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

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Not a hundred yards from where I sat were four field-guns—deadly four-inchers, the modern Krupp—sending shells into Hanyang as fast as the gunners were able to work. The booming shook the whole city, sending frightened children to their mothers, themselves at their wits' ends with fear. Revolutionary batteries at Hanyang, not yet silenced or showing any signs of giving up the fight, dropped its shells sometimes nearer, sometimes farther, never into the battery here on the railroad.

As an interested spectator, I sat on a few sleepers and watched where the shells dropped from both sets of guns. It was a casual pastime, and no one seemed to mind my being there. The gunners would, with highest glee, explain how the four-inchers were worked, would point away towards Hanyang Hill and tell you they were trying to pot the temple overlooking the Yangtze, and when a shell from the enemy dropped anywhere near there was a shout of enthusiastic mirth. They would look at one astutely, smile, inquire into one's family associations in characteristic Chinese style, and were highly delighted if relevantly one could carry on conversation with them in Chinese. The average military observer would probably have declared the Imperial Army to be a peculiar military force. Into the daily routine the extravagant Chinese etiquette was worked in conjunction with a discipline quite strange to Chinese, and on the face of things it would not seem, viewed from camp life, that China's army was in any way a modern army. But that this Model Army of China is as much of a myth as some would have us believe, I, now in it all, could not for a moment endorse. The foreigner has always looked upon the Chinese as a man who would not fight him with the weapons of war; his main attack would be the weapons of commerce, of boycott, or of trust. But the Chinese Army to-day is certainly no myth. It is strong enough to preserve peace with other countries, if not to enter into any external strife with the idea of winning.