SPEECH AT MEMORIAL MEETING FOR CHINA'S REVOLUTIONARY MARTYRS
17 June 1945

[Text] After the public offering of sacrifice, Chairman Mao presented his
eulogy, which briefly is as follows:

In the past 100 years, especially since the founding of the Chinese Communist
Party 24 years ago, the Chinese people, Chinese democrats and the communists,
in order to resist the double oppression of foreign imperialism and domestic
feudal power and build China into an independent, free, democratic, united
and strong new nation, have been waging an incessant and powerful struggle,
and innumerable revolutionary patriots have sacrificed themselves in this
great struggle. The reactionaries attempt to quell the revolution by means
of massacres. They feel that the greater the number of people killed, the
smaller will be the revolution. However, it has turned out to be otherwise.
Actually, the more people the reactionaries kill, the greater is the
revolutionary strength and the larger the number of reactionaries who will
perish. This is an irresistible principle. Hitler and Mussolini of foreign
countries, the fascism of Japan and the Manchurian government and Pei-yang
warlords of China have all proved this point. Though hundreds of thousands
and millions of China's revolutionary people have been slaughtered, hundreds
of thousands and millions more will rise and continue the revolution, and
no one can subjugate them. Today the resist-Japan democratic movement of
China's broad masses, the liberated areas of 100 million people, the people's
resistance troops of 1 million, the 1.21 million Communist Party members, and
the program for China's revolution decided on by the Seventh CCP Congress
have all been created by the bloody sacrifices of the several million democrats and several hundred thousand communists and their decades of struggle.
Now the Chinese people understand how to unite and how to struggle. China
will belong to the people, and China will defeat the Japanese aggressors and
their running dogs and build an independent, free, democratic, united and
powerful new China. The desire of all the revolutionary martyrs of the past
100 years, especially the recent 24 years, will be successfully realized.

° "The Seventh Chinese Communist Party Congress and Representatives of All
Fields in Yenan Held a Memorial Mass Meeting for China's Revolutionary
Patriots 2 Days Ago," CHIEH-FANG JIH-PAO, 19 June 1945.