Conversation with Certain Comrades from the Military Commission Radio Station

(December 25, 1936)

Revolution inevitably involves detours and hardships. If anyone, because they have endured some suffering, becomes unwilling to work in the Fourth Front Army, that would be wrong. After all, the Fourth Front Army is also an army under the Party’s leadership! In engaging in revolution, we must heed the Party’s instructions and submit to the needs of the revolutionary cause. Wherever we are needed, there we must go. The revolutionary endeavor necessarily requires a division of labor; wherever we are assigned, there we should fight, without picking and choosing. To regard revolutionary work as having distinctions of high or low, noble or base, would be entirely incorrect.

[1] A group of comrades from the Military Commission Radio Station, who had been assigned to work with the Left Column during the Long March, arrived in Bao’an. Due to Zhang Guotao’s erroneous line, they had taken many unnecessary detours and suffered greatly, leaving them feeling aggrieved and unsettled in their work. Upon learning of their situation, Mao Zedong visited their quarters and held a cordial conversation with them. What follows is an excerpt from that discussion between Mao Zedong and these comrades.