THE BURNING OF HANKOW
Have you ever seen a fire--a big fire? Have you ever stood watching
a wide prairie fire and seen the flames dance and leap upwards,
downwards, wriggle in and out, and menacingly approach you? If you
have, you will in some measure be able to follow me. Can you imagine
in that great dancing prairie fire that you have seen thousands of
housetops, minarets, temple spires, roofs of all heights, sizes, and
shapes--can you? Can you imagine those wild flames, fanned strongly
to one side, and see that mighty belt of flame galloping furiously
onward, then drawing back, then galloping on again and gaining
ground, then settling finally down as if it had its luckless enemy in
its most deadly grasp, slowly to torture it and cruelly to draw from
it its last gasp of life? Can you see that sea-like, billowy mass of
curling smoke, too thick to be driven by the strong north wind, but
just thick enough slowly to move and to give way now and again to
that enormous force of white-hot, crackling fire that sends up its
deep red flame in anger to the heavens? And can you see beyond you
through that dense smoke more roofs and spires and curving Chinese
architecture, seeming to dodge up and down, in and out, like a full
disordered regiment of cavalry in awful flight; on and on they seem
to go, yet to get no farther? Terrific is their endeavour, but
futile. They gallop never faster, in and out, up and down, and at
last, {82} giving up all hope, are compelled hopelessly to settle
down in the smoke and are lost to sight for ever.
[Illustration: THE BURNING OF HANKOW. A wave of flame a mile and a
half wide swept through the city and rendered half a million people
homeless.]
But those roofs are not cavalry; they are not men. The men and
terrified women, and the tiny helpless children, the old fathers and
the mothers, the invalids, the incapacitated, the blind, the halt,
and the maimed had left the city a couple of days before, and now
were around the countryside, rich and poor alike being turned out of
house and home. Those who doubted, however, or were indifferent were
mixed up in the flaming street, helpless, hopeless, waiting for their
inevitable doom in that great fire, the great fire of Hankow, the
devoted central market of the Chinese world, now lost in doom in the
Chinese war.
No one will ever tell precisely what happened during the firing of
the city. Europeans gathered on their housetops in the Concessions
to watch and to feel their hearts torn with pity. One gazed
abstractedly into a boiling cauldron, and expected that behind the
lurid flame thousands were pitifully exchanging their sad farewells
ere they settled down to die. There seemed to be no escape for the
poor people other than in the grave; all effort seemed to be void of
hope. As one watched he seemed to feel that underneath those roofs
the saddest scenes possible to enact in history were being recorded
with sad, sad tears. He seemed to feel that they were huddled round,
those men and women, those little children, those invalids, those
blind, those poor people who were about to die like rats in their
holes. And there crept into one's soul an infinite pathos.
[Illustration: THE SING SENG ROAD. The smartest thoroughfare of
Hankow, after the fire. For over a week fierce fighting was
maintained here.]
But I ask again, Can _you_ imagine all this? And imagining, think
you that you could describe? I watch, and watch. The flames seem to
draw me into their fiery bosom as the phosphorus does in the sea. I
can see it all, spreading away madly to the right, to the left, then
again meeting in the centre. It tears cruelly along does this great
belt of jagged flame, and soon will {83} meet its fellow. They seem
to be racing, each section of that horrid fire appearing to be vieing
with that other section in killing and burning, in slow death, many
peaceable people who were unable to flee. On it goes again, and
upwards, downwards, in, out, back, forth; sometimes it comes to a
greater mass, which yields less readily, and there it sits, like some
great bird of prey, until its conquest is at hand, and then goes
forward again with a furious glee. I have asked you whether,
imagining this, you could describe it. Here am I, seated on a lofty
rooftop, and see it. It is here, in all its horrible reality,
happening before my eyes as I write, making the history of our time,
and it is my business to describe it; that is why I am here. And yet
my pen falls helplessly. It baffles description. The phraseology
will not come. The words stick, the pen remains unmoved; I cannot
describe it. By far the worst thing I have ever known is this savage
razing of a great city to become a city of the dead and a place of
weeping.
[Illustration: Map of Hankow Native City Showing Burnt Area.]
But one thinks as one sees, far away in one corner of that deep,
dense, disordered flaming mass, one small, straight line of smoke
going up to the heavens, that that is the fitting sacrifice to the
hand of Destiny henceforth to guide this downtrodden people into
happier channels. That, however, will come with the years; now the
fire is with us. In our own way, we who watched the war had talked
about the burning of the city. After all, it is nothing much to burn
a city of five hundred thousand souls to the ground. In China one
walled city is hardly to be reckoned; and what, pray you, is it for
five hundred thousand human beings among four hundred and thirty
millions to be without home or shelter? When China burns, when she
kills, when she does anything that people who call themselves
civilised shrink from dreaming of, she shows the world that she is
the past mistress in all things that we call savage. It is, to us,
an act of cruellest {84} savagery. To us it is a sin against God and
man wilfully to burn a city to the ground, wantonly to destroy
hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of accumulated wealth; to us
it is all a crime unthinkable. To China it is a good thing that by
such acts of so-called savagery, of realest barbarism, of grossest,
inhuman tactics the people, the common people, the hewers of national
wood and the drawers of national water, are taught to know that they
must keep their place, that the hand of the Government is strong,
that the place in which Heaven has placed them must honourably be
filled, and that towards Revolution they should have no leanings. To
China the sweeping into eternity of thousands of fellow-mortals is
for the benefit of those who remain, and the destruction of property
in their national hysteria matters not a moment of passing thought.
So to those of us who know China, and who cannot believe that all
that we see and hear is true of the bewildering reform that is
alleged to have caught the country and its people into its arms, it
was not a great surprise to see the Imperialists carrying out their
threat to burn the city to ashes. And it is fortunate that scores of
thousands of people, who knew the national spirit and who expected
the horrors of former rebellions to be repeated, packed up what
little belongings they could and cleared out of gunshot by either
land or water.
Throughout the long day the fire burned away, making a sight as
wonderful as it was ghastly. From the fateful city the frightened
people who had remained behind came in droves; or, at any rate, they
made the attempt, only to be shot down by the soldiers who were
waiting for them. If no satisfactory explanation was forthcoming
from those terrified people, they were unmercifully bayoneted or shot
dead. The streets were guarded by Imperialists, who seemed bent on
having blood, and who, with frightful glee, carried out their mission
with impunity. It is, perhaps, {85} needless to say more. It was a
sight that Nero might have enjoyed, but to any one with any humanity
left him, even to those people one occasionally meets in China who
have no sympathies for the Chinese, and think that they should not be
helped religiously or socially, but should be left to go on their
ill-appointed way, the sight must have caused the greatest pain.
People would come to the exits of the city hoping to find refuge on
the Foreign Concessions; they had dropped on the way the little gear
they could at the outset carry, and now they were hopeful, at all
events, of saving their lives, and sought to come through the gates.
But no, even this was denied them. Back they had to go, probably to
their doom. The British bluejackets stationed at these exits told me
that their hearts bled for the pitiful people, but their instructions
were that none should come out. One of the greatest menaces
confronting the British authorities was the looting which threatened
the burning city. One road only separated the city from the British
Concession, and when the people began to flee the looters were in an
Eldorado. The scoundrels would come out with furs, silks, silver
ware, and every sort and condition of valuable, deposit it in the
Concessions, and go back for more, until it became necessary to
prevent Chinese from coming on the Concessions. After a time,
however, this rule was modified, and volunteers who could speak the
language were stationed there to inquire the mission of those who
were fleeing; but hundreds must have run from gate to gate, like rats
in their holes, knowing that each moment the fire was encroaching
ominously. At night the sight was watched by hundreds. Truly
heartbreaking was it to look on one of the finest cities on the
Yangtze being razed to the ground. When the darkness came on the
wide expanse of red flame lit up the country for miles around. At
the London Mission Hospital, adjoining the Concessions, there was a
scare for fear that {86} the place would catch, for the wind veered
slightly. All the patients were routed from their beds and carried
to other places of refuge. Europeans and natives formed one large
mutual band in carrying away the valuables. The sights we saw we
shall never forget. The pitiable condition of the people, the
indignation of the multitudes, who swore vengeance against the
Government, and much more that one cannot hurriedly think of or
relate, will live long in our memories.
At the time of the fire's outbreak it was thought that thousands must
have perished in that modern Sodom and Gomorra. The Imperialists
were mad for the lusts of war. A day or two previous Yuan Shih K'ai
had offered a large reward for the recapture of Hankow, and the men
were hot for the spoils. Their dead, truckloads piled up
irreverently, were all deposited in the flames, and over the
Concessions on the second day of the fire came the rank smell of
smouldering human flesh. During those days Europeans witnessed a
hell from their rooftops. At the back of the British Concession, at
the back of the French, and at the back of the German were batteries;
the Imperialists were winning their way over towards the Han River,
their goal, and from their batteries an incessant shelling was
vigorously kept up.
No one would forget those days. But lest they should, as it seemed,
the big guns from Tachimen kept hard at it, planking shells into the
city of Hanyang and anywhere else where soldiers were likely to lay
ambushed. The guns boomed away for an hour, and then there came
again dead silence, disturbed only by those who were still rescuing
the wounded and the helpless. But the calm lasted not for long.
Soon from the corner of the city nearest the Foreign Concessions
there came fresh wreaths of black smoke, showing that the deadly work
had recommenced. Soon the flames leaped up again, the wind blew them
farther inwards to the houses still standing, shells inconsequently
{87} fell near by; there was the same pathos and the same panic--the
city was on fire again. And so it continued for three days, and one
could see all over again what he might imagine in that prairie fire.
[Illustration: THE TOLL OF THE DEAD. After the heavy fighting round
Tachimen, nearly all the work of collecting the dead for burial fell
to the lot of foreigners.]
The wrath of Hades seemed to be upon the people. All around the
countryside they were scared--and well they might have been, for in
their fury the Imperialists burned everything as they went along. In
the midst of the huge conflagration, a general invitation was sent
out to foreigners to go into the city by way of the Maloo--the big
road skirting the city--to bring out eighty blind boys and the
wounded from the Wesleyan Mission Hospital. First impressions were
that the hospital and school and all that the Mission possessed had
been gutted. "We have £10,000 in the Mission," I overheard one of
the missionaries say, "but that's not so important as my blind boys."
Meantime permission by the Red Cross authorities had been secured for
the rescue party to go into the city. Each man as he volunteered
knew he went at great personal risk. Fighting was still heavy, but
every moment made a difference--and who knew but that those blind
boys were being burnt alive? By dark they had, however, been
rescued--only those who went knew at what cost.
On November 3rd a significant lull took place.
These lulls are dangerous forerunners of evil in China.
The Imperialists had captured Hankow, and were known to be ready to
forge ahead towards Hanyang, the great stronghold of the
Revolutionists--a city almost impregnable in itself, with a high hill
sheltering the town behind, and reached only after fording a rapid
river some hundred yards wide at the narrowest. To the north-west a
range of hills literally bristled with Revolutionary big guns; the
Hanyang Hill itself was practically one shell-proof cover, and noses
of guns of all sizes pointed in every direction. At Wuchang all {88}
the hills were fortified, and along the river-front big guns were
lined for many miles above and below the town. But in the actual
fighting, as has been said, there came a lull. That it was a
dangerous lull and that it came before the storm was firmly believed.
No one better than the Chinese can wait--they are all past-masters in
the art of dilly-dallying--and it was believed that a few days would
see either the end of the war and the establishment of a new rule
under Yuan's dictatorship or the re-establishment of Imperial rule
with some modifications, or there would come about a state of affairs
infinitely worse than anything yet seen.
With the Revolutionists repeatedly beaten back, although at
considerable loss to the Imperialists, with two-thirds of Hankow city
nothing but a heap of black, charred ruins, with thousands and tens
of thousands of people wandering with no home and no food, with women
maltreated and ravished, with looting and massacring proceeding at a
devilish pace, the casual onlooker would have concluded that the
Revolutionists had had enough. They had seen that the Imperial hand
in dealing with them was inclined to come down with extreme force,
and if need be, to crush and totally annihilate them--if it could.
But, strangely, the Revolutionists, despite their sad plight, with
most of their best men killed or wounded, and a haphazard army only
at the command of the new leader, were still more enthusiastic.
Probably the most remarkable feature of the whole Revolution in the
immediate centre of the three cities around which the active
operations were concentrated was the behaviour of the Revolutionary
troops. This to the Westerner who has never been to China may not be
deemed as important. But the student of Chinese affairs and the
readers of Chinese history will be aware that in past revolts in this
country the soldiery, such as it had been, had not startled the world
with their clean conduct at any period. The reverse had been {89}
the case. Previous rebellions had been made famous for the amount of
looting, stealing, ravishing, and general lawlessness that had
prevailed. But in the Revolution which was led by General Li there
was none of this. Throughout, the magnificent manner in which the
troops, both trained and untrained, had behaved was a credit to every
one concerned in the revolt.
The following edict, one of several published during the first days,
will go to show the spirit of the leaders:--
"Li, commander-in-chief of the Chinese People's Army, by
authority of the military Government, a special proclamation:
"By the command of the army administration, I desire you the
people of my country to know that wherever our patriotic troops
come you need have no occasion for the least suspicion or
anxiety. I come to save you and with no idea of acquiring merit
or personal profit, but to pull you out of fire and water, and to
cure you of your cankering maladies. Hitherto you have been
bitterly oppressed and drowned in a sea of misery through being
under the government of an alien race who treat you as bastards
and not as children. You must know that the present day Manchu
slaves do not belong to the family of Han, and we, being animated
by heaven-high patriotism, will not spare them their
well-deserved retribution. On this account I could not but raise
our patriotic flag in order to give you deliverance by causing
all the people to unite their strength and drive them out,
together with the traitorous Chinese robbers whom I will not
permit to continue long. These robbers have hitherto eaten our
flesh and now we will sleep in their skins. Whoever is animated
by patriotic sentiments let him quickly come and join our ranks,
and together gain the glory of delivering the country. The day
of the revival of the Han people is arrived with the
establishment of the Chinese republic with which you my brethren
will have no cause to be ashamed. Scholars, farmers, artisans,
and merchants, let all unite their efforts with ours to drive out
the Manchu barbarians. Wherever our army goes it will be under
perfect control and troops and people will be treated alike
without the least partiality to either. I desire you my beloved
uterine brothers every one to respectfully listen to my
exhortation.
"Dated the 18th day of the first year of Hwang Ti, being the
4609th year of China."
The other side of the question was eloquently put {90} in an Imperial
edict, published about the same time, and which reads:--
"For over a month the various provinces have been greatly
disturbed. The causes for this have not been all alike, and it
is necessary to discriminate in again proclaiming Our intentions
to the Empire. Those who are in favour of reforming the
Government by revolutionary methods have been making impossible
demands upon the Throne, yet We recognise that they have been
called forth by a patriotic love for their country and are
sincere; and also that the country is thrown into confusion and
distress because We have failed to make progress in Governmental
reform. We have repeatedly proclaimed that a reformed and
Constitutional Government shall be established, and We have
granted an amnesty to all who formally have been guilty of
political crimes, also allowing Revolutionists to form themselves
into a political party to be used in the service of the State.
But with regard to those Revolutionists, who ferment race hatred,
who desire to create a feeling of enmity between the Manchus and
the Chinese, they are not working for the reformation of the
Government, but are simply dealing out ruin all round in order to
gratify their private hate, and for this there is no
justification. We are labouring for the prosperity of the
kingdom and the happiness of the people, and We cannot make the
Government a constitutional one till the Empire is at peace. If
these men are allowed to excite the people with their mischievous
speeches and pernicious ideas the disturbances will increase, the
people will be scattered and miserably perish. When the four
classes of the people lose their occupation, the whole country is
thrown into confusion. There will be no end to the calamities.
We would, therefore, earnestly and sincerely impress upon you
scholars, gentry, army and people, the necessity of understanding
the principle of reforming the Government and repressing
disturbances. The Throne loves and respects the people, and
wishes them to seek after improvement, but as for those who act
in opposition to this and keep on creating disturbances, they are
the enemies of the public and a danger to all. Although they are
but a minority, My people ought to put them down with a strong
hand, yet if they will repent their former crimes, they should be
pardoned and their past offences not brought up against them.
But bad characters, who seize the opportunity to burn, kill, rape
and plunder, cannot be allowed to escape by any law of reason.
They must be rooted out and hunted down with all speed till they
are utterly exterminated in order that the good and peaceful
people may be protected. Therefore, let the Tartar Generals,
commanders-in-chief, viceroys, governors and all who are in
military authority respect my will and, discriminating between
{91} the political parties put down the irreconcilables. The
Army and the people will understand this intention, and let all
above and below with one mind labour for improvement. Then will
the country be fortunate and the people enjoy felicity without
limit.
"Let this Edict, together with the Edict of the 14th [Nov. 4th]
be printed on yellow paper and posted, so that all may be
informed. Respect this."
{92}