Evening Star Newspaper, January 12, 1930, Page 95

THE SUNDAY '"STAR, WASHINGTON, D. €, JANUARY 12 1930. mean peace. I was pleased that I was fo live within #ts city wall. In other cities our houses had stood a little apart from the crowded Chinese city. Nanking was different. There was no white man's settlement, no con- cession here. The foreign houses were scat- tered about over the city. There was plenty of room for everybody within this huge sprawling city which we knew lay hidden be- hind the circumference of the wall, BUT this unhappy land cflered peace to no one. Soon after our artival in Nanking, a Chinese acquaintance of ours said in the course of his conversation: “At present no Chinese ever feels safe. We never go to sleep at night without feeling that we may perish before morning. There is treachery cn every hand.” His remark suddenly gave mes the vision which I have never quite obliterated frcm my mind. of a nation of 400,000,000 people and not one of them who was old enough to think, who knew what safety meant. The rich were afraid of losing their money cr their lives; the poor feared both the advancing and retreating armies, feared for their lives, fcr the honor of their women, feared that the very rice bowls they ate from would be taken; the war lords feared the treachery which would cost them defeat and the loss of their heads. Even if I had had no personal anxieties I believe I could nct but have been depressed living as I did in the midst of 400,000,000 people held in the clutches of fear. The idea was appalling. But I and every man, whethsr business man or missionary, had reason for personal fear. The radical left wing of the Nationalist party was gaining in power. With the Nationalists race hatred was growing in viclence up river and moving slowly but surely toward us. Letters came from cur friends in Hunan. Much property of the British business com- panies had been destroyed. Here and there they were beginning to take b-th English and American schools and churches for their troops. Steamers eoming in at the docks down at the edge of the suburbs outside the ecity wall of Nanking brought their tales cf woe. All upriver boats, they said, were being fired on every trip they made. Then the besieged city of Wuchang, which had held out so bravely, was betrayed into the hands of the Nationalists. After weeks of suf- fering on the part of the common people, shut in without enough fcod. the city and its com- mander were sold to the Nationalists by the soldiers. 1If they were going to sell out why did they not do it before so many of the starving had dropped dead in the streets. There they lay; the starving-living had not strength enough either to make coffins or dig graves. These reports, too, came to my house. No wonder it was hard to find peace within the four walls of our home. China, and we with her, were going to our Gethsemane. Sixty thousand strong, the green-clad troops, victerious but not disciplined by heavy fighting or losses, now marched upon Gen. Sun’s west- ern border, Gen. Sun sent word to them that he would not invade the Nationalists’ territory; that he would wage no offensive warfare; that he would not fight unless he was forced to de- fend his borders. But the Nationalists paid no heed. So there was war be‘ween the two. As we went about the city of Nanking we saw more and more troops in their gray uniforms marching to the front. The sympathizers of the Na'ionalists in Nanking grew a little bolder “What Will ELL all I know is just what I read in the papers. Now just what has been adjitating the Natives in the public prints here lately? Course they got Christmas and New Year off their minds and are just now getting through exchanging all the presents, and so we ean settle down to the scrious side of life. its only a few days now till the opening of the big Disarmament Conference in London. I wanted to get over there and see what the boys were doing, but it looks like these people that I am working for are actually going to demand some of my time here in Beverley Hills making faces and odd sounds for the benefit of posterity. Can you imagine, just when I wanted to get to London and see what my old friends Mr. Dawes, Mr. Morrow, Joe Robinson, Dave Reed and Admiral Hilary Jones were doing, why these movie people got the nerve to tell me I bhave to go to work! Just for a little I would tell thein something. (A little salary.) 'URSE I dont need to tell you that I dont think the Boys are going to do much over there. Mind you I think its a fine thing, and it may be a step in the right direction. But the road is so Jong that step dont make much showing. You know they say that all the edu- cation, all the learning we have is just from reading and studying what was done in the past. Everything after all according to the learned, is what has the past taught us. Mind you thats what all the educated people say. But I am kinder personally like Henry Ford. His- tory dont mean much to me. Never mind what some other old Geeser did in 324 B.C. I's what are you going to do in 1930. And to my mind the less you read about him the better. For no condition that existed during his time is around today. Now mind you thats only the ignorant view. We must string the vducated for they are the ones that taught us what little us ignorant ones know. So the edueated say that everything is based on what has happened. In other words, there is a historical precedent to everything. Now here is where we will lick em on their own argument in regard to the success of this con- ference. 1If there had never been a Disarma- ment Conferenee iIn the past why we would look to this one with great anticipation. We would figure that they was going to really The mob siormed the houses of the British, shouting “Da. da, kill, kill, kill the foreigners!” now, preached more openly against the white man. As our cars drove down the streets the childrer threw stones at us. January came and the new year. Tragic events followed rapidly, one upon the heels of the other. From far up the Yangtze beyond the dangerous rapids the white people were be- ginning te eome. Fleeing, fleeing before the hate which was systematically being . roused against them. From far up the tributaries beyond Changsha, from tiny towns the names of which the world has never heard, fleeing, fleeing. Teachers, preachers, doctors, nurses, those who had gone into the waste places of China to bring education, healing and Chris- tianity, fleeing before this engendered hate. Fleeing, fleeing—the doctors and teachers, seeing a lifetime of work wiped out. Fleeing by junk, sedan chair, by wheelbarrow, on foot, often escaping by a few minutes the frenzied mobs. Sometimes scurrying away like hunted animals, running a little way, hiding, running a little way, hiding. UNTED by the Nationalist authorities, who threatened with death boatmen or chair- men who aided the white men in their escape. Fleeing without poesessions, in danger of their lives, at last reaching tributaries or the high reaches of the Yangtze, finding sanctuary on gunboats and steamers which were getting fewer and fewer in number; steamers which from my window I saw pass down the river, not earrying carge new, carrying their load ef refugees. disheartened, discouraged people. In the larger cities, like Chungking and Changsha, the white colonies still held out, hoping against hope that this wave ef hate and destruction would wear itself out. Then these larger colonies began te see they must go. First they sent away the sick and the women with small children, the ones which in case cf trouble could not be got out ef town quickly. The women and children escaped in small launches manned by officers and sailors from the gunboats, who knew nothing ef the treacherous low water channels of the Yangtae tributaries. In fear of running aground, in fear of shots from the shore, the launches made their way to Hankow. Fleeing, fleeing away from the Nationalists and their propaganda of hate. With a kind of grim determination I now kept myself to my tasks. It was time to begin the Spring gardening and, despite the tight- ening of these screws of fear, I went daily to the vegetable garden which lay at the foot of the hill and to the terraced flower garden on the slope. The pansy bed under its eovering of leaves was in bud. Two hundred white women over the city were doing the same things. As long as we could keep our hemes togetiier and thus kelp our men, it was up to us to do it. Then came January 5, and we lost all hope of the future. The conece:sion of Hankow was taken over under threat that if the British resisted the Chinese would massaere their women and children. What could we hepe for now? This was a daring and unprecedented move on the part of the Nationalis's. We had thought of Hankow as one of the centers which were safe. It had been made inviolate by international treaties. But the Nationalists had now repudiated those treaties. Flecing, fleeing, again fleeing, in the night with only a few minutes’ warning, the white women and children and babies of Hankow, fleeing from an infuriated mob. Where were the Chinese soldiers who were going to pretect the concession? Helping the mob! This meb collected by criers with gongs, supplied with a few loads of bricks, stormed the houses of the British, shouting, “Da, da. kill, kill, kill the foreigner!” Women and children fleeing n the rain and the dark. (Copyright, 1930.) We Sink Now?” Asks Will Rogers The Author-Comedian Takes Up the Subject of the Disarmament Conference, but Says He Looks at It From “an Ignorant Viewpoint.™ < ot A “:T?fhfi NERVE' u wTo THE RIVER WIth You'! 2 . ~ % Warought Byndicate lac. ¥ ¥ “They'll throw him into the Thames.” di-arm. But since 1922 in Washington at one when I had the good fortune to be (Not as a Delegate) Seeretary Hughes was pinch hitting for me there, and then there was another in 1926 at Geneva. T went over on the Leviathan with our Deligation. Mr. Hugh Gibson (who was then not an Ambassador as but only Minister to Switzerland) very competent man, he will be too, then Admiral Jones, Admiral Mr. Alexander, all a fine bunch ef k Well I went down to Geneva what they would do. Well outside of paying board they dident do anything. We had sunk and sunk at the Washington Conference, till we dident have anything else left above the wa'er line, so naturally at the Geneva one, as we had nothing to sink, there was ne sinking. So it fiopped. It was like going to a Prohibition New Years party, there was just nothing to keep the thing yoing, that was all. Then the next year they had another. But it did nothing. Now this is just another one. Of course, mind you, they will decide on some little things such as the Limiting of Battleships (which are washed up anyhew) and they may do something about Cruisers. But there will be nothing done about Instruments of war. If some fellow gets up and says, “What do you say about prohibiting the entire use of Chemical geies during the next war?” Say, they will throw that Guy in the Thames River., SUPPOSE some Deligate says, “Aeroplanes are an unfair method of warfare, for they can drop things on defenseless people, what do you say we abolish them?” Well I will tell you what they would say, they would say, send that Deligate home and have his head ex- amined. Now you see what I mean by us profiting by what has taken place in history is that we have held all these Disarmament Conferences and nothing has been done. so if we base the future on the past why nothing will be done. It just is not in the cards. Naturally every Nation wants to protect themselves according to their own needs. They don't want war. Neither cdo they want to be left entirely de- - fenseless, so you cant blame em. England and America may make a big too-doo about cut- ting down till its a parity in Battleships and Cruisers. But that wont mcan a thing. 1f you and I are evenly matched, that don't mean that we wont fight. It really means that we are more liable to fight, for each will naturally think they have the edge on the other. But the whole thing may lead to something. It sets people to thinking in the right direction. But as far as doing anything tw prevent war, why its not liable to do that. There has been war since the beginning of time, and we are no smarter than the people that have gone before us, so there is awful apt to be some more war. So lets sink something with em, but dont sink anything that we are liable to ‘need. (Copyright, 1930.)