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FILLING WATER CASKS
(Copyright. 1904. by William Thorp.)
Thi-y terribly carpet the earth with dead,
and ti fciro the cannons cool
Tlu'y walk unarnu'd, by twm and thrws,.
lnvttliiK tlio living to Bchuol.
Klpllnir.
"NOTHING In hlBlory not ever. In thai
lJ I hlHtory of our own country, or in
A I tin. p tiliiltutifin .if thi iriil.l-tfitr-
LJJJ Iiik parts of Austrulla equalM tha
XiCtitiitt mazlnK development of Manchu
ria Hlrii'O 1!KK).
iJurlng one month of the pummer of that
year IIuhhIu, In putting down the Koxcr up
rtHlnK. ruthleHHly swept tho land with flro
nd nword Its nrniliH crowding a year of
war Into n space of thirty dnys. The mns
acre of the ChlncMO at HlafroveHchenslc
and the destruction of tho population of
AIruh In tho flames of their own houses
were typlcul of the Russian method of "
warfare.
Then, all suddenly, when the Boxer
armies had been annihilated and the be
sieged Russian railroaders rescued, peace
offlclHlly reigned over the land. Critics
of Russian method might have said,
"They made a wilderness and called It
peace," and there would have been trutli
In the accusation. But almost before th
moke of tho guns had rolled away and thai
ashes of the burned villages had grown
cold, Russia set to work with feverish en
rgy to repooplo tho desert and ' creato
cities where hamlets once had been and
towns where the wolf had roamed un
checked. The weak point In the business, as In
tho whole scheme of Russian administra
tion amd colonization In the oast, Is that
It Ih artificially stimulated. The govern
ment does everything, or Is at the back of
everything. Most business enterprises are
ubxIdHtert, directly or Indirectly, by the
jToverntnent. The government goes ahead
of tho peoplo all the tlmo. There Is no
restless Impulse driving the Russian peas
ant to reach out to tho uttermost ends
of Asia and to rnrvc out a home and for
tune for himself, as American pioneers did
by slow degrees until they reached the
Pacific coast.
This has always been the history of Rus
sian expansion. There was a Russian gov
ernor, generations ago, who built a fleet of
armored ships and placed them on the
OiIlan, threatening Persia. When he
was remonstrated with, be replied:
"They are needed to take supplies to
our settlers on the eastern shores of the
lake."
"But there nra 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."
There, In a nutshell, Is the order of thffl
Rusl.n advance. The flag goes first and
mnkes Its conquests. Then come the In
dustrial Hnd commercial Interests, which
give the flag a colorable excuse for re
maining. At th end of the campaign Russian had
nearly ;nftO0 troops In M'tnchurla and the
adjacent Russian provinces. Strong de
tachm.wt. 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
rrsumod with redoubled energy long beforo
the fljrhtlng was over. Indeed, although
the great campaign of 1900 ended so
quickly, guerrilla warfare on a small scale
was lclng vigorously prosecuted in the
summer of 1902, and the Chimchuaea Ad
miral Alexleff's "red-bearded brlgnnds"
were giving a lot of trouble as recently
as last summer. They were Russia's
landing excuse for not carrying out her
Russia, Manchuria's Aladdin
Saw -rff--
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AT KHABAROVSK.
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RUSSIAN OFFICERS' HEAD
numerous diplomatic pledges to evacuate
Manchuria.
A good doal of misapprehension exists
a to who these ChunchuBcs are. The Rus
sian authorities try to make out that they
are the bandits who roamed Manchuria
before they entered the country, and who
were produced by the wretched mlsgovern
ment of the Munchu officials. This Is not
the fact. Only a small proportion of the
Chunchuses have been In the bandit busi
ness for that length of time. The great
majority were made outlaws by the cam
paign of 1500.
Russian victories. and Russfan massacres
drove the remnants of the Boxer hordes
and the Chinese tegular troops to seek
safety In the wild recesses of the moun
tains and forests. They were Joined by
large numbers of peaceful peasants whose
families had been extirpated and whoto
farms had been luld waste by the Russians.
Thus it was that a considerable proportion
of the Inhabitants of Manchuria were trans
formed by Russian policy into desperate
brigands, and have been hunted down ever
since like wild dogs.
I'nd.T these circumstances the develop
ment of Manchuila had to bo emphatically
a military development. The towns, wh'ch
sprang up like mushrooms alinoft over
nlr.lit. were in reality huge military posts.
Take the case of Khabarovsk. When the
Russians went to Mancl url.i It was only a
small village. At the beginning of 1!)! It
was a flourishing town of 15.0od people; but
nearly everybody In the place was either a
government oflUtal of some kind or a sol
dier. "When I passed through the town In
l'.Hil." Bald Archibald Colquhoun. the well
known English traveler, "there were no
fewer than twenty-nine fcenotals there.
The whole place simply hi 1st led with uni
forms, the officers were quartered In vry
house and were sleeping In every citi er
of the military club, some six or seven In
tho billiard room."
Still more wonderful was the rapid
growth of Harbin. A tiny fishing village
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STEAMERS ON THE AMUR, WAITING
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QUARTERS IN MUKDEN.
before the Russian advent, It was selected
as the headquarters of the railway con
struction work. One contractor alone built
over 500 houses for military officers and
civilian officials within the space of two
or three months. Still, there was not
enough accommodation for the swarm of
them, and a hotel with 400 rooms was rap
idly run up. Streets and boulevaida were
laid out, theaters, restaurants, government
buildings and churches erected in brief, a
fully equipped modern city was created as
if by the waving of a magician's wand.
It was up-to-date civilization but civil
ization with a difference. Forty-two wth
ered heads of Chunchuses were hung up
along one of the palutial boulevards of Old
Harbin for six months in 1902, "pour en
courager les autVes."
Russians tock hold of Klrtn. built river
docks and shipbuilding yards there, und
made the place un Important town within
a few months. Russian bazaars replaced
tho Chinese markets In other towns, or
grew up beside them. Russian tax col
lectors took their places along the fron
tier; Russian syndicates were formed to
exp!o!t the vast mineral wealth of tho
country; Russian steamers and barges ran
the old Junk traffic off the Manchurlan
rivers; and In every direction the Rus
sianizing of Manchuria went forward by
leavs and bounds.
Enormous numbers of Immigrants, in
creasing month by month and year by
year, were brought from Russia along tho
Trans-Siberian railroad and down the Amur
river to be settled on large firms very
much larser than they could cultivate
In the vast regions n."wly opened to col
onization by the prowess of Russian arms.
The land was glve.i to the colonists for
nothing It Is cheap to give away other
people's land but the Russian government
also gave them agricultural Implements,
cattlo and advances of mcney, the latter
nominally repayable within a term of
years, but in reality never expected to
be repaid.
Great efforts were made by the authori
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FOR A SUFFICIENT STAGE OF WATER
ties to establish these, settlers on a self
supporting basis, but those very efforts
havo tended to pauperize them, and they
seem to be hopelessly unable to compete
with the Chinese and Corean farmers, whd
have swarmed In and occupied land along,
eldo them. The authorities talk much of
their educational and civilizing mission,
but the Russian settlers are the most back
Ward people in the land.
"The villages are at a considerable dis
tance from each other," said a European
traveler who went through the country
two years ago. "Frequently there is no
school within reach, for these are only
found in the larger and older settlements,
and the people, thus left without education
or ennobling influences of any kind, re
lapse Into a state of semi-barbarism. Many
of the farms arc inland, but the majority
of the settlors live in the little log vil
lages clustered along the . banks of the
rivers, of which one passes twenty or thirty
a day. On Russian maps these villages
make an imposing show, but in reality,
compared to the vast urea available for
colonization, they are but drops In the
ocean."
It will be observed that the conditions.
In some respects, are much like those
which Americans faced in the winning of
the west. The lack of education and "en
nobling influences" is Inevitable in such
lonely surroundings, and may bo regarded
as being merely a temporary condition.
Tills failure to attain, at the outset, a
measure of impossible success is not to be
set down to the discredit of the Russian
authorities. Taking account of the brief
time they have been working to develop
the country, they have accomplished won
ders. They would probably have speedily
remedied many of the shortcomings noted
by travelers if the war with Japan had
not upset all their plans.
After the building and guarding of the
railways the chief energies of the authori
ties were applied to the fortification of
Port Arthur and the building of the brand
new city of Dalny, or Tallenwan. Millions
of dollars were spent on the forts and
docks at Port Arthur, and millions more
were being spent when the war broke out.
The building of Dalny as n terminus for
the Siberian railway astounded the world,
so colossal was the scheme and so rapid
its execution. In 1901 Dalny was simply a
- small collection of godowns, huts and
rough work shops. In 1902 over Jo.OJO.OOO
had been spent upon the work, on which
30,000 coolies were then engaged, and twice
as much money lay ready to be expended
for tho completion of the scheme. Five
piers, two docks, theaters, churches, boule
vards, thousands" of houses and lnnumera-
ble huts for 'the natives were being built
all destined for the population which was
to Ue imported later on, which, Indeed, had
already begun to settle In the place .when
war broke out.
Nothing seemed to be left undone, noth
ing unthought of by the Russian officials la
the development of the country, which lay
within their power. The genius of the Rus
sian character Is deeply religious. As soon
as Manchuria became, to all Intents anal
purposes, a Russian province, it had to
havo its bishop of the orthodox church;
and Innocent, the archimandrite of Peking,
was promptly appointed to the dignity. He
established an elaborate ecclesiastical or-.
ganizatlon, covering the whole of the coun
try. Every lonely village of raw settlers,
every Cossack post, even each Isolated
farmer, was in touch with a church and
priest before the war with Japan.
WILLIAM TUORP&