Evening Star Newspaper, September 8, 1929, Page 14

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. ¢, SEPTEMBER 8, 1929—PART 1. The Marines Who Wouldn’t Fight! Told by Their Commander, “HARD-BOILED” BUTLER No. 8—A Chinese General at §425,000 a Year. This is the last of eight articles in which Maj. Gen. Smedley Dar- lington Butler tells the diverting story of the bloodless conguest of China by the United States Marines he took out there in 1927 to protect Ameri- can lives in the country’s raging civil BY SMEDLEY DARLINGTON BUTLER, Major General, U. 8. M. C. (Copsright, 1020, by North American News- paper Alliance.) 1 told you how and why the com- munity of Boxertown gave me a bless- ing umbrella. In 1928 I received an- other from a community of 40,000 near Tientsin, which insisted that by re-| storing its lines of comunication with | Tientsin I had saved it. 1 was required to make many trips to Peiping to discuss questions that came up with our Minister and his aides. I preferred to motor rather than trust 1o the trains, as one never knew when bandits or troops would rip up the rails and delay the train for hours war. along the Tientsin-Peiping road. Some distance from the new highway I found my little flivver, which I was driving, in a mud hole with the engine stalled. I was fuming and fussing and wonder- ing how I was going to get it out and started, as night was near and I had no desire to spend the night on the road, miles from a town. Suddenly up drove a handsome Amer- ican limousine chauffered by a Chinese The passenger, a high Chinese | general, noticed my brigade flag and | soldier, stopped. ‘The general, who spoke English, had his chauffeur tow me out and start the car, and then he asked why I drove around in such a cheap car. I told him my Government didn't provide more ex- | LANSBURGH &BRO pensive ones. “Well,” he safd, “why don't you buy one with your own money?” T told him I couldn't afford to. and even days, or when some army would come along and take over all the jrains for troop movements. On one motor trip to Peiping I found | “yhen” he said, “why don't you use that a bridge on the Tientsin-Pelping | some of the entertainment fund you are highway had been carried away by & allowed, as commander in chief here, | flood. The Chinese highway depart-|and buy a good car?” | ment fiddled around for a week and| I told him we didn't have any enter- | did nothing about repairing it. To fa- tainment fund. | cilitate our own motor trips to Peiping | and to make sure that the plans fo our relief column would not be frus-|gq y He could hardly believe that. trated by lack of a bridge I sent out| “well," he said, “thal’s little enough, a company of our engineers, and they | but you must make up on the ‘pick- erected a modest pontoon bridge. ings.’” I told him there were no “pick- We used old lumber from our camp. | ings.” 1 doubt whether he believed me. $0 it didn't cost the government & |Then I asked him what he made. penny. The bridge was movable, and, “Well, I get $50,000 Mex (that's whenever we had to cross that stream | $25000 in American money) as salary, we sent the bridge out on a couple and $50,000 Mex for entertainment, and, of trucks, went over it, and then the |of course, there are the ‘pickings’” (by engineers would take down the bridge which he meant loot). and haul it back to camp. “How much did your ‘pickings’ One day a group of the elders of |amount to last year?” I asked. the town told me they could not get| “Only $750,000 Mex,” he repiied. to Tientsin to buy needed supplies and | Soon after we had completed the new to transact other business, as their | Sino-American stretch of 20 miles an bridge had been washed away, and they |agent for a low-priced American car didn't know what to do about it. Their booked orders for 200 machines, and the government had taken no action, despite | agents of other American makes booked numerous complaints. The waters were |orders for many cars. too raging to permit swimming across| The Chinese are poor, but a certain the 40-foot opening. Would we lend |percentage can and do buy luxuries. them our bridge, the committee fin-| When I first arrived in Tientsin there ished? | were only 5,000 bicycles in the city, and T told them that if they promised | When I left, less than two years later, not to break it up for firewood they |there were b could have it. After a while, when | If coolies can buy $40 (Mex) bicycles, | they showed they really needed it, I|the merchants and officials can buy | had the engineers build a permanent | motor cars and luxuries, and as their | He was greatly amazed. and asked | hat my salary was. I told him $6.000 span across the stream, and the elders | as well as the general population were Jubilant. In addition the engineers took out a couple of road drags and smoothed | about a mile of the road on each side of the bridge. “Butler Bridge.” Well, the elders of this town decided | to_give me another rblessing umbrel- | la We arranged "to dedicate the | bridge and the Chinese put up a brass tablet with my name on it and called the span “Butler Bridge.” They then | gave me the ceremonial umbrella and | told me I was a Chinese and one of them, and that the tablet would stay in its stone pierway forever. A hundred distinguished Chines cluding the governor of the province, attended the dedication iuncheon under trees near the operation, and 25,000 Chinese from the villages were grouped | about in the flelds While the gabfest was on at th> bridge dedication, one of the generals of the ninth army of the Southerns, who was then in control of the area and commanding 25,000 troops, volun- teered to give us as many men as we required to build roads under our di- rection. In China they have never been very keen on building roads, although every- thing they do build is most substantial. | Before the time of Christ they built | the Great Wall of China. It has sul-| fered only 5 per cent deterioration in 2.000 years. In the United States we tear our buildings down in 30 or 40 years—or they fall down. ‘That wall goes up 11,000 feet, right over the highest mountain peak. We | ‘wondered how they got the stone lhfll‘ high and were informed that they had made bricks just the size goats could carry, and then had driven 50,000 goats up at a time carrying the bricks. ‘There is a temple that has paint on 1t that was put on 5000 years ago, and not only is it still on, but it hasn't changed color. And there is wood work in China thousands of years old. But with all this those people never built a good road. They have built 17,000 miles of walls around their cities that have stood for 2,000 or | 3,000 years, but they have never built a good road. The reason was that they didn't want the people to com municate with each other. The ‘wanted the feudal system to continue. Even now there are 27 dialects in China. One day in my automobile, T was | on the road ‘about 10 miles from Pei- ping. I found a man who could speak English and asked him if he spoke Peipingese, and I was surprised to find that he could not speak Peipingese, though he lived only 10 miles out. I asked him why they didn’t build roads and he told me to prevent communica- tion. Then I said to him, “You say you ‘want the feudal system to continue, but you have dug canals, 70,000 miles of them, and built railroads.” Suffer From Lack of Roads. “But,” he said, “if we don’t want trouble all we do is let the water out of the canals, and we can fix the lo- comotives so they won't run. We couldn’t tear up @ road very easily.” | Now they are suffering for their lack ' of roads and they wanted the Marines to teach them how to build them. Well, things were very quiet for us and there were no prospects of trouble, so we said we would. roads improve and are rebuilt the coun- try will be a fine market for American- made machines. Opportunity in China. An American talking machine com- | | pany was having indifferent success in | enware, China until its Chinese agent suggest- ed that it build a small, cheap set. In two years the company sold almost 50,000 $10 instruments. Business people in China are ready to receive us with open arms. They trust us. They know we mean them no harm. But don’t try to sell them every- thing: send your representatives over | and take an interest in them as a na- tion. They have the complacency we are looking for any can't find. | his home here today after s short fll- SONG WRITER DIES. 'ne.ss. He was 81 years old, having celebrated his jubilee as a song writer in December, 1918. His successes included “Nancy Lee,” “Darby and Joan,’ @ Frederic E. Weatherly Expires at Age of 81, BATH, England, September 7 (n—l Bid Me B?"g“,,"y “Dann iy Frederic Edward Weatherly, whose | «The Holy Oity” and e sung the world over, died at Dreams.” ose of Picardy, “Ships of My In the September Sale of Housewares A yearly event, and one that thrifty housewives wel- come. Every article conducive to better homekeeping is included and is priced to save you considerably. Only 10 items mentioned here, there are many more. 7th, 8th and E Sts.—National 9800 Unpainted Chairs EXCEPTIONAL VALUE! "1 Comfortable square back style; well built of smoothly sanded lumber ready for painting. Lacquered steel Vegetable Bin; per- forated: red, green, white, blue and yellow. Electric Percolator. | Aluminum with guar- anteed heating ele- ment. Six-cup size, 8-day Kitchen Clock, with designs on blue, yeliow on white earth- We deal in periods of months and years; they deal in periods of centuries, They 'sald to us, “You have just elect- | ed Hoover and you expect your troubles | to be over for four years; we don't ex- pect our revolution to be over for 300 | years. | “What difference does it make? The | Manchurians came down upon us and | now Manchuria belongs to us. Japan is getting ready to come across now. and in 200 vears Japan will be a part of China. What is the use of fighting | | back when we can absorb them. Their children will marry Chinese, and before | we know it they will all be Chinese.” | ‘The Chinese appreciated our attitude | toward them and on numerous occa- sions told me how grateful they were | for the presence of the Marines. By | our attitude of refusing to join with other nations in any measures against the Chinese and in any steps to extend our lines, we caused the others to halt thelr ambitious plans, which were so cbnoxious to the Chinese. | Both factions, first the Northerners and after the shift of power the South- erners, intimated that they even might protest the withdrawal of our forces, [ | If the 3d Brigade of the United States Marines successfully accomplished its mission in China it was due to perfect teamwork by its entire personnel. full “There are 40,000,000 of us starving in the fields,” the Chinese general said. “We will turn as many of these people | over to you as you want if you will | boss them. We want them to work u der our good friends, the American Ma- rines. We want you to teach us to| buid roads and dikes to control the | water.” | When we agreed they wanted to turn | iover 10,000 Chinese soldiers to us, but | &f course we couldn’t handle that many. - ‘We agreed to “boss” 1,000 or 2,000 of them every day. And pretty soon these | Chinese set to work. Even the gen- 1s worked with picks and shovels,, t because it was an American con- ! Tern bossing them. All the camps had | Chinese soldiers. They lived in our | gents and the Marines lived in their | tents. We chowed at a common table. | Some of ‘the American residents| eouldn’t understand what was going on =-but the road was being buiit. < Our engineers built road drags, using illery tractors. There was great en- usiasm among our Marines on this| d-building project, and their little bor camps were very attractive. The hole thing had a beneficial effect on e Chinese, who swarmed around us all times. By November, 1928, the first 20 ;ues of the road from the Tientsin end the highway had been completed, d on that day, anniversary of the arine Corps’ birth in 1776, this sec- on was officially opened. ‘They jamed the road the Sino-American ighway. The Chinese officials, indicating their ustful attitude toward us, requested t we supervise additional and larger oups of their men in further road uilding. I doubt that Chinese sol- jers, or that the Chinese governmen; ad previously named -a highway aft@ foreign country, dedicating it with a onument and official ceremonies. .1 had two other .strange i— i’ | | | | | Il i | | Mirro 6-qt. Kettle; regularly much more. Of heavy sheet alum- inum; with tight-fit- ting cover. Lacquered Steel Garbage Can, with in- side galvanized pail; 1ift cover: green, white and yellow. Stainless Steel Cut- lery Set. Paring knife, ham slicer and knife sharpener: with stain- less steel blades. $3.95 Cutlery Set. 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