
look-out for a fortune. When he talked, money was his only topic, and
when he could not talk of money he kept silent.
[Sidenote: WILD DELIGHT]
[Illustration: AMERICANS CONVEYING A JAPANESE WOUNDED INTO THE
SETTLEMENT AFTER THE BATTLE OF TIENTSIN]
What did he care for works of art? He had heard that some of the
porcelain was worth large sums, but he really could not tell a
five-cent teapot from a thousand-dollar one. To use his expression, all
the works of art in the world were not worth “a cent,” and, anyhow,
they had no sound marketable value. All that he looked for in the
houses of rich “Chinos,” as he conveniently called the Chinese, was
gold bar, or silver, the latter for choice in four and a quarter pound
lumps (sycee). If he could not get gold or silver he preferred to
have nothing, but he looked and looked until he generally found what
he wanted. When once he had it, he was willing, in order to convert
it at once into cash, to sell each four and a quarter pound lump
(or seventy dollars worth in weight) for five, ten, fifteen or twenty
dollars local currency!
[Illustration: IN THE ARMOURY]
[Sidenote: A POPULAR SOLDIER]
[Illustration: IN THE ARMOURY--CHINESE CONFISCATED GUNS]
The American soldier, when acclimatised, became extremely popular
with all the other nations, and it was pleasant to see him chum,
particularly with the British Tommy. He was generous in his dealings
with other soldiers, and when he got to know the people was quite
affable, and had a pleasant word for everybody. He occasionally
referred to “his girl at home,” but hardly ever mentioned any other
relative, although no doubt he loved them all dearly. Next to his
attention to business, which he transacts as we have seen above,
comes his intense interest in firearms. It was therefore lucky that
it fell to the lot of the Americans to be set on guard at the large
Arsenal inside the city wall, close to the South Gate. Forty beautiful
Krupp and Nordenfeldt guns of the latest pattern were captured, with
quantities of small arms and ammunition, including shells of all
patterns and sizes. A detachment of the 9th Infantry was placed in
charge of the premises, and the men were quartered there until the
order came to march on Pekin.
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN OF SILVER]
The most fortunate of all were those fellows who were stationed in the
burnt-down Yamên of the Commissioner of Salt.
Hardly ever have I seen a sadder and more impressive sight than
this beautiful palace, with its fine decorations, being mercilessly
destroyed by a terrific fire. Through the large, picturesque gate, at
the sides of which sat, impassive, two magnificently-carved lions of
red and green stone, with round eyes and curly tails and manes, I gazed
upon a sight that brought vividly to mind Dante’s Inferno. The waves of
heat were almost blinding if one ventured too near, and, half choked by
the smoke, one gazed in awe at the tongues of flame bursting through
on all sides, devouring everything within their reach, and shooting
up into the air, where they became lost in clouds of black smoke. The
crash of collapsing ceilings, the crackling of furniture, and every
now and then fearful explosions of cartridges--there were thousands
and thousands of rounds in the palace--filled one’s ears. A few dead
Chinamen in the foreground completed the picture, a picture as
diabolical as one may ever wish to see. Except for their main walls of
masonry, houses in China are mostly of wood, so that in a comparatively
short time the rich palace was in ashes.
[Sidenote: TREASURE]
Before the palace was set on fire the Japanese had taken from it
large quantities of sycee silver amounting to several million Mexican
dollars. Great wealth, nevertheless, was known to still have remained
there. An American guard was placed on the ruins with instructions to
dig out the treasure. Some forty Chinese prisoners were set to work,
and in four days unearthed several million more dollars, all in sycee
silver. A photograph which I took one day in the place shows a high
mountain, about thirty feet long, thirty broad, and four high, of solid
silver, the result of only one morning’s digging among the ruins. Each
lump weighed from four and a quarter pounds to seven pounds, and was of
the purest silver. Some lumps were blackened by fire, but their value
was undiminished. Each day the silver was conveyed from the palace into
the foreign settlement by the American mule teams, and deposited in
the headquarters of the 9th Infantry. The British and Japanese carried
away similar sums from other official palaces, and, if I understood
rightly, a part of the amount collected was to be divided among all the
officers and men who took part in the capture of the city, a tangible
and sensible way of rewarding the brave fellows of all nations whose
splendid work had saved the Tientsin foreign settlement from massacre.