Liu and Deng [1], with copy to all commanders:  (1) We have received your telegram of the Ma-xu day [2].  We congratulate you on your great victory in annihilating two enemy divisions [3].   (2) It is requested that you concentrate at least eighteen regiments of your main force north of the railway for rest and reorganization, and to recruit and train new troops, so as to be better prepared for further operations.   (3) As the major campaign has just begun, you must be ready to fight seven or eight large battles within three to four months. All replenishment and rest-and-reorganization efforts should be geared toward this objective.   (4) Do not engage in any battle where success is uncertain; if you do fight, you must win. When confronting the Nationalist regular forces, in every engagement you must deploy superior forces against the enemy—at a ratio preferably of four to one (four thousand men against one thousand), but at least three to one—annihilate one part of their force, then attack another, then a third, defeating them piecemeal.  You are urged to use these principles to educate the cadre, overcoming the underestimation of the enemy that leads to spreading one’s strength too evenly across campaigns and battles and seeking victory everywhere (a mindset that exists among many cadres).

Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript; not endorsed by the Military Commission.

Notes  [1] Liu and Deng refers to Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, who at the time served respectively as commander and political commissar of the Jin-Hebei-Luyu Field Army.  [2] Ma-xu denotes the xu hour on the twenty-first day.  [3] This refers to the Longhai Railway Campaign conducted by the Jin-Hebei-Luyu Field Army from August 10 to 22, 1946. In this campaign, they destroyed one and a half brigades of the Nationalist army’s Reorganized 55th Division and a portion of the 68th Division.