Taoguang has become weak and incompetent after a long time, and Chai Dongliang completely showed off his muscles. Xu Shuzheng, in his capacity as deputy director of the Ministry of the Republic of China, inspected the Jianghuai Army and the Yangtze River Naval Division. Xu Shuzheng is not a scholar who talks about military affairs on paper, he once studied in the non-commissioned officer academy of the army and visited Europe, and he has a very deep understanding of the armies of the great powers. The equipment of the Jianghuai Army can basically be compared with that of Germany and France, which are European powers, and even slightly better than that of Ben and Russia, and the training can almost be described as cruel. The soldiers of the Jianghuai Army were generally well nourished, and the temperament of many of them could clearly be seen to be well-read, which was very different from the Beiyang Army, which was generally composed of illiterates.

The composition of the Jianghuai Army is different from that of the Southern Hui Party and the People's Army, and it is also different from the Beiyang, which only selects children from good families from the countryside, but as long as the physical and educational level is qualified, they can become a member of the Jianghuai Army, and they can even directly enter the Anqing Army Noncommissioned Officer School and become reserve officers.

What surprised Xu Shuzheng even more was that the equipment of the Jianghuai Army was all produced by itself, and the Hanfeng I rifle, which was a standard configuration, was definitely no less than the German Mauser 98, and even surpassed the Mauser 98 in several key indicators such as the durability of the barrel. The artillery and mortars of the Jianghuai Army were also all purchased from the Wuhu Arsenal and the Shanghai Guanghua Arsenal, and they were no less than those from Germany and France in terms of appearance and test firing results.

Chai Dongliang wasted no time in selling his arms to the War Department, patting his chest to ensure that the price and quality were not lower than those of foreign goods, and Xu Shuzheng agreed with mixed hearts.

Xu Shuzheng was so amazed by these superficial phenomena that he almost fainted when he asked about the resumes of several officers. Nearly half of the middle- and lower-ranking officers were originally "battalion bastards" who got tired of seeing them in various localities, but after half a year of non-commissioned officer training, they entered the Jianghuai Army and served as grass-roots officers.

When Xu Shuzheng looked at Chai Dongliang again, he simply felt that this guy was a monster, and other armies saw the bastards in the camp like a ghost in broad daylight, for fear that they would bring the simple recruits to ruin and avoid them, but Chai Dongliang actually absorbed a large number of Jianghuai troops, and completely transformed their temperament in just half a year. These confident, proud, and heroic young people, where is the filth and slippery of the bastards?

In fact, Chai Dongliang's first reaction when he saw these people was to hurry away, if it weren't for the insistence of Barnes and others, the Jianghuai Army would definitely not take them in. In the Army Non-commissioned Officer Academy, Barnes, Bruce and other British officers eat and live with them, create a family atmosphere so that they have a sense of belonging to the group, and then stimulate their competitiveness through team sports competitions and other methods, and give recognition to their progress bit by bit to stimulate their pride and self-confidence??? In the final analysis, it is to awaken their self-esteem, so that they can abandon negative emotions such as inferiority and self-abandonment, fully integrate into the Jianghuai Army, and feel proud to be a member of the Jianghuai Army.

This is their old trick of training the "Huayong Battalion" in those years, and this set is very effective for the almost suffocated Chinese who are suppressed by the government. The Chinese surname is very complex, loose and industrious, revering authority while contemptuous of the system, cowardly surname but always sticking to principles.

When they are respected and recognize their important surnames, they are empowered by a strong spirit. These lazy and dirty bastards insisted on increasing the amount of training every day, and when the instructors asked them to run five kilometers with weights, they ran seven or eight kilometers, and the instructors asked them to shoot 150 meters of live ammunition, 15 of which were within the 8th ring of 15 rounds per minute, and they demanded that they be able to achieve 15 of the 18 rounds per minute and hit within the 8 rings.

Looking at the queue and shooting performance of the mighty and majestic Jianghuai Army, Xu Shuzheng wiped his cold sweat and exclaimed: "The Jianghuai soldiers are really worthy of their reputation!" ”

Chai Dongliang did not explain this set of training methods to Xu Shuzheng, but only vaguely told him that the salary of the Jianghuai Army was higher than that of Beiyang, especially the officers.

Xu Shuzheng immediately wanted to cry, and he couldn't wait to say to him, don't mention money, it hurts your feelings. In the past year, the Beiyang Army's salaries have been discounted, and even Yuan Shikai's third division has been discounted by seven, and many of the remaining troops have been paid military salaries at a five-fold discount. It was only recently that I got the big loan for the aftermath that I reinstalled the full amount of salary.

There is a very strange phenomenon in the army: The more well-paid the troops, the less corrupt the officers will be, and the more insufficient the salaries, the more the officers will drink the blood of the soldiers and eat the empty quota.

Just a year and a half after the establishment of the Republic of China, Beiyang was degenerating at the speed of free fall, and there was a tendency to intensify.

Yuan Shikai and Duan Qirui both had the idea of reopening the gong and drum order, and planned to abandon the corrupted Beiyang Army and reorganize the new army. The training of the model regiment has become the focus of Yuan Shikai's work.

The chief instructor of the model regiment is the famous Jiang Baili, and the deputy chief instructor is also the famous Cai Yi, but whether it can be trained to the level of the Jianghuai Army, Xu Shuzheng is not sure at all, at least the model regiment does not dare to recruit the battalion bastards.

Xu Shuzheng finished reviewing the army, and happened to catch up with the Yangtze River Naval Division to send deputy commander Cheng Biguang back from the United States to escort back the extremely cheating "Feihong" ironclad cruiser.

This latest warship, which the Qing court purchased at a sky-high price more than twice the market price, made Xu Shuzheng tremble. The Qing court had a total of three fleets, the main force was the First Fleet, known as the Yangtze River Naval Division, the three largest warships "Haiqi", "Hairong", and "Haichen" were all in the First Fleet, and the Second Fleet and the Practice Fleet only had a few small broken ships patrolling the inland rivers.

The Sanhai warship and the Feihong, which has a displacement of more than 2,000 tons, sent the small boats in Beiyang's hands into the Yangtze River to feed fish and shrimp almost effortlessly. Moreover, Chai Dongliang also told Xu Shuzheng, intentionally or unintentionally, that within the next year, one heavy armored cruiser with a displacement of 5,000 tons and three light cruisers with a displacement of 1,800 tons manufactured by Austria-Hungary will also be delivered, as well as two cruisers with a displacement of 3,000 tons from the German Volkeng shipyard, as well as two British-made cruisers, as well as gunboats manufactured by Yuben???

Xu Shuzheng's frightened hands and feet were cold, Chai Dongliang is planning to rebuild the Beiyang Naval Division? The warships ordered by Zaixun and Cheng Biguang in the West were bought by him with all the balance paid.

When all these warships are put into service, the Yangtze River Fleet will become the second largest navy in Asia after the Combined Fleet.

Seeing Xu Shuzheng's dumbfounded appearance, Chai Dongliang couldn't help but secretly laugh, if he knew that the two 4,000-ton heavy armored cruisers being built for the Chilean Navy by Shanghai Guanghua Shipyard also belonged to him, and the two 10,000-ton ironclad battleships that had completed design work in the United States were also in full swing, would he faint on the spot?

Of course, if he wanted to know the full text of the "Bethlehem Contract", he would not only faint, but also bow down and change his court!

8 dreadnoughts, 20 heavy cruisers, 20 auxiliary ships, 100 submarines, and a full set of shipbuilding, artillery, chemical, electronic and other industrial systems for comprehensive technology transfer??? Whenever he thinks of the size of the navy stipulated in the "Bethlehem Contract", Chai Dongliang can wake up with a smile in his sleep. He had to thank the Qing court for leaving such a rich legacy to himself.

Shouldn't you ask a monk to recite the Sutra of the Past to Lafayette for a few days another day, so that she can climb from the eighteenth to the seventeenth floor of hell?

Chai Dongliang accompanied Xu Shuzheng and Goodnow to visit the Wuhu Industrial Park, and saw the rows of factories and towering chimneys, as well as the straight and wide roads, Xu Shuzheng suddenly had the illusion that he had arrived in Germany or Ben, and this was not Wuhu, but in the industrial area of Osaka or the Ruhr.

No, it's definitely not Osaka, because Osaka doesn't have such beautiful gray streets.

On the outskirts of Anqing and Wuhu, there are horse riding clubs, shooting clubs, and even aviation clubs, all of which enjoy financial subsidies from the Military Advisory Council, and young students and workers are most popular pastimes in their spare time such as horseback riding and shooting. Some young people with rich families are even more fashionable to learn to fly airplanes.

Xu Shuzheng now doubts that even if all the 160,000 people of the Beiyang Army are pulled over and put on the battlefield to fight hard, can they be the opponent of the Jianghuai Army? Beiyang relied on borrowing to survive, while the Jianghuai Army had a complete industrial system as a foundation, and weapons and equipment could be replenished at any time, which improved its combat effectiveness more than a notch. Beiyang's own arsenals are not only pitifully small in scale, but also full of drawbacks, and the inferior quality of the weapons produced is outrageously expensive, and the prices are twice as expensive as imported goods, and all the divisions in Beiyang are unwilling to use them, and they have to spend money to import them from foreign countries. Even in terms of troops, Beiyang does not necessarily have an advantage, and the young people in the horseback riding and shooting clubs can be qualified soldiers who have been trained for a few days. Moreover, in Chai Dongliang's ruling area, the people's love for the Jianghuai Army and their support for Chai Dongliang himself have reached their peak. When inspecting the Jianghuai Army, the fanatical admiration of those soldiers for Chai Dongliang made Xu Shuzheng's heart sour.

Seeing that Chai Dongliang's family background was so rich, Xu Shuzheng no longer dared to put a stinky skew on the deputy head of the War Department to him, and he could almost conclude that the rumored "Bethlehem Contract" was real, and Chai Dongliang was able to accumulate such a huge strength in just one and a half years by virtue of this grand and exaggerated secret contract.

Professor Goodnow was calm, he was interested in everything in Anqing and Wuhu, especially the prices, the people's living standards, and their mental state. As the Republican presidential candidate, Professor Goodnow was very clear about the contents of the "Bethlehem Contract", and he even knew that Guanghua Group had sold 160 sets of vertical kiln cement equipment to Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company, thus monopolizing cement production in the United States, and he also knew that Guanghua Group had transferred the patented technology of special steel smelting to Bethlehem, which caused its rival Beslech Steel Company to withdraw from the high-end steel market. He also knows that in Ma'anshan, only a few dozen kilometers away from Wuhu, a huge Sino-US coal-steel consortium has completed the first phase of construction and will soon be put into production.

Bethlehem Steel Company and Shanghai Guanghua Group have become strategic allies for mutual benefit and equality.

But that is only on the material level, and in the area ruled by Chai Dongliang, the mental state of the people is not a secret agreement that can be changed. This self-confident national sentiment he had seen in the American cowboys who pioneered the West, who believed that with their own hands they could change the world and create all miracles??? In fact, they did.

When everyone believes that miracles can be done, then miracles will happen naturally.

Chai Dongliang fully showed his family background, which made Xu Shuzheng die, who would be stupid enough to leave such a big family business and run to Yanjing City to be a nominal prime minister?

However, he was not without gains, Chai Dongliang assured him that once someone disrupts the peace and provokes a war, the Jianghuai army will firmly stand on the side of the political axe and become the vanguard of the counterinsurgency.

Of course, Xu Shuzheng heard the overtone, that is, let Beiyang interfere less in the affairs of the south, and if several removed governors of the Kuomintang want to rebel, the Jianghuai army itself can settle down.

In the salute and flowers, Xu Shuzheng, who had not had time to digest the horror, was sent away, and the dream of exchanging the throne of the premier for Chai Dongliang to take the initiative to hand over the local military and financial rights was completely bankrupt, and the plan to release the military power with a glass of wine was declared a failure.

Goodnow remained in Anqing to continue his expedition. As one of the Republican presidential candidates, Goodnow has a high demand for election to the presidency, and if nothing else, he is bound to become the Republican presidential candidate and rival Preston President Wilson in a war without gunpowder. To win, you have to make promises that interest the public, and diplomatic success is undoubtedly a good move.

Goodnow did not want to give up this opportunity, he set his sights on distant China, and it was for this reason that he was willing to come to China to serve as an adviser to the political axe of the Republic of China. But he was annoyed by the Beiyang political axe, and whenever Yuan Shikai proposed a new plan to strengthen his regime, he always took advantage of the attitude of American experts, saying that Dr. Goodnow and other foreign advisers had already expressed their approval. But they weren't really consulted, they weren't invited to important meetings, they weren't given the opportunity to participate in the development of important programs. Of course, they had been "consulted" in form, but this was usually done after the meeting had made a decision, and Yuan Shikai informed the advisers of what had been negotiated, and then announced that they had agreed. In this regard, the American minister Jia Leheng used to be the same as Good's post-80s Shaolin abbot Luo first-class lawyer. ”

Goodnow could not say anything but a wry smile. This kind of behavior of pulling the tiger's skin to make a big banner made Goodnow and other foreign advisers feel very disgusted, and the foreign advisers' remarks made up by Yuan Shikai's political axe have even been transmitted back to the West. These internationally renowned experts and scholars were very passive, and Goodnow even had the idea of returning to China. As a professor at Columbia University, Goodnow was not short of money, and the consulting fee of 25,000 silver dollars a year for the political axe of the Republic of China was not very attractive to him.

He hoped that Goodnow would seriously consider which person in China would become a true ally of the United States in the future, which would be more helpful to the strategic interests of the United States in the Far East. Minister Jia Leheng chattered to recommend Chai Dongliang to him, hoping that he could investigate it in depth.

Before leaving, Goodnow did a lot of work and collected a lot of information about Chai Dongliang. But after actually arriving in Anqing, the construction achievements here still exceeded his expectations. In Chai Dongliang, he saw the formation of an alliance between China and the United States, echoing each other on both sides of the Pacific Ocean against the British alliance, locking Russia inland so that it could not see the warm waters of the south, and curbing the pace of German expansion in the Far East??? If all this can come to fruition, then Goodnow will undoubtedly become one of the most accomplished presidents in American history!

Chai Dongliang also has a heart for Goodnow, this world's top political talent, definitely belongs to the rare breed that can be met but not sought. Chai Dongliang said that there was a small banquet on the third and a big banquet on the fifth, and the drinking party and dance party were even more commonplace, which made Goodnow a little happy.

Today, as usual, there was another drinking party, accompanied by officials of the Military Advisory Council and leading figures in the business world, axe brand three-star brandy and Solanik cigarettes, and even more whole boxes were moved up, and the drinking party was followed by a ball, with Western bands and Bosmian dancers and a crowd of people dancing in suits and leather shoes, which made Goodnow suddenly think that he was in Europe.

Chai Dongliang took advantage of the drunken heat and asked in English with a smile: "Doctor, you have been investigating in Anhui for so many days, do you have anything you can teach me?" ”

Goodnow was obviously thoughtful, and he smiled and said, "Your military and industrial development here are on the right track, and what I like most is the cleanliness of the city??? Oh, you know, Yanjing is so dirty! ”

Chai Dongliang took a glass of wine from the waiter's hand, held the wine glass and asked, "Don't you have any suggestions for me?" ”

Goodnow smiled: "Thank you for your warm reception for so many days, of course I will repay you, but not now, this kind of occasion is not suitable for talking about those bad politics, do you think?" ”

Chai Dongliang said stupidly: "What you said makes sense! Dance, dance! ”

Gao Chuguan hurriedly walked into the venue, he was wearing a green cloth robe and mille-feuille shoes, and the atmosphere here seemed very incongruous. Chai Dongliang knew that something was wrong when he saw his expression, so he hurriedly greeted him and asked, "Mr. Xiang Yuan, what happened?" ”

Gao Chu looked around, then lowered his voice and said, "Dudu, Duan Qirui and Yuan Keding have gone to Wuchang!" ”

"Oh, what are the two of them going to Wuchang to do at this time?" Chai Dongliang's brows locked.

???

Author's words: The text exceeds 5,000 words, and there is no charge for the following words.

Now China lacks everything, that is, there is no shortage of 2b, and there is actually a county government axe to spend a huge amount of money to build a monument to the development group, and it is stipulated that shops must use Chinese and Chinese languages, and the proportion of Chinese must not be less than 30%, otherwise a fine of 5,000!

I sincerely admire that this is no longer an ordinary 2B, it is simply a battle B in 2B!

There is no need to pay a fine of 5,000 yuan, Wang Jingwei's pseudo-political axe has not been so stipulated, and the political axe of Fangzheng County has pushed the unfinished business of Chairman Wang and Emperor Kant to the peak!

Tang Yuan is not the kind of person who must be opposed, on the contrary, I hate those guys who open their mouths and close their mouths and make up brain-dead remarks such as "China's bullet train derailed, and the anchor laughs". Relying on fabricating lies to stir up national sentiment is a matter of reproach.

I am also full of respect for Professor Naito Hunan who openly proclaimed with the conscience of a scholar that "Manchuria belongs to China, both historically and geographically," and others who sincerely helped China during the Xinhai Revolution, and Professor Naito Hunan who openly proclaimed with the conscience of a scholar that "Manchuria belongs to China, both historically and geographically."

But what is this pioneer group? That's a group of colonists who don't carry guns and retired soldiers in the countryside, this is a semi-militarized colonial organization! I wonder what would happen if someone built a memorial to the Nazis in Israel and made the shops in German.

I strongly suggest that the Fangzheng County Political Axe be changed to Yasukuni Shrine, so as to save these 2b and have to go to the book to pay homage, and also save a few silver for the people!

Tangyuan has a sense of time-traveling, could it be that it is now 1937? Does Manchukuo still exist? Seeing the dense signboards on the streets of Fangzheng County, this is definitely not China in 2011, I firmly believe!

"I'll fuck you!" ???? This is not Tang Yuan swearing, but borrowing the headlines of Hong Kong's Apple Evening News and Southern Weekly about the train derailment incident.

This was the last time Tang Yuan was angry, and from then on shut up and never express an opinion on anything again??? I have crossed over, and now I am in Anqing in 1913, where the shops do not have a Chinese sign, let alone a monument erected to the invaders!

(To be continued)