The Savannah morning news., 1904-05-01

threeS, inviting the nVlng TO
school," -Kipling.
Nothing in history-not even in the
history of our own country, or in the
exploitation of the gold bearing parts
of Australia-equals the amazing
development of Manchuria since 1900
During one month of the summer of
that year. Russia, in putting down
the Boxer uprising, ruthlessly swept
the land with fire and sword, her Ave
armies crowding a year of war into
a space of thirty days. The massa-
ere of the Chinese at Blagoveschensk
and the destruction of the population
of Aigun in the flames of their
own houses were but typical of
| the Russian method of warfare.
| Then, all suddenly, when the Boxer
armies had been annihilated, and the
besieged Russian railroaders rescued,
| peace officially reigned over the land.
Critics of Russian methods might
have said, They made a wilderness
and called it peace, and there would
| have been truth in the accusation
But almost before the smoke of the
guns had rolled away and the ashes
of burned villages had grown cold,
| Russia set to work with feverish en-
| ergy to re-people the desert and Gre
ate cities where hamlets once had been
| and towns where the wolf had roamed
| unchecked.
The Gar Does ii All.
The weak point in the business, as
in the whole scheme of Russian ad-
ministration and colonization in the
East, is that it is artificially stimulat-
| ed. The government does everything.
~ nf
business enterprises are subsidized,
directly or indirectly, by the govern
ment. The government goes ahead
| or the people all the time. There is
no restless impulse driving the Rus
| sian peasant to reach out to the ut
termost ends of Asia and to carve out
a home and fortune for himself, as
| American pioneers did by slow de-
srees until they reached the Pacific
| coast.
This has always been the history of
russian expansion. There was Rus
sion governor, generations ago, who
built fleet of armed ships and placed
them on the Caspian. threatening Per-
STA. When he was demonstrated with,
he replied:
They are needed to take supplies
TO our settlers on the eastern shores
| of the lake"
But there are no settlers there" he
was told.
NO? Well, that is a detail. The
ships will take some settlers there,
and then carry supplies to them"
The Flag Goes First.
There, in a nutshell, is the order of
the Russian advance. The flag goes
first and makes it's conquests. Then
come the industrial and commercial
interests, which give the flag a color
| able excuse for rem aiming
At the end of the campaign Russia
| had nearly 100000 troops in Manchuria
| and the adjacent Russian provinces.
| Strong attachments, mostly Cossacks,
were posted at short intervals all along
the lines of railway construction;
small but strong forts were built for
them; and the work interrupted by the
Boxer outbreak was resumed with re-
doubled energy long before the fight
! ing was over. Indeed, although the
| great campaign of 1900 ended so
| quickly, guerilla warfare on small
scale was being vigorously prose-
cuted in the summer of 1902 and the
| hunchuses-Admiral Alexieff's red
bearded brigands giving a lot
of trouble as recently as last summer.
! They were Russia's standing excuse
for not carrying out her numerous
| diplomatic pledges to evacuate Man
| churia.
| Chunchuses of Manchuria-
A good deal of misrepresentation ex-
| lists as to who these Chunchuses are.
The Russian authorities try to make
| cut that they are the bandits who
roamed Manchuria before they entered
the country, and who were produced
| by the wretched misgovernment of the
Manchu officials. This is not the
fact. Only a small proportion of the
Chunchuses have been in the bandit
business for that length of time.
The great majority were made out
laws by the campaign of 1900.
Russian victories and Russian mas
sacres drove the remnants of the
Boxer hordes and the Chinese regular
troops to seek safety in the wild re-
cesses of the mountains and forests.
They were joined by large numbers
of peaceful peasants whose families
had been extirpated and whose farms
had been laid waste by the Russians.
Thus it was that a considerable pro-
portion of the inhabitants of Man
churia were transformed by Russian
policy into desperate brigands, and
have been hunted down ever since like
wild dogs.
Under these circumstances the de-
velopment of Manchuria had to be
emphatically a military development.
The towns, which sprang up like
mushrooms almost overnight, were in
reality huge military posts.
Khabarovsk's Boom.
Take the case of Khabarovsk. When
the Russians went to Manchuria 1t
was only a small village. At the be-
ginning of 1901 it was a fourishing
town of $1,000 people; but nearly
everybody in the place was either a
government official of some kind or
a soldier.
when I passed through the town
in 1901" said Archibald Colquhoun,
the well-known English traveller,
there were no fewer than twenty-nine
generals there. The whole place SIM
ply bristled with uniforms the officers
were quartered in every house, and
We're sleeping in every corner of The
military club, some six or seven in the
billiard room"
Still more wonderful was the rapid
growth of Hardin. A tiny fishing viii
lage before the Russian advent, it was
selected as the headquarters of the