Letter to the Standing Committee
of the Secretariat

(February 14, 1926)

Comrades of the Standing Committee of the Central Secretariat:¹

Because my mental ailment has increased in severity, I am obliged to request
a two-week leave in order to go to Shaozhou to recuperate.² I have handed over
all the affairs of the Propaganda Department to Comrade Shen Yanbing³ for him
to deal with. I hereby inform you respectfully of this, and I shall be grateful if
you will take note of it.

Mao Zedong

For the source of this text, see above, the note to the letter of May 26, 1924.

--- Notes

1. The reference is, of course, to the Secretariat of the Central Executive Committee of
the Guomindang. Similarly, the Propaganda Department referred to below is that of the
Guomindang, of which Mao had been appointed acting head on October 5, 1925.

2. Once again, as in the letter of May 1924, "mental ailment" should presumably be
taken to mean extreme strain and fatigue. Following his original appointment as acting
head of the Guomindang Propaganda Department on October 5, 1925, Mao had contributed some twenty articles to the *Political Weekly* and had played an extremely active role
at the Second Congress of the Guomindang, presenting the report on propaganda and
drafting several resolutions on related topics. (All of these materials are translated above.)
Mao's leave of absence was for exactly two weeks; on February 28 he addressed the
opening session of the Guomindang Political Training Group. (For a summary of his
remarks on that occasion, see *Nianpu*, 1, p. 157.) According to the recollections of Shen
Yanbing (on Shen see the following note), though Mao used the excuse of illness in
requesting this leave, his real object was to go on a secret trip to the Hunan-Guangdong
border area to inspect the peasant movement there. See *Nianpu*, 1, p. 156.

3. Shen Dehong (1896–1981), *zi* Yanbing, a native of Zhejiang, is best known under his
pen name of Mao Dun. After studying at Beijing University from 1913 to 1916, he went to
Shanghai, where he worked as editor and translator for the Commercial Press. Contrary to
some published accounts, he became a member of Chen Duxiu's Communist group in
Shanghai as early as the summer of 1920. On December 31, 1925, his long association
with the Commercial Press came to an end, and he embarked the next day for Guangzhou
to attend the Second Guomindang Congress. At the third meeting of the Standing Committee of the Central Executive Committee on February 8, 1926, he was appointed secretary
of the Propaganda Department in response to a proposal by Mao Zedong, who had himself
been reappointed acting head of that department at the second Standing Committee meeting on
February 5. He also became editor of the *Political Weekly* when it resumed publication on
March 6, 1926, with issue No. 5. (Mao Zedong had ceased work on it after the appearance of
No. 4, on January 10, 1926, because he was taken up with his other activities.)