Perang Dunia Timur. Jepang, Tiongkok, dan Korea/Bab 17

REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF THE WAR TO THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER.

Characteristics of the two Nations in War—China’s Ignorance of the Coasts of Corea—Japan’s Knowledge of Chinese Topography and Climate—Patriotism in the Two Countries—Bad Judgment of China in Methods of Conducting the War—The Governmental Weather-Vane and its Revolutions—No Commander-in-Chief for the Chinese Army—Official Corruption in Civil as Well as Military Officials—The Battles of Ping-Yang and the Yalu River—Handling the Forces of the Enemies.

At this period in the war, occurs a lull which makes it possible and wise to take a glance at the whole course of affairs during the hostilities, since the declaration three months earlier. The war has advanced far enough to prove the mettle of both combatants, and to furnish data for judging of the probable issue of the struggle, at least from a purely military point of view. At the beginning of November, prophets were quite well equipped with material for predictions that were surely not to be disappointed, and it is from the aspect at this date that the present chapter takes its view. On the one side there is little but praise to be offered. The Japanese have proved themselves assiduous students of all modern armaments, and have in many points bettered their European instruction. They have made good their claim to be the rising power of the Orient.

Of the Chinese a diametrically opposite account must be given. From a military standpoint nothing favorable can be said of them, and the only palliation of their failure is that they were wholly unprepared for an unexpected aggression. The course of the war has brought out in strong relief what has not always been clearly recognized, the essential differences between the two belligerent nations. A stronger contrast is scarcely imaginable than that between China and Japan, though they are so near and have been nursed on a common literature. With passionate effort the Japanese have ransacked the western world for its treasures of knowledge, and have vigorously applied what they have learned. The Chinese, on the other hand, have set their 544faces against the science of other nations, and with an unhappy mixture of apathy and contempt have rejected the teaching which has pressed upon them. In the same spirit they have spurned the knowledge of their own country and of their own forces, while the Japanese have been for years making a minute study of both, and possess maps and details which the Chinese themselves have not and do not care for. The Chinese have carried on a large trade with the Yalu river, but the government knew nothing of the coast. Captain Calder of Port Arthur made a holiday expedition to the Manchoo-Corean coast, found the country beautiful, and recommended the naval authorities to let the cadets go and improve themselves by surveying it. Nothing was done, the sole reason being that the incidental expenses of the ships would be increased by being at sea, and the captains would not save so much of their monthly allowance. Now the only survey the Chinese admiral possesses even of the scene of the late naval battle, is the outline made by Captain Calder himself. The Japanese navy has complete charts both of the Corean and the Chinese coasts. In the summer of 1893 a small expedition of Japanese disguised as Chinese, in a native boat surveyed the islands and coasts of the Gulf of Pechili, spending eight days in the immediate neighborhood of Port Arthur. The topography and physiography of North China have been their study for years.

A Japanese physician even devoted a whole year to the climate and pathology. With his headquarters in Tien-tsin, where he plied the foreign doctors incessantly with queries, this Japanese investigator thoroughly explored the province of Chihli, and probably knows more of the climatic conditions of North China than any other living man. He pretended he had the intention of practicing among the Chinese, as possibly he may in the not distant future. The Chinese have started exotic medical schools, but they have not overcome the elementary difficulty about dissection, and the enterprise is but half hearted. As for employing competent men to gather knowledge, the whole idea is foreign to the Chinese official mind, and they only accept ungraciously as a gift the results of the explorations of enthusiasts for science. It is not, therefore, the accident of being a little 545earlier in the field, or quicker in movement to seize the benefit of an opportunity, that gives the Japanese such crushing advantages over the Chinese, but rather a deep-seated, congenital love of improvement on one side and hatred of it on the other.

Another essential difference between the people is their exhibition of patriotism. The Japanese are saturated with it, while the Chinese have none. The instinct of loyalty is there, and it can be called out by any man, native or foreign, who is worthy of it, but in the sense of nationality the Chinese have no capacity for enthusiasm, and the people as a whole are indifferent as to who rules them, so long as they are left to cultivate their gardens. For want of a patriotic focus, what would elsewhere be treachery is in China a commonplace of official practices; every man to the limit of his small ability selling his country for his private benefit, and no one able to cast a stone at his neighbor. In Japan it would be impossible to get a man to betray his fatherland; in China where is the man who would not? From the same root springs the incredible difference between the peoples in their treatment of soldiers and sailors. In the one country they are made heroes of, the people at home send delicacies to the troops abroad, honor the dead, and nurse the wounded. In the other the men are treated worse than dogs, robbed of their small pay, deserted, discarded, or grossly neglected by their leaders whenever they can be dispensed with and their monthly pay saved. Attachment between men and officers in China is a rare, though not an unknown thing, for the Chinese are, after all, human at heart, if one can but penetrate the pile of hereditary corruption which has covered up the divine spark.

The foregoing are but examples which might be multiplied indefinitely, of the antitheses of Chinese and Japanese character and mode of action. If to all this is added the fact that the Japanese are a people who delight in war, while the Chinese abominate it, no further search is needed for explanation of the actual result. It is simply ignorance overcome by science, indifference by energy.

The Chinese have conducted the campaign in the manner those best acquainted with them would have predicted, doing on most occasions the utterly wrong thing, or stumbling on the right 546thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. But the most pessimistic prophet could hardly have predicted the utter inaptitude of the Chinese military movements. It is not only that they have failed to learn the modern art of war, but that they have forgotten the old methods. It was thought that Chinese troops, though deficient in enterprise, might at least make a respectable defense. They were advised never to risk a pitched battle, but to retreat slowly, giving trouble to the enemy by night attacks on his baggage, and compelling him to use up an army corps to keep open his line of communication. They failed in every point, and allowed themselves to be chased and caught like sheep, losing stores, guns, and munitions. When all else failed, it was said that winter would come to their assistance, as the Japanese could never stand the cold, while the Chinese and Manchoos were inured to it. But when the cold came it was found that it was not the Japanese but the Chinese who suffered, having abandoned their warm clothing in precipitate flight. Their heart was never in the business, and nothing therefore could go right with the Chinese conduct of the war.

While the war was incubating, China had to make up her mind how she was to meet the aggression of the Japanese in Corea. Candid friends, who knew well that her inchoate forces could never be a match for any organized army whatsoever, commended strictly defensive strategy. She was caught in the false position—in a military sense, though it was politically correct—of having a small force isolated in southern Corea, while the Japanese were occupying the capital in strength. The fighting value of the respective fleets was as yet an unknown quantity, but on the Japanese side there was confidence in their own superiority, and on the part of the Chinese a tacit acquiescence in that estimate. Under such circumstances an over-sea campaign was an absurdity for China, and the commonest prudence dictated that the small garrison at Asan be withdrawn before the outbreak of war.

This crisis in affairs was met, as crises usually are in China, by divided counsels; moral cowardice on the part of those who knew, blind rage on the part of those who did not know, and the submission of the judgment of the informed to the arbitrary decrees and even the insidious advice of the uninformed. To speak 547plainly, Li Hang Chang, on whom the burden of the war would in all cases rest, and who knew something, though very little, of the power of discipline and organization, and who from the first was strongly opposed to the intervention in Corea, which was forced on him by pressure applied from Peking, was for withdrawing the garrison from Asan. In answer to his memorials to the throne, he had obtained the imperial authority and had hired transports to bring the troops over into Chinese territory. But other counsels supervened, and Li Hung Chang refrained from giving effect to his own views. As the Japanese were by imperial fiat to be driven out of Corea, it followed that the garrison at Asan must be strengthened, and China committed herself to the conditions of war dictated by the enemy, an offensive war oversea, which was entirely beyond China’s capacity.

There were still discussions and hesitations up to the moment of dispatching troops by sea to Corea. When the expedition of 548troops was seen to be inevitable, the Chinese were advised to take at least the precaution of having the transports escorted by a strong naval squadron. This was decided to be done, and the ill-fated Kow-shing left Taku on the clear understanding that an escort of warships would join her outside Wei-hai-wei, which was two hundred and twenty miles distant, and roughly half way to Asan. But before the transport had got so far on her voyage, the official weathercock had set in another direction. The diplomatic Yuan-si-Kai, former resident in Corea, where he had done so much to irritate the Japanese, now advised that the appearance of warships with the transports might give umbrage to the Japanese, and in deference to this opinion, before the pendulum had time to swing back, the Kow-shing with twelve hundred men on board, was sent unprotected to the Bay of Asan. The Japanese consular establishment, with its wonderfully organized intelligence department, was still in Tien-tsin, perfectly informed 551of everything that was being said and done in the most secret places, and making free use of the telegraph wires.

With the tragic destruction of the Kow-shing, the war was begun most disadvantageously to the Chinese. Being by one and the same stroke deprived of the expected re-enforcements and cut off from the sea, the small force at Asan had either to fight to the death, surrender, or make good their retreat by a long and dangerous flank march. This last course was adopted, and after making sufficient stand to cover their retreat, not without inflicting loss on the enemy, they succeeded in joining the Chinese army which had entered Corea from the north-west. The numbers of the retreating force were given as four thousand, but they were certainly less.

The simultaneous engagements by land and sea on the same day, July 25, proved that the Japanese had determined to begin the war in earnest. The naval action in which two Chinese ships 552were waylaid as they were leaving the Corean coast, served to prove that the Chinese ships could both fight and run away, and that the Japanese ships were very ably manœuvred, but the affair had little other significance.

Enraged by the sinking of the transport in time of nominal peace, the emperor of China ordered the fleet, over the head of Li Hung Chang, to pursue the enemy to destruction. In obedience to the imperial mandate, the Pei-yang squadron, in the early days of August, steamed for the Corean coast, but before sighting it steamed back again. The viceroy Li then interested himself to obtain a modification of the decree, and the fleet was commanded to remain on the defensive for the special protection of the Gulf of Pechili, which instruction held good until the middle of September, when the fleet was forced to accept battle off the Yalu river.

August 1st, troops were ordered to enter Corean territory from 553the Manchoorian side, and in the course of the month a considerable force had filtered its way to the city of Ping-Yang, the strongest strategical point in western Corea, and even to a considerable distance beyond. The massing of these troops was conducted in the old rough-and-tumble, half-hearted Chinese fashion. There was no head, but separate and rival commands, each general looking only to the viceroy, Li Hung Chang for orders and supplies, and receiving more of the former than of the latter.

These Chinese generals are an old world curiosity, scarcely conceivable in our age. They might be described as army contractors rather than fighting agents, for like the civil mandarins they buy their posts as an investment. The battalion or camp is farmed, as regards its expenses, by the general, who draws from government a lump sum for the maintenance of the force, and makes his economies according to his conscience, by falsifying his muster roll and defrauding his men. At the battle or rout of Ping-Yang there were soldiers who were three, four, and even five months in arrears of pay, some generals deliberately calculating on the casualties of war to reduce the number of eventual claimants on the pay fund. The most notorious offender, General Wei of Ping-Yang notoriety, who had less than half the troops he drew pay for, and these mostly untrained coollies, hustled into the ranks to take the place of unpaid deserters, and in whose program fighting had no place, had paid certain influential persons liberally for his command. Desertion, it may be observed in passing, is not regarded as a calamity by an avaricious Chinese general.

Chinese officers are however by no means all abandoned to money making. Some are liberal with their funds, just as some are brave and loyal, and are backed by equally brave and loyal soldiers. The efficiency of a force depends altogether on the personality of the general, and as in feudal times in Europe, it is to their chief rather than to any government or country that the troops feel the ties of allegiance. As the leader is, therefore, so are the men. General Tso-pao-kwei for example, who bore to his grave the honors of the fight at Ping-Yang, was a man well known to many foreigners of different classes, missionary and others, and the unanimity of good opinion of him is quite remarkable. He was not only brave, but a courteous and kindly gentleman 554who gained the affections of all around. A Mohammedan himself, all his soldiers were of the same faith, and they stood shoulder to shoulder like heroes in the face of overpowering odds.

During the month of August, while the Japanese forces were advancing upon Ping-Yang in three columns, there were outpost skirmishes in which the Japanese were frequently worsted. These affairs were naturally enough reported by the Chinese commanders concerned, according to their lights, as victories, and when it is remembered how the view of each is bounded by the horizon of his own camp, it is easy to see how they could deceive themselves as to the significance of such apparent success. The truth seems to be that the Chinese commanders in and about Ping-Yang did not realize that they were surrounded, each perhaps thinking it was the other’s business. They had sent out no scouts, nor posted videttes to watch the mountain passes to the north of them. These elementary military precautions had been pressed on Li Hung Chang, who sent repeated orders to the front to have them seen to; but nothing was done, for according to the vicious tradition of the Chinese service, the word is taken for the deed, and orders which are either impracticable or inconvenient are simply ignored or forgotten, without the delinquent being ever called to account. Spacious but wholly fictitious excuses would in any case serve the turn in a system whose fetich is universal sham. Perhaps, as there was no commander-in-chief, but a number of independent commands, duties which concerned the army at large fell within the sphere of no one in particular. But in whatever manner it came about, the result was that the Chinese remained in comatose ignorance of the intentions of the enemy, until the only thing left was precipitate retreat.

The affair of Ping-Yang was observed by one military expert, a Russian, who speaks in high terms of the precision and completeness of the Japanese equipment and organization, but the opposition had been so contemptible throughout the war that the military qualities of the Japanese have not been seriously put to the proof. They remain a theoretical quantity. So far as the campaign had gone, to November 1, the chief obstacles encountered had been bad roads, standing crops, and sickness.

The second day after the flight from Ping-Yang, September 17, the naval battle off the Yalu River was fought. The collision of the fleets seems to have been somewhat unpremeditated. The Chinese were engaged in disembarking troops for the re-enforcement of the army at Ping-Yang, and it is a characteristically haphazard proceeding that they should have been landing troops one hundred and twenty miles from the front, to strengthen a position already abandoned. The battle which ensued, and which raged for five hours, has been described with as much fullness as the limits of this volume permit, but the ultimate truth about it will perhaps never be fully known except of course to the Japanese government. From the Chinese side it will be impossible to obtain a consistent account, not because of intentional concealment, but because of the simple reason that no one in the Chinese fleet was able to observe accurately what was going on, except near his own vessel. Nevertheless the salient points of the battle stand out clear enough. The sea fight was but a repetition of the land fight, with two important differences. The first of these was that as the nature of the cause rendered it impossible to sail modern ships of war at all by two-thousand-year-old tactics, the mere possession of a fleet required a European organization. But the organization was imperfect, and would have been unable to sustain itself in action, but for the presence of another element in which the Chinese land forces were entirely lacking, competent foreign direction. This factor also was most imperfect. The foreign officers had been extemporized hastily, the leader of them being not even a seaman. They were of various nationalities and were enlisted about the middle of August. Three engineers, two German, one English; two gunnery officers, one English, one German; had been for some years in the fleet, and volunteered for war service. One American engaged for many years in the Chinese naval college also volunteered for active service during the war. Captain Von Hannecken, bearing now the rank of Chinese general, commissioned as Inspector General of Fortifications, was entrusted with the anomalous office of adviser of the admiral, thus giving him the real command of the fleet. An English civilian with naval training also joined.

On entering on their duties, these officers found the fleet honeycombed 556with abuses requiring patient reform, but they set themselves to make the best of things as they were, and to get the ships as quickly as possible into action, as the thing most needful in order to brace up officers and men. Von Hannecken urged unceasingly an offensive policy. He would seek out the Japanese and attack them wherever found, fall on their convoys, and generally assert the supremacy of China in Corean waters, from the Yalu eastward. In particular he urged the occupation of Ping-Yang inlet, so important for the support of the army which held the city of that name, and, if necessary, to fight to the death for the possession of a harbor at once so valuable and so easily defended. His prescience was indicated in the sequel, but to all such suggestions Admiral Ting replied with the imperial edict which forbade him to move out of Chinese waters. The convoying service for which the fleet was eventually told off in the middle of September was a sort of compromise, which, without transgressing too flagrantly the imperial restrictions, yet committed the fleet to an engagement on conditions not of its own choosing.

The handling of the respective fleets showed the great superiority of the Japanese professional training, and critics have commented on the weakness of the Chinese manœuvring, but the first consideration was to get the Chinese to fight at all. The government had satisfied itself that without foreigners to lead them, the Chinese commanders would rather lose their ships in trying to escape than stand up to the enemy. The man, the only man available, who possessed the requisite qualities, personal and professional, including a competent knowledge of Chinese, happened to be a soldier, but he at least made the fleet fight, not as a trained admiral would have done with a trained fleet, but in a manner to inspire the Chinese with some confidence in themselves, in which till then they were greatly lacking. That is perhaps the most important result of the baptism of fire of the Chinese navy.

As regards the technical bearings of the action off the Yalu, the Chinese admiral and captains adopted the formation which they said had been taught them by Captain Lang as the most advantageous for attack. But obviously a plan communicated four 557years ago by an officer whom these same men had intrigued out of their navy, when he had taken it through only half its course of training, could not be considered an infallible weapon with which to meet the thoroughly efficient navy of Japan.

The fight brought out several of the weak points of the Chinese naval organization, and taught the officers many lessons. Most conspicuously was the fatuous economy of ammunition exposed. The most formidable ships for offense and defense were of course the two iron clads Ting-Yuen and Chen-Yuen, with their twelve and one-half inch guns. These guns throw a shell three and one-half calibres long, charged with forty pounds of powder. It is a projectile of low initial velocity, but a most destructive explosive, as the Japanese have testified. There were but four of these shells in the fleet, all being on board the Chen-Yuen. Of a smaller, and of course cheaper shell for the same guns two and one-half calibres long, used for target practice, there were in all fourteen in the two iron clads, and they were fired off in the first hour and a half of the engagement, after which only steel shot was left with which to continue the fight. From the condition of the flag ship and her consort, may be inferred that of the other vessels in the fleet. They were at once however, after the battle, well supplied with shell except of the larger size.

The Chinese fleet was at a disadvantage in manœuvring from inferior speed, but a greater difficulty even than that was the perversity of the personnel. Even on board the flag ship orders were not carried out, but varied or suppressed at the discretion of the officers. In telegraphing from the conning tower to the engine room, the plans of the admiral were frustrated, by the officer who moved the telegraph signalling a low speed when the admiral was ordering a high speed, in order to close with the enemy. This trick was only discovered after the battle, by comparing notes with the German engineer who was below. How many other ways of cheating the commanding officer were resorted to during those critical hours, no one can tell. As for the other ships of the fleet, it is acknowledged that after the first round they kept no formation, each ship fighting her own battle, except the two ironclads with the foreign officers on board, which kept moving in concert till the close. The flagship lost all her signal 558halyards and a number of signal men in the beginning of the action, and thereby lost touch with the rest of the squadron.

From the capture of Ping-Yang, to the first of November, the progress of the war attested the circumspection of the Japanese, who from first to last resolved to risk nothing by land or sea. There was practically no resistance, and the Chinese government was tolerably aware that there would be none, either at the Yalu or at Feng-hwang-tcheng. What the government reckoned on, if they can be said to have made any reckoning at all, was that the forces assembled at Chiu-lien-tcheng would delay the advance of the enemy till something turned up, or till the winter should come to the aid of the invaded. Well, winter came, and lo it was the Chinese and not the Japanese who were its first victims. Poor General Sung, driven out of Kiu-lien-tcheng, and falling back on Feng-hwang-tcheng, was followed up so sharp that, with the remnant of his force, he had to retreat to the mountains, without extra clothing or baggage. The cold set in, and snow was falling on these shivering wretches, while the enemy was enjoying the comparative luxury of the towns and villages.

By this time in the history of the war, it seemed certain that in such a conflict as was to be anticipated, China would not entrust the ultimate defense of the empire to such loose levies as had been in the field. From the time of their organization, these 561troops under arms have constituted a danger to the peace of China, whether in victory or defeat, and perhaps there was a certain cynical calculation in the release by the Japanese of prisoners, that they might swell the ranks of brigands. It was believed by many friends of China that the dispersion of these troops would make room for an army built up on a different system, should the government be at last aroused to a sense of the necessity for military reform.

Until this time, the government of China properly so called, had not been able to bring its intelligence to bear on the question of imperial defense. That had been left in the hands of the imperial viceroy Li Hung Chang, who has for many years conducted the foreign as well as the naval and military affairs of the empire. But during the fall the Peking government was gradually gathering the reins into its own hands. The return of Prince Kung to the counsels of the emperor was a marked expression of the new resolution. The summoning of Von Hannecken by imperial edict to Peking was another indication of the suspension of Li Hung Chang’s function of general middleman between the empire and the world. Whether this new born energy for affairs was to have staying power sufficient to launch the government on the unknown sea of foreign science, and save the empire from disruption was problematical, but the war still raged on, and out of its immediate issues, it was predicted by many, was to arise a state of thing which would mock the slow progress of mere evolutionary reform, by a cataclysm which might do in one day what a century of deliberation could not accomplish.