Читать книгу China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War онлайн

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Here fighting was being carried on with a pluck which astounded all beholders. The Imperial Army was for the first time since the Chinese Model Army had been organised plunged into real warfare. The Revolutionists—a teeming multitude, it is true—were for the most part raw recruits, men who had never stood before gun-fire, whom one could reasonably have expected to be "gun-shy." But their bravery, because they believed their fight was one for emancipation, from what very few of the raw recruit element knew probably, would have made many an Occidental regiment blush with envy.

Truly were those first days of the war a season of intense excitement and surprise.

By November 1st the Imperialists, already in possession of Kilometre Ten and the whole line from Peking, by persevering and undaunted behaviour, excellent discipline, and military common sense, had won their way to the Tachimen, the railway station behind the French Concession. That morning I was in the camp at the station. Foreigners had been looked upon with suspicion, and as I entered the station some of the officers looked askance at me. No other army would have allowed me to pass the barrier without having seen a pass. But pass I had none. As I sat chatting to a crowd of well-knit northern fellows, who seemed perfectly at ease and to have all they wished for—except cigarettes, for which they were constantly making inquiries—it was difficult to believe that one was in the very centre of the topical world. The eyes of every one were turned towards this great struggle between Chinese and Chinese. Every newspaper in London and New York was concentrating upon the war. China's Revolution was on the far political horizon, for what affected China just then affected the world. And as those Imperial fellows at their military base congratulated each other that at least they had the chance of being actually in war, they had but little idea of the importance attaching to the conflict. Shells that dropped around me, however, were bringing messages of a China that was to be.