Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War by James Allan
page 47 of 85 (55%)
page 47 of 85 (55%)
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punishment, however, to use the language of the P.R., like a man, and
though his body seemed to bend like a reed with each stroke, he never uttered a sound that I could hear. I did not count the lashes, but there was no stint in the allowance. Minute after minute the castigator laboured away in his vocation, until finally the victim collapsed, and rolling over, lay like a log in a pool of blood, and was then carried off. I was rather surprised to see a whip used, as I had always supposed the bastinado to be the favourite method of flagellation in China. I asked Chung for an explanation, but he did not seem to understand my question, and replied that the "one piecee ting (soldier) no hab muchee hurtee," and that they might if they had liked have cut off his "one piecee head." True it is that decapitation is a very common punishment in the Chinese army. Strongly as the massacre by the Japanese troops in Port Arthur is to be condemned, there is not the slightest doubt in the world that the Chinese brought it on themselves by their own vindictive savagery towards their enemies. The attacking armies, advancing down the Peninsula in touch with the fleet, were now within a day or two's march of the inland forts. Bodies of Chinese troops harassed and resisted them, and brushes between the opposing forces frequently took place. The Chinese took some prisoners, whom they slew mercilessly, and one of the first things I saw on the morning of the 19th was a pair of corpses suspended by the feet from the branches of a huge camphor tree near the parade-ground. They were hideously mutilated. They had been disembowelled; the eyes were gouged out, the throat cut, and the right hand severed. They were perfectly naked, and groups of children were pelting them with mud and stones. Similar ghastly spectacles were to be seen in other parts, both inside |
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