FOR WAR


February 16, 1949


From the time the bandit Chiang Kai-shek launched his peace offensive on
January 1, the heroes of the reactionary Kuomintang clique kept on repeating
at great length their willingness to "shorten the duration of the war",
"alleviate the sufferings of the people" and "treat the salvation of the
people as the primary consideration". But early in February they suddenly
began to play down their peace tune and strike up the old tune of "fighting
the Communists to the bitter end". This has been especially so in the last
few days. On February 13 the Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang Central
Executive Committee issued a "Special Directive for Propaganda" to "all party
headquarters and party papers" which stated:

  Yeh Chien-ying has been spreading propaganda over our rear areas about the
  Chinese Communist Party's good faith in seeking peace, while condemning the
  Government's military moves as showing a lack of good faith in seeking peace.
  All our papers must emphatically refute this, directly and indirectly, in
  accordance with the following points.


The "Special Directive" gives quite a number of reasons why this "refutation"
should be made:

  Rather than surrender unconditionally, the Government should fight to the
  bitter end.


  The eight terms Mao Tse-tung put forward in his January 14 statement would
  ruin the nation, and the Government should not have accepted them.


  The Communist Party of China should bear the responsibility for wrecking
  peace. Instead, it has now drawn up a list of so-called war criminals which
  includes all the Government leaders and has even demanded that the Government
  first arrest them; this clearly shows how truculent and unreasonable the
  Communist Party is. Unless the Communist Party of China changes this behaviour,
  it will indeed be difficult to find a way to peace negotiations.


There is no more of the pathetic anxiety for peace negotiations of two weeks
ago. There is no further mention of those famous phrases, "shorten the duration
of the war", "alleviate the sufferings of the people" and "treat the salvation
of the people as the primary consideration", phrases which gladdened the
heart and spread everywhere. If the Communist Party of China is unwilling
to change its "behaviour" and insists on the punishment of the war criminals,
then peace talks will be impossible. Which, then, is the primary consideration
-- the salvation of the people or the salvation of the war criminals? According
to the "Special Directive for Propaganda" issued by these heroes of the
Kuomintang, they prefer the latter. The Communist Party of China is still
consulting the democratic parties and people's organizations about the list
of war criminals, and opinions have now been received from several quarters.
Judging by the opinions so far received, they all disapprove of the list
put forward on December 25 last year by an authoritative person in the Communist
Party of China. They consider that a list containing the names of only
forty-three war criminals is too short; they consider that those to be held
responsible for launching the counter-revolutionary war and butchering several
million people should certainly not be limited to forty-three, but should
be well over a hundred. For the time being, let us suppose that the number
of war criminals will be set at well over a hundred. Then we should like
to ask the heroes of the Kuomintang, why do you oppose the punishment of
war criminals? Aren't you willing to "shorten the duration of the war" and
"alleviate the sufferings of the people"? If the war continues because of
this opposition of yours, won't that be stalling for time and prolonging
the disaster of war? "Stalling for time and prolonging the disaster of war"
was the very accusation you made against the Communist Party of China in
the statement issued in the name of the Nanking government spokesman on January
26, 1949; can it be that now you want to take it back, write it on a placard
and hang it on yourselves as a badge of honour? You are men of infinite
compassion and mercy, who profess to "treat the salvation of the people as
the primary consideration". Then why do you suddenly change and treat the
salvation of the war criminals as the primary consideration? According to
the statistics of your government's Ministry of the Interior, the number
of the Chinese people is not 450 million, but 475 million; compare that with
100 odd war criminals -- which number is bigger? You heroes have studied
arithmetic; please do a careful sum in accordance with your arithmetic textbook
and then draw your conclusion. If, without doing this sum, you hastily change
your original formula of "treating the salvation of the people as the primary
consideration" -- a good formula with which we agree and the people of the
whole country agree -- into the formula of "treating the salvation of more
than a hundred war criminals as the primary consideration", then be careful,
for you certainly will not be able to maintain your ground. After having
"appealed for peace" over several weeks, those individuals who have repeatedly
mouthed the phrase, "treat the salvation of the people as the primary
consideration", are no longer "appealing for peace" but are appealing for
war. The reason the Kuomintang die-hards are in trouble is this: they have
stubbornly opposed the people, ridden roughshod over them and thus have isolated
themselves on the pinnacle of a pagoda; moreover, they will not repent, even
unto death. All you broad masses of the people of the Yangtse valley and
the south -- workers, peasants, intellectuals, urban petty bourgeoisie, national
bourgeoisie, enlightened gentry and Kuomintang members with a conscience
-- your attention, please! The days of the Kuomintang die-hards who have
been riding roughshod over you are numbered. You and we are on the same side.
The handful of die-hards will soon topple from their pinnacle, and a people's
China will soon emerge.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.