Part 5 (2/2)
I have already alluded to the fact that the old monarchial government of Korea ended its inglorious career but a few short months ago. While the records of the nation run back more than three thousand years--probably to a period when Job was so superbly reproaching his comforters in the Land of Uz--the late dynasty runs back only 500 years. We Americans, I may say in pa.s.sing, are accustomed to think of men of five hundred years ago, or even of John Smith and Pocahontas, as very ancient, but a pedigree of only five hundred years wouldn't ent.i.tle a family to enter good society over here. But though only five hundred years in power, this recent dynasty succeeded in doing about as much devilment and as little good as many dynasties much older in years. One of the missionaries explained to me yesterday that it was only when the King got very mad that he would order heads cut off without reason--but then the Koreans are very lazy and his inactivity at other periods may have been due to sloth.
The truth is, that most of these Oriental monarchies have been corrupt beyond the belief of the average American. When I was a boy I used to hear the old men in country churches thank G.o.d for the blessings of orderly government and for the privilege of wors.h.i.+pping as they chose, ”with no one to molest us or make us afraid.” As a rule, we take such things as matters of course, but when one comes over here into Asia and into countries where the people have been cursed by corrupt governments, where innocent lives have been taken upon the mere whim of the government, where property has been confiscated with no better reason, and where men have had to die for their faiths:--when he, in short, comes into lands where the rights of neither life, property nor conscience have been respected, he is likely to prize his American privileges somewhat more highly.
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The old Korean dynasty was not only corrupt, but unspeakably stupid.
Like the people, the King relied on sorcerers or fortune-tellers to find a lucky day or a lucky time of the moon to do whatever he wished, and in case of sickness consulted the mutang, or conjurer, instead of a doctor. Thus when the prince had smallpox some years ago, the mutang declared that the Smallpox Spirit or devil (who must always be referred to with great respect as ”His Excellency”) would not leave unless allowed to ride horseback clear to the Korean boundary, three hundred miles away; and a gayly caparisoned horse was accordingly led the entire distance for His Excellency, the Smallpox Spirit, to ride away on!
The government was also unfeignedly corrupt. Offices were given, just as lives were taken merely at the whim of the Throne. Taxes were farmed out, the grafting collectors taking from the people probably five or six times as much as finally reached the public treasury. More than this, the n.o.bility robbed the people at will, and there was no authority from whom they could get redress. Woe unto the man who became energetic and industrious under the old dispensation! First, the tax-gatherers would relieve him of the bulk of his swollen fortune, and what was left the n.o.ble or ”Yang-ban,” as a n.o.ble was called, would take the trouble to borrow but never take the trouble to repay. For the Yang-ban was a ”gentleman,” he was. It was beneath his dignity to work--even to guide the reins of the horse he rode--but it was not beneath his dignity to sponge on his friends (I think the verb ”to sponge” is too expressive to remain slang) or to borrow without repaying. Moreover, in case of extremity, it is said that Mother Yang-ban and Sister Ann might take in was.h.i.+ng, as is recorded in the cla.s.sic lays of our own land, but Father never defiled himself by doing anything so dishonorable as an honest day's work.
But alas and alack! for the degeneracy of our times. The Yang-bans in Korea have been deprived of their ancient {67} privileges, and I fear that even their fellows in America are by no means treated with the ancient deference and respect due to persons of such exalted merit and blue-blood.
What with the arbitrary and oppressive system of tax-robbery and the extortions of the Yang-bans it is not surprising that the Koreans here became disinclined to labor, while those who went to Manchuria, where there has been ”proper security for the gains of industry” are said to be quite a different folk--energetic because there has been encouragement to be energetic. The old Korean system of taxation being arbitrary, the only way to escape a raid by the tax-gatherer was to appear not to have anything worth raiding, and with the coinage confined usually to the copper ”cash” (each ”cash” worth a small fraction of a cent), it was difficult for a man to have much money without everybody knowing it. If a man had much he needed a warehouse to store it in. Mrs. Bishop in her book, already referred to, speaks of a time when it took 3200 ”cash” to equal a dollar in our money, making each coin worth 1-32 of a cent, and it took six men or one pony to carry $50 worth of coin! Another instance is mentioned in the j.a.panese official Year Book on Korea. The j.a.panese army bought $5000 worth of timber in the interior, where the people were not used to any other currency, with the result that ”the army had to charter a small steamer and fill her completely with this copper cash to finance the transaction!” I bought a few long, necklace-like strings of this old Korean money at ten cents a string, and even then probably paid too much.
When I bought my ticket for Korea it was nominally an independent monarchy under a j.a.panese ”protectorate,” but the day before I sailed from San Francisco, j.a.panese aggression took another step and the country was formally annexed as a part of the j.a.panese Empire. There is little doubt, I suppose, that the j.a.panese will give the Koreans better government than the old monarchy gave them, but one {68} cannot excuse all the methods by which j.a.pan fastened her rule on the island.
Yesterday morning I went out to the Old North Palace, a deserted and melancholy memorial of vanished power, stood on the throne where Korean kings once held audience, and saw the royal dwelling in which the j.a.panese and their aids killed the Queen in 1895, and also saw the place where they burned her body. The j.a.panese minister at that time was recalled and placed on trial for the offence, and, though he escaped conviction, the evidence of his guilt was undoubted. It has been estimated that in about eighteen months in 1907-'08, ”12,916 Koreans, called 'insurgents' by the j.a.panese and patriots by their fellow countrymen, were killed by the Mikado's soldiers and gendarmes, only 160 of whom lost their lives.” This looks more like butchery than war. Moreover, the j.a.panese themselves have to admit that there were inexcusable delays in paying for land seized from Koreans, and in view of all the circ.u.mstances it is questionable whether the Korean hatred or dislike of j.a.pan will become very much less cordial than it is to-day.
Perhaps in no country in the world has missionary work been more successful than in Korea (there are probably 125,000 Protestants now, while there were only 777 thirteen years ago), and I have been interested to learn that there is absolutely no truth in the j.a.panese newspaper reports that immense numbers of native Christians are leaving the church since annexation. On the contrary, reports from all over the country are good, and Seoul itself is just now in the midst of a most thoroughgoing and successful Christian revival, with 1800 conversions reported during the first ten days. At a Methodist mission school I visited this morning I found that a hundred of the native pupils had been canva.s.sing the town a part of three successive afternoons with the result that they had brought in the names of 697 Koreans expressing a desire to become Christians.
Here in Korea there is no waste of energy or money through {69} denominational divisions. Each denomination has its own sphere of activity, preventing duplication of effort, and my general observation has convinced me that the criticisms of foreign mission work sometimes heard in America are based on a radical misconception of conditions.
Even the non-Christians, in the great majority of cases, speak in high praise of the splendid work of the missionaries. A typical expression is that found in the latest issue of the Shanghai _National Review_, now before me, which may be expected to speak impartially. Referring to an address by Doctor Morrison, the Peking correspondent of the London _Times_, it says:
”Doctor Morrison eulogized the work of the missionaries and we cannot conceive that anybody who really knows of their work at first hand, not as it is to be found in extreme cases, but as ordinarily carried on, should do otherwise than eulogize it.”
Seoul, Korea.
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VIII
MANCHURIA--FAIR AND FERTILE
”Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night”--I remember yet how one of the dispatches began which brought so vividly to my mind the meaning of the great death-grapple here between the j.a.panese and Russian hosts in 1905.
[Footnote: ”Uneasily sleeps Mukden to-night. In the main street lamps burn dimly. Along dark roads in heavy dust are marching columns. The cool night is full of the low rustle of movement. Near the station, in over-filled hospitals, are heard low groans. The wounded arrive in a never-ceasing stream of carts, and another stream of ambulances moves northward, for the place must be cleared for to-day's victims. The eternal pines whisper above the Tombs of Chinese Emperors. In the fields watch fires are burning stores and evacuated villages----” And the correspondent goes on to tell of the wearied forces gathering for further fighting with the coming of dawn--men footsore and weak for want of food and water and rest. For forty-eight hours the j.a.panese had not eaten.]
The story in a nutsh.e.l.l is this:
”After the capitulation of Port Arthur, Oyama pressed toward Mukden, where Kuropatkin had established his headquarters, and there from February 24 to March 12 occurred probably the most desperate battle in modern history, if not in all history. About eight hundred thousand men were engaged. Again Oyama won, and Kuropatkin retreated in fairly good order about a hundred miles north of Mukden.”
So runs the historian's brief record of the t.i.tanic struggle five years ago in the ancient Manchurian city to which I have come. What Gettysburg was in our Civil War, that Mukden was in the first great contest between the white race and the Mongolian. Here covetous Death for once was satisfied, his gruesome garnering seen at each wintry nightfall in the {71} windrows of b.l.o.o.d.y and mangled bodies strewn along miles of snowy trenches.
I have heard all sorts of war traditions in Mukden: that at one time the j.a.panese thought themselves beaten in the battle and had ordered a retreat, when, a Russian force giving way, they turned quickly to press the advantage and s.n.a.t.c.hed victory from what they had thought was ruin. There are many stories, too, of the inefficiency of the Russian officers, stories made all the more probable in the light of the Russian Commander Kuropatkin's memoirs to the same general effect.
”Why, the English would put one of their admirals against the wall and shoot him like a common seaman for such gross neglect of duty as went entirely unpunished among Russian generals,” was one man's comment as he talked with me. ”The Roos.h.i.+ans were good fighters--fought 'and to 'and with the b.u.t.t of their muskets--and if they 'ad 'ad good commanders the j.a.ps would never have won,” said an Englishman who had seen service in India. A railway man also told me of the debauchery and profligacy of the Russian officers, disreputable women travelling regularly with them to and fro, drunkenness being also common. About the same charges were reported to me by a j.a.panese officer. In fact, it is said that the j.a.panese contrived to get a very considerable quant.i.ty of champagne to the Russian headquarters one day, and the next day made a slaughter-pen of the Russian camp while the Cossack commanders were still hopelessly befuddled from too much drinking!
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