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Show iiaiiioFLflor -4- Soldiers and Civilians Scramble Wildly In Tien Tsin. Tien Tsin. China, July 17. The ancient an-cient stone walls of the Chinese city of Tien Tsin, surrounded on the days of its occupation by the allied troops, a square mile of such filth, ruin and death, such turmoil and pillage as history his-tory could hardly duplicate. Under normal conditions the place was no better than a huge cesspool, festering w ith the accumulated rubbish and slops from a population of nearly 1,000,000, packed into a labyrinth of hovels, around the palaces of viceroys and petty Tao Tais, who absorbed their wealth and cave. them not even sewers sew-ers in return. Now It is the incarnation incarna-tion of all the suffering, horrors and waste of war. The European soldiers, when they fought their way up to the walls, saw floating in the canals and ditches outside out-side dozens of Chinese slain by their own people because they refused to fight. The bodies ware headless and their hands were tied behind their backs. The heads were discovered afterwards. Rows of them decorated the outer walls, hung by their pigtails. pig-tails. Five flags were flying from the high pagodas on the city walls when the newspaper correspondents entered, the French, Japanese, American, Russian and British. "It was hard enough to get those flaga up there." remarked a foreign officer, "but -he real trouble will be to get them ttown." The suburbs of the city presented a foretaste of what was inside. Sheila had torn the houses and plowed the ground, while the dead men scattered about among dead oorses, pigs and dogs, testified how thoroughly the bullets bul-lets hal swept the region the day before. be-fore. The sights inside compelled respect for the fierhting qualities of the Chinese. Chi-nese. Their dead were everywhere. Dressed in the coarse blue coolie blouse and troupers, decorated with characters charac-ters guaranteed to render them invulnerable invul-nerable to foreign bullets, they were strewn along the top of the wall wherever they had fallen. ' Walking a quarter of a mile along the embankment, embank-ment, the bodies averaged one in ten feet, and the wall was nearly ten miles lon-. - Throughout the city the demolished houses and hundreds of killed gave evidence evi-dence of how vastly more effective had been the foreign shell fire within the walls of the city than the Chinese bombardment bom-bardment of the foreign settlement, which, lasting for a month, had killed only a dozen persons. The vicefoy had constructed in the palace yard two comfortable and impenetrable bomb-proofs, bomb-proofs, excavations guarded by sandbags, sand-bags, but the common people were less fortunate. ' Many w omen and children were lying dead in the streets torn terribly by shrapnel. The living populace were utterly indifferent to them. They would not take the trouble to drag them out of the streets, or even cover them with matting as a foreign soldier did afterwards, after-wards, but trampled them under loot without bothering to turn them aside. Before the shooting in the streets was finished, thousands of Chinese had emerged from their burrows, carrying white flag?, or the flags of foreign nations, na-tions, principally the Japanese. Most remarkable of all the sights was the looting of the city: the middle of the place was Mke an ant hill kicked open. Chinese swarmed everywhere, thousands and thousands of them; diving into the flames of the burning shops, getting under falling walls nd into choking clouds of smoke. Most of them were half naked, grimy with smoite ana sometimes - dripping with blood. They were piled upon one another. an-other. The Chinese who would win a prize mast fight his way; other Chinese will s-prinsr upon him and pluck his plunder. They rolled among the corpses, pulling and tearing, w hile children, being be-ing trampled down, cried for help, and the mob poured right along over them. The palaces, the mint, the pawn shops, the stores of silks, furs and jewelry were the first objects of attack. Near the middle of the city was the most prosperous pawn shop, an institution insti-tution that had probably existed for centuries. Wealthy Chinamen were accustomed ac-customed to store their winter clothing there for safe keeping. When the doors were battered down the mob flowed in like a tidal wave. There were British officers, naval and military, soldiers and sailors with a good sprinkling of sikhs, but principally Chinese. In a twinkling all was pandemonium. The Chinese knew where the best treasure was to be found and the soldiers followed fol-lowed them. Two forces collided in the gateway, a rush line of Chinese struggling strug-gling to enter and another line fighting to get out with great armfuls of loot, while an occasional soldier went through the crowd like one of the Broadway squad. Tien Tsin experienced experi-enced a sweeping redistribution of wealth, but on the old scheme of the prizes to the strongest. Looters flourished for three days. On the first day it was entirely unrestrained. unrestrain-ed. Many white peopl accumulated stacks of goods by simply standing at the city gates and holding up the best laden Chinese from the endless procession pro-cession that flowed out. Pack horses, carts, rickshaws, collies loaded with trunks and sacks and piled witn loose silks, furs and bronzes, crowded all the roads leading down to the settlement. settle-ment. English officers rode with their horses concealed under dry goods boxes, and soldiers slung bundles on their bayonets. On the second day a conference of commanding officers decided to adopt repressive measures. The commanders, except the French, empowered the British, who were, doine- the provost duty, to slese all loot. This order the British attempted to execute by holding hold-ing up the looters as they entered the foreign towns. They took all bundles and reported the names of claimants for future inquiry. Naturally this step provoked grumbling, particularly among the soldiers of other nationalities. nationali-ties. Captain Bailey, the provost marshal, a big bodied, big voiced Englishman, Eng-lishman, explained that the prohibition was designed to restrain civilians from getting the spoils which should go to the men who did th" fighting. An official of-ficial statement is that all seized loot will be sold, the proceeds to be divided among the soldiers as prize money, but soldiers, wise through former cam paigns, comment skeptically. The Japanese, so far as casual observation obser-vation showed, did the least looting because be-cause of the admirable discipline under which their soldiers are held. The Americans had all to themselves one large arsenal, which they occupied on entering the city. It contained not only cannon, but a fine store of small arms, swords of curious and rich pattern, rifles f various makes, with stands of the long two-man guns, which are simply sim-ply giant rifles, throwinga ball which, from the report and whistle, the soldiers sol-diers in the fight judged to be one-pounders. one-pounders. Munitions of war were not to be sold or shipped to Washington as spoils of war. ; . . , On the third day of the occupation a different method was followed by compelling looters to give up their loads at the city gate. Even this measure meas-ure did not prevent the loss of much gold and silver. Civilians from the concession made a general raid on the salt commissioner's treasure and many succeeded in smuggling loads of silver bars through to the settlement. The Americans siezed a million taels' worth of precious metals, which is piled up in the marine barracks. Today the walled city looks as though a tornado had stricken it. Enough valuable property has . been destroyed to stock a big city and enough has been siezed to give every soldier a considerable con-siderable sumt if , the. -distribution. ,is honestly administered. ' |