How the navy got the Americans away from nanking

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: How the navy got the Americans away from nanking
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 7 (Issue No.9) September 1927
Year: 1927
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Fulltext: September, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 9 long and wide enough to reach from the waist to below the knees. The illustration shows a group of Kanaka police boys posed fo>\ their picture; the shirts are the property of the pho tographer. Only about the mission settlements may Kanakas wear shirts and coats. There is a reason, which may be a sound one; it is said that experience has shown that where the native of the tropics is permitted to adopt the ways of Europeans, in dress and diet, degeneracy of the race ensues. The strict regulation is, therefore, intended for the Kanakas’ own good. While old German New Guinea is an agri cultural land preeminently, and copra and cocoa the principal crops, last year some very rich gold strikes were made and mining has already become very attractive, several wealthy com panies, one American, being engaged in it. Gold had always been washed out by the Kanakas, but the genuine richness of the streams had never been realized until some Australians made bonanza discoveries on the Ramu, Markham and Warrior rivers at their headwaters in the How the Navy Got the Americans Away from Nanking When southern Chinese fall to fighting north ern Chinese the fiercest combat always centers around Nanking, for which, of course, there is a reason. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a reason in the West, but it is in the East. It is sentiment, the sentiment of old traditions. That is why things were so hot for Americans in Nanking last March, when the Cantonese forces of the South took the city and caused the hurried retreat of the northern troops that had been defending it. Nanking! Why does each side want so badly this whosit on the Yangtze? It is just the provincial capital of Kiangsu. True, but Nanking was not always thus. Between the 4th and 6th Christian centuries Nanking was the seat of six successive dynasties in China. In 1368 it was once more made the metropolis of China, lasting as such until 1421. In Nanking, through many centuries, young Chinese sat in their low-roofed narrow cells and studied the ancient classics in preparation for the examinations qualifying them for the service of the government and the title of mandarin. See the rows of these youth-killing cells! Tradition preserves, and racial conservatism would even restore them! China has a glorious past, espe cially in the realm of literature and philosophy. Like other nations with a glorious past, she would, if she could, fashion the present in the mold of the past and live apart in splendid isolation. She can’t, because she has tea, silk, porcelain, beans and bakers’ eggs to sell, and the world wants to buy—and will buy, too, whether China’s rulers will or no. But nations are like individ uals, so it isn’t a bit hard to sympathize with old China. A gray but stubborn old baron lives his frugal days out in his castle, surrounded by a ruined estate, and wins one’s pity and respect because he holds so fast to his cherished traditions and honors the teachings of his fathers. China is just like the impoverished baron— impractical, unable to meet the world in a world ly way, but full of pride in all that she has to be proud of, her ancient past. Nanking is a big part of that past. When Europe was but a savage land of petty rulers warring with one another, and the only true authority was that of Rome, the Church, when the ambitious could not defeat their adversaries with the sword they sometimes chose the poison cup; and the envied had tasters at their little courts to sample both wine and viands before they dared eat or drink. But they had another means of detecting the poison, the celebrated celedons of Nanking. These porcelains, it was believed, were of such sensitive clay that when poison touched them they responded with a ring of warning. Pick one up today, cap it over your fingers and thump it ever so lightly, and it will ring like a silver bell. In medieval times these wares were priceless. mountains of the mainland. The real El Dorado seems to be on Eddie creek and the Watut and Bulolo rivers; indeed, the whole country ap pears to be impregnated with gold. Leaving his ship, a captain went gold panning in the region of the richest strikes and brought out 10,000 pounds in four months. It is reported that an American company gave a million sterling for one big property after their engineer examined it and made a report. To obviate the necessity of the tedious overland journey to the mines, consuming more than a week and exposing one to malaria and black water fever, the companies employ airplanes between Rabaul and their supply posts nearby the workings. One company is working a rich vein, other holdings are placer projects. Such is a brief sketch of New Guinea under the mandate. The Journal's information is from Murdo N. McDonald, who was employed in the district police force. His duties fam iliarized him with the country and the people as well as the' administration of public affairs. Besides its porcelains, Nanking has its damask silks and the famous Nanking fans; in the sur rounding province is a great production of raw silk annually; in the traditions the Empress left her throne in Nanking every spring and enacted the ceremony of caring for the silk worms. Nanking has always been a political, educational and military center as well as an industrial and commercial emporium. Its walls are 32 miles in circumference and from 30 to 50 feet high. They are furnished with 13 gates, four of which are opened only for ceremonials. The magni ficent tomb of Ming-hsiau-ling, founder of the Ming dynasty, adorns a venerated hillside inside Nanking’s protecting walls, and all the virtues of Drum Tower Gate, Nanking, and Ancient Examination Sheds, Dismal Monuments to China’s Effete Past the Chinese race can be traced in the classics that were preserved in Nanking and imparted to generation after generation. Japan received her own culture from this foqntain. Its waters ran freely over the Orient in the 14th and 15th centuries, making wild peoples gentle with the cultured learning of Confucius and his brilliant disciples. No wonder, then, that when the never-ending campaigns are on between North and South, Nanking is the particular goal of each army. The fact made the situation of Americans in Nanking very dangerous when the southern troops poured into the city last March. It gave the American navy a chance to distinguish itself, and the chance was eagerly seized. If a foreign navy is operating in China (and several always are operating there, our own included), when crises arise, the way to win distinction is to get out your nationals with the least amount of actual firing and loss of life, sb that the minimum offense only is given to the Chinese, who would like nothing better than to build a Great Wall around the whole coast of their country—not against the Mongols, this time, but against western barbarians. When a modern people think like that there is nothing to do but remain patient until they come out of it, and our navy in the Far East is always under the command of a man who can be firmly patient and who knows his China. This time it is Admiral Clarence S. Williams. However, it was not his business to be at Nanking last March. That was the business of a gunboat, the Noa, relieving the Simpson. The British had the Emerald there under Captain England, and the Japanese had three destroyers. England was senior officer in com mand, the three powers were acting together and all had nationals in the city. The foreign settlement at Nanking lies along the bank of the Yangtze outside the walls, but for lack of space the foreign consulates are within the walls. The site of the city is hilly, one hill inside the walls is called Socony Hill because it is occupied .by the residences of American employes of the Standard Oil Company. The residence of the manager of this company’s Nanking office is quite a pretentious house built flush with the city wall, a circumstance that saved many American lives on Thursday, March 24. Two days before, the southern troops had poured into Nanking and began their systematic looting. It seems that at that time there were some 220 Americans in the city: teachers, mis sionaries, officials and business people, most of the men married and having their families with them. By the most extreme patience and mili tary strategy, on March 22 no less than 175 of these beleaguered Americans were safely taken aboard the Noa and the Preston, the men going later on board a British hulk anchored in the river. That night several stragglers added to the number of the saved, but all these were from the foreign concession outside the walls. * There remained the grim situation of the Americans within the walls, who had gathered together to encourage one another and taken final refuge in the Manager’s House on Socony Hill. It was in the defense of this house and evacuation of Americans from it that the heroic work was done. The Noa landed a squad of unarmed men under .the command of Ensign W. Phelps. The squad was to be armed ac the American Consu late, inside the walls, where there were 24 rifles and plenty of ammunition—and where it would be Phelps’ wits and the men’s against uncounted thousands of victory-mad Cantonese! The men were G. M. Tounsend, T. C. Garbray, Electri cian Charzotte, O. M. Gree, E. Hatew, D. L. (Conclude,! on pope //) September, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 11 “Judge on the Bench”--Judge Harvey Judge George Rogers Harvey came to the Philippines in 1901. He was, therefore, among the first Americans who came out on their own. since he had no connection with the government. He and Mrs. Harvey have just left the islands, to go to California. It is on account of Mrs. Har vey’s health, no longer robust in this climate; and though Judge Harvey is on leave of absence, having five months’ accrued leave, which might be extended in an emergency, there is also a possibility that he may resign at the end of his leave and not come back to the Philippine bench. He has honored it for a long period, thirteen years, having been appointed a judge of the court of first instance in 1914. Judge Harvey embodies justice; there has always been the public feeling, and the feeling among litigants, that the law would be accom modated to the ends of justice in his decisions if it lay within his power. For the law is not always just, it is more consistently so when administered by the judge who exalts justice and tempers it at times with mercy. Perhaps if there were jury trial in this territory, it would be in Judge Harvey’s court more than in others that the privilege would be waived by both parties. Certainly he has been little harassed by litigants seeking favors: none has dared violate his sanc tum. The government, too, has been kept as aloof as the plain citizen. Men have disagreed with Judge Harvey, and he, like other judges, has been reversed on occasion, but no reversal and no personal pique has ever impeached his honor. If a tale may be told with sufficient delicacy, it may be told out of school. Judge Harvey took over the duties of his sala in Manila on a Monday. The first business presented was a motion for dissolution of a receivership, which his predecessor had just granted without notice. The man whose business had been placed in the hands of a receiver was now in court asking dissolution of the receivership. Puzzled by the circumstances, Judge Harvey consulted the man who had granted the receivership. “What shall I do?” he asked. “Oh, if I were you I’d dissolve the thing. Blank told me himself he thought the other people would settle if they were threatened with a receivership!” There was no way out of the nasty mess except to dissolve the receivership, but no one has ever attempted to utilize Judge Harvey’s court as a bill collecting agency. Harvey was born near Athens, Alabama, some years ago. His parents were both Virginia people, from old colonial families. The first Harvey encountered in Virginia’s history is Sir John Harvey, who settled at Jamestown in 1637. Harvey attended public school at Ennis, Texas, and later attended Valparaiso University. ' He then returned to Texas, studied law at the University of Texas, was examined and admitted to practice in the state, and was elected county attorney of El Paso county. At the close of his term, two years, he went to Kansas City and was graduated there from the Kansas City School of Law and admitted to practice in Missouri. Soon after this he came to Manila, opening law offices in the old Batlle building on Calle Rosario which was torn down some years ago for the widening of calle Dasmarinas. (H. E. Heacock, beginning his jewelry business in the islands, had offices with Harvey.) Friends of Harvey from El Paso came with him to Manila. He was their counsel. They planned to engage in banking and other lines of business here, feeling, like the honest border men they were, that under the American flag the development of the islands would be rapid and the opportunities for capital abundant. But they soon found that the then administra tion was not encouraging that sort of thing; they got the cold shoulder, and they went back to Texas. Harvey decided to stay and stick it out. If the country thought it didn’t need business men, it might think better of lawyers; and the experience would be interesting in any case. Besides, Harvey does stick things out; it’s his way. After a year of private practice, upon invita tion from Judge Libbeus R. Wilfley, then the attorney general, Harvey took a post as an assistant attorney. In 1903 he was appointed assistant attorney general for constabulary matters and assigned to constabulary head quarters, and two years later, as assistant at torney general, he returned to the attorney general’s office, where, in 1908, he was promoted to the post of solicitor general—the job Alex ander- Reyes has now. From this position, in which he was often acting attorney general, he went to the bench in 1914. His first ap pointment was to the 7th district, Tayabas, Batangas and Mindoro, but in June, 1914, he was appointed to the Manila district, where he has been ever since—longer than any other American judge in the history of the Manila court. During the World War, Judge Harvey was NANKING: From Page Nine Larratt, T. H. Jones, First Class Seaman Morris, Second Class Fireman Plumley, and C. N. Arnold. Two or three pf these men, Morris and Plumley especially, are commended for their conspicuous conduct in Nanking, but every man stood true to his duty. It was nearly 10 in in the morning, Thursday, when Phelps learned that the British Consulate had been looted, the guard overcome and the Consul General killed. Word came next of the general looting of the Christian missions and the wanton murder of an American, Dr. Williams. It was then and there decided to get the remain ing Americans out of the city, come what might. Phelps was at the American Consulate with his handful of men, and refugees had joined them there. Among them was Mrs. John K. Davis and her two children, the wife and children of the U. S. Consul, John K. Davis, who remained on duty and gave sound counsel and cool assistance. There was a long trek over the hills to the Socony house. Undergoing desultory fire from ambush all the way, Mrs. Davis and the children bore up with the men and reached temporary safety. Phelps had given various parts of a machine he had smuggled through the gate, to different men among the refugees to carry; but they hurried so that they threw these away! When the Bidding the Carabao Good-by from the Paddies W. A. McKellar Manager, Machinery Department, Macleod and Company In the article of Mr. Hill in the August number of the American Chamber of Com merce Journal, he says: “The main agri cultural motive power in the Philippines is, and will be, the carabao, suited to work in partly submerged fields and adapted to the intensive methods of cultivation followed in the Orient.” If by the words and will be he refers to the next few years, he is, no doubt, correct, but since he does not so qualify the meaning of his statement as to the future, I wish to express the contrary belief that, before many years, the commissioned a major judge advocate in the judge advocate general’s department of the Army. He served for a time as judge advocate of the Philippine department; he was also in Washington for a year, on assignment at the judge advocate general’s office. Judge Harvey married Miss Ray Virginia Hoyt in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1894. They have two sons, Stanley and Charles, who were brought up in Manila until they went off to school and college in the United States. Charles, the younger, is now living at Long Beach, Cal ifornia, where he is employed in business. The Harveys are going there from Manila. Stanley, employed by Ulen and Company, engineers, is at Athens, Greece, where his company is building the new waterworks system. (Major J. F, Case, builder of the Montalban waterworks system for Manila, is associated with Ulen and Company.) Stanley is married, there is a baby, and the most important business of life for Judge Harvey now is to get that baby into his arms. Maybe he will be able to do this while away from Manila. All right, let him visit Athens and carry the finest grandchild in the world up to the Acropolis, if he wants to, but only on his way back to Manila, via Europe. For the thing his neighbors and friends want him to do is to come back to Manila. Why, he and Mrs. Harvey are a part of the old town. What will Masonry, for instance, do without Judge Harvey? He has always been active in Masonry, master of his own lodge, Corregidor No. 3, worthy patron of Mayon Chapter, O. E. S., and Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the Philippine Islands in 1915. He has been honored with the 33rd degree. Au revoir, Judge Harvey, and Mrs. Harvey; but only au revoir, and bon voyage. Socony house was reached the machine gun could not be set up. Men stood at the Socony house exposed to irregular fire while keeping signal communica tion with the Noa and the Preston, and the men answering them aboardship were constantly under fire from shore. (At such times the navy’s patience is sorely tried, these are really the fatal moments, when there could be either war or peace.) Attack after attack was made on tlie refuge house by armed looters. These aggres sions grew so alarming that at last Phelps asked that the boats in the river give fire protection. Fire! A salvo was the response, from the Preston, then the Noa. Shells dropped just over the house, and to the side of the house, but never a one on the house; and while the loot ing Cantonese were thus kept back, the Ameri cans made cables of the bedclothing and other materials at hand in the house and lowered themselves down over the wall, and made their way, carefully guarding the women and children, down to the river landing and the belching ships. Not a life was lost, not a person was wounded; and when all noses were counted, the Nanking affair became a matter of prolonged parleys among the diplomats. The navy had done its intrepid duty. It had rescued all Americans save the murdered Dr. Williams, and saved the Cantonese of the Nanking forces of occupation from their own folly as much as was humanly possible. Filipino will be forced, as the Japanese rice producer is today, to study and copy the Amer ican method of producing rice by mechanical power for plowing, planting, harvesting, and threshing. When Japan saw that America by its use of modern agricultural machinery operated with high priced labor was able to reverse the flow of rice across the Pacific, and to sell its product in the Orient in competition with rice produced by the cheapest labor in the world, they sent their investigators to the United States to study the methods by which this was done, and are making
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