as he rushed a
soldier fired, and he fell."

A man, whose appearance proclaimed him to be of a higher class than most of
the villagers, then spoke in bitter tones. "We are rebuilding our houses,"
he said, "but of what use is it for us to do so? I was a man of family. My
fathers and fathers' fathers had their record. Our family papers are
destroyed. Henceforth we are a people without a name, disgraced and
outcast."

I found, when I went further into the country, that this view was fairly
common. The Koreans regard their family existence with peculiar veneration.
The family record means everything to them. When it is destroyed, the
family is wiped out It no longer exists, even though there are many members
of it still living. As the province of Chung-Chong-Do prides itself on the
large number of its substantial families, there could be no more effective
way of striking at them than this.

I rode out of the village heavy-hearted. What struck me most about this
form of punishment, however, was not the suffering of the villagers so much
as the futility of the proceedings, from the Japanese point of view. In
place of pacifying a people, they were turning hundreds of quiet families
into rebels. During the next few days I was to see at least one town and
many scores of villages treated as this one. To what end? The villagers
were certainly not the people fighting the Japanese. All they wanted to do
was to look quietly after their own affairs. Japan professed a desire to
conciliate Korea and to win the affection and support of her people. In one
province at least the policy of house-burning had reduced a prosperous
community to ruin, increased the rebel forces, and sown a crop of bitter
hatred which it would take generations to root out.

We rode on through village after village and hamlet after hamlet burned to
the ground. The very attitude of the people told me that the hand of Japan
had struck hard there. We would come upon a boy carrying a load of wood. He
would run quickly to the side of the road when he saw us, expecting he knew
not what. We passed a village with a few houses left. The women flew to
shelter as I drew near. Some of the stories that I heard later helped me to
understand why they should run. Of course they took me for a Japanese.

All along the route I heard tales of the Japanese plundering, where they
had not destroyed. At places the village elders would bring me an old man
badly beaten by a Japanese sol