Militarism In Asia
By
Gareth
Jones,
Bangkok, Siam.
June, 1935
For many months I have been a
wanderer in the Far East hastening from the cliff girt pine-bejewelled
coasts of Japan to the luxuriant Philippines to the coconut groves of
the South Sea Islands to the volcanoes and rubber forests of Java, to
the glittering golden temples of Siam, to French Indo China with its
ruins of the past glory hidden in tiger infested jungles and to the
bandit harassed interior of old China.
What has left the deepest
impression upon me during this journey of thousands of miles through
many countries?
More than by the beauties of
the present and by the glories of the past, I have been moved by fear of
the future through out the Far East, which once was the home of peace
and philosophy of resignation and of contemplation, a new religion is
tearing into shreds the tranquility of yesterday, and is crashing with
the roar of drums into the calm of the priests of yore.
This new religion is the
WORSHIP of the SOLDIER. In each new land I have seen rising the sceptre
of militarism. In Japan I tramped though gorges where the trees clung
like grim death to the rocks, where water falls spattered down into the
depths, and where the paths were littered with the bizarre stone gods of
old. Then with a breath taking suddenness Mount Fuji rose white-capped
to complete a scene of peace. Crash! In the midst of this idyll I had
to leap for my life to the side of the road, for hurtling madly round
the corner came a line of Japanese military tanks, painted in brown and
green, with determined ruthless head peeping out, as their engines of
death shattered the poetry of the countryside. It was a symbol of the
war machine breaking into the Asia of the artist and the dreamer.
When I returned to Tokyo I
saw how the soldiers dominated national life how the civilians in the
Government had little to say before the military men, how the War Office
scorned the Foreign Office and how the young officers set them selves up
as a Spartan example to the youth of the country and taught that Japan
had a mission to save
the world. I went to see the Navy Minister, Admiral Osumi “Will not the
financial situation be a barrier to the building up of a great Navy?”
I sailed past the British
rocky heights of Hong Kong, where battleships lay, a defense of British
interests in South China. There was excitement on the day on which I
arrived, for young and old British citizens merchants and clerks,
teachers and lawyers were donning uniforms for all night manoeuvres.
When the Philippines came in
sight I little expected to find among the Filipinos any trace of the
WORSHIP of the SOLDIERS. I was disillusioned for no sooner had I
entered the Office of one of Manila’s leading politicians than he told
me: “We must build up a Filipino Army, an independent army of our own,
to defend our shores and to provide a training for our youth. We must
build up a Filipino Navy. We must have an air force, for no nation is a
real independent nation without an air force.”
My journey continued towards
the South, across the Equator, past Borneo to the Celebes and there, to
Java. In the smiling islands I thought that such savage preparation as
that of modern warfare would be distant, but I was mistaken. In the
first port where I landed, Soerabaya, bombing seaplanes darted out
towards the open sea. “We are building up our air force,” the Dutch
Colonists declared. “We have bought fourteen Douglas planes for the
Amsterdam to Batavia civil air route, but we believe that military
considerations entered into the purchase of those aeroplanes.” In great
speed. Thousands of coolies were at work excavating, shovelling,
carrying earth and stone in that tremendous scheme of converting a
formerly malaria-stricken swamp into Britain’s outpost in the Far
East. I looked down-almost dizzy at the dry dock, a masterpiece of
naval construction, which will hold the largest battleships afloat and
saw at the gate the granite blocks, which are smoothed to a measurement
of 1/4000 of an inch! Great Britain is not being left behind in the
military and naval race in the Far East.
A dirty little tramp steamer
chugged its way with myself as its only passenger to the Kingdom of
Siam, which, so the Siamese claim, is the only true independent Buddhist
nation in the world. No one had greater scorn for the soldier and the
fighter than the great Buddha, who lived four hundred years before
Christ, and who taught that all life and all desire were evil. Surely
in Siam, a country without enemies, with Great Britain on one side and
France on the other, I should find a country where there was no worship
of the soldier!
On the contrary,
however, I found when I reached its capitol, Bangkok, that the
revolution had led to a military dictatorship and that the Army was the
real master of Siam, I went to see the Prime Minister, who is at the
same time the Foreign Minister and the Commander in Chief of all the
Siamese forces. He was clad in the green uniform of a Siamese General
and he received me in a room decorated with ancient and new weapons used
in Siamese warfare. “I am a soldier?" he declared bluntly and proudly.
I went out to a large field
beneath the ramparts of the Royal Palace. Workmen were busy erecting
wooden towers and cloth scenes, which I saw were scenes of battle. My
American companion pointed to the field and said: “That is a
revolutionary change in the Siamese. Formerly no one would have dared
to touch that ground, for it was sacred, being the burial ground, but
today it is being made ready for a great military display.” The Siamese
Buddhists beneath that soil would indeed turn in their graves if they
knew that the consecrated field was being used for the worship of the
soldier, and that a few days later Siamese military aeroplanes would
encircle overhead and drop imitation bombs upon their resting place.
Soldiers have been sent
to the schools of Siam to demonstrate to the children the use of machine
guns and sometimes terrifying the village youngsters who, never having
seen a machine gun in their lives, are scared by the din of the war
engines.
“Why do you lay such stress
on the soldier?" I asked the Minister of Education: “We believe in
military drill and military training for the youth of Siam, because they
give discipline and. build character,” he declared. Through French
Indo-China I travelled and there again I saw the worship of the soldier
and the lauding of the French Army
At last I
came to China, where soldiers have been regarded as the scum of society
and where the scholar has been the cynosure of all eyes. For days I
traversed the country into the interior, through a district where
Communist troops had marched time and time again and where bandits had
their lairs. This was real China and here, I thought, as I questioned a
class of Schoolboys, I would find the old despising of the soldier.
They were one and all, fiery militants. “I want to go to a military
school and learn how to handle machine guns and tanks,” declared Wong, a
youth of eighteen. “China must become a nation with a great army,”
shouted Chen. “We must have military institutes throughout the land,”
proclaimed Chiang, a meek boy with glasses. “In the next year,” was the
opinion of big-shouldered Wu, “We must have a great military machine to
be able to conquer Soviet Russia and Japan!”
Goodbye to the Pacifism of
the China of yesterdays, I reflected as I left the school and passed a
brigade of clumsy young men in brown uniforms, doing their compulsory
military training.
I went to see Marshal Chang
Hsueh-liang, who is, after Chiang Kai-shek, the most powerful man in
China. “We want military training to build up the character of Chinese
youths!” he declared to me.
I walked through a part of
Kwangtung Province and there in one town I saw sentries guarding each
temple. When I tried to enter to see the images, they barred my way
with their bayonets. The temples, I learned, had become the dwelling
place of the soldiers.
Many of the troops are at
one time bandits and at other times soldiers. Last week many folks in
Changsha were startled to see a bandit chief from the South of Hunan
arrive in Changsha the capitol, and pay a visit to the Governor. Next
day, however, it was announced that the arch robber had been made a
Colonel and that his three hundred thieves had been converted into
soldiers in the Governor’s Army.
That is typical of old China. The passion of
respectable youth for militarism and for military aeroplanes is, on the
other hand, revolutionary. It reveals an Asia which is bubbling over
with change and which is casting aside old beliefs for a new and
dangerous creed, the WORSHIP of the SOLDIER.
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