The Peoples and Politics of the Far East Volume 1; Travels and Studies in the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese Colonies, Siberia, China, Japan, Korea, Siam and Malaya (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 Excerpt: ...and they are evidently drawn from the lower classes of a farming population. Their winter barracks aro spacious and handsome buildings, but their summer barracks, several milos inland by the shore of a beautiful part of the Amur Bay, are rather ramshackle, and if the truth is to be told, much dirtier than Tommy Atkins would be satisfied to live in. But I spent a jolly evening with them when I rode out with my military guide, and shared their palatable if frugal supper of black bread, potato soup, and kvau--a kind of thin bitter beer. The detachment I visited was under the command of a lieutenant who looked fifteen, and was certainly not twenty. They would make good rough fighting material--Kaiumenfutter as the Germans oynioally call it--all the better for wnr work in this far-off bard country because they do not know what it is to be petted or pampered in time of peaoe. In fact, peace means perhaps more hard work for them than war, for they are employed on building fortifications, making bricks, and several other occupations that are not included in the military curriculum elsewhere, very much like common labourers. The following estimate of their numbers at Vladivostok is not far from tho mark: two battalions of infantry, 2,000; artillery, 350; sappers, 250; total, on peace footing, 2,000 men. This is doubtlosB much smaller than is generally supposed, but the tendoucy is to distribute the forces all over this part of Eastern Siberia, and only to collect a large numln-r at Vladivostok in times of danger. Probably 30,000 men could be concentrated here in a short time. The oDlcers, on the whole, struck me as a fine body of men, dignified, devoted, and intelligent. But they must suffer intellectually from being cut off by the strict Russian censorship laws fro...