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AGAINST THE COMMUNIST MENACE 11 BECAME MILITARIZED CHAPTER I

7,000 men is £120,000 sterling a year, less 40% if regular pay is withheld, as it is in most cases. As it is with the generals so it is with the men—soldiering is a business, a lazy man’s job. The armies are mostly recruited from the peasantry, who habitually work the year round for their keep and clothing, and are happy to receive a couple of dollars in hard cash on each agricultural settlement-day, a practice which is faithfully copied by their employers when they enter the army. The actual cost of rations per man per month is only Mexican $1.86, i.e., three shillings and ten pence in English money, on which every general can declare himself a monthly dividend of at least as much on every man if he lays out his men properly in rich areas. Battles (unless they are mishandled and serious fighting results) have therefore become an exercise in that up-to-date investment me- thod—geographical distribution of capital. No doubt it has happened in the past that there are serious-minded men who have taken their duties seriously. But in the main the militarization of North China has been yet another proof that when you transfer from one part of the world to another an imperfectly understood conception, such as armed rivalry arising primarily