From Mao Zedong and Zhu De to Xiang Ying
About the Necessity of Destroying All
Secret Documents

(December 26, 1940)

As to whether or not to carry out the destruction of secret documents, you should
anticipate the special difficulties that might be encountered during the move. You
may suffer attacks and you may suffer losses, so the situation needs to be regarded
more seriously. Upon this basis, aside from making every possible effort to overcome difficulties, all secret documents must be completely destroyed as soon as
they have been read. [X][X]1 should be carried on the person of the most trustworthy comrades, and the question of how to handle things when danger is encountered should be figured out beforehand. This directive applies not only to the military
headquarters; the entire southern Anhui army should be ordered to carry it out
without exception. Not leaving any trace whatsoever of secret documents is most
important.

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 6, p. 235, where it is reproduced from Wannan shibian.
1. In a passage very similar to this one, cited in a note to the text of December 18, 1940,
the characters missing there stand for “code books,” and that is very probably what has
been omitted here.