Elegiac Couplet for Mr. Guo Gaoru¹
(July 1939)

You, Sir, followed after the virtuous one,² living in reclusion behind a humble
gate; able to enjoy a ripe old age, in illustrious virtue and understanding of mysteries you far surpassed the ancients;
Your son is a distinguished master in the world of letters, exerting himself in
military work to help drive out the Japanese bandits; his signal contributions engraved in stone inspire those to come.

Instructions of the Central Military Commission
on the Problem of Consolidating the
Anti-Japanese University
(July 1939)

The overall policy for running the Anti-Japanese University and all other military
and political schools and training groups organized by intellectuals should be as
follows:
1. Training educated youth into proletarian soldiers or sympathizers and training them to become cadres of the Eighth Route Army are indeed hard work. We
should endeavor to transform their thinking, pay attention to the process of their
ideological transformation, and organize ideological contests and debates in appropriate ways. In reality, there must be struggles between bourgeois ideas and
proletarian ideas in these schools.
2. All the work of schools should be aimed at transforming the thinking of
students. Political education is the central link. There should not be too many
courses, but the work of class education and Party education must be greatly
strengthened. The Anti-Japanese University is not a school of the united front, but
a school for Eighth Route Army cadres under the leadership of the Party.
3. The principles for educating intellectual youth are the following:
a. Educate them to master Marxism-Leninism, and to overcome bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois thinking and ideas.
b. Educate them to be disciplined and organized and to oppose anarchism and
liberalism.
c. Educate them to go resolutely down to work at the grass roots and to oppose
looking down on practical experience.
d. Educate them to be close to the workers and peasants and to oppose the attitude of looking down on the workers and peasants.

We have translated this couplet from Shici duilian, pp. 171-72, where it is taken from no. 14
of Chongqing wenshi ziliao.
Our source for this document is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 6, pp. 93-94, where it is
reproduced from the guide to an exhibition at the Military Museum in Beijing.

--- Notes

1. Guo Zhaofei (1853–1939), zi Gaoru, had died in his native village in Sichuan on
July 3, 1939. He was the father of Guo Moruo, who at this time headed the Literary
Propaganda Section of the Political Department of the Military Commission of the National Government.

2. Here Mao is referring to Guo Gaoru as a reincarnation of the Eastern Han recluse Guo
Tai, who was known for his virtues and refusal to serve as an official.