Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/81
ADMINISTRATION
nominally three taels (nine shillings) per month, out of which he must buy his own rations. It is generally believed that the men do not receive nearly so much, a large percentage being appropriated by the officers, but beyond the established fact that the private's pay is often in arrears, nothing can be said with assurance on this subject. The men's uniform is very sensible, a loose tunic falling over loose trousers, drawn close round the ankles, and cloth boots with thick paper soles. The garments are of cotton; the tunic blue, brown, or yellow with facings of a different colour; the trousers generally blue, and on the breast or back a large circle enclosing ideographs that show the corps to which the wearer belongs. This uniform costs four taels (twelve shillings), and twenty taels are allowed for the purchase of a cavalry horse. Altogether the annual appropriations for the army now aggregate some forty million taels (seven millions sterling approximately), though less than a moiety of that amount used to suffice before contact with Occidental civilization imposed upon China the duty of squandering her resources upon machines for slaughtering human beings.
In every province there is a General, commander-in-chief of the Green Banner forces. Like the Tartar General, he outranks a viceroy. Under him are from two to six brigadier-generals, each in command of a brigade; there being also, as a matter of course, a regular establishment of
59