March 1918
Imperator Pax
Talon Master
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March 1918
He found himself in something of an uncomfortable position. Allen had no idea what the most recently seated cadre members thought about all this.
God knows, a decade ago the idea that they'd be carrying on like this... it would have struck him absurd. Still, they had to sit through it, and so did the proxies and make what they would of the stump speeches. That was they were for all intents and purposes. Stump speeches... and ones that were looking beyond just the province... people had gotten up and talked about the war too, and the mess it had made of everything.
He knew for a fact that had resulted in some unplanned changes to what people had planned to say, but more than that this gathering was different for other reasons. It hadn't helped that they'd opened at this least this part of the conference to allies, and associates from outside the province. Instead of informal dialogue, smoking room fireside chats in the morning or evenings over whisky or in open floor circulars instead they'd had every take turns at a podium for speeches.
This year had been formal floor speeches. So maybe with an itinerary that made it clear that the topic of this morning had been intended to talk about the situation of bandit suppression... maybe hongkui had a point... maybe it would have been better he used terms like forward basing instead of sphere of influence... but maybe just as well he'd called a spade a spade.
The truth was geography played a big role in Szechwan's situation, and that the province's original leadership were being replaced by more and more fractured local leadership.
Some of the noise started to dim. The loudest people the originals, and a line between camps. The Ma Clique was looking at more than just bandit suppression there was money to be made, and maybe grudges to be settled that went back to the Dugan revolt... and probably before.
"Oh shit." Cole had sat up, and Allen recognized that Waite was heading to the podium next. Allen had not intended to speak at this and was high up in the back right row.
There was a cough, "The Tsardom is gone, does anyone disagree with that? This war has killed by my reckoning three empires. A fourth to come? The arrival of the Federal Army on the shores of western Europe is the doom of Germany."
Allen rubbed the bridge of his nose. Cole bit down to stop himself. He sounded like Colonel Wood at the forefront of young men in cadet uniforms in New York.
"It is true that the Congress of the United States has been loath to supply the necessary funds to prepare the army, but the army is now in Europe, whether it lasts a year or two. The landslide is coming down. Russia though, is gone. The sick man of Europe is all but broken, the Austrians were as the Germans themselves observed a shambling dead weight handcuffed to them. The Germans have killed an entire generation of frenchmen, but the math does not lie. The Entente spends something to the order of a half billion dollars every six months. Over four billion dollars has gone out to insure that France can buy food and weapons, that England, and Russia can. That's what the war costs. London has been supplanted as global financial heart of trade." By New York.... by wall street, by the trading houses like JP Morgan. "Washington has yet pledged more."
This would have been a speech better made, tailored to an American audience... and indeed one largely of educated southern gentry and adventurers of their generation or even their fathers' generation, but Waite continued his hands resting on the podium as he spoke of structures, and of history... and of what had allowed the US to take such a role. The factors of gradual construction, of evolution not revolution as Waite tended to quip, which was in itself a contagious catch phrase he probably had gotten from some Englishman.
... and speaking of Englishmen Percy was nervously squirming as the speech carried on. Not the least of which was when Waite highlighted that there had needed to be a transition from the British acting through Morgan to having actually sent a treasury delegation to Wilson in person. He wasn't likely to turn the conversation to the necessity of military resources, which might further disturb Percy at the moment... instead turning to Russia's descent into anarchic bloodletting as the Bolsheviks focused on seizing power for themselves and purging their rivals... and the famine that such disorder would predictably bring.
--
He watched the staff gathering, as the pipes played. The march had put an argument about their current force arrangement.
Cullen shrugged as another cadre man to the right of Bert and Dawes regarded and then turned, "The kilts are one thing, but swords really?"
The Commandos were in their dress uniforms, which now included basket hilted swords. "I've six companies of the fellas," Cole replied, "Besides the point of the sword on a gentleman's uniform is to look sharp... and they match." He added after a minute.
Allen paused to sip his coffee. The kilts weren't quite Campbell colors. They'd clearly been done from the same wool stocks as the uniforms were worked in. That was from a green mountain boys line off of the spanish merinos. They were machine stiched, and machine dyed, and the green was therefore dark and uniform and made the red stand out a bright near to blood color.
"You're doing this just to tweak the limeys." A twangy voice put it.
"I wouldn't do anything of the sort Seamus." Cullen protested to the South Carolinians comment, "I planned the uniforms a while ago, its just it took time." He said to the others... and it did sound believable. "I put a lot of work in those uniforms. Fellas deserve to look good."
It was believable.
Certainly it was the same thinking that allowed dress uniforms for staff officers to include Austrian knots on gray uniforms... which the British probably weren't all together thrilled of either.
The labor corp had been formally retired as a name after the Bashan fighting and their fortifications as the transition completed with the body folding into either the Corp of Engineers or the Interior Ministry. Ministry had been a compromise to Chinese sensibilities on the naming of things. They had considered Department of the Interior ... well Interior Ministry sounded better... it was hard to argue there.
Public Works was a good name for civilian side of things.
"Cole." He called.
"Yeah?"
"I want those bandits in Bashan cleared out. Take your first battalion and get it done."
Cole clicked his tongue and smiled, looking to a veteran of 7th Cavalry with a smile that didn't reach his eyes, "Yeah, I'll handle it." Carter down the table started to protest, "He can come with me, I'll need some red legs along, yeah?"
"Of course he's going with you." Allen replied, and the younger man shut up, "What? I'm reinforcing the front Carter. I ain't mad at you. Szechwan is big country, the corp of engineers will do what needs to be done, you do your job, Cullen does his, and Hongkui will handle his. There is enough food at the banquet for you all to fill up."
The Gendearmes 1st Regiment on the deck marched well... but they fought better still. Cullen was right maybe the distinction of them with kilts and basket hilted swords was a merit of distinction that did warrant it. Later when it was time to hunt they'd trade dress uniforms for ghillie suits and remington and mauser rifles.
Cullen leaned back, "There are other bandits that need killing John."
"There are always rats in the field." He agreed.
Bandit... as they had learned years ago, years ago now, had much harsher connotations in Chinese than in English. It was true that Bai Lang had had his ideals. That he had had his beliefs that he had looked after the people in at least his home county with the proceeds of his raids... but that hadn't extended to the neighbors never mind what he'd done to the hui as he'd worked his way west four years ago.
Never again would bandits be allowed to cross Shensi's borders, that was the intention. To accomplish that they needed to to grow and expand. People were less likely to turn to banditry with better prospects, and no famine. There were always the bad sorts... but that was what the law was for... and if Hongkui was serious about projecting a sphere of influence into the north western frontier region of the province... well then yes they'd just reinforce the foothold as Gansu units filed in.
--
Griswold had been giving him dirty looks much of the previous afternoon, and it didn't look his mood had improved. Part of that were the speeches from yesterday. JP was all but fidgeting and Waite looked like he wanted to be elsewhere as well which suggested the Georgian may as well dragged them in by their ears.
He spared a glance at the clock, "Don't you have a meeting with Waller, and Simmons now?"
"See I told Sam just that." JP burst out.
"It can wait." Griswold declared, "Look I needed the four of us in the same damned room and I can rustle Dawes if I need to, but," He wagged his finger, then stopped, "Alright its like this the times are a changing. The filibusters have gone off yeah well thats fine, but we're short on people, we are still on schedule, but with everything going on something is going to have to give. Lewis's gun takes an awful lot of machining. Its a lot of hours on my fellas."
Allen nodded. JP nodded. Waite shrugged, "Yeah. We all know what. I mean come on, those fins sucks down wind, a vacuum like." There was some shop talk between the trio of exactly what it was like, but then they dropped back.
The jist was that production needed to throttle back. "I'll be honest. We've been running full tilt for the Anzac order, and from the feelers we're getting look I think we need to step back and refurbish the machines. We're making a lot of guns a month. The barrel making is starting to show problems..."
"Not the Mausers?"
"We replace the bits on the Mausers more frequently anyway," Waite answered the question, "I know what he means there, and with the Lewis it has been different but, if we had machine tooling from the states more regularly this wouldn't be giving us trouble." But the situation was, that Waite had a point that the war was till ongoing and thus machine tooling replacements were basically non existent. "Towards that end we need a solution to look for it, preferably before the Japanese Army starts seriously asking for 8mm guns."
"Nakamichi was serious about that?" JP questioned suddenly, "I thought he was just, I mean." He trailed off, "Its just a few hundred guns." And that statement in its lonesome highlighted how much things had changed. A few hundred guns. A few hundred [machine guns]. It was not longer 1914. Yuan Shikai was long dead, and things had changed quite a lot since then, never mind since the Qing Dynasty had crumbled away.
They were beyond, well beyond the early days where industry went up piecemeal. They still were licensing technology, they would license things from Kodak after the war ended, there would be other technologies to license and bring in. For 1918 though a few hundred machine guns as a contract it didn't warrant much of a look. "I think Nakamichi found some spare change somewhere, or one of his friends did. I mean the Japs probably have an ETS equivalent, but they've said nothing about airplane models." Waite replied, "if I had to guess they're going to move on Vladivostok, and if they can find the money-"
"Nakamichi's request for input?"
"Uh huh," He grunted, "Five divisions, he's looking to pad out the number of machine guns. Of course, with the war," Waite paused, "I don't know how much the Japanese army has kept up with trends. Tsingtao not withstanding." Allen hadn't had to watch the assault on Tsingtao at the start of the war, they'd been camped far away from the coast in Xian ... making sense of the post Bai Lang situation of the country side, and contending with what the European war would mean... but he remembered the human bullet attacks of the Russo-Japanese war. At Mukden, the Japanese had had less than two hundred machine guns and that had been spread across in packets in the five field armies present... but that had been way back in 1905
"Speaking of five divisions."
"Not this shit again." They had had this argument yesterday.
"Damn it John Allen. We had this argument, Nakamichi made the observation that three divisions was a good idea, and put it off." In 1916, and they had taken time to do that. "Yeah, I agree that in 1913 that would have been silly. The British had what six plus the horses." It wasn't a real question, and it wasn't 1913. "We can stretch it out, but we need to be clear with the men what we're going to do."
In 1913 the British Empire, not hte Empire at large, but the British Army the BEF had been six infantry divisions and an over strength cavalry division. The reasoning behind it was it was a frontier force designed to operate in marginal border zones across the empire... that hadn't been where they had gone to fight in 1914. Unlike the British though Waite's logic behind the divisional expansion reflected territorial boundaries, and answers. 1st and 3rd were expeditionary units built similar to the US 15th Infantry where as 2nd and the presumed 4th and 5th would be Infantry Divisions intended for staffing by reservists and as a body for maintaining order.
The compromise was eventually to be had with the establishment of a national guard bureau based on the American model that would be staffed by initially three provinces. Western Zhili, Shansi, and Shensi. It would take time, after 1920, to go ahead expand that to stand up and recruit from the western commanderies, Xinjian, the gansu corridor and also tibet, but the ground work reflected the changes.
British estimates placed the number of soldiers in China in 1915 at half a million. That would have been fine, if, if that had still all be under a nominal Beiyang chain of command, but it wasn't any more. The president and the prime minister hadn't even evenly divided the armies. Percy's estimates suggested there were over a hundred thousand men in the south under arms predominantly under the control of the Yunnan clique and its army. The expectation would be ther would be in excess of a million men next year.
He wasn't even sure if Percy was counting their three divisions and the four brigades. He wasn't yet counting plans for the WPA's nominal force of the same volume not yet. Duan Qirui had yet to announce his plans for that force's size and organization, much less make anything towards how he intended to equip it to fight in Europe. Not that the War Participation Army would actually ever go to Europe.
He found himself in something of an uncomfortable position. Allen had no idea what the most recently seated cadre members thought about all this.
God knows, a decade ago the idea that they'd be carrying on like this... it would have struck him absurd. Still, they had to sit through it, and so did the proxies and make what they would of the stump speeches. That was they were for all intents and purposes. Stump speeches... and ones that were looking beyond just the province... people had gotten up and talked about the war too, and the mess it had made of everything.
He knew for a fact that had resulted in some unplanned changes to what people had planned to say, but more than that this gathering was different for other reasons. It hadn't helped that they'd opened at this least this part of the conference to allies, and associates from outside the province. Instead of informal dialogue, smoking room fireside chats in the morning or evenings over whisky or in open floor circulars instead they'd had every take turns at a podium for speeches.
This year had been formal floor speeches. So maybe with an itinerary that made it clear that the topic of this morning had been intended to talk about the situation of bandit suppression... maybe hongkui had a point... maybe it would have been better he used terms like forward basing instead of sphere of influence... but maybe just as well he'd called a spade a spade.
The truth was geography played a big role in Szechwan's situation, and that the province's original leadership were being replaced by more and more fractured local leadership.
Some of the noise started to dim. The loudest people the originals, and a line between camps. The Ma Clique was looking at more than just bandit suppression there was money to be made, and maybe grudges to be settled that went back to the Dugan revolt... and probably before.
"Oh shit." Cole had sat up, and Allen recognized that Waite was heading to the podium next. Allen had not intended to speak at this and was high up in the back right row.
There was a cough, "The Tsardom is gone, does anyone disagree with that? This war has killed by my reckoning three empires. A fourth to come? The arrival of the Federal Army on the shores of western Europe is the doom of Germany."
Allen rubbed the bridge of his nose. Cole bit down to stop himself. He sounded like Colonel Wood at the forefront of young men in cadet uniforms in New York.
"It is true that the Congress of the United States has been loath to supply the necessary funds to prepare the army, but the army is now in Europe, whether it lasts a year or two. The landslide is coming down. Russia though, is gone. The sick man of Europe is all but broken, the Austrians were as the Germans themselves observed a shambling dead weight handcuffed to them. The Germans have killed an entire generation of frenchmen, but the math does not lie. The Entente spends something to the order of a half billion dollars every six months. Over four billion dollars has gone out to insure that France can buy food and weapons, that England, and Russia can. That's what the war costs. London has been supplanted as global financial heart of trade." By New York.... by wall street, by the trading houses like JP Morgan. "Washington has yet pledged more."
This would have been a speech better made, tailored to an American audience... and indeed one largely of educated southern gentry and adventurers of their generation or even their fathers' generation, but Waite continued his hands resting on the podium as he spoke of structures, and of history... and of what had allowed the US to take such a role. The factors of gradual construction, of evolution not revolution as Waite tended to quip, which was in itself a contagious catch phrase he probably had gotten from some Englishman.
... and speaking of Englishmen Percy was nervously squirming as the speech carried on. Not the least of which was when Waite highlighted that there had needed to be a transition from the British acting through Morgan to having actually sent a treasury delegation to Wilson in person. He wasn't likely to turn the conversation to the necessity of military resources, which might further disturb Percy at the moment... instead turning to Russia's descent into anarchic bloodletting as the Bolsheviks focused on seizing power for themselves and purging their rivals... and the famine that such disorder would predictably bring.
--
He watched the staff gathering, as the pipes played. The march had put an argument about their current force arrangement.
Cullen shrugged as another cadre man to the right of Bert and Dawes regarded and then turned, "The kilts are one thing, but swords really?"
The Commandos were in their dress uniforms, which now included basket hilted swords. "I've six companies of the fellas," Cole replied, "Besides the point of the sword on a gentleman's uniform is to look sharp... and they match." He added after a minute.
Allen paused to sip his coffee. The kilts weren't quite Campbell colors. They'd clearly been done from the same wool stocks as the uniforms were worked in. That was from a green mountain boys line off of the spanish merinos. They were machine stiched, and machine dyed, and the green was therefore dark and uniform and made the red stand out a bright near to blood color.
"You're doing this just to tweak the limeys." A twangy voice put it.
"I wouldn't do anything of the sort Seamus." Cullen protested to the South Carolinians comment, "I planned the uniforms a while ago, its just it took time." He said to the others... and it did sound believable. "I put a lot of work in those uniforms. Fellas deserve to look good."
It was believable.
Certainly it was the same thinking that allowed dress uniforms for staff officers to include Austrian knots on gray uniforms... which the British probably weren't all together thrilled of either.
The labor corp had been formally retired as a name after the Bashan fighting and their fortifications as the transition completed with the body folding into either the Corp of Engineers or the Interior Ministry. Ministry had been a compromise to Chinese sensibilities on the naming of things. They had considered Department of the Interior ... well Interior Ministry sounded better... it was hard to argue there.
Public Works was a good name for civilian side of things.
"Cole." He called.
"Yeah?"
"I want those bandits in Bashan cleared out. Take your first battalion and get it done."
Cole clicked his tongue and smiled, looking to a veteran of 7th Cavalry with a smile that didn't reach his eyes, "Yeah, I'll handle it." Carter down the table started to protest, "He can come with me, I'll need some red legs along, yeah?"
"Of course he's going with you." Allen replied, and the younger man shut up, "What? I'm reinforcing the front Carter. I ain't mad at you. Szechwan is big country, the corp of engineers will do what needs to be done, you do your job, Cullen does his, and Hongkui will handle his. There is enough food at the banquet for you all to fill up."
The Gendearmes 1st Regiment on the deck marched well... but they fought better still. Cullen was right maybe the distinction of them with kilts and basket hilted swords was a merit of distinction that did warrant it. Later when it was time to hunt they'd trade dress uniforms for ghillie suits and remington and mauser rifles.
Cullen leaned back, "There are other bandits that need killing John."
"There are always rats in the field." He agreed.
Bandit... as they had learned years ago, years ago now, had much harsher connotations in Chinese than in English. It was true that Bai Lang had had his ideals. That he had had his beliefs that he had looked after the people in at least his home county with the proceeds of his raids... but that hadn't extended to the neighbors never mind what he'd done to the hui as he'd worked his way west four years ago.
Never again would bandits be allowed to cross Shensi's borders, that was the intention. To accomplish that they needed to to grow and expand. People were less likely to turn to banditry with better prospects, and no famine. There were always the bad sorts... but that was what the law was for... and if Hongkui was serious about projecting a sphere of influence into the north western frontier region of the province... well then yes they'd just reinforce the foothold as Gansu units filed in.
--
Griswold had been giving him dirty looks much of the previous afternoon, and it didn't look his mood had improved. Part of that were the speeches from yesterday. JP was all but fidgeting and Waite looked like he wanted to be elsewhere as well which suggested the Georgian may as well dragged them in by their ears.
He spared a glance at the clock, "Don't you have a meeting with Waller, and Simmons now?"
"See I told Sam just that." JP burst out.
"It can wait." Griswold declared, "Look I needed the four of us in the same damned room and I can rustle Dawes if I need to, but," He wagged his finger, then stopped, "Alright its like this the times are a changing. The filibusters have gone off yeah well thats fine, but we're short on people, we are still on schedule, but with everything going on something is going to have to give. Lewis's gun takes an awful lot of machining. Its a lot of hours on my fellas."
Allen nodded. JP nodded. Waite shrugged, "Yeah. We all know what. I mean come on, those fins sucks down wind, a vacuum like." There was some shop talk between the trio of exactly what it was like, but then they dropped back.
The jist was that production needed to throttle back. "I'll be honest. We've been running full tilt for the Anzac order, and from the feelers we're getting look I think we need to step back and refurbish the machines. We're making a lot of guns a month. The barrel making is starting to show problems..."
"Not the Mausers?"
"We replace the bits on the Mausers more frequently anyway," Waite answered the question, "I know what he means there, and with the Lewis it has been different but, if we had machine tooling from the states more regularly this wouldn't be giving us trouble." But the situation was, that Waite had a point that the war was till ongoing and thus machine tooling replacements were basically non existent. "Towards that end we need a solution to look for it, preferably before the Japanese Army starts seriously asking for 8mm guns."
"Nakamichi was serious about that?" JP questioned suddenly, "I thought he was just, I mean." He trailed off, "Its just a few hundred guns." And that statement in its lonesome highlighted how much things had changed. A few hundred guns. A few hundred [machine guns]. It was not longer 1914. Yuan Shikai was long dead, and things had changed quite a lot since then, never mind since the Qing Dynasty had crumbled away.
They were beyond, well beyond the early days where industry went up piecemeal. They still were licensing technology, they would license things from Kodak after the war ended, there would be other technologies to license and bring in. For 1918 though a few hundred machine guns as a contract it didn't warrant much of a look. "I think Nakamichi found some spare change somewhere, or one of his friends did. I mean the Japs probably have an ETS equivalent, but they've said nothing about airplane models." Waite replied, "if I had to guess they're going to move on Vladivostok, and if they can find the money-"
"Nakamichi's request for input?"
"Uh huh," He grunted, "Five divisions, he's looking to pad out the number of machine guns. Of course, with the war," Waite paused, "I don't know how much the Japanese army has kept up with trends. Tsingtao not withstanding." Allen hadn't had to watch the assault on Tsingtao at the start of the war, they'd been camped far away from the coast in Xian ... making sense of the post Bai Lang situation of the country side, and contending with what the European war would mean... but he remembered the human bullet attacks of the Russo-Japanese war. At Mukden, the Japanese had had less than two hundred machine guns and that had been spread across in packets in the five field armies present... but that had been way back in 1905
"Speaking of five divisions."
"Not this shit again." They had had this argument yesterday.
"Damn it John Allen. We had this argument, Nakamichi made the observation that three divisions was a good idea, and put it off." In 1916, and they had taken time to do that. "Yeah, I agree that in 1913 that would have been silly. The British had what six plus the horses." It wasn't a real question, and it wasn't 1913. "We can stretch it out, but we need to be clear with the men what we're going to do."
In 1913 the British Empire, not hte Empire at large, but the British Army the BEF had been six infantry divisions and an over strength cavalry division. The reasoning behind it was it was a frontier force designed to operate in marginal border zones across the empire... that hadn't been where they had gone to fight in 1914. Unlike the British though Waite's logic behind the divisional expansion reflected territorial boundaries, and answers. 1st and 3rd were expeditionary units built similar to the US 15th Infantry where as 2nd and the presumed 4th and 5th would be Infantry Divisions intended for staffing by reservists and as a body for maintaining order.
The compromise was eventually to be had with the establishment of a national guard bureau based on the American model that would be staffed by initially three provinces. Western Zhili, Shansi, and Shensi. It would take time, after 1920, to go ahead expand that to stand up and recruit from the western commanderies, Xinjian, the gansu corridor and also tibet, but the ground work reflected the changes.
British estimates placed the number of soldiers in China in 1915 at half a million. That would have been fine, if, if that had still all be under a nominal Beiyang chain of command, but it wasn't any more. The president and the prime minister hadn't even evenly divided the armies. Percy's estimates suggested there were over a hundred thousand men in the south under arms predominantly under the control of the Yunnan clique and its army. The expectation would be ther would be in excess of a million men next year.
He wasn't even sure if Percy was counting their three divisions and the four brigades. He wasn't yet counting plans for the WPA's nominal force of the same volume not yet. Duan Qirui had yet to announce his plans for that force's size and organization, much less make anything towards how he intended to equip it to fight in Europe. Not that the War Participation Army would actually ever go to Europe.