Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 210, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1917 — About Siam [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

About Siam

SIAM'S entry into the great war on the side of the entente allies has reawakened Interest in that far-off country. It is not such an insignificant dot floating loose somewhere near the equator, when one stops a minute to think it over,- writes Adachl Kinnosuke, In the New York Tribune. Slam Is bigger than Japan proper— I mean the country is. She has 195,000 square miles of territory. -And the insular Japan proper is not quite 148,000 square miles in area. Siam is only 13,780 square miles smaller than Germany herself. As to the number of the people In Slam, she herself was not any too clear until 1910. In November of that year fairly accurate figures were obtained — as census go—and published. The number given was 8,149,487. It included women. For years the serious trouble with the Siamese census figures had been a startling sact —more or less true In political United States and political Japan—that to them women were no people at all. Globe trotters who grace Slam with their unwelcome presence are apt to get away with the impression that the City Of Bangkok is something more than all Siam. - They have claimed in their printed books that one-ninth of the entire population of the kingdom lived in the capital city; that there is no other capital of the world —save, perhaps, London —which had such an exaggerated proportion of a country’s population centered in one city. For once there is something back of this impression. One-ninth of the total population of Slam? Well, not quite.

But not far from the mark, for Bangkok had in 1914 more than 628,600 inhabitants, which Is something more than one-thirteenth of the entire population of the kingdom. How Its Slaves Were Freed. When King Chulalongkorn I ascehtTed the throne of Siam he was a young man, and the institution of slavery in the country was a hoary thing. Religion had sanctified it; tradition had ossified it. Slavery in Siam was in the utter depth of depravity. That was bad enough. But there was another thing which was in a much more impossible depth of degradation than slavery Itself. It was the Incredibly selfish and benighted attitude of the wealthy and the privileged class which owned the slaves. Apparently the young king was powerless ; be could not do a single, solitary thing save through the co-op-eration and assistance of this selfsame privileged class, which surrounded him on all sides. Compared to the Siamese king, President Lincoln had the freedom of action of a Rocky Mountain eagle. And yet—and yet, the Siamese king did the work. The year 1905 saw both the Siamese borp to slavery and those who had sold themselves into bondage, walk out into the world and life as free as any other mortals. And that is not the most remarkable chapter of the remarkable story, either. For under the Siamese king there was not so much as a hint of a civil war! Another thing still more remarkable even than this. Is that all this work was done by an Oriental potentate —born and bred out yonder in the atmosphere, amid traditions, ideals and culture which the Christian missionaries travel thousands of miles to destroy and to reform. Resources Are Considerable. People who laugh over the news of Siam’s entry into the world war

and conjure up the visions of humble huts stuck up on piles or on pontoons along the muddy banks of the Menam, of the houseboats weaving their ways up and down her innumerable canals, or of the stately towers of Bangkok’s public buildings, palaces and temples rivaling a sunset sky with their manycolored tiles—they do not know quite as much, as they might. Slam is not altogether a bit of picturesque scenery. In the fiscal year of 1915-1916, she exported more than 1,250,066 tons, of rice valued at more than $32,449,000—ye5, she is as solid as all that and this must mean something in the days when food—simple, primitive nonfanciful food is the most fashionable topic of conversations in all the chancellories of all the great powers of the earth. -*■■■ To be sure Siam cannot make much impression on the war finance of the entente allies. Her revenue for the “fiscal year 1016-17 is estimated at $26,692,C00; the entire amount does not

cover just one day’s- war expenditure of Great Britain alone. When the Siamese army Is mentioned the good people of Europe and America somehow let their fancies wander to a comic opera. Before the Russian war they were wont to do precisely this very thing about the Japanese army.' And they should be reminded of this fact in the most unkindly manner possible. • And just to rub It in, the good American friends should be reminded of an undeniable fact that Slam was ahead of the proud and very up-to-date United States In the matter of compulsory military service—ahead of her by about thirteen years. Incredible, of course, but true. Old Fighting Method* Gone. . Of course the old style army of Slam had its share of entertaining traditions —to make a tremendous demonstration of overwhelming force to scare the enemy, always at a good safe distance from him —was one of them, and when an accidental-blunder placed the opposing forces within reach of a human voice, then to hurl at the enemy a terrific stream of heroic epithets and vile vituperations, and if the matter came to the worst, then under ho circumstances whatever let the men lose their heads to the extent of launching a bayonet charge, but let their spokesman challenge the other side to put up a warrior—the champion warrior—to a deadly duel with the hero of their own camp, and let the two warrior representatives' decide the fate of the war! My own heroic countrymen In Japan have not the slightest excuse to make merry over this procedure. Not so many centuries ago their own brave ancestors were wont to resort to this method of economical warfare, especially in many' interclan brawls.

This sort of thing is* now but a quaint memory with the modern army of Siam, however. In 1904 the law of universal military service went into effect Years before that a number of the sons of the Siamese nobility had been trained in the military schools of Europe and of the United States. They had returned home literally kindling with enthusiasm for the new order of things. They had seen that a modern army and navy had a good deal to do with the dignity of a modern state and with her very moral standing. They could not quite make out the logic of the thing. But they just knew that it was right. Back home in Siam they lost no time in becoming at once the prophets and preachers of this new doctrine of national prestige. What they have accomplished up to the present writing is not likely to turn the tide of the world war in Europe, as has been hinted. But they have made something of a beginning. Of that there is hot a ghost of a doubt. And the development of the Siamese army and navy should be more interesting to the British statesmen than to the militarists of Germany—if truth were told.

View of Bangkok From the River.