Page 270 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume III.indd

268 MAO TSE-TUNG
The experience of the three periods of the revolution, and especially
that of the War of Resistance Against Japan, has convinced us and
the whole Chinese people that without the efforts of the Chinese Com-
munist Party, without the Chinese Communists as the mainstay of the
Chinese people, China can never achieve independence or liberation,
or industrialization and the modernization of her agriculture.
Comrades! I firmly believe that with the Communist Party of
China armed with the experience of the three revolutions, we can
accomplish our great political task.
Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have heroically laid down
their lives for the people; let us hold their banner high and march
ahead along the path crimson with their blood!
A new-democratic China will soon be born. Let us hail that
great day!

NOTES

1 The Chinese National Liberation Vanguard Corps, or to give its shorter name
the National Vanguard Corps, was a revolutionary youth organization formed
under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in September 1936 by the
progressive youth who participated in the December 9th Movement of 1935. After
the outbreak of the War of Resistance, many of its members saw action and took
part in building base areas behind the enemy lines. The organizations of the National
Vanguard Corps in the Kuomintang areas were forcibly dissolved by the Chiang
Kai-shek government in 1938; those in the Liberated Areas were later merged into
the Association of Youth for National Salvation, an organization of even broader
scope.
2 On July 7, 1937, the Japanese invading forces attacked the Chinese garrison at
Lukouchiao, some ten kilometres southwest of Peking. Under the influence of the
ardent and nation-wide anti-Japanese movement the Chinese troops put up resistance.
This incident marked the beginning of the Chinese people’s heroic War of Resistance
Against Japan which lasted for eight years.
3 For a fuller account of the three anti-Communist onslaughts, see “A Comment
on the Sessions of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and of the People’s
Political Council”, pp. 137-51 of this volume.
4 These operations to force China’s north-south trunk railways open for through
traffic constituted the offensive launched in May 1944 by the Japanese army to seize
the Canton-Hankow Railway along its entire length and thus secure an uninterrupted
land link between northern and southern China.
5 Scobie was the commander of the British imperialist forces of aggression in
Greece. In October 1944, when the German invaders were retreating in defeat on
the European continent, Scobie’s troops entered the country, bringing with them
the reactionary Greek government that had been in exile in London. Scobie directed
and assisted this government in attacking the Greek People’s Liberation Army, which