Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

[Imperator Pax]

July 1919
Allen's particular marital situation would have prompted the wagging of tongues at home, but here it was nothing too unusual. The lack of children before Augustus's birth in 1914 had caused complaints with Jun's family, but Hina had never really struck him as wanting children in the first place. Akira's birth had changed that. Jun's family had taken Augustus's birth well, more than well. It had been a relief, never mind that he was a healthy boy, which was of course a more significant matter itself.

Cullen shrugged at the matter, "Mother Mei's family was never a matter." Allen blew out a breath, but didn't tell him that didn't help, "Its the truth, I can't give you advice there brother John. Papa made sure she was looked after in Shanghai, the kids went to the British school while he was off."

The states had actually recalled the old man back to the 4th​ for the Philippines, but then again they had also called old Wheeler up as well... and maybe that was for the best given old man Lawton had been killed in action by a filipino with a mauser reported at a distance in excess of five hundred yards the week before Christmas 1899.

That would be twenty years ago come December.

Allen waved the matter away. At the end of the month Augustus would be five.

The conversation turned to the states and the 18th​ amendment. Prohibition. The prohibition of 'intoxicating liquors' still needed appropriate enforcement legislation and that was what Congress was presently dithering over at home. Once it managed to get through the house it'd then have to be worked out in the senate, which Shellman said might split the Republican party in for an against, but enough states had signed on there wasn't much question that something would be done this year.

"They did wait till the war was over." He observed.

"Yeah, they did." Cullen snorted, "Powell has some silly idea to get around prohibition by encouraging people to tour the tropics. He says after four years of war that people will want to get back into foreign trips, back to normal."

"He's probably not wrong." Back before the war there had been discussions about the hotel business, but it had never reached a major consensus in committee leaving things to individual development. Back before the war though Hirst had penned Foreign Travel writing about the Hindenburgh America line's travel packages from New York to Europe through Suez to India then China, Japan before returning to the States via San Francisco.

An article written, and a travel package provided before the panama canal had opened. "Where's it leave us?"

"Perhaps that's best left to Shanghai," Zhili was one thing, but Powell was probably on to something so far as beaches and rum drinks for the travelling inclined middle class, "As for liquor, honestly we need the tax money, and even if we didn't we can't waste the manpower on such a fool thing." There had already been discussions of food and drug inspectors to avoid any sinclar-ian problems it was better to make efforts of prevention than have to go in an fix the problem later. "I find it funny that given the situation the states won't ratify French protectionism outright, but they'll basically do it because they can't hold their liquor."

It wasn't worth complaining about domestic problems back in the stat that they couldn't hope to do anything about; that was the general consensus, "It'll be bad for the farmers back home."

"Probably so," He agreed, and the midwest in general, but being an all around poorly thought out idea it still wasn't their problem. "The congress has passed poorly thought out bills before, but our purchasing committees need to be focused on what we can actually effect."

Even if prohibition didn't go through they wouldn't have been able to take advantage of it, they needed legal currency to trade with. Powell might be on to something with inviting tourists to enjoy sand and surf but the MAK bottom line was still developing. Its course of development would be different than theirs even as they continued to work together

No one in 1913 had realized all the possibilities of 1914, and of what colossal changes it would write upon the world and history. Now that the world was over a chapter had ended. A book had ended. The long 19th​ century as it would one day be called was over.

--
"The Europeans have all but guaranteed there is to be another war," Dawes hissed... for what was probably the hundredth time... and while everyone basically agreed with the idea in principle they didn't necessarily want to be hit with it at the start of every meeting. Dawes today wasn't banging on about the money, so much as the threat the Bolshevik's played abroad. That a distracted Europe would let the bandits in Russia manage to get lose, and make an even bigger ruckus.

The Whites and the Reds were still fighting but there were other factions involved. Peasants and Anarachists, the greens and blacks as it were, attacked all sides faced with the interminable conditions of the war ton country around them. There were also no shortage of bandits loosely affiliated or not with either side.

The Whites had the problem of lack of clear leadership, and that they were having issues of desertion. It was one thing to not like Lenin and his ilk, but another to march a thousand miles from home when the whole reason a man had signed up was to oppose the communists near home, and who gave a shit what happened in Petersburg. Then of course there were the logistics of those kinds of marches, and moving whole families across country. That was something else they were seeing, and MacKinder and his aides were seeing the same thing, and couldn't ignore it even if MacKinder was complaining that the desertion was a matter of 'short sightedness'.

... whether or not Lloyd George wanted to hear that or not was besides the point. Trotsky was making the argument that the Whites were tools of the Anglo-Japanese Imperialist Capitalist ... whatever and that seemed to be working in Moscow, and Petersburg but those city's were already the centers of the Bolshevik power.

That was so far as Dawes was viewing the problem. It didn't matter the average factory worker had never read marx, what they most likely really cared about was the doubling, and doubling again, the rampant inflation of food stuffs and essentials like fuel since the war had begun. The proletariat of Russia, the industrial working class were maybe three perhaps four million people, but the industries they worked in by and large were confined to the great imperial cities. That gave Lenin and company a disproportionate influence in the industrial centers of Moscow and Petrograd.

The hundred and thirty something million peasants were too disorganized and too spread out through the country side for a fragmented opposition to organize.

Dawes unfurled a list of tables, and maps, "Production peaked in 1917," Everyone knew that, "In 1918 the States were fully committed to spring offensives this year," Offensives that never manifested because of the November Armistice, and now here they were with the peace dictates of France, and England... and Dawes's prophecies of the one to come, "Russian expansion of industry always created a housing problem." it was the problem of a top down government directed industrialization, that had been clear when the French had built up their tenements as well in the previous century. "We have the material on hand, and this is the rail trunk," The rail line in Transoxiana that the had already built, it left China and moved through the old silk road what Dawes was proposing was nothing new.

To follow the old northern route to run from Xian through the Gansu Corridor through the Tian Shan all that had been done, but to go ahead and extend that further westwards in a series of branches, with telecommunications lines telegraphs and telephones as they constructed housing.

The real goal such that there could be said to be one was to keep people busy, use up stock that would otherwise depress prices at market, and to knit together central Asia from the south effectively removing the importance of the trans-Siberian connection while potentially alleviating agitation or reducing pressure. They wanted to take pressure from the trans Siberian line which was having issues with bandits in the middle section and arguments ... bickering really from the frankly middling US presence the Japanese, and the British along with the sporadic and complicated White political factions.

The only argument against was the notion of sending those materials to middle America... and that wasn't feasible. Not right now, the shipping was the bottleneck, and the MAK needed time to set up warehouses, and to work on the expansion of the harbor and dock system. They would have to export some steel, some of the other products that would go to that, but the reality of war shipping controls meant that they didn't expect to have either British, or American cargo carriers for a year or two to send what they needed, in the quantities needed.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1919
Day to day, military life was a lot of repetition. You did one thing, a lot. You did another thing a lot. There was expectation that you would this till the point it was rote and that was what peace time, what garrison time was so that you'd have the understand you could repeat over and over again.

Not exactly in the same way as the factory floor, or the miner, but there was repetition in a soldier's life. This was most clear with the training field. Less clear with the ideas of tactics, and objective orientation that governed the Rifle Divisions, and their parent sub units. A line infantry command had a much narrower scope of what it was suppsoed to do, the reservists were not expected to conduct aggressive assault operations. 1st​ and 3rd​ were supposed to hunt down and engage the enemy if it was called for.

3rd​ was limitted by its terrain responsibilities as its name stopped being strictly about its lighter guns and more about where they were most frequently posted. The tibetan mountains, just the border with Szechwan was not ideal terrain for motor vehicles. There were simply limits on the trucks that they had.

It was the usual identified weakness to whenever they pulled 3rd​ Regiments off the line for analysis. The adoption of rucksucks better reflected the enviroments they were working in. The bergen had been available before the war, and Norway had stayed out of the war and of course Norway had also done what they had done in interacting so it hadn't been hard to exchange ideas.

For the Infantry the british style packs they were already producing were the better option. There would be some overlap in equipment with an emphasis on common canvas durability, buckles and so forth... but as with the British doctrine the Infantry divisions were largely only using their bags when moving post to post. Rifles were going to be carrying through brush and the up and down of hills and mountains.

That meant a lot of wear on shoes.

They planned, trained for the plan, made clear what the objectives in anexcercise were, and expected the younger men, the younger officers, to be able to respond to the plan. Platoon leadership needed to be able to trust and push that down to the sergeants to actually accomplish the objective.

The excercises were important. You didn't get a second chance against a real enemy so you came back knowing what appeared to work, and what equipment might have failed in the field. That meant the rifle regiments came in, took seats at the school and detailed what they had observed.

"Percy is getting the nth degree from Jordan," But that was probably also because Jordan was getting push back in the FSO ... part of it was cause he was too old, now, there was pressure now that the war was over, and people wanted his job... including a somebody on MacKinder's staff who had expected to have Jordan's job. "Reinsch is also probably not happy either."

Jordan had no legal authority to make that he'd stuck his oar into the matter, and frankly it was suspect that the May 4th​ protests were anything other than a fig leaf, but he was now several months down the line facing push back from the FSO. Jordan was pushing back complaining that he had been brought back to China at the PM, and all that, but the commission and omission of various statements from the legation were painting different picutres to different higher authority... both in England and in the States. That constituted confusion, in already confused executive, and legislature... and that was going to be a headache because Wilson had burned a lot of bridges with the recently installed congress.

Whatever war time fraternties had existed had broken down by this point. The consequences of that in the long term were still to be seen. Officers of the Phillipines postings and others from the US were quick to point out that divisions in the chinese sense were smaller than their american counterparts... as if this somehow was an indictment that they weren't 'real divisions', that they weren't square divisions meant they had less men.

There had been an initial hope as those reports had come that Reinsch would take them at face value and drop it. He hadn't, arguing that that wasn't the point he was complaining about, and then more or less going on to complain that the HQ Phillipines wasn't treating this with appropriate seriousness... which of course got back to Lansing and the state department professionals who had responded in the expected manner.

"Yeah, well from the sound of it Reinsch can't be much longer for the office either."

"That ain't as good as it sounds," George grunted, "If he runs for the senate we'll have a headache on our hands for sure." There was some grumbling of agreement. That was the problem, the disolution of the 'wartime consensus' or at least the willingness to come to a consensus for the sake of the perceived necessity of the war was going across the belligerents. The States, and the British, and that included in the dominions which were now no longer engaged in the fighting of the western front... though there were other problems. Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, and so on all looked towards the future and to an extent with their own versions of 'splendid isolationism' from continental affairs.

How long would it be until Australia demanded the Anzac be withdrawn from Siberia?

"We're getting ahead of ourselves, where do things sit right now?"

"In tietsin? Honan is the biggest problem, as long as there is fighting down there, I think we're too far away. Japan is making noises about Fukien, but thats no surprise, but thats well the usual suspects, Terauchi is trying to shut them up but -"

But the marshal probably couldn't wrangle it. He'd been a compromise candidate for prime minister's office in the first place, and things were tense in Tokyo. The diet was a mess, and inflation due to the war was a problem. It was no stretch to expect Terauchi's government to fall, and Lloyd George wasn't necessarily in too hot of a position.

"Suffice to say we could get unwanted attention, but I get the feeling once Reinsch and Jordan are gone most likely whoever replaces them won't be an issue."

Assuming that they were career service officials not political appointees went unsaid. The problem still remained that that both men were what was interfering with purchasing war time stock. The US had cut back on its procurement, and now would have been ideal to snap up orders and if Jordan's embargo held then that would stop them from access to other surplus arms.

"So what happens if we get the usual summer bandit war this year?"

That was to be the question.

In the mean time, the excercise on the field needed to be halted to evaluate whatever had been done down there since the examiners on the field had started running flags up. "Think one of them managed to get on the objective?"

"That or managed to wipe an entire company out, and the proctors are unhappy about it." Waite replied, and that was true the US's rules for wargaming generally disdained 'getting lucky', but every now and then at West Point some one managed to get a unit in the back end somehow and catch an opposing force with their drawers down.

With almost five years of war gaming here on this field they'd seen it happen, and it would probably become more common as division wide summer drill became the norm.
--
Without Standard Oil getting broken up, it might not have taken them so long to get the oil derricks in Shensi going. Instead of having to share the profits though, the deal had fallen through, and while there had been talks in 1914 Bai Lang's rampage had scuttled that and they had moved further west into Shensi. Then having driven Bai Lang off from Xian, and then running his bandits down had cemented their prescence in the western provinces from Shansi all the way to Xinjiang and even Tibet.

That prescence had expanded as the army expanded, but more importantly as British purchases expanded industrial prescence far faster than they had originally envisioned. Xian had thus changed significantly from 1914... where in 1914 there had still be the ruins and damage of the fighting from the Boxer rebellion, if not remnants of even earlier fighting from the lack of an effective municipal and provincial government due to the disruptions of the provincial financial apparatus.

Stability made people comfortable enough to engage in commerce, and trust the system.

Bert rested his hands on his midsection as he recline in the office chair, "We're good?"

"If this is accurate we're better than good," They were going to bring over as many germans and austrians as they could... anybody with technical skills or a university degree in the sciences to be honest... and well they'd sink money in other businesses. There was too much stupidity in the world to not try and keep improving machines, it wasn't about just reducing labor as reducing the cost of the machines you produced to do the work. "Something else eating you?"

There was a pause, "Well I got to talking to Yan, and you know know we agree on most of stuff, but well he wants Shansi to stick to literary Chinese,"

Of course Bert wouldn't have argued with the bayonet doctrine issue, and frankly that was a free concession to make. The production of bayonets didn't really cause them any issues, and they already the sword pattern arisaka style bayonets anyway. Whatever his,Allen's, personal feelings about the bayonet were, they had proven that sometimes they were useful, "I know... and its his home province," And Yan was a confucian gentleman, "and if Old Ma had been more hands on, I think the Ma clique would have probably agreed with Yan's position about school's needing to teach in literary than vernacular," as spoken day to day, "language. But we agree with everything else Yan's reform platform has, so language is where we can afford to disagree," And the common vernacular chinese as a written language was still under the works, it was shaped by newspapers here in town, it was shaped by popular literature.

That was actually why Yan preferred literary chinese, in that vernacular chinese didn't have a standard that was accepted by everyone.

As for the rest, Yan's platform went for compulsory education, scientific education, education of both sexes, ending foot binding, medical practices to fight disease.

"And the automobiles?"

"Like I said Bert this is good, I'll be happy to meet these fellas." They wouldn't be able to just rely on what Ford made... not that Ford didn't do good work, but the Model T had limitations that was clear, they would need other vehicles. "As for that, can you keep it up, or you going to join Powell?"

Whether Bert did or not would remain to be seen, the likely case would be to send him and young carter to the English mission for the post war rotation. They needed to have a pulse on Europe, and while plausible to shuffle blame on distant France and irridentist delusions of granduer the old newspaper lion was only half the entente leadership. It had been sykes and picot after all ... that and if Jordan was going to retire best to be forwarened if their were any shake ups in the foreign office.

What it would ultimately result in would inevitably be the review of the blue books of the 19th​ century. The cadre's initial consensus was that Bernstein's so called revisionism, as the Marxists called it, had been correct. It was impossible to fundamentally square Marx's so called sciencetific dialectic of history and of capitalist exploitation with the self evident paper facts. Quality of life was improving universally, workers worked less, and worked in better conditions, and so on all in stark constrast to Marx's predictions of how a capitalist society worked. That the great war had erupted and shown that no a German Labor Union was Still a German labor union and a Frenchman was a Frenchman further demonstrably disproved Marx's concept of universal alienation.

What actually came about from the review of the blue books and specifically the blue books that had been used to write Kapital simply underscored the existing position. Kapital had been written from the cherry picking of the data from the British Civil Service reports; the blue books. The first volume had been published in 1867, and the other two posthumously completed by Engels as Marx had been able to scientifically prove Capitalism was doomed. More to the point though was that even the blue books of the 1850s showed that real wages, and hours worked by the proletariate were respectively increasing and declining, while workplace hazards were declining.

In short even sitting in the British library Marx had to have been staring it point blank in black and right even his own sources were showing what was self evident to anyone with eyes that lot of hte working class was improving with things like electrification.

But even if that had been all written up in 1919 it wouldn't have mattered, but it was true it represented a hardening across cadre lines, and ultimate what would be Xian state lines to the mess that was becoming the Russian situation to their north, and west.
--
Notes: Yan Xishan's opinion on modernizing Chinese isat this point in time still in flux, on the one hand he wrote, and expected his officers to know literary chinese, but he also expected, perhaps in pure spirit of practicality wanted his magistrates to publish in the vernacular ... but this was also specifically in the local dialect of Shansi so a universal or Shaanxi dialect wouldn't be quite the same but literary chinese would have been understood in writing by educated literati.

So his position is simplified here, this is a case of regionalism.

With regards to the concluding portions on Marx, this is actually accurate, Das Kapital (Capital) volume one would not have survived modern peer review, and it is very likely that Marx knew he had a problem. This is explicitly why he could not vol 2 & 3, and why that fell to Engels, Engels was less concerned about 'science' and more finishing his friend's legacy, and this is part of the issue that does lead into Bernsteinian Revisionism (Bernstein is actually still alive and lives until 1932) because it created quite a stir in orthodox marxism in the pre war period (ww1). Marx used he was in exile in England at the time, the British reports on the state of industry and cherry picked his sources, but even at the time of writing the condition of the working class in England was improving and that flew in the face of Marx's predictions of what 'was certainty'. Economists / Social Scientists cannot predict the future, and another issue is besides cherry picking from his own chosen sources these reports ran into the issue of being relatively in scope yes England was the major industrial power of the time, but it didn't address or compare other industrial development. Admittedly Marx was in exile he couldn't go back to Prussia, and he'd been kicked out of belgium and france by this point, on the other hand the British blue books were / are a great primary source for compiled statistics. (There was no German equivalent at this point because Germany didn't unify fully until late.)

Speaking of Britain so the Anglo-Japanese Alliance? Why did it not get renewed? Canada. Canada's PM apparently raised such a fuss the British let it lapse, probably in part on the weight of well Japan didn't send troops to fight in Europe so we need the Canadian troops more than this naval alliance thing, and besides Japan is a reliable ally even if we're not legally allied any more. The result of a lot of bad planning, but its Canadian objections to the alliance that seems to be the factor within the empire that causes the problem coupled with the wildly optimistic believe that peace would be lasting (in spite of tons of people expecting that that versailles would directly cause another war). Anyway that was interesting enough to share.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1919
The circular telegrams were simply part of how society had developed in response to technology. They were really it had to be recognized part a natural adaption to the telegraph system. It allowed rival political to impeach other groups, it was free speech.

Waite's take on Wu Peifu's latest telegram circular was a little rosy... but on the other hand there were few people who could have told the confucian gentleman to pipe down. The bigger problem, arguably was the rabble rousing as concerns about Russian agents continued to cycle in. Part of that was almost certainly Duan's people maneuvering to leverage commitments with both his since rebranded 'WPA' in an attempt to secure leverage.

Zhang wasn't going to talk about rabble rousing and the bolsheviks in the papers. It just wasn't his way of doing things and the Manchurian clique had other things they were doing.

The problem was the dismissal of the government, the central government back at the start of June... but after China's refusal on the 28th​ to sign on to Versailles they had expected some of the steam to left off.

"Tell me you told Guo," a major in the 7th​ Infantry Regiment's Headquarters, "He couldn't publish that..."

"Oh I told him, he really wasn't happy about it." Bill replied to the army doctor.

"Its incendiary."

Sam turned to look at the protest, then he snorted shaking his head "So who gives a damn. Its not like he's wrong."

Guo being not simply in the service, and an officer at the staff level was fluent in English. His paper which, Allen had read, was in vernacular characters cited Wilsonian principles and derived not simply European secret diplomacy... the major had gone on to cite things like Sykes-Picot being discussed in the original time frame. Everything he had written about was accurate, and worse was privy to their understand of chatter in the back rooms... which yes the Bolsheviks had published so it wasn't secret those treaties had hit the press... but if it Shanghai's presses well... incendiary was right.

"Cullen?"

"He's not the only one, one of my group commanders is fully prepared to throw the French in front of the train. He's got copies of every time the French asked for Japanese troops... and their considerations to sell cochina to the Japanese to cover the expenses of French debts to Japan from the war and ..." Cole stopped and blew out a breath, "Well, I've sat on it for now, but, If 1st​ and 3rd​'s officers aren't writing papers they will be, its how they've been brought up." Cole stopped and turned to Bill, "Who?"

The Texan shrugged, "I think you can guess, and he's not wrong, and besides," He started to protest the looks regarding's 3rd​ Division's leadership, "Its Duan's fault anyway for sending that fool telegram back in May to everybody yapping about this league of nations thing Wilson wants."

At the time... Duan's telegram hadn't ... well at the end of March it had been one thing... and then Yunnan had started getting mouthy again. Not that they had ever really stopped but... "Alright, what then, we tell him to wait, publish them all in one journal? Oh we can bind it and send it to Reinsch," He didn't say it , but almost said it'd be great fun to watch the professor since Guo pointedly had noted that the utility of the arms embargo would in fact make bandits more effective not less... not the least of which was because Guo had cited Japanese arms in Manchuria, and Yunnan, and the flow of French arms into the south as well.

That Duan had taken receipt of a not in-substantive delivery of Japanese rifles for his WPA delivered in June had been missed by precisely no one who was paying attention... including Zhang, or the dujun of the provinces south of the river. "I was..." Waite paused, "I was gonna say the Confucian gentleman thing to do, would be to actually write papers of our own, on what we do know... and publish then let them go to the press after us."

"Are you out of it?" The ex navy doctor asked, "Don't you think the brits, and Reinsch would go through the roof if we did that?"

"I'm not alright with saying they can't publish."

"Neither," Bill replied. "Al, he's right we let 'em publish together. We need a journal thing anyway, thats been talked about besides what are the consequences? A boycott of French goods, british goods maybe?"

The british had gotten a short lived boycott, but that hadn't lasted long during the strike in Shanghai ... and really it had probably been the strike but it had upset people. "Shifting blame on to the French, isn't gonna help us, but if well if it gets published in Shanghai," Cole paused, "It'll get to south to Indochina and if the French have riots down there who knows what 'll happen."

"That's none of our business." Bill snorted.

"We could allow them to publish without including rank. None of them are colonels, except Lee."

Bill snorted, "I'll put my name with his, if Reinsch wants to make hay out of it, let him come talk to me."

They were getting no where, and to be fair this had been a long time coming probably. Too much of the telegraph chatter... or even just the publication of the Russian Foreign Ministry documents that had hit the guardian might have done it. "Lets step back just a minute, what about the elected officials?"

"What about them?"

"Senate, and the assembly have our people said anything yet?"

"I don't think so,"

There was some other mumbling, "Well then we'll ask them, and see what they think. The election was important."

Waite drummed his pen on the table beside his copy of the Shangai based China Times, "Yeah, we should get their opinion."

--
History, especially ten fifteen years down the road, would make their weighing of the decision going back and mediating the response look so much better planned than it would be in reality. The paper publishing was a question of what to do, and later after moods were calmer the involvement of bringing other opinions in looked more like how policy drafting was being done on the regular by that point.

They weren't really the same thing. More importantly it gave them time to breath and look at what the officers were looking at when they wrote in the wake of Versailles, and ultimately that gave them time to develop a framework of what and how and when publishing was appropriate for officers.

"There are going to be consequences, but we can probably weather them." Cole remarked leaning back in the chair. Duan's call for National Assembly elections probably hadn't given the man the results he had wanted but it had let representatives from the western provinces be voted on and at the time in 1918 that had been all Waite had wanted.

Elections. The Franchise was limited to the income tax above a certain threshold that wasn't unusual, there was an age requirement and an educational requirements... but for a European derived system it was something.

It was political engagement, and as a result it was the engagement which prompted bringing the officers in question into the review process for finishing the drafting of the constitution... Lee had been on the list anyway.

Allen glanced at the copies of the work, "Bert's going to England soon, he's taking Carter."

"Yeah, I get that... you know Percy says you need to visit England, seeing as you and Bill did ride into Russia."

That was the problem, that might be the case, but the invitations in question were him and Bill... but none of the rest... it would have pissed him off more if it had been extended to Ellenburg, not that the doctor hadn't done his part... but it was obvious the British invitation was overlooking enlisted and junior officers.

Su stuck his head in the door, "I have finished my draft regarding rejection of the treaty... and the material based on secret treaties during the war." Su had not planned to write anything; not initially. Yan had already basically threated to turn apoplectic, the truth being that he had assumed that a lot of the rabble rousing had at first been the Research clique and as a result there had been confusion.

Su's paper was itself was more moderate than Lee, but they came to the same conclusion. Duan Qirui's state was too week, and too riven by political factionism... though they had come to that conclusion from two different directions... to be effective at accomplishing the duties of the government. Su was being a little more charitable to Duan's position because he did think the rabble rousing in Beijing was used as an excuse by Jordan to force the arms embargo but that was at best a faint concession from the senator.

What would ultimately stop them from picking sides was not that the fractures in the Beiyang army leadership didn't have points. It was that all of them insisted on making stupid fucking concessions. Duan made his share of mistakes, but Feng well did to... there for what would happen was Feng's federalist model was more appealing but still had its problems.

That was a year in the future. Whether or not Cole's 1918 pamphlet, or any of the supporting publications by affiliates had anything to do with it was debatable too. The truth was Bolshevik extremism was new to China, and most far left intellectual thought was anarchism... and attempting to discredit his ideas was based on looking at events outside of the country, and thus to appearances of the officers was a comment against external enemies that the cadre was already acting against vis a vis rescuing the tsar ... and to some extent in certain circles as part of China's participation as part of the war effort more broadly.

Lenin was purported to be in German pay, certainly he had accepted and cooperated with the Germans to get to Russia, and he had levied for Brest Litovsk to be signed for the Chinese public he had effectively sold Russia out to the Germans to end the war.

"I don't like some of the talk coming out of the states." He remarked putting the paper aside... cognizant that his own paper worked from Burke and others and that publishing it would be putting his name into a discussion that they'd been caught off guard for. "I don't see Reinsch moving, and you know how the British feel about ever admitting one of their people screwed up, they'll use the letter as written rather than as intended... if Reinsch gets in the senate he'll start banging on as it was intended."

"He has to get elected first."

"I want you to cable the Swedish office, and the Swiss one, and frankly I think we should be more proactive in looking for people in the central powers. More proactive," Europe after four years of war was a mess, and now they were in the space between the last one and the next.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1919
There was a stack of telegrams that had come in and very little of it good news.

He really didn't like some of the chatter coming out of the States. There was little to be done about it because the people didn't want to hear the truth. The war in europe had been European irredentism fought for nationalist reasons fought for driven by the middle class. It was emotional, it was illogical... and big business had been utterly caught flat foot by the demands of government leadership to provide for their 'short victorious war', but it was easier to shift the blame than recognize that young men had been queuing up round the block for a chance to fight for king and country.

The reality though was that the Europeans had been so tightly woven together by trade war was a fundamentally an act of self harm. Had been an act of self harm. Lenin was delusional, in more ways than one. Colonies weren't productive markets for finished goods. They were fundamentally carved out because France wanted to compete with England, because France thought it was entitled to being England's equal and the scramble for Africa had become a grand game of European prestige between France, England, Germany, Belgium and the lot. But France wasn't capitalist, it was an Imperial power sure, but France was not cut from the same cloth as England or its colonies, or the United States.

... and in the coming decade it would be ironicaally the french who coined the neologism Eurocentric to highlight the issue at hand.

Allen put the pen down, with summer wearing on in China there was more to do, and more importantly they were going to have to prepare for a fresh possibility of bandit aggression over the frontier as pools of labor in Szechwan were freed from village rotas. That was in itself an excellent lesson, an excellent demonstration of how paramount industrialization modernization was. Seasonal work and poor prospects and an excess population created a body of men who had few other prospects than to turn bandits and jump the border to attack the other side.

That was the other thing. Modernizing institutions operated all year around, the school year was compulsory, the factories operated on the clock regardless of the season, the mines too, even firm operated farms rotated crops and had scientific work undertaken throughout the year where as the family plot would have down time for other chores.

Of course that was another issue Szechwan produced as a result of its climate and geography produced more rice, where in the north it was grain. That of course didn't change the family farm as drastically of course, but the steel industry provided better farming implements and goods that rendered other changes. There would be still others by all the things he took for granted, and all the new things that were still to come from the modern world... but Szechwan still had one foot in the middle ages and that meant bandits and spear chuckers coming out to try and raid homesteads... it was more like the New Mexico territories than Waite wanted to admit.

Hell to an extent they might as well have had one foot in the previous century... and that would probably be what he would phrase it as, in hopes of having it be considered more... they had to fix it.

That meant posting regiments on the border, and it meant scheduling drills for the men... and that was what the plan was.
--
It was eleven o'clock in the morning. The four battalions of 7th​ Infantry Regiment were deployed on the field including their 3inch rapid firing battery, and their most recently delivered Model of 1917 water cooled Machine Guns.

Each infantry man was carrying a fighting load of two hundred rounds. What made today distinct was that the mortarmen, the red legs and the machine gun crews were engaged in the excercise. That distinguished it. Because if it came to it the men here could be resupplied by train and could be deployed to reinforce the 4th​ Regiment sitting on the border with Szechwan, or for that matter 3rd​ Regiment garrisoned presently at Urumqi to the west, or another of 3rd​ Division's constiuennt divisions such as the one deployed in railhead in eastern tibet.

Percy coughed slightly, "Which one is your firebrand?"

"The major is entitled to his opinion, for the record he's with the artillery," he gestured to the bank of field telephones where the staff officers were handling fires coordination.

"So, if the notion is you have bandits to concern with why not bring your huntsmen? I would have expected the 1st​ to be up and at them."

He gave a shrug, "most of them are busy elsewhere." Percy tilted his head, "We have a brigade in western Zhili that is standing up, and they're occupied with that." A brigade that was also receiving 1917 machine guns, but while that probably annoyed the Legation it wasn't what would really get under their skin.

"Oh, oh. Yes. I can see that would be important." He paused, and when no explanation was elaborated on, "Brigade is what you're referring to -"

"As a unit of combined arms of specialists, and aggressive action of course." The intention was to integrate mechanization, and the introduction at higher levels where the brigade would test and evaluate, "The idea is to integrate the airplane as a spotting element for our artillery at this level"

"Those austrian birds of yours." It wasn't a question

"Yes. We have a time table in place, but it'll be next year before we're fully confident in readiness." There were complaints in the cadre that was b eing conservative, that the austrian planes should have been subjected to further more rigorous testing and that they should be pressing forward... but that might well have been a nascent little cabal of men who wanted an independent air force of all things... they weren't there yet. "So Griswold has 1st​ for the time being while they're with the ETS." It was temporary duty of course. That didn't expect to last but for a couple months, but that was also due to expectations of when bandit activity might come and when it might wane.... but 1st​ division could theoretically be mobilized for offensive action if they had a problem.

It would have been preferable they had other options... but they didn't. The army was of limitted size, and it was a matter of good financial health. The war was over, and while the overheating of production had reduced considerably they had to look at the budget.

"So what then?"

"2nd​ divisions regiments will maintain at active readiness. The 4th​ and 5th​ divisions will remain as guard units and will have their monthly drill outside of their core units which will function as active units, and training units and will rotate on station as needed If," He enunciated, "John Jordan doesn't like that then we stand at an ireconciable division."

"I've seen your prelimary documents, John Allen, and if you'll pardon this. You know as well i that that army will grow. If you intend to count where you are now, I will remind you that in 1860 there perhaps not even 20 million prussians, that is less than half of the purported united provinces population. Or more correctly, to use your comparison, France is equivalent population."

"Uneven development. We're playing catch up." They were behind. The conversation ended as the guns opened... and Allen saw no reason to inform Percy that as an officer who'd gone through the general staff officer program, Guo had access, and had refered back to cadre meeting minutes.
--
Notes: Something that should have been mentioned last week since it was touched on is the vote, and those rules were written under the qing, and were modelled off of German advice, and that was the same advice by which Japan had been given. In the present, Xian is still operating under what is the contemporary Chinese system for the vote in terms of a provincial constitution and no one expects in a year there is the going to be the Zhili-Fengien conflict.

Xian doesn't change those laws or standards for a long time. The franchise is limited to enumerated criteria, so as a result on the one hand Xian in the interwar period has a developing politically active voting population, but that is limitted to criteria that were written up in 19th​ century. Education, Income, but not gender in Xian's case. As a result Xian doesn't pass universal suffrage for a while and this will also impact other political factors, such as wartime mobilization. I should point out that the renewal of the SSA in the US and the passage of the Selective Service Act was very close and very controversial renewal of the SSA was by one vote. All of the original cadre were volunteers, the army of the spanish american war, the phillipines, the boxer rebellion were all volunteers. The cadre's RPF, and wolf hunters (in 1914) were all volunteers. The present (c1919) army in Xian, are an all volunteer force. There is just not sufficent support for a draft, and war mobilization in Xian is unique to national characteristics. Part of that is that as a distinct northern chinese state by 1940 (where you have an entire generation that has grown up with compulsorary standard education) the social contract is different, especially since the generation in question will have grown up more or less on the doctrine of a defensive territorial state that has never known a unified chinese state. Xian strategically is focused ona defenseive conflict and in 1940 is preparing for an offensive using an all volunteer army which has certain requirements.

Which of course then Germany decides to invade the Soviet Union (Barbarossa in June of the next year) and then Japan launchs the attack on all the pacific basically that winter (7 December) so that brings in the Anglo-American alliance against Japan and then Hitler (despite not being legally obligated to do so under his treaty with Japan decides to be a dumbass and declares war on the States, not helped by the Kriegsmarine channeling the WW1 Navy and telling him 'nah man we totally got this' spoiler they don't got this.) but this is absolutely awesome news for Xian because well it diverts massive manpower from their current enemy (Japan) and it consumes massive attention from the Soviet Union so no worries about the Russians feeling adventurous plus it insures British and American support. Thats WW2 and thats a ways off still.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1919
Some forty three hundred men were actively involved in the exercises most of that of course was the 7th​ Regiment but there were of course supporting personnel and instructors brought in from other units in small numbers. The beyond those actively involved were the various observers, of which Percy wasn't alone.

It had been a good call, and not just for financial gains, to start winter gear manufacture early. Last year had been a surprise... and not just for the sudden end of the great war in Europe, but that had pulled the rug out of the brits for their legal justification for involvement in Russia. Had they better prepared perhaps they could have made a stronger argument that Lenin's Bolsheviks were German allies and and had they been more resolved to throw Lenin and his malcontents out... but that was not the situation. The commonwealth... the dominions were now making noises and it was even worse with Wilson. Something was going to have to give.

That was precisely why they were pushing to provide supplies into the north, whether that was Kirghiz or Siberia proper. Some of that was British money some of it was coming from Terauchi's government before it had collapsed due to the rice riots over inflation. He would have preferred Japan to have kept the bald marshal as Prime Minister, but he supposed Hara wasn't an awful choice even if he was indecisive and too scared of doing something that might offend anybody.

With eleven months in his tenure Hara just wasn't impressive at all.

It was less humid today, which was to Percy's benefit, and the mercury only read eighty two. With a lifetime in China, Percy really should have been used to it, but he wasn't, "The Bolsheviks have crossed the Urals, there is no doubt that they'll make to drive on Omsk."

Which would take them months to reach. Siberia was too open an expanse. There weren't enough developed towns, the infrastructure was shit. It looked bad. "I've heard," Iseburo had sent cables out, and the Japanese army was leveraging to bring a fourth and fifth divisions out to the field but Hara was waffling.

Even if he allowed it, and the diet approved the funding... Hara would never allow a real mobilization and the money wasn't likely to be there with problems at home.

There needed to be a larger anglo-american commitment but Wilson was rushing to bring the troops home which was sure to have problems, but worse than that were the appropriation bills in the congress. Had the British Empire with all its dominions relocated its troops into European Russia maybe, then maybe they would have succeeded.

That was to always be the historical question that lingered.

The contribution, the sale of, supplies to the White Russian cause, the Japanese presence, Zhang Tsolin's contribution to the war in the east, and the Imperial British contribution took the form largely of clothing, and packs, but also to the sale ammunition and machine guns as Iseburo purchased 8mm Mauser machine guns. That would probably drop off in terms of the actual guns as unlike them he could purchase surplus machine guns from Europe, but Iseburo had the railway system more or less now under control as it ran from Irkutsk to the Japanese Garrison at Vladivostok. Irkutsuk to Omsk was almost as far as Vladivostok was from Irkutsk given the railway conditions about 1500 miles, to maybe 21 to reach Vladivostok.

... and if there was anything to be said for Hara was that he accepted the need for brining in civilian investment... but now wasn't the time for that.

"Omsk?" Percy questioned.

"Who's asking,"

"MacKinder, not Sir John in this case," He didn't reply immediately, so Percy continued, "The commissioner is committed to our present struggle against bolshevism. Given the influence your Transoxiana line entails and its growth you have a stake in this."

He snorted, of course he had a stake, "We have no intention of connecting the line further north," With the Don and Kuban cossacks withdrawing into Kirghiz and hundreds of thousands of them or russians or whoever pouring into the Kirghiz, into central Asia, "Especially with Orenburg's fall."

"Yes, the bolshevik offensive."

"There is a consensus," Which Percy would have probably insisted was largely him and Iseburo, "That the rail line going to Omsk from the west should be torn up entirely and the defensive line consolidated there, if you won't do that then the Whites will keep fighting over empty space, and it will keep bleeding troops since the local regiments have no investment in expeditionary warfare."

He had already heard how the British had recognized that in the Baltic with what was apparently a very good Karelian rising but as a regiment its leadership and its men were adamantly opposed to leaving the peninsula. That made them reliable for defensive operations in their homeland but the British couldn't convince them to march.

--
Percy took the austrian knotwork on the staff uniforms more or less alright... though he had mentioned that the US had formally dropped the knots on dress uniforms two years earlier... Allen didn't care. The changes in regulations to full dress was a bit of useless trivia.


"Well what is he wearing, you'd think it was bit of sport."

"Its a wind breaker Percy," What would come to be called a field jacket.

"Its a bit flappy isn't it-" Percy went quiet as the scout fired prompting a ring at one of the distance targets.

"Its a jacket for the field, not mess dress." He replied. "That's why its more green," The instructor being borrowed from 1st​ Regiment was unique in that he was wearing the loose fitting jacket. It might not have seemed like much but the attire was unique or special dispensation for the uniform allotment of graduates of the Regimental Scout Sniper program... though regimental was perhaps misnomer being that the school was run from higher authority. Whatever the case for the school, he didn't specify to Percy.

The wind breaker was a piece of civilian jacket popular back in the states. Men's outdoor wear, hunting, warmer than a sweater, and could be taken on and off in the woods back home as needed. If you didn't want to spook a whitetail, well it worked for two legged sort of game as well.

"Zhang Tso-lin doing well for himself by the way. I know the two of you are competing for Austrians to come along." How funny it was that the Russian position in Manchuria, before the war with Japan, had been perceived by the British so unassailable that it was seemingly inevitable to the British it was to be Russian territory.

Zhang, "He likes fast cars."

"Your man," Percy paused to pinch the bridge of his nose, "Otto, shares a name with that dutch painter."

"Hieronymus,"

"Yes, he's a racer."

"He is, I think we've picked up a couple of those. It seems to be a popular past time with the people we're talking to,"

"de Haviland," Allen shrugged. Airco, the company the man was designer for wasn't in the best of circumstances. A lurch due to the war ending. Percy nodded, "Ah, well you we be I think pleased to know that while John Jordan's embargo upon arms, should have no legal effect what so ever on the aircraft trade, after all they're not rifles, or cannon are they?"

Allen raised an eyebrow as another piece of steel rang in the distance. That was the beginning of it... a couple of months, and the FSO had started to undermine Jordan's harebrained idea by offering aircraft into north china... it was funny... and sort of sad for the old man.

It wasn't even business, it was politics.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1919
The captain had the hookless fasteners of his windbreaker half up, and the buttons undone. "How is the stitching?" Allen asked conversationally leaning back in the chair. "I know some of 3rd​ has complained about the sleeves."

"For sleeves, they have been fine for me, but the hem split while I was in the field." The jackets were short only going down to a man's hips enough that it could be worn loose and provide some concealment to the pistol on a man's belt, or zipped and or buttoned to allow the pistol to be easily accessed.

"How'd that happen?"

"I couldn't say." The captain replied

Allen shrugged, "Just usual wear then, right write it up."

"Have you had any problems with the jacket?"

"Unfortunately captain, beyond the jaunt into Russia," well before the jackets had been adopted, "I have not had the obligation to be in the field. You are an officer of the first division, you are tip of the offensive it is paramount your equipment is to specification. That its up to the task."

"Sir"

The captain saluted and then departed.

Percy sat down. From the sound of it, the mood in the legation fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of these drills.. in the same way that the papers back home were rushing to misrepresent how the stupid war had happened in the first place. It was vexing.

"You should know there is a good chance that Alston will succeed Sir John when the latter retires, which I think we can all recognize at this point is likely to be sooner rather than later." There were to be consequences of that. Jordan had turned against the Anglo-Japanese alliance and while with Edward Gray's departure from the ship of state there was no single person who had the force or influence to manage, Jordan wasn't alone in his opinions. That Jordan would go on to participate in the post war negotiations on naval limits designed to reduce spending, and avoid a costly arms race was part of that. "There have been operations ongoing in the vicinity in Murmansk since May, but recognizing factors locally, as well as more generally it must be recognized of the need to make common cause. To look forward. Mister Churchill has come to believe that this may in fact be a long conflict with the Bolsheviks fought over many places not just in Russia, a new kind of war, and Mackinder rightly agrees with him."

"And I would take it that Alston is in the same boat?"

"He is."

"And?"

"And in the Murmansk offensive thus far, the Lewis gun has proven once again its great utility."

Allen snorted, "I will cable Isaac and let him know," He replied, which he was going to but he mostly said it to be smart, "I assume thereby there is something to be done?"

"As you know John Allen, BSA produces the Lewis Gun in the Russian cartridge,"

"Yes." He replied, and he knew the next question. If the war had still been going on, maybe would have been on the table, "And no I am not willing to retool to produce that obsolescent cartridge without a bloody good reason. I will be blunt, England would be well served to adopt 30'," Thirty, "06" Aught Six, "Regardless of its own draw backs, just as you would do well to ditch the wheel guns for Browning's forty five. I will produce Lewis's design in the British service cartridge, if you need an extension of that order its in the black and white. I am even willing to continue that contract with improved versions of the gun," Streamlined changes to the barrel shroud that helped keep the barrel from warping, and made the gun simpler to manufacture "But from an efficiency standpoint from a standpoint of manufacture it would be a waste of time to add a third cartridge to manufacture. Even though I freely admit BSA makes fine guns."

"You would be willing to supply them in 8mm," He was a little surprised Percy hadn't called it the 'German Caliber', "As you are doing for your Japanese friend, and as I expect that Zhang Tso-lin will also adopt."

"I can't speak to Zhang adopting the machine gun," There had certainly been no plans to sell them to their Manchurian neighbor, "but yes Iseburo has procured," and order of "the guns." Admittedly what would probably happen would be the Navy would want Lewis guns in 303 probably for just inter service rivalry's sake. "We have delivered three million rounds as of last month." Which, really wasn't in the scope of machine gun ammunition a great deal, especially not since Iseburo or more correctly the Japanese Army had eight millimeter maxims as well. Admittedly the Maxims had probably been German guns provided to Japan by the British but that was merely his guess.

What Percy was able to inform him, and that Allen had yet been privy to, was that the French presence had already begun to be withdrawn. That was he supposed in hindsight was no great surprise. As far as the French were concerned the Russians had done what they were paid to do, bleed so frenchmen didn't why should frenchmen bleed to save Russians from bolsheviks. Not that he said as much to Percy, but if that was the French logic he supposed it made sense.

"Trotsky began his counter attack," Apparently it had begun the 24th​ of July, no doubt the Reds sensing the weakening of allied resolve with the departure of the French, and the redeployment of british troops... plus whatever it was that Percy wasn't telling him.
--
The basic idea remained what it was. The railway was how you moved large volumes of equipment from Point A to Point B, meaning usually City 1 to City 2 or at least City to Town, that was the advantage of China with ten thousand years of settlement or whatever the province had ancient towns. Allen personally figured ten thousand years was just short hand for long long ago, but it didn't matter two thousand five thousand ten thousand at that point it really ended up meaning the same thing a long time back.

People had lived there a long time, so it was actually pretty bad that roads were as terrible as they were... but the Qing hadn't wanted to spend the money, and frankly he doubted the Ming or the Mongols before them had wanted to. The railway alleviated that Was it a fix to every problem, of course not, they were going to build paved roads but they and the railways were increasing 'lateral' moving across a potential defensive frontage.

What Allen understood, what he took from the European war was in many respects a reiteration of the war between the states. Overland marching for a modern army was time consuming because of the significant burden of artillery and ammunition. You needed engineers to bring field guns over water and those bridges had be stout enough to support twenty pounders never mind heavier guns, and yes mountain and pack guns were easier to move but it didn't change the underlying issue.

A man today carried with him more equipment than his grandfather would have. The uniform was different even for the most of infantry man it had changed.

Which was what the Major was exhorting the men.

They had removed the senior officers from the regiment in order to see if the junior officers could, well with the assistance of sergeants naturally, manage to accomplish an exercise objective without a colonel minding them. Could they accomplish the delineated objective of the exercise?

This was different because it was not the abstraction of war gaming at the college. These were actual men in the field moving terrain. It was not one of the Rifle divisions either, nor units from second division. It built off of all of those things, but the idea was one thing, this was seeing what carried into practice.
--
Notes: Some of the dancing around geostrategic changes of the post first world war but we won't particularly touch on the details of the polar bear expedition / murmansk theater and while there certainly did exist some chauvinism between service cartridges and 'British dwarf' to refer to 303 existed its mostly born out Ordinance and an association with England's perceived quaintness , and 7.62x54R was looked on as a case of lack Russian technical sophistication or even backwardness (and the Finns never seem to get this treatment despite using the same cartridge and Mosin rifles), Japan's 6.5 semi-rimmed cartridge similarly gets looked down on as not having enough stopping power... and this eventually leads to 7.7 which is basically a rimless 303 in performance terms, but this is an era where 'stopping power' in a service rifle cartridge and is it 'modern' is very much a topic its also mostly about the logistical burden of equipping the armies that emerge in response to the first world war. So like, yes there is cartridge preferences, but it shouldn't be taken as an objective fact so much as subjective commentary, and needling.

 

[Imperator Pax]

September 1919​

It had started as a loud morning, and digressed to the present points, "It was bound to happen, frankly we shouldn't be too surprised." Griswold remarked tossing the paper from Zhengzhou. "What do we do?"

"We write a circular."

He wheeled, "What the Fresh Hell is that gonna do?" Sam bellowed.

Allen nodded weathering the shout, "We've dealt with attempted train robberies before, overreacting won't do us any good," and it wasn't like it had been a successful robbery, even so train robberies given the importance of trains tended to spook people... Griswold's reaction was testatement to that.

"And besides the idiots got what was coming to them." Another man added.

"Not the point."

They were just shy of a dozen men in the room, it was mid afternoon. They had other things to do, or rather that was why it was a smaller body the morning had busy enough without this. The problem wasn't banditry itself. The problem was cross province banditry and .. the situation with the borders. Zhenzhou was a vital link between provinces. So important the Qing had made it part of Zhili over the protests of the gentry of the provinces it had previously belonged to, and thus had made it, Zhengzhou, Yuan Shikai's problem.

Honan was complicated. The bigger problem was that it had been a dry summer, too much rain brought floods, but not enough was a drought and that was bad... "It has nothing to do with the rain," Or at least they could say one way or another for sure... it was too early to jump to that conclusion.

Just as they theoretically couldn't lay the blame on Honan's gentry for allow the opportunity to occur... even if everyone in the room was probably thinking it. "We'll need to talk to Yan, and given tensions in Shantung this could be bad if it goes over there."

The logic behind participating in the habit of writing a circular first had less to do, but not nothing, with their own population... that was what newspapers and the press were for. They'd release statements through the papers in Zhengzhou, and elsewhere what they planned to do about it. The circular was for the province of Honan, and also to establish publicly to neighboring provinces an 'indictment'.

That would give Cao Kun an opportunity to say something representing Zhili. It would give the gentry of Honan the opportunity to save some degree of face... to at least do something regarding their own bandits.

The were three particular issues. This had been a problem previously... but not really since 1914 not since Bai Lang had been shot down. It was probably related to some degree by the growing drought , and thereby this was merely an indicator of what was to come when next year's harvest failed. Thirdly it was representative of existing tensions between the provinces as they existed and had not abated from earlier conflicts between authorities holding Peking that were not tied to either the issue of the harvest It was emblematic of weakening central control.

It was not just the border with the honanese, the border reaches the marches between provinces were fraying as the Beiyang clique came apart allowing bandit gangs to swell from thousands to tens of thousand and even larger in heavily populated northern china.

--
Failed train robberies aside so there were a million other things to see to as September had begun, and the year continued to trudge onwards, "We were planning to expand irrigation, and the war is over,"

Which meant tractors could be purchased over seas and the purchases could resume. Of course tractors had elicited other uses in the course of the war, and somewhat beforehand "Look at this,"

The picture was somewhere he couldn't place it didn't look like Europe, a bunch of boys in slant hats were amusing themselves climbing over the large boxed armored form of a tracked machine.

"What the hell is that?" He asked

"German documents and interviews call it A7, Mephisto?"

"I reiterate the question, where is this?"

"Australia, I was talking with one of our liaisons," probably one of the proofing inspectors from the anzac he supposed, "and his friend of a friend said they had just offloaded this big bastard. They say its in excess of thirty tons,"

"And you want to look at it?"

"Its right in our back yard."

True enough, "Fine, go. In the mean time we need to focus on Edsel, Ford deal the tractors, and expanding company farms with the war over I shouldn't need to say that we should see midwest grain come down some call the Chicago office, get them to talk to McCorrmick, and make sure they know to keep an eye on the wheat futures. Keep talking to Kansas and the other colleges."

"University of Texas is working on new vaccines for cattle." Bill waved, "Invited daddy and Phineas up to talk about it, and my brother says it looks promising for the health of calves." [The Vaccine promises a], at least per the paper, "Significant reduction in mortality."

The conversation went on, but it still circled what if the rains continued to be slack, and if this was a drought, "We're really lucky if it is the start of one that it didn't start two years ago."

"The French buying up the futures with wall street's money would have probably pushed off, even without Wilson's damn commission," Shellman agreed, "But on the other hand if the French are going to impose tariffs then its going to cause shots back at them."

Allen glanced to his right, "Powell you'll have agriculture setting up, the MAK won't be able to build tractors or steam engines yet, but we're going to need shipping handled can you do that?"

"Absolutely I figured if you didn't ask I'd volunteer, the states built up a lot of tonnage but they did the work fast, and there is talk. I'll get back to you if I start smelling smoke," If there was trouble. "If we can get a regular line though I think we can probably manage."

"There is always the brits." Someone down the table suggested.

"Not until Jordan's gone." Allen replied, "I don't want him getting the idea to screw about with anything we ship on British ships," or at least anything more than they could... "Percy mentioned aircraft but Holt built tractors for the British, and Black Jack has looked at them, from everything I've been told in terms of earth moving machines they might replace our Italian options, but the object is anything and everything that might help. The British seem to want to open the market, but leaving that thing," He gestured to the Australians playing on the steel monster, "and our first round of hires I want the German chemical industry picked clean. Fertilizer, herbicides we'll combine with tractors and attempt to modernize as fast as possible. If the dry spell holds we will move forward with more irrigation, the dams and the dikes need to be done," droughts were a risk in china, as much as floods were and they lead to famine, and the idea was to kill famine. Large industrial organized farming would be the sword to do that.

"Are we in that big of a hurry?"

Grsiwold beat him to it, "If you hadn't heard from the sound of it some yankee judge on the bench says that Wilson went against the constitution during the war, most likely I expect they'll see damages as a result. We want to hit before Washington actually has to pay." While it was still uncertain, was it a rough step, sure, but the select committee had agreed that moving quickly was more likely to get them the results. "Shellman this was your brainchild," He told the navy doctor, "You read him into it."

"First and foremost I want to make clear the epidemic is not over, we are going into the annual flu season," The doctor declared leaning over the table as he got excited. It lead to them getting beat over the head about over using aspirin and that it wasn't magic, and you had to use the right medicines to treat specifics not trying to use the same thing just because daddy and gran pappy had been doing, "Look the railway has made it possible to handle, and quarantine the sick, and we have been put people up in safe, sanitary conditions and we have good results with some treatments but the Germans have to be short on money, and I need more trained doctors," and they had promised Shellman more funding just as everyone had agreed that pensions were the correct thing to organize and arrange.

In 1920 everything was going to change... more so than they realized. The luncheon meeting going on over agriculture, and procurement for the agribusiness and next door with its committee on the textile industries manufacturing shoes, and trousers, and jackets, as well as other leather and canvas goods were convened as continuation of long formulated policy, long formulated on the expectation of what the end of the war would mean.

 

[Imperator Pax]

September 1919
The changing character of the British Mission to 'South Russia' was a little concerning. If there hadn't been a civil war, if the shooting hadn't started more than a year ago scholarly advisors and lawyers to try and 'democratize' the Russian government in exile wouldn't necessarily have been a terrible idea.

One of the best ways though they had found over the years to having the Chinese, admittedly not the Russians, think positively of capitalism, of the market, was to reiterate that Adam Smith had been a government official, and a member of the civil service in addition to being a scholar. Those credentials did more than anything to give the ideas validity. A reliable civil service was necessary for business, because corruption harmed everyone.

That had taken time to learn to learn that framing would find an audience.

[They had] Taken time to learn how to explain what structures had built the States into what it was, it was a matter of institutions. Burke was another example, an even better one because he was so much easier to explain the importance of old institutions as new ones were built up.

In sharp contrast the British with their Cambridge and Oxford dons and such took the railway up expecting to work some kind of 'civilizing magic'. That wasn't to say Japan was not sending its own people, but Iseburo's biggest focus was making sure that train cars carrying goods and supplies were getting where they needed to go with their cargoes unmolested. He was also ignoring the white government under Kolchak more or less because he didn't like Kolchak personally or his ideas and so he sat east of Omsk on the lake, sending a train west once a week but hardly more than that if he could avoid it without both an American and British presence.

How much Iseburo's involvement of Graves's diminutive collection of US Army personnel was politically driven, and how much of it was a personal attempt by Yamagata's heir to allow the US Siberian Expedition to save face, was being debated whenever the matter came up. "It would help if Graves wasn't such feckless dreamer." Cullen hissed "Now, now, I can accept he's got a lot on his plate, and only so many men, but he sounds more like a preacher than a general. Its all peace and temperance -"

The conversation turned into Graves being the son of Baptist minister and also an embarrseement to the state of Texas according to Bill as he joined in... but it wasn't really the point. The British effort to convince the government, so far as a government could be said to exist, was running into trouble and part of that was that the intervention by the Entente membership was simply too small, but also that there was obstinate resistance to the structural necessity of more troops.

It could easily be summarized as that the British would have preferred a combined front at Omsk, but that the manpower wasn't there. A frontage at Omsk under Kolchak on paper made sense, and especially would have made sense to the British conception of the Eurasian landmass... that was to say protecting British India, but one wouldn't have guessed from the talk and the publicity.

It was a headache, "Waite you're chairing?" What do you think, was the question being asked.

"I've ridden the line, if the Russians could read in any significant numbers the British would have tried to start newspapers. I wish that I was kidding, but the British are stirred up of trying to impart Anglican values in the east, and I think them, and the French, and even WIlson's people thought this lawyer stuff would work. MacKinder is pushing back, but I get the feeling he's got some backbencher in parliament he's arguing with. There is a lot of talk of common law going on from the lawyers, something about inviting some justice or another I assume they don't mean our Supreme Court to the conversation."

There were a series of groans from down the table. "What they need to do is take all the crates of guns they took off the Germans, and the artillery and dump them for the Russians to use." Someone on that end of the table complained. "its putting the cart ahead of the horse."

Waite shook his head in annoyance, "Paddy isn't wrong,"

"Percy says the Bolsheviks are in the process of some kind of offensive, from the sound of it Trotsky might mean to try this bridge," To Germany, "foolishness."

"What about the whites?"

"If we're lucky, whatever they're going to do will catch the Bolsheviks where they aren't, and then can steal a march on Lenin. We will just have to see." The real crux though was to move increasingly towards the consensus that would mean cutting the lines, and ripping up what connected Lenin's capital of Moscow to the far east. That idea had already been gestating... gestating that there was a consensus and ultimately in recognition of how modern war was. By the time the white advance on Moscow stalled due to the failure of its logistics and the tide began to turn a consensus had solidified.

--
The table was covered in papers. "Take a sheet," Bill grunted to one of his staff officers nudging him, "Not the oil, we do that."

There was no point in not talking about it. The commencement of the address at the university last year had talked about it. "These, gentlemen. Is the production as we estimate it of four years of industrial warfare in Europe. They're very big numbers."

Which was an understatement, he wondered if they would ever know with something close to accuracy what the toll of life would be. It would take more than two years for the English to put their estimates out by that point so much had changed.

Waite glanced at him, and handed him a sheet, "Even if we put aside the navy, what was expended on the war boggles comprehension. The British were not ready, no one was ready."

The shell failures were only part of it. They had never touched that part of the war business... the British had entered, everyone had entered the war with too few weapons, and too few bullets. "All of you," They informed the convened officers, "Have been informed of what of late has been said... and I will be blunt I believe in the model of the British Army, and of the American Army as it existed before the war... but I also believe that it is an inherent English flaw due to a lengthy maritime tradition to underscore the importance of the land army." Which was the nicest most polite way he had determined to phrase it. "John Jordan wants the world to go back to the way things were... but America succeeded Britain's position as most prominent economy, as the focal point of trade, all of Europe now sits dependent on New York credit. The world has changed, and that is not a change the states will look fondly on, because America enjoys being aloof from the Europeans and it always has been the preference of the States to be aloof from the likes of Spain, France, and the German speaking expanse of Europe," Mostly because there hadn't been an Italy when the founding fathers had been around, and back then he wasn't sure they had much concerned themselves with Russia either, but even if they had it wasn't the point, "The United States will not ratify the French Peace, and the French peace will insure that there is war. There is no going back to 1900, and to that end we must accept that there must be a reasonably sized army that is ideally surplus to what we think we might need." He declared.

The problem was that if the States could not reach a consensus for peace in Europe , they would almost certainly seek to evacuate from Russian entanglements sooner rather than later. There was also the fact that Wilson had overruled the very financial experts at the Federal Reserve in order to continue to provide money to the French, which was now likely to start creating problems because it was increasingly evident France intended to start a trade war with its former allies.

Though such plans were impossible to envision in three years the French Prime Minister at the time envisioned that the only way to get American capital was to occupy the Ruhr, a term of the treaty that the states would never ratify. Poincare's strategy, he pulling double duty as PM and as Foreign Minister, worked though damaged France's reputation and his own further.

... but if the United States did not consider Europe's security to be paramount to its own, it was impossible to say that China should be with politics of western Europe to be so important. There were too many other responsibilities at home. The briefing on war time economics was critical, but they hadn't expected the driving failures of the white cause , its principle failure being one of organization, and internal unity, and truthfully inability to rally internal and external support for the cause.

In 1919 no one readily expected that the Japanese mission to Siberia would continue into the twenties and that the Japanese presence at Irkutsk and its entrenchment there since the rescue of the Romanovs would mark the changes on the map after Lenin's death... but that was still years off.

The staff officers here were looking at numbers and figures of production. Of tons of steel, of bushels of grain by the many thousands. The hard economic facts so they had been able to come together. The assembly though perhaps also demonstrated where they were falling behind. This was a conglomeration of staff officers, all officers, soldiers.

There were to b e other meetings with floor bosses, managers, and further up for individual factory organization but this series of meetings was of the army. Of highly educated men within the army, but it was to be something of a trend on martial virtue and its place in the emerging central Chinese state of Xian.
--
Notes: We should be done with the calendar year 1919 by Christmas which is good, and hopefully in January we will return to just the saturday update for this since otherwise we'd pretty well over take the finished 1920 sections since the brief conflict in July of 1920 while it is very brief and is more a matter of intrigues behind the scene it is of significant importance to Chinese history, and the legitimacy, and perceptions of legitimacy (or lack there of) of the succeeding governments.

 

[Imperator Pax]

September 1919
There was so much of this that they didn't need right now... especially with the war in Europe having ended almost a year ago now. Allen didn't expect quick turn around, the two captains from the 1st​ Division who had made the cut did have work to do, and there were the others... "Look at this." He took the paper, and scowled. "You going to talk to Bill?"

He looked at Cullen, "This is tomorrow's paper Cole." He noted.

"Yeah, that's right, and its going out, I was lucky to get told, and lets be honest he's right. I agree the circular going out was the right move," Which was also agreed right there in black and white, what the paper was accusing Honan's gentry of was not complicity, but collusion with the bandits. Something they couldn't prove... at least he hadn't, "No we ain't got anything, and I don't think we missed anything. If this was the green gang yeah, maybe, but these came off like normal bandits."

"What were they using?"

"Kropatcheks, some eighty eights," most likely local production of the commission rifle, "we recovered a couple." Allen nodded. "Machine gun burst, and those two fellas got on the wrong end of a browning." An Auto 5, "Their friends decided to discretion was the better part of valor but we didn't catch anyone either." He had known that. "The trains run regular, we have no reason to think anything but they were watching, and the train in question was the usual. I give you they could have been running for wire, or the dynamite, but they probably thought there was crates of guns aboard."

Allen nodded, "I could see that," He agreed. He thought back to the before, "We're going to have problems. Bandits jumping the border."

"Brigade was nominal brother John, maybe it don't need to be so nominal, huh?" Cullen was being somewhat facetious, the gendarmes were allocated an increased paper strength next year, "Then there is the guard too." He paused, "And one more thing, I figure you best hear it from me, assuming our census estimates are right, well a couple of fellas have already compared our population not to France, but to where Japan sits. We're not there with them yet, but if we are going to catch up, we need to do a lot of work."

Right, they had just dropped the production of the war on the desk in front of the best and brightest in the command and of course that would be what they were looking at. With the situation the Russians were in, no even if the Russians had been fine, people would have looked to compare themselves to Japan. "We do that." He agreed after a moment.

Cole wrapped his knuckles on the table, "Be ambitious boys," He remarked with a grin. "Anything interesting from the technical committees?"

Allen shook his his head, "Not so far, the linen department," the textile board more properly, "Found some patent filed a few years ago in the states for a new type of shutterless loom that they think is the future. It has the potential to be very quick, or so they tell me." Other than that though with a delegation off to England, the states, Germany, and the Hapsburg realm the latter two being coordinated through the Swiss office. "And if they're right well it'll give the filibusters," The middle American cadre, "a foot in the door for textiles."

The general consensus was that the British model of industrialization was a series of steps that could be built up on each other. Coal mining wasn't just for fueling the furnaces you needed it later for fueling bigger trains, and also for steel making as well as power. To make goods though, textiles, and porcelain were good starting industries to move beyond simple agrarian foodstuffs, or even luxury agrarian goods. Coal, and iron got you steel, steel and oil took you further still in what you could make, but you could hardly jump the queue.

Of course the Brits had had to largely figure out how everything fit together on their lonesome, and the states had been impeded by ideological factors like Jefferson waxing poetic about the family farmer and probably... just not liking city folk, but the logistics of the railway, and more importantly the modern locomotive's more powerful engine would make getting goods to market much easier than it had been in grand daddy's day.

--
He had let, let that was a joke, Jun handle the mid autumn festival festivities. The cadre, the gathering of the conglomerate sponsored together, and so did the different members of the cadre who actually held shares, so thus his family, Bill, Cole, Dawes and the few others left from the original number... but Jun exercised control over the contributed funds.

It had made the papers of course. Since Jun owned the organized media corporation that owned the printing presses and handled the news bureaus which were underneath it... i.e. The people who actually wrote the daily papers. It was a business strategy and what kept those papers afloat because they could reach to a large enough audience to be self sustaining. It created stability, but it did put pressure on a decision for language.

The recent debates in Peking about language, about literary Chinese and its competition the 'new language' scholars at Peking University their so called baihua was that their new vernacular Chinese was an academic one chockfull of borrowed English, German, French and Japanese loanwords and probably more confusingly was not the use of standard western punctuation but the use of English sentence structure which made it more confusing for the average chinese reader who wouldn't have frame of reference to sudden use of long nonsense strings of latin letters as German words too often settled into. The peking university literati were just too rushed for pushing their version of a Chinese vernacular that wasn't really a common one, but rather a scientific or educated vernacular used for academia.

How things got read by the man on the street was important.

Jun's media monopoly, extended beyond the papers, and if radios became common they'd need rules for broadcasting, and that would go increasingly towards language standards. So for the mid autumn festival there were banners, and broadsheets in bright colors everywhere.

"Its going to be a long night." Bill remarked.

There was no doubting that. "I'd like to hope for a prosperous coming year, but I think," More likely, "Its going to require more work."

"We finished the draft, we're done aren't we?"

Allen looked at the crowds, the massive throngs of people crowding the streets. A banner asking for prosperity in the coming year. "Yeah," The draft was done and officially, the constitution for the province would promulgate in tomorrow's paper, and hopefully Yan was going to have Taiyuan's print house send out his own new provincial constitution. The plan was that constitution wouldn't enter into effect until the new year but that was marked as the 1st​ of January 1920. "Lets go tell the boys take their passes and enjoy the holiday." Not everyone was off today, they couldn't cut everyone loose of course, but it was a paid holiday for almost everyone.
--
Notes: I keep meaning to do a full mid autumn festival scene it just doesn't go on paper to where I'm satisfied, but September 1919 the mid autumn festival here is important because it marks Xian as a prototypical government putting a final draft forward, going this is what we're doing and then putting in the papers as this is the new provincial government system for 1920 that's pretty important, and culturally the festival is auspicious for that... but as a cultural phemennon serious business.

Anyway, I need to figure out if not BT what I'm updating tomorrow

 

[Imperator Pax]

October 1919
The map lines were solidifying. He had been just looking at the reported movements of troops, but he was starting to guess as to where this might be leading. Would Lenin do it? He had agreed to Brest Litovsk, they had recognized an independent Finland since then... would they acknowledge an independent Central Asia, and forsake the Russian Empire's holdings gained since the 17th​ century?

Would they? It was a thought... Well maybe it came down to if they thought they could defeat Kolchak, and Kolchak continued to try and push without a coherent strategy and support. If the lines solidified then fine... he could live with that... it wasn't his problem, and plenty of those were already on his plate.

His red pen rolled to a stop on the paper. He had little interest in philosophizing but it galled him significantly how fast excuses were being made to divorce oneself of the whole thing... and how fast the blame was being made. He lifted the pen up, and scratched a reminder to not allow it be forgotten that it had been Wilson who had overruled his own Federal Reserve bankers that loans should be continued to extended to the French and that the business people had been ordered about by an overstretched and unprepared Executive apparatus. This notion that business was to blame was absurd, it was the emotional, illogical, middle class that had driven Europe to war.

He couldn't stand it. It was vexing the way the papers back home were starting to carry on. What was worse was that Wilson god damn him was making it worse with his stump speeches... and the Republicans were probably going to put the Dems on the ropes. If there was anything that demonstrated Wilson was a southerner it was that he was taking things personally, he was personally affronted the Senate clearly thought him a fool. That Wilson had to at least on some level recognize that the French and British had made him look like an idiot probably made the Virginian double down harder for the sake of honor...

So Wilson ranted and raved harder about his position trying to viscerally charge with words because he could do nothing else.

There was a knock on the door, "Enter." He called.

"John Allen." Percy idled to a corner of the map, "These are the latest plots."

"Our best understanding of the war in the west." He replied. Sanctions would not work, especially since Percy had made clear the FSO was willing to ignore the spirit and only agree to the specifics of the sanctions, and the French and Japanese would pay lip service at best that much was clear less than six months on... "Its not good, they're not really armies. Their hordes of men with too limited equipment, and too little morale."

Percy scowled, "Yes, but shouldn't abandon them." Percy replied, and MacKinder did seem to honestly believe that... the problem was that the idealists weren't the ones who controlled the purse in England... HM Treasury were the worst collection of misers under heaven and they had no investment on an emotional level.. and emotion drove war fighting. Then of course on top of that, Percy's use of shouldn't instead of must not was an indictment of the political reality.

"Tell me about the southern front."

"Well I should think you would be well informed with Waite sitting in Kirghiz personally," The Englishman replied.

He blew a breath out, "I want an English view of the conditions there."

"The bolsheviks have been kept out, out of central Asia." Out of the Governor Generalship of the Steppes, and that had been reinforced with the migration from the west of displaced Cossacks and others over the past really two years, but certainly the last one, "but they are on the offensive I know that MacKinder has toured the fortifications at Uralsk," On the west bank of the river

"And?"

"There is nothing to say there."

The hell there wasn't, but Allen didn't voice that. He instead reached for a telegram that unofficially he had already read, but this copy had come from the State Department, "That's from Graves," The preacher's son turned General had been complaining again up the chain about Kolchak. He pulled another telegram, "That is from Iseburo on the condition of the rail lines." They could send him steel but they could not give him engines or cars... maybe cars soon, but engines were in short supply in central asia if they were to send them anywhere.

"This has them working in Mongolia, Baron Ungern is a bit queer."

That wasn't his problem. "Iseburo merely wants to insure the rail lines run in good order," He replied instead; admittedly in defensive.

"He wants the trans Siberian from the Urals to Omsk torn up. It would make a counter to the Bolsheviks thrust impossible."

"It would force the Bolsheviks to march through the winter or do nothing all winter while Omsk is fortified," Allen wasn't ignorant of the Japanese or 'Russian' garrisons appearing through eastern Siberia and attempts to impose law and order throughout, but the main focus remained the normal operation of the railway, oh there were Japanese, Koreans, hundreds of thousands even of Chinese workers coming to build houses and shops but it was all along the rail.
--
The prospect of how quickly the Whites would fade in the west as a fighting force would eventually come to be likened to the collapse of the Russian front... because it ultimately stemmed from the same structural defects in the Russian Army. Both sides could attack, but once supplies ran thin and a counter attack was mustered the troops tended to desert.

At that point it turned into a slog of attrition. The Bolsheviks were able to pull numbers from the factory dominated cities and increasingly seize food from the peasants. That upset the peasants, but the so called 'greens' had been subject to similar requisitions from the whites as well and while they added a third rung or fourth counting the anarchists they weren't pro white. The directive from London became stabilizing the front, but that order might well have been decided on too late... or maybe Omsk had been too far to begin with. Kolchak simply hadn't had the authority to, the accepted authority, to maintain his status over the steppes or behind his position to the east.

At the present though they were still watching... and counting the cars. "The British, well the Australians are in Omsk, but while MacKinder wants to keep them there from the sound of it the talk is to move them south."

Allen tapped his pen and nodded, "What's the reasoning?"

"Officially to shore up the front, unofficially," Dawes shrugged, "To minimize the chance of them being in the line of fire. Omsk isn't ready for an attack, its crowded, its confusing, its all around a mess. The morale is bad," No shit. "The list goes on like that as you can imagine. I wouldn't be surprised if you get down to it, the Brits intend to run their supplies through weihaiwei through us and just skip the trans Siberian all together." There had been grumbling all in the spring in the Dominions about the war being over, there had been grumbling before, but the signing of the peace treaty in Europe was the impetus for more of it. "What do you think is going to happen?"

"Iseburo has flatly refused to have the army move from Baikal," he had made his neat little orderly tables and was admant they stay that way. "I expect that if this goes badly he'll only let them go west with the intention of ripping the railway up." Which was what he thought should have been done anyway, but he didn't want to be in a position where the Diet might question him spending money when the army might want to get expeditionary.

It was a mess.

"Percy knows that I take it?"

"He does. Iseburo cabled Kolchak," all but demanding, [that] "He tear the transiberian down."

"I bet the Admiral didn't like that."

"No from what Graves has said to Washington he didn't." There was no denying Iseburo was conservative, he had no taste for exciting daring cavalry raids, or bullheaded charges if someone told him he had the ability to hold fifteen miles he'd stop marching at ten, he was much more conservative than his father was.

That was the problem and as October wore on, the international disagreements further created a mess. The British, and the Japanese would continue their respective agreements irrespective of American resistance, banking on fait accompli from Wilson which would given Wilson's other distractions prove out.

Dawes leaned back, "The brits are shipping rifles and ammunition into southern Russia."

"We know that," He meant Kirghiz, but southern Russia would for a very long time be the official name of the 'government in exile' as the Europeans called it as the British called it. The Cossacks were getting all the weapons that should have been surpluses out and cheap to buy on the open market as the British army demobilized... but because of the embargo they were kept from paying cash for while Jordan sat in Tietsin.

"This could just be me reading too much into it hoss, but I wouldn't be surprised if its an excuse to justify keeping the australians there. It probably won't hold for long, but it could be leverage to carve off central asia and then try and find british capital to levy British influence in the region."

...it made a certain amount of sense as to why the FSO might angle for that.

 

[Imperator Pax]

October 1919
It was getting late in the afternoon... or at least was dark outside already.

A man couldn't be a solider forever. If he was lucky he could do it a long time, but modern war was dangerous, and costly in other ways. The papers on the desk were a reminder of that. He could think back to 1910 when they'd bought their first artillery, and then other guns that krupp had had commercially available on order, just pick up a catalog from a sales rep and go through it say this is what I want.

It was expensive, but railwaymen made enough. They weren't unique there. It gave them an advantage. Bai Lang had found that out, as he had attacked fortified defensive positions protected with High Explosive and Canister. Machine guns added another advantage, but a professional army supported with both was a monster on the field.

Allen signed. The pension bill wasn't really a bill but a memorandum, saying that once the constitution went into effect they would ratify the pension bill, which was based off of Bismarck's reforms. They didn't really have anyone else to base it off, but the Bismarckian welfare system was only part of it. The US Army had been granting pensions since the Revolution... whenever congress could be arsed to actually provide funding for such, and that needed to be seen to it. They couldn't leave it to whenever a house of representatives could be seated.

Men discharged for wounds, or those separating under honorable circumstances needed to be looked after. That was where education was to come in. There had to be something a man could do after, and so on... so that was also on the list of what the provincial government would have to look at plan for.

That was the consensus, there was a knock, "Enter." He answered, Shang stepped in and he handed the documents over and since the colonel was currently filling a cadre vacancy rather than commanding troops. Shang picked up the pen and started counter signing but glanced at the ranking red leg.

Dawes followed glanced at the colonel, "Naw, you need to be here for this to," He put the case he was carrying on the desk, heedless of the other papers, "This is coming from Lansing. The president... has had a stroke, its bad." The artillery officer remarked. "From the cable is, its damn bad. He's bed ridden they're not sure he'll recover... and it gets a bit worse."

The documents were from the state department's black chamber mission with the army. They were cable intercepts and memorandums corroborated with other notes exchanged... more to the point they were discussions between France and England. Much of it was stuff already known, stuff told to the Russians, stuff subsequently published in the Guardian on behest of the Bolsheviks after the latter had cracked open the safes of the Russian Foreign Ministry... but some of it was new. Some of it was talking about Siberia, but others... were about Europe.

"I guess we shouldn't be surprised, sykes picot was brazen..." Allen whistled. It made sense though, Versailles terms had to have been largely written before the armistice, oh sure some of it, the status of central Europe and the rest had needed, there needed to be something to mollify the president, but if this did hit the senate, "Has he disclosed this to the senate?"

"I have no idea, but it is, it makes sense." French policy in the black and white of 1916 outlined a demilitarization and enforced neutrality of the rhineland, the germans industrial heartland, "Look I've cabled Washington, Wilson does not have the votes in the senate, and if this gets out, not only will they reject the peace treaty we can expect them to read the riot act out and then there will be fiasco in the papers on top of it."

"When do they plan on voting?"

"They're trying to get Wilson to see reason, but he's bed ridden if he dies it kills the treaty," and it was easy that the Senate might well prefer that, then they wouldn't have a fight, it was just pass in the night with the president, "I don't even know if Marshall has the spine to do anything, he might well resign... and then we would have Lansing."

Allen mused that that might be nice, given the papers Lansing would almost certainly reject the peace treaty, if only likely because he had to, but he would be able to pretend it was because the French not because the republicans wouldn't agree to it; theatrical as that might seem. It went further than that, it would go further than that as they would learn later. "He means to push House under the train from the sounds of it?"

"Yeah, if Wilson does die we can expect Lansing to insist Marshall pack him off, and strenuously tell House off personally before sending him away." Dawes agreed. "here."

Lansing's position, no doubt somewhat shaped by his writing to them was first and foremost to lambaste the treaty for the Shandong issue, whether that was because he knew, which was possible, that any messages would be archived and have a chinese audience at some point, or just because he knew the cadre at present's stance it didn't matter. It moved from there to declared the league of nations to be toothless and utterly worthless which was a damning indictment in words of something that Wilson so highly valued.

"France and England have written the treaty with to their benefit a plethora of unjust gains, and there is naught the League of Nation as put to paper can do being so toothless, it is utterly worthless at hoping to redress such wrongs." Shang read.

Lansing had actually testified to the state department something to that effect already, but in October of 1919 they had no idea of those minutes that would only come out later. Lansing had written what he meant, and with intention.

In a month Lansing would under accusation that he was out to sink the treaty. Without room to negotiate with the Senate Lansing refused to act as go between between the crippled Wilson and the Senate and the treaty would never be ratified. The knock on effect of that was that between France and the Anglo-American relationship, England chose America. The British would not ratify a security guarantee, and British public opinion began to turn against the French... assuming it had not already begun to do so as winter approached given the looming trade war.

"And not to make bigger mess, JP sent this one."

The report was mostly what had been expected.

It started with the numbers, but there ws a lot of red ink hitting numbers on the latter pages.

The truth was even in Shanghai while there had been some inflation due to the war it had been mild, far less than in the States. There had been inflation, yes, but China and for that matter Japan had actually been doing better than the States. That had held true for Japan until the end of the previous year, but then it had hit, it was still an issue in Japan, as the papers adjudicated.

Japan's inflation had over taken the US.

That wasn't what he was all that concerned with... that probably could have been managed. "If this is right..."

"Yeah," Then the trade war brewing in Europe, the trade war that was going to spill over to hit the states, and Japan, was going to drive Japan's balance negative. "I mean admitting that with the war over, Japan isn't going to be exporting as much, but yeah you wouldn't know it from the asking price."

So when the price went down the drain, it would be bad.

He scribbled on the math, "They're over two hundred percent," and the result would be the banking panic in Tokyo of 1920 another feature of the new world.

--
Notes: Short yes, but Japan by this point had extended a lot of bad loans, and otherwise extended a lot of capital, and this played into both domestic problems as well as complicated the global trade when the tariff wars started. Its not just Japan, it is everyone in 1920 that gets dinged in some capacity. The demands for rapid demobilization of the combatants was detrimental. Japan and the US had both superseded Britain at export market and the US market being larger and less effected than Britain meant that there were to be knock on effects. Unlike Japan, and the UK the US continued to be a provider of capital ... up until it wasn't, US capital being really the only player at the game resulted in increasing prices on stocks that would in addition to other factors result in the great depression.

[WW1 and its destruction of the integrated European market that existed pre war lead to the market conditions post war that would cause the variety of banking crisis that would culminate in the NYSE crash, but there were there were other crashes, and there were smaller more immediately post war slumps]

and apparently I never posted the reply to ATP's question, Magadan is currently in Japanese and its going to stay there until like 43/44. The Soviet Union has other gold mines there were plenty of mines with forced labor, given the rates of incaration increasing by 1920 and certainly later, home boy lenin and later Stalin would find some way to get money

EDIT: Ok, Saturday we will conclude 1919 with one final segment of October, and next week we will push on into the prologue of 1920

 

[Imperator Pax]

October 1919~ epilogue
They would look back from 1920 as the end of an era... the closing of a chapter.

He had penned a letter for Fukuoka where Akashi was convalescing he'd fallen on a trip back to the home islands and winter was coming. It was a perfunctory letter though, as at the time it had been written not only had his attention between on other matters, he had not been thinking too much of it and fully expecting him to recover.

His real focus was a continuation of normal duties, and the expanding ones. Shang had a collection of documents that threatened to fall off the table if it got any larger. There were twenty three mounds of documents in the room, all varying sizes. One for each for the cadre members assembled here proxy or otherwise, and each pile collected to address what they thought was important.

Officially the conference had opened this morning, but there had been talks last night, and would last through the weekend until Wednesday. To that end it was doubtful they would get through everyone's piles today, but that wasn't the point. Additionally there was probably some overlap across everyone's pages.

First and foremost were the timetables. What had begun, and what had begun was that Japan had beaten Russian the Russo-Japanese War. If Japan were able to build itself up into an industrial power to fight the Tsar to a standstill then why couldn't China, why couldn't reforms and investment provide for China what it yielded Japan?

That had been Yuan Shikai's question, why couldn't China do what Japan had done? The answer to that was a stew of lingering structural problems preventing the comprehensive reforms... and a lack of time.

That had been a decade previous, and Yuan was several years dead. The principle political answer put forward by Waite, and Bert to a lesser extend was quick to say that it was a matter of economic productivity. Russia wasn't really capitalist, it wasn't liberal it didn't 'follow' market forces, and so on, it was the same argument that had been put forward in 1906 for Japan's success. That because Russia's industries were state driven they were less effective, that there were no 'men of vision' as paper in New York had written, there were no 'titans of industry'. Japan had by contrast privatized its state owned industries for the most part, arsenals excepting for example. It had unleashed the vigor of the zaibatsu and had relied on expert production of foreign but allied nations.

As a Russian admiral had opined many Japanese ships had been built in English yards... admittedly that had been the excuse for the dogger bank incident.

As an explanation it was lacking, it was incomplete, and it was probably a bit rosy... and realistically it did probably underestimate the importance of other factors. That eighty percent of the Russian peasantry had still been farmers probably hadn't helped the Russian cause. Russia though was not the priority much as the situation there would likely slip in.

The matter of the agrarian peasantry though had to be discussed because they were now in a very different position to where they had been a decade ago. For centuries the Qing farmer had been dividing his family plot among his sons, and the Qing had attempted intermittently at best to bring new lands under cultivation, but that had been plagued by a host of other problems.

By that point the old dynasty had abolished the eight legged essay, and the civil service exams had been done away with. That created a problem, problems. The Chinese had been digging coal seasonally for centuries as fueling for heating so that had made sense to get into once they were in a position to expand in that direction.

Building a middle class though hadn't been the point, that would have ascribed far more to their foresight than they deserved. There had been a body of labor there, second and third sons who would have otherwise been scratching dirt on tiny little plots, or second and third sons who ordinarily would have dreamed of the civil service exam as a way up. A way that was forever closed after the reforms.

The product of subdividing generation after generation of sons who stayed home had made it near to impossible for the small chinese farmer to effectively modernize. Even with new world crops, there were liitations in the land in cultivation, and in techniques particularly for non staple crops. The way chinese kept bees came to mind, but that was hardly and far from the only matter.

Getting people tot tkae the step to be entrenpenuers in wholly new fields was difficult. Allen counted himself among such, as while soldiers both sides of the family were in rail. Cullen was the same. Bill's daddy was in cattle and oil, and so the list went on. It was hard to ask a man to do something he never had any experience with, but rather than be entrepenuers adminstration and organization was another matter. They weren't the same thing but you needed a floor boss, and a fella above him who knew how things were supposed to run, and you always needed to be looking for people willing to learn.

The intention had not been to make a middle class. The eight hour work week had been about safety and efficiency. They had brought in American made tooling, well because they were American, but because it was the tooling they themselves understood and had introduced American floor practices in 1911. The steel mill had taken time to get running but company housing had been long established by then... and then there had been the RPF standing to.

The bandit problem had been a problem. China as a whole had had five hundred odd rebellions that had made the papers between 1905 to finally October of 1911.

"To borrow an expression we've discussed before, that the war in Europe represented a great boon to us." China as a whole really, though how much of a boon would be up to opinions, but the trade deficit of the whole nation had greatly been reduced as exports to the combatants had gone out... and they had been settling into Xian by the time war were declared that summer of 1914.

Then suddenly there were opening of markets to Europe with far higher margins than they had considered. "The textile industry is one where our domestic production will hold up best." As people working in cities, as miners worked, people would buy clothes. It was an observation from the middle of hte table that no one fussed over.

There were a variety of goods which were made which had a civilian market, but the driving reason to refuse expansion of arms was because it didn't, because the writing on the wall for how fast those contracts would be pulled now that the war with Germany was over and western Europe wasn't threatened was self evident.

The decision not to was that there wasn't a foreseeable second market for something like the 7.62x54 not when Westinghouse in the US was sitting on a million rifles. It would have been a boondoggle, and as they were late to industrializing taking that risk without payment upfront, which without the war on wouldn't happen, there was perceived to be too much risk.

--
Notes: To reiterate as one might reasonably intuit this is the conclusion of 1919, where we will do a short time skip, and finally move into early 1920 to serve as prologue before because we are looking at the months where all the warning signs are there, where the market is already overheated despite letting off some 'steam' in 1918 but the rumors of a trade war, and then actual tariffs, demobilization and less demand for heavy industrial goods in the combatant countries, and the flu pandemic largely being over all played a role. The issue of circulating of capital is another issue, but we won't really get into that until later.

Anyway, what I probably should have done was just put this and previous one together as one post, but the next update will be the prologue covering the solidifying the lines in Siberia and open the High Warlord Years arc, which will continue until its conclusion with thee current outline of 1925.

Anyway, as I may or may not have said earlier in the thread, I would do some things differently if say every 2 2.5 months of on page content were something like eighty thousand words of novel style paced plot progression, if I were doing that we would probably be further down the AH rabbit hole

Perhaps Lansing would become president perhaps Pershing, or Wood would succeed him, maybe not go that far but we are moving into the interwar years and the period where China has to continue expanding its domestic industry due to the post war economic crisis, and also where from an Alternate History standpoint there are other emerging states. We will see Spain show up in diplomatic chatter, Sweden, Switzerland as arms suppliers and we will also see actual signatories to the arms embargo basically flaunt it but that presented its own problems historically.

 

[Imperator Pax]

1920 Prologue
The phone rang; loudly. It was dark outside still, and it was cold. Allen swung his feet off the bed and got up to answer... if they were calling the house most likely someone had already sent a car ahead, and given the hour there wouldn't be much time.

As he walked he considered what might have been the prompting for it... the phone call in the middle of the night. He stifled the yawn and coughed into the receiver, "What is it?" He asked. The voice on the other end answered. It was a man's voice a staff officer too young to properly shave, and he was excited... probably for having something to do after being stuck with the late night shift.

Allen scribbled on the pad against the electric lamp's glare.

Then read the numbers back.

The authorization tracked. The train was approved, it had to have been for its contents to come down and cross the border... which meant Waite had approved it. So naturally his next question was if anyone had rang him. Thus far the other operator was waiting for the other end to actually find him.

"Who's onboard the train?" He asked finally. "I see." He got off the phone got dressed and waited outside for the car that was coming, resigned that he most likely miss the morning run. An hour later as four in the morning approached he was sitting in his office cradling the office phone. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"We let them cross the border in November after Omsk fell, and once I was sure that the border with Kirghiz was locked down I made the decision that Kolchak had fucked the situation pretty good. The British wanted the Czechs to go on to Irkutsk, and I have them an alternate option." Waite replied over the phone, "I think you'll understand why I did shortly."

Iseburo's defenses at Irkutsk had pulled the Red Cavalry in and in combination with the schneiders Yamagata's heir had dug in along with no shortage of machine guns, mixes of Lewis guns and Maxims, and Vickers, he had hewed them down but good. It had been work predominantly done by elements of the 12th​ Division of the IJA.

Not Russians, and Iseburo had not allowed a close order pursuit. He had driven the Bolsheviks off, and settled back to see if they would make a second attempt.

That should have reassured Graves, it should have mollified him, but instead Graves had complained about the Japanese use of force It was absurd. Still Grave's foot stamping aside Allen had cabled that it was as fine of a christmas gift as he could imagine given the season. "What about the other troops?"

"They're all here." Waite had never liked the Admiral to begin with, and had probably been undermining his authority anyway, but his actual objective had been to pull troops as many troops and civilians out of Omsk as could be cleared onto the trains before the city had fallen... and then tear the whole railway down to the basics and fortify the border as more or less had been consensus. "And I've promised them passage to harbors where they can take a boat ride back to Europe if that's what they want."

It wasn't just the czechs, though they would certainly be what the state department would care about. It was czechs, slovaks, romanians poles, and probably others. "Have you now?" Allen kept the question short, but the British were going to be pissed.

"We've come to an agreement." He replied cryptically, "I'll call you in the afternoon."

Bill looked at him, and put his own headset down, "He's on a damned train." That much was obvious. It was no wonder it had taken the Transoxiana office hadn't been able to connect immediately. "The whole Legion you think?"

"We're supposed to talk to the state department." The British had wanted the legion to go to Irkutsk to shore up Kolchak, and Kolchak must have upset the Cezechs, generically, again, so they'd gone south instead, maybe Waite had already been talking to them anyway, but regardless it was now apparent that Waite was shipping the legion out of 'South Russia'.

"Well we're what twelve hours ahead of them, call them now."

He knew that... which was also something Waite had probably known. They needed to ring Lansing and figure out what to do about have two or three divisions of the legion on their doorstep.
--
Lansing leapt at the opportunity. It was obvious that with Wilson an invalid that the opportunity to 'succeed', to accomplish the mission must have been of great political value... repatriation of at least half a dozen nations wouldn't .... hopefully wouldn't be their problem. From the sound of it Lansing wanted them shipped to San Francisco and from there put on a train to New York.

... which as quick as that answer had been suggested that the State Department had drawn up plans to handle evacuating the legion months ago, but the pressure to keep them on the front had meant they hadn't needed to be acted upon.

"We're going to need to be there."

"Where?" He asked to bill's statement.

"Tietsin,"

He grunted. Yeah, that was probably true... he'd been evading the legation with excuses... when Akashi had died he hadn't had a choice he had to make an appearance at the funeral, but the Japanese presence had dissuaded Jordan from complaining. "Waite is playing this awful tight to his chest."

"I noticed that, he could have told." Told them sooner, "They have to have been there a month at least."

Because of the need to handle the Australians and the workers, and their own battalions and the Cossack population... and the growing russian population fleeing the bolshevik front. Housing construction had been handled by the corp of engineers... most likely Waite hadn't needed to requisition anything unusual. Millions were fleeing the war what was there to say in a report of I need x beans, and y canned meat, and such.

So the question became what else was going on. "You think its the Brits?"

"I reckon," The texan drawled, "The cable from Irkutsk wanted them to join with Iseburo right,"

"The plan for the whites was to pull back to Irkutsk," Which meant Waite had probably had shipped them the other way, why? It would upset the brits, "The red cavalry smashed its face into Iseburo's fortifications, pretty well. "its said they suffered rates of losses of men and horse comparable to Cedar Mountain, more than half the force scythed down by the red legs before they could make it to the bayonets."

"The infantry officers must be smarting." Bill replied draining his own mug of coffee. "Still better they were prepared for it, I'd never thought Id see horsemen charge prepared infantry, and yet that's what we see."

"When the enemy is making a mistake don't correct them. So the Legion?" He said redirecting to the subject, "We need to talk to the British too, I suppose."

"How do they not know?" Bill had refilled his coffee from the carafe, "We strung the wires," For telegraph and telephone, "But that doesn't stop them from using them, there is no way they shouldn't know."

"The British mission in Irkutsk must not be talking to the one in the south." At least not regularly. "I wonder if the Australians are in on it,"

"Ya think?"

He shrugged, "Alright so we've got a bunch of mouths to feed, I think we should stand first division to those Honglan engines he's got," their model 1917 heavy locomotives, "having to be pulling something more than passenger cars."

"The legion has artillery, machine guns."

That was true, and that could have been it. Waite might have kept things hushed and clandestine like to avoid John Jordan complaining if they took possession of the legions weapons.

--
Notes: this has been a long way coming, and was originally foreshadowed with the original conclusion to the Romanof rescue back in the misc thread. This opens 1920, andthis and 1921 really mark the turning point with the beginning of hte years of high warlordism even though '21 in its present format is likely going to be shorter, a lot of the important financial stuff occurs in 1920, and in 21 much of the important events occur internationally, or are reactions in the coastal cities to events abroad and their repercussions leading to problems. In no small part this is the ZHili-Fengtien war but also Zhang Tsolin loaning the central government a couple million, which really starts Zhang into the throwing good money after bad, and gets him involved in the military cycle which ultimately bankrupts Manchuria historically

ANyway, this update is largely a result of last minute holiday shuffling,

 

[Imperator Pax]

Prologue 1920
It had been apparent when they'd first set up the development corporation in western Zhili with Yuan Shikai's invitation that just too few people were literate. Not in Chinese, not in English. It had been the same in Mexico, and parts of old Spain's empire and it was still true, the language of the railroad was English. With less than ten percent literacy... it was obvious... it was still obvious given the condition of the rural peasantry living conditions... but merely acknolwedging it in writing wouldn't fix that.

It wasn't that the Chinese disliked books, or letters or any of that... the schools just weren't there, and a man needed to be able to do more than just write the characters for his name. Five years of primary schooling... a sixth year starting in the fall six to coincide with the start of the storm in Europe that had torn the old empires asunder.

Augustus, and his brothers, would get a full twelve years of school, then the boys would go to college. There would be other boys who would go to college too, but his focus was for the moment on all the things that were coming together. Education had to be compulsory. It had to teach math, and science, there had be to be an understanding of the numbers that governed the world around them.

The factories brought second and third sons in from the countryside. Fear of bandits had brought whole families. Housing had been tight, so that had to be accounted for. Without the examination system for magistrates education in the countryside became controversial. If a man could leave his father's farm and earn a living wage in the city he could support a family earlier than trying to scratch at the ground on a small plot of land.

In 1914 in just Zhili that had been one thing. The factories had been limited six years ago. Railway workers had been more varied... but he was also thinking about coal. Before they had come, coal mining had been different and unchanged from how it had been for centuries. It was season work, part timers largely in the down seasons, or miners rushing to meet demand at market for the cold months especially.

That had changed with the corporation in Zhili. One part was hourly work schedules, clocks and what not but it was also that it was no longer about just furnishing coal for heating and cooking at home. It was about all the other things a modern society did with coal. Coal mining became all year around and on a schedule that was the same. That had meant introducing of capital machinery to expand coal mining, engines, pumps, lights, pneumatic hammers, the list went on.

So even before the factories had really begun to grow the miners had been taking hourly wages. It was hard work, even with pumps and dynamite it was hard but they could work it year around and support a family, and that was different than just part time splitting it between working a small plot scratching away at depleted soil.

These were the things that would enter books. In fifty years people would look back and talk about the generation and see the population growth and they'd make the connection. That as people moved into town it created demand for various goods that otherwise had less of a market in a more rural community. A demand for commodities and for housing, and for entertainment.

The population boom after the end of world war one as it was to be known in later history was to be remembered as the generation that would fight the second sino Japanese war. That was a misnomer of sorts, but it was the popular memory would think of them as, as the generation born in the north who would forge Chinese unification.

That was not what Allen considered, or contemplated... even if the British would insist that of course they had been right in projecting the course of Chinese Unification after the fact. Allen did not appreciate the comparisons that were made to the emerging government of Xian, and Prussia... but of course in the present day, in January of 1920 the western provinces didn't think of themselves as independent.

The whole process of a constitution was to modernize, and establish laws, and procedures for the provinces not to declare independence from Peking.

The constitution which in its first article enshrined a legal recognition of racial equality. What was effectively a boilerplate homage to the constitution of the states, and just to facilitate a reiteration that all persons regardless were enjoined equal protection under the law... but Wilson had rejected, and not just the Virginian, a Japanese proposal in similar language to such for his stupid league of nations idea.

--
He watched the bright red engine steam ahead. The Model 1917 engine had been built last year and was a standard enough design. It was coal fired, even though he did believe that diesel would supersede that in the near future... but they had a lot of coal.

That was the point. It was available. Bill was bringing oil fields in Shensi to where they could sell at market was at an important stage, but it had been more profitable to sell that production to Britain and Japan than to rush forward trying to replace every engine and get them off coal. It didn't make sense to get off coal when there had been, and still was an engine shortage.

"We should convene the cadre regardless of what this is." Allen didn't get any objections to the statement.

"There is an upcoming meeting anyway."

The provincial constitution had only just come into effect the first of the month. First elections to the lower house would convene this fall, and that would provide popular representation to provide input to the matters of government. Much as it annoyed him, it would have been appropriate to call it a house of burgesses, even Percy had made that observation given the likely constituency of who would be elected to the body.

The brakes started to sound as the whistle fired... and the big engine started to slow.

"Did you get a response from Iseburo?" Bill questioned

"He says his government would have let the Czechs through, but he already doesn't like the admiral so he'd have probably given them a train ride to Vladivostok anyway." From the sound of it, even with this... 'green ukraine' thing the British and Japanese were talking about as existing the Japanese certainly didn't seem like they were going to leave Vladivostok.... and not the railways to be sure... which was Graves's complaint to the Legation, and the state department, and to Washington... but there was no way to even know if Graves's telegram was actually reaching Wilson.

Sam shoved his hands in his jacket, "You know George is next in the rotation to go to England, we can't spare you," Nor could they spare him, Griswold, for that matter, they probably couldn't really spare Bill but he was officially in the line up... if only because of the chance of sending someone state side.

The Texan frowned, "I don't think George is on this trains boys, and I can already reckon Shellman and the rest of the docs are going to be cursing up a storm."
--
Notes: the reason this prologue is three parts besides other than that's how I typically structure things, this being about just shy of five thousand words in its first draft. Is that its to imply the logistical burden involved in the moving of men and materiel. Again that's also the implication of the reference to crimean war in the conclusion of the prologue but armies in WW1 due to how explosively fast the armies grew overtaxed railways that were never intended for armies of that size.

... and of course looking forward, Xian's construction at the end of WW1 of an overland train route across the old silk road, opens a path for Lend Lease. Now in early 1920 there isn't yet a link to Bukhara, never mind Tehran, especially since the Trans oxiana line is operated commercially in an independent white russian successor state in central asia, not as part of Xian. It does however reach Tashkent, and Samarkand by this point, and it will reach Buhkara by the year's end. Tashkent and Samarkand to either Afghanistan or more likely Tehran facilitates a link into the Persian gulf overland and thus trade that isn't dependent on pacific port for either Xian and more practically for South White Russia (which later on is plus because don't have to deal with the other warlords, or the KMT or later Japan).

This benefits obvious in the interwar years Russian successor state industrially, financially economically, so forth and so on, and in the long term Iran was a major lend lease entreport so Xian isn't dependent on the himalayan hump or the indochina route even in 38.

 

[Imperator Pax]

1920
They were indeed still waiting on Waite to actually show up. He must have been coming on the last train to be sure, which was going to be a spot to argue over, but there was nothing to be done other than to wait. To wait, and to continue to work on all the other things that needed doing. Griswold grimaced flexing his hand, and shook his head, "No, we're not there yet." He muttered.

"Problem?"

"No problem." He replied glancing to his workmen, then gestured to his colt, "Mind if I see it." He raised an eyebrow and pulled the pistol from under his shoulder. "See this is one of Colt's early guns," He remarked turning to the two, as he dropped the gun and racked the slide back, "This pretty finish, see the markings on the slide, but," he snagged up a pair of calipers, you can more importantly see slight differences in the cutting,"

Allen sat down and listened to Griswold carry on about his preferred workmanship. In 1916 they had received the browning patents from FN... they hadn't heard anything about that from Colt. The Norwegians who had done the same thing they had done... buy up the patents from FN while they'd been in a lurch. Argentina had picked up the 1911 as well, and both the French, and the British Empire had taken them along as the war went along its merry way.

Griswold had already had enough experience with their own guns, that by the time commercial guns from the states started being a problem to source they'd been looking for an option. Of course by that point the army had bee in expansion, and was worth calling an army, "Anyway," Griswold said, "this has the grip safety cavalry insisted borrowing from the luger," He shrugged, "Which we will do away with in our production." more and more officers were pinning their grip safeties in place anyway and it would simplify production but the real saving would be the new standardized parker finish... which utilized manganese sources they had put under cultivation to sell to England during the war, whether they could sell it to the states or continue to sell it to the Brits would depend on factors at market but they were waiting for things to settle out... but in part it didn't appear as if the Russians under Lenin would be getting back into the market any time soon.

That was generally considered a beneficial thing to their exports of material that the Russian empire had furnished to market before the war in Europe. It might have been callous but so long as the war in Eastern Europe continued there was some degree of insulation, and there would be a market. "Sam I don't mean to rush you, but need to see about that train."

"I know." He replied, "Just wanted to make a point. You ready?"

Allen returned his browning to ready, and its resting place, "What is that about?"

"The college lectures on the Crimean war, and leaving aside needing to teach why we had to explain out Russia lost that one, we also have to explain why it was a transition between really modern war and the napoleonic fighting." The war between France and England in the 1850s had been against a Russia looking to throw its weight around, but it had been a limited war. A war that France and England had entered in because it disrupted the balance among the powers so to speak on the continent... but it had been the first real war defined by the railroad, and by proxy large volumes of steel production to provide for the army at war.

Six decades later here they were.

The primary rail artery ran east to west. A massive trunk line that had been made possible with steam drivers, dynamite, and standard steel with reinforced caissons to level it out. While they had made the attempt where feasible to be as efficient with time and space as possible, the Transoxiana as it connected through the Gansu corridor took the route of the ancient silk road, close enough that it might as well have been called such officially.

Since they'd never intended to build the Transoxiana line that was coincidental... but industry and the work of engineers made it appear a matter of forethought.... but part of that was demographics. The route through Gansu then across the Altai, and Tian Shan all of it went through and reached caravan cities, and the result was that the railways had a potential ability to support merchant trading towns along the route without needing to build up crossroad towns like the states had done... those existing towns let them build branch lines off the main line.

The massive staging yard west of Xian proper were a cloud of coal smokestacks from all the locomotives, a reminder of the engine shortage more than about the pollution they generated. The inter urbans would be cleaner and less obnoxious, they'd be more space conscious too. "That's Waite then." Sam remarked. "Lets go see what this whole mess is about." The men around them were equipped up to standard.

Triple aught, .000, was a mechanical tolerance, you took a piece of cloth, cotton for example, and you cut it and the machine sewed to that standard. A thousandth of an inch. Where that came into play were in the difference between uniforms. A quality northrop loom could turn out the twill for the engineers rain jackets which then went to mechanical needle machines for that degree of work.

It wasn't even that expensive. The big investment was in the machinery. A northrop loom bought in 1910 still worked ten years later, and paid for itself by saving time, and being precise. Singer machines for sewing handled the needlework. You paid up front for the machine, and it freed workers to do other jobs, or to run more of the same machines.

For military purposes you only needed them for specialty equipment. The British pack gear was really only designed for moving a man station to station. The problem with that logic, was that the reality of war in Europe had shown that sub par stiches came up and tore loose. Thus on a commercial export market the idea was a little more marketing to emphasize a brand name tailoring. "Winter doesn't look like it was all that nice to them." Allen observed regarding the czechs, "And there are a lot of them if he pulled all of them off."

Czechs was a short hand, and a misnomer if that were true, "We'll have to ship the poles to their own country."

"From the sound of it the Poles will at least be fighting the Russians."

"So give them a hair cut, a hot shower, and chow, issue them fresh uniforms and tell them to stay limber, but we'll have them home whenever the shipping situation is settled." That was the problem, there was no telling when that would be. "I hope to hell he's on this train."

"Looks like a lot cargo." Sam replied, "Which is odd because those 122mm howitzers were with tuesday's train, I would have figured the whole artillery park would have arrived by this point. Is there another train?"

"Not unless he plans to ride in after this lot I was told this should be the last of them."

"Maybe this is the last of the supply, but it probably would have made more sense to leave some stuff behind, seeing as the British are likely going to complain about carrying it all, and I doubt the States are going to be much better."

"Yeah, the maritime commission is still a pain," He agreed, then snapped his mouth shut, "Yeah there he is." Waite was in the company of men who were in the officer uniforms. "And their dependents, guess that makes sense..." He trailed off.

It did to a degree... Civilian baggage was possible, but still a bit much. They went to make the rounds and the acquaintances all the same.

--
Several hours later Waite let the bomb drop for the whole affair, "Leaving aside of course that yes I think this is a help to the state department, its more than that." and the state department per se wasn't who might throw bombs over this.

"Get on with it." Sam grunted, and Allen had to agree Waite had been incommunicado long enough that whatever this was would obviously call a stir. "We've cabled the MAK with your antics, and the European commission to let them know." In no small part to avoid having Bert get blindsided by some foreign office man in London.

"The czechs want to go home. To the point that there was a risk of mutiny," Waite spread his hands, "Kolchak's a son of a bitch, Graves is right not to like the man, and if you don't want to take his word Al will probably take Iseburo, but the admiral is the wrong man for the job and he doesn't have the right friends. So I extended a hand to the czechs that if they would do me the favor of making sure that they withdrew in good order we could all help each other." He remarked a conspiratorial lean, "You see," He cleared his throat, "the Tsar's gold reserves were loaded up... and that is where the business arrangement lies. Safe passage."

"Excuse me?"

"We're getting paid, Al."

"No I got that." He replied sharpishly... but the real question was...

"The Czechs aren't in much different straits than us, they have a young nation needs capital," and it wasn't until much later he considered exactly how Waite had meant that comment, "so it wasn't as if I pushed them hard."

The Czechs had in exchange for immediate passage through decided to bypass Kolchak entirely... the Russian admiral had not been happy when the legion had disappeared and had arrived in the northern most station of their trans oxiana line with an offer.

Three hundred tons of gold. Not the entirety of the Tsar's gold reserve. The tsars had been late coming to the gold standard only adopting it in 1897, but in twenty years they had built up a lot of it and then spent a lot of it, but still had a lot over all.

Three hundred tons was ... a lot of god damned money. Griswold put it perhaps best, "And you spring this on us without drink?"

He paused contemplative, "So that means that Kolchak doesn't have the gold, and it is here there is no chance then of Lenin getting it?"
--
Notes: this has been in the cards for literally years, this was part of the original conclusion written for the end of the Romanoff rescue epilogue for ww1, it sets up for a number of interwar facets including also parts of the Polish-Soviet war's references later on. It has effects on international diplomacy and so forth.

But this opens the calendar year 1920, and that's of critical importance from a timeline standpoint, because its here where in ideological terms where the break becomes permanent. The reason in some of the older material Confederation gets used is that the North China Confederation, or Xian's confederation starts with a relatively week consensus based system rather than over federal power. Shansi, Shensi, the western commanderies all have their own constitutions based on the same framework come into legal force this year. There is not explicit federal control over the provinces collectively. There would not need to be in 1919.

In 1920 after the constitutions have gone into effect though things begin to change ideologically, both 'domestically', in the broader Northern China region, and in China as a whole. This contributes to the British especially next year amping up the Prussia comparisons, but at 'home' Xian and its collection of provinces have to contend with political factions, and fallout from the permanent breaking up of the beiyang clique for good, and also Sun Yat-sen down south starts making friendly noises towards the soviets, and he also writes / publishes / revises (whatever one wants to call it) / an overhaul of his political thesis and that coupled with his lack of martial credibility undermines rather than strengthens his position, the other political problem ideologically is one that has been touched on and thats Feng (who is dead by this point, Cao Kun suceeds him) and Duan's espoused views about how the Peking government should move forward.

Specifically this is the issue of Duan pursuing a centralized authority around himself, and a continued aggressive attempt to bring the south into line by military force, versus the 'anti-war' faction under Feng who advocated Federalism and potentially just writing off the south in favor of a more cohesive northern union of beiyang provinces. This got the latter a lot of flak from the former's supporters, but it was out there in the ideological battleground. So what will happen is when the Anhui-Zhili war happens and Fengtien (Manchuria) go at it in the summer and Duan's goverment collapses it makes an ideological break that cleaves apart Northern Chinese unity... and part of that is that Zhili clique burns metaphorical bridges over its attempt to bring back the old parliament to the southern provinces and unlike Manchuria (fengtien) who opts to largely ignore this, ideologically with a new constitution in effect Xian and the western provinces go the old parliament has no legitimacy hold new elections entirely don't just put the old people in there, and that defeats the point of the compromise because the KMT parliament was a concession to power brokers in the southern provinces to get their ascent to a new nominally national unity government... and at home within Xian's public opinion where sentiment is riding high on how things are going, how things look it doesn't break well because the south has no reputation as anything other than a dividing factor.

That end result is that where 1919 was tumultuous, 1920 proves to an ideological breaking point.

 

[Imperator Pax]

March 1920
It had been a couple months since those few days in January spring was coming, the days were getting longer. He sat surrounded by papers in a warm well lit office, but his mind was elsewhere. Before the congress had ordered the class graduated early there had been a confidence at West Point, a confidence among most everyone that they were 'the vanguard of civilization and progress' as one paper had put it. As the class prepared to graduate early prepared to don the cadet gray one last time before going to the khakis and going over the sea that was all the papers could talk about.

Twenty years later. A hundred thousand didn't seem like so many for an army. The European war had shattered that far beyond the war between Japan and the Russians. There was an optimism though that came with where they stood as well. There was good reason for optimism in the ranks though... the Taiping had run rampant from December 1850 through Perry's black ships opening Japan, and through basically the breadth of the war between the states. Japan had seriously undertaken modernity, and the old dynasty hadn't, and the result had been an end to the Manchu's rule even if it had taken a long time for that to be born out.

They still war gamed the battles of the Taiping. They had added other conflicts, and battles. The college endeavored to have men understand the terrible battles of the somme and verdun at least relative to what could made sense of.

This year inaugurated a step towards modernity in other ways. The constitutions for the provinces were in effect now. Admittedly the promulgation of the one for Tibet was optimistic, and he wondered if the eastern half of the province knew they had a constitution, but it was still something. Tibet was the least developed of all the regions, it had textiles, it had a growing textile industry, it produced textiles that would have a market for luxuries exported to the states. That would bring in money, that would buy things that Tibet needed after a fashion.

It was more complicated than simple business.

There was so much that needed to be done.

There was a knock on the door. "Enter." He answered, and the door opened, and he put the hydro electric drafting plans to one side. It was time. He stood up and his boots echoed across the hardwood floors, "How are things?"

Powell shrugged, "They could be better. The situation in Europe isn't great. The French tariffs are going to crush Latin American exports, I wish that was hyperbole but its the damned truth, France is going to turn their colonies into captive markets, I figure its an attempt for autarchy, the British will reply tit for tat."

That was no surprise Powell's statement was something already recognized... because it was what happened with tariffs came out. People still remembered mercantilism... "Frankly the French and the Germans were never free markets anyway," He replied, "What do you propose doing?"

"I want to stabilize things, I want to build a railway goes all the way down to the canal."

"Yeah?"

It wouldn't get that far. Powell would build the railway across three of the four republics but that coupled with Costa Rica's instabilities further south and then the onset of the depression stalled further development, and that prevented his ideal. "Its about economic integration, middle America has talked about it beat around the bush before. A common market, and before the capital just wasn't there. Especially once Britain went to war but we can do it."

They pushed through the double doors to join the seventy odd other men, more than half in gray uniforms... which was the other development. The MAK had adopted its own lighter version of the uniform but it was still gray. Lighter in the sense the twill was better suited for closer to the tropics.
--
The start of spring conference had opened with a look at everything that was going on in Europe. Steel was the foundation of industrial society. Hence the Emden Endowment for the Metallurgical Society to establishment of a college and research institution as such... they hadn't really done much in the way of pure research since the college had been founded. The war and all, but the war had had to come to an end.

To that end there were limits on studying the process of galvanization... or at least there had been, "I am all for just sticking my finger in the Russo-Asiatic Bank's eye," Or at least he would have been if it had still been in the 1914 leadership.... no was sure who was supposed to be in charge now, but they'd always met in Paris, and there was French capital involved, "Now vindictiveness aside do you you think this real?"

Allen shrugged to Dawes's question, "I think it is," But it wasn't his area, "We'd have to fund the research, but if he's right," If Sedzimir was on to something, "then we should see an industrial process by the end of the decade." It was always best to be conservative with these things. Never assume something was going to be revolutionary but don't dismiss it out of hand... and what would happen of course was that in a decade when the wall street crash had plunged the states into the worse depression in history and knackered western Europe... well in ten years China would be more insulated from the financial crisis. "What do you think Powell, you agree?"

"I do." The MAK cadre head responded. "This has automobile applications of the first order, I've picked through, expand the number of rollers, put those electric motors to drive them, that by itself is worth delving into it." Which was not something the MAK had the ability to act on at the moment, so the work would have to be done here in Xian.

The probably with a hundred men, well total, was that it was often difficult to catch everyone... they had been talking about some kind of switchboard and headset apparatus but it hadn't gone anywhere yet. "Should we move on to radios? Or the Pyrex patent licensure," Dawes questioned... rhetorically.

"Radios," Came the chime in from almost a third of the table in unison, a couple of the locomotive men protested... and the pyrex patent needed to be seen to for safety reasons, it would help safety but it lacked the perceived broadness of radios. Of everything they would do.

The meeting went on throughout the day. The conference of Spring 1920 focused on allocating resources, and the argument to integrate improvements from the work, and work on leads to better sciences and the industrial world. A lot of it was still focused on their 'bread and butter' on trains, and steel manufacture, metallurgy in general. Steel was the building block. It was what the trains needed, the bridges, cities.

The tooling.

The machinery was expendable. Buy use it up, use the profits to buy newer better machines, or een build them in house... the latter had been the lesson of the war as supply of new Hartford tooling dried up... and people still grumbled about tooling that had gotten shipped off to Tsarist Russia only to be appropriated by the Bolsheviks. It was 1920, they were looking forward to a new decade... and one with a different and potentially brighter future than what things would have been without the influx of capital from the war. The demands to make more for export.

"Speaking of capital there is the bank minutes, you want 'em?"

"I might as well." That also wasn't his area of expertise. There had been a reason that the central bank had been set up independent of direct cadre control, and with explicit clear goals. Wilson should not have overruled his own bank during the war, "What's this?"

"They say recession actually started before the armistice. The number crunching on the machines bears out the theory."

It made sense... the market had been overheating in materials the year before, and price controls had let off pressure from the boiler, but not enough. "That's interesting, but the consensus is that prices will come down then?"

"Yeah, maybe this year, but certainly next." Dawes agreed. "Now," He coughed, "We don't expect to see a return to pre war lows. That's makers, that's gonna be consumers as well, people with money in their pocket are going to want to buy stuff, so I expect that things get moving after all the boys are home there will be a demand for things, but prices in general should decline from where they've so maybe 1914 prices."
--
Notes: We have officially entered 1920 as a calendar year main story whatever you want to call it. By this point and time Reinsch has not only resigned, but he has been replaced as US legation, Alston has finally succeeded John Jordan there are other personnel changes to the combined anglo America legation in Peking. As mentioned in this section the Asiatic bank which nominally held the Russian manchurian lines is in financial turmoil due to the Bolshevik seizure of power, no one is readily clearly on who holds what there are several changes of leadership various attempts to restructure RAB had been prone to making legal challenges really between the period of 1902-1916 against various Anglo, Japanese, and American investment attempts throughout China, this included in Hankow with the floundering russian investments in what is today Wuhan. There were other litigations while WW1 was going on, and then of course there was well the 1917 revolutions and the floor fell out but by that point there was a lot of animosity between the various banks. The RAB's behavior was not unique it was just the one that got the shaft from starting from an already weaker position (post 1905 especially, but then 1917).

Anyway, and also the situation in Manchuria, and Siberia here, will effect how Manchuria acts in the future, but Zhang Tso-lin always kept ties to the Manchu court and that will play a role later when we start getting into both Manchuria as well as Mongolia with Ungern in 21.

 

[Imperator Pax]

War games - considering what kind of forces have your China and potential enemies,you should rather focis on russian civil war battles,maybe polish-soviet 1920,too.
There is no enemies and places where your China could fight second Verdun.

Click to shrink...

Like, at the modern US Army (and the naval war college) war college we still war game out WW1 battles its more about staff level understanding of order of operations. Its not that we expect to refight those battles, we don't, its about if you have x and the enemy has y why does Z happen. Its about asking the attendees do you understand why and how of doctrine.

Yes, the Russian Civil war and P-S are probably more reflective of the actions you're likely to fight but if you're running that course is there going to be the documentation to dissect those battles the Army War College in WW1 was looking at San Juan Hill and the spanish-american war because we understood both sides and it was wanted that the officers taking the course work would recognize and think about this (largely because most of west points grads were being promoted rapidly, and 2 most of them hadn't had serious staff work for that size of units) no one in the 1920s in China is going to refight Verdun the resources for that just aren't there, Verdun was very much a battle that occured due to geographical constraints and no ability to move latterally.

 

[Imperator Pax]

March 1920
Allen pulled the paper out of the rack. The cadre was a hundred members nominal, that was the paper strength and like any unit rarely met it. They were down a couple members who had yet to have replacements named. There twenty plus members of the body who were proxies for cadre members who were currently abroad.

Underneath the Cadre though were bodies, and organizations connected to the army, and to business and day to day to running of both... and going forward there would be a bureaucracy in the province going forward. They had been planning for that, but it would be the staff officers, there were division commanders to consider, there was the corp of engineers, there were others that developed since Bai Lang's death... but they were doing more now than just talking about staffing government posts. They were talking about implementation of formal bureaucracy.

For the moment though it was just the three of them in the room.

"Are these numbers accurate?"

There was a snort, Waite shook his head, put his glass to one side, "Hoss those are probably optimistic. Leaving aside schooling requirements, housing, and," another snort, "that there is a lot of demand, I mean most of our boys want to make rank. Career sergeants are in high demand too... with reservists and the system we'll get some overlap, but if we have to call those troops up it'll mean disrupting the economy."

That wouldn't be so much of an issue during the calling of the guard was for a flood or to handle a purely short term emergency. "We knew there were going to be teething issues."

Understatement. "I mean, we'll have some people ship out for Powell, the Guatemala city trunk is expanding,"

"Don't remind me," Allen muttered glancing to the other man, but it was standard practice. They needed experienced crews to handle the track." They had agreed to Powell's temporary duty request on the fact that was how things worked, "I didn't need Powell reminding me how much trouble it was to set the first line up." That they had built largely relying on techniques from the corp of engineers... and that had meant setting dynamite in some cases personally. Powell wasn't prepared to do that.

"He wasn't even here for most of that," Waite snorted. "He's got no business talking about that. Especially given him being off, I don't care how well he's laid the foundation over there."

"You agreed to the personnel though."

"Its a major trunk line I'm not stupid I know what he needs... but I also know he wants a battalion of first rate shooters."

The truth was when they had started they had needed much as when Japan had first laid down rails had needed to import steel for the rails... and that had meant going to the states, but they had started securing coal and iron digging and then a mill of their own as soon as possible... and by the time they had started laying the trunk line west from Zhengzhou... well they had steel... never mind after the move to Xian.

"Its for security, there are bandits over there too. Black Jack was jumping the border with Mexico before the States went to go save Europe from the Germans."

Allen glanced to Waite, "I know, we all know that," He replied holding up a hand, "How is Dulles on that affair?"

"He's alright with it... given the yankee in New York, and that Wilson," [is] "a cripple, its better than that since it means we shouldn't have a problem. The House is divided... we will have to see, but its hiring season, and its buying season major, Powell knows it we go in while things are cheap we ship it to Guatemala and we build now while all the competition is struggling to find a sure footing." The former signals officer moved over to liberate the decanter, "Now is the time to move."

"Of that we're in agreement," Waite agreed, "Griswold, Dawes, yeah we're all onboard. Doesn't change the fact its right there in black and white, that we're gonna be short manpower. That's why we're going to expand hiring from Europe." Particularly the defunct empires of old europe... and not just for here... "But the consensus is unanimous, be ambitious boys." Waite took a glass. "And admit you're glad to be here, for more reasons than just the whiskey."

Ah the idiocy of prohibition, another reason not to head back to the states.
--

Percy tucked his handkerchief away, "Always a fine breakfast John Allen, reminds me of home. "

Allen sipped the orange juice, the oranges which come from a ship that had left the states from San Francisco harbor but it was a good thing that things were going back to normal. The French had wanted economic controls to remain... .which bluntly Allen interpreted was that France wanted preferential rates for being French... and it was starting to cost the French, "I told you Wilson had not a chance of getting through the Senate with it," He remarked.

"Yes, you did." And without an American assent to Versailles the British government under the Welsh Wizard had written themselves the nice out of things on the continent. "It toppled Clemenceau's government."

He made a vaguely affirmative noise in the back of his throat and set the glass down. "I assume that must have some effect with regards to Alston."

"It does after a fact." Percy folded one leg and formed a scholar's cradle, "The Japanese, have Vladivostok quite secure. The French have left, and they left significant amounts of material, but well the Poles are fighting the Soviets in the west-"

"Percy would you get on with it,"

"You don't really need rifles, John Allen. That's what the arms embargo, well embargos... but that doesn't hurt you, you have a dozen arsenals now I have a friend at Vickers now that the war is over there are just certain things which well the embargo doesn't say anything about, and the letter of it is the important thing."

He drummed his fingers on the desk, a part of him was tempted to bring up the Vickers Siemens scandal from before the war... but all of that seemed long ago now... so he adjusted the trim of the conversation, "We might not need rifles but I am given to understand that is not a sentiment shared with our Cossack neighbors."

"Yes, that is true. There is a great deal of hardware that under the defense ... plans, spending for imperial defense that are surplus to requirements and will be paid off."

"And you wouldn't want it sitting in Manchuria or Mongolia."

"No."

In hindsight it was a good call. What would happen was that that new, the shiny new weapons left for the allied intervention that hadn't been well planned for and allocated well for at all would leave plenty of equipment and tools beside... but the diversion was merely about ferretting out the other positions. There was no reason not to explore potential agreements, "You're worried about India." You're was really more 'you lot are', meaning the whole British establishment.

"We will always be worried about the jewel in the crown." Percy replied, "yes and that's why, no point pretending," He remarked clearing his throat, "It is what it is you know... part of the problem is Wilson's declaration of the aims of the expedition without consulting either Japan or Britain, and he has acted sense as if our efforts to contain the Bolshevik menace are the problem, can you scarcely imagine what would have been if we had simply allowed Lenin to sell the country off to the Germans. The Germans are beat, they're down for now, but for the rest of it, we must contain the reds... and-"

"The railways."

"Yes. There is no ocean, no sea we can traverse,"

There was always the possibility of Persia, but neither broached it, they wouldn't do that today there were too many uncertainties about that route. "The Cadre has its interests," There were technical, and institutional skill sets that needed to be cultivated, "Vickers opened a laboratory in 1917, and not for rifles, so you could say we'd be amenable to cooperation, and purchases from England." The truth was few if any of the cadre's membership these days could afford to be rigorous laboratory dwellers ... there was too much else to do they were needed elsewhere... and if the body of the university was to expand, if the technical colleges were going to go there needed to be commercial laboratories that provided work. In vickers case it was a matter of electrical power... but not just that Vickers was a big company, "You're correct there are things other than rifles, but its not necessarily ship building either, as you said no seas we can traverse." Better not to let Percy think that Vickers might have a shot at any canal works... even though those needed to be be done.

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1920
He thought about they had built that first line... but the Qing were long gone now... they'd been on their last legs, and now it felt so long ago.

In 1910, a decade earlier, he'd have been appalled with what Wilson had done on behalf of the European war... appalled wasn't the right word per se to what he felt though. Wilson had made mistakes, in particular ignoring his own experts at his own vaunted federal reserve when they told him something he hadn't liked but Wilson had overseen developments that could not be ignored in view of what they had been able to accomplish... but the rush to demobilize was a mistake, that much was clear.

They could learn from the mistakes... they had to learn from the mistakes. They needed to be planning for a decade in the future. That meant keeping up with developments in manufacturing for when hostilities resumed. When, was the question, for them, for here in China, for the Middle American cadre. That meant planning, some things were simple. Up front payment, US Dollars the pound as a secondary, it was probably too much to hope for for actual gold some people would have preferred that, but credit wasn't an option.

Even if the Bolsheviks hadn't defaulted on the Tsarist loans the French noise should have made everyone leery... the French were too mercantilist. Not so mercantilist that if it came to it don't sell to them at all, but selling to the British seemed safer. Carry was another concern, and that was hard to predict.

Production, procurement needed to be more effective. That meant in investing in improved machinery, it meant trying new ideas. Better rolling techniques, larger steam driven hammers, scale production, more efficient mines. There was a note in the file about mines, which had hit his desk, that would have to be followed up on. All of that would be important for making the Ford deal work, as had already been noted the use of automotive industry would be about moving supplies beyond the end of a rail head... the model T or an equivalent or derivative there of would be feasible to sell to the working public, but it wouldn't be as readily available to the work force for at least a few years. Most of the automotive production would be for commercial or military application, and would take the form of trucks, or tractors. They knew that, Ford knew that, and their agreement with Ford was already slated to provide ford trucks, and tractors, the latter from Edsel's branch of the company so really it was the shipping bottleneck than anything... and it was no secret that old man was riding his son hard.

The agreement with Ford was to buy Fords in bulk... something they would have done anyway but had been stopped by the War and its board controlling industries so even in that they had an advantage. In 1911 before the Qing had collapsed they wouldn't have been considering making anything more than more coal fired trains, there hadn't existed a demand for more than that not really. The electric generator demand had been limited, too limited that year to be a real priority for domestic production., but the integration of their own copper mines and increased demand changed that, as had the war's strangle. The war had changed everything.

That was the limitation, it was hard to be sure that ... that that change was understood... or that everyone understood it in the same way. That was most apparent in the papers that were coming forward from their own officers ... the men in the lower ranks trying to make sense of it all... especially with the end of the war to look at. To that end it was just about static defense, it was not entirely about the transition to maneuver with overwhelming force, it wasn't just about logistics... and it was not about looking back at the old masters to contemplate and make sense of the strategy. It was all of that together, and more.

"So what is the ETS suggesting?"

Bill shuffled, and glanced to Waite, "It was something I was talking to Fin," His younger brother Phineas, who had been in the Navy, "in March 1862 the Virginia was completed."

"Are you suggesting we need to build river boats," Cole started to speak up, "You want gunships?"

"Yes." Cullen declared succinctly.

"Nah that's not it." Bill answered, "We got to talking, my brother and I were talking turrets like on Monitor became the norm, you see it now on the French tank, the Renault, but we were looking at that as well. Sloping the plate provides protection, it cuts down on internal volume sure, I want to slope the plates on the armored cars,"

"We think it would provide better protection for the machine guns,"

"And you want more than that eventually, I take it?" He guessed, "For what?"

"Mobile gun carriage. A howitzer for close range direct fire."

"Why?"

"Why not?" Waite questioned, "It'll protect my red legs, my red legs bring a moving gun directly against enemy infantry in the open or their positions of defense. "

He held up his hands, "That's fair." He glanced at Cullen, raising an eyebrow before he asked the question, "Do you really want boats?"

"The green gang is running boats in the yangzi, it'd be nice to have something, but we can talk about it later." Cullen turned the office chair around, "So what do you two girls want with this?"

"We want to test the angles to start with."

"Then what change how you cut plate, how you roll it, what?"

"Yeah, something like that, I read the report from Russia, that church bell, that could have been bad nine kinds of ways bad,. The one pounder doesn't give the force of it," For infantry out in the open at close range it was one thing, but other than that, "it hasn't got the range, and it doesn't offer protection adequate for what we need, and its top heavy... which we already know from with third."

These would be the talks that would eventually lead to the formation of the commission that would lead to the Virginia plate tests in a few years down the road. In the spring of 1920 it simply wasn't a priority. The interim solution was simply to make better changes to the Ford trucks, which would supersede and replace the other models of trucks with the army.
--
The ford deal was the major investment for the Corp of Engineers, as well as the rifle divisions. The infantry divisions less so. Second Division would receive trucks probably in a few years, but because the infantry units were intended to operate much closer to the railheads, and occupy defensive strong points it wasn't a priority.

"You want to establish a what?"

Allen frowned covering his ear, "Don't holler Hodges. We're all right here."

"I think we should have an independent air division. An Air Force." Adams replied, rounding in his chair. "For gods sake you were the one who said Vickers is having the feelers out."

The two men were both being watched by the rest of the body. Adams was a junior member his suggestion was a feeler. Allen figured someone else would have put it out there. It had been one thing to talk about buying air planes for the mail service, but even that was a combination of arguments for needing a critical needs ferry service... and also as an excuse for international procurement to skirt Jordan's embargo.

The problem with Jordans embargo is he couldn't, hadn't been able to stop them from bringing in the albatros that they had settled on as their preferred option... and he couldn't stop them from having Hieronymus build more powerful engines for the birds either.

That was going to be slow going for other reasons. There were lessons to learn from war time production to be sure, but planes were not trains. They had different construction requirements, they all accepted that. The automotive industry was more important, had more obvious, more broad civilian generalizability.

In august the British had enumerated a ten year rule. The parliamentarians of old england talking about how a follow on war was not likely for the forseeable future... if they were lucky that meant they'd have those ten years of breathing space... but if they weren't lucky they needed to be ready. Optimism needed to be tempered by prudence.

Hodges shifted his beginning of a portly bulk, the weight gain not helped by the leg break in an accident during the expansion of the war years, he wasn't quite fat yet, but John Adams a thin man with a wide forehead. "An air force?" Hodges grunted, "For what? Because the British have done it, cause they have a Royal Air Force..." Hodges paused heading off that the Signals Corp had held the US birds before the war... and the US had gone into the war unprepared for the air war, and that was the biggest impediment to the talk.

Future arguments for the Air Division becoming the Air Force and an Air Minister was to ultimately follow a model along what shaped the Gendarems structure. It was to be a division largely in name and based in 1920 to study, to conduct staff work, engineering work, on both air messenger service, civilian side duties, as well as defensive, air protection, air reconnaissance, and air attack. It was to be a tall order, but it was also not in 1920 a priority. It was not something they intended to pour money into production or procurement of large numbers of planes until they had a strategy, and framework to answer fundamental questions... by that point Hodges had retired to Tibet, and Adams had shipped to Middle America, where of course they had a larger need for Hieronymus aircraft to fly search missions for the conflict brewing there

 

[Imperator Pax]

.
April 1920
At a little over three years old the Infantry Staff College had graduated three classes under its belt now. Its course work included the classics of literature. The same was true for the elementary schools as well... just in a different scope of study. He had had concerns about Yuan's insistence on the Confucian core curriculum for primary school... but for officers, reviewing Sun Tzu made more sense... but arguably more important were looking at what other people in his day, and age had said about the book. To that extent the Wuzi was at least as important... and probably more important a historical document than Sun Tzu was for certain political lessons.

They would never go back to a society of Confucian literati, but they would also never place the same emphasis and care that the Art of War wanted to place on spies... but that wasn't to say they ignored either. They couldn't afford to do that... because the truth was, "Both books are taught to the Japanese," The Samurai might have been abolished as a caste but their traditions did survive in some measure, "At that their staff colleges." Yan nodded in concurrence... he had after all graduated from the army one, and even though most of them hadn't gone to Japanese schools had been exposed to the Japanese body of literature that they studied.

But just as the domestic literature was important and looking at how other neighboring nations interpreted the old classics there needed to be room for new developments. New technology could still validate old ideals, but they could invalidate old standbys as well.

Only part of today to be the rehashing of the bayonet curriculum. There would be talk about all the toys the artillery had developed, field guns, howitzers, mortars and machine guns, but perhaps as equally important was political inoculation. It was to be teh defining factor of change... and to the British it was a reiteration of the Clauswitzenian maxims.

For the FSO and their dilettante armchair experts within the political elite it played towards their own preconceived notions... and that included super imposing the last two and a half centuries of European political history upon the east.

The Qing had coveted western weapons. The Wuwei corp, and the Hui sharpshooters had rushed for Mauser rifles, maxim machine guns, and Krupp mountain guns. The Qing, the Koreans, and Japanese had all invited Prussian officers.

"Educational, more broadly social reforms are necessary. It has to be the whole populace." Waite remarked, "It was the black and white, modernization had to be pushed forward by an educated populace, success was having locally available skills not simply bringing things in from overseas the war proved that by cutting them off as central governments imposed controls on resources hitherto unfathomable.

Things like the exam system, the eight legged essay, would not return, but the traditions of an educated elite, the value society put on degree holders, and magistrates would still be there. It was about bringing the middle classes, the upper classes into the fold... but even so they weren't attempting to crib liberally from what had allowed the Meiji reformers to modernize Japan unilaterally.

Modernization had to include education for obvious economic reasons, but there was not a nationalist agenda at the higher echelons of command. That was true of the Ma clique's participation and of Yan Xishan with regard to his native province... because in April of 1920 no one was looking at the full break down of the beiyang clique into its composite factions of northern power brokers. This was supposed to be a conference on education, and joint military and civilian political theory. It was not as it would be reinterpreted later perhaps even reimagined as the origin or a step in the direction of a northern Chinese ideological separatism. There was one 'China' no one disagreed with that consensus, but there were ... after a fact regional provincial or even county loyalties that separated north from south.

"We're not in disagreement, but the college itself is intended to prepare majors, and little birds for battalion command," In 1916 after all there had been no brigade generals and the purpose of the Staff college had been effectively as a promotion board running through officers to contend with the expanding army.

"When the new class graduates we should have the officers to fill the ranks forward, but our bigger concern is materiel command ranks." Waite's look was directed to Yan.

The Dujun paused. "As I understand this is a common problem."

Waite grunted in agreement, "Yeah, but if the machine bureau in Taiyuan is going to produce mortars, and brownings something has to be done." The mortars were really less of an issue, no one really expected Stokes's three inch of any of the improvements to it were a problem. It was the wiring and filling out work for things like the three inch pack guns and larger cannons that needed work, or the complex cutting that went into the receiver of a water cooled browning machine gun.

--
His focus was on train tables. Trains to weihaiwei and Tietsin, but trains westward to the Transoxiana line. The British treasury was going to start pinching pennies soon. It was unavoidable... but on the otehr hand the red cavalry the only real expeditionary force the bolsheviks were capable of mustering had been driven back.

It was stupid of them to have attacked in winter anyway, but never mind into a prepared force . That spit balled into too many speculations. Had they done it out of revolutionary zeal, out of the belief that the Japanese couldn't possibly withstand them, ignorance... ay number of mistaken factors... the red cavalry had attacked head forward...

...but instead of forming square the defenses had shattered them, and the Japanese had chased them from the province.... but then they had stopped chasing. They had stopped chasing because Iseburo had insisted they had no mandate to do that, and they didn't have the resources. He wouldn't let the army do what he had already recognized had been the white's problem .

MacKinder didn't think it would be enough. He and a handful of others in the FSO wanted to act, felt it was a duty to act... but they weren't the ones controlling the purse strings. The British were trying to push for other solutions. Since the French weren't reliable sources of troops, the British were redirecting pressure elsewhere, leveraging the French to try and support the new states in the west... or that was what the FSO claimed they were doing.

It seemed a rosy assessment.

It seemed pretty likely that the British were puffing themselves up , or were taking French affirmatives at face value without proof... but that could be cynicism as well... they wouldn't really be sure, couldn't be sure until things settled out.

... but it was April now, if something was going to happen it would have to be soon. "Lenin calls it War communism."

Allen put the tables down, and glanced to Dawes, "Banditry would be more accurate from what we've heard."

"Yeah." The artilleryman agreed somberly, "He's going to cause a famine... and frankly that's the point since hunger is a weapon." Lenin's statements on what was acceptable for revolutionary fighting, or fighting for the revolution was a double edged sword. It was easy for city people, Berliners, Londoners, New Yorkers to wave red banners they lived in the great western urban metropolis it was rhetoric, the same as an city party boss to them. "Its all rhetoric and flourish as long as they aren't the ones hungry."

"I don't like this ten year foolishness."

He got a look in reply, and then a shrug, "Its the anglo-saxon inclination John, the congress will lap it up, why spend the money they'll say? The English will say they shouldn't need to fight a war in Europe, the states will look towards the oceans and they'll all bray about splendid isolation together. Must be nice having all that shoreline," He remarked wistfully, "But we can never afford that sort of optimism hoss. Anyway," Dawes rifled through a set of papers, "Here,"

"Textile reports?" He bit down a groan... it was dry reading even if clothes were a staple good.

"Yeah. I think we can get the cotton we need from central Asia, we make denim out of it turn around, and ship it back out. There are mills state side we can work with, where we do the same thing, its shorter turn around, but local cotton will be insulated against a trade war."

"So you think this loom thing is for real?"

"Hodges thinks so, but its a machine it'll take time and I don't know if he's comfortable waiting. This is more about supplying the mill not the machine, and its also about stability. We can make free trade work to our advantage... if France and England, and the states start tit for tat we don't want to be in the middle of all that. So we insulate where we can preemptive like."

--
Notes: one thing to note is that Clauswitz is not in the US Army's main curriculum at this point in time, it doesn't enter the normal curriculum until the seventies. The Royal Navy is actually more Clauswitzian than the US through theoriticians like Corbett. So thus while it hasn't actually entered the curriculum Xian does adopt Clauswitz, but largely because the Qing and Japanese schools had already had it suggested to them in the 1870s. This has nothing to do with the cadre Yuan Shikai had read Clauswitz, the Wuzi, Jomini (obviously he was the more popular theorist in the 19th​ century) and a wide range of other military treatises. Iseburo and certainly Yamagata Aritomo had read Clauswitz (which is ironic since Clauswitz would have been highly critical of the IJA and IJN's later subordination of civilian control).

Also it occurs to me 'wiring' here in cannon construction, specifically is referring to barrel construction its not referring to electrical wiring just so no one is confused about this

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1920
The Australians had taken a gargantuan 'tank' from the Germans as war booty, even though he'd only seen pictures of it the absurdity of the 'Mark VIII' sitting on the gravel was measurable. It had its own sort of appeal to be sure, but the size of the British and the German tanks relative to the French one. They didn't have the German one for comparison but they had the picture of the Australians crawling all over the thing.

It was a monster.

"What the hell?" Cullen muttered. "They said there was a difference. The automotive park had several tractors as well. "Where is Hall anyway, this was supposed to his showing?"

"The caterpillar tracks." He jerked his hand towards one of the shorter tractors, "The French tank, the Renault is about seven tons." Seven feet high, he waved to the brit one, "That is thirty eight tons. It'll do five miles an hour to the french seven."

They shared a look. Griswold slapped them both on the back, "The next generation of warfare bound to be some teething issues, Randolph," Hall, "and I will take it from here."

Cullen raised an eyebrow, "Think he was anxious to get rid of us fast enough?"

"Suppose so, the fords are are best bet still for armored protection," They didn't expect to get much out of either design... but artillery wanted something that theoretically could carry something... which meant they were probably more interested in the British design, "At least for machine guns."

"That's what I've been told, they can also more readily carry troopers. Still be officially infantry, we'll let the red legs handle those things. No complaints from me," He remarked... and that was basically it. They had been talking about it and the states back home had rules tanks were to be an infantry matter. In Xian it would be the artillery. Armored cars would be an infantry matter, because there was no cavalry, though some infantry formations would adopt styles like the cavalry that the Gendarmes had been using. "If the red legs aren't going to fight the infantry for mortars we can toss them in the back of the trucks."

There had been several larger mortars that while feasible for a team to carry it ran into the issue of feeding the things. It thereby made more sense to mechanize heavier mortars. "The hundred and twenty will largely be with the brigades, and Rifle divisions." He remarked. The brigades would get them first just because they were smaller specialist units, and lugging a hundred twenty pound mortar plus several hundred rounds... far too many rounds to expect leg infantry to deploy from such a vehicle, but sufficient for the rebuilt Fultons with their long beds.

The general idea was the brigade's attached Heavy Combat engineers would be covered in the dismount they'd effect a fighting position. The Mortar Platoon would then effect sustained fired, holding the enemy in place to cover the maneuver.

It was mechanicist. It relied on a mechanical progression of battle, through a series of steps, but the argument lay in accepted theoretical principles. It was what Black Jack would have done "Division of the labor aside, Ford has been paid. The assembly line should be operational by the fall." Several million dollars.

"That's right." Cole agreed. "We should have ten thousand trucks sent over, Ford's people will oversee our assembly, and we will get a batch each year until we're through the allotment. Five years as per the writing."

He nodded. Ford had agreed to terms in no small part to put one over on Studebaker. Those ten thousand trucks would nearly double the number of registered automobiles in China. It was why they had insisted on trucks and not cars though. They were still going to bring in cars, but they were the least of it, since they'd wittled Ford into agreeing to a tractor factor as well. The deal would ultimately run to 1927 being superseded by an agreement on overhauling of factory lines that would entail engineers going to Ford's factories for lessons... but that would be years in the future... and in part driven by the expansion of demand for the automobile expanding beyond the company niche.

They would still be far behind the likes of France, and the States behind Japan, and England as well... but there would be a growing demand for cars as the landscape changed.

--
They had divided, before they had even really started work on the constitution the legal reforms necessary to do things. That had meant civil and criminal work to pick up the slack by previous administrations, but now that the constitution was in effect it was a different... different sort of thing. The previous arrangement had to change because it had always been interim.

The change over had meant other changes, knock on effects. Cullen had had to appoint Gendarmes to take up criminal investigations well in excess of what they'd originally been intended to, which had tied down officers and other ranks for those duties. As it was some of that was going to have to stay. Other duties were going to have to be county and municipal police.

"What am I looking at?"

"Its the construction prospectus."

He rolled eyes, "Yes, and," Then whirled around looking for, the signatures on the bottom, "Oh look my name your name, Bill, Waite, what came up?'

"We've been building for a while, ten years, but it changed after we moved here." He meant Xian specifically, Griswold tapped where the inter-urbans were moving, "People had started fleeing here while Bai Lang started moving west. Then the war started."

"And had a body of labor." People had needed jobs, then the war had started. China had managed to avoid the inflation in labor, "Is that changing?"

"No, labor, factory labor, isn't the problem housing is, we can bring in plenty of sons from the farms, and the countryside." That made up more of the work force than immigration, "But take the automotive factory for example, its here," Sam moved around, "Bai's rampage scared a lot of people, pushed Xian to about two million people," And even after Bai Lang had been killed there had still been Jia clinging to Bai Lang's banner and his message afterwards, "Not all of them left, and after the war boom started that expanded."

None of this was a new or unique phenomenon. Peking, Tietsin, Shanghai a lot of the big coastal cities had it, Harbin would see it. There were jobs. A similar problem existed in the states, existed in Paris, in London, in Berlin, in all the big mill towns. "So municipal management. There is another thing, while you're here." He shrugged, and the most obvious decision were intersections on the line. Significant places where the main rail lines met, close proximity to not just water, or arable land, but mines that could support new factories. "Get with Hall, and take what you need from the Corp of Engineers,"

"The dam?"

"Yeah." He replied. They had been looking at going forward, it was the right time of year now to break ground on it, Akashi's death had been unfortunate. It hadn't derailed the project but it had been a second set of eyes they didn't have any more.

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1920
The Corp of Engineers had under gone a degree of professionalization that mirrored the General Staff. They still had different roles, and there was overlap, but the production of automobiles created a pressure in the chain that was different than the matter of the locomotive. Percy had observed that that the army would have to grow, regardless of what he had based that conclusion on it was true.

That was itself an important distinction, since the consensus at all ranks was that the army would expand in size, but for any number of reasons. Xian had rapidly grown into a hub of rail traffic. Three years of near constant expansion had meant that the lines west of the ancient city now dwarfed in mileage the eastern section of the network. There was no indication that that change would reverse.

... but it was also shaping two different directions from the Corp, and from the General Staff. He already officers who were predicting a future war with the menace of the Bolsheviks. Predictions that had begun after Omsk had fallen, may have even predated it, but before the Red Cavalry had been excoriated against Irkutsk and the defenses of the Baikal. There were staff officers who quickly pointed out the logistical hurdle of projecting power into the Siberian expanse, but it was the Corp which had predominantly planned and carried out the railways, and the road network.

That wasn't the driving reason for the response to the Bolshevik threat. It was political. It was more than that Trotsky was a frothing mad man, or Lenin's callousness. It was what they wrote, and it was the spread of war communism, and the seizure of grain from the peasants. In a confucian ideal there was a sort of yeoman farmer yearning... it wasn't quite jeffersonian small farmer republic but they weren't alien ideals to one another.

That created a political opposition to what Lenin talked about, but also because modernization was taking root. Fundamentally though, even in just vernacular language, the conversation was shaped by comparing the Bolsheviks to bandits which sapped and eroded any pretenses to legitimacy. That was further shaped by the Russian sloughing off territory left and right. The independence of the Poles, and Finns, the baltic countries and Lenin's acquiescence initially, leaving aside the current wars, presented a weak and unfavorable picture of the Reds as a potential government.

That didn't discredit them as a potential threat. Just because a bandit couldn't hold an entire province didn't stop him from being able to ride through it setting fires as he liked.

How did you stop that? Which was why with summer approaching the staff college was a swarm with notions on the inevitable war against bandits, because well the southern bandits were now 'small bandits' and the potential Bolshevik threat was now 'large bandits'.

It was a headache, but one that would only get worse as the south would inevitably compound the underlying ideological issues. Those political ideas would be shaped by economic progress and modernization as the railway network in the west expanded and grew.

Cullen leaned against the wall, "Its not just the Army either." He replied his cavalry boots on the crate of papers, which had yet to be pulled open, "Its good for us to have breathing space. Kirghiz, whatever is going on north of us. That's land, somebody else's land that is between us and the reds, I may not like all the whites, but I'll take them over Lenin any day."

"What are you thinking?"

"English is the language of the railway, the British have brought in lawyers, and newspaper men."

"And?"

"There aren't that many schools, there are probably even fewer type sets for Cyrillic, I want to give the whites an option to be seen as modernizing, and to break them off culturally from Moscow, and Petersburg."

There was a thing called the unity church which while conducting mass in the Greek trappings its recognized the pope in rome as head of the Christian church with the Russian patriarch in disgrace and the situation otherwise complicated it was a move that most wouldn't have contemplated... especially since the English type sets and printing presses for papers the British had wasted space in trains to bring in were already there. "And you think the British will go for it?"

"I think they'll agree with the bold face type of it." He replied.

Allen shifted the papers, "And where did you get the idea for this?"

"Akashi, god rest his soul."

"From what he wrote, resting wasn't what he had in mind."
--
He folded the paper, and glanced up at the slightly older man, "This is the warrant, for your assumption of the rank of General, and to assume command of the next Rifle Division."

The Eighth.

Which was where things became complicated. 1st​ and 3rd​ Divisions had a common lineage. There were shared traditions there were officers from the RPF in senior posts in both commands, and in 2nd​ division. First through third were full readiness commands, supported by brigades. 4th​ Division was officially the Shansi division of the National Guard. 7th​ Division would be posted to Kansu, and take up its garrison at the Lake, officially.

Shang didn't protest the command, not this time.

They had had considerations. As the senior most colonel in the ranks, Shang had been the strongest contender for command of the Western Zhili Brigade with its mechanized elements. "The situation in the south."

"Yes, Cunhuo is making ground and," With the windfall he probably had taken on in terms of booty, and plunder from taking Mianyang, "We expect him to displace Lu Chao from Chengdu over the course of his summer campaigning." Maybe as early as July. Now whether or not he could make good on that? Whether he could turn those successes into a march further south, and take Chunking it didn't matter. It was enough already to make the British nervous since it was 'their sphere of influence'.

... and it was enough to make them concerned if he turned the opposite way. There were a variety of northern for lack of a particularly good comparison tribal confederations and chiefdoms in the north of szechwan.... but if Liu Cunhuo did pivot north to gobble up all of Chao's former territory, assert hegemony over that... there was little those feeble chiefdoms could do to stop him.

There was no question that would lead to Ma's independent brigades were still dancing over the border, and Liu would most likely use that as an excuse to launch his own raids. That was a problem for other reasons. Liu was one rising star displacing Lu Chao who had lost his grip on power and was back peddling. Chen to the west sat looking across the border with the eastern most portions of tibet... the portions that they were administrating... 3rd​ Division's was officially garrisoned in Tibet. Money into tibet, investment capital going into tibet would attract predatory attention from Szechwan's teeming mass of bandits.

It was Szechwan, and its chaos, and its larger population, which shaped the decision to raise a fourth full time division. It was to be a response to deteriorating conditions in Szechwan... even though internally it was also shaped discussions regarding the distinction between 'big' bandits and small bandits, and looking towards the northwestern border.

That was there problem. That was what they were looking at. Griswold, Phillips, Liu (Qing En) were all discussing not just semi automatic rifles, there was to be a conference the following month, but also the prospect of milder smaller cartridges to contend with the magazines. What was still was not contended with was the break between Anhui, and Zhili and how Manchuria was looking at Zhili's actions.



--
Notes: Ok so the anti Xiong war was one of the larger, but still relatively small conflicts that were common place in Sichuan province. And figuring out who had what when before the dust settled isn't well documented. Lu was one of those KMT guys who was good about starting rebellions who would then when things started to go badly proceeded to book it, he fled to Japan a couple times (he was educated in Japan), he hid out in Shanghai, but his base of power was limitted during this period, so as suggest here, the summer campaign drives him out of the province entirely (and he flees back to Shanghai). Xiong Kew and Liu (one of several warlords named Liu operating in Szechwan in this period), and Lu, and frankly a number of particularly the eastern Sichuan warlords will show up in the next three four years dealing with the provincial border skirmishing, beyond that Xiong advocated a Federal system for China, which put him at odds with both the northern aligned beiyang appointed provincial leadership as well as the handful of KMT aligned leadership.

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1920
The war in Europe's end forced a number of things to the fore. Things that had been largely delegated to secondary committees in the face trade the brought the money in to pay for everything else

The issue of compiling a modern civil, and criminal law took time, would take time not the least of which was that in a few months they would be holding provincial elections to fill the lower house, and also county and municipal positions. That got into who was eligible for the vote in the first place, that got into then registering them, and that meant pictures and name and address and for some people that was no issue. Anyone in the army already had their pictures taken a hundred times over... because while there might not have been a hundred colonels active there were enough officers across three full time divisions and the two reservists alone to warrant entire books of photographs.

Actually domestic photography had been something of a growing demand of late, which played into yet another matter, beyond simply preparing for the elections in the fall.

Waite rested a hand on the pink of India, "I don't think this map is accurate any more John." Rand, McNally, and Company had printed this one in 1914, before the guns of august had opened, but for the most part it showed the world as it was a decade earlier... with some updates of the Russo-Japanese war, labelling Port Arthur under Japanese control, It showed Japan and her empire in a color that with age and sunlight matched that of England's.

Rand's map said it was a Republic of China and made no comment upon the status of Mongolia or Tibet... but that wasn't the half of it. Yuan Shikai had been dead four years now.. and the Empire of Russia was now gone.

If only they could have kept the soviets from pushing past the natural boundary of the Urals. Instead Russian Turkestan had seen the influx of a million Cossacks, and then Kolchak had been forced to take Japanese hospitality in the trans baikal. "They're lines on a map, George." Cole replied drumming his fingers.

Waite shot him a dirty look, "We didn't start the line out to Lhasa until Yuan was dead, and buried," Allen knew what was coming with the mention, it was a conversation that he had had with Reinsch back in the summer of 1916; Simla. The line to Lhasa had not opened until over a year later, and had been overshadowed by the Guatemala advance. "The Brits were too busy back then," the war too consuming by that point and 3rd​ Division had started stationing a battalion in eastern Tibet, at the rail head.

That might not have sounded liked much... but Lhasa in 1915 hadn't been but about thirty thousand and it was dwindling at the time. The Qing officials, the old armies were gone, there were still merchants but the economy was in decline as the Xinhai revolt had tossed things into flux.... and the war had done it no favors.

That was the real detail that mattered, not the battalion per se, but the arrival of the railhead... and what it also brought with it. The opening of the railhead brought with it the start of industrial investment, but the war was over now. "What are you suggesting?"

"I want to reallocate the Eighth Regiment, and the 8th​ Division headquarters to Lhasa, failing that I think we should consider expanding the existing presence to a regimental headquarters, and reallocating 3rd​ Division's position." That was going to be controversial given the ongoing discussions regarding 7th​ Division in Kansu.

"You realize its been a little over a week since I've even told Shang that the eighth is to be stood up?"

"I know, and I know the consensus is with what Yan said, that the reserve should be established first," That Yan's overarching model was more the National Guard of the states than the army of Imperial Japan's reserve system had escaped precisely no one, but it wasn't political Yan probably had made that decision for as much financial reasons, for prudence, as he had with an eye towards mobilizing the guard by Wilson in 1917. "We'd have a hard time going off, but I'll be honest, Yan could have a hundred thousand men in the reserves with just Shansi," That was true, which was why the reserve had been allocated at that strength because it was imminently feasible to recruit at that strength for this coming financial year. "The expenditure of a garrison command, and appointing a senior staff officer should settle the public on regards to Szechwan."

That was also true, if they went and put money into the southern border, or into Tibet, but then turned around and put a new division with established leadership... Szechwan's warlords might decide it wasn't worth the effort to poke the dragon.

--
Yan was quick to extol his view of three duties... but he had backed off the notion of conscription along a Japanese model, or a Prussian model, in part for economic reasons but also to avoid protests from his own provincial gentry. The farmers didn't appreciate their sons going off to the army, especially not for a few years and then deciding that they didn't particularly want to go back home to the family farm.

It was from a manpower perspective to have men in urban professions in cities with depots, or other facilities to handle reservist duties in part because it avoided those problems. If a boy moved off the farm, went to the city got a job, and then enlisted well that was that. On the other hand, there was an expectation of literacy. Yan felt the same way... and that meant putting money into Shansi's primary school system.

"If that we had started ten years ago... No?"

Allen shrugged, rubbing his brow, "Would we be further along, maybe, but in 1910? No we couldn't have started that, even with Edenborn's help, 1913, 1914 would have been the earliest I could see us having started," But so much of what had come in had been the transition to farther west, relocation to xian after beating off Bai Lang, and then with the war in Europe starting bringing in so much in the way of capital that they could afford those expenditures... and they couldn't afford to pretend that they could have done things with things they only knew in hindsight... but there were lessons that they had learned during the war years, and even before that they could put into practice. "Its not just the schools that the war is over, we need to look at technological rationalization," New tools, mechanization of the mining, they had already done what they could with work force organization, and integration of adjacent industries.

Part of it was of course that ten years ago, hell most of China was still digging coal for season consumption needs. Most mines operating were small, rural, poor access to roads, and dug most of their stock during the high demand months of the year. That was to say during winter, because most of the demand was for the heating of houses, and for cooking. Sun Yat-sen, and Cao Kun for that matter, were right in that that was in no small part as to the regionalization of the railroads, that while trains consumed coal their demands were largely made on supply chains that were outside the normal scope of demand.

There was just so little heavy industry to actually demand coal otherwise. There was little in demand for most ancient towns, and cities, regardless of how large for electrical energy generation, the demand wasn't there in Yuan Shikai's day... and there was no capital to bring such to the cities in the south independent of outside investment that was from the treaty ports. There were other factors, but it was mostly the lack of confidence and the cause of that was the chaos.

... a chaos which they did not expect was about to get much worse.

"Putting Shansi to one side for the moment," Dawes remarked, "From the sound of it Duan wants to mount another expedition south." There were grumblings from the handful others in the room to which Allen could sympathize with, and the older man rifled through the papers, "Its a couple divisions being called up, but I don't see any talk that suggest they've learned their lesson."

It was the same plan. Go down the railway try and force their way down to presumably where all this mess had begun. That wasn't to say Hankou or its neighboring cities weren't important, they were, but there was too much space between them. "Hupeh, Szechwan? Or does he think to go all the way?"

"To Yunnan, no from the sound of it the talk is replay the last attempt."

"Like I Said." Dawes grumbled to Hodges's statement... the other man was already discussing going to Lhasa personally

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1920
One couldn't ignore the outside world. Isolationism didn't work in a world of the telegraph and the steam engine.

The Bolsheviks had proclaimed their Tartar Republic at the end of June. The issue that dominated discussion amongst White Russian forces south and east of the city of Kazan, in Kighiz and transbaikal were that it was solidifying Red control over holdings gained... there were grumbling complaints that the Czech Legion had taken and held Kazan briefly... and what if what if what if... but they were rampant speculations of things that might could or should have been not what was.

The bigger concern was the mountain of warnings elsewhere, of drought and grain seizures, the combination of both. It was to mean a famine... a famine that would kill millions. A famine that could not be reasonably attributed to the muted border skirmishes of the civil war as lines on the map became fixed by a begrudging acceptance of political reality. Famine as a weapon of terror, was the reality of it, and not simply incompetence or mismanagement. The Reds intentionally were stripping grain from peasants.

It was a decision that redoubled or compelled certain procedures. Firstly was the condition of the east. Japan wanted to sink capital into the eastern breakaway states, some even beat upon the drum of the old Russo-Japanese war to address perceived grievances. Those investments very likely would make some men very rich, the ones who could afford to invest the Yen.

"What's Iseburo have to say then?"

Allen folded the couriered letter in half, "Not terribly much its all dry calculus, he wants to bring in more experts to adminster things, a lot of work to be done, and not much in the way of people" Most likely that would mean an influx of Koreans, more Chinese, and Japanese from the home islands, "Here."

He handed over the sketched diagram, "This looks familiar, its county and provincial organization?"

"Its Yamagata's organizational model, as Inspector General Iseburo has the authority to organize the police force on the railway." He replied... Percy had remarked that if Japan succeeded in walking away with the Russian Far East it would reorder world politics well in excess of the paramount shift from the Russo-Japanese war. It would mean that Japan would be absolutely forced to accept the calculus of facing the Soviets to their west insuring an eternal partnership, between the Japanese Army and the Royal Navy to encircle the Bolshevik threat.

It was idealistic after a fashion, perhaps optimistic was the better factor, and ignored... well factors like what the Canadians for example wanted... and the position of preeminence of the Japanese Navy as well for that matter.

It was admittedly the course of action that Yamagata, the old man, would have preferred... but Lenin had withdrawn the Bolsheviks to Moscow and while it might have been possible to invest and seize Petersburg if there was the will to support the army, that was lacking. "What news?" He remarked taking the chart back, and folding it behind the first page.

"Duan is very clear where he stands with the south," and at least on that at least the Red Leg was consistent, even if it wasn't very realistic... perhaps best demonstrated by Cao Kun's assumption of the mantle of leadership that had been left when Feng had passed away in December. "Cao Kun is just not having it, and its not just him, his command is not happy, and that's not a good sign." That was in hindsight a serious understatement, it was to prove a severe understatement it was to change the entire course of affairs.

"And?"

"the numbers are divided, Feng made a compelling argument, maybe it wasn't the most popular one at first, but Duan has burned a lot of goodwill." There was pause, "Percy still thinks you should go to England."

"And?"

"And you should take Bill, show the flag. Its the sort of thing that means a lot to the Brits, and lets be honest shake some hands with the European office,"

He snorted, "Its starting to sound like a conspiracy is afoot, I had the same discussion with pops at lunch yesterday, funny thing, Bill gets a transpacific phone call from the Colonel too."

Waite shrugged dismissively, "Well if Colonel McCulloch says-" He stopped, "Its important, its for the good of the firm... and, there are other reasons," One thing would lead to another, the upcoming surprise would derail the New Year's trip, and by that point ... by the point that pressure had mounted, well there were reasons to go. Japan's crown prince would be going to the following summer's festivities in the King of England's honor... and well... those proceedings would be, would be interrupted by whole other unforeseen matters. "You're saying the old man brought it up?"

"Yes."

Waite gave another shrug, glanced down at the organization. "He say anything about this,"

"No," and frankly Allen didn't expect anything to be said. "Municipal, county, and provinces is smart way to make things run smooth." Post office, police reforms and so on the list went on. "Iseburo has already mentioned schools, but only because he knows it will have to be done, the Diet is unlikely to throw him funding for it quickly... but the buryats and their local Buddhists we can expect there will be advisors soon enough."

"Its a pity Akashi's gone." George observed.
--
The telegrams were flurrying back and forth. It was hard to be sure what had driven Feng's original position on Federalism in China... the man was dead now so they sure couldn't ask him. Originally it hadn't been popular with the Beiyang clique, the south had liked it... but Duan's supporters had wanted to roast Feng like a side of ham for it.

... but the fighting had gone on, and Yuan was dead, and that left things divided. Divided in ways that hadn't been able to accurately predict...

"we so don't need this right now." Duan was refusing to back down... they just didn't have any idea about what it was that was going to give.

Allen nodded, acknowledged the obvious, "What is Cao Kun going to do?"

"Right, the same thing he's been doing. He's not happy, mostly its just telegrams to everyone who came up under him... or his friends. Which I will remind you that includes us." Griswold remarked, "and that's something the Legation isn't about to let us forget."

"Shang, Lee, either of you want up?"

Lee looked up from his stack of circulars, "Would the arrival of Minister Crane not change our standing with the Legation?"

There were a couple of glances, and Bill nodded, "He's right we're in Crane's good books. This isn't like with Reinsch. Counting that Alston isn't likely to rock the boat."

"Duan Qirui would be beholden to Japanese financial assistance if he wishes to open a new campaign in Honan, and the international concession in Hankou, would draw unfavorable press." Shang observed. "If he is as he appears to be, he is going to take the War Participation Army South... or he is going to mobilize the five divisions associated with him."

Looks passed. There were independent brigades, but the 'clique' around Duan was complicated. The cadre had been growing contentious about the forays the Ma clique had been running over the border into Szechwan, but broadly accepted it for what it was... Little Ma was doing what he had been told to do... but those independent brigades had been running over the border for years now. It was complicated, by the fact Old Ma had died and the leadership had shifted... and the changes of legal leadership in Gansu, provincial leadership... the situation in Xinjiang ... and now this.

Duan clique was maybe twenty fellas... but in a way that was overstating that, or understating. Duan had a prominent collection of people carrying his position in the legislature, but that wasn't it. Of the twenty, "Well of the governors, Duan has maybe five guys he could really depend on,"... and the problem with that was the damage done over the past year to Chang... "And Ni for that matter, Anwhei is a powder keg, the gentry don't like Ni." Griswold observed, and clucked his tongue before stating the obvious. "Hunan is a mess too... Crane is gonna regret becoming Minister if his first real month on the job is a war."

They had been hoping that elections in the western provinces would woo Crane, and thus Washington about progress in China, but those elections were several months out still. This would throw a cloud over any of that. Frankly they had expected that had Reinsch stuck around the elections of the lower house might ameliorate some there, but Reinsch had returned to the states.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1920
The month would have been busy anyway given the approaching start of term. The matter of education, including higher learning, had matters that needed to tend to and that required the Cadre's presence when there was so much else to do as well. There were matters of banking that needed to be seen to. There were preparations for elections come in the fall. There was construction work in the vicinity of the city galore. All of those things could be thought to just entail Xian. The city, the county around, the neighboring counties, the province, the provinces next door.

There was the army to think about. It was summer bandits were going to be a concern. Bandits were certainly going to be a problem if Duan made moves down south, and the south stirred the pot further. Then there was everything with the White Russians, the Japanese. The British were going to wag their tongues. All of it was a given.

All of that was business, but they had expected that things would calm down with the end of the war in Europe. Things would stabilize that there would be a relaxation of war time powers and the possibility that other American capital would start to flow into central and south China. That maybe the American railway company might push into the south and facilitate some miraculous binding up of the provinces. Maybe that had been a bit optimistic but with the war over it had seemed, it had been expected that people of means in the state would start looking for foreign investments.

The ... findings were interesting, but he hadn't expected it with all the trouble. Optimism was one thing, but they'd been in China for more than a decade now and institutional knowledge of that gave perspective.


Augustus was holding one of the bronze arrowheads to scrutinize.

"Was I mistaken in believing you found such things interesting?"

He looked at Jun, and then to the objects that had been dug up, "No, yes I am interested in the past Jun but your own papers make it very clear there is a lot going on." Bill wasn't helping the situation by examining a piece of pottery that had been put out on the table... and he was right photographing things were a good idea. They were already going to have to move and find another site to put the well down. "You want me to go to the village?"

"Yes," She replied "and take Augustus, as you stated it is about time he start seeing the work."

That wasn't what he had meant, but he'd been about this age when he'd been given the first book on understanding the telegraph system for the railway... but he hadn't also been trying to learn Chinese characters alongside the dots and dashes.

His initial inclination was to ring the university. History was important, maybe they could have volunteers, they could make some learning experience of it all, certainly that would have been less controversial to bringing 1st​ Battalion along for a hike fifteen miles north east for a weekend outing that would end up turning into a lot longer than a weekend. Still that was ultimately the choice he made, to go to the office phone and have the switch board ring the officer of the watch... in this case the Battalion XO with orders to bring 1/1 to assembly.

--
It had rained that morning, and that boiled off the humidity, meant it was a fairly nice day all things considered. Hopefully the short rain coming would be indicative of the season and that come september the farms would be well watered. Still now that it had moved off, was pretty good weather, nice breeze. All in all it was a comfortable morning, and that would make this easy enough. "I'm sorry," He told the other man in gray, "I could have sworn that you said it was a pyramid?" Allen replied turning on his heel away from the mound.

"A large bronze horse as well." One of the scout snipers of the battalion had sketched a copy of it, and another man from the platoon had likewise filled out a sketch of the site.

He turned on his heel, twisting again, and looked at the rail line. The north line was in visual distance... if it had been two miles south they would have probably found this six years ago before Augustus had been born. "Push the cordon, bring the rest of the regiment down, tell 'em, tell 'them whatever we have here, its important." He pivoted back, "Augustus, get back here." He looked at the junior staff officer, "tell the details start taking photos of everything. Everything If that's a pyramid, if you see more of these clay soldiers," He considered for a moment knowing he would be expecting a lot of photographs, "the horse bones too, everything. Regular guards are to be posted at intervals..." He clucked his tongue, "in fact make an exercise of it, push out this place is big, defend it as if you were going to protect Zhengzhou."

"Sir."

Someone years in the future, would probably complain about their initial response... but in 1920 with archaeology still largely in its infancy the modern science of archaeology just didn't exist as a proper discipline yet... such that doctors of antiquity from Yale and Trinity college would complain that it wasn't right to use the army for this sort of thing. That is could have compromised the site, that they could have inflicted untold destruction on priceless historical remnants of a bygone age.

In July of 1920 though, mathematical certainty mapping, controlled expedition by professional soldiers was something close enough to care about what they were doing. He stood at the field table and looked at the sketches... the long side of the exterior wall was estimated to be over a mile... they weren't sure yet but they were pretty sure the rivers established the presumable natural boundaries of the sight. So they'd push over and south of the river away from the 'city' and form a defensive place there.

The discovery would be somewhat overshadowed in international press as Shanghai, and the North China Herald focused on the crisis in Peking. No one in Peking would pay attention to an archaeological find, even one of this nature, and in a few days, one half of the beiyang clique would be shooting at the other as the Anfu club attempted to fend off the Zhili side.

The outing was a strictly local matter, and the significance meant little really until the next year, and after the elections had been held in early November.
--
Notes: July of 1920 is a long series of short segments. Frankly, all of them could, including this one, could do with expansion... because again if nominally every normal ~9-10 weeks of in story content was about eighty thousand words July '20 would warrant a lot more in terms of stuff in the outline but just isn't fully being fleshed out, but there are a number of things that happen in this month that have long term repercussions.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1920
The table was a clamor of noise as they shuffled and moved papers around and carried on over the business, and how others conducted theirs, "The Federal Reserve Branch of New York, had an opening capital of twenty million dollars, I shouldn't have to tell you," Waite drawled, "that it was the largest even before they started taking in deposits from the wealthy, or that it was understandably significantly larger than what Atlanta opened with." It had had been discussed that Atlanta was a much smaller bank, and had no where near the capital influx, which was by no means a surprise. "It brought in one hundred million dollars in its first day of operation. That was in 1914, and before the war started." and of course that was part of the issue that Wilson's government had been trying to wrap their heads around... and in a way what they were trying to make sense of the best way to work as well.

Officially the banking commission the board of the reserve bank was modelled on a mix of the bank of England and the Federal Reserve system in the states. Lender of last resort, so on and so forth, a consolidation of assets.

On the other hand, there had been no expectation for a large gold reserve, not the least of which was the Chinese dollar had remained stable because it was on the silver standard, and that had insulated it from concerns about gold during the war. The silver dollar had been stable, against the pound, the dollar the Yen ... now admittedly that hadn't applied to other Chinese currencies in circulation, provincial notes but that shit wasn't their problem.

"We should look at is as a good thing. Now yes in an ideal world we would be able to buy all sorts of arms that the Europeans, and the states are so hastily divesting themselves of but we should look at this as a nest egg. We sit on it."

There were rumblings of mild agreement. On its face the proposal there was nothing wrong with the idea, but at the same time there was a general acceptance that money that capital was also better spent in sound investments than just accruing interest... on the other hand that was the key word sound.

That ultimately brought forward issues of establishing fiduciary duties, and rules to govern banks in order to determine eligibility and classifications... which presented other problems. The banking commission might be entitled to advice on such rules... but the real argument to be had was was this a matter for the cadre whose membership had limited banking experience to determine... or if it should be a matter of regulation that was warranted to wait until after the election of a lower chamber of law makers and thereby have a bill ratified by a bicameral consent.

JP's proxy, and Griswold both felt that they should just get on with it. Waite, and Dawes formed the anchor suggesting that they wait until after the house had been elected and seated... in other words waiting until the new year ... and then there were the people who wanted the cadre to draft recommendations but to then hear what the representatives had to say on it.

That however the was issue. The nest egg to borrow the term just used provided the cadre explicitly with a large reserve of gold on top of the existing foreign currency reserve from the war... a war that Dawes had always had been adamant was only in half time. "So we sit on three hundred tons of gold?" It wasn't really a question.

The implication was more about the value of that much gold. "We could issue currency."

"No." Dawes snapped at the younger man who'd made the suggestion. "If anything that's the probably the one thing where don't have enough gold to bother with." He said after a minute, but the younger man wasn't having it.

"and how do you figure that?"

"cause the states aren't sitting on double what we are, more like ten times where we sit." Dawes replied.

"More actually," Griswold added in edgewise, "I think I heard something about expecting to have three billion dollars in gold, and I reckon that he's right. Yes the provinces historically have issued their own currencies, but to be honest I think that's a problem, not a strength. Then, on top of that the Customs Dollar is silver backed, we start issuing goldbacked notes, and I don't care if Zhang up north does it, its not the same thing, I just don't think its a good idea..."

"Expanding the gold reserve probably isn't the worst idea either," Dawes added.

Hodges sat back in his chair, which creaked slightly "I can look after that," The heavier set man remarked, "But I think with any kind of mining we do need to be allocating for heavier machinery, if we don't want to spend the gold right now, then we should probably spend pounds where we can." Officially the remuneration to Peking that Duan had agreed to was in the Pound, but they weren't real worried there... the British appetite during the war had consumed vast quantities of money and while worries about inflation were going to be well founded it was just as much the trade war in Europe that wounded the Brits twice. "Give things a few years and hopefully things will settle out," And the trade wars, and the tariffs they entailed would fall by the wayside, that was the hope anyway... but that would prove to largely be misplaced optimism.

They didn't know that, and frankly part of that was to be the financial conditions in Europe being too large to really expect... there would be still some market for export but not a return to the Free Trade years of Wilson's early presidency. That was a pity by the Cadre's understanding of things... of how things in an ideal world would be. "Capital for labor saving machinery shouldn't be an issue," Dawes agreed, especially that jack hammers and tractors to pull freight were all something of a no brainer, and obvious. "I suppose really if you think something can b e done in Tibet, we will have to expand the rail head at Lhasa."

"We're already planning to do that, with the moving the Division Headquarters there."

"Right, right," Dawes replied scratching at the hair above his ear. "Yeah, you'll have Shang there I totally forgot about that."

"Since we're gone on to that subject," Waite remarked raising his pen, "From the sound of it we need a sub committee for Tibet." It would officially serve as Hodges's last posting before his retirement, heading that sub unit within the cadre but it did set the ground work in the long term for the work that would staunch the decline of Tibet's population which had fallen to about a half million total... and for the eventual ratification of a version of the provincial constitution... and thus an elected lower house in a few years. There was no hurry for any of that, with a 'small population' by Chinese standards no one present even considered that such a thing should be rushed into. The railhead at Lhasa had only opened after all a few years earlier, the new division, and other works were all even more recent and thus there was no need to rush things.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1920
The actual outbreak of hostilities on the fourteenth had come as a shock. Mostly for the actual sudden escalation to maneuvering of troops. Two sides of the beiyang clique starting to shoot at each other was a far cry removed from the usual angry circulars which should have been the end of it. Even the papers who had been happy to circulate those telegrams were surprised and unsure what to make out of it.

It seriously undercut the legitimacy of Duan's position by trying to force his way through a blocking force intending to stop him from reopening the front to the south. This was now about a division within North China, it was now a conflict between northern factions. "This is madness." Dawes observed... which it was.

They had had no business endorsing the telegrams that had gone out under Wu Pei-fu's auspice. Wu had moved the 3rd​ Division of the Beiyang Army and a number of brigades across the province, of Zhili, west to east towards the coast. Their positions determined by the reality of railways, and coordinated by telegraph lines, but all of it was taking place inside of Zhili proper.

The war participation army had come down both sides of the railway and tossed the 3rd​ back probably through a combination of 3rd​ not having expected a fight, and also it couldn't be denied the WPA had better guns and more modern weapons. "Counting, what we know, Cao Kun has rallied nine brigades," from those dujun protesting a reopening of conflict in Honan. The so called anti war faction of the Beiyang clique... the problem was of course with 3rd being pushed back like it had, that raised questions of how prepared the Zhili clique was to actually rally a force to really fight this out.

"What does the legation make out of all of this?"

Allen turned in his seat to look side to side, first to the man who had asked the question, and then down for anyone aiming to answer it. Waite sighed, but Cole drummed his fingers on the table, "You're not going to like it, but from the sound of it, the ministers don't know what to do," And then after a moment's pause, "but Hayashi's boy there," Hayashi's protégé, "has already demanded the legations throw their support behind what Duan is doing... Alston," well the Brit who had replaced John Jordan, "doesn't seem to know how to respond to that."

The legation guards were irrelevant they were too few to seriously swing a battle on this scale, but it was the signaling that was important. "Is there any idea what Crane is thinking?" Allen questioned.

"He's cabled Washington about the fighting north of Tietsin, but bluntly the response from the War department and from Secretary of State Colby," The wet fish who had replaced Lansing, "Is that its not his business, that if westerners aren't involved he should let them settle it between them. Far as we can tell, from Washington it sounds like Colby is afraid of moving without Wilson, and Wilson is himself too ill to manage anything on the matter." and of course while it bore little focus at this meeting the truth was that Bainbridge Colby was more focused on politics at home than he was regarding foreign policy.

"Then they won't do anything." Someone remarked, "As it is Cao Kun, and Duan fighting, all of this is what fifty miles from Peking?"

"Closer to sixty if we reckon the fighting around Tietsin," Another man remarked, and then he shrugged disregarding the point in favor of announcing that, "Its effectively next door."

A glance was thrown towards Waite who had stood up and walked towards the map, "Wu will most likely fall back the western troops to Baoting, that's just geography, what he does from there who knows. What I don't imagine will happen is a pressing down the line, attacking the academy from the north would tricky and thats not doubt where the headquarters will be..." and never mind the tactical question, there would be social repercussions if Duan had to storm the school since so many Beiyang officers had attended it... "We'll have to wait and see what happens."

Were they gonna take a step back, talk about it. Would there be international arbitration, Alston would probably try and go that route but if he was flabbergasted he'd need to find his sea legs quickly if things didn't calm down.

Allen sighed, "Tell me about the situation in Tietsin?"

"Well you aint' gonna like that either," Waite grumbled turning away from the war room map of Northern China, rifling around for tacks and string. "We have idiots going to and strolling around from the concession gawking at the fighting, you'd think they would have stopped that after the war in Europe, but it is what it is. The north china herald is taking the statements and making the rounds... and I expect that we will start seeing stupid hot takes reach the southern papers if they haven't already started rolling off the presses."

Duan was unpopular; there was no reason to pretend otherwise. This wasn't going to help. Shanghai would probably therefore voice support for Cao Kun, which was never you mind but there were going to be issues all the same. "Zhang Tso-lin is in talks with Cao Kun."

And that was to be the other shoe, and for the legation looking in that must have come as a surprise to some. Duan had been swing his dick all around, and ultimately Zhang and Duan had different cliques, Japanese ones, supporting them. One side thought Duan was doing the right thing, the other one was supporting Zhang for their reasons. Zhang was tired of Duan, but at this point, "Anything?"

"They're just talking for now, but Zhang has agreed in principle to Wu's telegram." That wasn't news, per se, they had known about that two days earlier before the actual shooting had started... but then again no one had expected the stupid telegram to result in actual shooting.

--
Notes: This officially signals the break of the Beiyang clique, as a whole, and also marks the begining of the roughly week long (or just over) Anhui Zhili war, and this is important also because in two years Zhili (the clique) will throw down with their previous ally the Fengtien and further compromise northern solidarity

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1920
The cadre committee on the army... it was officially the army was responsible for the budget, and discussions that impacted all manner of other factors involved towards the recommendations and policies which shaped Xian's fighting force. Europe was hastily slashing military spending, but they wouldn't be doing that... but on the other hand they also would not be rapidly expanding expenditures either.

Cadre policy as a collective whole had capped the Army's active divisions at five, allowed for another five divisions in the reserve... and while not official in that it was not de jure, the expected force strength paper strength for all divisions and brigades was something on the order of a quarter of a million men.

That was out of an estimated population, assuming the tentative census numbers were something approaching accurate somewhere between 45 and 50 million people with Xian proper being about two and a half million permanent residents. Something along the lines of about one in five people lived in an urban residence, and that was expected to increase as electrification of towns increased and the commiserate growth of government bureaucracy... which was where the army reentered the picture.

Electrification was necessary for factories, and in particular the manufacture of automobiles, but also the matter of tractors, which impact the rural countryside. The ETS, experimental technical section, was another example of its like... in this case another experiment with motorization which had been piddling about since April.

Today's exercise was somewhat more excitable in part due to the fighting in the east. The telegrams from this morning put ... placed that combined the two feuding, or three one supposed with Zhang looking to be moving south now, at over a hundred thousand men. "SO tell me about it?"

"The engine block is cast iron," Waite replied. The things wheels were larger than a pavesi, and it was like tractors were tending pretty tall besides that, "Otto put that suspension of his on it, we will see how that works, and then we will see about slanting things." He meant armor. "Its gonna be heavier than our unarmored fords but you know god willing it'll be less trouble on the axles since its supposed to be designed for the weight."

As it was four of the lumbering machines were pushing thirty, those big tractor style tires were letting them better navigate the mud of the exercise. Their machines guns were belt and enclosed in protected semi turrets up top. That meant there was the turnover risk, but assuming that these things or frankly so development incremental production version went to manufacture in two to four years these armored cars were meant for the North china plain and probably for first division. "I see these ones have trailer hitches."

"We loose some speed for carrying, but yeah, those big wheels definitely help for rough terrain. They're not as good as well as a holt on rough terrain, but they mess the road up a lot less."

"And how do the men like them?"

Waite sucked a breath in, "Getting in and out is pain with a rifle, that's the biggest complaint I've heard, but we're putting them through the paces and well we ain't broke anything yet... but like I'm hoping the strain on the axles from the weight won't be as bad as the Ford's."

"And on the weight?"

"Truthfully, I want to pair the machine gun up top with an alternate feed, but we ain't done that yet." He shrugged. "There are some other things, but you'll see all that when my report enters the record... I think its got promise, Otto meant for those independent arm bar suspension for racing, but shit its a good system, once we get engine production up I think this sort of thing has promise. The other thing is this is four big tires, we're looking at more well normal sized tires, and some other things, Griswold got that one, and they're a bit faster on the road, but Cole thinks this could ford water pretty well."

That would have utility. "What happens if something gets stuck?"

"Well, right now we just use a holt with a winch up front, but theoretically we could put a winch on the front end and they could pull each other out of the ditch. Holt makes a good tractor, and frankly if we had to we have some other options."

The truth was the cadre's rail side affairs put emphasis on manufacturing certain designs, and of course... situation being what it was, "Iseburo put an order of Mikado in," 2-8-2 for wide gauge, "Which we can actually fill." They were finally caught up on engine production, at least they would be by the start of the new fiscal year... which was a relief, "A dozen engines for the line up to Irkutsk."

"That won't start a problem with Hayashi will it?"

He shrugged, "No they're making him London's problem," He had been recalled back at the end of May to Tokyo, "I'll be glad for it, his boy on the Manchurian line won't start something with Iseburo... and frankly he has the good sense not to lock horns over tractors."

Waite nodded, "I know we don't have a direct connection with Irkutsk so I wasn't sure." The Bolsehviks have taken omsk, but the British had been pretty adamant that while they might consider [talking with] the soviets they also considered the border conditions as they sat to be fixed now. Lloyd George's foreign secretary, and MacKinder had said as much... but most likely the reason that Lenin weren't trying anything was they didn't have the manpower or the materiel to fight on two fronts. "So what's he expecting?"

"Trade mostly, I know he wants to be able to move goods but also that the command is separate from the Kwantung Army Command... which that has ruffled some feathers," But Iseburo was vastly less willing to tolerate adventurism and talk of adventuring from junior officers when he was around, and since he was physically present on the ground in Siberia he could make majors and colonels do what he wanted of them... and they were less likely to brook since he had forced the red cavalry into a killing ground and stacked them at the lake. It was probably vitally needed credibility since he hadn't served in the army as a young man. "If he can get things up an running well that will be good, Sakhalin island has some oil, but how well that can be exploited ... that's gonna take some doing, but they're talking about floating a tender for exploratory drilling."

The problem with that went back to the issues of England. MacKinder had outlined that the bolsheviks needed to be stopped, the British refused to commit to the kind of force necessary to overthrow Lenin... and frankly the opportunity where that was possible had probably passed. The government in Tokyo likewise refused to commit to a military campaign without an American commitment the idea being a great triple alliance, which of course Washington wouldn't commit to ... so the next best thing was to solidify the boundaries. To secure the 'world island' as MacKinder called it by locking the Bolsheviks in the interior and denying them a pacific port, or of course any ability to threaten India; he was an englishman after all. His next proposal was the necessity of trade relations between the most important in this context British allies, and securing a coalition that could be strong enough that the Bolsheviks wouldn't attack at all.

It was optimistic but it fundamentally relied on how trade had been done in 1913... and things had changed. 'Trying to get things back to normal'.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1920
The fan working above them was a reminder it was summer again, not that they needed reminding. The truth was that even though there were not farmers any longer... not really not like the days of their grandfathers this was the busy season they found. Not just for government work, but for the army as well. The pen stopped tapping on the table abruptly drawing attention by its sudden stillness, "I don't think we're going to be able to bring over as much military tooling as we originally expected." Griswold grumbled.

"The Embargo isn't perfect," Cole pointed out, but it was still a nuisance, "and Powell is right that we can still buy the things we want, and we can ship them to middle America." It wasn't charity they'd be building up the labor force for long term trade and putting in work for other things.

One of the things that come out of watching the states mobilize for war were putting companies that made civilian goods to manufacture other things. Singer, the people who made some of their sewing machines for textile companies as well as ones for home spinners, had been turned to making artillery shells. That was important because of how voracious the appetite for shells were, and also the shell problems the British had had with their quality control early in the war.

It was something that gave the Cadre a lot to think about, especially as the work on automotive industry expanded, and they looked at the manufacture of other parts. "Our critical priority should be the machine tooling, precision machining not only can reduce the time it takes us to make a good but also its greater viability," What Griswold was actually speaking of was durability of the product and how long it lasted. Things like rayon, which had come into the world the year before the Europeans had decided to go to kill each other, were an example of new goods for market, and the necessity of large chemical industries.

Large industries needed electrical power. That demand could vary significantly depending on working hours, and even what they were building.

That just fed back to needing to invest capital in machine tooling. The tooling, would reduce time which in turn reduced the cost of production. Better machine tooling meant also that precision work could be carried out in plants that had still other advantages.

The cadre had agreed to a series of goals aimed at reaching in 1925. Five years from start of implementation. The idea was to look at how close they were in 24, and make plans then five years on from that see how that second set of plans was going on in 29 going into 30. The work though was industrial and capital distribution aimed at meeting the market. Tariffs was not something the cadre talked about, the British still were in charge of the customs board and were involved in collecting those important revenues for China.

Setting tariffs and collecting taxes wasn't an option for the planning... and with several provinces involved in the endeavor there needed to be few to none trade barriers between the provinces and the ability to source goods now that the war wasn't interfering. The problem, the issue which merited this late July conference, was the matter in Peking and how the legations were carrying about regardless of their specific behavior.

The US and British Legations had been both caught flat foot, and Japan had wanted to support Duan Qirui. Zhang pivoting and moving to block movements by taking his troops south though had pretty much hemmed Duan in. The Fengtien troops had deployed en masse even if they hadn't done a whole lot of fighting.

At that point Duan had seen the writing on the wall and resigned, ironically making it a rather lot of a replay of the fiasco with the pony tail general just with him as the marshal with the queue. Duan's resignation paved the way for Fengtien and Zhili to mark into Peking without any serious fighting, which had reassured the legations to a degree.

Duan was out but now what was the question

Duan had talked about the restoration of Peking to managing its own tariffs but that had always been tentative to actually managing to get the finances of the country in order. That was the whole reason that the Qing had agreed, and that the revolutionary government had agreed, and Yuan had agreed, and that Duan had also agreed that the customs board existed. The british were honest brokers in terms of making sure the agreed upon tariffs were collected and that that money then went on to what it was supposed to go towards... even if yes part of that income was for paying down the indemnity from the boxer mess of 1900.

That made the prospect of trade internationally difficult. "From an operations stand point that's probably true, however, we need to recognize event in Peking don't do a lot for confidence," Cullen replied, "Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people who want to move to town, and we need to look towards housing, and jobs, and trade, we have a lot to do, and the locomotives we build for export," To Iseburo, to staff the Kirghiz rail network that was growing across the steppe and towards the Caspian side, as well as going to the MAK and Guatemala and for that matter the line connecting to Honduras. "that's great. All of the ones we have now are with people who can trust us to deliver, for one reason or another... this mess in Peking looks bad to folks back home."

"And what are you suggesting?"

"Truthfully that we need to massage how the legations are acting, its in everyone's best interest that China is stable, chaos is bad for everyone an example has to be set. The elections in November need to go off without a hitch." He held up a hand, "Don't get me wrong, you're right, expanding the work that can be seen done is good, and the less people stuck in narrow margin, cyclical work like farming is obviously good, but we need to show back home that that its safe."

... that it wasn't the chaos and disorder of some of how Europe looked went unsaid though with the violence convulsing say the German capital back in January over communist agitation.
--
In the war between the states a Federal division trended upwards to about four thousand men, Confederate divisions were larger still if they were at paper strength. The result was that if in they somehow managed to wind back up in grand pa's day 1st​ Division was comparable to some corps in size.

Officially a rifle battalion had about 70 officers allotted to it on paper. That only applied to active army division battalions; in no small part due to their red legs. So 1st​ and 3rd​ until very recently, but ETS units stood up to study a concept and evaluate new systems trended even larger in the number officers, warrant officers, and senior enlisted they employed for a given task. All of those men were thoroughly involved in writing up what they had learned over the course of exercises that then was digested in subsequent reviews of those sections.

The conclusion pretty in all of it was that officers and senior enlisted agreed that in order to get there first, to a designated assembly point, rifle divisions needed to b e mechanized. Once they arrived and in sufficient numbers could throw out blocking forces, and counter reconnoiter forces and then engage the enemy as the artillery deployed.

The lesson since 1913 was that tractor drawn artillery were more less space intensive, you didn't need pack mules or horses and could have a congregated motor pool of mechanics who would be tasked to other duties as needed. The benefits there in were obvious, and as a result the generalization drawn from the studies was that industrial expansion, a large economy insured the viability of both the army as a short term sustainable institution... that was to say keeping it funded... as well as that it expanded economic growth more broadly... and of course the staff officers read read read.

They read especially, and digested what the greater powers had done to mobilize their economies for a war time footing... and again that non military industries could produce goods for sustaining a total war state. That also honed into the matter of the quality matter, but more than that.

"Corps?"

"Yes," It was a controversial topic, and it was a good thing Reinsch had been succeeded by someone more favorable to what they were doing out here given recent tensions.

"Realistically 1st​ and 2nd​ Division plus a couple brigades are our reaction force anyway." Cullen replied, "With Shang where he is, and 3rd​ plus a brigade that covers the southern frontier." He declined to bring up the Guard, but recent events were conspicuous as a result of that lack of explicit mention, "Our first line reserves are the Gendarmes first line units, and the two brigades of artillery, and the Heavy Engineering Brigade, after that its the Guard component for responding" [against] "a non regional challenge."

Dawes, who was of course particularly smug at the conclusion that broadly endorsed his red legs as a critical component of the modern army... not that really needed to be said... drummed his fingers on the reports. "The matter of communication, and logistics, and transport are the major matters of the finding. The Infantry remains critical to establishing local control, and exerting an area of influence, but the rapid bringing up of artillery and their engagement in short decisive barrages is what allows the army to turn away of enemies many time time in excess of our own people." Rather, probably, unintentionally one man down from Dawes echoed a comment Allen had made to Percy some years before.

--
Notes: This is in part to reiterate how the world is changing, for reference despite being similar in manpower terms Xian's triangle divisions, for different reason, the constituent battalion number of officers is roughly double that of a British Great War roster, and this is in part a hallmark of specialization. Here Xian's Rifle Btn still have that fourth company being artillery, which means greater logistical needs, so headquarters support is larger, there is also other CSS roles where Xian Rifle Battalions have organic snipers and also a larger medical section. [The aid men mentioned some time back]

The other thing is that even though there will be comments of 'this five year plan' or 'that five year plan', this is an evolution of the technocratic business planning model idea rather than the centralized state planning model of the later, relatively speaking, interwar year belligerents. This is we have X production we want to expand in order to meet a target goal by 192X, and this goes towards the cadre having corporate rather than government roots and coming from a period of long term industrial planning on the corporate side that is aimed at long term profitability rather than quarterly dividend numbers.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1920
When you came down to it Duan had probably done more to hurt himself in all of this ... that it was a mess of his own making than anything else. He'd thrown the first punch and underestimated how much the other guy was willing to take... and then it had all tumbled down from there.

Duan had resigned in the face of defeat but that was hardly the end of it. Zhang had brought with him a large body of men to Beijing, which part of that was that Manchuria had on paper provided the strategic reserve for Zhili's push against the Anfu club... but Zhang was also making clear he didn't intend to be pushed around by the more urbane leadership... and that had implications of its own.

Fengtien, and Zhili made their agreements which meant a new cabinet and a shake up of the executive offices. Officially Xu would be staying on but from the sound of it they had, the two cliques, had agreed to bring Jin back as PM.

Percy sipped his tea.

"Xu isn't exactly in Cao's good graces." Allen found himself noting, though the Englishman should have been well aware of that.

The englishman nodded, and then made a reference to the 'May Fourth business' as he called it, "Its quite different for your lot, the papers published," He meant Xian, and the newspapers that took their cues from Xian, "made it quite clear that Versailles would be refused by America." It had become politically expedient to say America instead of the legally correct distinct answer of 'the senate would refuse to ratify'. They were doing the same after all... it was politically convenient. It also bypassed the nuances of why the senate would refuse.

"We speak the same language Percy, your counterpart in Washington should have known that treaty wasn't going to fly..." but most likely Lloyd George whether the wizard wanted to admit it or not had thought that it was a matter of fait accompli, that because the president would agree to it that all the rest would grudgingly go along... after all Wilson had campaigned against the war and then lead the states into it after the Germans had become unbearable. That wasn't how the founding fathers had balanced the machinery of government, "So what then?"

"Cao Kun supports federalism, maybe not to the same degree as Feng did, but broadly speaking he wants a unified Chinese state." And that was something that Alston meant to use since he had cabled that statement with the intention of leverage against the embargo without actually coming on to say that the whole thing had been a mistake... but the implication in the cables was there... and also with the threat of the reds on the frontier... "and well I suppose towards that end, I should ask you where you stand?"

"In what sense Percy?"

"Cao Kun is attempting to be a consensus builder with the south... and it isn't going well." The papers were making their rounds of cartoons. Shanghai, Canton especially... but Peking wasn't exempt even with troops in the street. "The south wants the previous parliament, but we should reasonably come to the conclusion that... the parliament is toothless, if it was brought back the Zhili clique, never mind Manchuria would have any cause to give them credence.

The problem there would be the constituency of the lower house... and that the KMT delegates were quite likely to be as much of a headache, potentially even more of a headache than those who had won their seats in the previous election. The south though had boycotted the election, as stupid as boycotting the elections had been, it gave the south a paper excuse to say they weren't represented by the 'illegitimate duan qirui paper parliament' or what not. "I intend to hold elections in the fall Percy, and I intend to seat our lower house in the spring. Its a provincial matter, and as you say Cao Kun is consensus building." Which meant he didn't want to rock the boat he didn't want to have expend troops in distant provinces... let the provinces self administer.

How much of that was simply a recognition that the center had not been... had not been since the Qing able to direct its own forces, being reliant on provincial forces, to control the different regions given the state of the banner army system... able to enforce its will on the provinces was debatable. The conflict in Honan the 'war and anti war parties', the fights before that during Yuan Shikai had shown that the center just couldn't afford to keep troops in the field for prolonged periods of time. It simply wasn't feasible in terms of silver, or political capital.

"And what then?"

"My understanding of current polling is that public security, and safety are the driving factors of the electorate."

"Fight bandits you mean?"

Allen shrugged, "When we ask people what they think the government should be doing its to hunt bandits," And when they could ever ask, well what else, "Its sanitation, flood control, care for the sick infirm, food prices." The cadre consensus was that benevolence societies were all well and good for small local matters, food banks were fine, but that there needed to b e something more, there needed to be more organization.

"Correct me if I'm wrong John Allen, a great number of your electorate are soldiers. You're talking about, is a khaki election. Your soldiers have the franchise."

"And everyone who digs coal for me as well," He retorted bristling. It wasn't all. The truth was even though it wasn't universal suffrage there were women who had the incomes or property to vote as well... and that was something they had broached on but hadn't really, really thought about. Percy, didn't care about that...

Percy deflected, "What I meant," He protested, "Was that I would expect a politically minded soldier to still be most concerned with what he deals with daily. If he hunts bandits, he would surely expect the government's responsibility must be to shoot bandits. If he is called upon to see to broken levies then flood control must be the duty of the state. You seem to have asked questions that are self evident in what a man should answer especially in this country."

... and whether or not Percy might have a point there it was easy to imagine what someone from Harvard or Cambridge, Yale or Oxford might think of a solider electorate and where their preferences sat, "I have ever confidence that an educated and engaged populace can identify its own troubles."

Graves didn't rise to it, and whether he had meant it or not he'd found a chink to leverage Allen's temper, "We're going to be very busy, MacKinder's staff, and the Red Cross are very worried about conditions in Southern Russia between the war-"

"The war nothing, its banditry, this war communism nonsense is theft plain and simple, and there will be a famine as a result."

"Yes, but.... but as it sits and as I shouldn't need to tell you, that there are those who would sooner think that the Bolsheviks can be rehabilitated and brought around to with honey than vinegar."

It was disgusting but Percy wasn't wrong, there were people who had not learned the lesson that 1914 had well established. Trade did not prevent war, economic integration did not obviate revanchist ambitions. "So what? You had already said the Canadian is making a mess of things with Japan."

"It not just the minister, though I admit that Imperial politics is a complicated matter. The Japanese are prepared to prohibit trade with the soviet union. The Diet is going to take it up, but there is a compromise whereby we, Japan and the Empire and Lenin will recognize the Soviet state's borders,"

It had always been an optimistic idea... it was optimistic, only coherent and military force would check the aggression of the enemy, talking didn't work. It should have been, to borrow from Roosevelt as case of hammering away with guns not typewriters. The threat of being shot at if they came across the line was the only way lines worked. "So, that's that then, We refuse to have any trade with Moscow," The Bolshevik's capital, "we allow no transit of goods, we permit no soviet corporate entities to operate, etc etc." Percy started to waffle, "The latter, maybe a more difficult sell. Back channels to talk."

He nearly brought up the telegram that had come from Churchill, that questioned what sort of peace there could be if Lenin had his way from Warsaw to Vladivostok... "There is nothing to talk about Percy, fine, lets return to the situation in the south."

"Yes, the south, we did get a bit derailed, Cao Kun is amenable to reseating the old parliament but he also doesn't want to create a ruckus with the northern members of the parliament either. Zhang doesn't really care about parliament, per se, but he likes the impression that he has people in Peking it makes him feel included." Percy paused, "It gives him face you know." It did, and that was a complicated issue in itself. "Jin is one of Duan's people, him coming back on as Prime Minister is ... well it gives the Anfu club face in spite of it."

Percy was dancing around something, something that must have hit the legation... maybe the Brits were carrying on conversations in hopes of stability and wanted to know what Cao Kun's Zhili clique had in mind to manage it. "You want to tell me what this is really about, Percival?"

"The victors, yes probably Cao Kun, but also Zhang tso-lin, we can't discount his voice in this... the victors are adamant that provincial authorities be consulted henceforth... on all government appointments and policies." It went further than that. It went a lot further than that. The combined Zhili-Fengtien 'bill' for lack of a better description enumerated that they [provincial leadership] should nominate within their own provincial jurisdictions, but also to veto appointments outside provincial jurisdictions. They used the word 'advise' provinces who weren't accepting Peking's orders... which was probably some strain of compromise between the war and anti war factions within the Beiyang Clique. "And then there is the matter of ... of taxes and expenditures."

... of course it was that to which London was most concerned. The balance of payments, especially with the vast sums expended during the war weighing on the Treasury.