Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

The mood in the Glory Hotel's bar was a bit odd, not in the usual night affair not for the middle of the week. The cordon of graybacks kept order, but most were officers, the enlisted men at the door all had rifles. "He's drunk." Bill remarked stating the obvious, "I mean its celebratory, but's since he made the phone call had to have at least three more."

There was a mix of sharp dressed figures in western clothes, and Allen caught Nakamichi in the back end of the throng clearly perplexed. "I'll go find find out. Hina said she put his documents behind the bar."

Bill stepped back to let one of the men pass him, "you want me to ring the embassy?"

"His or ours?" Allen asked.

"I mean, to call Colonel Forrest, but yeah, that too."

Allen shook his head, "Let me see what this is about, if its enough for Percy to start buying the whole bar drinks he probably already knows." He paused, "When do you get a minute tell Nakamichi over there I'll talk to him in a minute." It was near to tempting to pull him out entirely and stick him in one of the second storey rooms with a telephone and see if he couldn't dig something out, or-

"And if he asks?"

"Tell him, Old Man Yamagata probably knows," Whatever 'it' was was, "and if he doesn't, we'll tell him." Allen stepped towards the bar, caught a reproving look from his second wife, nodded, and kept walking snagging the bottle left on the counter. "Percy, how many have you had?" He asked taking a glass behind the counter and pouring himself two fingers of peat, salt, and smoke to sip.

"A couple," Percy proclaimed probably louder than intended, as he swayed like he was at sea, "Yes, sorry you must have been burning the midnight oil... though I suppose no one will use that," He swallowed, "anymore. All electric lighting." The Englishman straightened. "Its good news old chap. Asquith is out. Good news for your man Cole, I'd say, they're going to let Smuts into the war ministry." Percy's express and the way his eyes set clearly told what the drunk Englishman thought of that.

Percy's disapproval of letting the old Boer commando in must have seemed to let the wolf bed down with the sheep, or the fox with the hens to the old imperial guard who still believed a sneeze in Whitehall was a hurricane in Africa. "Asquith is Prime minister."

"Was Prime Minister," Percy laughed swaying, "New conductor for the orchestra, Lloyd George has the job now."

"Easy Perce," He grabbed the Englishman, before he could topple. "What else,"

"He's prime minister," He replied, "Change the whole direction of the war." Percy blanched. "The w.c.-"

Fifteen minutes later, "Well Hina is not happy, but at least he didn't give way all on the bar." John Allen put the scotch on table between them, and glanced at the man in the wireframes "So the Brits have a new Prime Minister, I'm sure Yamagata knows, but if you want ring Tokyo from here." He gestured towards the brass receiver.

"Ah yes, thank you very much." Nakamichi went to make his phone call.

If Yamagata didn't know then he would soon.

"Ring the embassy?"

"I'm sure he knows, but yes." They couldn't talk how this might effect business. The Cadre was scattered across north China, Tietsin, Peking, Taiyuan, a half dozen Zhili towns, Zhengzhou, Xian, and plenty in wider Shansi. THat was just how railway tended to shape things.
--
He'd eaten breakfast at the hotel, taken the car up to the arsenal's gallery floor, and then come back down for lunch. Lloyd George winning, becoming PM, and the Election Stateside held significantly in the forward. Opened a series of different notes, that ranged from the averaged prices of pig iron for the year for several countries, Sweden for example 157 kroner, and that was not the only failure to convert to either pounds or at least dollar value. More importantly perhaps than the cost were who was buying what from where, even though it couldn't understated that 'at what price' was important. The swedes continued sell to the French at roughly their pre war volume, but Russian demand for not just pig iron but all other steel products had increased well in excess of pre war trade... and so forth.

The answer for why? Was easy, it was the war of course. The war wasn't going to last forever though, and when it ended there would be a recession... that was just the lesson of history... Governments would want to tighten the belt. There would be no excess funding for naval building programs. The Cadre's hundred membership had contracted at the war onset, or really a bit before, consolidating voting shares, and capital into a much smaller group of the original membership, with new members brought in as a managerial and leadership roles. Where in 1914 there had been a particularly serious concern of distributing, or perhaps even being forced into a situation where the hundred might end up commanding individual platoons if something didn't end up being done with Bai Lang that hadn't played out.

There were enough people in both classes to recognize what was coming... the problem was what to do about it. The Europeans, with their near constant, and shrill insistence that once the war was over capital would return for investment had long since become stale... as had the insistence that their treaty rights be respected. The situation closer still, with the bandits in Honan, and Szechwan would spill over the borders as men were 'driven to the mountains' as the expression went. There were other still more local problems. The Ma clique had to worry about bandits in Gansu's counties as well stirring up trouble... and given the refugees from Kirghiz, and into the Ili river area there would be trouble there. For the 'managerial class' that was less of an issue, their positions in the cadre were not quite ephemeral but more likely to end in a few years, and some had even resigned to rejoin commissions under the preparedness movement back home when asked by General Wood, even as the Virginian in office insisted to keep the states out of the war.

Wilson's position was likely to change. He'd had to accept most of the preparedness suggestions, and with Lansing holding telegrams in reserve just in case. The US was approaching entry, even if it took another year the preparations had already begun. There was no way Wilson would be able to stop the deluge, he'd either go for it or get swept along.

He looked up, "How goes the planning for the festive season?" He inquired as Hina smoothly slid into the chair across from him. The end of another year, the third christmas with no sign that the European war was yet over, and far away from the sounds of the guns, for the Europeans still in China, that made Christmas, and New Years the loudest of parties. That was more an expansion of pre war trends rather than having emerged solely from the war though. "Do you have everything you need?" Even saying it, he knew that ran into the problem of the war. Beef, what couldn't be bought locally, could be sourced abroad particularly from Argentina even though that still meant competing with prices for Britain. The French had the northern fifth of the of their country occupied, but France had always been an agrarian country, and the agriculture sector continued to export goods but was doing so with a diminished work force and and the threat of german U-Boats that also served to drive the cost up.

That created something of an expected expense, and of course the reality was it increased demand for those goods. That was just how people were. "I won't even ask how you happen to know that, but counterfeits aren't anything new." He remarked taking the list from where it had been pushed into the middle of the table. "I assume you want something done?" Hina tilted her head, and he frowned, "Whose doing the counterfeiting."

"You just said you didn't want to know." She pointed out unnecessarily, "Wouldn't it be easier to deal with, after all it isn't as if the British Authorities," She emphasized the words, "Won't do much of the work in Shanghai."

She wasn't wrong. Alston had no sense to what the wider colonial apparatus had played in British positions. The man was terribly out of his depth. That meant that he'd never even considered understanding the situation and the ties and channels official, and behind the curtains, with the Municipal Police Commissioner and the whole international community. "The fakes are Japanese aren't they?"

She spread her hands.

"I'll make a couple calls..." There was some relief that Hina wasn't the sort to set up one of her rivals hotels by tricking them into buying a too good to be true batch of liquor, and spirits just to pull the rug out ahead of the most important season of the year... unless she had a really good reason.

... and the truth was he had been putting a call off about the green gang for a while anyway. Shanghai was only close by when you were in Peking, or Tietsin or other easy access to the coast, otherwise ... well China had few if any direct rail connections and the only one in the north that existed was the British line from Peking-Tietsin that did eventually reach Shanghai. The canals would have been another way to get there, but their increasing state of disrepair made them impractical.
--
The return to the arsenal after lunch was with the expectation someone was going to end up with a lot of egg on their face, and probably a great deal of money along side prestige lost. Percy looked better and apparently had been speaking with his people. Sam had been showing him the completed examples of the three inch mortars. Stokes's original design. The truth was that at some point point the other 'half' of the cadre leadership / owners class were going to have to make trips abroad, much like Cole and Bill had come back from.

Sam snapped the bipod clamps of and pushed Isaac's machine gun onto the display table in the middle so it was directly under the electric light. "This is the latest version of your dwarf," He replied throwing a look over Percy's shoulder at him.

The englishman nodded. They all together cut an odd group. Percy's khaki, and their grays, his Webley and their automatics. Allen scooped the machine gun up, "So how is this going to work Percy,"

"You mean proofing," He sighed, and then grudgingly took the Lewis, struggling against its weight but managing, "Well, as simple as it would be... to just let you proof your own guns, I suppose Smythe will have to just come back out."

"You won't bring an Australian, or South African out. They'll be using them."

"If one could be found I suppose." He happily let Griswold take the light machine gun, and straightened his jacket. "Matheson might be able to be freed up,"

It might have just been the war forcing expediency on the British... but Sam nodded, "If this will suffice, if the funding can be made available for the Ozzies-"

"The Prime Minister that regardless of that dreadful polling nonsense that the Anzacs are Imperial Troops and should be accordingly supplied."

"And the Indians?"

"Well, I'm sure at some point yes," Percy replied, "They're fighting the Turks, its not quite the same." He continued stumbling a bit to protest. Percy departed within the hour, and the two Americans glanced at one another.

"Well?"

"I showed him the Pattern 1914s."

"And?"

"I-" He shrugged, "I could use new tooling."

"I'm going to speak to Duan, I know he's hard up for modern rifles. I think some capital and an offer of rifles we currently in inventory would probably suffice."

"That's an idea."

"Do you have something better?"

Griswold smirked, "He's a red leg, the three inchers we've been using are hydro spring guns, well almost all of our guns are."

"Almost?'

"Well since someone has only just now agreed to new 15cm guns, I've worked up a hydro pneumatic recoil for it."

"Is that what the tinkerers were shooting this morning?" It had sounded more rapid than the Xian based heavy battery, but he hadn't paid much heed to it.

"It was an experiment. Congress is a collection of misers back home, and well then you've got the chiefs-"

"I am not Crozier, and I do not appreciate the comparison to Ordinance."

Griswold raised his hands, "I didn't mean it like that."

"It sure sounded like it."

"I apologize."

Allen stifled the feeling, and exhaled. Then grudgingly apologized in return, "The advantage is that it lets you go faster."

"With a good crew, yes."

"Dawes knows?"

There was a pause, "He wants to stick with the proven hydrosprings, he's not opposed to the idea but he thinks that any serial production begin with the smaller guns."

"That wouldn't be his decision. He wanted the heavy guns, he got them. Have you asked Phillip?" a look in response, "Are you telling me you've had time to fabricate a gun, but you haven't been able to get ahold of Powell?" In 1914 Powell's mentor Adna Chaffee had passed away, and it was a wonder he hadn't cashed out then, "He's still in New York?"

"He's in Washington, at Root's War College."

"How long has he been there?"

Griswold shrugged, "I've no idea, I had thought he was at the Academy." He wondered who else had been laboring under that assumption. "Look I get it, I understand, Phillip wasn't around, and maybe Dawes overstepped, but Phil ain't here... and if you're daddy is right and the war comes, they're gonna promote Phil to lieutenant colonel at least. We certainly won't have him for a minimum of a couple years, assuming he doesn't get killed."

"We'll talk about it..." ... and realistically... there were going to have to be changes. They had been largely going about the war with ersatz measures in the cadre that hadn't reflected how things had been.

--
Notes: Obviously again some of this is clearly foreshadowing to the eventual transition to government, but also the move hydro pneumatic is drawn from lessons the British made, and even within British service going from hydro springs was controversial if not for failures at galliopi wouldn't have happened and even then members of the artillery corp (the historically most professional part of the British army's officer corp) still protested the adoption admittedly on the grounds that they hadn't tested it properly (because there was a war on, but the French had introduced this into a mass produced gun in 1897, and the British had experience with the Mle1897 so eventually the system became standard after the war, but there was surprising resistance to adopting it...).

This also is related to my above discussion with ATP over artillery, if we go back to White Wolf, due to how Krupp did business you could buy pretty much any modern gun they built even in small orders, or licenses to produce really up until July 1914. So In White Wolf the cadre has the technical data packages for the 77 Field cannon (also in British inventory), the 10.5cm (which was used very widely both pre war and even further post, this is the 105x155R cartridge which goes on to be the basis the parent for a number of other cartridges), and the 15cm before the outbreak of the Second Revolution the summer 1913. The 77 and 105 can use the same carriage and follows a rather clear technological progression.

 

[ATP]

The principle reason is that unlike the 1910s the 10.5, (especially postwar with an upgraded trail in the twenties) it has a higher velocity cased charged and more importantly is capable of a sustained rate of fire three to four times that of the Shneider gun, which is the driving doctrinal reason, the practical engineering reason is that the getting the technical data package for the 105 is easier, and it has greater ability to upgrade

So while Schneiders are mentioned as showing up later on, they're as second line artillery guards units in the northern expedition protecting Zhengzhou and positions north of the western Yangtze (basically southern Shaanxi northern Sichuan c.1927)

Click to shrink...

soviets with german help upgraged 122mm Schneider howitzer,and get 38m as result.Good thing,used during entire war.But - if 105mm is easier,then they should choose it.
If you arleady have Krupp guns,you could as well made them after WW1.And new versions from 1918,too - you could probably buy it cheap then.
And remember - lots of cheap 120 and 160mm mortars,too.You could "invent" them before WW2.
And PAW 600 as AT gun,too.You do not need AT gun till at least 1937,after all.
Czech before fall made new 15cm and 10 cm howitzers,you could buy them in 1937,too.
Poland in 1939 have new 100mm howitzer,too.
It is always cheaper buy stuff from falling states.

Which remind me - in 1918 you could buy anything cheaply in Germany or A-H,and secure engineers from both countries and Russia.Even if you must pay for their families,it still would be worth it.

P.S Happy Easter

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

Allen tucked his thumbs behind the thick leather of his gun belt, the right slightly higher on the edge in the perennial habit. It was true the Philippines had been a mess of trouble with too many people trying to settle old grudges, but they'd been wonderful years otherwise. Other trips abroad as ships became faster, and the posting to the hermit kingdom and duty in the Russo Japanese war to observe had all been different experiences... and all their own lessons to teach. The great adventure of world changing year to year before your eyes.

At Xian in 1914, months before the European war had begun, the tractors had pulled the fifteen centimeter guns into position. The tractors navigated mud better than the Fultons there was no contest there, but the concept was the same. Perhaps this was just Griswold's early Christmas present to himself.

Percy blanched beside him as the red legs attached to the technical section tossed shells into the sliding breech of both guns. The five nines roared, were reloaded and roared again, then twice repeated again before the split trails yoked to the quads and moved to a second firing station to fire.

If not for the range and rounds expended it would have been an exact duplication of 5th​ Artillery ready maneuver drills... well that and the lack of a horse team. Not that they could discuss Dawes's potential apprehension to changing recoil mechanism in front of the englishman. No that would have to be a conversation for another time, and in truth Allen admitted he should have kept his temper better in line.

"Obviously can't be maintained, you'd shoot the barrel out, sustained rounds per minute will probably be four, not six." Griswold declared, "I imagine might even with not having to move, and enough practice might get one more on occassion."

"Its fine work, Sam."

"Yes, yes quite right." Percy replied eye the pair of guns. "Just the two though?"

"Its experimental," Griswold replied, throwing an indiscrete look, "Recoil system works, sighting system needs to be evaluated to make sure our glass will hold up. Next year, experimental battery will evaluate two more and see how they hold up." He muttered off about the differences between having horses pull cannons and suspension systems and axles and the like.

What he didn't mention was the growing surety that Wilson was either going to bring the US into the war on his own accord or was going to be pressured into it. He'd made a silly stupid attempt to try and open white peace negotiations that had been rejected by France, and England. The US entering would mean that they'd have to husband motor vehicles, and the general consensus was that they'd have to give it two maybe even three or four years to work out how to approach Ford about setting up a factory locally, particularly with regard for Capital reserves. There was bound to be some kind of slump as the war ended and demobilization took place, but they would have to see.

Percy either din't notice or didn't make a sign he had. "Ah yes." He replied, "Well, yes." The englishman trailed off. The British had in October began yet another series of standarizations, reforms, to continue 'equalizing' as had been their term last year when this had started their field artillery in Europe.

"When we're done," Griswold commented, "We will move to testing the four pieces together. See how these two compare versus where on the next two, so on." Though not nearly as officer heavy as the British had been prior to the onset of the war in Europe had standardized on four each batteries placing command to a captain... largely on the basis of of the communication requirement, and the math for ranging.

"You really think the honanese warrant all that?"

"Strong medicine," Griswold replied sharpishly. "If Honan stayed to its side of the border, but the Qing had hundred of rebellions between the Boxer mess, and 1912." each province was entirely too willing to go raid the neighbors since they'd been getting away with it since probably before the thirteen colonies had thrown old king George out with the tea. By the time the cuttin' with Jeff Davis done the Qing's fight with the Taiping had killed millions by itself, and that hadn't eveen been the only rebellion going on at the time. Nian, and the Dungan rebellions out west had made the Indian wars look like bar room brawls in size.

That just brought them back to that China had managed its population with just feudal farming, no mechanical reapers, and not steam engines. They'd been growing potatoes introduced from the new world, and other crops, but it had all been plain feudal sharecropping or near enough. Xian was the size of New York City, and it wasn't anything special. "Its not just Honan, with Tsai O dead the ones down in his old stomping grounds will start probably sooner rather than later."

"I'd heard about that little border skirmish, get plenty of that in Africa of course. A couple thousand of the natives, they just don't understand what quality infantry can do in the clinch. Never the mind what happens when they're properly supported with artillery, or heaven forbid the Maxim."

"like I said, strong medicine." Griswold remarked. "Szechwan is near to sixty million," More people than jolly old England, "And that's going to make a mess when they start." And that was probably an understatement.

"It won't be that bad, they do this all the time. Summer rolls around, its done in a few weeks. Just show the rowdy ones off. No," Percy shook his head, "There were some other things we needed to talk about I think." And that ... and that eventually would lead to another twisting path, a talk about the Tsar and his new prime minister... and would set the stage for the conversations that followed in the following year... months down the road.

And later beyond that, a 'favor'.
--
The weather had continued to turn colder. There was no sign of snow, and while possibly after the first of the year a white Christmas seemed unlikely. That was just as well. It made little sense to really celebrate Christmas except as an excuse to throw a hell of a bash, and really new years made a better solution, even though there was usually little left to be done this late in the year.

Akashi's enclosed documents were all dated in the year of, or since Jimmu's ascension, 2577, to throne in the same way that some people wanted to date the Chinese year from the year of the Yellow Emperor's ascension... which would be 4628. The banking transactions were useful all the same, as were what it said about the flow of arms. Akashi went on about the declining condition a frequent topic to most people he talked to about China, and Russia and their decrepit finances and '
'superstitious ideologies'. He hadn't come out and lampooned Hayashi it was close to implication that there were arms going into the south's guomindang.

He folded the papers away, and decided these wouldn't be the sort of things to mention to Percy. The Russians had gotten knotted up over siems carrey, and even before that in 1914 had the war not broken they'd been trying to muscle in to gobble up Mongolia... in what if Allen were to be honest had smelled like a prelude to trying to stir something up over Manchuria... and between the two, then and now Allen would have bet on the Japanese.

Maybe things would have been better if that had happened... maybe not. He was still fairly sure that some of the twenty one demands had come out of Hayashi's office in Tietsin, and even if they hadn't it had come with the support of Kato's party in the diet. Whatever the case it had been done, and with nearly two years since, and Yuan six months dead the avalanche was probably due to start rolling down hill sooner rather than later.
--
Notes: This starts the end of the year for 1916, and more pointedly sets the events for 1917 and foreshadows some of what happens over the next five years, but the main is the spiral of events of 1917.

Sichuan and Henan turn into just massive bandit riven warrens over the course of the year, and then despite being a part of the Beiyang clique (Being chairman for almost a year after Yuan's death) Chang Hsun, the pony tail general, in July attempts to restore Puyi to the throne which results in Duan Qirui showing up fifty thousand troops to run him off from that.

Then of course more broadly there is the Japanese, and the British response the February revolution in Russia (which was not a favorable response to that), never mind the subsequent October revolution which figures in both countries were even more nervous about.

But also this foreshadows the future consequences of when Yamagata dies in '22 he leaves behind the Army's political apparatus without a clear successor that sets the stage if not wholly but to a significant extent the variety of problems that come about in the army without that leadership, because not only was there not a clear leader no one had any real skill sets beyond principally as Infantry officers at that point. [Yes, the Army had a foreign relations advisory council established in 1915 but that's a whole other can of worms not limited to advocating annexing (or trying to) all of the Russian Far East and fighting the nascent soviet union in the same year as Yamagata's death, which admittedly they had been agitating for that to an extent while he'd been alive, but without a clear leader to rally around they just fully lost their marbles at being told 'no' you can't do that, we don't have the money for that, especially given what all the Navy was asking for.]

 

[ATP]

Thanks for chapter.
tractors for 15cm howitzers - it is only logical,you would need a lot of horses otherwise.Practical for 100mm howitzers,not so for 15cm.

October revolution - germans send Lenin,which would fail alone,but Wall Street send Trocky&thugs,which won revolution for Lenin.Remember,that Wall Street always supported soviets after that - not for free,of course.They take tsar gold,when it end they take gold from church altars,when it end they genocided farmers and sell their grain,Wall Street take money from that,too.
That is probably reason why we have no Norynberg ror soviet genociders - we would have execute Wall Street,too.
So,you must remember,that Wall Street always would support soviets against you.

But,welcoming Ford is good idea.And as many as possible engineers from Russia,Germany and A-H.Even factories - Fokker could take his plane factory to Holland,you could take another to China.
There were 5 in germany,3 in A-H and one in Russia.
I suggest A-H,they have stronger engines.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Thanks for chapter.
tractors for 15cm howitzers - it is only logical,you would need a lot of horses otherwise.Practical for 100mm howitzers,not so for 15cm.

October revolution - germans send Lenin,which would fail alone,but Wall Street send Trocky&thugs,which won revolution for Lenin.Remember,that Wall Street always supported soviets after that - not for free,of course.They take tsar gold,when it end they take gold from church altars,when it end they genocided farmers and sell their grain,Wall Street take money from that,too.
That is probably reason why we have no Norynberg ror soviet genociders - we would have execute Wall Street,too.
So,you must remember,that Wall Street always would support soviets against you.

But,welcoming Ford is good idea.And as many as possible engineers from Russia,Germany and A-H.Even factories - Fokker could take his plane factory to Holland,you could take another to China.
There were 5 in germany,3 in A-H and one in Russia.
I suggest A-H,they have stronger engines.

Click to shrink...

Steyr-Daimler puch is going to have a lot of guys out of work soon from a country that won't exist in a number of differently fields when OEWG goes bankrupt, but really thats 1920 and also all that business will get done through the swiss to start with after Austria Hungary goes kaput.


and 1920 really marks the period well if 1917 is the year the boulders voted 20 is the avalanche actually came down the hill in China's warlord era Then '22 and ;24 happen where you actually see small scale tank and aircraft usages in the summer conflicts, and then in 26-28 here the Northern expedition is significantly more convention stand up fights between professional militaries and less backroom dealing. Also because I wrote Zhengzhou tank battle almost two years ago now.


But yeah, in terms of what goes up, even the end of WW1 is still a ways down the road, we haven't gotten to 1917s events happening yet

 

[ATP]

Steyr-Daimler puch is going to have a lot of guys out of work soon from a country that won't exist in a number of differently fields when OEWG goes bankrupt, but really thats 1920 and also all that business will get done through the swiss to start with after Austria Hungary goes kaput.


and 1920 really marks the period well if 1917 is the year the boulders voted 20 is the avalanche actually came down the hill in China's warlord era Then '22 and ;24 happen where you actually see small scale tank and aircraft usages in the summer conflicts, and then in 26-28 here the Northern expedition is significantly more convention stand up fights between professional militaries and less backroom dealing. Also because I wrote Zhengzhou tank battle almost two years ago now.


But yeah, in terms of what goes up, even the end of WW1 is still a ways down the road, we haven't gotten to 1917s events happening yet

Click to shrink...

Indeed.Now you have bandits to fight.All you need is infrantry to cover rails,and dragoons with Madsen LMG and light artillery to chase them.Few recon planes would help,but you do not need more then 10-20 for finding bandits.
For 1917 - you could do nothing except gathering forces,but later grab as much Syberia as possible.In OTL Czech Legion take russian gold and leaved after betraing Kolchak,now all that gold would be yours.And russians fleeing from commies - useful for new state.
There was also polish siberian dyvision 10.000 strong,in OTL czech betrayed them so most surrender.You could save them,too.Polish settlers would do as well as russians,especially that most would return to Poland.

P.S and you could save tsar with family.Maybe marry his doughters to your officers?

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

The end of the year was principally... just as it almost always was... about the social aspect. The business side of things was administrative, clerical, managing plans for the coming year. They ran off the eight hour day, forty hour work week, and with enough space to run shifts seven days a week twenty four hours a day if the work load called for it. If there was anything to be said for Wilson as a president his free trade policies had been good especially with holdings stateside to put goods to market off in Texas, and Alabama or ashore at ports in Savannah or San Francisco. With more and more people buying clothes from general goods stores it was simply a market, and with Wilson having disposed of the Tariffs even before the European war that export had been surprisingly lucrative.

It had just been overshadowed by the European War. The new contract would be good though, it gave them the opportunity to modernize. That was not the magic word. In 1911Yin Chang had seemed receptive to finally modernizing to the Gewehr 98... but the money still hadn't been there. Of the six Beiyang divisions, just divisions not counting the independent brigades, four had been in Zhili, one in Manchuria, with fifth division posted to Shangdong. The less reliable 'new divisions' just as dependent on provincial funding but less well trained, had by that point become or perhaps had never been reliable to the Manchu, but only some of those had been loyal to Yuan Shikai. It was possible to blame that on the vagaries of the Manchu court, the old Buddha getting impatient but really like everything else it had probably been a hundred things on top of that.

So while the factory workers were preparing for the end of the year festivities, the shopping and all the rest of it they were here. That wasn't to say the company was completely shut down for the season, the trains still needed to run, telephones operated, the fire brigade was on stand by, and others but the factories were largely finished for the year, whether in later years that would hold as domestic consumption increased who could say. "There a problem?"

"No, its lighter than a Krag." Bill glanced sideways to Griswold.

Which brought him back to the question he'd just asked, since Allen hadn't gotten to hold the gun yet, "Is that going to be a problem?"

"Not Mechanically." He protested, "But it is a lighter gun, its a shorter barrel, it'll kick more." He nodded at the not quite answer, sort of an answer.

"I'll take 'em," Cole grunted taking the short rifle from Sam, "Give them to the class As."

"Proof of concept," Griswold replied, "The arsenal's first priority is getting Farnsworth, or whoever the Brits send to approve the Pattern 14 rifles, and I'll need six months to fill that order at least. Probably eight. Either way at minimum to April even with,"

The tooling, "I've spoken to Qirui," Allen replied with a shrug, now they just needed to see what the republic would want for the tooling, "But the time is going to come when we're going to have to be able to manufacture our own milling, and cutting machines." Even without the US in the war the tool supply was largely dug up... and Ford might have been opposed to the war but he had his own in house tool manufacturing so he wasn't nearly as inconvenienced as they were by the European conflict. "I know that we aren't going to manage that before the states go over there, but after the war." He paused, "What?"

"Zhang wants to get into planes." Cole replied not glancing down as he pulled the action out and then scoping the bore.... which one a new gun seemed a little pointless. "I don't know how he thinks he'll manage that but he says if Duan won't do it," and Duan wasn't interested in continuing Yuan Shikai's ambitions for an air force because the money wasn't there, and because there were no planes to buy on market at the moment, "He will."

Taxes paid to the imperial capital even at the very end of the Qing had been predominantly the salt gable, and similar medieval taxes and monopolies. The Qing had always been leery of new types of taxes ... or any taxes of any kind even as government revenues had been diminished, and thus provinces had to make up for shortfalls as well as to fund their own defense... and that decentralization continued into the Republic as 1912 had begun. The northern provinces dominated by Beiyang Dujun paid the traditional taxes that their provinces owed the Peking government but only because the Beiyang Congress had agreed to do so back in September. What they had not agreed on were more modern taxes that was deemed a provincial or even county matter now that Yuan Shikai wasn't around to ride herd. It wasn't unique to the north, down south in Canton, and Yunnan there was simply no stomach for financial reform.

As broken as the status quo was it was the most acceptable option to the most involved people. The provincial gentry in Canton, or the other southern provinces might have occasionally flittered with revolutionary sentiments when it came to pay the bill the support for change wasn't there... but something would inevitably give the system wasn't sustainable.

Feudal taxes could not sustain western armies.

--
There were certain institutions to which there was no point towards, and then there were institutions where... well maybe it did. The Japanese had turned their traditional religion into something akin... to the Church of England... sort of, and presumably Yuan Shikai had had something similar in mind when he'd brought back the rites as part of proclaiming himself emperor.. Siam, came to mind as well, and the French were doing their level best to shove Catholicism down the buddhists throats in IndoChina even when most Parisian elite were as quick to sneer at popism as any fine victorian dandy. The Russians had their patriarchs, and the pashas claimed to be the head of all right thinking mohamadens and so it went. It was a collection of elites, and station, and organization.

Whether or not your prime minister really believed it well who cared as long as the institutions were maintained... that was what it really boiled down to, because the institutions were supposed to do things for the society around them. IT was why despite the founding fathers not wanting their own church of England had still had Chaplains in the army. In a solidly English measure the Navy's first Chaplain had graduated from Harvard in colonial mirror of Oxford and the British's vicars, and bishops of note.

The consensus had been, even if not a priority while Bai Lang had been running around, that the army needed certain institutions. The Russians and Japanese both had had their chaplains show the flag during the 1905 fighting... and they'd had something of a fit in the door. 1914 had hardly been the first time Allen had patronized a Buddhist stupa, or temple, there was a benefit to being on good footing with your neighbors and not needlessly antagonizing your neighbors.

"The gardens are very beautiful."

Nakamichi seemed earnest in the praise as Allen passed his time under the veranda with the tea, "This," He gestured to the water course, "Was Yamagata's recommendation, well you've seen the house's garden." He had designed the house garden, and recommended the designer for this one, and a few of the others including the one in Xian... and of course it had Xian was ... very much going to be the most important one. They were increasingly moving westward into interior China, and would have done that without the European war.
A little under a year ago... just shy of eleven months when the Japanese Legation had extended to Yuan Shikai.... 21 Demands divided along five axes. Most nothing more than a belligerent demand to recognize the de facto state of affairs, Japanese troops had occupied Shantung, and the German Concession they and the brits had interred the Germans. The second series, roughly a third of the whole slew of the demands, were an expansion of Japanese rights in Manchuria an action obviously intended to take advantage of the Russians being distracted in Europe.

Japan wanted to call in the loans, finally in central china, for the iron mines and wanted it in writing again... this had been a long time coming and the Russians weren't exactly in a place to fight it. It was one thing to stamp and moan about spheres of influence and that they'd have the capital for other projects eventually just as soon as the war was over probably another when the debts had been on the books for ten fifteen years and the russians could barely manage the interest for some of the loans.


IF Japan had stopped with those that'd probably have been fine. Russia would have really been the only one get hosed out, even if the first series would upset some people it wouldn't really have changed much meaningfully. There would have been complaints about the open door, but Hioki would have made the argument that these were continuations of existing not wholly new agreements. The same way that the French and Russians had done time and again to Reinsch. It would have been predictable and hard to argue that it really broke the status quo.

No, that distinction went to the last third of the demands or more accurately the final eight demands entailed. It was in that Gonsuke Hayashi had overplayed his hand in It was easy to see his thinking though... Hayashi had probably been thinking that he could force the terms like they'd done on the hermit kindom no big deal. The difference was that England hadn't been involved in Joseon, and demanding that Japan be able to prohibit China from ceding any further coastal concessions was a bridge to far for the British Empire. Unlike a decade early in the Hermit Kingdom the States were much much less keen to allowing a repeat of their departure, and so Reinsch, Bryan and even lansing weren't happy either.

... and if the Foreign Office and the State Department didn't like item number 15 the next seven were absolutely ludicrous If only because of how expansive the overreach was. If it had just been the right to found, and fund schools, and temples then Japan would have been fine. The railway building would almost certainly have ran into objections from Britain, France, Russia at the least, but probably a couple of the smaller European countries... but Belgium was occupied by the Germans so they couldn't really do much now could they?

The demands had gone for the whole damn pie wanting to be able to take control of China's financial and police apparatus bypassing the banking consortium... and that was the start of the backlash for the last third. Fukien could have possibly been up for debate, but it and Manchurian together in right, to say that John Jordan had hit the wall had been an understatement.

Three months after, in that April, Yamagata had forced the last seven removed, and then after back channel secret negotiations Yuan Shikai had agreed to thirteen articles with some grumbling British ascent.

Hayashi was a sore loser. "We'll have to increase funding for the schools next year of course." He told Nakamichi, which had already been planned. Running compulsory education just to fourteen years of age they were over taxed, never mind what they really needed in terms of skilled labor.

... and of course donations to support Buddhist and confucian temples was just part of the way you kept a community going. It was just the accepted way according to Jun, after all weren't the Japanese doing that.
--
Notes:Zhang Tso'lin was very enthusiastic about all modern military contrivances, armored cars, tanks, airplanes as well as more mundane updates to his army including modernized mauser rifles submachine guns (Lots of sub machine guns, Italian, German, Swiss) After ww1 He was spening twice his actual tax base and most of it went to his military and buying things like Vickers Mediums in addition to aircraft from French, Italian, American, and British sources and later on others



As with the 21 demands Yamagata Aritomo's opposition to the demands was almost certainly one part clique politics, and secondly very very financially driven. Japan did not have the money in 1915 to build those three railways at the time for example Japan was still in shaky financial grounds from the Russo-Japanese war and post war military expenditures. Aritomo and his proteges did support taking steps to create a buffer state to protect Korea, expand influence in Manchuria, and provide for defense against a future war with Tsarist Russia. He actually expected that they'd be fighting Imperial Russia for Round 2 a decade after the Russo Japanese war ended and world war 1 preempted that, but until British capital from Japanese support in ww1 became available Japan was mostly taking on US and British loans at the time.

 

[ATP]

Modernization is good thing,but only country who manage use Vickers medium was soviets/they named it T.28/,and even for tem it not worked well.British themselves visely do not buy it.

Good chater,with good slices-of economical-and military-life

P.S about howitzers - 105mm would be good til WW2,but 122mm soviet development from 1938 was better - problem is,how get them,Maybe instead czech 100mm new version from 1937.Or polish from 1939 prototype with 14.000km range.You could have get both cheaply when first Czech,and later Poland fall..

 

[Imperator Pax]

Indeed.Now you have bandits to fight.All you need is infrantry to cover rails,and dragoons with Madsen LMG and light artillery to chase them.Few recon planes would help,but you do not need more then 10-20 for finding bandits.
For 1917 - you could do nothing except gathering forces,but later grab as much Syberia as possible.In OTL Czech Legion take russian gold and leaved after betraing Kolchak,now all that gold would be yours.And russians fleeing from commies - useful for new state.
There was also polish siberian dyvision 10.000 strong,in OTL czech betrayed them so most surrender.You could save them,too.Polish settlers would do as well as russians,especially that most would return to Poland.

P.S and you could save tsar with family.Maybe marry his doughters to your officers?

Click to shrink...

Modernization is good thing,but only country who manage use Vickers medium was soviets/they named it T.28/,and even for tem it not worked well.British themselves visely do not buy it.

Good chater,with good slices-of economical-and military-life

P.S about howitzers - 105mm would be good til WW2,but 122mm soviet development from 1938 was better - problem is,how get them,Maybe instead czech 100mm new version from 1937.Or polish from 1939 prototype with 14.000km range.You could have get both cheaply when first Czech,and later Poland fall..

Click to shrink...

Even pre 2, the 105x155 is being superseded by longer more accurate versions this is why US ordinance went to the longer 105 x 372 (what became the 105mm Howitzer M1, which only saw limitted production because Ordinance didn't have money prior to the late thirties) after the decision came down to mechanize all future gun programs (the 105 were allocated six pack horses per gun), and that is what I'd planned on, I didn't actually look at the Czech 100 while dealing with the interwar planning, which is an oversight on my part since I looked at their interwar aircraft, tanks, small arms.

Anway the current planned course is 10.5cm box trail IMR ,which will be superseded in service by hydropneumatic versions, to then after the Chinese Arms embargo goes up in 1919 to upgrade to the Bofors 10.5 new trail and its really just the trail and mount system that changes here, its a 360 degree steel wheel design and this will serve alongside and through the Northern Expedtion (This will include the existing 3inchers, the 105x155R guns, the 122 guns in Gendarmes service, and the 15cm and 155mm (Schneider) guns) Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, and a handful of others never sign on to the May 1919 arms embargo, which of course gets into why Zhang ended up with so many planes and vickers tanks in the twenties to begin with.

The Vickers Medium [and to clarify, because Vickers interwar naming conventions, I'm not talking about A1 the multi turret that would go on to be Soviet T28, I'm talking about Mark 1 the single turret design, which would evolve as a design into Mark II and then III but were largely confined in British service to English colonial conflicts of the inter war years] was a fairly innovative tankit just wasn't ready in 1926, but more the point of Zhang's deal with Vickers (or the French and Italians for that matter) was well emblematic of business practices in the twenties, but both the issue of tanks (and aircraft) as well as artillery all deal with Arc 2 matters because its still even if only for the next couple of updates roughly still 1916, and all of this is are post ww1 and by 1920 we're into full on Nation state building

 

[ATP]

Before 1930 you do not need tanks,and few planes.After that,choose what was best.
Some upgunned Vickers E/like T.26 with 45mm gun/ would work,for planes - you aleady would have one factory buyed from eithr A-H or Germany after 1918,so you could invent any type of plane which could be made there.
A-H have stronger engines,so i suggest them.
1.Albatross D.3/german license,with 165kwh engine/

2.Berg D.1,136-166 kwh engine
3.Phonix D.2,3 - after war,Sweden buy license and produced as J-1.
4.Brandenburg W18 seaplane.

I suggest 2 or 3,remember about engines! and engineers,too.Not mention inventors.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Before 1930 you do not need tanks,and few planes.After that,choose what was best.
Some upgunned Vickers E/like T.26 with 45mm gun/ would work,for planes - you aleady would have one factory buyed from eithr A-H or Germany after 1918,so you could invent any type of plane which could be made there.
A-H have stronger engines,so i suggest them.
1.Albatross D.3/german license,with 165kwh engine/

2.Berg D.1,136-166 kwh engine
3.Phonix D.2,3 - after war,Sweden buy license and produced as J-1.
4.Brandenburg W18 seaplane.

I suggest 2 or 3,remember about engines! and engineers,too.Not mention inventors.

Click to shrink...

So, again this is years in the future in story time we won't really see tanks until '26, and they'll be things like the Citreon, the heavy Schneider, the FT 17 (and clones of... so many FT clones), the Male Mark V, the Vickers Mark 1, list goes on and thats just tanks we know made it to north china

The Vickers E is actually too late really to bring in but for all intents and purposes its role by other preceding Vickers tanks the finalized E won't debut until after the Northern expedition (The Vickers Medium Mark I is most revolutionary for its turret design (3 men in the turret relatively comfortably), but it carries the 47mm gun), but anyway, by the time we hit that we will really be getting into the emergence and development of inter war tank doctrine, which I've talked about somewhat previously [Vickers E first arrives in china c. 34]

--
Tank Doctrine, so the Soviet T28 aka the failed Vickers A1E1 came about because people in positions of power kept hearing about 'Landships' [and this was still making doctrine rounds in 1940] and this leads or could lead into a at length discourse about how the tank develped historically and in the regular armies but for brevity you had four sources or advocates of tank doctrine:

Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and then sometimes overlooked Engineers (or whoever was responsible for mechanization sometimes technical sections were under the Signals corp it depends on when and who). This gets us into where Xian's armor doctrine is principally constructed by its artillery leg post 1928 towards a doctrine of infantry support which places the emphasis on mobility and protected firepower i.e. throw high explosive shell at enemy infantry to support our infantry's ability to fire and maneuver. [This is why the 'Three incher' gets chosen in the thirites over the Mark 1 2 CWT 47mm, its not about AP its not about killing enemy tanks its about a sufficiently large HE shell that can be carried in sufficient quantities for fighting as the QF 77 Mark 1 throws two and a half times more high explosive and shrapnel than the 47mm]

So in short development begins something along these lines the first FT 17 arrives in China probably in 1918 but is certainly present by 1919 and several copies of it enter not just french ones. It does seem to beat teh British early Marks to China by several months as the Mark IV and V do eventually show up by 1919 (Notably none of the American FTs show up in the Russian expedition they don't make an appearance in China until after they were handed over to the Infantry and show up a decade later) And the big thing with the FT is well yes it has some sloped armor but that enough of them were made with radio sets it shows the concept is proven... also yes it has a turret thats good too. But the FT was fundamentally developed as an outgrowth of French Infantry doctrine

ANyway basically ironically in an anti tank role you can get a way with a smaller gun an actual effective hit defeats a lot of early low quality steel or iron armor but for taking out infantry you want a bigger round hence the 77mm basically larger shell more HE more Shrapnel because even into the mid forties most tank guns are repurposed artillery often as short barrelled guns (and that shorterning of barrel means significant loss of velocity in some catridges because powder charge is often still using older slower powders rather than the new faster burning powders).

As for aircraft, that is in the future and would be ironically best served for once Ford gets the automotive industry up and running particularly for the industrial manufacture of engines (which is admittedly related to the tank development in terms of domestic manufacutre). but thats all ARc 2 and later content. After Versailles is signed.

 

[ATP]

So, again this is years in the future in story time we won't really see tanks until '26, and they'll be things like the Citreon, the heavy Schneider, the FT 17 (and clones of... so many FT clones), the Male Mark V, the Vickers Mark 1, list goes on and thats just tanks we know made it to north china

The Vickers E is actually too late really to bring in but for all intents and purposes its role by other preceding Vickers tanks the finalized E won't debut until after the Northern expedition (The Vickers Medium Mark I is most revolutionary for its turret design (3 men in the turret relatively comfortably), but it carries the 47mm gun), but anyway, by the time we hit that we will really be getting into the emergence and development of inter war tank doctrine, which I've talked about somewhat previously [Vickers E first arrives in china c. 34]

--
Tank Doctrine, so the Soviet T28 aka the failed Vickers A1E1 came about because people in positions of power kept hearing about 'Landships' [and this was still making doctrine rounds in 1940] and this leads or could lead into a at length discourse about how the tank develped historically and in the regular armies but for brevity you had four sources or advocates of tank doctrine:

Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and then sometimes overlooked Engineers (or whoever was responsible for mechanization sometimes technical sections were under the Signals corp it depends on when and who). This gets us into where Xian's armor doctrine is principally constructed by its artillery leg post 1928 towards a doctrine of infantry support which places the emphasis on mobility and protected firepower i.e. throw high explosive shell at enemy infantry to support our infantry's ability to fire and maneuver. [This is why the 'Three incher' gets chosen in the thirites over the Mark 1 2 CWT 47mm, its not about AP its not about killing enemy tanks its about a sufficiently large HE shell that can be carried in sufficient quantities for fighting as the QF 77 Mark 1 throws two and a half times more high explosive and shrapnel than the 47mm]

So in short development begins something along these lines the first FT 17 arrives in China probably in 1918 but is certainly present by 1919 and several copies of it enter not just french ones. It does seem to beat teh British early Marks to China by several months as the Mark IV and V do eventually show up by 1919 (Notably none of the American FTs show up in the Russian expedition they don't make an appearance in China until after they were handed over to the Infantry and show up a decade later) And the big thing with the FT is well yes it has some sloped armor but that enough of them were made with radio sets it shows the concept is proven... also yes it has a turret thats good too. But the FT was fundamentally developed as an outgrowth of French Infantry doctrine

ANyway basically ironically in an anti tank role you can get a way with a smaller gun an actual effective hit defeats a lot of early low quality steel or iron armor but for taking out infantry you want a bigger round hence the 77mm basically larger shell more HE more Shrapnel because even into the mid forties most tank guns are repurposed artillery often as short barrelled guns (and that shorterning of barrel means significant loss of velocity in some catridges because powder charge is often still using older slower powders rather than the new faster burning powders).

As for aircraft, that is in the future and would be ironically best served for once Ford gets the automotive industry up and running particularly for the industrial manufacture of engines (which is admittedly related to the tank development in terms of domestic manufacutre). but thats all ARc 2 and later content. After Versailles is signed.

Click to shrink...

Tanks as infrantry support - why not invent some kind of Semovente before WW2? you would have 75mm gun on light tank chasis.
Czech artillery - here,howitzer 150mm vz37,but you would find there 100mm howitzer vz 30,and more Here:/also tanks and rifles/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjEypOM9sL3AhWkxIsKHZs7DFkQFnoECA4QAQ&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoda_K_series&usg=AOvVaw1sfbqWhZw6wEK6zBUt2kGD

Unfortunatelly,they do not have better 100mm howitzer - but,you could use polish prototype 100mmwz38St - it have 14.000 range,1580kg weigh,and fired 6-8/minute.
On the same chasis they made 75mm 38St field gun,so you could produce both cheaper.

About A-H planes -
1.Aviatik manufacture made Berg D1 fighter/constructor Julius von Berg/ with 136-166kW Austro-Daimler engines/some problems with them,but it worked/ - Ferdynand Porshe made them.
2.Phonix manufacture -Phonix D.1/3 - very modified Brandenburg D.1 - Hiero engines 147-169 KW.Produced in Warchałowski-Eissler manufacture,constructor Otto Hieronymus.

Since Hiero engines do not have any problems,like Austro-Daimler,i suggest buy them.And one of two fighters mentioned.Preferably,with constructors.
What about inviting Julius von Berg for planes,and Otto Hieronymus for engines ?

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

There was planning for a heavy dinner and then there was packing away two steaks, in addition to the soup and fish they'd started with. Then that was before Hina had ordered the strawberry and cream cake before heading off with the other ladies. "mm, thats good cake." Bill remarked stretching, before coming back to rest his forearms on the big table. "Alright what's this good news of yours."

"Well I thought it was funny, at least" The other englishman remarked easing back from the table. Percy glanced at his compatriot and eased back from the table, surreptiously loosing a button on his Imperial Service jacket, "You've been talking to Duan Qirui, haven't you?"

As he was Prime Minister of the Republic that went without saying, but it was certainly true, both directly with the red leg, as well as a couple lunches with Cao Kun, which wasn't unusual, "This and that," Allen replied. It wasn't being intentionally evasive, but anything he told Percy about railways was likely to get back to British concerns... not that they were likely to try anything , but Cao Kun or probably really the Ma family were hoping for finishing out the railways that would mean going into Tibet ... with Ma Anliang pushing for that he certainly wasn't going to mention it to Percy until he had to, "Bandits are on the rise, so."

"Exactly, the bandits," Percy reached for his brandy and sipped, nodding to them.


"Yes quite. Well I was wondering because well Duan talking about joining the Entete, the allies, where he could raise a war participation army." Percy snorted, "Has he talked to you about that, or this some new idea?"

"Not so new, back in September. Its been an off and on sort of thing."

That caught Percy's friend somewhat off foot. "Really, I honestly thought this might have been something the chinaman had conjured, what about about you Percival has mentioned anything to you?"

"Yes, I may remember something a few months ago, it would have been before John Jordan left, but I seem to recall something."

Percy previcating, there might be something there. It also told Allen enough that keeping his mouth shut mostly was probably a good idea, "Like I said its an off and on thing, what's he bringing it up for?"

"Oh you know, money of course. He'd need money for modern arms."

"Yes, yes the money," Percy agreed, "Well as John Jordan told the Chinese Prime Minister, the money just not there."

"He seems to think that might have changed."

"He may just be assuming that because Llyod George has the premiership." Percy replied.

"Perhaps so. From the sound of it, and not having heard of it, I thought it might have been some new scheme. If there were funds what could they do."

"There is the ANZAC contract, we could make one in 8mm the Beiyang already uses, if they actually go to Europe run them off whatever you've captured from the Germans I suppose." In addition to whatever was produced with the order. It was funny how the British had throughout the previous years not wanted British troops not to use foreign ammunition but the broader Imperial cohort the Anzac, Indians and Canadians and all could all use ammunition sourced elsewhere... but the war going on had abridged even that. American made ammunition had been reaching British infantry since October 1915 at the latest.

"What's this then?"

"First of the year, its a run of three hundred thousand... your paperwork calls it the Mark 1 star," He certainly wasn't going to tell the man the price per rifle, or plus ammunition. "There are other discussions."

"The ministry of munitions should have it back soon, nearly Christmas, but soon." Percy replied getting a shrewd look from the other khaki uniformed man. "What about the Lewis guns?"

"We've made the machining adjustments a test batch probably early in the new year, and then any final contracts. Well we can ink it once you have something, again sometime after the first of the year."

"Oh good, I knew you were erring on the side of caution John Allen. After all you've got a number of them in service."

"Lewis's action is probably the best thing I've seen to date." He replied reaching for the coffee, "and he says he's worked out the problems with 30 Government," 30 06, "Which is nice to hear." All that beefing with Crozier aside.
--
The British over for dinner had been interesting... it had turned into some dancing around the election state side. There was still a week till Christmas and all the Legation dinners and parties, and then the lead up into the new year bash. "What do you make of it?"

"Akashi's stuff." Bill snorted, "Hell Al. What do you think Cole?"

"Akashi's right Allen needs to pay a visit to Japan, 'specially since they've got a new Prime Minister as well."

"Terauchi, why," Not that he wasn't a swell enough fellow, and in the right cliques.

Instead of answering as if he'd been waiting to spring upon them the elder Forrest made an entrance into the office, "Because regarding your question this morning about why Qirui might think funding is available, it seems he's been in talks with the finance ministry." The old man had brought four typed copies and handed them out, "And Cullen is right, this has been going on since November, I'd reckon they're nearly to the point of concluding it."

He opened the manila folder, and looked over the papers throwing a sour look at Cole, who just shrugged half apologetically, "Have you been given copies of Akashi's posts?"

"I have not had that pleasure," The old man had conspicuously not moved for the center documents, "Would you care to share?" Bill reached over and handed them to the colonel, and they settled to stew over the reading.

"Britain takes loans from Japan, Japan turns around and loans it out, to Duan, with the strings attached and Britain potentially gets another nation to add to the allies."

"And that's the advantage it being a feather in their cap for the propaganda, tell the people back home. Some of it looks like what Yamagata cut out of Shigenobu's demands," Forrest the elder replied glancing over the top, "And of course he could very well have insisted those be removed on the grounds of fiscal responsibility, but just as likely he was preparing to run the Prime Minister out of politics all together." The timing of previous administrations finance members arrest had been... convenient but on the other hand it wasn't really a conspiracy. There had been some kind of row within the party, and it had been about money, but then it seemingly always was. "And as much as we would like to ascertain where they're going with this, what do you make about Akashi's comments about the marxists here?"

"Most of the revolutionaries in exile fled to Switzerland," He replied, "Sit around in Geneva, Lucern the lot of chateaus and coffee houses to complain. I know Akashi doesn't like the sudden shift," The change in prime minister, but Akashi didn't like the Tsarist government either. "Why?"

"Terauichi does not like the marxists, we have common cause there. In fact Lansing's people in speaking with Balfour's people think the Germans are up to something. We obviously haven't told the British we read the German's mail, but they probably know." The British had cut the German undersea cables early in the war, "There is enough of trouble with the IWW as it is, so Lansing doesn't want to start a riot, but Germany is moving a lot of silver dollars overseas."

"So if China enters the war its good for the states."

"Wilson won't like it. Too much secret diplomacy for him, its all too bloody European in his opinion, but yes Lansing wants Chinese participation." The whole thing was a tangled mess. "I'd say we should have a cause for war by Summer, which is good because we're not ready yet. The preparedness movement just isn't enough."

That had been a topic they'd had before. The inevitability of the draft for when the US entered the war... which the British didn't know that that was the way the state department was leaning. Wilson didn't want to get involved but the mood was already turning... and if the British didn't know letting the Japanese know that that was the way things were was probably not what the state department wanted.... Lansing was almost certainly angling for concessions. "The draft?"

"If you're going to bring people over you need to have it done."

Bill had spoken to his daddy,... and of course Colonel McCulloch was entirely too old that he'd be recalled, and it was doubtful that his youngest brothers would be effected, but Wilson had been a damned navy lawyer, "Of course he won't come. If he has to go he'll go, but his whole job it managing the family trust..."

"I can't see them reactivating his commission, not with your family tied up in oil, trains, and ranching all together. They won't do it. If he volunteers to return it'd be different, but too much money and," And political influence, "besides even if they called him up it'd be to run the organization."

"There have been some of the Gillespie folks who have signed up,"

"They're German stock?"

"Well, yeah, some of the Irish too, if Daddy can't secure exemptions for his oil engineers he'll send them over to us I think, but we'll see, won't we?"

"How long until you have rigs running full time?"

Bill threw a glance to him, and then back to the older Forrest, "In Shaanxi? Couple of months, summer" He clicked his tongue, "End of next year at the latest, for Gansu. We've done the exploring All the right conditions, and I'll need drill engineers."

"We're going to need engineers of every stripe and sort." Cole muttered, after the conversation ended and it was the three of them left in the office, "As to Texas, and Edenborns people, I think this will be a good trial run. The French and English have already divided up the Ottomans and the war aint close to done. I don't want to think what they'll plan for pillaging the other two morons. I think we need to prepare the corporation in Switzerland to start looking to recruit people to come over. Once the war ends, we can pay 'em in US dollars and they can work a couple years, or stay on long term if things are bad in the old country."

--
Notes: This is basically continuation of the general course for the 1916 parts of the timeline, on one hand its this stuff is happening in China, this stuff is happening in China in the context of wider international events, this stuff is happening in the world at large, and then in 1917 all the planning the long term great game stuff the great powers have been mustache twirling just falls out as the Bolshevik surprise comes out of the oven and everyone is like 'wtf is this shit', the US joins the war before that but doesn't really make significant contributions till after, China 'joins' the war before the Bolshevik seizure of power too, but that summer is when like a couple dozen small conflicts break out in China and the country really starts to disintegrate into provincial fiefdoms.

So yeah, going into 1917 we're preparing for the first bandit war, and then other stuff. With that out of the way I'm going to talk about some of the methodology that well in general effects not just this timeline but my AH stuff for the most part. SO for this story, as it relates to that, I treat 1917 as the end of the 'long 19th​ century' and if not that year between 1919 and 1914, I would pick the start of ww1 rather than the end of it. Which gets us into the systems of looking at history.

I consider the start of the Industrial revolution to be in the 1690s in Britain, basically with the foundation of the bank of England and this is because I define the Industrial revolution including the systems which lead to its developments which admittedly under that model you could say the precursor to the Industrial Revolution was the foundation of the East Indies companies in England and the Netherlands. I'm not defining the revolution on just the mass production of textiles but also the institutional social and economic shifts that made that mass production possible, and thus I place its start a few decades earlier than most because by that point things like stable banking capital, and national banking apparatus being available to England facilitated the financial wherewithal to create the British Imperial Market and be involved in far flung colonial adventures such that France despite have twice the population of England was roughly equal in economic productivity in the first half of the 18th​ century and then England just completely eclipses them by the Napoleonic war in terms of things like iron production.

This is also part of the system which is why when numbering off the states to Industrialize its England, and then America because I'm looking at the development of the institutions and the manufacture of the tools necessary to industrialize and colonial America despite some political pushback (particularly from people like Jefferson) already had a culture and the inclination to industrialize before independence and this was supported to an extent by the early republic even before the Napoleonic wars and Europe (continental Europe) doesn't industrialize until the 1830s despite for example Netherlands having a colonial empire and a banking apparatus though the dutch would go on to be a major proponent of industrialization.

Anyway to bring this back, this banking revolution and credit, and just in general access to financial institutions and capital as reliable institutions is important for basically future industrial ventures. The development of the LLC and such all play a part in this, and incorporation, trusts and subsequently the professionalization of management, which is slow to catch on in Europe, until really really quite late.

Anyway, in timeline terms this is arc one of the primary timeline, 1916 is sort of the prologue and runs into and through the summer of 1918. That will in a similar fashion serve as the basis for a timeskip forward to the break down of the beiyang army and subsequent major clique conflicts that occur among other political developments.

 

[ATP]

Banking revolution and credits started in medieval Italy/Northern city - states,south was fucked by Normans/.Mass production,too
Pity,that somebody else/Netherlands,later England/ used their concepts to rule world.

Corporation in Switzerland - great idea.I read memories of polish aristocrat Hipolit Korwin-Milewski,who knew important people in both Russia and France.According to him,Russians do not seriuusly fought germans,becouse russian elites was germans,too.
When he meet in Switzerland exiled A-H aristocrats/which he,of course,knew too/ they claimed that Germany wanted war in 1914,becouse they fear,that Russia after 1916 would be too strong to defeat.Author was not sure,if they were right or not.

P.S Weapons after WW2 - you need AA and AT,but only after 1930.
Oerikon 20mm,Bofors 40 and 80mm for AA.
AT - 47 mm was better then 37mm for killing infrantry,and good enough for japaneese so called tanks.You could choose either Belgium/1931/ or Austrian/1935/ guns.
Czech and Polish was designed too late/1936 Czech,1939 Poland/

 

[Imperator Pax]

Banking revolution and credits started in medieval Italy/Northern city - states,south was fucked by Normans/.Mass production,too
Pity,that somebody else/Netherlands,later England/ used their concepts to rule world.

Corporation in Switzerland - great idea.I read memories of polish aristocrat Hipolit Korwin-Milewski,who knew important people in both Russia and France.According to him,Russians do not seriuusly fought germans,becouse russian elites was germans,too.
When he meet in Switzerland exiled A-H aristocrats/which he,of course,knew too/ they claimed that Germany wanted war in 1914,becouse they fear,that Russia after 1916 would be too strong to defeat.Author was not sure,if they were right or not.

P.S Weapons after WW2 - you need AA and AT,but only after 1930.
Oerikon 20mm,Bofors 40 and 80mm for AA.
AT - 47 mm was better then 37mm for killing infrantry,and good enough for japaneese so called tanks.You could choose either Belgium/1931/ or Austrian/1935/ guns.
Czech and Polish was designed too late/1936 Czech,1939 Poland/

Click to shrink...

Yeah that was poor short hand usage on my part I should have specified llc joint stock private national banks and so with regulatory powers and even that's not a complete answer to what all changes in the 17th century banking apparatus

 

[ATP]

Yeah that was poor short hand usage on my part I should have specified llc joint stock private national banks and so with regulatory powers and even that's not a complete answer to what all changes in the 17th century banking apparatus

Click to shrink...

True.If Italians have English channel which defend them from invasions,they could do the same as England,but earlier.
I was wrong about Czech 47mm - Czech 47mm was designed in 1936,so you could wait for it.It was much better then belgian and austrian gun.Enough for Japan,and even early T.34.
Later could use AT version of 80mm AA Bofors.
Maybe After WW2 buy PAW 1000 from Allies,after they captured it in Germany?

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

Christmas was fast approaching, and the news from Europe was of course that change was coming that the war was entering a new phase... that the 'concert of 1917' would be different. From their place in the distant orient there was some skepticism to it, and yet it was potentially true. The war in Europe had marked a change, not so much because they'd been dependent on European tool manufacturing.

They hadn't been. It was true Germany made good tooling for certain things. The dutch for others. The British. The problem wasn't that they were cut off from the supply because those countries were at war. It was that because the entente was at war they were buying up tooling from the states and as 1915's pace had increased the US supply had been devoured paid for by British buys on credit.

The British Merchant Marine was going wherever it could to pick up goods from all over the world... and it was the war effort was enough that it was driving up prices for those in demand goods across the whole world. They knew that pretty well, just for things like iron, never mind steel, or finished goods.

Iron and derivative goods sold well, textile prices were up to. The war was good for business because European demand was high. In short demand was high because the war had created excess demand in the Entente and because the war had cut Europe from trading with one another in their normal fashion, that couldn't be overlooked either.

To that extent he wasn't terribly surprised when Nakamichi referred to the cadre as a 'Zaibatsu', not because most of his fellow core leadership were blood related, or at least not closely, but the remaining share holders were all the product of the first cadre who had stayed in with longstanding ties. Beneath that core membership were the other experts and managers who administered subsidiaries largely on the professional day to day business.

He could draw the comparisons... and even if that wasn't the point Nakamichi was making the other similarities were pretty similar. The iron and coal mines were managed carefully and professionally, and with scientific rigor much like mines back in the states. Experts organized and clocks timed around overlapping eight hour shifts based on scientific theories.

Zaibatsu wasn't a horrible word. Clan was a perfectly serviceable description, and they needed to plan for a future after the war ended. Present incomes needed to be prepared to invest in what would make money in the future after the war was over... and that was why he'd been willing to pay Qirui for the Hartford tooling the Liu had been given the money by Yuan to buy from Pratt and Whitney. Not that Duan hadn't been easy to convince, he had plenty of personal reasons to distrust modernizing the Hanyang arsenal that the tooling had been purchased for. Not allowing them to get to Hanyang was in his interest.

The three cities were a hot bed of anti beiyang sentiment... and if the talk coming out of the Beiyang committee of the various dujun and other officers of rank was accurate it would be the first target for any Beiyang action against the south. Hanyang was close enough to the provinces loyal to the Beiyang clique and yet wasn't in one of those northern aligned provinces. There was no reason to give a city that had already struck imperial colors for the guomindang more than once new american made tooling.

"I appreciate the Christmas present, its even a couple days early.' Griswold remarked.

Allen grunted, "How are things on your end Cole?"

Cole put his drink on the table and sat back down, "We'll leave probably that Friday morning," The first Friday of the new year, "Go out west and see, Percy's all but confirmed Akashi's report that inflation of the Russian money. That's worsening the food shortages from the draft that Percy told us about. If I was going to put money on it, given the Brits, and Japan are telling us the same thing... its going to get a hell of a lot worse."

He nodded, "And readiness?"

"They're not ready. We need a couple more months. I get moving away from flying brigades, and to geographic centered regiments, but its still a change. We're not ready, and the incoming classes will need time, especially for telephones and artillery. Its a time and resource investment, we're talking human capital. If we promote every lieutenant to captain and every captain to colonel it'd be a right mess."

They knew they couldn't do that, and frankly everyone knew that. Reiterating that with just a handful of them here was pointless. "That's fine, the tooling?" He turned back to Griswold,

"Its on the train cars, as soon as its off in the city," Xian's old Manchu quarter, "I'll get the first shift settled into it, and see about doing the first runs." Shijiazhuang's Cedar Forrest could produce part of the British rifle Order after the start of the new year, while that tooling was spinning up, and then ideally the two together could finish the order quicker... assuming nothing else came up. The British wouldn't necessarily like it because it would mean inspecting two different factories' production, but that kind of old fashioned behavior had been dealt with before.

"The more I think about it, the less I like Percy's buddy nosing around."

"Its bad enough, have him snooping," Cole agreed, "And shit, you didn't see it, but Nakamichi had the stomach to say we should add two whole divisions in ear shot. That bastard looked like he was going to clear his skin at the thought. I didn't like that."

Allen threw a look to Bill, who shrugged "I wasn't there Al. I missed that."

"If that wasn't what rubbed you the wrong way then what was?"

"Well Akashi wants us to talk to Giichi, I mean you know how he feels about the Marxists,"

"Him, and my pops are about two peas in a pod," Allen replied reaching for his coffee, "Is he coming to visit, cause I don't know if I have enough liquor for both of them to drink," Laughter chortled round the table, "I'm serious. Christmas and News Year, putting on and what not."

"No, no. Not this year, but if you're going over there you should pay him a visit."

--

Cole's notion of not ready lay in the complexities of basically inculcating literacy into enlisted men... hell they were talking about English as well for men weren't, largely, even literate in their native language. Allen blew a breath out, and watched the rank file past the flag pole and the red dragon on the blue field.

They had had the conversation months earlier about the incoming new recruits. The southern revolutionary flag evoked, called for a union of five races.... Whites, Yellows, Reds, Blacks and Blues. Five colors on a flag.

That was too many damned colors to have on a nation flag. Yuan Shikai had adopted a somewhat more inventive take on it, but even that was a gaudy eyesore. Jun placed a hand on his arm as she took a seat under the pavilion.

The dragon banner had been her idea. There was nothing they could do to get around it either. They'd won a battle and rallied troops around it.. and worse Yuan had gone and encouraged it for evoking martial vigor. "I thought you would enjoy the prospect returning to visit Japan?" She half stated half asked.

"I would, if it wasn't work."

"You're unhappy with your father's request?" It was not a damn request. She sniffed from behind her fan, "Or the fact that the minister wishes to establish the Japanese position before they admit that they're preparing to join the conflict?"

"Lansing has read enough of the German mail to know something is going on," the germans had been having to use American cables since the Brits had cut theirs, and the Germans had even agreed to decrypt their own messages, but that hadn't stopped state from letting the army crack the german ciphers... so even if the Germans had changed machines after 1915 it wouldn't have mattered. "They've got a lot of Mexican silver dollars tied up, the germans, and I don't have a problem passing that to Akashi," There was a burst from one team on the Madsen from a berm firing at a series of mannequins, "but this about trying to find out where the Japanese sit ahead of lansing sitting down with whoever their prime minister sends." But there was movement on that front closer to here as well, and that was part of it.

... and the Brits were lurking in the background insistent that when the war was over everything was just going to magically turn back to how it had been in 1914 before the boche started the war, and the French legation seemed to be huffing the same opium.

"What do you believe?"

"Given the situation, I'd expect the Japanese plan to advance a railway loan to qirui, in Shandong probably, but cutting the Russians out of Mongolia isn't an unreasonable guess." They probably wouldn't try for anything further south, but given the war being perceived as pushing the Russians too hard might cause them to go running to England... "I expect that Japan is hedging on wanting to see what the English do," They'd elected Lloyd in after Terauchi had been in, "Wilson being reelected probably is not as big of a deal to them. They like Wilson." Mostly. "They'll most likely want confirmation of Bryan's," Gentleman's, "Agreement from last year, but other than its watching what England does."
--
Notes: Ok so when we transition to 1917 I'm going to do a separate threadmark, index / extra to deal with some historical notes that would otherwise just be unwieldy in their length.
Anyway, One more December segment to go, and that will close out 1916, but in the following notes among other things I'm going to cover both the 1916 troops strengths OTL for the provincial military and the national military in an abridged format because it will help elucidate I think the sheer massive troop expansion across China in and then after 1917. This is not unique to the Beiyang army forces... which is something I'll talk about in that transitional notes post. I have to stop myself there, but we still need to get through December 1916's scenes.

 

[ATP]

Their army need to expand,and it would be problem if they faced any normal army.Luckily for them,their possible opponets would be expanding too,and from worst position.
So - they would stil have better army then any other chineese faction.Should be enough.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I will threadmark this shortly, since I might as well put it up, otherwise I may end up misplacing it again.

So this is 1916
"By 1916 however the largest provincial budgetary allocation was for the army, across all provinces. In 1916 140+ million yuan was spent on the combine budgets of the central ministry of the army as well as provincial armies. This cost, roughly a third being paid by the central government, reflected that in 1916 the peking government provided funding for 13 divisions, each requiring a budget on average of about 1.8 million yuan, and nine brigades with the provinces providing 16 divisions and 29 brigades of supposedly modern forces. Quality and equipment between provinces widely varied from the still largely standardized Beiyang divisions of Yuan Shikai's northern confederates at this point and many Beiyang aligned provinces still fielded large numbers of 'territorial defense units' with less than modern equipment much as was found in the south. Some provinces continued to support banner and green standard formations of the qing era... "
For reference a 1916 Beiyang standard division was supposed to be roughly 15k men.

Anyway to the important things
The Yuan Shikai government (Army Ministry) in 1916 was responsible for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 20 Division. As well as 1st 2nd 7th 8th 13th 14th Mixed Brigades, a 1st and 2nd Capital Brigade, the 2nd cav brigade, and the 1st and 2nd Temporary Regiments. the respective provinces were responsible for the following: (Note that traditional Qing organization used the battalion as the primary unit hence why TDs are given in that unit, the first column after a province is modern forces, the second are its TD units if any are recorded or other late qing style second line units)

Zhili	2 Modern Battalions	82 Territorial Defense Battalions	Fengtien	2 Modern Divisions 1 Battalion and 1 Platoon	27 Territorial Defense Battalions	Heliojiang	1 division 2 machine gun platoons
Shandong	1 division 1 brigade 3 platoons	38 Territorial defense battalions	Henan	2 mixed brigades,	35 Hongwei Army battalions 13 TD battalions	Shanxi	1 brigade, 3 regiments, 1battalion
Jiangsu	2 divisions 4 brigades 1 battalion		Anhui	3 battalions 3 platoons	37 battalions Anwu Army (Late Qing)	Jiangxi	2 brigades 1 regiment 1 platoon
Fujian	2 brigades		Zhejiang	1 Division 1 brigade	6 battalions of territorial defense battalions	Hubei	2 divisions 2 brigades 1 regiment 1 battalion
Hunan	1 brigade 1 regiment 2 battalions	? Yes.	Shaanxi	4 Brigades 1 Battalion		Gansu	13 battalions	37 Territorial defense battalions
Xinjiang	29 battalions	46 Territorial Defense battalions	Sichuan	2 divisions 2 mixed brigades 1 battalion	46 battalions Han Army (traditional)	Guangdong	1 Division 2 mixed brigades 1 battalion
Guangxi	2 divisions 26 battalions		Yunnan	2 divisions		Guizhou	6 regiments 19 battalions 2 platoons
Rehe	2 Regiments, and 20 Battalions		Suiyan	1 brigade		Chahar	1 brigade

I'm skipping some provinces some of them just aren't important, I do wish I had a good map of 1916 to put up, and I have the budgets and they don't add up. Corruption is an understatment relative to paper strength, and also provincial troops who were deemed modern often still had less in the way of weapons... and Qing era TDs in some cases still had flintlocks, but were non smokeless powder rifles, and I doubt many of these units were at full strength in 1916. Also in 1916 there was a major issue of who was actually in charge of some of these units, there were instances where the civil governor was responsible for some, the 'military governor' for others, and local figures of some other position were in charge of some i.e. Xinjiang and Anhui both comes to mind. As does Shanxi during this period

 

[Imperator Pax]

I will threadmark this shortly, since I might as well put it up, otherwise I may end up misplacing it again.

So this is 1916
"By 1916 however the largest provincial budgetary allocation was for the army, across all provinces. In 1916 140+ million yuan was spent on the combine budgets of the central ministry of the army as well as provincial armies. This cost, roughly a third being paid by the central government, reflected that in 1916 the peking government provided funding for 13 divisions, each requiring a budget on average of about 1.8 million yuan, and nine brigades with the provinces providing 16 divisions and 29 brigades of supposedly modern forces. Quality and equipment between provinces widely varied from the still largely standardized Beiyang divisions of Yuan Shikai's northern confederates at this point and many Beiyang aligned provinces still fielded large numbers of 'territorial defense units' with less than modern equipment much as was found in the south. Some provinces continued to support banner and green standard formations of the qing era... "
For reference a 1916 Beiyang standard division was supposed to be roughly 15k men. I say supposed to because in 1916 China had only a rough strength of about half a million men under arms and a significant number of units were under strength and some basically existed only on paper.

Anyway to the important things
The Yuan Shikai government (Army Ministry) in 1916 was responsible for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th and 20 Division. As well as 1st 2nd 7th 8th 13th 14th Mixed Brigades, a 1st and 2nd Capital Brigade, the 2nd cav brigade, and the 1st and 2nd Temporary Regiments. the respective provinces were responsible for the following: (Note that traditional Qing organization used the battalion as the primary unit hence why TDs are given in that unit, the first column after a province is modern forces, the second are its TD units if any are recorded or other late qing style second line units)

Zhili	2 Modern Battalions	82 Territorial Defense Battalions	Fengtien	2 Modern Divisions 1 Battalion and 1 Platoon	27 Territorial Defense Battalions	Heliojiang	1 division 2 machine gun platoons
Shandong	1 division 1 brigade 3 platoons	38 Territorial defense battalions	Henan	2 mixed brigades,	35 Hongwei Army battalions 13 TD battalions	Shanxi	1 brigade, 3 regiments, 1battalion
Jiangsu	2 divisions 4 brigades 1 battalion		Anhui	3 battalions 3 platoons	37 battalions Anwu Army (Late Qing)	Jiangxi	2 brigades 1 regiment 1 platoon
Fujian	2 brigades		Zhejiang	1 Division 1 brigade	6 battalions of territorial defense battalions	Hubei	2 divisions 2 brigades 1 regiment 1 battalion
Hunan	1 brigade 1 regiment 2 battalions	? Yes.	Shaanxi	4 Brigades 1 Battalion		Gansu	13 battalions	37 Territorial defense battalions
Xinjiang	29 battalions	46 Territorial Defense battalions	Sichuan	2 divisions 2 mixed brigades 1 battalion	46 battalions Han Army (traditional)	Guangdong	1 Division 2 mixed brigades 1 battalion
Guangxi	2 divisions 26 battalions		Yunnan	2 divisions		Guizhou	6 regiments 19 battalions 2 platoons
Rehe	2 Regiments, and 20 Battalions		Suiyan	1 brigade		Chahar	1 brigade

I'm skipping some provinces some of them just aren't important, I do wish I had a good map of 1916 to put up, and I have the budgets and they don't add up. Corruption is an understatment relative to paper strength, and also provincial troops who were deemed modern often still had less in the way of weapons... and Qing era TDs in some cases still had flintlocks, but were non smokeless powder rifles, and I doubt many of these units were at full strength in 1916

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916 Conclusion​

As he'd expected there was no sign of a white Christmas being likely.

The Christmas festivities had begun the 22nd​, a Friday, and looked like they were going to run into when the clamoring leading into New Years eve started that last Friday of the year, the 29th​. Why? Because it was an excuse to show off wealth, and prestige. ... case in point how everyone was getting steak tonight from the lowliest private up to full colonels. That was plural because two brigades of artillery were present at the dinner.

Sparing a look at men who fell to the Light Artillery brigade, and Powell's continued absence from their ranks, Allen stepped to the podium of the university's great hall and the microphones placed in front. Now began the dance around Yuan Shikai's failed bid to restore monarchy to the ancient country, now to dance around the old general's death in july, while still having to admit that without him to rally around, either around him in support, or for the south to rally against him as an excuse now the cuttin' was sure to start. "... in Europe the greatest bloodletting in human history is underway, but we shall ourselves be faced with our own fights. So 1917 will bring with it further changes, further advancements." Scientific principles of management, of excellence, of study, and experimentation. All the sort of things Reinsch felt in their conversation the day previous were too mechanical, "We will adopt new structures, adopt new rifles, acquire new models of artillery." He almost considered singling out Nakamichi, to break from his prepared speech, and highlight suggestions to create two more divisions... but didn't he'd written out a planned ten thousand word he'd damned well use it. Percy and his acquaintance from Merry Old England's foreign office were in attendance, and there was no benefit to tweaking the new man's nose. So he continued on, comparing in allegory the process of making an army like making steel.

... and roughly forty five minutes later he returned to his seat, somewhat wishing the high table had required seating certain guests nearer.

"Not exactly the Christmas message." Percy remarked. "A bit lacking on peace and goodwill among men, don't you think."

Bill snorted, "I was hoping you'd cut it down."

"Realistically, they need to know Szechwan is going to turn into a charnel house." He replied, and that belied the point. Szechwan was 55 million people. It was the whole population of the dual monarchy shoved into one Chinese province. One province about to be divided by the ravenous power hungry local leaders and that they would make desperate men, and that would cause the chaos of one province to domino across the others.

.. and of course it was more than that.

"Yes well," Percy started to reply.

"That and I had to say something to distinguish every unit here." Infantry, artillery, the engineers so forth. Percy reached for his port, and for a moment he thought the other Englishman looked prepared to question their lack of cavalry in representation. "and that includes our visiting guests."

Beef was halal after all... even though he was pretty sure Ma wasn't especially picky about the scriptural restrictions given he ate sausage and downed baiju but that wasn't why they'd served steaks it just was convenient for all involved.

"Ah yes, them." He looked at the Gansu 'anti banditry' delegation who were visiting. "No, really I was wondering you're planning to make a trip to Japan aren't you?"

"I am," Not that it was any of Percy's damned business.

Percy glanced to his compatriot. Who cleared his throat, "I was wondering, I'd heard from reliable men," The other man grunted, "That Prince Yamagata had invited you to stay."

"Kyoto is a lovely town, its too pretty to call a city." He replied, to which the Englishmen agreed in using the description that it was 'quaint'. "Its not business, I'm a friend of the family." It was going to sideline into business, but they didn't know that for sure. Advertising that there were other objectives was unwise.

"Iseburo is absolutely fascinated by the matters of the locomotive." Percy declared to his compatriot interjecting. "Prince Yamagata's heir that is."

"I understand the prince doesn't speak English." Percy's co worker remarked clearly disapproving.

"Of course he speaks English," Allen grunted, probably more harshly than he meant, he reached for his scotch and sipped. "He speaks English." What more likely the Brit had been misinformed was that the old man's grasp of written English was a particular embarrassment to the general.

"I read your article regarding the Japanese leadership, during the war with the Russians."

1906, or seven he couldn't remember now when it had been published. "Did you now?" He sipped, "Anything in particular?"

"That the prince believed war with Russia, that Russian irredentism would be inevitable."

"His prediction seems to have been overshadowed by the Tsar fighting his cousin," Kaiser Bill, "But yes, I did report that at the time, and that of Japan's venerable statesmen Aritomo had acquitted himself quite impressively, and," That he among that number, "had the breath of experience to prepare them for any attempts at avenging their defeat in the recent war." Yamagata had made clear that he expected the Russians to try and try again, that war was inevitable in the following decade.

"Well, I suppose it must be darkly comedic then, all of us on the same side against the Germans."

"I don't think war is funny." Bill muttered, "But its politics, and sometimes you get along with fellows cause there isn't any other choice."
--
Hina's Christmas day luncheon had 'lacked' a crowd of a crowd of ten thousand, but then again it wasn't as if the Glory could handle having an infantry brigade's worth of men along. "Did it work like you wanted it?"

She smiled catlike against the banister, "Well charlatans, and fraudulent products being revealed to be fakes could only be a positive thing."

"Yeah," He sipped the coffee, "And there was nothing cathartic at all about watching the municipal police smash all those fake bottles." He moved to stand beside her, "Is the turn out for this like you expected?"

"We would be number 1," She replied in emphasized English. "Everyone important has made at least polite appearances." This wasn't New York and it was hard to organize the hundreds' grand parties for the holidays and thus it fell usually to a knife fight between hotels. Shanghai's international had enough mansions and 'palaces' that it, and Hong Kong for that matter had persons of sufficient importance and grand enough homes to host.

"Then you have my congratulations." The truth was they were dancing around other subjects, but he was glad this had gone well for her.. and not just because this was a 'social victory' and a feather in the cap for social relations and how it impacted the international community of the city.
--
They just needed to get through this last evening, and they'd be done. Nineteen sixteen would be over, and they could see what 1917 was going to spring upon them. "are you packed?" Forrest the elder questioned.

"Yes," He shook his head, "Has there been anything else?"

His father sullenly reached for his liquor. "Lansing wants you to talk to Goto."

"..." He made no immediate reply.

"What, don't give me that look, you were gonna go drink with the doctor anyway. Go see Inanzo while you're at it. Test the waters find out where they stand, and if you can see if you can't get Japan to confirm that bit about chopping the Ottomans all to bits."

"Why, we know that they know? What could they possibly gain us?"

"Because if Japan tells us, if Japan's liberals tell us we don't have any issue with the Brits wondering how we know that they and the French are chop up the Sultanate. That will give Lansing leverage on Britain."

He could admittedly see that. "How familiar is Lansing with my itenerary."

"Not very, he's leaving it to your discretion, but the suggestion to talk to the home minister warranted direct telling. We don't want to advertise to the Brits how close we are to joining their crusade, but the Germans are up to something."

"More chatter?"

"Through the last couple weeks. The kaiserliche marine is preparing for something."

"What about down south? You said you were following agents, what happened there?"

"They put in, into Canton, a not significant amount of Mexican silver dollars in their possession." He shrugged, "The British have insisted that the Germans are trying to stir up the Irish again, and that they're trying in India, and they could be right. Maybe its an attempt to stir up trouble in Cochin, or Tonkin or somewhere with the French."

John Allen considered denying that was his problem. "I can understand with Ireland,"

"I know its a backwater piss pot but the British consider it their prize possession." He meant India, "If they face a revolt there it'll distract them. It has no heavy industry, but it is

"I wasn't going to say that, India's got millions of muslims, if the Sultan has declared for a jihad the Brits could be facing some of their best troops revolting. The French Colonies though,"
"They just put down that one down south, and its still simmering."

"The germans would need to ship arms, I can't imagine it'd be as effective as stirring up India."

"We are talking about the same Kaiser who fired Bismarck, and thought to start a naval arms race with the Royal Navy." The colonel shook his head, "I will get you a list of critical positions, but it'll be short. If it has to be done, suggest that the United States is approaching making a decision in the summer. Lansing believes we can hash most of it out informally and then get it all in writing, and have it all said and done before the Brits or the French need to be told."

... thereby with the assumption of making them fait accompli. "And Russia?"

"The state department would prefer to hold as a trump card, but we are prepared to fully recognize Japan primacy of any special zone in Manchuria up to the exclusion of the Russians... if it comes to that. Lansing doesn't want to jump straight to telling Japan we're fine kicking the Russians out of the game, but if you have to tell him that's where we're at it, its fine."

"Because of the situation with the parliament?"

"No, Lansing is fully prepared to toss the Russians before this, Bryan might not have been ready to go that far, but Manchuria is much closer to Japan than it is to Russia... and its just realpolitik anyway. The Russian army is in shambles."

It was a short list.. shorter than he expected. "1917 is gonna be a disaster?"

"Given the last two years? Yes."

Wilson might have campaigned about how he had kept the country out of the war, but that it had been as close as it had underscored how much the country had changed. The united states of 1899 had stood looking across both oceans, and prepared to look beyond them. The war with Spain had provided it the first steps, but Perry had opened Japan's gates before the war between the states so even as far back as then... the US's destiny and steps into the wider world had been foreshadowed.

Allen blew out a breath, "What about the Draft?"

"I've a copy of the current version," There was a pause, "it will be necessary, you can guess that. The Europeans are throwing themselves into a meat grinder."

Millions on Millions.

--
Notes: This ends 1916 effectively serving as an epilogue to the year admittedly with some material only covered in an abridged format and 1917 will open with basically its own prologue in late January where the shit has hit the fan with the Zimmerman telegraph, admittedly among other things, and the US now having a most excellent cassus belli into the war... and it will still take three months to get the declaration of war after the sinking of several US merchant vessels.

So sometime in this next week most likely I need to put up an index note of various topics, of things that just bear dealing with, but again in 1916 China's army was half a million men, (and part of that was that Yuan Shikai was frequently demobilizing unreliable units and disarming them when he could, both for security, and also financial reasons. This had been his policy as early as 1890s during the Qing era reforms) and in 1917 alone the provinces would add 200k men to that number in an explosion of impressment and conscription as fighting broke out. (See in this conclusion, Szechwan's population).

 

[ATP]

Could Japan take Manchuria earlier in this TL? i read,that they have chance for that during WW1.
And i could farsee their reaction - european are throwing themselves into meatgrinder - how we could made more weapons and sell them?

 

[Imperator Pax]

Could Japan take Manchuria earlier in this TL? i read,that they have chance for that during WW1.
And i could farsee their reaction - european are throwing themselves into meatgrinder - how we could made more weapons and sell them?

Click to shrink...

In this timeline, and again there are details coming up in 20 that I don't want to spoil particularly for stuff that effects post war,

the short answer is yes they could have

Will they?

Spoiler: Spoiler

Manchuria? No, the Japanese in the OTL had an administrative crisis by weak governments initiated by the inflation caused by the war, which are still very much a real problem here. So they won't take direct control of Mnachuria,

Lansing, and for that matter parts of the British Foreign Office were willing to encourage Japan to go into Manchuria especially if it meant keeping it out of the hands of the Bolsheviks England was willing to extend loans and arms, including giving Japan access to tanks and what really stopped them was that WW1 was over and there was diminishing public support continuing the war far far away, but basically yes, in this timeline Japan has a vested interest in being more involved in Manchuria.

However what is likely to happen is that with a drop in access, or rather lack of access to an influx of hard currency, and other political factors there will be a larger / more drawn out Russian civil war with Rump white russian states, and a Japanese puppet state in the far east (which was something that Japan had wanted to do, but political weakness that prevented them from acting in Manchuria OTL also prevented them from doing so) now here there is a greater British antipathy to the Bolsheviks during the civil war (Its 1916 here, but by this point Churchill has been rehabilitiated) and there is a growing multinational concern Japan, America, England over the political issues in Russia, and once we get to 1919/20 there will be other factors that shape why the British government is willing to supply weapons to a rump russian state that is under Japanese influence, but by that point we will have introduced Ungern and Zhang Tso-lin

 

[ATP]

In this timeline, and again there are details coming up in 20 that I don't want to spoil particularly for stuff that effects post war,

the short answer is yes they could have

Will they?

Spoiler: Spoiler

Manchuria? No, the Japanese in the OTL had an administrative crisis by weak governments initiated by the inflation caused by the war, which are still very much a real problem here. So they won't take direct control of Mnachuria,

Lansing, and for that matter parts of the British Foreign Office were willing to encourage Japan to go into Manchuria especially if it meant keeping it out of the hands of the Bolsheviks England was willing to extend loans and arms, including giving Japan access to tanks and what really stopped them was that WW1 was over and there was diminishing public support continuing the war far far away, but basically yes, in this timeline Japan has a vested interest in being more involved in Manchuria.

However what is likely to happen is that with a drop in access, or rather lack of access to an influx of hard currency, and other political factors there will be a larger / more drawn out Russian civil war with Rump white russian states, and a Japanese puppet state in the far east (which was something that Japan had wanted to do, but political weakness that prevented them from acting in Manchuria OTL also prevented them from doing so) now here there is a greater British antipathy to the Bolsheviks during the civil war (Its 1916 here, but by this point Churchill has been rehabilitiated) and there is a growing multinational concern Japan, America, England over the political issues in Russia, and once we get to 1919/20 there will be other factors that shape why the British government is willing to supply weapons to a rump russian state that is under Japanese influence, but by that point we will have introduced Ungern and Zhang Tso-lin

Click to shrink...

Mad Baron? i like it.
And USA helped soviets in OTL - they take Vladivostok do japaneese could not do that,and gave it to soviets.
Also,made Japan leave Siberia in 1923 under the pretext that soviet let Siberian be free.Soviets,of course,lied,and USA did nothing.
Considering,that Wall Street payed Trocky &thugs to get to Russia and win revolution/Lenin run,sralin was nobody then/ and later buyed tsar gold,church gold,and grain robbed from murdered farmers,i would say that Wall Street for unknown reason made USA support soviets.

My theory - Russia start becoming economical superpower,and in time could replace USA.What better method to destroy competition then gave their country to genocidal idiots?

 

[Imperator Pax]

Prologue
1917
​

'What we see is the composite of the heartland and of a Bismarck without a Kaiser.'
- attributed Commissioner of British Mission to South Russia 1921

--

The trip to Japan, or at least its Kyoto leg, had come to an end, of sorts, with being abruptly grabbed to deal with a new crisis, or rather an opportunity to be seized. The Germans had presented the states as the near to perfect cassus belli as could be said to exist, the excuse to enter the war in Europe. To that end as he sat in the chair looking north at the moats of the Imperial palace, he was surprised that Lansing's intervention hadn't entailed twisting the war department to toss him a letter to report back... but the directive amounted to the same goal.

The terms were the same, preparing for the actual conflict to come. Lansing now had a sufficiently powerful excuse to override any umbrage over the entente duo's means to divide up the ottomans as spoils. He had the telegrams and better still didn't need to admit to reading the german's mail, the British had brought their own copies to him which would make for an even better argument to congress, and to brow beat Wilson into agreement if it came to that.

Teruachi had been told, by the old man, to look forward to the end of the war even before the German telegrams had hit the papers. "I must admit this short visit has turned into quite a stay."

"If only it hadn't turned into work." He replied, "truthfully I'd have preferred to stay in Kyoto longer." He deflected, but the telegrams were no longer the only thing on the table.

Akashi sat down at the window seat overlooking the imperial grounds. "The situation is truly worrisome in our neighboring country." He remarked. "It will only get worse."

"Yeah, I'm regretting not sending Cole to Switzerland." Process of incorporation of a 'Swiss office' to plan for after the war with funds pulled from reserves of money the British had paid for war time supply contracts, in both British Pounds, and American dollars had been deposited and the hiring started... but it pulled experts from other needs. The Cadre numbered only just half, "Sounds like the Germans are stirring up the revolutionaries in exile."

"I remember doing such when I was a younger man," The general replied, "If they can give them money and put them into place, they will cause a great deal of trouble." The simple laid back delivery of the words downplayed how prophetic their prediction would be. The success far outstripping Akashi's own funding of revolutionaries during, and after the Russo-Japanese war, and his stirring the soup as he had called it once. He had called the different groups after ingredients after all, cabbage, carrots, potato... etc.

"Its worrying the old man to be sure." Yamagata was downright morose about the developing, or as he preferred 'deteriorating' situation. "I admit I had expected him to celebrate the Russian's misfortune."

"He believes it will make the House of Representatives too complacent, that they'll let their guard down. That they will let the same anarchists, and marxists stir up trouble in our country." In a little more than a year, in 1918, Yamagata would turn eighty... but there was a clear difference in his health and that of Bill's daddy. Aritomo's health was declining... and he'd attended the coronation of the now deposed Tsar... he had to be feeling his age.

... and of course, with Akashi's comment in mind, Aritomo had always distrusted the parties that had emerged in the lower house, and not just because Hirobumi had willfully pursued political apparatus, "Lansing is not thrilled with a revolutionary government coming to power," Even if the noise from others were delusions of optimism about a new democratic Russia, "and ths not counting radical socialists being included, have you spoken with the English?"

"Not personally."

"But you've heard something?"

"Somewhat, I don't know. The foreign office is quite confused right now."

He bit down a comment about how being king of the hill had to suck. The British were so used to planning to always be on top, always fighting complacency, especially in business... and to have just seemed to have lucked into finally getting the states in the war the Russians shit the bed... he shook his head, "Well, its the game."

A shared smirk, "That it is. Admittedly I'd have preferred to engage with the dam project."

"Yamagata thinks the government should be looking at what's going to happen when the war ends," Economically especially. Inflation. "These noveau riche,"

The older man nodded, "the Narrikin, he's worried they'll spread bad behavior because they have become lucky, not because they were good." There in lay the basis that people should have faith in the ability of their higher authority rather than be in fear of their ability according to Yamagata. "If these people who came into their wealth just on luck can squander it while the commoner goes hungry it will cause unrest." They were talking about the explosion in demand for Japan's exports that had created the so called new Zaibatsu.

"Even if their excesses can be pointed to as frivolous or contemptible, the best refutation of Marx remains that his core thesis is unfounded. The poor are not in fact getting poorer. The peasant labor's lot had increased as society advanced, the advent of electricity or even before it gas lighting provides a better life than simply being dependent on the natural world. Free Trade means that goods can be purchased at their cheapest allowing even the lowest rungs of society the benefits of modern life. Are they then poorer than their grandfathers, or are they bettered by it?"

"They are made better of course. A man who has never not known electricity cannot possibly claim to understand what it is to know hardship. We should undertake everything possible to step into modernity. Electrification is itself absolutely necessary in this, as is the eradication of diseases from that have plagued us since feudal times."

Time was not however on there side. For all that Akashi looked to build a better word, to invest, and to convince others to invest in what later generations would call green energy, and harnessing the natural world... the colonel simply didn't have the time left... some of his work would be done, more still left undone.

--
Whilst he had still been in Kyoto at the time the Virginian had been still trying to leverage France and England to make peace... that must have been grating for Lansing... and probably the old lion and Lloyd George as well. It was entirely possible the Foreign Office had released the telegram at the time because Wilson had started talking about whether or not a neutral nation should be 'prolonging the conflict' by loaning the belligerent powers money... but that could have been Wilson trying to play hardball.
"We're not entering the war?"

"We are." Allen glanced at the man to clarify, "the British want us to join the entente. The president is not prepared to enter into an alliance but rather will ask congress for a declaration as cobelligerents."

"I hate fucking lawyers." He muttered in response, "fine what does that mean?" ... and that was the more complicated issue. Wilson, was as much the naïve sort, prone to flights of fancy the same as Reinsch was. The notion that the revolution in Russia should be some reason for the US to enter the war, and that it was in the US interests to save the Russians from Germany. Wilson was Wilson though, he honestly seemed to believe the tripe he spewed and there was little doubt that this might well have had nothing to do with the loans Russia had taken out... even though that probably did enter the calculus of others.

... and in the political arithmetic of what was coming it didn't matter why Wilson wanted the declaration just so long as he asked the Congress for it. "That's not the worst of it." If the profanity entailed had bothered the others it wasn't detailed. Forrest senior hadn't even looked up before passing over the documents, "Lansing has been talking to Francis, and he, and worse, the British, are talking about the railway."

... that made sense as to why he was here then. The papers were dated from petrograd from the start of the month and had been dispatched to Lansing from whose office had made them subsequently available to them. Francis wanted to cut the British out, and go directly to loaning the Russians money rather than through British intercession... and ... and it wasn't just the sum, "What are the British saying about the railway?"

"Just don't fall over." The old man replied.

He didn't like that comment, "What are they proposing?"

"They want to modernize the railway."

"Which railways?"

"No, the railway. The Trans Siberian one."

Allen stared at him. In June of 1916 while China had been embroiled in the mess that had sputtered out when Yuan Shikai had unfortunately passed away there had been a conference. A US loan for railway material had been provided, over three hundred thousand tons of material paid for through the loan.

It was almost six thousand miles long though. "How do they propose that?'

"They want us to do it, the president has short listed to Stevens, but he's not going to be the only commission. The British and French are putting together their own and want to send them across Russia for the war effort." This was almost going to turn into a fight over the Chinese Eastern Railway, and the South Manchurian.

There would be a time after, after the war, but before the economics had set in if the railway idea hadn't been an attempt at a bribe... or if it had been thrown to them as bait. As spring of 1917 began though there were too many other matters... either way the need to turn the line west further still. There was now more reason to extend their line into Xinjiang, and would eventually have reason to extend into Kirghiz ironically enough with tacit British approval.
--
Notes: This is in slightly different tone as its the year opening. 1917 Chapter 1 will return to China and mark the beginning of the turn there, and the lead up to the Manchu restoration and events further.

I would have posted my notes 1916 but that ran afoul of the computer gremlins, and I'm going to have rewrite a lot of that material from scratch and just gradually update it over time, but this officially opens 1917 in this timeline

 

[ATP]

gremlins are nasty critters.
Japan financed terrorist during 1905 war,one of them was józef Liłsudzki,future leader of Poland/after 1926 putch/.
Germans honestly despised Lenin&thugs,and after revolution try to made deal with any other russian party which agree to peace with them.All refused.
Very noble,but suicidal - practically all russian elites who do not manage to run from country was genocided by either Lenin or Sralin.
And Russia,who start to become economic superpower,becomed third world country with powerfull army and tank factories made by USA.Yes,Wall Street not only financed Trocky,they later take tsar,church gold and genocided farmers grain - and built great tank factories for soviets.

It seems,that here USA would pay for transiberian railroad,too - that is why probably here USA do not gave Siberia to soviets,like in OTL.
For coming battles - except czech legion who fought soviets and made deal with them/part of gold,Kolczak,and russian refugees for safe passage with part of gold/
There was also polish siberian division who do not made deals,but was betrayed by czechs and must mostly surrender.

 

[Imperator Pax]

So yeah I lost like twelve pages of fucking notes, I swore for like a good two minutes.... yeah it was ... it attracted attention

Mad Baron? i like it.
And USA helped soviets in OTL - they take Vladivostok do japaneese could not do that,and gave it to soviets.
Also,made Japan leave Siberia in 1923 under the pretext that soviet let Siberian be free.Soviets,of course,lied,and USA did nothing.
Considering,that Wall Street payed Trocky &thugs to get to Russia and win revolution/Lenin run,sralin was nobody then/ and later buyed tsar gold,church gold,and grain robbed from murdered farmers,i would say that Wall Street for unknown reason made USA support soviets.

My theory - Russia start becoming economical superpower,and in time could replace USA.What better method to destroy competition then gave their country to genocidal idiots?

Click to shrink...

To be fair, the State department here, versus OTL is a little more coherent we will get to that because here, for reasons in 1919 there is a much coherent anti-bolshevik containment strategy than in actual history... also the soviets have less hard currency reserves which is another factor in the US not sticking to policy, but that gets into contributing factors of British Politics, Japanese Politics, US politics,and also the whole clusterfuck of the Russian civil war.

As for the Russia developing economic superpower, not really, feasible, the US had a major leg up not just in comparable landmass but it had a highly developed domestic machine tooling industry and specialization coupled with significant research (now, under the soviet union this did develop... but the soviets were slow on the computer development) also the Russians fell into the extraction economic trap and got hit with the oil market being what it was, you would basically need a point of divergence Alexander II at the latest.In my opinion just to get the institutional knowledge base that spreads out enough rather than end up where the russians/soviets were where they were still important technology from France particularly for the domestic goods market but thats wholly my opinion and I'm sure someone could take a later POD and make a reasonable step towards that.

gremlins are nasty critters.
Japan financed terrorist during 1905 war,one of them was józef Liłsudzki,future leader of Poland/after 1926 putch/.
Germans honestly despised Lenin&thugs,and after revolution try to made deal with any other russian party which agree to peace with them.All refused.
Very noble,but suicidal - practically all russian elites who do not manage to run from country was genocided by either Lenin or Sralin.
And Russia,who start to become economic superpower,becomed third world country with powerfull army and tank factories made by USA.Yes,Wall Street not only financed Trocky,they later take tsar,church gold and genocided farmers grain - and built great tank factories for soviets.

It seems,that here USA would pay for transiberian railroad,too - that is why probably here USA do not gave Siberia to soviets,like in OTL.
For coming battles - except czech legion who fought soviets and made deal with them/part of gold,Kolczak,and russian refugees for safe passage with part of gold/
There was also polish siberian division who do not made deals,but was betrayed by czechs and must mostly surrender.

Click to shrink...

The Imperial Germans never really grokked Lenin's blatant gemanophillia and some of that was clearly Lenin always considered himself an orthodox marxist even when he made pretty clear breaks from marxist dogma, and even German socialists (Bernstein and his lot, even into the early 20s before there was a clear break between the revisionists and the German Communist party) weren't super keen on some of Lenin's ideas.

As to Japan' Yeah Akashi was a very effective spy master even in spite of his political idealism, this the guy was perfectly happy running rings of agent provocateurs but also proceeded to talk the Imperial Diet into massive public spending works for electrification and land reform in Taiwan, the man is probably more complicated than I can adequately cover in the handful of scenes Akashi shows up in this story.

As for the Transsiberian, historically, the British and French basically agreed to divide up Russia as an international post war market (this was summer 1916, before the revolution) basically expected that they'd be able to buy the US off by offering railroad concessions on the trans siberian like its Imperial Great Power politics where it boils down to well will throw them a bone and they'll be so grateful, and part of the post ww1 situation is just how schizophrenic the US foreign policy gets [State gets into taking some blatantly self harming and contradictory positions, and US foreign poilcy through the 20s is a string of dumb shit as it waffles back and forth 'do we want to get involved or not', to the point the British foreign office quips 'The Americans aren't even sure they're on the same planet with the rest of us'.]

 

[ATP]

So yeah I lost like twelve pages of fucking notes, I swore for like a good two minutes.... yeah it was ... it attracted attention




To be fair, the State department here, versus OTL is a little more coherent we will get to that because here, for reasons in 1919 there is a much coherent anti-bolshevik containment strategy than in actual history... also the soviets have less hard currency reserves which is another factor in the US not sticking to policy, but that gets into contributing factors of British Politics, Japanese Politics, US politics,and also the whole clusterfuck of the Russian civil war.

As for the Russia developing economic superpower, not really, feasible, the US had a major leg up not just in comparable landmass but it had a highly developed domestic machine tooling industry and specialization coupled with significant research (now, under the soviet union this did develop... but the soviets were slow on the computer development) also the Russians fell into the extraction economic trap and got hit with the oil market being what it was, you would basically need a point of divergence Alexander II at the latest.In my opinion just to get the institutional knowledge base that spreads out enough rather than end up where the russians/soviets were where they were still important technology from France particularly for the domestic goods market but thats wholly my opinion and I'm sure someone could take a later POD and make a reasonable step towards that.


The Imperial Germans never really grokked Lenin's blatant gemanophillia and some of that was clearly Lenin always considered himself an orthodox marxist even when he made pretty clear breaks from marxist dogma, and even German socialists (Bernstein and his lot, even into the early 20s before there was a clear break between the revisionists and the German Communist party) weren't super keen on some of Lenin's ideas.

As to Japan' Yeah Akashi was a very effective spy master even in spite of his political idealism, this the guy was perfectly happy running rings of agent provocateurs but also proceeded to talk the Imperial Diet into massive public spending works for electrification and land reform in Taiwan, the man is probably more complicated than I can adequately cover in the handful of scenes Akashi shows up in this story.

As for the Transsiberian, historically, the British and French basically agreed to divide up Russia as an international post war market (this was summer 1916, before the revolution) basically expected that they'd be able to buy the US off by offering railroad concessions on the trans siberian like its Imperial Great Power politics where it boils down to well will throw them a bone and they'll be so grateful, and part of the post ww1 situation is just how schizophrenic the US foreign policy gets [State gets into taking some blatantly self harming and contradictory positions, and US foreign poilcy through the 20s is a string of dumb shit as it waffles back and forth 'do we want to get involved or not', to the point the British foreign office quips 'The Americans aren't even sure they're on the same planet with the rest of us'.]

Click to shrink...

1.Russia with Stołypin still alive could do that,and even after his death it was possible.And there were specialists - i read many memories of poles who was engineers in Russia and was making big money there.Other minorities,especially germans,did the same.

2.Germans was still christians,so butchering other white christians was something foul for them/they have no problems with Herero genocide,thought/
So,they wanted replace Lenin with anybody else - sadly for Europe,all russian parties was faitful to Allies.
It is one of times,when traitor actually would help everybody.Imagine white Russia which made peace with germans,waited for their collapse,and then reclaimed all their lands.France always prefered making deals with Russia then with Poland,less alone smaller states.The same goes for England.
Yes,one russian traitor wold save russian empire.And world from 100 millions of comie victims.

Taiwan was masterpiece - people there really loved Japan.
And american could be mostly stupid,including Wall Street dudes who helped soviets.Lenin considered them as useful idiots who would die in due time in gulags.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Notes
Linguistics.


Firstly, these days we make something of a big deal of being multilingual and frankly that's a relatively recent sociocultural shift, that really wouldn't apply to a lot of people in the upper middle classes.

To use as an example, we have Vladimir Lenin, even though this is likely never going to show up on screen. He was fluent in English, and even after the revolution often spoke both English and German over Russian at least to foreigners. (As in he would carry conversations with American journalists in English, and this was true of both his time in Austria, and Switzerland as well as after he returned to Russia. Some people have suggested that Lenin disliked speaking Russian for one reason or another, but that's neither here nor there). The simple reality is that during the period of long 19th century large volumes of the upper middle class and aristocracy spoke more than one language and read and wrote more than one language.

Similarly prior to the emergence of modern nationalism and the proliferation of national centric education curriculum and educational reforms that occurred outside of that polyglots were relatively more common in vernacular use, spoken word.

[Aritomo Yamagata was embarrassed that he never had a strong grasp on English literacy, he asked his friends to translate written English to Japanese for him, particularly foreign news articles. This is also true of Yuan Shikai, who is deceased by this point in the story, his strongest western foreign language was German.]


Basically literacy in most countries prior to nationalism as a modern concept tended to be low, (Sweden is the only European country to attain majority literacy in the 17th​ century... and that was mostly the monarchy moving from German as the language of state to vernacular swedish and using the printing pressed to standardize Swedish into the language spoken today via the printing press, and this was also done in cooperation with the Swedish Lutheran church). The Netherlands followed in the 1700s, but England took quite a long time to achieve majority literacy compared to popular impression it wouldn't be until Queen Victoria that most people could read and right (men and women, and this is largely a result of compulsorily urban education).

So in this time frame you have quite a large volume of people who speak four and five languages to one degree or another. English, French, Spanish, German were all major trade languages, Greek and Latin were still frequently taught to children of the upper classes as part of a classical education. Russian asserted itself over French in terms of language briefly during the concert of Europe period because of geopolitics and emergent Russian nationalism. (Though this was short lived.) So in this we have lots of characters who at the very least speak several languages apiece including various local regional or creole dialects in the case of some persons.

Also prior to WW1 the US was still highly multilingual, German was very common across the US, Spanish was very common, Greek (Vulgar, not classical) was common, as was Italian, Swedish was still somewhat common even outside of the midwest. And world war 1 basically killed all of that, it even did a massive cleaning out of French. Within a generation or two non english speaking just craters, and post world war 2 its even more obvious, and this is a direct outgrowth of emergent American national identity after 1870 but especially of the US agitation to become involved more in international affairs and then the subsequent backlash.


So to that, and all of that needed to be covered, cause I'm sure my all of probably twenty or so regular readers for this story are probably like huh sure are a lot of people who speak more than one language, and that's why. After 1920 multilingualism becomes less necessary (France goes to great efforts to standardize on Parisian dialect french as the national language, and represses any other usage, Japan undertakes the same thing after the Meiji with compulsory education settling on the Edo dialect, the list goes on.)

--

Ironically in the long term this also shapes Xian as a polity, Xian's german dialect is based American Southern German dialects like you would find from West Texas (or Louisiana), and this is not because they're the largest German speaking expatriate communities its because they're the earliest and its of the dialects already used to be intermingled with American English because after 1920 it has government support for a few thousand people who live there, and then you have an influx of Austrians, Czechs (and Slovaks, who speak German as a second language because the dual empire), Germans and the Germans who come in later whose subsequent children grow up in academic exposure speaking either this americanized German or American English in conjunction with a north Chinese dialect for basically literary purposes.

But thats in the future... Tomorrow we will begin spring of 1917, but this stick will probably be editted somewhat as I deal with some of the other data points relating to 1916.

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1917​

He had planned to be gone six weeks not ... basically double that, but it didn't matter, there had been things to take care of, that could have been taken care, but he'd made sure to be in Tietsin by the first and in Peking by the time Wilson asked congress for the declaration of war against Germany. 'To make the world safe for democracy'.

Congress hadn't yet returned the request, but it was inevitable... and there were other problems to contend with. "We don't have the manpower for it."

His thoughts were a decade in the past, "No, we don't, and we will need two years, or more." His thoughts to 1907 occupied the matter. Of a statutory force the US Army had sixty four thousand of its authorized eighty eight thousand strength of that number it had thirty regiment of foot. It wasn't a question of population. Xian very easily could have supplied eighty thousand men it was a city of millions that wasn't even one percent of its population.

.. and with violence across the border to the south in Szechwan now increasingly spilling over into the south of the province something had to be done. "So what, an anti bandit campaign of our own?"

"That's about the only choice we have."

"God damn it, you said it yourself," Bill grunted.

That outburst was accompanied by a thud.

Morning was something that came too quickly in all honesty, too much to do. That was probably doubly true for McCulloch given he'd been gone for longer. The Texan had plenty of work of his own to do, but Allen was ultimately the person in charge. It was funny how all the Beiyang big shots... ok not all, the Pig Tail general didn't... but the majority of them went to a lot of effort to wear fancy European style uniforms.

He had thought about it more than once... the stone wash grey of the uniforms... maybe go to green or something. He'd thought about it before, and nothing came of it. It was the predominant color of uniforms. Justifying big expense for uniforms on color alone was hard. There uniforms were already more American than anyone elses, they even used American style belts, and boots. It was footwear he was more likely to approve of an expenditure for.

"I'm aware we don't have the manpower." They had at some point stopped talking about Black Jack's jaunt, and gone to their own problems. It didn't change the fact they'd started with how Pershing was chasing the Villistas around northern Mexico... and the Federal government had only given him ten thousand men. That was too few for the area they were asking him to cover.

... and many of the 'warlords' as they'd been coined in the papers to the south were nothing more than bandits... and while they'd been compared to ol pancho they had significantly more bandits total than Pancho Villa did. "I said Pershing hadn't been given adequate troops for what he's been asked to do. What he's doing is jumping the border and chasing Pancho through the latter's backyard... all I want for now," He hedged, cognizant that there was probably an array of officers on the other side of the office door, "Is to secure our side of the fence." The world had really started to flip upside down back in February...

Bill took a long pull from his jostled bourbon. "You won't go over the border, you can promise, I ain't one of the others, I've seen you when your blood is up Al."

"I know when not to pursue." He replied.
--
He grunted, and tossed his head back into the pillow. Allen blinked looking from his side to the curtains where the sun was starting to peak through, then back up. He let his hand trail down a bare thigh. She ran a finger down the discoloration of scar tissue near his collar bone.

"The Catholics call it making a prince of the church."

He looked up at her, sweat matting her dark hair lady godiva style. He grunted as he sat up. Hina's ideas of what constituted pillow talk were quirky to say the least.

He withheld asking if she actually wanted a child. His eyes falling to the scars marring an otherwise beautiful figure. They both ended up shuffling around, and then getting out of the four poster bed to their respective wash basins.

It was hard to tell the actual time, but it was starting to brighten on the horizon. Still it was time to start the day, and there was always coffee. He dropped the rag into the basin, and reached for his undershirt, beginning the process of getting dressed for the day. The wardrobe he kept in the Hotel suite for nights where he just didn't make it across town to home needed updating, and he pulled a pair of slacks from the rack inside the imported cedar.

Hina clucked slightly having already begun buttoning the bodice and made her way over. "This one." She remarked, gesturing to one of the tattersall check shirts."

He held up the green and wine check, but it matched the dark gray slacks.

Shirt and tie followed and she finished up as he looped his shoulder rig under his other arm. The jacket was tailored to accommodate the browning automatic, and most people were unlikely to notice the one at his hip unless they were looking there... people didn't tend to notice. "Breakfast?" He asked.

She was sorting through her collection of hats, and glanced out of the closet, "We'll see." That meant no, "Maybe a cafe," She settled and rang the bell for one of her maids. He ended up having to wait for the papers to be delivered... which was fine the kitchen had sent him up a couple of poached eggs, and that would probably tied him over till lunch.

The wait for the papers ended up being a bust. There was nothing in the Times or the Post though about the states going to war yet. Congress hadn't finished horse trading he supposed... he wondered what slices of the pie were still being fought over.

There was a grumbling from what sounded like Major Chang. The door opened, the old Japanese 'businessman' was... younger than Yamagata ... in his late fifties now "Sir, Minister-"

"Hayashi." He remarked glancing to the older man who had a decade, more now, had been there in Korea. The last couple years had bleached the man's hair from black to white. The mustache he'd grown presumably while in Italy was heavily waxed as had become his style.

He got a side eye from the older man looking him up and down, and Hayashi lightly toyed with his cane, "Should it be General Forrest now?"

"You can call me just Forrest, I don't mind." He sat back down in the chair. Then making a decision jerked his head towards a chair, that the man could sit. Hayashi didn't immediately move. Deciding to continue the emphatic casual tone since Hayashi was using English he continued with an informal brush reaching for his second cup of coffee. "You here to complain about my steel exports, my railways, or just complain about the way things used to be?"

"I would come to complain about the British, and their attempts to play your country against mine."

Allen suppressed a groan at the gall of the man, even as he waved again at him to take his pick of available seating, "I don't doubt, but they also want America's help," and money, "to put paid to the Kaiser, how is Qingdao?"

"Much more orderly now," Hayashi replied smoothly, because that was where he spent much of his time.... which was fine. "but yes, they do wish everyone would unite against the Germans, under their leadership of course."

He shrugged, "Of course, its the Brits. Everyone wants to be in charge." He leaned forward, "I don't speak for Washington. If you want the Germans out of China, that's fine with me. The huns out, sure, I'd be willing to bet the Brits, and Washington are fine with that. So what's the particular problem?"

"We fielded the most troops in the alliance of eight nations."

"Your heartland is the closest Hayashi, I'd hope you be able to put together two divisions on short division." It had been only one division, the 5th and they had gotten a bloody nose in the fighting, but he wasn't going to mention that. "But its not just the Brits you're going to have to horse trade with, their Entente has a bunch of other assholes in it too. Which is none of my business, so what do you want?"

"You've been told about the railway strike in Tangshan."

"Yeah," It had been in the paper, and it wasn't like it was the first one either. The prime minister wasn't likely happy about it. "Offloading coal is hard labor," and it wasn't probably just the coolies either, Fengtian maybe, or just someone small time, or even just bandits.

"The Hui," who were Muslims like the Moros, which Hayashi felt some apparent need to emphasize for his own reasons "and the Manchu are restive." He warned, "As if that were not enough there are other railway disturbances in the South Manchuria railway we have concerns of Marxist agitation that could undermine security."

After the minister left he glanced at the Major, "I'm going to bet the Japanese have their own gangsters stirring the pot on the docks. They're definitely providing weapons to everyone involved." There were too many Arisakas floating around as it was. Tangshang was on the other side of Peking. The eastern half of Zhili was, well his 'sphere of influence' if you wanted to use Minister Hayashi's fancy term ended in Jehol... which was probably next when it came to riling up the Manchus.

Chang nodded seriously at this.

Allen wondered how much longer the war in Europe would go on for. The US entry to be... the talks about the French on economic controls last year, that was going to effect the exports that went to the British... and then there was the whole Russian fiasco.

"The marxists though?"

Hayashi had blamed them by name, which was unusual for him. "I'll make some inquiries," It'd be annoying to have Hayashi be proven to have been telling the truth, but he doubted it. ... unless someone in the legation assumed it was the marxists had gone running to Hayashi, and Hayashi had to take those claims or concerns serious... "I'll see who besides the minister is at the legation," Since of course, Tietsin had played host to Hayashi barely any since Japan had seized the German lease and he'd shoved most of his responsibilities off on the likes of Hioki, or in his absence Obata.

He tapped his fingers on his desk.

"Sir?"

He glanced at Chang. "Major, did you notice Hayashi didn't correct me when I said two divisions?"

"Sir?"

"The Japanese only deployed the fifth." He shrugged. Yamagata would have admitted that they had only deployed one division even in response to the reply that it was most troops in the alliance... "It might be nothing. "I'll call on the legation," and the American one, and the British one... because Hayashi also had not mentioned the Russians... and it would be interesting to know if anyone had told the Japanese what the Franco-British entente had in mind for the entente cordiale third member.

Hayashi was up to something, but that was like saying water was wet.

Chang was still standing there, "Yes major?"

"He mentioned the northerners?"

"Yes he did." He agreed. "I expect he'll try and stir trouble up with them." Allen wasn't ignorant that even with just the 1914 raising they'd had plenty of Manchu and Hui... which Hayashi might have noticed if he spent more time in Tietsin or Peking... but Hayashi hadn't.... or he had and he was playing stupid about the number of Hui in gray jackets. "He mentioned the Moros." He muttered, "Do you know much of how the Philippine fighting was done?" It was a rhetorical question, "Hayashi isn't a soldier he gets much of what he knows from the papers, and from assholes who get paid to stir up trouble. Some New Yorker gets it in his head we ran around with pig fat, and pig blood and buried people with pigs."

Chang wasn't Hui, wasn't a mohammedan, and shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Some muslims believe that pigs are so unclean they'll keep you from going to heaven when you die. Some don't. Its a personal sort of thing." He shrugged from behind his desk. "Everyone has their own quibbles," And it was the sort of thing he tried to avoid dealing with. "But this New York fellow who probably never even set foot in Manilla never mind in Sulu land or wherever made it out like we were intentionally going out of our way to-," He paused... "Like we were reenacting our own version of the British cleaning house in the Bengal in 1858. Its poppycock, most of the fighting were muslims fighting each other, and certainly while I was under Black Jack the only pigs around were the ones our people ate. There was no pig blotter, or use of any of that, it was all cooked up by some journalist getting his rocks off."

"You think he'll do this?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if he thinks splashing hui merchants with pig lard may or may not spark a riot, and if it doesn't for religious reasons it sure will for pride." They really didn't need the prospect of one more problem. "I'll go to the legation," He said turning back to the other issue, "See what I can't find out, and then we will see about making sure Szechwan's charnel house stays on its side of the border." The problems in Szechwan were getting worse, but there Hunan too. It wasn't even just the south, Shensi wasn't entirely placid either. "See if you can find what Chen's first mixed brigade is doing in the interim."
--
EDIT: As a note it appears that in Pershing's biography that there may have been burials in camp waste pits of enemy dead at least during his second term (this would have been after the Russo Japanese war), notably this is well after the first reports of using pig plotter which show up allegedly first in 1899 but certainly by the spring of 1901. [And indeed the idea that this is yellow journalism may be a case of journalists taking stories from the sepoy mutiny in Bengal decades earlier verbatim and then adopting those stories for 1899 and the subsequent phillipine insurection]