July II, 1 9 1 8 
Land & Water 
13 
calendar, but to the Chinese it was the"5th day of the 5th 
moon, and, therefore, the Festival of the Dragon. For 
the ten thousand coolies who labour unceasingly at the 
discharge of ships' cargoes and other war-work in and about 
the old Norman port, it was high holiday. . You, who have 
followed in the Press from afar the earth-shaking triumphs 
of young China under the Republic, who have heard that 
since the revolution the Chinese Government has adopted 
the Western calendar, together with frock coats, votes for 
women, and all the rest of it, you may object that the Dragon 
Festival went by the board together with the Manchu dynasty 
and pigtails and the trimetrical classic. No doubt it did, 
on paper, for the edification of diplomats, financiers and 
missionaries, and for the greater glory of a handful of pre- 
datory politicians at Peking. But for the toiling masses of 
the Chinese people the Dragon Festival remains nevertheless 
a national institution, no more to be abolished by presidental 
mandate than the canons of Confucius, or the growing of 
opium, or the binding of lily-feet in maidens. It is an ancient 
people and it loveth ancient things ; and so, on the fifth 
day of the fifth moon (prehistoric style) it continues as of 
old to collect and pay its debts and to do other seemly and 
seasonable things to celebrate the memory of a certain 
virtuous Minister of State who, because of rottenness in high 
places, committed suicide (thus runs the legend) about 
450 BC. It is of no importance that the name of this 
superior man has long since been forgotten : the sons of 
Hau are quite content to do reverence to the dim and distant 
memory of such ^a phenomcn3n, and to persevere, after the 
patient, unquestioning manner of their race, in their annual 
quest for his mortal remains. 
For the sturdy natives of Shantung who, by their pres- 
ence and their labour of days, now testify in France to the 
fact that the East has heard the West a-calling, this cele- 
bration of the Dragon Festival was necessarily somewhat 
of a makeshift and a compromise. It lacked the central 
features of dragon-bouts, paper money, and that ancient 
symbolic ritual, wherewith the faithful are wont to go forth 
to seek the mortal coil of him who lived and died a model 
mandarin. But it is an essential tenet of Chinese philosophy 
to like what you can get when you cannot get what you would 
like, and the leave-squads of highly cheerful coolies, who 
pervaded the busy streets of the Havre that Thursday 
morning, found many joys to compensate them for the 
privations of exile. In the first place, they were all well 
clothed, well paid, and well fed ; enjoying, in fact, a state 
of bodily well-being to which no coolies in China would ever 
hope to aspire. 1)0 not the ever-generous (if somewhat 
undiscriminating) authorities at Whitehall provide these 
Asiatics with meat three times a day, not to mention bread, 
rice, vegetables, sugar, cheese, and all the other things that 
go to the making of British war rations ? When Wang 
Ching-fu and his friends return in due season to the un- 
seasoned rice bowl of lean seasons in Shantung, they will, 
at least, have known three unforgetable years of fatness 
beyond the dreams of glutton}', and with the blissful cer- 
tainty of ample daily bread, each man receives a franc a day, 
over and above the maintenance allowance paid to his family 
in China. 
A Dragon Festival, unmarred by household bills, without 
the customary visits to pawnbrokers and usurers ; a festival 
■with money to burn and a town full of good things to buy- 
withal — no wonder that the little groups of coolies were grin- 
ning as one man amidst the fearful joys of dumb-show 
shopping, making tlie ancient streets of the Havre resound 
with strange, cheerful noises of th'e East. One man I met 
in the Public Garden — a flat-nosed, genial fellow of the 
Sancho Panza type — carrying with infinite pride a bunch 
of red peonies, one of the few flowers in the Havre market 
to remind these exiles of spring-time in their native land, 
a flower very appropriate, by classical tradition, for the 
celebration of the festival. He was a strange vision, this 
son of Hau, still wearing on his feet the native cotton shoes 
of Shantung, his legs bedecked with khaki puttees and on 
his head a saucy Homburg hat. Sniffing ecstatically at his 
peonies, he was heading for the tramway that would take him 
hack to camp, all oblivious of the strangeness of the world 
about him, quite unconscious of his own fantastic jiresence 
in it. Around and about him, enjoying their iiour of case 
and their i>lacc in the sun, were fighting men from all the 
four corners of the earth — Belgians and Russians (flotsam, 
these, now working at munitions), Americans and Australians, 
Britishers of every description, Indians and Portuguese — 
not to mention a cheerful contingent of "Waacs" and 
"WreVis" — a very kaleidoscopic epitome of the history of 
the war. But the man from Shantung went his way through 
that sun-flecked garden as if all these were but fleeting 
shadows on the Painted Veil, as if he himself and his peonies 
were the only realities. His Oriental soul was evidently 
worlds away, either lost in memories of bygone days or 
weaving roseate dreams about the coming flash. 
Coming up softly from behind, I asked in his own tongue 
how much he had given for the flowers and what he was 
going to do with them ? 
You cannot surprise the East ; its imperturbability is 
inbred, elemental, the result of centuries of fatalism, not 
merely a defensive armour like that of the Scot. Without 
surprise, without even an indication of mild interest, but 
with the serene courtesy of his race, he replied that the 
flowers had cost him two days' pay — two "flancs," as he put 
it. As for their purpose, was not the tapir aware that this 
was the 5th day of the 5th moon ? There was to be a special 
big chow-chow at the camp that evening, and what could 
be more suitable to the occasion than peonies ? Whereupon, 
we fell to talking. It was good work and good living in 
France, he said. By the end of his three years, fourteen 
months hence, he hoped to have saved many dollars. Per- 
haps, if the war was not over by then, he would sign on 
again. But was it true, as he had heard, that there was 
trouble also in China ? Had there been looting of cities by 
bandits in Shantung ? Was his family in any danger at 
Wei-hai-wei ? It is worthy of note that, in his opinion, 
the middle kingdom will know no lasting peace until the 
old order is re-established with the Dragon Throne and all 
foolish talkers forcibly suppressed. Why, he asked, did not 
England help to put down the pirates and robbers who make 
the Chinese people to eat bitterness ? 
On our way to the labour camp we met one of the Coolie 
Companies celebrating the occasion by a full-dress procession, 
headed by its flag, all very pleased and proud. Also we 
met a regiment of American troops in full marching order, 
and again, further on, some squads of German prisoners under 
escort, returning to work. My Chinese friend paid no attention 
to the Germans ; but the Americans drew speech from the depths 
of his philosophic detachment. "Those are overseas men," 
he observed ; "they are going to help the French to fight." 
Then, after a pause and incidentally, as if recording an 
axiom, he added, "We Chinese do not fight." It was said 
complacently, but there was, nevertheless, an unmistakable 
implication of superior wisdom. And to my mind there 
came a swift mind-picture of China as she is to-day, and as 
she has been so often in the past, her millions of non-fighters 
once more the prey of lawlessness and rapine, " Whose harvest 
the hungry eateth up and the robber swalloweth up their 
substance." And I wondered whether there is much to 
choose in the end between the grim casualty lists of our 
own machine-made civilisation and that of the dream-fed 
patriarchal system of the East. Our poets and philosophers 
have been over prone to realise Matthew Arnold's lotus- 
eating moon, that Orient which 
. , . let the legious thunder by, 
And plunged in thought again. 
With what hideous paroxysms has that meditation been 
broken through the long centuries ! Who shall say whether 
the better wisdom dwells among the disdainful thinkers or 
with the thundering legions ? 
After a visit to the Chinese camp and ai^ inspection of 
their rations for the day (which made my humble meat card 
a thing of derision), I was returning to the Hotel de Normandie, 
through the Place Gambetta, where the masts of the fishing 
smacks look down upon the flowersellers' stalls, when I 
came across another group of coolies, standing outside a 
shop just wherp the main street begins. They were earnestly 
trying, by means of much eloquent gesture, to explain some- 
thing to Madame la proprUtaire. Madame had given it up. 
Their pantomime had suggested a tooth brush, but this 
had been rejected by the whole strength of the company. 
My services as interpreter having been accepted, it transpired 
that what was wanted was a mouth-organ, "to make pleasant 
sounds fof our festival." One of the coolies was the proud 
possessor of a native fiddle, another had a tin whistle ; only 
the organ was needed to complete the orchestra. Alas, 
there was no such instrument to be found in all the town. 
In the matter of headgear, the King's regulations appear to 
allow the Labour Battalions a latitude which expresses itself 
in fancy. The result detracts somewhat from their collective 
dignity ; their motley i)romiscuity reminded me of early days 
in Japan, what time the sons of the Samurai first took to 
experiments in the garb of Western civilisation, and their 
traders imported miscellaneous cargoes of second-hand hats 
from London and New York. 
And, in conclusion, be it said that, as regards their morals 
and manners and general conduct, these lumible recruits in 
the ranks of the Allies have won golden opinions on all 
sides. 
