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BY HIN WONG
CANTON has been horribly red the last few days since October 15 when a Red Army of 40,000 terrorists red-washed 35 wards and streets in the Western Suburb with the blood of aged and young who were too weak to endure the rage of a Red Sun which pierced through them in the form of daggers and bayonets and kerosene oil, the power of which has left a monument of hundreds of blackened walls standing over debris, once the glory of 1600 homes and sheps worth more than $25,000,000 but now a grave of 6,000 innocent men, women, and children who perished when Dr. Sun Yat-sen destroyed a good part of the city by fire when failing to overcome all the Canton Merchants Volunteers opposing tyranny and misrule.
Since the last return of Dr. Sun Yat-sen to power in Canton in the spring of 1923, he has been importing to sup- port his ambition to become the President of China several hundred thousand politicians and mercenaries. To support them, exorbitant taxes had to be created; public lands and buildings, sold; private property, confiscated; and many men and women pressed into involuntary servitude. Of course, the Cantonese first petitioned, then protested by strikes and suspension of trade, and finally resisted by force some of these maladministrations and unbearable taxes. But Dr. Sun, instead of listening to public protests and removing some of the grievances, looked upon all those differing with him in policy and political ideas as enemies and sought to remove them by enlarging his Red Army with advice and subsidy from Soviet representatives in order that he might end all opposiiton from the people.
The Canton Merchants Volunteers, a legal organization with military training for local self-defense against lawless elements, naturally was called upon by the people to check further outlawry. Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his Kuomintang Political Party, while themselves daily preaching democracy and party government, would not sanction having any other party but their own, and they had been suspicious of the people’s movement for self-government and defense for some time. When the Merchants Volunteers in Canton applied to the Canton government for a permit to import arms last August, Dr. Sun and his party got excited and they, instead of denying the application and thus preventing the arrival of any arms, first issued the permit and, upon the coming into port of the arms, seized them and disregarded the permit. The Volunteers protested against the action and the Kuomintang regime under Sun Yat-sen which assured the owners of the arms that they would be given back all arms upon their contribution of $500,000 towards Dr. Sun’s war fund and then divided the arms among Dr. Sun’s favorite following. Upon further pressure from the Volunteers, Dr. Sun finally agreed to hand back about 4,000 of the 10,000 pieces of arms and 110,000 of the 34,000,000 rounds of ammunition. The Volunteers were glad on October 10, just two months after the arrival of the arms, to get what was given back but, on examination after the receipt of this small part of a big consignment, it was found that they were but substitutes, discarded and damaged articles gathered from the mercenary units. The Volunteer organization, thus cheated, again protested. This angered Dr.
Sun Yat-sen, and he on October 14 decreed the disarming of the Volunteers and the occupying of their barracks. Upon the refusal of the latter to be disarmed, the massacre of the Canton citizens followed. For the time being the Volunteers have been driven from their homes and the Red flag of tie Kuomintang Party is now supreme in Canton.
The destruction of Canton City dnd the massacre of Canton citizens by Reds under Dr. Sun Yat-sen, on October 15, as far as figures go, gathered from various sources, were responsible for deaths among aged persons, mostly women, and children, numbering 4,300 to 6,400; whole or part ruining by fire of 1,600 to 2,200 shops or offices; and damage to business and property amounting to no less than $25,000,000. Exact figures in all these will never be known, and the numberr of homes sacked, persons more or less wounded by stray bullets or burning buildings or resisting looting, and women outraged, while large, may not be such as given in some vernacular press reports. It appeared that only about 584 Reds were shot and 200 seriously and 700 slightly wounded, while some 600 Merchants Volunteers were, on October 17, unaccounted for. Among these, some 50 were given up as dead, 100 wounded, and 150 as having been perhaps taken prisoners by the many Red commanders. The number of streets partially or wholly destroyed was 34 when last figured.
The attacking Reds were directed by Wu Te-chen, adjutant-generalto Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who actually commanded the general shooting affray at the Menchants Volunteers who defended their "city at several strategic points; by Li Fook-lum, who encouraged the massacre of the civilians and the general rape and lootings; and by-Governor Liao Chung-aoi, the fore- most Chinese Bolshevist in South China, who led the 40 squads formed among the unemployed coolies to commit the incendiarism from the several barber shops which had done so effective a service in the destruction of the most prosperous business section of Canton, including the Ta-tung, Tang-lung, and the Supsam-hong Streets, the Wall Street section of Canton, the home of the “capitalistic’’ interests, according to Red phraseology. 4%.
Canton, October 20, 1924.