Profit and Loss in Manchuria

Abstract

i OR over ten years, from 1924 to 1934, I lived in Manchuria, and this statement is a necessary preface to the article that follows. For the first seven years I watched with keen interest the rapid progress which was being made; a progress which neither civil war, world crisis, nor maladministration and the corrupt practices of many of the officials could prevent, and which was due primarily to the energy, thrift and endurance of the Chinese population-peasants, workers, immigrants, merchants and employers alike. Then there followed the stormy years of the Japanese invasion. The country is still smoldering with resistance, and the new order is emerging with difficulty. I have visited many of the scenes of guerilla war, and in the past three years have talked with many Chinese, from students and administrators to merchants and workers; and I cannot say that I have found any Chinese who likes Manchukuo or wants to be a Manchukuo citizen. The situation now is certainly better than it was two years ago, but there are still thousands of Volunteers and bandits,1 and in many places the prestige of the Government holds good only along the railway lines. All the northeastern, mountainous part of the country is still an arena of war. Nor are all the rebels mere bandits. Many of them are fired by a genuine, irreconcilable patriotism. Moreover, the ruin of hundreds of villages, in the course of the Japanese occupation by force, is not a thing to be forgotten in two or three years. A prolonged peace would make the population yield, however grudgingly, to necessity; but in the meantime every rumor of further war, against either Russia or China, means an increase of Volunteer activity.