CAPTAIN YOUNG HUSBAND ON THE CHINESE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1 Sin,—May I be permitted the use of your columns to dispel an illusion which has prevailed for many years, and which evidently still obtains ? In the Spectator of June 9th you refer to the conquest of Kashgar as indicating that the Chinese possessed military qualities which the result of the Japanese War had made us think they lacked, and you speak of the people the Chinese defeated in Kashgar as the bravest and fiercest Mahommedans in the world. I had the good fortune to be able to visit Kashgar a decade after the con- quest, having travelled thither from Pekin, through the length of Turkestan. I also lived for about eight months in the town of Kashgar in 1890-91. On p. 185 of my book, "Among the Celestials," I give an account by an eye-witness of the Chinese entry into Kashgar :— "There was practically no fighting. Yak-ub Beg had died or been poisoned away westward some weeks before, and he being dead there was no one to lead the defence, and the people of the country were absolutely apathetic. What soldiers there were, when they heard the Chinese were close to the town hastily threw aside their uniforms, and assuming the dress of cultivators, walked about the fields in a lamb-like and innocent manner."
Again, on p. 194 I describe the people of Turkestan (Kashgar) as—
"The essence of imperturbable mediocrity Revolutions
have occurred, but they have generally been carried out by foreigners. Yakub Beg was a foreigner, and most of the officials under him were the same ; so that even when their hereditary rulers, the Chinese, were driven out for a time the people of Chinese Turkestan did not govern themselves. On the contrary, in all these changes they appear to have looked on with indifference. Such a people are not, as might naturally be inferred, a fighting race. They are a race of cultivators and small shup keepers, and nothing more."
The reconquest of this people cannot be taken as an indication that the Chinese possess military aptitude. We have to thank you for reminding us that the Chinese are not so absolutely and totally impotent as many of us had got to imagine. But this particular incident in their 'history merely gives evidence of the pertinacity of their character, and cannot, in my opinion, be taken to prove that they possess any military quality which the Japanese War showed them to lack,—I am,
Sir, &o., FRANCIS EDWARD YOUNCIIIIISSA,ND.
The Agency, Deoli, Bajpv.tana.
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