About the only difference between a bandit and a soldier is the matter of army pay, a uniform and a gun. —John B. Powell, American publisher and hostage1 MAY 1923 After the revolution of 1911 ended more than two thousand years of imperial rule in China, the country ruptured into regional political factions, each jockeying for power in a constant state of internecine warfare. The armies of the provincial military warlords, the tuchuns, dominated the countryside as the hapless leaders of the Republic of China in Peking struggled to maintain a semblance
