anese woman and two children came up and also
ordered a car.
Then the Chinese clerk in charge of the station
turned to me and said: "You can have the third car.
There are two other people before you
I"
"I was here first. These people came after me,"
I protested.
"Well,
you must take the third car. You must
wait," he repeated.
"What do you mean
I
I was here first and you are
giving this car to these people because they are J ap-
anese."
The Chinese clerk was frightened.
"You must
wait," he repeated to me.
I went up to a taxi that rolled in, but the chauf-
feur would not allow me to take the car because a
Japanese was waiting. There was nothing for me to
do but leave the station.
Incidents similar to this I have witnessed in many
parts of China. There is today in China a degrada-
tion, a servility before the Japanese that is indescrib-
able. The origin of it is to be sought, not in the
Chinese masses, but in Nanking.
Since the Japanese
inv_asion of Manchuria in September,
1931,
the Nan-
king Government
and all its officials and military
men have told the Chinese people that China is too
weak to fight, that it must submit. For five years the
whole Chinese press, the schools, and all other public
institutions,
have taught this demoralizing idea. Vast
Chinese armies 'have retreated before a handful of
Japanese.
Slowly but surely the poison of fear and
servility has seeped into the blood of China. The
Japanese no longer need to use guns to conquer the
country. All they have to do is to send an unarmed
Japanese woman or child, or a Japanese or Korean
gangster,
and get all they want.
The Japanese know this. They have no fear of
any Chinese except the Communists and the Chinese
Red Army. These they fear and these forces alone,
with their sympathizers,
prevent the Japanese from
openly occupying the country. Every other Chinese
they can scare to death.
The press has just reported this typical incident:
Along the Lunghai Railway in Honan Province in
Central China, two Japanese got on the train. The
Chinese conductor went through the cars and asked
for tickets. He asked the Japanese for tickets also.
They shrugged their shoulders and replied "May
yo" (have not), then turned and gazed placidly out
of the window. The conductor asked again but the
Japanese replied the same. The conductor shifted
from foot to foot, then went away.
Soon a group of armed Chinese railway gen-
darmes-the
terror of poor Chinese-came through
the car. They halted before the Japanese and asked
for their tickets. The two Japanese again shrugged
their shoulders,
sa;d "May yo," and gazed placidly
out of the window. The gendarmes asked again but
the Japanese did not even reply. Like whipped dogs
PARTISAN
REVIEW
the gendarmes sneaked away and left the car,-and
the Japanese rode without tickets.
The Japanese ride free on the trains of China.
The same Chinese gendarmes who will beat a poor
Chinese to death if they catch him on a train with-
out a ticket, crawl like worms before a Japanese.
Often I have related these incidents to friends. Bit-
ter arguments ensue. "\Vhat do you expect?" they
ask: "Do you expect these conductors and gendarmes
to disobey the Nanking Government? Do you expect
them to do what the whole Chinese army is ordered
not to do-fight
the Japanese on the spot?"
"They could put the Japanese off the train."
"Yes-and the Nanking Government
would in-
struct the Governor of the Province in question to
hand the Japanese Consul an official letter of
apology,-with indemnity."
Then someone adds: "Why should the Japan-
ese act other than they do? \Vho is going to stop
them ?"
"The Red Army and its allies will stop them
I"
"The Nanking Government
wages war on the
Red Army to prevent that."
"For the time being only. Wait. The time will
come when it can no longer do that."
"All right," reply my friends, "until then the J ap-
anese can do as they please."
On the Peiping-Tientsin train a sbort time ago 1
watched some fifty Japanese and Koreans take pos-
session of a second-class car. They had bags of silver
which they were taking out of China. They were not
"smuggling" as the press likes to say
j
they were
quite openly taking it out just as they quite openly
bring in "smuggled" goods.
Chinese coolies had
carried the silver onto the train for them, and the
armed guards on the car steps had stepped aside
politely and allowed them all to pass. Inside, the
Chinese conductor opened the compartment
doors
for them, bowed and smiled a welcome. Later this
conductor went through the car again, opened the
compartment
doors, bowed and smiled and passed
on. But when he came to me, he asked for my ticket.
He bowed to the Japanese and Koreans in my com-
partment,
smiled, but did not dare ask them for
their tickets.
In fury,
I said to him: "Shame!
Shame
I"~
In my anger I followed him into the corridor
and down the car, watching him welcome these
gangsters.
"Shame on you, a Chinese worker!" I
kept saying. He kept ·his head turned from me, but
continued his degradation.
The Japanese and Korean
gangsters did not even notice him, but took his ser-
vility as their right.
Better that a people disappear from the face of
the earth than accept such a fate as this. Better that
individual Chinese revolt and die on the spot, rather
than endure this. That which makes them men is
gone. After that, existence has no meaning.
