Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

[Imperator Pax]

April 1922
Wu's formal recognition of hostilities had come very late, weeks late, and with little indication of a serious attempt to dissuade the situation by political means... and thus it had confirmed that it was to be resolved by military force. That lack of denunciation though had not prevented him from positioning his troopers across Zhili province, and predicting deployment of Fengtien forces... and of course facing the reality that since Duan had been deposed there had been a sizable manchurian contingent in the capital environs. By the logic of the Huai army writings of the Taiping, that should have conveyed to Fengtien sufficient advantage as the 'host' of the battle for contesting the capital... but the Huai army of the 1860s had never had to fight a modern army engagement and Peking was very hard to defend without making preparations to resist.

Those weeks however had given the Foreign Office, and the Legation presence time to respond. It had also been weeks where Japan's legation had been slow to say anything, and then refuse to take sides in the crisis... Alston as his britainic majesty's minister plenipotentiary had recommended them to remain aloof from this scuffling. They'd already been hoping to do just that, and Wu's formal circular establishing his recognition of a state of hostilities didn't change that. They were going to remain at an elevated alert status. What Alston had not stated was Percy's official status. Allen watching one of the combat cars making its way through the street was unsure what Percy meant to gain by being here. "German gun?" He asked.

"Originally," He replied, the mechanics of the self loading system not his area of study, but it had invited some tizzy of mechanical deluge from the red legs, "From before the war," He continued, but it hadn't been ready, and not at market before then. The Combat Cars would carry a variety of armament such that the intention was a driver, a gunner and 11 dismounts. That was feasible for stand up fighters like the 1st​,and 3rd​ but the talk of mechanizing Infantry Divisions ...it wasn't feasible for them. 'The Leg' Infantry were to follow on and hold positions that Rifle and he supposed 'mechanized' infantry would punch through on, "The german cartridge it fired was anemic for our purposes so the Swiss Cadre insisted the cartridge be lengthened and shell weight increased, it was a lesson we learned after the visit to Russia."

"Ah." was all the Englishman remarked. Then after a moment, as Allen silently contemplated the map of northern china on his table, paying the armored vehicle no more mind as it rounded the bend, and staring at the suburb of tietsin where Zhang had established his own headquarters spoke up again, "does it meet satisfaction then?"

"It kills folks pretty well." He replied bluntly. "Yes its satisfactory for that Percy, we wouldn't have approved mounting it on the cars and issuing them to 1st ​if it didn't." Graves took the moment to acknowledge that, and how the experimental technical section worked in the evaluation of equipment. "The shell is about five inches, its not quite double the muzzle velocity of Becker's gun running American powder," He continued. "We're not entirely confident that its enough high explosive," At least with the current HE composition load, "to bust a pillbox, but its something."

"All due respect John Allen, bandits don't generally lay concrete and wire."

"The bolsheviks are bandits," He replied tersely, "Small bandits might not have concrete but bigger ones will do what they can." Alston in Tietsin with the Legation had continued to speak of the need of vigilance, for which he was supported by Churchill back in England with regards to Lenin. The Cadre didn't need reminding of that, they knew that. They knew that very well, and Percy's reminders on Alston's behest were rather annoying in their would be schoolteacher tone. He paused to take a pull from the dark coffee on the desk, and continued to eye Junliangcheng to the northeast on the map. It was where Zhang had established his headquarters of Fengtien, which put him in easy distance, a comfortable walking distance to speak to the legations as he liked.

"With his gendarmes he could have placed himself in Peking proper." Percy remarked.

Zhang could have certainly. His actual movement of troops had begun after Sun had begun moving into Hunan...and it was possible Zhang had expected Sun to either have more success or that that was meant to draw off Wu's troops further to Hunan. The Communications clique had lampooned Wu's suppression efforts in Hunan as wasteful of money that the national treasury simply could not afford the brief government of Liang had when it had come in cut funding to Wu's expedition in the province. "Sun started marching soon after Liang's government collapsed." Liang had been succeeded by bringing Yen... which seemed to suit the State department fine, but Liang's dismissal again had been something to set Zhang off as a personal slight, "He got off the line in early February."

"More than enough time for you to mobilize." Percy replied unnecessarily because that was self-evident... the fighting in Hunan had forced him to cut short both the consolatory funeral responsibilities and talks with Iseburo over the soviet problem to the North west. For that, Allen could say he resented Sun's expedition regardless of how much real threat it posed to the southern frontier.

Which was of course how things had started. Sun's march into Hunan required a readiness, and a statement. The cadre's official statement, written by a newly minted lieutenant general of the corp of engineers had outlined to the public, Xian's public, through the newspapers why the mobilization was occurring and what was going on. Yan had published a concurrent statement for his own province but the crux was that such an uprising would disrupt harmony. It didn't matter if Sun's march succeeded or if this was to be another failed rebellion it would make a mess of things.

The other matter was for the army active or reserve components alike how procedural the call up had become. Percy was correct that having been able to start issuing orders back in February had meant that by the point in which Wu and Zhang had moved their troops around the cadre had had the time to ready 1st​, 2nd​, and order 3rd​ and 8th​ Divisions to hold fast.

"You're going to authorize an expansion of the army."

It wasn't a question, so Allen didn't immediately respond to it, "Not as such," He replied, officially there were 7 provincial constitutions. Shansi, Shensi, and Western Zhili and then the western commanderies ... plus Tibet. "We were going to expand anyway. Expansion of the Guard," A brigade for Tibet, a brigade for Western Zhili, "the problem is this kind of common cause making caught everyone off guard."

"Yes," Percy paused, "From what we have been able to put together, it goes something like this, Sun is supposed to become president." That made sense, "Liang is supposed to come back in as Prime Minister,"

"I can understand that much, and the others."

"Duan would return as Dujun of Zhili, and from what I am to understand the provinces of Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Anhui would pass to the care of Zhang Xun. I am to assume that other provinces would be doled out to other Anhui generals who were supposed to be involved."

What obviously those men hadn't counted on was the squadrons at Shanghai and Canton deciding to support Wu and make a nuisance of themselves to the attempts to move troops north. "And?"

"And you're going to authorize the expansion of the army. You did it in response to the Manchu uprising, and now there are the bloody bolsheviks on the border as well."

"Why is that a problem for you Percy?"

"its not. Bloody hell John Allen, but you think that crack at the King's Honors was a joke, and even if it was drink caused to spill from the lips of men. Its what people, good people think. You were Yuan Shikai's friend, but people at home," He meant Londoners and the British of good breeding, from the right schools, and so forth, "See the problematic things about it all. The East India men were given leave, were asked to collect taxes by the Mughals. They were a company, and the old Empire is gone spare, Yuan is dead, the Qing went away before that and you can pretend that your private army is part of the country, but there is so much German there that they'd rather you're Prussia in the orient than admit you look like an east India man who has no need to answer to parliament."

From what he understood they'd never amounted to enough for Wilson to care, and Harding didn't seem to actively care because they weren't asking him for anything. The British concern was therefore... well annoying he supposed because they cared and the President of the United States did not care what they did. "Should I expect a problem from Curzon?"

"Personally, of course not Lord Curzon has no personal enmity with any of you... Even if you hadn't been there when the King was shot, you went to Russia, and have friends for it, including the personage of the King..."

"But?" He asked. "I assume it has something to do with your ham-fisted analogy." Especially since he'd never had a monopoly, and he was half tempted the likes of Forbes had never enjoyed a monopoly in the China trade in the US... Wilson had wanted free trade with China... well free trade with everyone Harding... Harding was too scared of the world beyond the shores, and wanted to do with things... which was no way to live, "I've made the decision to live here Percy, as has the majority of the cadre certainly all the ones that remain today. You can make your comparisons to the East India company but parliament granted me no monopoly, and I wouldn't have accepted one." The protest though was for other reasons, drawing the line in the sand to layout he didn't like the comparison... and the Cadre didn't like the comparison. Curzon could claim he didn't have any personal enmity, but the he talked about, and shit he went around doing as Foreign Secretary did tend to get the blood up all the same offense intended or not.

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1922
The notes of hostilities would keep the officers of the General Staff very busy. Not so much of the novelty but such that Fengtien military advisers had clearly updated the Manchuria doctrine with lessons learned from the European war... to a degree. Zhang had expended shells on impressive hours long bombardments, likely only stopped by shell shortages.

This had been mirrored by Wu as well...and had Wu been an artillery officer (or Zhang for that matter) then the artillery would have been better served. Most of the shelling had been reported as ineffective, poorly directed, though extremely lethal to infantry with the misfortune to be caught out in the open. It was no surprise that from there, that the bulk of the casualties stemmed. Still it could have certainly been worse, something he had commented on to Percy.

The deployment of so many men had entailed pulling second and reserve line forces, and commanders not prepared for high intensity action. Allen knew what the claimed paper strength of troops was being stated to be. Zhang no doubt had a slight numerical advantage in ratio... but it was early may now in Zhili and with the crowds on the railroads moving supplies would be easy to bog down and loose track. Desertion was likely to be the biggest issue, indeed that would prove itself once the conflict turned.

He'd already taken more than one telegram warning about how that needed to be addressed, how it posed a threat to public security. He would pass that to Cullen. Posted here as he was to Zhengzhou in the event of the opening of hostilities either with the southern doctor or a conflict with less likely the honanese gentry required his focus... and yet, he still could not help but think of matters which were also within his official remit. The cadre did not particularly care for either the weimar democracy or the French. The idea of the Weimar lot making common cause whatever the reasoning with the Bolsheviks under Lenin was infuriating but that was half a world away... and he, and the MAK under Powell and the other smaller cadre bodies involved more strictly in international trade wanted things Germany had.

Faced as they were with problems here there were more immediate concerns though, "Its a modern sort of war,"

That was true, and he responded to Percy's comment bluntly, "Yes." It was that, and Percy did seem still a bit surprised about it.

"The observers say Zhang's troopsare not as well disciplined as their Zhili counterparts."

He recalled the zouave drills that Beiyang sixth brigade had conducted in the summer of 1917, "Wu has always been quite severe on the parade deck," He replied tiredly reaching for the steel mug on his campaign desk, "From the sound of it they were quick to turn this into an artillery duel." The problem was that by rail it was an hour to Peking from Tietsin even with a slow train. "Less experienced troops, troops who didn't know to dig in probably caught the artillery early." And that was probably enough, it was a reminder at least that going forward there would be enemies with much better artillery than lesser bandits had access to. "The Truth is Percy, in ten years China has doubled the number of nominal divisions in operation. Perhaps more so depending on how many divisions the south claims to have this week, but there were thirty odd divisions when Yuan Shikai died." Never mind the wide ranging numbers of brigades across the old empire, and of course the free floating battalions which had no organized higher organizational element out in the provinces.

In 1917 Duan had leveraged fifty thousand men... Fengtien, and Zhili had been busy since both sides numbered more than double that in the same theater area... that was to say the troops that both could put up in the vicinity of the capital. So yeah, everyone had more troops now, but large swathes of those were freshly raised green formations...and in a country that didn't have an effective system of conscription and readiness nor an ability to inspire the ranks for a national cause... and those green troops just didn't have a durable morale to stand and take losses... and the truth was the observers on the front said that the artillery actions were a mix of old and new.

Percy took a pull from his mug of black coffee, that previously had rested on the corner of the map, "There are some missionaries talking to Wu,"

Allen perked slightly, "Oh?" He asked, that was news, but not terribly surprising. He supposed that the more things changed the more they stayed the same, but on the other hand it might well be something that Zhang would latch on to, "What do they have to say?"

"Just that they think that Wu should make peace with Zhang. They're urging an end to hostilities, both to Wu but also to the Legation. That we should be trying to find a resolution to this." With almost a quarter of a million men in the field between Zhili, and Fengtien never mind the population of Zhili and Peking ... the population of civilians Chinese and foreign alike.

It might well have been nothing, but the conference in Washington had been a prominent background event in the lead up to this debacle. Not so much for China's interest in a Navy, but for that made a useful talking point for both sides, indeed the conference had attracted internationally much attention from all brand of tittering sorts.

Ships were to be decommissioned, and legally at least there was to be a parity between the Royal Navy and US Navy. Not that Allen could ever see congress seeing the reason to spend up to that tonnage, it was the opposite for the Brits they would spend up to that tonnage... and for good reason, there had been shocks to the British during the war. Their position on the treaty limits were also the more sensible if Congress could see sense they would have recognized that for the US, and in the interest of the economy it made more sense to build up to the treaty limits or at least closer to it in order to gradually let off steam from the war economy not just throw cold water on a hot engine.

None of that was a problem for China, not even Japan being confirmed third of world navies. Japan had also agreed to revert Shantung back in February ,but that had not stopped subsequent telegrams for lampooning the legation sent to Washington for the treaty and to represent China's interests... but that was always easy for the faction out of power to do in a democracy. To complain about something that they had no hand in, regardless of the objective.


It was however not the cause of this fracas, in fact it had probably been a minor contribution to it at best, because Wu and Zhang neither were navy men. It was true that Wu had employed China's navy recently, and again in the present fighting possibly in the south the chinese navy had no business given the present state of finances to be contemplating buying battleships or trying build yards that might build them. Money though was the spark that had lit the tender, because Liang had wanted to negotiate, for what had then gotten him accused of treason.

Allen made noise of acknowledgement in the back of his throat finally.

"You shouldn't be out in the front, frankly none of you should."

"Why, the King, and his wizard had no issue of us going over the border to save his cousin," He pointed out, "Black Jack had to be kept in the rear by presidential order I'll allow, but in the Philippines, and in grandfather's day nothing of our command," save perhaps the technology employed, "Is unusual."

"Most generals do not carry rifles John Allen," Allen would not point out his rifle while at hand, was on a rack with the others and his job was at the field table, or reading telegrams. "even allowing those ones who fought in Africa it is just not done in this day and age... and its not an emergency. Not really." The Englishman declared, "Neither Zhang, nor Wu have looked towards the west," A pause, "towards your lot."

"And it isn't them to which we're concerned of having to resort to our guns." Despite that both Zhili, and Fengtien both were Beiyang wings, but then so had the Anhui for all that had prevented a fight between.

"Dr Sun,but even your own staff officers say he can't make it this far."

A chatter he did not like, Allen disliked when officers became insistent that the enemy couldn't do something because the math was against them. "Fools get lucky all the time, and don't like listening to the odds," And soldiering was a profession where luck was important to have, "And I don't want the boys shocked if Sun does get lucky." He changed the subject, "Will Wu make peace with Zhang?"

Percy paused ,and nodded in catching the corollary, "If he does that would I think stop the southern doctor in Hunan." Or would if Sun were smart, but more likely the hunanese resisting the 'northern expedition' would throw Sun back. "As to talks, I should hope so, and I think from the talk Wu is amenable to peace." The real question would be the terms, and what both sides could agree to agree about. "This whole thing started about money you know."

"It was the spark at least. Liang was insistent that the fighting in Hunan was unbearable expense," Something that Wu might have been able to tolerate being said if Cao had had time to smooth ruffled feathers, as during Duan's premiership he had made the same argument to the then Beiyang chief... but Liang had also made other comments which had not made the communications clique man very popular. "I can't imagine this is any better."

It wasn't the truth was it was worse. Wu's use of field artillery ... it was hard for Allen to describe 3rd ​division's guns as heavy, but they were relative to what the Jade Marshal had available had been brought on to a brigade about five thousand strong. The Fengtian had included cavalry and the force had been well equipped with new rifles. It hadn't been some backwoods militia...

And the artillery hadn't cared. That bit of butchery had problem been contributory to Zhang's bad luck in this affair. That he'd lost good well equipped troops because they hadn't been expecting the artillery... which Allen admitted was odd given Zhang's great and known fascination for all the modern contrivances of war.

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1922
The newspapers had been delivered with a full spread of pictures. There was a lot of talk about what things would be like a few months and largely ignoring the fighting in the east around the capital.

In 1920 they had already started the process of land resettlement. Homesteads. The military budget increases and other 'standards' as they were called in euphemism for the annual expenses. Part of it was to insure that Xian didn't grow too large to be unmanageable. The same with other cities were in place as well, but with more than two million people Xian was a 'proper metropolis' akin to other great cities Percy would admit, that included the strasse and czech town with their cafes that evoked parts of the old Hapsburg grandeur. It gave unto the capital, provincial or otherwise depending on the speaker, an international character.

It just reminded him of the disintegrating central authority. Percy's comments of late had been doing that a lot, and the truth was that as May dragged on it was a reminder that Xian's authority grew stronger with the war that had come to Tietsin and to the outskirts of the capital. Percy was busy on the cable and the telephone with the Legation. Much as Seymour must have felt there was a palpable notion of decline to the government of Peking, and Allen wondered if it actually mattered if Wu or Zhang carried the day. Both men had grand ideas, but he wasn't certain either had the resources or the support of other men to make good on them... and truthfully he suspect both men if given the rope would hang themselves trying to do exactly as Duan had done in taking expeditions south.

"Zhang made common cause with the doctor," Percy pointed out, then pushing on, going far as to observe that after Yuan Shikai's death the last remnants of central control by the government had withered away. The ties on provincial military authority weren't even worth calling threads.

For all the good throwing in with the doctor seemed to be doing Zhang, "And Sun is being hammered upon by the Hunanese," He replied. Jun was likewise doubtful that Zhang was anything more than an ally of convenience to Sun... or perhaps worsewas that the common cause being made was because factions at Zhang's court had pressured him to do so, which the dujun brindled at. They didn't have proof of that, but it wouldn't have surprised them. "The fighting in Hunan can't keep up."

"You're saying that?"

"For the same reasons the previous marches into that province have failed," He replied, Sun, like Duan… or really Wu and Duan and Yuan all going back the past nearly a decade hadn't prepared for a lengthy campaign. There was no knockout blow to deliver, and every campaign mounted 'atomized' provincial leadership further, pushing down to county officials and gentry desperate to hold on to what they had built... and most of those men had had family who'd lost much when the taipings had rebelled so Hunan had a long history of being in the fray. "Those rail lines are vulnerable to men who have the experience to know that, and from north or south," It was the only way to effectively, "to bring in shells and cartridges." Xian's southern frontier with Szechwan was an array of blockhouses and fortified positions. The merchants who had done their business to support Kansu's independent brigades as they roved over the border had built more solid shoppes and larger permanent towns expanded as those brigades were demobilized in place of permanent formations which rotated regularly through. That was another change. Those towns on his southern border paid taxes to Xian's revenue service, "There also isn't much of a tax base down there, with bandits, and the armies having to requisition what they need." He took care not to call it a no man's land for Percy's sensibilities. "Hunan may not be Szechwan, Percy but its a mess of a country all the same."

"Cao Kun has always been opposed to those southern marches."

"Yes he has," Allen replied, and that had along with the financial pressure of Liang insisting that the treasury just couldn't bear the burden of the expedition had encouraged Wu to bring his troops back north and home... "Its expensive keeping troops in the province, and Sun has no military experience," His failed rebellions had never involved him in a military leadership role despite all attempts to heap military ranks on the doctor it still didn't make him a general. "this expedition of his is an amateur venture that will fail for any number of reasons." But most likely given the reports of ambushes it would be because Sun couldn't sustain the losses and would have to retire back south or have his entire force melt away and desert. A problem which had beleaguered the much more disciplined beiyang troops season after season from Yuan Shikai's time, through Duan, and Wu's most recent venture south. "But that he has no support among the local authorities," and no way to legtimize himself among the provincials was arguably the most damning Allen suspected... the greatest benefit in those early days in moroland had been the support of local chiefs, and of course the friendship between the pashas and the united states and that as a result the caliph of islam had written urging muslim support for the mission of the United States. Whatever affection the pashas had felt for the United States, Allen had to suspect it was just as much dislike for Spain that had impacted that support.

"You're not going to move then?"

Percy had attended morning drill. The men on their morning run, which as expected Allen and his own staff had joined in, as the Englishman had sat aside for. The run wasn't anything arduous, up the hill, down the hill across a path that wasgreen and treed carefully tended. Percy had been a bit more discomforted by the pistol and rifle practice of the men that had followed but the battalion from 1st​ had to keep ready. "No, the situation is tense," And the province south of them, south of Zhili and Zhengzhou was taut as a spring.

Honan's gentry had always complained, had been a concern five years earlier when Zhang Xun had raised the banner of manchu restoration in the capital... and it was perhaps only the numbers that both Beiyang wings had brought against one another that kept Honan's gentry quiet. "The paper," Percy remarked is talking about railway work." The inter urbans were necessary, but you needed regular roads as well. Heavy freight was best moved long distances by rail or by canal, "And about concerns from the rains."

"Get on with it Percy."

He'd been expecting it. "I was just going to say that your man Powell has mentioned canal work."

"Not for here he hasn't, and if so just for flood control." The ARC talk was a headache but the Cadre discussion had been very very clear in its conclusion that was apolitical can of worms they didn't want to entangle themselves up in. Railway expansion was one thing, but the canal project in the east of the country too much of that was beyond their borders. It was that geographic reality which had cemented the determination. "Powell may speak of another canal in middle America if he likes, and he may expand upon port works in middle America, and may talk of Africa as well, but that talk will be tempered by reality."

It was not twenty years ago. The French would inevitably bluster on but Harding's talk of things was less the present issue than the coming apart of the seams of the Beiyang...and even without that. "You just don't want to invest in Honan do you?"

"No, I expect if we tried without there being a solid figure there, we'd end up with a fight." The honanese gentry would resist an attempt to expand resist the idea of control... and would probably start shooting even without that kind of overreach... never mind if they did actually try and tell them what to do. They couldn't afford that. Honan was not their problem, and they had enough on their plate with the chaos in Szechwan.

Percy gave an exaggerated sigh. "There are questions about Africa now to," Allen had not really concerned himself with the Dark Continent, he remembered the Chicago expo of course that had shown him the first Chinese Opera, but that wasn'tthe same... and it had been to West Point not long after... and studies, and then Asia. It had been Asia which had come to dominate his life, Powell had almost left the cadre after Chafnee's death and now represented the much broader international model of the cadre's collective.

"The company is talking about it," He wasn't about to tell Percy that half of the reason he had voted affirmative to the plans was that he viewed war in Europe inevitable. There was going to be another war, maybe not an explosive outbreak as August of 1914, but another one would come... Versailles was nothing more than breathing space. "There is a lot of planning. We're going to be very busy going into 1925. Powell is talking to Morgan, and Ford's tire guy the outline he put together looks good." Even though with him here with the troops he hadn't had the time to focus on it. "China's population is still recovering from the wars of the previous century, our cities no longer are bound to farming season," Even though an astute person would easily recognize that putting the elections where they were was a due consideration of the farmer's time. "We have a lot to do Percy, and there is business in Africa to be done."

"You think the tariffs are a problem."

"I think they're stupid, and so do most the rest. France is a mercantilist country," They were backwards and uppity to use someone else's words, France was a gold-plated turd, "Their finances are abysmal, and I don't consider it prudent to extend them any considerations. Not after the way they've shown their ass."

"They are a great power John Allen."

"Only because England thinks so, and because you loan them money to keep their lights on." Percy protested that Morgan was doing the same, "Misplaced affection," As the elder Forrest had put it, "I've read the transcripts of France talking about its navy, a navy that France can neither afford nor build efficiently." He headed off the the question that opened, "We can do neither, and nor do I expect a government in Peking stable enough to expand ports anytime soon. Any, canal work we do will be to exercise control over the season inundations. We will clean up, and dredge the channels, but for the moment we are not talking about anymore than that."

"And in 1925? For the latter half of this decade?"

Well that was going to be complicated, Powell seemed to be intent on trying to push a boulder up the hill by talking about Free Trade. He had friends in the wider English-speaking world, in the dominions, but seemed to be running into the problem where Lloyd George's government was being recriminated about for having too many businessmen and not enough gentlemen.

--
Notes: So one of things that makes its appearance in the post war years (and you also see this after ww2) are recriminations on both sides of the pond. There are still francophiles in positions of power and in the ascendancy in places in both England, and in the US (indeed when we get to WW2, Eisenhower plays an even greater role in policy than Pershing does in terms of shaping support for France in US national policies) but there are a lot of recriminations against England and the US in French press, and a lot recriminations against France in the english speaking world after 1919, and especially in the 20s and early thirties and the cadre is not immune to that.

This will be relevant when Patton, and also MacArthur show up later on. In addition to Stillwell, and Pershing and Wood among others. [George the Fifth, and Lenin both die earlier of their respective injuries in this work than they did in history]

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1922
The conflict on the coast, the shooting part, had ebbed a bit. In the south things were still a bit spicy but largely out of the Shanghai public's eye... but drills and readiness continued. Maybe the hot part of this was done, maybe it wasn't.

To skim the papers from home was all he really he had time for. He was glad they came. This was not like the Philippines where news from home was scant, and the papers were a comfort to the men... or at least a reprieve from boredom. Still active duty, even if just being border pickets was tedious more often than not and it kept him from other duties that were building up waiting for him back in Xian. Allen folded the paper and put it aside. The telegram from the legation told him less than from Percy, and he was keen to let the Englishman carry along, "I don't know if you should really be that concerned."

"Your man doesn't want von Lettow for his the business side of things, he wants him back in Africa." Percy remarked. The German General had been a point of contact for handling import and export of goods for the Cadre in Germany... part of an effort to rebuild trade relations destroyed by the war's outbreak, and then the resolution of the war.

"Or he wants to expand trade into Liberia."

"He wants to bring the Ashkari," which were the Black German Soldiers, "and rather truthfully the whole bloody colonial troop is what he wants to do."

"Liberia is a small country, and did a lot of business with Germany before the war," He observed placidly, "And I would remark that while Powell does mean to have the man put field gray back on, that the Cadre does want to invest money in Liberia."

"There are talks of a concession."

"Percy, I will be blunt. I think Versailles was a damned disgrace, and while I will put most the blame for that on the French, and for Wilson lacking a proper constitution," being a weakling when the times got hard, much as he'd shown when he'd bent to the party apparatus in 1913 early in his time as President, "I recognize that rubber is a very valuable commodity, and one that Liberia is more tempting to be involved income the future. "If you're complaining to me because this puts us at odds with British interests to development of the country I'd recommend your side put up the money to start development of a rail line, because Powell is ready to put a thousand miles of rail down on schedule." That the Schedule was for the fiscal year of 24 was not something he was going to come out and say unless he needed to. "Now the canal thing... that's another matter."

It was about that time the sharp rap on the door interrupted, for which he was actually quite grateful. "Sir." The report came in and he took it and the lieutenant colonel who had delivered it swiftly back.

"The mobilization report."

It wasn't a question. He nodded.

Xian's reserves and national guard component was a hundred thousand men in the ranks. 2nd​ and 4th​ Divisions were more active, but Fifth less so than those two. Three more divisions representing a nominal forty five thousand more men. Then twenty five thousand more across the support and logistical brigades.

In theory, in the business of numbers the reserves were comparable in size to either Zhili and Fengtiens commitment to the fighting in and around Peking. The active component of the army was another five divisions supported by brigades of their own. Such a number he would have considered ... he wasn't sure he could have fathomed such a force being feasible never mind economical a decade earlier... but that was what the European war had entailed. What the expansion of demand and prices driven to what would have before the war been mad prices. "the army has expanded."

"And will expand more, John Allen. I'm not blind, and as annoyed as you might be by the comparisons to Prussia you can talk about Free Trade and need to avoid customs duties all you like, but what it sounds like is the German Bund, the abolishing or prohibiting of taxes across provincial lines." The British were leery of such talk. The men back in London some of them anyway... but others men like Churchill was looking at Kirghiz as way to keep Lenin hemmed in. It wasn't that the British liked the idea of interior barriers they didn't... it was the internal armies that some members of the Foreign Service were expressing problems with. "But lets be honest, you have a khaki electorate... those when they go to vote in November will say the army has to be bigger. That's what they'll vote for."

There was no single center of authority in Szechwan to their south, and as a result every petty county headman made to charge a tax for passing through. Szechwan's myriad bandit kings readily involved themselves with Shanghai's green gang. That presented another problem. "You want to say whatever your point is?"

"If you eliminate the trade barriers between provinces, that will be well received, but it bears in mind that even if people like it, someone is going to make those cracks about you being quite prussian... because the only other example they can make is the comparison that they don't want to make. Before the mutiny the Company had the most readers and writers in Persian of anywhere." Allen assumed that was discounting the Persian court, and the Mughals obviously, but it didn't matter, "I don't imagine you'll have a problem with a mutiny... I think the men in London's clubs admit that all of you will live out your lives here. You'll never go back and take your money and buy country homes, and you'll never sit in parliament... and that I think is what scares them more. You'll never be nabobs, because your fathers, and grand fathers were soldiers... and you all of you were those gray jackets too well. So its so much easier for them to say your Prussian and not a loose company, certainly not now... when its not longer just collecting taxes for Peking to squander, and lets b e honest they are squandering the money that the customs service collects mostly."

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1922
Percy had told them there would be peace talks between Fengtien and Zhili, but the solidified front had given him enough peace of mind to turn his focus to the work that lay ahead. Every time there were 'war scares' like this civilian affairs went on the back burner. It was still early in the campaign season so something could still go wrong. Not the least of which was that Hunan sat where it did south of Zhili, and in May a new dujun had been appointed. "Wu managed a double envelopment, by means of that old mongol standby of a feigned retreat." Dawes remarked, "A lot of that was the ground,"

The result was that on the 5th ​of May the 23rd​ Division had put into Tietsin, which had probably secured the legation's decision to support Wu tentatively as the victor in the contest of arms. Dawes was right a lot of the fighting had been determined by the ground around the fighting. The combat hadn't been as atrocious in bloodshed as that of the fighting in Europe, but artillery had laid waste the better part of two divisions, Wu was sitting on forty thousand odd prisoners in the vicinity of the capital... and and then there were were the wounded to count on both sides. "They'll exchange prisoners... the ones that don't switch sides." Cole remarked with a hint of disgust from where he was sitting by the window, "They'll have to hash things out, but Zhang will probably withdraw north of the wall, and grumble about it.

It was at that point the conversation turned away from the north and towards Hunan. Hunan's gentry, and how favorably the new Dujun might be received.

Cullen had been thumbing through the fanciful recounting put to print of the adventures in Russia with amusement. With May upon them there was far less concern than there had been a month earlier, and thus time for such distractions. The rescue of the romanoffs was a popular subject, and prone to absurd inflations and hyperbole, but no amount of directing attention to the official war diary made the English reading public less engrossed by the brave struggle against red bandits intent on murdering King George's cousin or the tsar's helpless family

The novel had benefitted its author, probably an officer from 3rd​ Allen suspected with the timing of its publication. It had been published and had arrived at stands just before the King's honors the previous year... and when ole' George the Fifth had been shot the public had been in an outrage. It was just one of several novels which largely all chronicled the adventure, and part of a still broader genre of 'eastern adventure novels' that had cropped... for rather since George had been shot, and in concern for the King's health there had been a great deal of review of England's own involvement in Russia after the revolution.

Not enough introspection that Allen expected real action, "Perce got blindsided like the rest of the brits did he?" Cole asked.

"Sounds like it," He replied to the question, Rapallo was actually what he was here about, the talk of Genoa had been far less of interest to the cadre... that was not to say that the Cadre had had no interest in its proceedings but here they had had initially far less interest for it had seemed like to be nothing more than the French showing their asses to the world. Then of course as if to prove that pronouncement the French government had been replaced by an even more stupid one. Powell certainly that thought was the case in his cables. "And Stockman is already talking about his surgery," And for that matter the study of diseases, epidemiology. "And then there is Powell."

"Percy?" Cullen questioned, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah, but I've seen the British proposal," From the British Liberian Development Corporation, "And its not realistic for what they have. My bigger concern is he's busy all over, and this talk of canals and harbor dredging risks overplaying his hand,"

"Liberia isn't very big," he clicked his tongue quietly, "bout the same size as Honduras." Cullen observed referring not to geographic size but population. "And its not just about rubber, I figure he's looking to develop iron ore as well, but if he can get rubber trees to grow like he says they can...it'll be a boom. If he's got the state departments blessing then...well that will help."

It would. Liberia was a small country, and maybe Powell did have the means to do it, but there was still the question of money in all this. "Percy thinks that Powell has some absurd idea of depeopling what was German East Africa and having an exodus of people move into Liberia."

"Cattle ranches," Bill acknowledged, "From what he's written Liberia could support it, and he's talking about bringing the German black soldiers to settle in, he thinks it'll convince the both sides of it." It was the sort of thing that the Brits would never contemplate... "And Powell has the money to swing it cause of the war," and because the Germans had lost. Liberia also made a tempting measure not only did rubber have the potential to be a big boom but also that coffee was a going to be in demand, as would other crops, "Liberia is hard up for money, got whacked for their trade with the Germans, and didn't have great finances before... Phineas," Bill's navy lawyer brother, "does figure that State would rather the trust pushes the money into the country than risk the Brits trying to come in... but he's not sure how far State really wants things to go."

"Is there a problem in Middle America?"

"No the state desk down that way is whole hearted in their support," There was a pause, and some ruffling of papers moving around them en gathered around the table, and then some grumbling. "He's covering some of it with Morgan but from what I understand from Phineas there is concession talk. I think state wants the Liberians to be bailed out."

That in the end was the thing. That was something any of them could have done. Pierpont Morgan, or even Firestone had that kind of money as a result of the loans and business done during the war and their own dealings normally. Liberia, or most of the countries of Africa, or South America spent money like water... and the finaces of some of the other countries of Asia were shaky themselves... then of course there was Europe. The break up of the old empires, and the reknitting of the quilt of the world, the new borders, made for a mess. The marketing campaign to push adoption in Europe was to answer both a short term economic gap but in the longer term make preparations for a future conflict. "The Serbs have what 26 rifles in service?"

"Across half a dozen cartridges, Romania is only slightly better. The Czechs have friends stateside and got the likes of Skoda, which benefits us from a licensing standpoint." That the czechs had decided against their own in house rifle design, meant there was a chance there, it was a pity that their magazine fed design wasn't likely to win either, "The Serbs on the other hand are starting to get worried about their other neighbor," He meant Italy. Revisionists in the country had been giving speeches for at least two years about driving the serbs back, and the racial inferiority of slavs, and all that such. It sounded like a lot of hot air, but they weren't having to hear it directly," That's part of the reason we're getting where we are. The three of them have agreed in principle to 8mm Mauser, if we get no where else there is setting up ammunition manufacturing and selling some rifles."
--
Notes: Through the end of the year this will likely be updated twice a week. This will make things much easier on me, and then we will go back to standard Saturday updates in the new year

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1922
Allen didn't presume to distinguish how England's peace time list was supposed to work. He did understand that the war had required vast numbers of men to be called to the colors, and he hoped never to be put in a position where conscription should arise. That being said Percy in his khaki was a sight that bordered on the absurd, particularly with the old workhorse webley along.

It couldn't be helped though.

Sentries from first stood with fixed sword bayonets, looking sharp... both the men and the blades from where they were posted, but Zhengzhou was safe. Zhengzhou had been growing rapidly in the last years of the Qing, and that had continued under Yuan Shikai, under Duan, and it had remained as part of Zhili because the Beiyang consensus from 1913 on as the cadre had continued to invest money into the city.

With 1st​ division present, and at strength the populace was relaxed, and their comfort seemed to be supported as news filtered in of peace talks brokered by the British. Percy was outranked by a number of men some years his junior including a number of men who had been young at the time of the 1917July action.

Yet those same officers still participated made time to participate in the physical readiness of the men, and to make every effort to uphold the professional officer standards, and the technical aspects of the profession they belonged to. With morning drills completed fully half of Allen's staff both those of his peace time officers and the men from the 1st​and the brigade supporting his base of operations were enjoined in study groups that included table top war gaming of scenarios. Something that could be done because the rail hub was safe.

Zhengzhou was the largest cadre city in Western Zhili, more than a million people and had outgrown the still critically important city of Shijiazhuang to the north... where a division sat its eyes focused on Baoding and its military apparatus. The threats though were what they were. The possibility had Zhang Xun managed to rally people to Zhang Tsolin's attempt and the other Zhang had reached Baoding forced them into the conflict, but it hadn't played out that way.

Allen lifted the black tea and drank, before looking at the report. Without active shooting to be done men had paper work and study to be done. It was to keep the men busy, officer and enlisted alike. The Regimental Scout Snipers had been expected to shoot matches for qualification, and Allen had half a mind that even deployed as they were the 1st​ Regiment should carry those qualifications out. Admittedly most of those men had found their normal gray jackets preferable to potential fighting in Zhengzhou to their issued mottled green camouflage jackets which had been issued on the presumption of deploying to fight in Szechwan and among trees not from city streets. Gray worked quite well for night fighting, actually better than black, and the men found that the reduced muzzle flash of the issued rifles with the Maxim derived 'silencer' made them quite effective at evading detection despite using relatively short rifles firing even full power service rounds.

Allen looked up, it wasn't a conversation he really wanted to have with Percy around. For all the British liked to speak of their riflemen and their mad minute, their officers got awful damn squeamish when the realities of the American experience of the Philippines came up and the lessons learned. Allen's current chief of staff was a full bird colonel more than a dozen years Percy's junior. "I can have something arranged for the men sir." He replied looking at the report. The comment was innocuous enough and barely stirred Percy from his own reading,. The RSS qualification for 1st​ included a patch of a sword piercing a wolf's jaws, the same patch was sown on the Colonel's day uniform sleeve, even though technically his tenure with the Scouts had predated the formal adoption of it. The Colonel's rain proof 'field jacket' was also slung over the back of his chair such that the patch was visible for anyone looking at the sleeve.

There had been disagreements over a number of things for rules and regulations, particularly over the best way to organize that. Typically, in following with precedence in the states the regiment carried a numbered sewn patch to the uniform on the sleeve. There had been arguments that that should be abandoned except for dress uniforms and thus not present in the field at all. For the time being soldiers of first regiment as with other regiments carried their Regiment and Battalion on their sleeve, and in the case of specialist formations distinct unit patches, or branch insignia.

The red leg, blood stripe, was like with other branch service colors had been done away with except in dress uniforms long ago... though it did still lead to some confusion with other Beiyang units for the different colors used by other services in the neighbors.

Percy idled over, "The legation thinks there is an agreement, that they can get Zhang and Wu will stop throwing their men at each other. That we've found the spot on the map to freeze the lines of control... you know..."

"That's what the wires tell me," He replied, his stack of telegrams every morning was substantial and covered more than just the Legation in Tietsin.

"I don't think Zhang ... I don't think Zhang came into this war expecting a real fight."

That was possible, Allen was willing to admit. Zhang had been dismissive for years of Wu's abilities as a soldier despite his long tenure in the Beiyang army. He'd underestimated the resistance... that seemed pretty self evident here. It was a mistake that they endeavored to not make. "I assume that he must have said something to garner that."

"From the back channels, the coalition he was apart of was supposed to prevent hostilities... sort of like how Duan's coalition prevented a protracted conflict in 1917."

... a part of him could understand how that thinking might have come together, "Zhang Xun was a part of that coalition. And Sun as well."

"Yes... and even though the Germans have been beaten I think that gave Alston some pause about what he should cable to London." There had been accusations during the Manchu Restoration that Zhang had been pro German, some of the Royalist party was pro German, and Sun had opposed initially the declaration of war against Germany. Of course for as much as the Foreign Service complained, Allen did feel that part of the problem was they read too much into how much of the late Qing law code at least those parts that had been aimed at modernizing, and the army had borrowed from Prussian sources. "I think it stopped Alston from moving."

"Maybe," Allen replied, "Japan didn't seem to know what to think." But a part of him wondered if that was because they had lost too many senior experts of state ... the old man's death came to mind this had been getting underway not long before they'd buried Yamagata. Had that frozen them? Or had it just meant there were now too many arguing cliques in foreign policy. "Harding seems to have thought it needed to play out, that interfering with the natural order isn't advisable."

"That was the American position for the Taiping rebellion as well, that supporting the Qing was a mistake." That history should have been allowed to run its course.

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1922
Half the focus of mobilization, in the way it had been carried out were reports of telephone, telegraph lines, of roads, and of course, of the status of the railway and its rolling stock and engines. Half the focus because of what that capability allowed.

Allen fully expected that details of communication and carrying capacity in timely manner would dominate discussions from staff officers as they looked towards the border with the hated Bolsheviks along the western frontier. How quickly had they been able to order men into action, how quickly had they been able to preposition stocks of shells to go out in support of artillery, what had they learned that they could improve on. It would also reach the lower house, who had to look forward to running for elections in the fall.

Much vitriol had been expended upon domestic coverage of news of Rapallo. The news from the North China Herald and many other papers had carried the opinion to other more regional papers, and broadsheets. What only some of those broadsheets saw fit to speak of however were the conditions for moving forward...what the organizing summit had been aimed at. But Xian's papers were quick, in the war fevered public consciousness to speak that such normalization would only push the Bolshevik bandits towards further aggression over the borders that were de facto since the collapse of the previous order.

The papers were quick to remind Xian's reading public that elections were to be in November. Those people were less concerned with the politics or the motives of Curzon...that fell to the Cadre to remain on guard for. "Given the precedent with Persia," Which was its own fucking mess, but Waite withheld the obvious, "Curzon can't likely move whatever his intentions, he doesn't have the money for it in the treasury, or the treasury won't provide him the money for it."

Still on the matter of trade 'officially', and for about another month, the Ottoman Empire remained at war with the British Empire... and that stymied trade...which disappointed many of the broader fraternity who hoped to move quickly in an aim of presenting so many countries using the M1917 pattern rifle, as just one option, that it might seem the only option. It was the licensing and the cost of the unit which was the real goal. The czechs had inherited a lot from the Austrians so they would be liscencing there but it was also about setting a precedent that if they could secure trade with the emerging governments and business communities then there would be a framework to work from and cement it.

"Li is back as president."

That had gone into effect the 11th​, and he'd been a compromise choice, "A figurehead at best." Waite replied snappishly to Carter's statement, "That's no way to run a government," He mumbled rubbing his forehead no doubt to fruitlessly oppose the tension headache he'd been fighting all morning, "Cao is talking about wanting to be president."

More than the question of elections though was the matter of how this effected the broader whole of the country... Xian's voting public would not rally to support reunifying the country until the outbreak of the second sino japanese war more than a decade into the future. The newspapers had dissuaded most of the reading ranks that there was anything worth fighting over in terms of going south, which was ironically the same position Cao Kun had advocated against Duan Qirui years earlier.

Wu as principal field commander of the Zhili clique's forces had bloodied Zhang's nose good... in particularly compelling the defection of a Fengtien division. Wu though regardless of those successes had not been in a position to accept anything other than a mediated peace, and in part that had to under the familiar mediation of the British.

That wasn't unusual.. in fact it was almost institutional at this point... but the bigger issue to the cadre was the conspiracy for which had put the three maritime provinces of Manchuria against the Zhili wing of the clique... and their ineffectual coconspirators. Zhang had looked towards bringing common cause with the south, and with Zhang Xun, and Duan Qirui...which was an odd odd mix, and there was little reason to doubt why it had failed.

"What is the mess down south shaping out to be?"

From one man further down the table, "I wouldn't be surprised if Sun runs back to Japan with his tail between his legs." There were some nods of agreement from a handful of junior members. "If nothing else we are expecting hostilities in the south to be unaffected by talks between the British... Sun bogged down trying to march north, and now has fighting in his back end and having his supply train get hit like Duan got."

Allen paused, "Composition size of Sun's army?"

"A division," The man replied, "That is, its roughly at strength for a Qing division. Exact organization is unknown, realistically the 'Northern Expedition Army' is probably several amalgamated units from Yunnan and Cantonese forces." Cullen's tone was skeptical, "rifles are by and large a mix of 88s mixed with Japanese and French supporting guns. They don't have much artillery to speak of." He paused, "what I did find interesting in the cable traffic was Duan throwing his support behind Sun, against Chen, which may be nothing, but it stuck out as a detail there." Another pause, "I don't have a grasp on how much control Sun has there is no actual unified chain of command with the other units, there are many," Was the word Cole settled on, "independent battalions scattered through Canton, and Guanxi" And Yunnan has its own clique who while not especially well armed at least have something we might recognize as an organized army.

"I take it there is something else you want to talk about when it comes to the army?" He meant theirs obviously, Waite had a jacket of papers waiting that couldn't be related to the problems in the south, "You want to tell me what that's about."

"We don't have many degree holders. We have some," Waite remarked referring to the old examination system. Those degrees were still respected, but were increasingly superseded in precedence by requiring officers to have four year college degrees without dispensation such as for mustangs. Even men promoted up from the ranks usually pursued education for their advancement but Waite continued, "Of the majority of troops who volunteered to fight fought Bai Lang they couldn't read or write Chinese in what would be thought of as fluent. I allow that that is of the enlisted ranks, and the ones who were literate were by and large ethnically Manchu, or Hui. Indeed most of our enlisted men today who read and write Chinese in classical form are ethnically Hui who I needn't remind you that make up a substantial portion of our ranks." Not a majority, but there was far less social stigma attached with soldiering, "Pretty much all of our officers can read Chinese, and with vernacular writing becoming common that is changing for the enlisted, but our own papers frequently publish in English because of how common it is to read papers."

He nodded, deciding he'd state the obvious, "Its fashionable." Allen pointed out. "It was the same in Joseon, for that matter the Philippines with English replacing Spanish in quick order for most papers."

"Yeah," Waite agreed as despite the States attempting to keep Spanish on, the wind had changed there were still elites that spoke Spanish, but the majority of the populace as postal services and schools took shape increasingly used English and papers began to be sold in the language outpaced Spanish publications, "And I allow that the North China Herald has always been an English paper," both in language and in that it had been founded for the English community of Shanghai...despite the fact that most of Xian didn't even consider Shanghai to be 'northern'. "Our literary traditions are having an effect on the men... and education is having an effect on distinguishing them from our neighbors." He meant the southern provinces... of which Szechwan was the most notable, but also the other neighbors coastal Zhili, Anhui, the Shandong peninsula... and the maritime north as well for that matter all were becoming very distinct.

That reminded him of course of a lesson that Yamagata had mentioned when speaking of the laws of the Bakufu and how one of the early shogun's elder statesmen had seen fit to recognize that 'different traditions of the many separate domains'...and that had been the middle of the 17th​ century.

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1922
There were pictures on the table, duplicates so that every man here could see them. The artillery were in pristine condition and were in parade paint. Unscuffed. They looked impressive in the black and white.

Zhang's Schneiders that had been delivered had been brought into Manchuria before the fighting had gotten underway. The problem was that the guns themselves had caused some confusion in the papers. The GPF 155 was a French gun but one the US had taken into service.... which was the detail which had likely lead to the confusion and then the uproar of complaints for those looking to support the position on the arms embargo John Jordan had bullied into position.

But of course the fighting was all but over by the time the news had actually gotten back to it, and the facts that the guns were French not American made wouldn't have changed anything. The French legation had agreed with John Jordan's arms embargo and then the French had turned around and sold Zhang the Schneiders. "Frankly I don't think we should be surprised."

There was shuffling, and the start of protests from some... but Waite was right from a historical standpoint, "The Taiping rebellion, the British consuls and the public back home. All this complaining is the same."

"Right." He replied and the ruffling of the other officers fell silent, "Its the same sort of thing... but the difference is we can do what we need."

"Will this effect the air force?" One of the newer men questioned. It was a good question. The Air Force much as with the prospect of the railway, and the school system enamored the public. It was shiny, and new and modern, and not decrepit which was the most important thing because it presented a contrast to the old dynasty and the failures of the contemporary Republic.

"No, surprisingly not." Waite replied, "Aircraft are not covered by the legation's idiocy." Nor tanks apparently, which was hilarious, "Much as with our automotive engineers we're going to need to entertain racing ideas, and while talk of metal hulls is talk, de Havilland has some ideas, the most practical of which is a twin engine monoplane with an enclosed cockpit. We have interim options available to us, but Britain will not interfere with aircraft options, even if we arm them."

Arming aircraft was an obvious future step. It remained true that the primary impediment to metal hulls was production, and weight limitations imposed by limited engine power. They would need more than a decade to where they could overcome that. The exiting theoretical underpinnings were were well established even if practical engineering concerns would hold back realistic production for time.

Besides of course the conception of aircraft in terms of practical utility was not dropping bombs at this stage, but rather when fitted with increasingly powerful radios the ability to relay falling shots from artillery. That was the driving objective of near term aircraft usage. Observation, and reconnaissance... and it was no surprise at all that the air service wanted more... and Allen knew to head that off before that argument started up for the umpteenth time, even if it meant bringing up the budget and the way they structured the budget.

"We will visit the practical capabilities in two years." He told the general, "In two years I expect a report on not just what we can build, but what is going on abroad, talk to Junkers, de Haviliand and outfits in the states." and he hoped that Sikorsky's demonstrator didn't get brought up again... it had been shown to the army and the navy back home, and while the agreement from the Navy's boys was it had potential, "But I am obliged to reiterate that engine production, of sufficiently robust and powerful engines will take years to build up." Further complicated by the mechanization of the existing rifle divisions and their brigades if it came to that. "That is the priority. Engine production."

1st​ and 3rd​ would take priority.

Then 8th​ under Shang, then2nd​ but 2nd's priority was increasingly looking to be a case of training and doctrine and working to expand the reserves of personnel to build up the pool of manpower they were doing. Most fighting men in the army would remain leg infantry even though they were not going to be requiring all recruits to attend the infantry basic training.

That itself had been an argument. Direct recruitment to 1st​ division required completion of the infantry basic school regardless of occupation but that was largely because the First Division expected to act as a firebreak in the event of a disaster. It was what the men spent their time in garrison drilling on, and the expectation of a call up came that there were going to be leadership ready to take charge.

1st​ and 3rd​ both had high fitness standards above the regular army standards. Division standards were being pushed. Being released to other units was the way the majority of transfers went to other units either officially or unofficially since the turnover rate was also used to staff units that were standing up; like the 9th Division. 3rd​Division under Lee had almost a non existent smoking culture, which Shellman had observed seemed to coincide with much better run times about nine minutes to a mile was the division average.

All of such material was being compiled as the summer wore on in anticipation of the Fall conference which would as normal convene the cadre, but also to bring together the lower house's membership. The lower house who would be holding elections come November.

The army though was coming to terms with the reality of fighting. Most fighting took place within three hundred yards, there were exceptions of course. 3rd​Division, and units posted to the Bashan Defensive Cordon along Szechwan routinely had to engage beyond that, and there was shooting down slope, which added further complications.

That was beyond the range of the submachine guns they were testing, but when it came to urban combat and close order battle Griswold's modifications provided the men a great comfort in city fighting. Those lost effectiveness in high brush country, the ridgelines of mountains, or the extended plains of the kansu corridor, Tibet, or the likely terrain of engagement against the Bolsheviks.

So there were competing arguments. The shortening of the rifle's barrel had already begun before even the European war. It had begun even earlier than they had been here. The adoption of the sword bayonet was driven by economics and political considerations, but also in recognition that bandits would foolhardily mount brazen cavalry charges of sabres and ponies. Swords and spears were common with bandits, as were older firearms.

That wasn't so much a shock. None of the cadre, none of the first cadre who had almost all had time in the Philippines had been surprised that hill folk would use weapons other than guns. Improvised weapons of all sorts were a fact of life. "We've been here a decade now."

He needed no reminding of that. The RPF had a brotherhood. Veterans gathered to commemorate that they were the first, the older brothers of the whole army even as Xian's papers celebrated its Air Force as a point of pride. Hui officers and their families held banquets to celebrate the death of Bai Lang just as earlier in the year Xian had celebrated the defense of the city against the White Wolf, and the railway reaching the city.

Such were the traditions that had developed. A tradition that was reflected as they got closer to election season, and that with fall those men would go to the polls. Percy seemed to fret over the khaki ... or field gray electorate going to the polls.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1922
They had a few more weeks before they really needed to have things finalized for going into the usual fall conference... and then this year there would be the elections to consider as well as reporting on the summer drill. As it was th Congress were talking about what needed to still be done on their end even as they also used it to complain about Peking. The cadre though dealt places far further than Peking. There were international trade considerations to think about

Powell's report was a grand document that come via courier who had sailed from San Francisco Bay. It spoke of certain 'Scientific Certainties' relying on such claims to buttress the ambition of a man who had largely been abroad and skipping from office to office of the cadre the majority of the last ten years. What he was insisting was that the success of Middle America, and indeed Liberia as if that program were already approved, was to make good on the flight of human capital from Europe, and to encourage immigration from Japan and China as well... though Powell did also touch on the need to appoint executives, secretaries of offices like the executive branch back in the states.

"He's fascinated with a million." Waite remarked one hand holding up pages as he he skimmed, no doubt having read yet another reference to Ford's quip of a million of anything is a great many.

The number applied to everything. Millions of dollars, but also that in order to breach the threshold for a 'certain' economic boon there needed to be a million people metropolis. He sighed the likes of Zhengzhou, and Xian in order to support their industry. A million tons of steel, and coal, and so forth. Powell hoped to entice Americans of course to come abroad to middle America, he also hoped to supersede Argentina as the desired destination for Italians leaving that old country. He wanted Poles, and Germans, and the Baltic folks to come and move to the tropical countries to build farms and erect and work factories.

That included a package to sway the old German colonies to pack up and leave the Brits behind and to come and make new farms of coffee in addition to the rubber growing in Liberia he had in mind. "My understanding is that with state and with Jack," Morgan the younger, "Couple that with Ford and the Tire man, with coffee and so forth," Dawes continued outlining diversification plans, "I think he can swing the numbers for this outline, but he will be on the line for a lot of credit if he can't get this central american project of his under one flag." That would be the chanciest thing. Guatemala and Honduras both tied up a lot of work on the railway work, but that work was on schedule and that expanded industrial farming efforts that was able to still be profitable. "But its got other risks, Powell does want to encourage more people to come over, but we need the states to block France especially." But going for him was that the four countries involved all wanted investment and railways to the point of promising concessions if the work could be done and that made State happy.

"It shouldn't be a problem," In November of 1913, Teddy Roosevelt had smoozed to the Argentine elite that they needed no protection from European predations, that they were capable and had the means by masculine virtue to extend their own monroe doctrine from Buenos Aries which was as Powell couldn't help but observe was a fifth of the country's population. "Especially if you look at the prospectus."

Powell was advocating close ties with all the English speaking countries of course. That was to include England. He hoped to convince the still infant central american republic to speak to other nations in the south of the Americas including argentina of common arms.... but also that the central American republic would need both a navy and merchant marine. The cadre had no experience making naval armor plate without the Naval Treaty and if the war in Europe had still been going on they might have gotten a foot in the door but they didn't, hadn't.

Such were grand dreams Allen was skeptical of. He didn't think Powell had the resources to carry that off at this stage, but the prospect of the wood necessary for making airplanes effectively, well that was a different story. The prospect of large rubber growing and increased mechanization through the deal with Ford all of that had potential... but the majority of the machinery Powell was going to buy was going to come from the United States, that as no secret. Unless they could really make good on the composite construction of the Albatross, and apply that to more airplanes

Cullen's boots scuffed on the floor as he stood up, "What he's failing to state is that most of this started while he was in the states, he was talking to House, and the State Department as well... probably House first before Bryan left and then as Lansing showed more sense ..." Both House, and Lansing had lost influence as the Virginian had become more addled as the end of the war turned into the morass of trying to affirm a peace, "to deal with Latin America. From what I've been able to determine, there was nothing about Africa when he pushed off to Guatemala, that's new."

"What is the news on that front?"

"Honduras was a bit of a given," Cole replied, "El Salvador I get the feeling regardless of how Washington feels they're not quite as keen on it" Cullen's instincts would prove accurate... and of course regardless of how State wanted a unified central american republic there were to be delays, and regional differences... but capital and the railway that it built would bring together three of the four countries. "Now that being said, they don't dislike the other benefits, they're buying guns from our export people including being interested in the German trading house," Out of Bremen, but which serviced Austria, Hungary, the Czechs and so on, "I don't think they'll agree to the extent of what Powell and his friends want for a unified state."

Guatemala, Honduras, and then Nicarguaas the decade welled on... "Honduras?"

"The government there has matched Guatemala's railway concession rights. The RPF is expected to reach divisional strength next year." Cullen answered, "currently there are two brigades, the Honduras based element," He deferred pausing before saying he'd have the report passed along, "Suffice to say Powell has been been recruiting but he's splitting time with Africa..."
"But its working?"

"Yes... a certain yankee is throwing around," The name of, "Ward and," words like "Filibuster a lot." He shrugged, "But Powell should be able to finish the line to 'Tegu on schedule, which will directly link Guatemala city via our tracks... and State will be very happy when that happens." Dynamite was a great thing, Nobel deserved more credit for that than any fool medal, but the Swedes could be a bit queer at times.

"I suppose we should be glad, that Powell has things in hand, and he's close enough the bastard is being attention to his antics," Allen replied to Waite's commentary on the situation. "What does Powell make of the Brit's air police idea?"

"No more positive than what we do," Cullen replied, "You need boots on the ground to exercise any kind of order, the air craft can tell us what they can see, but we have to be there to make calls locally."



--
Notes: General Notation for updates this is going up early we're projecting snow, (not ussually a problem) but also an ice storm so it is very possible I will lose power which will potentially disrupt updates then tomorrow and Saturday will like be eminence in shadow and the litrpg storywhich i'm still working on, and then sunday if I have power I will update Battletech archon monday, etc, and probably last week of the month I'll resume updating Essence of VIltrumite.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1922
The technical side of things extended deep into the army's organization as new Regiments were organized...and as they moved from the larger strategic organization of active and reserve. The latter tied inextricably to the greater comfort of the organization in governing provinces. The Regular Army was to supplemented by a Federal Reserve force, but also to support by National Guardsmen who in normal organization were to be a formal provincial militia that could be federalized when they needed to be called up... implementing that would take time on a divisional basis.

It was therefore only natural that Yan wanted to emphasize to his home province the National Guard to which the 4th​ Division was a part of. The 4th​ as an Infantry Division however spent a preponderance of its time on active duty or at least a significantly greater period of time than originally envisioned... but that was the problem with theoretical divisions of labor that technical papers drew up.

… and of course those papers were drawn up in schools of military sciences, office buildings, and in the permanent unit headquarters. Cullen expected to have ninety thousand full time gendarmes, that was to say nominal fighting strength, supported by a much smaller complement of reserves by the end the technocratic plan slated to conclude in 25 but part of that was to be a military college for training military police, intelligence, and civil affairs officers which would be multi-service. The compromise vote held that it would be training personnel from the Regular Army, the Guard, the Reserves, the Air Force, and the Gendarmes.

That had been accepted de rigeuer in the matter of usual votes. Doctrinal arguments given the motorization of troops the sub machine gun was an object of significant interest. As were self loading rifles. Rapidly mobile troops, and the close quarters fighting coupled with the ammunition requirements there were certain facts that were self evident to support the ideas.

"Now Federov's rifle besides the ammunition runs into the problem of the milling time." 6.5 SR as it was shorthand in technical nomenclature tables was already in Iseburo's inventory, and Iseburo's administrative center was much closer to a potential boleshevik swing. It was why he focused more on railway guns and coastal defenses... and it was why he was arguing with the army's air service insisting that any plane aloft needed to be able to direct his artillery, or any artillery. From the sound of it the army air group was bridling but had much bigger concerns than elsewhere. "Griswold is doing a lot of milling of course, but we can do a fair amount of the work on the Assault Phase Rifles with individual lathes," Especially since Lewis's Assault Phase rifle did away with the aluminum void shroud for cooling... the result was popularity with elite formations, with men who favored semi automatic fire over automatic and wanted the accuracy of a closed bolt.

"That's another thing," There was a pause, "The 1914 rifle followed existing trends," though frankly with the number of commercial Mausers they had had with turned down bolt handles though they hadn't at the time been talking about it, the consensus had been that having its turned down was better. "We've had some success licensing out the Service Rifle and Latin America," including south America, "will take what we can sell them from what Powell says... but money does become a problem for purchasing. We can offer replacements to their Maxim and Vickers guns, and we can sell them surplus, but Powell is sure that a fight is coming."

There was a rumbling of discontent at the conclusion of the cavalry man's caveat. There was, had always been concerns about what getting involved further afield might lead them into. The new governor of the Philippines was interested in a hand, but he wanted the Philippines a lot closer in a system to the States back home... which was fair. Wood was older than any of them and interests were well established from his in Cuba so there had been less concern there. "The State Department says there is a lot of work to be done there."

… and there was money to be made there. Allen paused, "The Honduras situation?" He asked aware it couldn't be just that, but Honduras had been the issue which had kept the original cadre on the fence for getting into the grandiose plans of railway development in central America before the expansion of the available capital made by the European War. "He expects there will be a fight,"

"And a boom in sales as a result." The cavalry man replied, and it went without saying that was expected to be good for them. "That's why he wants a bigger share of the ford trucks than planned, he says he plans to use them to hasten roadwork, but they're managing 8 and a half a day. That's not a bad pace at all... but he wants to lay down doubles and he wants to spur off as well. So he needs more machines to do that."

Waite, who accepted that they had gotten off of the initial topic of self loading rifles, and the issue of manpower entered the fray, "This central American republic project," And at the very least if they couldn't have that then a free trade zone and an expanded merchant marine based on snapping up US flagged shipping on the cheap from Uncle Sam. "He thinks that he can weld them all together if only he builds up roads and railways up and down the line, maybe build that big port while he's at it?"

The cavalry man shrugged, "That's what I've heard." He paused, "I don't know if he plans to transfer the fords, sell them what have you... or if they're actually intended for mechanizing," That would be mechanizing Powells much smaller body of manpower.

Part of the deal with Ford had been buying Ford products that had included both complete models being shipped assembled, automobiles that would be shipped to their own factories to be assembled, and spare parts. Powell was asking for are routing of the completed trucks to latin america... but he might end up looking at the latter if the project managed to get far enough along where it could support a local automotive industry. "Has Powell written up, or the MAK," more broadly, though there was no disputing Powell had a great deal more sway than any of the others in the cadre, "Written up an organization table for modernization?"

"Officially no, unofficially the North and South brigades will be reorganized into divisions soon is the word... which tells me that he has something on the triangle model." There was a pause and ruffling of papers, "He's put out a statement for a race blind army, and has attempted to hire demobilized troops from Europe and the states, offering to bring their families in, he's even promised to General Pershing that black troops will be treated the same as their white counterparts if Black Jack will encourage them to exert themselves. My understanding is the existing force is already fully integrated, and that that will be the norm going forward." Other than that Powell for the time being only wanted lighter field guns Three Inchers and 105s specifically to prevent him from having confusion in the supply, "I still think he has his work cut out for him... but we will see how things go over there."

"What are the plans for sending a party to Guatemala?"


There was a shrug, "We can send Carter, unless you want to ship him to England, but its complicated."

Allen acknowledged the point, Powell's project these last couple of years had been the right time. He'd gotten the capital in and then he'd been able to get the state department's blessing. The leadership in United Fruit had been wanting the railways built but just didn't have the resources to commit the project and certainly hadn't had it once the European War had begun... and that had stalled work on anything more than what they had already built. Now though well things were much busier for other reasons and Powell was moving to diversify.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1922
Allen folded and put aside the report turning and rotating his wrist and looking at the gray sleeve and chinese sleeve interior visible. The uniform was a second skin, Percy had gone back to a civilian suit just as soon as his duties as 'observer' were over with the implementation of the British brokered peace. Percy had always been persnickety about the uniforms. At the time of the RPF, more than a decade earlier, they'd worn what they had liked, the adoption of uniforms had only happened after they'd been forced to recognize they needed more men... and that they were fighting with machine guns, and Dawes had insisted they buy Krupp guns commercially.

So even though they were 'at peace' as Percy insisted and he had civilian administrative tasks to handle he still wore the uniform of the day. Waite's Chief of Staff had forwarded him a report on the deeding and titling, and then talked about corporate law. That was a problem since officially the republic of China had inherited from the old Dynasty the german style body of corporate laws. Waite wanted that scrapped... and his argument was persuasive... but it would have to Allen felt wait until after the election, which meant waiting till the new class of the lower house was seated.

Waite was sounding impatient about it the last time it had come up in committee, and today was just a point to underscore that.

In hindsight, years down the road it represented a legal wedge that split them further from Peking's nominal authority. Waite had wanted originally, in 1919 and the year following, to just leverage the Assembly Duan had called elections for to be nudged into a vote... but that had of course never happened like that. That represented a break from how Waite had been trying to keep working within the system of the republic, but had now moved to building a legal system specifically to reflect just the provinces under Cadre stewardship, which of course how he justified it... and how it was put in the broadsheets the following January. All in the name of avoiding rocking the boat too much.

The problem was what had happened before that... during the war years. The British Empire had continued to carry goods from China, but the needs of the war in Europe had changed how things had gone forward. Between 1902, when he'd still been in the Philippines, and 1914 after Bai Lang they had become apart of the doubling of capital investment in China. The investment of the Japanese firms in the period had gone to over two hundred million dollars across that period.

In 1914 Allen would have considered 200 million dollars to be a great amount of money. He was reminded of a quip about Ford, but the truth was the European War had changed things... changed things immeasurably in how they looked at things. The war had menat bringing in British purchasing agents, and proofing inspectors and men to sign for goods before they left on trains heading to ports for coolies and longshoremen to load them on to ships or other trains.

In 1913 China had gone to the polls forty million men had gone to the polls to stock the almost six hundred seats of the Chinese congress. The average age of those representatives had been only scarcely older than the average for the Cadre, the average age being under forty years. Bland, writing in Shanghai, had been right though... the optimism of the republic had not been meant to last. Allen drummed his fingers on the report. In November they would go to the polls, every enlisted man would vote...and for that matter probably the majority if not all of them, even workman and factory man and miners too would vote. That turnout wouldbe important. Everyone employed by the cadre... by the corporations they had established made enough to meet the income tax requirement that provided the franchise under the law.

The law of the defunct Qing. The same body of laws that Waite's Chief of Staff had summarized in the report in front of him. Waite came in sharply, without knocking. "Did you read that?" He asked without preamble.

"I did." He replied.

Waite was also in uniform. Gray. He remembered the defense of the city in 1914. "Good. I know most of that is telling you stuff Bert has probably talked your ear off of anyway, we were all here when the question of the salt gabelle came up, and the carving of the cake started up." He meant in 1913, the tax on salt the talk of commission, the issues of Mongolia, Manchuria." The banking commission, when Wilson had been new had had the American banking partners pull out. Wilson hadn't liked bankers, he claimed it was 'about principle'... that should have been a bigger warning about Wilson being a fool than they had realized ... but they enjoyed almost a decade of hindsight now and there had been optimistic talk of free trade at the time as well. "No body saw the war coming, not the war that actually came to Europe. Suddenly having things turn around and instead of selling boots, and woolens and watches and caps, and gloves," He waved his hands on, "To China, China was selling them to Europe for the war. Its why Cullen always carries on about security of goods, and being so leery about shipping things to ports where dock workers will filch things."

"I assume this involves business law." Allen stated indicating the chief of staff's report.

"I intend to ask the lower house to consider drafting corporate laws more in line with that of the United States," And thus to a lesser extent like those England. "it is only a limited reform, but I want to make it easier for smaller shop keepers and firms to get started without us, and also I think it will make things with health and welfare easier as firms get bigger because it'll make it easier to understand."

Allen nodded, though noncommittally. Whatever Waite had in mind would have to be studied, and looked at for the consequences and knock on effects. "Are you expecting opposition to this?"

"Truthfully no, the truth is I fully intend to browbeat the opposition with the numbers of productivity shown during the war." He shrugged tone changing from boastful back to his more steady normal working voice, "They are relatively minor changes," Waite reassured him, "But I want us to have sensible laws, and I would rather a man buy a good local made good than a french shoe trading on prestige." The French did make some good shoes there wasn't a question of that

He raised an eyebrow. The Constitution of the United States could not simply be translated into China and made to address Chinese woes. The same for the Meiji constitution of Japan. They had to start smaller, with local laws and modern municipal and county systems and work up... it was why Allen had borrowed heavily from old man Yamagata's writings, and efforts to reform Japan's localities decades back. "We have no way to set tariffs, to keep out foreign goods." A power the US congress seemed intent on confirming and delegating to the President.

"We don't need to Al, sure we'd get tax money out of it, but those goods have been absent so long encouraging new startups before they can get back in hold, and not have to be shipped from Shanghai isn't that hard." Allen visualized a map... he could visualize what it was the other man meant. There was no direct rail link between the Cadre to Shanghai's bustling port. Never mind any of the major southern commercial ports. Western Zhili had more ready access to imported western goods at market, but the western trunk line stretching all the way through the Gansu corridors and further still thanks to dynamite and hard work were more connected to each other than to Canton. Waite for his part continued on, "We're catching up on Japan, the lower house will appreciate that, but that doesn't mean we can slack. Japan's first major steel works only opened in 1901, those mills of ours they took work, but we're better off now. We have no shortage of coal. We can do this, but we can't slack." There was a pause, "And lets be honest we can't neglect agriculture, and frankly we politically can't afford to neglect the farm lobby. There are enough old school gentry on the fence who have traditional confucian ideas about things."

Waite stopped just short of coming out and saying it, "What are you suggesting we give them?"

"Up front nothing," He replied, "What I suggest is suggest by putting out questions to the men running for the lower office how best to push agriculture forward. We let them talk about tractors, or corn for animal feed, or hell we let them talk about how to expand cattle to address the demand for milk and butter." There were plenty of stock grazers in the west counties to be sure there was going to be a powerful agriculture lobby one day in the congress itself.

There was other concerns vegetables, potatoes, pork too, but personally Allen was somewhat relieved that Waite's reading of the situation was such that they, the upper house, didn't need to push forward something. If Waite were to have suggested that Allen would have gauged the situation to be a much more serious domestic issue. "You think the lower house should be able to handle it?"

"They have to be able to handle it." He replied, "There were certain things for which have to be addressed, and having the lower house come up with solutions. We can demonstrate the system is working that those men can generate solutions as such, and that we are inviting the government to listen to complaints and problems and then to act."
--
Notes One of the things recently came up in discussion in my normal job is the effectiveness in the early 2nd​ Sino Japanese air war of both ground and interceptors and the ineffectiveness of japanese bomber doctrine that resulted in a significant loss of Japanese air frames. Here, that's going to be magnified significantly it will also have other effects locally, because it as a war time example (much like the Russo-Japanese war)highlighted obvious flaws in accepted strategies. In this case the big one being the bomber will always get through, which the Japanese ignored because there was no actual overarching objective to 101 102etc bombing campaigns because Army Navy squabbles and how the war had gotten started in the first place. That will be something to consider long term.

Then of course there is another effect we will see from increased palletization during WW1 that will be followed up on in a future segment that will effect logistics as well though that might be pushed to a date in '23.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1922
The 1920 Census had been based off of previous ideas... previous plans which had been delayed by the things conspired to make a mockery the plans of men. It had been something that the cadre had offered to help conduct for Yuan Shikai as dujun of Zhili, and then through him passed up the old dynasty's apparatus to do a national census. Those things had never gotten very far. It would have been beyond their ability in 1910 to do that. Grand as the IBM machines were they would not have been able to facilitate counting all of China. Still as for tabulating and calculating the machines had made it possible to do other things and were a great benefit to business workings.

Yuan Shikai had hoped to undertake a census once his reign as Emperor was secure, and he had b efore that attempt at least talked about doing a census as President of the Republic. It hadn't happened it had remained just talk. The 1920 census had entailed Western Zhili, the Three Western Commanderies, Tibet nominally, and Shensi, and Shansi.

"What are you telling me?" Allen questioned.

Bert shuffled a bit, but George beat him to it, "We've done the math. The 1920 Census estimation suggest that in terms of demographic health... the country has not fully recovered from the losses of the taiping's rebellion."

There was shuffling and JP put voice to the obvious statistical question, "But, we have no way to measur e Hupeh, Hunan, Anhui, Zhejiang, or any of the rest of them who were wrecked."

"I looked at the Qing numbers and tax rolls." George replied his voice a low tone, which was set with a hard enough edge to tell anyone unfamiliar what he thought of those numbers.

"I did as well, and Shellman."Bertie agreed, "Our conservative low figure number," Bert continued looking queasy at the thought, "Is that more than 25 million perished in China's civil war, and that is the agreed upon estimate and its," He trailed off letting the engineer pick up.

"Perhaps double that even." Waite continued. "Beyond that though, its the economic implications that I see effecting us. During the rebellion money poured into Shanghai, as long the Brits were in control and the city was safe wealthy merchants came in, and they paid good money for British traders to carry their goods under foreign flagged steamers." It was there that the committee however began to draw conflicting conclusions, because it was not 1865. The war between chinese states was still ongoing, and looked as if this were to last longer if perhaps not as bloody as the war against the Taiping. "We have factories, we have factories which need employment. We build houses, and expand places to live. There is also another valve for release of the displaced population in that not only do people come north, or as in the most recent case, come west from eastern Zhili and Shantung but they also take steamships under company flag and are going to other projects."

Which included Middle America, as well as the African project. Workers were settling permanently there that was after all what Powell was aiming for, he wanted to open farms for coffee, and ranches for cattle he was aiming to draw Chinese, and Japanese, Italians and Germans and encourage them build up... and anyone fleeing the bolsheviks. And the conclusion from which Waite reached from his study of statistics was that he and Griswold both, along with a handful of other old hands, was that the planning for the operation plan of development for the second five years was going to have to be revised. It had been a full decade since the old dynasty had fallen. In that past decade the cadre had remained a hundred man allotted body, but the company had expanded vastly.

... and as the British grumbled His Majesty's civil servants and even some of the paper men made and drew unfavorable comparisons of a company that had held a british sanctioned monopoly, that had had an Army. Some in the Foreign Service in order to save face were diverting, talking to Curzon and others as an army that just happened to have an attached civil government... but they missed another point. There was especially in just the past few generations ample historical precedent for having one man as military and civil authority over multiple provinces. The governorship of the individual provinces was also changing as well with no longer a separation between the two where by the governor was both civil and military authority during peace time.

There was thus a continuity as a new bureaucracy took shape, and that was at least internally clear to Xian's government if still somewhat opaque to those far away in London town. The fall conference would publish vast volumes, ponderous amounts of information for those who cared to read. Percy's job was easy on that front, he didn't need to read the accepted version of vernacular chinese that was in because they published side by side with English reports. Those reports which would start going out this month, and proceed through the end of the year were emphatic on an idea of a prospering country building a strong army.

In short the repair of water control, expansion of not just the railway system, but the development of a better road system to supplement trade, and the expansion of public education. Electrification was another priority, another matter to point to, and one where the growing populace sheltering from strife elsewhere could crowd around the lights and start to rebuild.

"So I ask again, what are you telling me?"

"The 1930 census is arguably going to be even more important than the first one." Waite declared, "It will substantiate whether or not we were even close to the mark. It will bear out what we will do this decade what we have actually managed to accomplish." They were still playing catchup. To Britain, to the States, and to Japan. "We have got to get out ahead of the Bolsheviks, a war is going to come and we have to build up. Yeah, the got a bloody nose in Europe and their prophecy of revolution to any sensible person clearly fell flat on its face, but that's precisely it... they're lunatics, and mad men and bandits with a zealous conviction." He was shy of pounding the table, "They're a cult, they're thugs with a new age religious bent... and the government back in Washington are idiots for letting Hoover minister to the ills the Bolsheviks themselves create." It was a damning assertion, and one that would linger in Xian's popular conception of the interwar years until the dawn of the cold war where it would have new life breathed into it in popular accounting. "Sooner or later Washington is going to have to pick a side, isolation and neutrality are a fool's course whatever that the protection of the oceans."

... but the war Waite envisioned was not to be the one Dawes imagined. It was not to be the one which would come. Waite assumed that the Bolsheviks would gamble on trying to fight their crusade west again, but without the Tsar's gold bullion to entice trade, with famine rampant, and without access to the far eastern mines they had to turn to less productive sources, and more laborious efforts.

That meant accepting Hoover's charity, for all the bluster that the Bolshevik papers would carry on in spite of. There would be foreign trade, but the Bolsheviks, were not regardless of an agreed upon policy of presenting a unified public face capable of putting up the money to buy everything they needed. Lenin would compromise by his New Economic Policy which would buy time... and then there would be disagreements in the party after his death that would buy more time. The Communist idea would be buoyed, faith in the communist 'experiment' of the soviet union in the west would be inflated both by communist propaganda on progress and banking failures towards the end of the decade... but all that was in the future.

In the waning summer of 1922 the political axes were shifting...

--
Notes: This is not actually the end of the arc, we will continue with August 22 next time, but it does mark t he shift as we go into 23 and the decline in that year that leads to the Beiyang internal conflicts of 1924-25 and Chiang's Northern Expedition and how it effects China. But also of course in looking forward the focus also looks back to past events in the story, and in previous historical events.

Internationally of course there is the continued unrest in Europe, as mentioned back in the June segment obliquely things like Mussolini's agitation in Italy as well as the emergence of the Little Entente of Romania, Serbia, and Czechoslovokia.

 

[Imperator Pax]

August 1922

The rest of the Foreign Policy committee meeting still dealt with the intersection of Russia, and England just other nuances of that mess. Ungern spent time speaking in traditional terms 'grozny this' saintly and paternal that, and adding a slathering of Chingisid propaganda as he spoke of modernizing the Mongolian state in speeches and in what limited numbers of paprs. Replacing the Cyrillic script in favor of the English latin alphabet had at least proven successful in Kirghiz largely because of the lack of competing printing presses …Ungern as a result hadn't been that hard to convince to adapt written mongolian to instead use the latin alphabet as well, but it had probably been the cost of such things that had tipped his opinion on the matter.

It was about cost. Iseburo had helped that as had Kirghiz. They all agreed that reducing the dependence on Moscow based institutions was preferable and everyone in turn agreed to present it to the public as part and parcel to modernizing. Thankfully Japan had domestically it own English language printing papers for which Iseburo had been able to coopt for publishing local 'chapters' in his administrative center on the big lake.

"It is our institutions that are our strength," Waite declared... he wasn't wrong. Waite was out of all of the cadre probably the one most invested in the outreach and social work that created the basis of not just the formal institutions but also the emerging national institutions like the public sector unions. That had been a controversial vote in committee at the time of coming to grips with the need of the war in Europe...an it had been confirmed last year with the lower house approving the bill. That approval had been more about the money and funding, and the recognition of supporting full time employment. Well full employment in the industries of note in order to support increasing efforts to build a modern state... and a modern state that was increasingly divorced from Peking.

Waite was adamant that even if Peking failed to correct its present course they could not circulate the kind of provincial declaration of independence that other provinces and sometimes even counties issued. Unfortunately for Waite's high minded position, that was popular with the electorate who were rightfully rather up with the situation in the capital.

The war in Europe had put of the minds of most the Boxer rebellion, except for those who looked at the war in Europe as a reminder of the necessity of a strong state. At the verdun and the Somme countless men had been thrown away into the exertion of largely pointless bloodletting. China had had its share of blood wars... the Taiping rebellion... remained an article of study... the boxer rebellion was as well... but more than that Yuan Shikai, and Duan Qirui's more recent failings in trying to pacify the south.

Allen cleared his throat, signaling his intention to speak, "Yes, and with the election polls being what they are, we can expect the legislature to push for an expanded army." The scrabble over Peking, and Sun's conspiracy had been allover the papers but it wasn't the only factor. There had been a push before for the expansion as the news of the war on peasant farmers by the Bolsheviks. "Yuan Shikai," following on those started by Li Hongzhang, "set the beiyang army on a set of reforms, but I believe we can see that those efforts with it have fallen apart." Duan had attempted to set up, to build off Yuan's efforts but that had been toset up to provide him a power base outside of the Beiyang, "The army is enfranchised." As were all of the factory workers including the new automotive workers who labored on assembly lines that were mind numbing. "Shang has pushed forward the work of his staff college graduates, and they hold certain positions, which should be recognized."

"Your men want a fight."

Waite's comment was almost an accusation, and Hodges took the bait. "The eighth had been on border duty... they've got a better idea than your brigade, on whats going on in Szechwan." He hissed face tight in snarl, and knuckles white. The raising of a brigade in Tibet can't be ove r looked even if the argument wasn't to adding troops.

"Invading Szechwan would bog us down in an unstainable fight." Waite retorted, "And if the damned reds come over the border what the sam hell do we do then? You think that John Bull," Britain, "Or Washington will actually intervene for Japan over Siberia, Mongolia, we might might hear something from Curzon but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. We're not france, whatever orientalists are in the Foreign Office its not the same as with 1914 and saving Paris."

There were nods. The truth was that Britain was in debt. England could probably pay it, but not in a place to expend more money... not on the sums of a real fight. France was even worse off, they hadn't had the capital before for anything like what passed through London before the war... and London was a distant second to New York which was where the French were dependent now on credit. That was making the papers, and it was making a lot of people hot under the collar for how France was acting, and Allen couldn't blame them. "What do you suggest then?"

"We got to give them another option. To build a rich country, the land has to be safe. Safety means a strong army. We need more ties to our neighbors to buttress the system."

"We have talked about building the railways in the west." To Iran, furthering the lines already in Kirghiz, some of those lines still needed to be doubled up "We've even talked about the lines into Afghanistan, and India." There was nothing impossible about it, it was just a question of will and time, and dynamite. India, and Iran would offer them access to the sea, Kirghiz needed to be able to buy cattle... and horse.... stocks to replace the herd losses from the European War, "But I expect that you mean more than that?"

"Those printing presses we built and shipped in are going to go to good use. The war in Europe savaged the tsarist establishment, probably added a couple million people into the steppe. Mostly people who couldn't read, but illiteracy was a problem everywhere anyway, The cossacks being pushed this far east isn't going to make them amicable to the reds, but hate doesn't put food on the table, and in a generation or two well sometimes people forget. I think," Waite paused, "I think the way the Poles were able to hold on was because of books, because they had an identity that wasn't Peter took a blank sheet of paper and scribbled all over it."

"When do you suggest we do this?"

"Next year," after, "we get through the elections when all the provinces have their legislatures we get all the houses together for a conference and we talk about it with all of them."

--
Notes: Parts of this segment were shaved so its a little shorter than originally entailed, but to reiterate somewhat how Xian's army is structured the default 'unit' for identity is at the regimental level. (in the Qing military apparatus it would have been the battalion equivalent, and that identity does to an extent exist in China during this period with warlord armies, but the Beiyang were specifically built on divisional lines, but also Yuan Shikai was also heavily emulating Prussian traditions).

Divisions are comprised of regiments, Brigades are comprised of Regiments but they're both organized under Xian's emerging Army Corp Structure. Brigades are expected to be able to act independently or as direct supporting elements for divisions, but they're considered distinct from divisions, which generally inherit their Numbered status from the save Regiment of Infantry.[Xian doesn't have artillery, or cavalry divisions at this point. All Artillery Regiments are branch organized for administrative purposes under the service's Corp, the same as the Corp of Engineers and these 'Corp' handle for example the education side of things]

 

[Imperator Pax]

1 September 1922
The year before Lenin had formally requested aid for the famines that were the Reds own damned fault to begin with, and it seemed unlikely, at least for the near future, that the Soviets would ever get back to the agricultural productivity of the Russian Empire. That was a problem... both for the bolsheviks at home and for other folks who had to consider it... and what the repercussions might be as a collection of bandits who seemed to know nothing about farming decided to throw nonsense at a wall and see what stuck, and when it failed just seize the grain at gun point. It was that which had proved the loudest topic. Hodges had worked himself up into rare form over the issue of the institutionalized banditry implemented by the Bolsheviks since they had come to power... and having Harding come into distribute food aid to the starving caused by the unrealistic quotas imposed, never mind shipments in of fresh grain stock... new seeds. Something that wouldn't have been necessary if the peasants in the countryside hadn't been forced to eat their seed stocks or starve.

This wasn't news, and it contributed to the raking over the coals that Xian's papers put the socialists through and as it was the bolsheviks, the peasants and the anarchists were still shooting at each other even as the remaining white centers solidified in the east as they too began to receive grain aid from the United States though in less volume. Those solidified bases of power in the east impacted other changes. Hodges had pointed out that Siberia had managed an average harvest in terms of productivity per acre. It wasn't a great harvest but the rain fall had been 'okay enough' this year that with at least a stable situation hadn't meant a famine.


Hodges didn't necessarily like the situation of the two conglomerated White Russian states. Kirghiz, the central Asian state, and the White Far East, comprising Eastern Siberia provinces and maritime were very different from one another two years on... with different political patrons. At least in the latter they were more comfortable with the situation. Kirghiz was in the British Sphere of Influence and Kurzon wanted to use the White Russians there as a buffer state in between the soviets and India...but to do it on the cheap in order to appease the treasury.

Curzon's 'balancing' both internally to Britain's empire, and his attempt to play the great game left England's position of center shaky. Much closer ... much more chance of it being messy. Allen was reminded of one Roosevelt's quips about gentlemen that he decided not to mention in the meeting , and not to mention in the after either.

"Hodges has been complaining of chest pains," Shellman remarked. "Do you think its a problem?"

Allen frowned at the doctor's question, the truth was Hodges had never quite healed right after the break in 1916. He'd done a better job on the mend than would have been thought of a generation earlier, but it had kept him from the rigors of a frontline command. There were chatter that Hodges resented that he could keep the physical fitness standard that would have allowed him to lead men into the fray. It would have been worse for Hodges if he had tried to go home. "You're the doctor," He replied.

"I think its a problem." The former naval officer replied, "He's working himself to death." An idiom, and a diagnosis that would eventually exist in the books, "Keeps all hours, and is constantly on about there being more to do he won't listen to me though."

For which Hodges was right, there was more to do. There was always going to be more to do. "There is that," He replied before pausing a moment, "Hodges brought up another point. The insurance."

"The more people we pull from the countryside the more people live in cities." Shellman paused, "I think we will find some new equilibrium," He remarked, speculating on where that new balance point might be between farming and rural folks and the people living in the cities especially as machines increased productivity both in factories, and on farms, and probably eventually in shops too, "Regardless of where that is, we will have more old folks and not necessarily ones with family, and there is disability insurance as well. We've borrowed what we can from Bismarck." The fund came out of a payroll tax it was meant for seeing to the elderly, survivors and the disabled for the whole citizenry. If they had been more forward thinking after Bai Lang they might have been able to trial run it with a military pension system first... but the fighting with Bai Lang had been before the bloodletting in Europe had started. They'd missed another chance three years later when the fighting over restoring the Qing had broken out. So facing the reality of that there was going to be a contraction in trade when the demand from the war went through they had started looking for a solution. Hence the 1920 framework... the foundation was stable. "Hodges wants to bolster it with a sovereign wealth fund doesn't he? Take some of the gold the czechs paid us with, invest?"

"Thats right," Allen nodded, "Its a much bigger proposal than the one put forward to support the education system," Which had been something suggested based on lesson from Texas to support primary schools, and the university system. That had itself been something the Cadre had used to support the earlier schools once they started the first a&m colleges, putting in money that came from rail and then coal to the fund, "His argument is redundancies in the system." Which did create a problem "His argument is that the cadre can bypass the lower on this."

"We're not bypassing them,"Shellman replied, "The system was designed that appropriations, tax burdens on the populace at large have to be approved by the lower house. That gold bullion and leveraging on it was designed outside of that, as were other revenue streams as a contingency." There were other constitutional restrictions on spending that effected both the upper and lower houses that included both benchmark on military spending and a restriction on military spending during peace time; whatever that definition was supposed to mean. It had been a narrow thing there, and complicated by there being the single cadre but multiple provincial lower houses... if Xian's house of representatives agreed with a cadre declaration of war then it brought the other provinces in... and that probably wasn't the best solution... "Besides the elections in a couple months and we can make adjustments to the system. No body here disagrees with Hodges's point..."

They all accepted that in the realm of foreign policy that a continuation of the fighting in Europe was going to happen... and it was hardly outside of the realm of possibility that the Bolsheviks would make a gamble on how much skin England had in the game. "Curzon wants Kirghiz as a buffer state to keep the soviets away from the jewel in the crown... we have tohope that Curzon gives the impression that a red push towards there will get the Indian Army moving."

"It'd be a colonial war, that might be easier for Whitehall to stomach than a war against one of the neighbors in Europe." Or that the British public might accept it given that a bolshevik had managed to wing King George. "Kirghiz needs more time... and frankly yeah we're going to do work there but its going to be awkward with what we have here trying to handle foreign policy abroad. Hodges going off today, look John its one thing for trade missions, but Lenin seizing grain makes our own gentry nervous, talk of famine makes everybody nervous."

The result was the people reading the papers were primed to support a fight, since the idea of red bandits coming in and dispossessing them of food was to no one's liking. Allen recognized that Lenin had tried to have people run a factory floor and then shown that didn't work, then shoved in central control often with some of the same bosses and demonstrated he still couldn't match productivity. Those numbers, and that disorder had made the papers too, and it helped further undermine the red's talking points... but that ran into the issue of shaping what went out to the readership of the papers. Different readers took umbrage with different actions undertaken by Lenin's maliciously incompetent collection of thugs but they were still insulated by land differences...

 

[Imperator Pax]

September 1922
His desk was as usual crowded with documents, including those that pertained to the material preparations that could be expected of Central Asia, but they were not what occupied his attention at the moment. Even if there had been shooting conflicts ongoing his work would have required documentation, and records of movement of goods. Shang had sent up a series of papers, hand picked papers, from young Staff Officers which had been about the highlight of his morning. Hodges while here was still nominally the commander of the 8th​ Division since Shang was currently on temporary duty during the course of summer drill. That meant he was handling the up and coming staff officers while most of the cadre, Hodges included who was only here temporarily for the conference, were looking forward to the election campaigns. He suspected Waite had commissioned the placards that had gone up to encourage 'Success'. Cullen's printing presses were even more obviously his handiwork even without taking note of the gendarmes who festooned their bullpens and working spaces with them voluntarily. Cole had the advantage of being able to spend far more time with his most junior men. Mostly because the lowest rank of gendarmes troopers, the privates, were expected to be lawmen. Their patrols took them into the community regularly and without necessarily expectation of direct action.

A part of Allen envied that closeness that Cole could maintain with his most junior men. The cynical part of his thinking recognized that even Cole wouldn't be able to keep it forever that way. The gendarmes were being expanded... not as fast as the regular army, but it was becoming bigger and like all the others Cole could only be in one place at a time. The training of gendarmes for privates entailed more than the Infantry School that had been the norm up until quite recently.

The training was a talking point with the cadre. It had been a longstanding talking point. For the army was a professional institution, one drawn of volunteers. Even though they had not... except very recently discussed a cavalry, there had been red legs, and engineers, and signals men.

But the cadre had so much to do, not all of them could be focused on the profession of arms. The margins for the railway had been fair in 1914. Western Zhili had made enough in freight even that they could stomached a British style subsidized passenger carry... not that Yuan Shikai would have considered that. Not when most of that freight was coal, which then at that point had gone to selling for cooking and heating purposes.

The war in Europe had meant more demand, and had expedited electrification. It had pushed them to expand. Forty plus percent of the cadre held active military commissions in the army, that rose to over seventy men being involved in uniform for the body with the reserves... and there were a couple of seats that in the new year would need to be filled.

... and would certainly be filled by officers, but they would wait for that until after elections of the lower house.

The present quorum though was insistent that now that the war in Europe was over it was time to take advantage of mid western grain, Kansas and Nebraska and the like, to pad what they could as a guard against famine Corn, and wheat could be stored and kept on hand just in case. There were other reports.

The previous year the Food and Drug Administration, theirs not the states back home, had finished standing up and had issued their recommendations for marking and labelling food. That had been a long time coming. It was something of a point of contention. Food hygiene, and slaughtering of stock for meat... well there had been talks, but also there was the public to consider. Local farmers markets were one thing, but well the states had enacted prohibition but their own food and drug administration had more reason to check the labels and standards for alcohol.

Alcohol was legal, but it was going to be taxed. Tobacco as well. Allen expected the latter though to potentially get complaints from Tietsin, or the consul in Shanghai, but it might not. The British ambassador, never mind his American counterpart would very likely side with them, and it was always possible that the consul of the day would be too taken with moralizing to stand complaints over such taxes by tobacco.

It was equally possible the anglo-american tobacco consortium which grew tobacco in China would keep their mouths shut because they wouldn't want to risk it for their own reasons. Those being that, if they started an argument the Cadre could shut them out entirely, the public might boycott them anyway, and that the Cadre could always adjust the rates for the rail that the tobacco company used to ship across the silk road into Kirghiz That was the advantage of holding a transportation monopoly.

There certainly wasn't going to be a fight this close to the elections... not with the Anglo-American legation in Tietsin enthusiastically voicing support for the voting coming. Shurman thought they were doing well enough, and his cables to Harding were favorable in part because he'd done his stint in the Philippines while most of the Cadre had been in uniform. The man might not have known all the men personally during those days, but he seemed to appreciate that they were on the right track.

Even with the support of both ambassadors it was too late, Allen thought for the rest of China to go to the polls and stock the Federal Legislature here... and that was going to b e a problem. Because, frankly their representatives were pushing for it, and were not happy with the chatter in Peking. Cao Kun was trying to build a consensus, talk about the constitution and this and that, but what it was really doing was showing that the constitution wasn't really how things were run.

It was the dickering and attempts to horse trade instead of fighting bandits. It was the shooting different branches of the beiyang kept getting themselves into, and then when they weren't doing that it was the fighting in Honan. These were all things that made his days more complicated than they otherwise might have been.

Cole was a few minutes earlier than he'd been expected, but not unusually so. The steel documents he passed over were a little unusual. "I'm aware that stepping down production from the war time peak has been a talking point." He commented paging through the documents, before reaching another series of war production documents related to quality control, as well as security deposits for the hand over of goods. "But I assume this has something else to do as well."

"We don't have a port. There is no rail line," No direct rail line to the city, "to Shanghai, but we do bring stuff in, from overseas and we always have but that's been a real shake up over the years." He gestured to still other figures in the table. "Bert has long complained that there is a problem where some of the things that get ordered are stolen on the docks, which don't get me wrong everyone has that problem." and they expected to have that problem in Kirghiz

But it had been a big enough concern with regards to shipping goods to the entente, to England and to Russia with the brits as bursar that when they had started loading goods on to skids for shipping they had insisted that the brits were responsible for approving the goods on site and taking possession and handling shipping. It wasn't just concern over theft, they had no boats to carry them over the water, "We'd already been using pallets to move things around the factories," Especially as the arsenals had been manufacturing more guns, but it had made sense for cloth goods as well... cotton textiles had used them in the states before they'd entered the academy. Then it had only been a matter of time before an engine had been attached to a lifting machine for the pallets, "I assume that your suggestion be related."

He produced a draft of a sheet steel box, "It would require cranes, but we can put these on flat bed train cars, they're shut up so you can't easily steal out of him, and they're steel obvious its not impossible for something to get broke inside but it makes it a hell of a lot less likely."

"What are the drawbacks?"

"The lifting, we can't go any bigger than this container for want of infrastructure. If we try and ship this it'd be too big for the apes in the dockyards to move." Hence his comment on requiring cranes, "Powell wants to get into buying surplus vessels from the shipping board," which would allow the MAK to run US flagged ships but otherwise permit preferential carrying and alleviate one of the great problems the cadre had in selling goods abroad. "These containers can be put on a rail car, we'd have to talk to him though about actually using them, but if he's serious about over the seas trade and ports we could secure both ends of our arrangement."

"Do you think he'll bite?"

"If he's serious about this talk in Liberia, even if he's not packing coffee in one of these would bean easy thing. If we had enough of them."

There were economies of scale in steel manufacturing. Due to the European war's demand for steel larger producers had been able to build up immense cost saving measures which coupled with high panicking high prices of 1917 and 1918 especially for Pig Iron but mild steels and other bulk metal products they'd profited handsomely. After the armistice they had had to step down production, but costs actually increased per unit as the market had moved to peace time levels. "I understand that, but production of this will take time."

"Railways first, ships, trucks later." But with Trucks, that was where the deal with Ford cam in.

"If you can get the MAK to go along with it, we can talk about it next year. With working examples Cole, for peace and war applications." The fighting between Fengtien and Zhili had involved lots of shells.
--
Notes: This has been alluded to as forthcoming, we are talking about a precursor to intermodal containers here, because all of the technology for such existed before McClean put it into practice in the early cold war to the point that I really think that part of the resistance was most likely union related for dockworkers, and the infrastructure limitations ofWW1 followed by the great depression before the war.

Its a standard shaped metal box with doors, you just need to build enough of them, and again here, these are smaller than a standard modern shipping container because of those limitations (the idea behind these containers is that they're probably shorter) but again its a standard industrial steel box. Its we know the docks are bad about getting sticky fingers or longshoremen break things because they're drunk on the job (again at work alcoholism pervasive problem).

 

[Imperator Pax]

September1922
The fall conference spent a long time discussing many of the things he had spent the week earlier going over in minutiae with Carter. It was not just military equipment, but also the economy. While people took pride in the army the banking apparatus exerted tidal like effects on people's livelihoods... but for most of today it had been looking forward to the army's standard fighting man... or the infantry at large.

The FN Model 1900 caliber 35 Remington, and its beefed up Griswold version in 8mm Mauser were de facto the principle self loading rifles of the army's select units and ranks issued those. Current tabulations said that there were about twenty two thousand 35 Remington guns in service between the Army, the National Guard, and the Gendarmes plus other security forces. The weapons operated from a long recoil system, and Griswold was expecting full conversion to magazine fed versions was approximately ninety percent complete with most of the guns not in magazine conversion form being in the hands of the Railway Police.

The 1900, and Winchester it competed against in the states had been adopted early by the cadre as personal arms since most of the cadre were aficionados of such new developments. In the years before the war in Europe they had also been looking to buy up weapons in packets in order to outfit the then much smaller force of the company soldiery. That had lead to buying the mondragon rifles for which Mexico had been in arrears and to the work on the Lewis gun. All of which supported the notion of fire and maneuver which had been US doctrine since the war between the states

Mondragon and Lewis both favored a gas piston system which seemed to be the way forward in the longer term for using their full power 200 grain 8mm Mauser. The prohibitive recoil of the long recoil system with the service rifle was most keenly felt by smaller men... which was not as significant of a problem given the Qing height requirements for northern Chinese, but it bore consideration all the same. Length of pull for the rifle was another concern, but part of the reason that for example the Winchester 351 had failed out were issues with standardized magazine though that had only been one issue out of several.

That the 35 caliber gun had already been in limited production and in spare parts before that before the8mm version's initial form had come out was another reason for its numbers. The railway men, the Gendarmes and especially 3rd ​Divisions mechanized troops found the shorter length of the 1900 variant useful. 1St​, 2nd​, and 8th​Division all fielded the 35 Caliber gun in more limited numbers with 2nd​ Regiment being the only unit in the Active Guard unit being issued them and that was only a result of its mechanization though some were issued to its artillery component in place of the1920 Model Service Rifle.

For ten years Griswold had been playing with the design, and was of the opinion that while it was now mature there were limits in what they could do with it moving further. There was simply more that went into the production of rifles that were semi automatic, and Griswold acknowledged that improvements with machine tooling and larger orders would bring prices down.

There was a familiar litany of charts which were based on previous year records that showed what they spent on production of rifles, what development was costing and what they could expect. All of which was going to at least go to the lower house at some point because someone had gotten into their head that semi automatic rifles were presently a feasible option for the army.

They weren't. Not for the whole army. Not with what they cost per unit, and not with the logistical burden it would have imposed to sustain the present army size, never mind an expansion.

"We've got twenty thousand Remingtons." the 1900, and its variants "but the majority of those are with Lee and my boys," Cullen remarked, "And they work well for what we need them to," 35 Remington was back home plenty sufficient for hunting bear or elk at reasonable distances, and that was the impediment of the cartridge. For close in work it was great, but it was a carbine ranged weapon, where as Model 1920 bolt action allowed line infantrymen to fire on targets accurately well in excess of those ranges, even if those ranges were unheard of in street to street fighting. "I don't think they would work as well with 9th​ and 10th​divisions... we could try them with 4th​ division, but my understanding is Yan doesn't want to go that route."

The governor of Shansi nodded, "I believe that a mix of full power rifles, and 45 caliber," he paused, "Submachine guns would be the better option. I am prepared to test and evaluate this, once the Lewis work is further along than it is currently."

Griswold was working on a blowback version... Lewis's original machine pistol had been a piston system scaled down to 45 which did work, but was unnecessarily complex for a pistol caliber weapon. Lewis had recognized that after the armistice and started the work but the lack of interest by Britain or the states had diminished his drive to pursue beyond a few early prototypes.

Lewis's work had merit, though with the 45 caliber weapon there were obvious improvements to be made. "So we are in the agreement that we're not there yet? Griswold?"

"Blowback simplifies things greatly, I admit 3rd's problem with freezing the action up, I'll work on that." He stated, "Yan isn't the only one who is interested in this, Powell, has said given conditions over there," In central America, "That there are concerns about obstructions getting into the action, mud and so forth." There was a sudden wash of chatter about armaments in general... or at least the small arms side of it.

There was no surprise there. The past decade had resulted in avid martial focus on rifle skills. There remained a vocal minority within the Army Staff that every man in uniform should be a rifleman and expected to attend the basic course for infantry. That was the cadre, even Yan Xishan who came from a Japanese Army Doctrine background, admitted impractical given the needs of the Army. They needed specialist support troops, the guidelines for that recognized that training for them needed to reflect less direct combat application.

The Army's Education Bureau, now under the command of a Major General, was responsible for overseeing the certification of schooling records both before the Army, and the course of schools attended during service. Civilians and Soldiers alike seemed to take pride in this arrangement as it awarded certifications, and maintained records of when and how highly men scored on practical and academic exams.

Completion, coinciding with the Fall Festival, of their version of the Wimbledon cup with distinction came with recognition. There were restrictions of course, the thousand yard match was open to all civilians, but in the interest of fairness a more grueling course of work was open only to members past or present of Rifle Divisions who could complete the physical standards of their units... this course accompanied an award of a shoulder rocker for dress uniforms and all but guaranteed that the recipient would be asked to take a teaching cadre position in the next rotation of marksmen courses.

Those successful at the course then naturally wrote reports on the successes or failings of the rifles and other implements of the profession. For Xian's martial reading body those who placed at the national match were also treated to consideration of their writings on the merits of particular techniques. Those men largely operated though with full power rifles, or in the pistols matches that ran alongside the majority with the Army standard service pistol.

This committee within the cadre was expect to attend the national match, and observe. Perhaps almost as importantly was the reception and the public facing of the gathering at the fall festival which made them collectively publicly visible.
--
Notes: this is basically a glance into logistics and doctrine for the interwar years... I keep saying at some point I'll actually do a post where it breaks down the Rifle Divisions and possibly their supporting Brigades as Xian to moves to its Army Corp structure but that probably won't happen until the aftermath of the 2nd Zhili Fengtian war and Feng's coup against Cao Kun. That being said Technologically this foreshadows the dvelopment of an Owen type blowback submachine gun in order to not have the actions lock up. It'll just be in 45 caliber not 9mm at this point in time since Xian basically has no major 9x19mm in inventory. [Historically it should be noted that Yan would go on to produce thomspons at Taiyuan and also produced 6.5 Arisaka, as well as a 45 caliber Broomhandle after previous producing an original clone. Here there is no reason for Taiyuan to produce the 6.5 though if it had already been underway the Federov would probably be a better option than the Chauchat that SMB did produce, Vickers are still being produced in 8mm Mauser]

 

[Imperator Pax]

October 1922
They had less than a month before folks went to the polls. The cadre was swamped with work... which was perfectly normal though Hodges in particular looked more winded by the work. The Soviets had had to bring in foreign aid to make up for their failed grain policies since last year... and Xian while largely republishing British material was also the center point for collecting collating and republishing reports about bandit activity undertaken by Lenin's thugs. Part of that was to shore up Kirghiz, but it also had a rabid following at home as the documentation mounted.


"He's pretty gassed out," Carter observed as the throng of ninety so men filtered out in order to take the recess offer by the lunch.

Allen nodded, "And we've got a couple more weeks of this." He replied. "He is right though literacy is going to be an issue, especially in the countryside. "Hodges had stamped a long while on the naive policy of splendid isolationism as the Brits called it, and had made clear that they couldn't rely on such high mindedness to to remain aloof. He'd taken that usual warning a step forward to fire a shot across Waite's bow that Jeffersonian democracies weren't going to emerge from the aether, and that they shouldn't expect one to spring up either. "As for things in Middle America, that's Powell's problem," And he'd have preferred if the Cadre here, both Waite, and Hodges left it well enough alone. Carter's expression shifted, "What?"

"Its just, Powell is serious about trying to pull people out of Europe, and with the famine in the former tsarist lands, he's talking with Joint," What the Joint Distributing Committee shortened its name as, "And the ARA under Hoover, he's busy trying to move Ruthenians out especially the refugees who made it to Poland and if not Middle America, to settle them in Liberia to raise cattle and hogs there."

"Is he gonna have a problem with Hoover pulling out of that clusterfuck?" He asked an edge on the final word.

Carter shrugged, "I guess, truth be told Hoover's not wrong that son of a bitch," Lenin, "selling grain for machinery while the provinces in the south starve, on the other hand I don't think he'll do it immediately... they'll waffle around Hoover's got queer ideas and he'll argue with Lenin and if then when he doesn't get his way he'll stamp off, but that could be months from now," It would be the following summer.

"Does Powell know that?"

"Sure he's contributing to the medical aid to Poland from his own medical detachments, mostly those graduates from Loyola in Chicago," Who the prevailing assumption was that Powell meant to use as a cadre to establish a jesuit medical college in Guatemala City, though if he intended to train Army doctors there might be more of a hassle than Powell really reckoned for, "Last report was he had forty doctors over there." Allen nodded, and stopped to watch Dawes josh around with some round face boys from the 15th​ Infantry Regiment about whether or not they had voted yet using the army's early ballot protocol. The Colonel General of the Artillery was still in his dress uniform and the young lieutenants were on the spot about being jovially confronted about civic duty by the head of the artillery branch. "Should we go save them?" Carter asked.

"If they're gonna lead men, they'll need to take a little teasing." Allen answered, "Though I do reckon we need to talk to Dawes," He stated straightening, "I think I will let Cullen handle Percy for the time being."

"Percy and the Brits are going to have questions," Carter remarked mirroring his change in posture and tone, "About what Powell has planned."

That was so, "The MAK is making its own investments," Clark's statement to be ambitious boys, came to mind, that defined the cadre's original membership, "Their foundation, and fundamentals seem strong enough to stand on their own."

The paused and interceded with the red leg chief, and sent the junior officers to their own affairs and the three fell into a walk for the way towards coffee and a light lunch.

"Curzon is going to complain that we're not treating Moscow like a great power."

"Damn Curzon to hell." Dawes replied. "I'm tired of limeys talking about propriety. Even if I bought into that nonsense, Hodges isn't wrong, I will not respect any government the likes that Lenin is running. That bastard can write of revolutionary measures, its banditry. Grain, grain, grain that's what he writes about, telegrams about, and then he complains hoover is an arrogant bastard," which well even a broke clock got the time right every so often, but, "Pot calling the kettle black."

"I don't expect anyone to Dawes, but that's precisely the problem. We know what we're looking at," Dawes fell silent, and took a swig of the coffee and then nodded.

Carter looked between them.

Dawes put the coffee cup down, "He's a bandit. He's selling plunder for weapons, and ammunition." He stated quietly, "we know the soviets are selling grain, exporting material from a starving countryside for weapons." You bought weapons, you stocked up when you thought there was a fight coming. England's ministry was braying about a ten year rule. Briand talked of peace. They were fools, damned fools the lot of them. Europe was exhausted and short on money, and that was the only reason the fighting had taken a stay in the west. "Its the same for the situation on our southern border." Szechwan was divided, riven between big and small warlords scrambling for bits of territory sometimes as small as a hamlet, sometimes as big as a county... and Szechwan was big, and full of people.

Carter's expression said a lot about the conversation. There were days when Allen watched the younger, barely, man and wondered why he seemed so... and then he remembered the why. Allen turned and remembered the Philippines a shared glance told him the same. Carter had missed the work that had been done by the Army's Civil Affairs to reach out, Allen remembered the letters he had carried to Moro land and to other Muslim chiefs from the pasha the caliph endorsing American presence over that of the previous Spanish.

But the pashas had been deposed the middle east torn up between England and France... and even if it hadn't he could have hardly needed a letter from the Sunni Caliph to support their efforts with the Hui muslims in the Kansu corridor or in Xinjiang... though it might have been nice in the steppe it wouldn't have helped them in Szechwan. Allen made a mental note to call Cole, and Bill in along with their respective staff. Operating in Szechwan did increasingly seem inevitable was likely to be very different than before, and more likely to be akin to the hundred plus small wars of the Philippines.

 

[Imperator Pax]

October 1922
The wind paused.

Allen, standing among the other well bred parents, watched as the girl put the arrow where she wanted it. It was a fine enough sport, Joseon had it, Japan did as well, and it seemed prudent to give girls some form of martial experience besides just war gaming... though in truth he had no strong opinions one way or another. Whatever the case it was apart of the education curriculum in the public schools. There was a girls archery team as a result and the schools competed against one another, and that seemed sensible.

Ordinarily of course he simply did not have the time to take with the fighting, and frankly just with the expanse of the industry to involve to thoroughly appreciate never mind participate in the the education committee's work. Certainly not primary education. Cullen who was here with some of hishalf siblings nodded... probably feeling equally as out of place as to what they were here. Their opportunity for small talk had been interfered with by this unexpected duty of state. Ordinarily this time of year, and appearances at public functions still allowed them to cut up among themselves.

"Mother Mei said that archery was one of the six noble arts," He remarked as the girls assembled back around a statue of the Goddess Guan-yin with their teachers, "Still this is a pretty young match for us to be here."

"Don't you have a niece in this batch here?" He questioned making sure to keep his voice low.

"Sure, my half sister grew up shooting recurve..." He blew out a breath, "Which reminds me she wants to learn how to fly an airplane."

Allen nodded, there had been a time when he'd been a lot louder, brash, that he too had wanted to learn to fly a plane... but with age, and seeing what war entailed he had decided that he didn't have the time for those kinds of lessons. The railway had taken his time, and then leading men into battle, "I suppose she has the time for it," He glanced sideways to where Jun was speaking to another woman. Augustus looked less than enthused. They had left the younger boys with the nannies, but he supposed Jun was right Augustus was eight now... and frankly his school was participating there were a lot of parents here.

A significant number of the men were in uniform so it wasn't as if Cullen or he stood out. Allen in point of fact knew most of the officers here, and there were senior enlisted men whose children attended as well as the children of foremen and other senior factory personnel. Education was supposed to be compulsory and universal and the best way to insure that was to make it very clear that attendance was demonstrated by front facing folks for everyone else to see.

There was a glance thrown towards his gray uniform. Augustus was dressed stiffly in school uniform, which was not modified on military lines, instead being strictly civilian dress of oxfords, and khaki slacks. The school's uniform reminded him of the one his brother Daniel had worn. Daniel was in London, military attaché there. Daniel had gone to Yale instead of West Point... which had made their mother happy enough... and besides Daniel had been the younger brother. His maternal grandfather had been less keen on it, regardless of the usefulness of networking with other proper families.

It was that which clued him in to their reason for being here.

The school uniforms were distinctly non military. Some of the schools in other provinces copied the uniforms of the beiyang. Yan's compulsory public school had instituted a dress code based on Japanese models. It was, therefore kind of ironic that Xian's premier school for children from good families should share a uniform with the schools for the same in Shanghai.

He decided he wasn't going to mention it.
--
The meeting was off the books so to speak. It was an exploratory committee and one he'd only decided on the week before... and if he had put it on the calendar officially this close to elections then well it would have created chatter that he didn't want.

This wasn't the sort of meeting that would be able to be kept discrete. The complete staff of three general grade officers was just too many men. Allen had been able to run some stripe of cover by ordering the snap mobilization of 1st ​Regiment on the auspices of being a drill, which coincidentally Cullen had ordered 1st​ Commando to do as well. Bill and Allen had both communicated to Shang and Lee at 8th​ and 3rd​ Divisions respectively that this was an exercise and that things were fine but in truth they had already agreed to bring the two senior generals into discussions sooner rather than later.

Cullen stirred his coffee and sat down one of the last men to do so as they gathered drinks and papers aplenty. The smoking room had no one smoking in it. Some of the men did smoke but no one was at the moment. It hadn't escaped Allen that he'd had conversations related to this one with Shang before... and with Cullen... and with Bill. Never formalized discussions like, never putting it before the staff like this. Szechwan was a mess, and getting into a protracted border war was precisely what they didn't want to do.

"We have been talking about reorganizing into Corps for a while now." Bill began.

Allen shook his head, "That's not quite what this is about," Though the year previous they had reviewed papers pushed up from the staff college of a 6-5 arrangement for an expeditionary force that remained a popular talking point within army circles.

The Texan flashed a grin, "I know, but given who all is here," His expression swept across the officers, " well Percy thinks, and he told the Legation that was what this was about over the wires." In a way, as he too went looking at the men who were here that made sense. Elections were right around the corner but he knew that the Foreign Office and State had mixed views on such events as it related to the army. Percy's assumption given the presence here could easily have been reinforced by preconceived notions of such.

Percy assumed probably rightly since he'd known the longest and probably had a good measure of them that they would expand the army. He probably assumed that they would do so sooner and London didn't seem to be able to make up its mind about how it felt about that... some opposed the militarized posture, and spending on the army, where other voices in the foreign office and elsewhere suggested tighter cooperation. Churchill was one of those men... they had gotten that from both ends of the communications. From Percy and Alston as well as from men in London directly, including his brother Daniel in the US embassy.

As a result of Percy's misconception they might potentially be able to play this off... or it might give them a headache. The assembled staff officers were handed compiled folders of the Army's history going back to the RPF and also the hurdles of procurement for weapons. A reminder of times when uniforms never mind standard service pistols and rifles had not been so common.

Not as many of the men in this room were veterans of the RPF as would have been the case a decade earlier when the Army had started to really take shape. Men had retired, or died. Now, unlike in 1912 there were generals, and full staffs of officers. This was going to be a long conversation, and one probably long overdue as well. "We must discuss that the Army is not simply a hammer. That it must be a force of administration and that it will have to supervise and administer areas when we operate or cooperate with power structures that are not our own." He stated beginning the conversation in earnest. "We must however also recognize the time tables that organized a railway did not by itself provide safety. That required force of arms," The RPF initially... but hte railway was what allowed them to penetrate into the inland country far from China's sorrow... and in truth this conversation was long overdue, "We have begun," before even, "Since 1920 to erect by definition a federal civil service in the provinces the army must recognize that. The Army will need men for its very with grounding in learning, and a dedication to the missions put forward..."

--
Notes: Formatting XF 2 issues will be fixed shortly.

 

[Imperator Pax]

November 1922
Elections were critically important one would say, especially that the results be trustworthy. The papers were awash with pictures, and columns of words talking about stand tall, and, rushing towards the outcome. The provincial constitutions required elections of th e lower house on schedule every two years, and there were still lesser posts, county and municipality elections which also had to be held as established by lesser laws.

The papers talked also of other things.

Socialism had failed to find much reception in the United States because it lacked Middle class proprietary, because it was associated with bomb throwing anarchist and so on . That association discouraged prim and proper shop keepers, and land owning farmers from having any interest in such things, and the Bolsheviks with their grain seizures and their attempts to couch things in militarized language and socialism this and that, and 'war communism' discredited them to the peasantry, and to the farmers and landholders who all aspired to respectability.

The turnout this year was good, and initial poll reports from a variety of public and private sources laid out the projected results, even as the tabulating machines were still counting punch card ballots. The lower house would likely have a large number of men holding onto their seats. The franchise had expanded somewhat in two years and that meant there was margin shift. There would be some changes.

Much like the election of 1920 it was a turnout that Percy qualified as a Khaki election. Realistically Allen figured given the size of the steel industry, or the railway, that those might be a little more accurate... but the brits watched the Army go to the polls in their uniforms... the ones who didn't vote early anyway. Men went to their home districts as groups of chums to cast their votes as Percy had quipped. Cullen had gone out this morning with a number of his staff, and a mix recent graduates of the gendarmes college to vote.

The papers talked about how the bolsheviks stole grain from the peasantry and were selling it abroad to buy weapons. The papers did this not just to stir up anti-bolshevik sentiment, but also as a way to throw askance looks towards the unruly mobs of bandits to the south in the agriculturally productive regions of the Yangtze. That Szechwan should have been rich. That Yunnan and Kwangsi should have been as sub tropical expanses that should not have been troubled by famine, or lack of funds went for the most part unsaid.

The papers disclosed that not only was the grain stolen it was then sold cheaply to European nations.... and that hinted at insidious machinations. The papers did not have the audience to delve into the matter of grand strategy, there were social clubs for public discussion of those sorts of things. That had been a change of pace of the late Qing where such gatherings had become socially acceptable.

Most men were also working today efforts had been made to allow them to go to the polls in shifts, and frankly that was really the whole reason for mechanical punch card ballots. Cast your vote on a standardized form, and then gather around the radio tonight when the announcements of the results came. It wasn't just the men on the factory floor, the reason that an apparatus existed for the army to vote early was if they needed to be mobilized and pushed to deal with a problem.

The elections being in early November like the states was based around agriculture, but it also took into account that any summer flooding should be over by this point of the year. There were still other factors, but it could be rendered down to the fact that most the world was still agrarian, and that included China for however large her great cities were, and however peopled her provinces were so things were planned for how things were not for how one wished them to be. The broadsheets for the man around town reflected this also with what they reported to the masses. Allen drummed his finger tips on his desk aware that Percy was scrutinizing Shang's chief of staff as he did so. Graves finally settled probably all too aware that Xian expected the officers to remain with their side arms... and be proficient with them.

"How are things in London?"

Percy's smile thinned, "Not bad," He replied, "You had a cable this morning."

"Just Daniel's salutations, he knew the elections are today," Just that he hadn't quite got the timing right for the difference, "He can't exactly call from London," Frankly there wasn't yet a commercial service for handling phone calls, which was why they still did trade missions.

Percy nodded, "Your papers aren't exactly happy."

"The bolsheviks can sell stolen grain under market prices. Lenin wants to do that that's fine, but I'll have nothing having to do with it. I'll buy my grain from the states," That Curzon had been attracted by the prospect of buying cheap soviet grain dumped on the market was concerning, "And I will attempt to support improved agriculture in Central Asia," The investment of capital to support agronomists who could take steps to manage water conservancy, dig tube wells, and soil work, "but buying grain stolen from farmers besides being morally reprehensible is providing aid to the bolsheviks that will be used to buy weapons against us later."

And the us in that statement while meant in broad terms was for the papers generally interpreted more as at some point the soviets would try something stupid as their 'revolutionary bridge' nonsense of attack. The staff expected that despite 'assurances', for all that those were worth, in the international community that the soviets recognized the independence of post Russian imperial territories and so on, that they would eventually attempt to reconquer territories...

Export of grain to Latvia two years earlier had come with the demand that they recognize the Kharkiv based puppet state in Ukraine... and Curzon seemed to be laboring heavily under the misunderstanding that the Bolsheviks ideology was just window dressing and that for all their revolutionary posturing the bolshevik leadership were Russian chauvinists with tsarist educations and thus motives. Percy shuffled uncomfortably with this for the truth was it was about the balance of trade. The Bolsheviks were exporting more than just cheap grain, they were also exporting timber as well for hard currency and in turn that hard currency was being spent for goods of British manufacture. "Harding... we think at least means to take things to the papers to air his grievances as well."

That wasn't surprising, not really. The muckrakers needed something to do, and Lenin's 'war communism' bit and Trotsky carrying on in the papers, never mind telegrams made very clear what had gone on over the last few years. Shang took a seat, "We do not like that the language of Trotsky and Lenin foppishly employs military terms to obfuscate their banditry." Percy nodded regarding the Chinese general before sitting down as well, "If Mister Hoover does go to the papers to complain then there will be complaints?"

"Yes, yes of course there will be complaints... but it was Harding I should observe that wanted, and campaigned on getting things back to normal." Percy remarked

He regretted that response when Shang asked, "So it was normal to buy stolen grain before the war?"

"No, no of course not, but trade with the Russians was normal. We could buy Russian wheat at market before the war." Percy attempted to change subjects knowing he was in a losing engagement in part because when Omsk had collapsed it had caused a flood of further immigrants from Russia a not unsubstantial number to settle in northern China including Xinjiang. "The bank of Japan is talking about potentially another round of loans. Are you worried about that?"

It had taken them about eight months to get to this point, but Allen was all too aware that it was the second serious banking crisis Japan had had in basically two years... there had been one in 1920 that could have been written off as just the market shedding in the global post war recession. "I won't say I'm not concerned." But the bank was doing something, "We're going to watch the situation." They would, Xian decided it didn't like the structural factors that had caused things, especially when those factors were magnified by the following year's earthquake it put them on alert for other problems so no one was quite surprised when what came to be known as the Great Showa Financial Crisis began to break in January of 1927.

 

[Imperator Pax]

March 1923

The last six months, the winter hadn't been all that easy on any one. But the cadre had accepted that Hodges death had probably been preventable which made it worse. It was still a hard loss, even though the man had officially retired after the elections. They hadn't had his seat filled, and that absence was sorely felt as the year had turned. At least it could be said that he had overseen what he had meant to, Tibet's constitution had been in place long enough and it had a legislature that had held elections, and filled seats in November on schedule and without incident. Were that something that could be said for the for the whole of the country maybe they wouldn't have been looking at little stamped metal boxes with springs in them as intently as most the working group was.

Magazines had been the stumbling point in the logistical chain. They had already been used to producing ammunition. 45 caliber. 35 Browning. 8 mm Mauser. They were the working calibers of the army there were second line cartridges as well that the Arsenal produced but in a much more limited scale by comparison. It shouldn't have been complicated, but it was a small thing.

The Rifle Divisions, 1st​,3rd​,and 8th​were slated for the next universal short rifle with detachable magazines. They had probably lucked out there by not trying to do the whole army at the same time even just adding 2nd​and 4th​Divisions might have meant that they weren't ready. It had taken two years from adoption of the final pattern design after testing, and to spin up manufacturing for springs and followers, body, and baseplates. Now they were in the process of having 1st and 3rd Divisions work through a million rounds of Mauser ammunition for testing and evaluation purposes.

It had been a more troublesome hurdle with the magazines for the Browning rifles...but that had been for larger magazines. There had been more experimentation as the project developed than just ten and twenty round magazines. Browning's rifle was semi automatic and 35 Browning was ideal as a cartridge at the ranges men were fighting and killing one another at.

There were reasons of scale to keep 8mm mauser, running a machine gun was one of the more important was. 3rd ​Division under Lee was trialing the browning rifles at a company scale with their new trucks. It was machine guns where the issue lay. Sustainment in a company though was easier than trying to worry about mixing calibers further down. The lewis guns could be could be kept fed and defended by men with rifles; that was to say 8mm Mauser rifles.

There were other things they were experimenting with. Cullen gestured to the bakelite stock, "This doesn't expand like wood will in heat and cold. Its not metal so it doesn't bite a man without gloves on either in extremes. Its lighter, it also lets us build the stock inline with the shoulder." That would make the Browning easier to control...that long action, especially 8mm Mauser was difficult for smaller men to tame. Even then it helped larger men to have a mechanical advantage. "Putting the sights on the receiver expands the sights radius, and gives us better options for accommodating an inline scope. The stock also will better accommodate that," He gestured to the long curved form of a twenty round magazine

3rd​Division was slated for wide scale troop trials of these for a simple reason. The mountain division with its lighter artillery operated across a wider range of environments. They were a better choice to test these rifles than 1st ​or 8th​divisions. "If a fight comes," He let the comment hang.

"Lee knows the trade." Cole replied, "Bill is sure he can get his boys moving if things go sideways so he would have help in a hurry anyway."

"When things go sideways." Allen corrected, not that he disagreed. Bill officially in light of everything else held dual command of an Army Brigade and also was responsible for the western brigade of the Air Force, which was predominantly structured around a training and evaluation group based at the Lake for flying spotting and communications. He was also responsible for chairing the oil committee, which was a lot of engineering work so two regiments of Heavy Engineers were on hand at any given time.

Cullen nodded, "You're not wrong." He agreed with a smirk. "I don't like it any more than you brother John." In this case it was the situation in the south. Sun had a long history of failed rebellions under his belt. It was why as much as he wanted recognition from King George's government, and Washington he was unlikely to get it. He just couldn't credibly deliver on claims of leadership.

The doctor didn't seem to grasp that.

But he did seem to recognize he needed help somewhere... and after the mess with Zhang Xun, and Zhang Tso-lin... which was still a head scratcher of an arrangement looking back he had made common cause with some bolshevik thug from the Third International. That wasn't going to win him any sort of fanfare in London, or Washington.

"Lee is confident that he can win against problems."

Allen didn't question that, Bill's former chief of staff was an accomplished campaigner, "And the Regiment?"

"Its three companies of men." Cole replied. "The idea isn't exactly new, get them onto choice ground quickly, find the enemy, fix them in place." And allow the bulk of the larger force to accomplish its mission. "May not have horses, but its cavalry alright."

Lee wouldn't be in charge of 3rd ​Division for much longer. There had been talk about this evolution to the division, and other testing as the army changed, but Lee would probably be promoted up and out ... most probably to an instructional position or as commander of one of the major materiel programs. Efforts to modernize the army's offensive capabilities, or sustainment abilities were being discussed as was appointing him as commandant of the Army Academy. If he took a major materiel command though that would mean Lee would have a role in shaping special regiments that were planned for ETS in the coming year.

The lower house had been sworn in, and opened up the conversation of all sorts of things that needed to be discussed in government. The passing of the election though, also brought relief to the cadre. It allowed them to turn towards other concerns, business concerns like the production of lighter, softer, consumer goods Things, like egg and milk money, and goods that everyone bought for house hold for domestic comfort. That meant expanding the textile market further that meant the technical section examining and licensing for patents, for patenting dyeing processes and other efforts.

There was a lot to be done, a lot that needed to be read. "The central bank will be important as well, but we need to look forward to next year as well." The fall of 24. they had two elections in the lower house, they needed to make sure that things were good for going into that.

"Yeah, Waite is pretty hot on that czech patent, for that loom. If he could get it to work he thinks it'd be something special." Cole remarked running down the collar of his rain proofed field jacket. Then with a shrug he turned over, "Of course we'd be largely selling abroad and the tarriff talks in the congress has got to worry Waite." Allen nodded at this, for it was true, but the loom miraculous as Waite described the air jet system that had been patented if it worked would increase productivity and that would mean people here could buy more for less without a quality drop. Szechwan was a big province, a good sized European country by itself, and their handful of provinces were about the same as well the US Census of 1920 had recorded a population of over a hundred million, which had been something the American Geographical Society had pronounced before the onset of the war in Europe as statically likely. The handful of provinces, those under Cadre auspices, now sat with a population between that of the United Kingdom and the United States which was a very large domestic market to sell too and one that could be expected to expand as urbanization increased.
--
Notes: We enter 1923 with this update, and will continue that with tomorrows as I have social functions tomorrow Ghost (Battletech) should update Sunday as normal

 

[Imperator Pax]

March 1923
The paper work pushed up was in austere military language. The man who had written it had come out of the quartermaster's corp and it showed. The central bank had a mandate for long term stability. That was its mission orientation, and objective for operations. Even the framework it had been written in was something that the professor, that Reisnch had remarked had a militarized tone. Maybe he was right, that the English language charter, and even its vernacular chinese translation, had been written by officers immersed in the profession of arms. Those men had also largely presided over the finalization of text books for primary school.

Compulsory education had begun as part of the cadre's efforts to education the children of company employees, and then of Xian's urban populace growing further and then of whole provinces as they had assumed the mantle of provincial governance. Where Reinsch disapproved, the elder Forrest, Allen's father had begrudgingly acknowledged that they were doing things as he put it in 'the right fashion'.

None of the cadre were immune to the shift in opinions put forward in papers. It was a sentiment found in former soldiers of the British Empire ingrowing numbers and that was making the rounds now. That required a man to read them, which was a facet of having public papers and ones that wrote for the working class, or for younger men.

The education program put forward by the committee was bi lingual. It favored english because of the lack at the time of formalizing vernacular Chinese. Chinese was to be the language of arts, of poetry of compositions. Most the cadre agreed with Hodges's observation a decade ago that chinese tonal ballads were quite pleasing to the ear after all. It would have to share history to some degree, but mathematics, and science were taught in English. As a result for all talks of baihua of vernacular chinese English was the language of political discourse... and in Xian this entailed men in the broadsheets continued to use words taken from the vernacular of the army.

So editorials which came from educated men here often read like the reports he read from his staff... and sometimes they were even from the same pens. Burke was a popular source of quotes. His father opposed mercantilism, and the cadre agreed it supported free trade in principle even if it had been disabused of any notions that trade would make people peaceable, would keep them from doing anything foolish. Property rights supported by Burke, were paired with criticism of French trade policy and protectionism.

Broadsheets went out, casting a much cleaner break in things than was true. That showed in certain claims put out there that had their roots in the previous century.

Capitalism was an anglo-saxon tradition, born from developing of industry, of industrializing. Western Europe... Spain, France and expanded to include Germany were not capitalist countries in the world view the cadre wrote about. It was the combination of common law, which included views on property rights, of national banks and corporate bodies that had evolved before and after the English civil war that had given modern England and then the colonies their tools. It was scientific thought like Bacon and the man Lewis was named after.

But it also as their generation had recognized, that protestant churches were not immune to swindlers and thieves, the pilgrims of New England and their founders were a prime example of that historically, never mind their absurd hand wringing over witches. Embezzlement violated the fiduciary duties a man had to his organization... it was a felony. A crime which entailed particularly egregious breaches of decorum. The leaders of the pilgrims had run from England for being accused of financial mismanagement after all.

Allen pinched the bridge of his nose. The pattern of embezzlement that had crippled the Qing was a frequent topic in the papers. Men railed against it. Railed against it vigorously. That was fine. The problem was that it created new internal problems... sort of internal problems. "We had suspicion that Zhang Xun took the bank specie." Which frankly he had been entitled to at least some of that, maybe even all of it. The pony tailed general had been rich, but rich as a result of his position.

The vernacular literati, and the english papers alike were quick to find fault with the enrichment of the Jun-fa system... the corruption and tax farming that pervaded particularly the coastal provinces but truthfully contributed also to the mess of szechwan. Zhang Tso-lin was shielded from some criticism for Manchuria's success, for his successes in various reforms, but plenty were willing to tar him after last year's defeat. Cao Kun was unfortunately not immune for he was a fairly hands off sort, who enjoyed the prestige as dujun of Zhili in name but largely left things to others as he grasped for still other posts... and that was a familiar sort of thing

Waite addressed the elephant in the room, "Cao Kun's ambitions are going to be a problem, but lets not play around. The real difference between our papers and Shanghai's is this business Sun's gotten himself in with the Bolsheviks."

... and Xian's papers, and their writers were not happy. Sun's history of failed rebellions were trotted out, the lack of military successes called out to civilian readers as well, but it had more sway on a politically involved military class here. Especially since Lenin and his members had few real military successes, had humiliated themselves at brest litovsk and yet insisted on using military language, a term meaning 'playing soldiers' the same insult that Zhang had tarred Wu with with ironically enough was thrown around.

Allen stopped massaging the bridge of his nose, and glanced over to the engineer, "Whats new on that front?"

"Realistically not a whole lot." Marx's nonsense was largely limited to the population that had connections to European education. The success of the bolshevik revolution to seize power in an exhausted Russia one that had been beaten black and blue by the Kaiser's army had attracted attention from radical students and intelligentsia in treaty ports, and on universities. "I'd attribute his success to the failures of others. We don't have this problem because there is a home grown literary culture. And one that is quick to distinguish details and reasons for success to given concrete explanations for success. Shanghai has too many gangsters causing trouble, too many incidents that stir up sentiments of resentment and not enough things to have pride in locally." Cullen's chinese half siblings had lived in Shanghai before 1914 and before things had reoriented to Xian after Bai Lang had been killed, and the European war began. "That's my read anyway. Sun's partnership with the Soviets is mostly wind, the bolsheviks can't really afford to give him much more than recognition that isn't worth much anyway... he might well have read too much into Rapallo," the treaty between Germany and the Bolsheviks, "if he's expecting support, or the bolsheviks are expecting a communist party they both seem as like to be disappointed."

"What do you think we should expect?"

"We didn't come into this business with continentals in tow," Waite remarked speaking up, "Or englishmen for that matter that's why the papers are the way they are. Think about it, the States have always enjoyed a good opinion to the Chinese public, it helps that there have been other things, the Dutch sinophiles come to mind, or our ties to Luzon." The government of the United States was not perfect by any means but, "But as a general rule we came in buoyed by a popular impression of our country. We compounded that starting capital with success, and thus the public impression of the hundred of us who started it stands where it did when the old dynasty did collapse."

And even though it didn't always seem like it that had been a long time ago now. Waite was right, the end of the European War had meant the influx of many new faces, new experts from Europe but people who had seen the European continent at war... but that industrial war had come with numbers and explanations even as it had been unfolding to Xian's populace at large. A populace that frequently had exposure to the language used by the army as well. "Cole, this bit about Zhang Xun and the gold, how much of it do we think is still in play?"

"I'd guess a lot," Cole replied, "enough that he's still relevant in Shanghai's circles. The back chatter between Zhang Xun, Zhang Tso-lin, and the Guomindang ... I'd say that they're planning to go around again."

"And these actions in Shanghai?"

"He's a big enough player financially, he has a sworn brother at the stock exchange who is the middle man for the money, but its Zhang Xun's money to be sure." Something to speak with Percy about, Allen suspected, but Cole continued, "It means he is probably the main source of hard currency in this group of strange bedfellows... but it'll be his money I think that will pay for arms that come into Shanghai." Tso-lin could buy his own weapons, or have his own rifles manufactured, and Zhang Tso-lin was buying from lots of people, including Vickers to the consternation of some.

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1923
The Albatross was Xian's principle aircraft in service well outstripping its nearest competitor. 170 planes including those assigned to training squadrons were in service across the country. The majority of those planes were configured in twelve man observation and reconnaisance squadrons ussually in groups of two squadrons for every strike squadron.

It was also the aircraft as a result of domestic production and tested reliability that served in Middle America and now according to Powell in Liberia. Taken together the Cadre expected total numbers to reach about three hundred... by the end of the fiscal year. All of that hadbeen made possible due to the Albatross's use of plywood. That was the same idea that de Havilliand wanted to pursue in his larger engine design, though he was insistent they move to a twin engine monoplane. That was probably the way forward... but for Xian's needs for the moment the Albatross sufficed.

These things were both in Allen's interest, but also beyond his technical expertise. He had to let the racers work, and he had to allow the up and coming to push ahead. "You want to re engine them?"

"With an aluminum V8."

"How many?" He asked.

Bill's major glanced to him for an answer. "Guo, he asked you." The texan stated at the look, "We wouldn't be here if I didn't think this was worth doing."

"Eighteen planes. A full squadron plus six reserves."

He mulled over it. That was a pretty big ask, and why Major Guo was worried about asking in the first place. There had been talk about reingining the fleet with newer more powerful engines. Engines were maturing as supplies became more available now that the war was over, "Tell me Major why are you not writing this up as a request to have new built planes constructed?" He decided to side step the six reserves because truthfully given the air force that really was the bigger ask. Out of a 170 planes there were nine combat squadrons which in practice were geographically located in South Shansi, with the Western Brigade, under Bill, at Qinghai, and with Northern Command at Xian. In practice that meant1st​ Division 3rd​ and 8th​ had artillery spotter planes and theoretically had planes that could deploy as bombers. Northern and South Shansi were the divided elements of the Eastern Brigade of the Air Force.

In practice a squadron typically had three reserve planes. There was always a demand for new planes both for the training squadrons and the action arm of the service. Procurement was vastly behind demand. That was the Major's principle issue. If he wrote up a request not only would he be the latest request from his own command he'd be behind all the other requests from two other Air bases.

Bill however could not just sign an order saying here take an entire squadron offline and take the spares for the rest. Eighteen planes was a hell of an ask. "Its a racing engine?"

"Yes."

The conversation continued. Talks of horsepower, liter capacity, the cooling system. Other things. The major had learned what he could... and had ideas. It was a reminder that they were where Japan had been before the war, and that Japan's aircraft were now maturing. This kind of talent, as Bill no doubt recognized, had to be nurtured for the next generation. "I cannot at this time give you 18 planes major. I can give you six." He glanced to Bill, "And I figure that your commanding officer can manage to find you another couple. There are conditions though, for my six. In a couple of months the races are going to put on for the air force commission. If you're ready by that point, that's fine, but if you're not that'll be alright." There were plans for an air mission to tour the states, Britain, and Europe, some of the men insisted they should study how birds flew, and some men having looked at aircraft were talking about how those lessons could even be applied to shaping the new diesel locomotives to improve their performance by reducing drag.

That was the thoughts of looking forward. To push forward.

The original albatross had wanted to use an inline V8, but the engine hadn't been there yet. That and there had been a war on. In peace time it was easier to work on engine technology. That was part of the reason why there had been talk of finding a more powerful engine. There were still arguments about whether inline V8s were there yet. It wasn't just a question of engine power, it was a question of engine reliability. They had officially taken the Albatross into service when the air force had stood up in 1920. There were two competing lines of officers in the race going forward. It was not just the racers competing against themselves, it was officers who wanted to expand the air force in numbers.

Those men were looking at the Army and its expansion and asking where their service could not expand. Part of that was engine production. They had invited de havilliand along because of his interest in composite airframes because that had been one of the limiting bottlenecks of the war production for planes.

They had understood that from business talks during the war. From steps taken by Wilson's government as part of the war production authority. The air frame was something they were going to have to get around...hence the Albatross, hence looking to work on that with other materials without trying to chase down the expense of going to a metal skinned bird. The limitation for that was of course engine power.

Most of the racers agreed that metal aircraft were coming, but the question was how far out were they, and de Haviliand didn't see them being anywhere close to the timetable. He expected that the next incremental step would be mono wing composite hull plywood aircraft ,enclosed cockpits would follow for that. Metal hulls in his approximation were ten years down the road... it was always Allen found it'll be a decade was how long it would take something. That was the progression rule of thumb it seemed... and part of that was engines.

They needed to produce more engines. Engine designs needed to be more robust, both in power and in reliability. In Allen's opinion, in the opinion of most of the cadre, now was precisely the time to do this sort of research. Airplanes had proven they had place in military endeavors. Over flights from the Bashan line, Southern Shansi, showed and monitored movements in Szechwan, they were working stabilized cameras to take pictures of what was going on at Orenburg just over the Kirghiz border with the Bolsheviks without actually having to fly on their side... and of the pilots were probably violating the letter of their orders to take pictures on the other side of the wire.

The European War had been a trial by fire. It had lead to a crash development program of pushing and pushing to get the most out of what was available because the war justified spending ever more sums of money... but that money was going to come due. Companies after the war governments had been saddled with debt. Now though they weren't in a life or death struggle they could experiment prudently, and expand what they knew.
--
Notes: The necessities of early interwar air power, what we don't touch on here are the growing civilian applications of airplane technologies as they hit their stride, air mail in particular, but also passenger transport and the like.

An air squadron nominally is 12 aircraft this is not a guaranteed strength and there would be a pool of reserve aircraft to draw from but also training squadrons are pulling from the same pool of aircraft, there are a handful of other late war and early interwar aircraft in service at this point and other aircraft will show up, but again as pointed out this is the era of engines are your major limiting factor

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1923

The Cadre came back from 'Winter break' with so much to do. Really though the winter furlough, winter block leave was largely in name only for them. The truth was that the work didn't stop not when the work was running a country. Waite might not have liked putting it in those specific terms but it was true... and with the second congress having been seated in March predominantly with incumbents of the 1st​ congress returning that was how it was.

Allen had to suspect even Waite's supporters were starting to get a bit tired of his repeated complaints about use of certain language; the sort of language that implied that they were independent of Peking. Still Waite argument was in part at least a response to Curzon trying to treat Tibet as independent of Peking. The cadre might not have come to this country with such in mind, but the truth was they were there. The officers of the General Staff, the men who made and tested out war fighting ideas who reviewed and studied all the new tools of war were politically active. They were men who had daily interactions with cadre men.

Waite could complain about running a country being a problematic statement... but it was what they were doing. Jun had an almost visceral dislike of certain provinces, and that was true for others as well. It wasn't just limitted to Jiangnan but most of the lands south of the river got that brush. Yunnan, and Szechwan were quarrelsome... Shanghai was 'a den of gangsters'. Still Bai Lang had been from Henan, Henan's gentry were a problem politically. Xian could not support, would not support a Manchu restoration. There was little sympathy for the Qing dynasty.

Thus there were political positions within the representatives who while perhaps not ready to issue a declaration independence from Peking certainly didn't care what the South thought. They didn't care what the old parliament's membership had to say. The Guomindang representatives could go pound sand. That had been true of opinions already.

A couple of months earlier Sun had gotten together with a soviet agent... and that looked like it was going to turn into sending students to the soviet union for 'military and economic education'. That was a bad fucking joke. Whether anything would really come of it was debateable, but perhaps the bigger problem was the state of relations in the north not being smooth either. "Soviet Russia," Waite remarked, "is probably just schizophrenic." He remarked..."Now all this nonsense of 'independent republic," Was just that, was nonsense, it was quite apparent that Soviet Ukraine took its marching orders from Moscow, "but Lenin wants loans, and machinery and technical expertise... and I hate to say it like this but, Ford is deluded enough when it comes to thinking peace can be brought with trade that he'll probably go along with it."

There were some annoyed expressions at this but no one objected to the conclusion reached. Lenin's NEP was a grudging admission that bolshevism and communist economics didn't work. At least anyone who could do basic math could have figured that out as the famine had wracked the country two years earlier... Ford thought that since Lenin had let Hoover come in to help, and was letting some degree of free enterprise, even if stifled by bureaucracy, that he had a shot to 'preserve world peace' as he had put it.

"We'll put all of this before the Congress at large, its better they recognize that the whole world is a mess." Bill stated glancing to his right.

"It might spook them."

"Maybe so," The texan replied, "But I'd rather them hear it from us." He glanced to Dawes, "Any chance we could nudge Ford towards all the new countries since he's making nice to the reds."

Dawes shrugged, but acknowledged he was going to attempt to answer the question rather than yield 'the floor' to Waite, "Its a question of capital. Latvia no, the Finns are a maybe, but I doubt it personally... Poland is certainly big enough but they're too friendly with France. Now Ford certainly could try, but trucks require roads... and the tsars even when they had inclination weren't too good at building those. We could suggest it, but there would probably be little gained... but nothing would be hurt if we phrased it right. I think the best solution though would be arms efforts," The Poles already used a sensible modern caliber after all, " further licensing of rifles and machine guns." Clemenceau had urged a cordon sanitaire around the soviets and while the Cadre would never admit echoing the idea guns and technical specifications for them, "artillery would be good as well, but there is a certain degree of both doctrinal conservatism to fight up hill against, but also fiscal conservatism. Persia, Afghanistan here in Asia, Kirghiz certainly talk to the Finns, the Latvians as well as the Poles. It certainly won't hurt anything." Versailles had made a mess of European trade. Some of that was just it acrimonious nature, including boneheaded efforts to preserve French privileges in what was supposed to be a peace treaty. Some of it was less clear cut things, but by products of changes in borders. "There are the Turks as well, anyone we can push to get on the rifle caliber," 8mm. "can then be encouraged to machine guns of the like and since Germany isn't supposed to well the biggest potential rival is out of the race for now."

Waite cleared his throat, and finally Dawes ceded, "There is Tibet as well. With Kirghiz we have space between us and the Bolsheviks. For which Kurzon means to shield India... but the brits are going to want to sell goods to the Russian market, even while they admit," in this case the Tories espoused, "That if the soviets get their feet underneath them they'll be a threat in the east, that they'll cause trouble over the borders, in Persia and try and threaten India by stirring up trouble... and the truth is that Imperial Prerfence doesn't change the reality that British industries need raw materials, and the baltic is a lot closer than sailing through Suez, or even across the Atlantic." Better Powell's MAK than the soviets though. Still it was transportation costs which was the main thing now with demand back at peace time levels. Central Asia's railways had been fundamentally changed after 1918 and the downfall of the Russian Empire. Railways keep prices down even accounting for the down time needed to work on coal fired steam boilers for cleaning and other maintenance. "I believe our priority should remain within Asia, and that the railways should be the main artery for which we provide goods as it allows for a standard load, and reliable schedule."

Trucks were an excellent supplementary, and final distribution option. Once you were at a rail head then if the roads were available you could move them onto trucks and load the goods either loose, or on skids to that final distribution warehouse.

Carter shuffled slightly as Shellman who was beside him signaled he needed a word in, when acknowledged the doctor voiced first his support the railway linkages which was basically accepted by the cadre already based on the previous work especially since it was generally hoped that as ford tractors could be shipped to Kirghiz to mechanize some of their agriculture in turn that grain would be available at market, "There is chatter about the situation on the continent. The French weren't happy about rapallo," Which very very few people were, "But also that France might try rapprochement with the Bolsheviks potentially over any war scare with England." Before the war in Europe the French had antagonized England repeatedly on colonial issues, including risking war over events in the vicinity of Suez and in North Africa as well other events in Egypt and southernly parts of the dark continent, "But France is also broke... and them going to Morgan for loans means Harding could order him to stop if they actually do blunder into a fight..."

But it was not so much the possibility that France might really start a fight so much that a war scare that had been normal enough when Victoria had ruled, and before 1914, it was that it would distract from Asia. "The French haven't recognized the Soviets yet."

"Not yet, but they probably will... which," Shellman paused, "I'm not going to lie it is very likely to set Hughes off like a firecracker." He shook his head, "But like with England, France wants raw materials lumber, grain, oil, those sorts of things, but the soviets may only manage a fifth of what the Tsar exported before the war."

Which for a country as geographically large as the Soviet Union was terrible...but also the Soviet Population was going from rough estimates say maybe one hundred to one hundred ten million, possibly somewhat higher. Going from the 1920 census Xian estimated her six provinces totaled about a bit under half of the soviet population's conservative estimate. The census estimate, such things never being entirely sure things was something close of fifty million, maybe forty seven million souls in 1920... 1930's census was going to be the country's big reveal in terms of determining the demographic health of north china. That matter of people though was further effected by where they lived in relation resources like water, and transportation infrastructure.

"As Percy is apt to point out again," likely the next time they spoke," The British House," Of Commons, "talks of the importance of Chinese trade."

"We shouldn't forget that the Custom's service was the majority of the Qing's revenue." Shellman added, "But you'd have to be blind to see thats true of Peking but not the case of the larger ... well warlords. The customs service increasingly has less sway for industrial bases." He meant Manchuria but it would have been just as easy to speak of Xian that way. The look Dawes made suggested that he and Carter both recognized that. "We are closer to England," The UK, "in population than the states, Economically, by wages we're closer to Japan than Mexico." He jostled some papers forcing Carter to move over further, "The census at the end of the decade will tell us more but I really expect there is undercutting among the rural populace going on, and I have concerns about the health ministry's work."

There were glances, and Dawes raised the question, "Smallpox, or the plague?" He asked the doctor with a wary look that most the men shared.

"Well yes, but in this case I meant more about water borne illnesses, and Malaria is certainly high on that list."
--
Notes: On Demographics Without Eastern Siberia/maritime/baikal and east thereof, and without Central Asia (the -stans of the present map) The soviet population is almost overwhelmingly in the European part of the USSR even during the tsarist period most of hte population and contemporary russia is in the major european metropolitan areas.

Now that being said between those lost territories thats probably eighty million people depending on displacement and refugees and resettlement, colonization of chinese, koreans, Japanese in eastern siberia maybe a little higher in E.Siberia and what is generally referred to as Kirghiz. The cadre provinces are probably roughly a tenth of the total chinese population (Tibet is very sparsely populated during this period) Shansi, Shensi, Western Zhili, are where most of the Cadre population live Kansu, Xinjiang and Qinghai (the old western commanderies) are also relatively sparsely populated but all togethercould potential account for over fifty million people total, but could also be fewer than that.

By comparison by1925 Szechwan's population even with rampant civil war fighting wasprobably seventy odd million people it was very agriculturally productive region. Famine in Sichuan province means you have royally fucked up the situation. [Which of course is a similar situation with agriculture in the soviet union, in the volga, Ukraine, the north caucus, etc].

Additionally at this point, post Rapallo, the Soviets largest trade partner by volume of trade is Weimar Germany, and then there is pass through trade where the soviets were selling goods into germany that were then reexported to countries who didn't recognize the USSR (SO France,Britain, the US) at this point. This here isn't reciprocated, Persia, Japan, China aren't accepting transit from the USSR all traffic from Germany has to come by sea lane (in other words British or American flagged merchant shipping) and that has delays if Germany is selling goods on the international market and frankly Germany doesn't have alot of spare capital to invest abroad.

In summation what we're looking at here, and next time is the gradualist evolution of foreign policy committees and commitments in the interwar yearsfrom the Cadre perspective. IT should be noted that Baldwin is not yet in power, basically we're skipping over the entire Law Premiership [October 22 to May 23].

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1923
The normal working schedule the end of the winter furlough brought with it a bringing back, a review of old positions. It was what he did with his mornings. He got up, reviewed any priority dispatches that had come in that hadn't warranted a phone call to get him out of bed, he took morning chow and coffee, PT to get the blood circulating, come back to a tray full of papers that needed to be seen to. The prospect of a draft remained unlikely. It was a distinct minority position within the Cadre barely reaching double digits... and even Yan Xishan, who had previously been its great advocate, had moved away from it, though with the caveat that the United States had needed to implement it in order to build up strength rapidly. There was only one possibility for that fight envisioned accepting they were never going to cut the army down to Federal levels of spendthrift. The bolsheviks...

So the cadre looked backwards to the RPF. The railway had begun life as the first cadre venture, and it had taken the cues from other great rail lines. There had been talk about whether or not the railway employees needed different uniforms. The railway employed hundreds of thousands, but it hadn't at the beginning.

The rail works had entailed secure, stable year around work. No slack in farming, no worries about boom and bust like textiles. It was not seasonal work. It had meant instilling the idea of a career path, and discipline... uniforms and time management. Physical endurance with coal and firemen.

… and when the time had come, the RPF had been recruited by and large from railway men, along with some other industries, but mostly from men worked on the railways. Men whose livelihoods were threatened by bandits and efforts that would have disrupted their work. … and the railway had been small back then. It was so much larger now in 1923. The railway had its own police. Stations were just too important not to have them, and the truth was it was a popular choice for soldiers to go to the railway more generally.

"If we ever have to go to fully mobilize, to fight something like Europe did we would need to rationalize the transportation grid." There would be trade and goods which would take a back seat for transport, but the truth was because of the way the cadre was in terms of capital... fighting thus far had never strained the railway system the way it had for shipping the armies of the European war.

"Zhang ended up running low on shells. Pushing south of the great wall overtaxed his supply lines, as crazy as that sounds for the distance," At least as the crow flew but the truth was it was the same problem that Yuan and Duan had faced in their southern campaigns. On paper those distances shouldn't have been so bad, and not nearly as much trouble as either Beiyang leader had faced.

So it came back to the matter of supply, and support personnel. Railway men who enlisted wouldn't necessarily be riflemen. Rationalization of the transportation grid would very likely mean more support personnel, and keeping the trains running, just with shells and boxes of ammunition... or medical supplies to treat their inevitable wounded.


Xian of 1923 however was not the provincial capital it had been in 1917, and certainly not the swollen city of refugees of 1914. the world had changed. Modernity had come to central china, and its leadership grim as the prospect was was looking at what it required to wage a modern European war if they were pushed into it.

"We're going to have to consider how we can bolster our resources." Every man in the room not only understood the academics of what their artillery park consumed they had been in command of artillery in action in Xian's previous conflicts. "We need to preposition where our cannons will be supplied. In any defensive conflict near rail heads Is one thing, but-"

"I was trained to blow rail bridges, so were most of you." Allen stated plainly to the assembled men...both those original men of the cadre and their own officers who'd come up here. The fighting in honan, back when Yuan and then Duan had tried to weld the country north and south by force, showed what failure to maintain secure logistical trains lead to as well. Waite nodded. "The railway will be our main logistical transfer point." The doubling of the main trunk would allow hubs to ship both directions. They would expand electrification in the cities to keep people moving, but transfer points would have to include roads to secondary distribution centers. "This is a topic for which we have spoken of for a long time as theoretical. We will do so now, because it will consume sufficient volumes of steel that it will help reduce the overall cost margin of the steel we use."

In particular the new steel rail lines which had been impractible in their expense a decade previous were now viable as a result of that scale manufacturing. Those new rails were safer, and more durable which would mean they would need to be replaced less frequently and that was technological progress because they needed to be more durable.

The the majority of their engines would however remain coal fired despite technology moving forward. That meant engines that were heavier than newer engines would continue to bear down on the rail. Even more reason for the new steel really. "We should have expected numbers at the start of the month," In a week, well this coming Tuesday it would be May, "They'll be available for the lower house to look at."

"Do we expect any other issues?"

"The British should be pretty happy even if the first lines will be relatively modest." Waite remarked, "If anything we might end up between the American Legation wanting us to build more, and potentially the French complaining about there being no competition for the rail line, but since we're well away from the coast we might not even get that complaint." It was a perennial worry though. Shanghai was the jewel of international travel in Asia. France, England, America, the bund, the bars and all the glitz and glamor captured the papers attention. "Alston doesn't get along with their man in Shanghai, but he's one of John Jordan's own hands."

Barton had stirred up trouble with the local dujun, was unpopular with the Chinese... and generally just gave the foreign office fits but he also couldn't be readily gotten rid of because he was from the right sort of stock.

"Speaking of the Brits," Dawes remarked deciding to make a jump of topic, "Formal congratulations for Prince Albert getting married," The wedding was Thursday.

Allen nodded, "A congratulatory note was drafted and signed by all the officers present or in support of the Ekatrinburg operation. My brother Daniel has already received it and the London office under Stuart has things in hand."
–
Notes: we touch lightly here on manpower and total war aspects in the spring of 1923, and what ultimately puts Xian in a position where it doesn't need to implement the draft. Railways in the 19th​ century were a massive employer of manpower when operating in developed systems and were critical to war efforts... and in this timeline North China is significantly more developed

And globally in this timeline there is more investment in railways, and sooner investment in Asia, African and the central American regions in the long term this is very impactful to the cold war simply because of how it expands the movement of goods and people even though the Soviet Union is weaker here.

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1923
Xian's operational capabilities put a lot of weight on its General Staff, and the Rifle Divisions supported by their brigades. 10th ​Division would reach full readiness in approximately 45 days in time for the summer drill. All of that was completely normal.

"Its our own damned fault," Dawes remarked, though his tone suggested he didn't think the situation was in any way a problem but that he recognized how they had gotten here. "You took the boys over the border to save the Tsar and his family," He snorted, "Its made the dime store novels," Dawes waved as he gave another bark of laughter, "And then some stupid bolshie manages to shoot King George, who is much more likeable than Nicky and just compounds the whole business." The red leg settled, resting a hand on the table and leaned forward in a vaguely conspiratorial manner, "This sort of thing was bound to happen. If we're ever pushed to it its better we've a plan."

War Plan Red...imaginatively named did grow out of talk from the year previous. There was no denying that fact. "How far along is planning?"

"Not very, I doubt by the time of the summer exercises," The drills in late June, "there will be significant material. First thing we will have to do is face facts of fighting a European war." Dawes shook his head, "Anyway, we have plenty of other matters to deal with especially if we're going to run a double line just for diesel on the main trunk."

Ribbon railing was expensive ... too expensive before the war. "We've demonstrated with the line to Qinghai that the steel industry can support it now." He replied. The truth was the original steel mill had been intended to support normal steel joint, but like everything the war in Europe had fueled massive expansion. British demand had come hand in hand with British insistence on quality control. That had pushed them to expand production while keeping British tolerances as the minimum guideline particularly for things like tempering and heat treatment of steel things that directly effected load bearing parts in weapons and engines as well. "it'll be another few years before we're ready to do it." They were talking about it now, and while he had said many times that diesel electric were the rail engines of the future they had an abundance of coal... and diesel engines before the war had just not been there. A diesel addition to the main trunk line also would only run from Xian to Qinghai initially.

They were going to talk about just that one, and contemplate laying the line in 25 but they would need to push five hundred miles of track easy for that. They had made their names in rail, but the diesel line would require a lot of work and operation wouldn't likely be full service before the decade was out. "We have to be ambitious," Dawes declared, "And yeah, I suppose we could have tried more with diesel before this. The engines are more practicable now."

He nodded in agreement, not quite prepared to share Dawes's tickled pink attitude about all of this, but someone in the room needed to be stoic he supposed. "What else?"

"To be truthful there is a lot else, these are just the big items likely to get attention in the papers." The public was eager to engage and here what their government was doing, how it was going to build a strong state. Xian did not really have political parties the same way as back home. They had political clubs, which one day with as millions had the vote would form parties akin to back home, but for now they were much smaller entities largely drawn up of men who had the franchise, were literate and had read the constitution.

It was amazing that three years it had been had lead to different objectives, but it was also that the world was changing around them. Allen nodded, "Speaking of engines, I'm slated to take the commission along to see the factory."

"We're behind." Dawes remarked needlessly, "Allowing that the Ford Deal included setting up the factory, but Powell isn't the only one who was optimistic perhaps overly so, about things."

It was one of those things where it needed time to grow. The factory for automobiles was expensive but it was a long term investment in their efforts. "I understand the commission is looking at expanding domestic machine tooling," production of, "in the next five years."

"We have to," Dawes replied, "Our current targets for production aren't high enough. The old targets were based on the expectation that with the war over we could grab up tooling from the states, which yeah we've done that, but some of that is going to Powell and more than we expected since he's in Liberia... and we're doing more than we had planned four and five years ago."

"So we underestimated what we needed." It wasn't really a question.. the real question he wanted Dawes to answer, "How badly do you think we were off?"

The red leg shrugged, "Truthfully I think we were off pretty far, I think we hewed conservatively on growth because the war was over. We knew we could buy state side at least we would be soon but also we couldn't rely so heavily on exports." There was still some leeriness over exports for the pacifistic mood and talk of Imperial preference, but, " We should send Bert to check on things in Europe. See what we can sell, see what we can buy. I think that when we plan for the next five years are going to need to allow that organic growth is going to happen some times more than we expect and that perhaps the best way to deal with that is to encourage smaller firms to grow to take up the slack."

There was a pause, and Waite shuffled some papers over, "Ford does have an optimistic view of the situation in Russia. He thinks if Lenin is exporting grain and allow business that means he can get a foot in the door, but I don't see a deal being forthcoming... and not from Hughes," The chart came from English sources but it was about the export of industrial articles from Italy in exchange for soviet grain. They were just over four months into the year, and if the papers were to be believed the volume of goods for which Italy had brought in had doubled in value what it had imported during the whole of 1922 and looked to still be growing.

It wasn't just grain of course. From Moscow Rome was obtaining not just grain, but oil, manganese ore, coal for which the war had highlighted shortages of, raw iron and lumber. Nearly all of these goods were being carried by Italian shipping lines since there was no Soviet Merchant marinate really speak of. The english, by virtue of their insurance of vessels, kept such records and were available which meant that Powell had had not trouble tracking vessels in the Mediterranean... but the conclusion seemed to be in the international english language papers was that Europe was again dividing into spheres and power blocks and that the natural course of action must be John Bull and Uncle Sam joining more firmly in an alliance even though Harding's government professed detachment from world affairs.

Powell had also sent over a very grim reading of situations in the states. Harding didn't want to become directly involved but he protested the French occupation of the Ruhr. The British government was also not happy about that which had started back in January. "He's taking this awful serious."

"Its too early... and France actually firing on the Royal Navy in the Med, never mind the channel is unthinkable." Dawes informed Waite with surety, "But also France does seem intent on not paying its debts to either England or to the States and clearly resents British influence in the balkans. We may have push back on that, so far as they're concerned we're English and our merchantmen fly American flags, but are carrying arms and cargo which might aggravate the state department..." Our in this case meant the MAK as well, the truth was Powell was mostly the broker of arms some surplus some new to the countries who felt they needed them. The aggregate package of rifles and machine guns were envisioned as that they could keep cost per unit down. That meant a planned package of rifles in 8mm based off of the 98 to push towards any country with a border or a dispute with the soviets in the west.
--
Notes: Warscares, especially prior to modern telecommunications were fairly common topics of public discussion one of the things which emerges from WW1 is tighter government censorship and control over papers and this restrains some of this kind of talk, and while war between France and the UK was very unlikely to actually happen it still was talked bout as that could happen and that worried people who lookedat WW1 and who questioned why the war had even been fought. This was compounded by France making political misteps in its dealing with both the UK and US in the international that had nothing to do with Germany (though Stressman's government doesn't help things there either. People like to pretend our governments are somehow uniquelybad, but no 19th​ and 20th​ century governments had really stupid ideas even when they weren't murderous thugs)

This also setsup for something that happens later based on some rather silly ideasof the late 19th​ century, but that will be down the road.