TWO DAYS LATER came the successful climax of some weeks of intrigue. I left Mukden with a flying column of Japanese troops engaged on the task of bandit-suppression. The chapters which follow give an account of that expedition. It is an accurate account, but dull. It would be duller still if the reader had no understanding of the general situation with regard to banditry in Manchuria. Accordingly I append an estimate of that situation here.
Banditry is the biggest problem which the Japanese are facing in Manchukuo. Contrary to the general belief, which is based on information issued by Japanese sources, the pacification of the country – which covers an area greater than those of Germany and France combined, and is mostly mountainous, thickly wooded, and inadequately served by communications – is far from complete. Banditry is endemic in Manchuria. Until the Japanese came in in 1931 Manchurian banditry differed in kind from most of the banditry of China proper, which was in great part a phenomenon of despair, the by-product of civil wars, famines, floods, and plague. Since 1931 Japanese propaganda has blinded the world to the fact that Manchuria under Chang Tso-lin, and in a less degree under his son, was a region not only naturally richer, but actually better administered and no more over-militarized than any area of corresponding size south of the Wall. The bandits who troubled it were for the most part professional desperadoes, not men made desperate by necessity. Because pay in the Old Marshal’s armies was both higher and more regular than in the ephemeral levies of China proper, the soldier-bandit – shifting from one walk of life to the other as the chances of civil and military loot varied – was not a serious menace.
The typical Manchurian bandit was a racketeer, an enterprising and old-established parasite; he operated in small groups, stuck to a certain district, and worked in strict accordance with ancient and universally recognized conventions. Under normal conditions he was not so much a threat to the peace of the community as a permanent and carefully regulated drain on its finances. He probably bulked in the eyes of the peasant much as the income-tax collector bulks in the eyes of the British rentier – as an iniquitous but inevitable consequence of the way his country’s affairs have been mismanaged. He kept the peace in return for a form of Danegeld, paid partly in cash and partly in kind. To travellers and merchandise passing through his territory he issued an expensive but usually inviolable safe-conduct. His relations with the local defence force were friendly. He was rarely suppressed, but could sometimes be ‘reclaimed’ by a punitive expedition, whose ranks he was probably glad to join under favourable conditions. He was, in fine, a scandal rather than a peril.
His numbers were however augmented and his irresponsibility increased by the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The bandit problem changed its complexion. Large bodies of soldiers, without leaders and without pay – the rabble of the broken armies which had attempted resistance – increased the feeling of insecurity and alarm in the country which, while they plundered, they said they meant – one day – to save. Lawlessness in Manchuria reached a pitch unparalleled before. Travel, hitherto safer than in any other part of post-revolutionary China, became an impossibility, and no railway, with the exception of the main line of the South Manchurian Railway, dared to run night trains. For the foreign community the year 1932 was darkened by such outrages as the murder of Mrs. Woodruff and the kidnapping of Mrs. Pawley and Mr. Corkran. For all their good intentions, the Japanese forces in Manchuria were powerless to prevent the establishment of a reign of terror.
In the autumn of that turbulent year the total number of bandits active in Manchukuo was officially computed by the Japanese military authorities at 212,000. They were classified as follows:
(1) The pseudo-patriotic ‘political’ forces, mostly remnants of the Young Marshal’s armies – 69,000.
(2) Bands of religious fanatics like the ‘Red Spears’ – 16,000.
(3) The old-style bandit, whose technique I have analysed above – 62,000.
(4) The bandits of despair – peasants forced into crime by the pressure of circumstances – 65,000.
Towards the close of the year a drive was launched on a big scale against these lawless elements. (In official circles the annexation of Jehol is still carefully referred to as the culminating stage in this campaign of pacification.) Its results, though admittedly a disappointment to the military, were by no means negligible. The large, semi-organized forces were broken up; it was a picnic for the Japanese troops.
In the summer of 1933, when I was there, the number of bandits at large was officially given as 60,000, in my opinion an extravagantly conservative estimate. I should, however, explain that banditry in Manchuria is in some measure a seasonal problem, which reaches its maximum gravity in the months from July to October. During this period the kaoliang, or millet, a staple crop all over the country, stands ten feet high and more, so that even in the plains each village is surrounded by a belt of good cover. In July, also, the raw opium is brought in from the poppy fields, and, since most habitual bandits are addicted to the drug, it provides an added incentive for marauding activities. The official estimate may therefore be taken as representing only the whole-time bandits; the Japanese themselves confessed that they expected to see it trebled in the autumn.
To sum up, the effects of the Japanese invasion on lawlessness in Manchuria have been two: one good, and one bad. The good one was, not to restore order, but to make available, at certain points, the effective agents of order – troops who could neither be bought nor defied (though they could be evaded) by the bandits. This meant, roughly, that every town with a Japanese garrison in it was safe, and that major outrages in the interior stood a good chance of being avenged, if not averted.
The bad effect was enormously to increase the number of bandits, while at the same time breaking down the harmonious relations between the criminal classes and the agents of the law – relations which, however deplorable in theory, at any rate secured a modus vivendi for a substantial proportion of the community.
Fundamentally the problem of eliminating the bandits is economic. As the prosperity of the country increases discontent will die, and banditry with it. Yet the bandits themselves are the chief obstacles to economic progress. The immediate primary needs are better communications and education, the former for obvious reasons of strategy, the latter to undermine the apathy with which the peasants endure the depredations of bandits as they endured the corruption of officials. Both these will be forthcoming in time. Some progress has, of course, already been made. Since 1932 the problem has been reduced to its original dimensions. But as its scope has contracted its difficulties have increased. The military now have to deal with small groups of criminals, operating for the most part in difficult country full of good cover. They are protected by a network of spies. In appearance they are indistinguishable from their law-abiding fellow-citizens, for they seldom wear uniforms; on the approach of a punitive expedition they can bury their rifles and revert to those innocent agricultural pursuits which are in fact for many of them a part-time occupation. Fighting the bandits is, as a Japanese officer disgustedly said to me, ‘like swatting flies’.
It will be a long time – at the very least, I should say, five years – before that thankless task has been completed and the flies reduced to a negligible pest.