Evening star., 1934-10-28

~ N THE north and on the west
the Red line of Russia, backed
by the militant drive Of Com
~ munist theology. On the east,
expanding Manchoukuo, be-
hind the transparent facade of which
Japan shapes her continental empire.
And to the south, cropping China,
politically weak, yet in the process of
subtly advancing her economic from
tiers into regions politically weaker
still.
These are the restless neighbors. the
large avid forces that handbook
ingly focused since 1881. With one of
them the Mongols, shaken at last from
their aloofness, must find destiny
With one of them the nomads of desert
and grasslands must yield TO the pres
sure of what Is loosely called modern
civilization.
Despite its obviously growing i'm
portance in Eastern affairs, Mongolia,
however, is comparatively little known,
ing it.
Map Reference Not Illuminating.
Reference to maps is not very illu-
minating. Unless quite recently made,
the ordinary map of Asia shows you
Mongolia only as an uncitied expanse
beyond the Great Wall, colored usually
in the hue of China Actually, of
course. it is not part of China; and
today the greater part Of it has passed
beyond Chinese influence. How did it
happen?
During the early years of the Manchu
Dynasty, Mongol lands stretched from
Kansu and Eastern Tibet northward
across the Cobb Desert to the Siberian
steppes. On the west they also en-
braced districts clear to the region of
the lower Volga. They reached east
ward to include about half of what
became known in the West as Man.
churia. Mongol domains in Manchuria
extended down through Jehol to the
Great Wall. their southern boundary.
Within these rough limits. the lands
collectively known as Mongolia. were
tribes with marked cultural similari-
ties, believed to have had a common
clinical relationship with the fungus,
early men of Manchuria.
For more than 1000 years, and for
long after the impact of the West had
begun violent pulsations in China and
Japan, life among the Mongols scarcely
had changed in its central pattern at
all. They remained, like their austere
ancestors. herdsmen and breeders of
cattle. living much of their life in the
saddle, all of it in the open. They
held cities In disdain. and the few that
existed in Mongolia were merely
glorified cattle markets dominated by
cunning Chinese traders, or meccas
of Lamaism, presided over by equally
cunning priests.
Had No Unemployment.
They had no mines. no railways, no
telegraphs, no factories and no unem-
ployment. They lived by the severe
but effective codes deriving from the
Great Yassak of Genghis Khan, which
punished by death such crimes as
theft. adultery. sodomy, mendacity or
bankruptcy after the third time"
A stubbornly unsettled people, they
rotated from one good pasture or graz
ing land to another, abjur;=S eli COM
forts that could no. be easily trans
ported by POM or primitive cart or
between the humps of camels, satisfy
ing their simple wants by their pastoral
self sufficient ecSnomy. Property con-
sisted merely of thN arms, cattle and
accountrements of existence within
the felt walls Of portable "yurtS"-
tents. They did not own land as in
dividualS, but as tribal units known as
hoshun.
They occupied region which never
was conquered by China, but over
which the Chinese inherited loose
suzerainty. Before the Manchu Dyn-
aSty Mongolia had an area of about
100000 square miles. While nomi-
nally it came under Manchu sway,
Mongol chieftains in an immense ter
ritory were in practice virtually auton-
omous. Their princes, claiming di-
rect descent from Genghis Khan,
"conqueror of all men," regarded
themselves as allies rather than as
subjects of the Manchus.
Division Began In 1911.
The partitioning of Mongolia began
when Czarist Russia annexed regions
near the lower Volga. Somewhat
later, in spreading over Siberia, Russia
absorbed more Mongol territory. Divi-
sion did not begin in earnest, however,
until after the Chinese Revolution in
1911. In that year, backed by Rus
sian imperialists, some of the native
princes in Outer Mongolia declared
their independence from China and
established kind of thearchy headed