promptly.
Mao [Zedong] Zhou [Enlai] Peng [Dehuai]
Telegram to Zhu [De], Zhang [Guotao],
Xu [Xiangqian], and Chen [Changhao]
on Again Ordering the Fourth Front Army
to Advance Northward Rapidly
(September 27, 1936, 6:00 P.M.)
Zhu [De], Zhang [Guotao], Xu [Xiangqian], and Chen [Changhao]:


1. The Central Committee has already issued an explicit order, so please
immediately order the Tongwei troops to return and occupy Tongwei. The rest
are to follow the northward march.


2. As soon as we receive a telegraphic reply, our Second Division will go to
Zhuanglang and Tai'an, and our First Division will go to the border between
Wa[ting], Long[de], and Jing[ning] to coordinate actions.¹


3. Hu Zongnan's reinforcement brigade has retreated from Huining to
Lanzhou. Only two companies remain in the town of Huining, where panic
prevails. To raid and occupy this town is possible. The rest of Hu's forces dare
not advance on the Xi['an]-Lan[zhou] highway towards Baoji and Tianshui, so
our Second Front Army is perfectly capable of forcing them into submission.
When the Second Division goes to Zhuanglang, Hu will certainly not dare to
advance rashly. The Fourth Front Army now has plenty of time to enter the
Long[de]-Jing[ning]-Hui[ning]-Ding[xi] highway, and the enemy has no possibility of blocking it.


4. Even though the Lan [zhou]-Liang[zhou] line is five or six hundred li
long, it is very sparsely populated, there is not enough food, and there are great
snow-covered mountains in the middle. This we have been told by Deng [Xiaoping], who wrote on the basis of personal experience.² If the enemy occupies the
strategic points first, we will run into tremendous difficulties.


5. Please decide quickly and respond likewise.
Mao [Zedong] Zhou [Enlai] Peng [Dehuai]
² The reference is to the highways between Xining in Qinghai and Lanzhou in
Gansu, and between Liangzhou in Gansu and Lanzhou.
Our source for this text is the 1986 annual compendium of Wenxian he yanjiu, pp. 122-23.

--- Notes

1. All the places mentioned in the first three paragraphs of this text are located in the
area where the three provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi, and Ningxia (as it then was now the
Ningxia Muslim Autonomous Region) converge. Mao refers to the "border" between
Wating, Longde, and Jingning because the first two of these are in Ningxia, and the third
in Gansu, whereas Zhuanglang and Tai'an are both in Gansu.

2. Regarding Deng Xiaoping's journey through this area, see above, the relevant note
to the text of September 19, 1936.