Page "editorial" Paragraph 874

The miserable people of China, the largest cast ever conscripted to enact an ideological passion play, cannot themselves resist overtly.

They think, perforce, of physical survival: everything else is secondary.

But the army which Mao continues to feed well, where are its sympathies??

The psychological strategists in Taiwan stress the great sense of family, cultivated in China over thousands of years.

It has not been extirpated by ten years of Communist depersonalization.

Every soldier in the army has, somewhere, relatives who are close to starvation.

The soldiers themselves cannot stage a successful rebellion, it is assumed: but will their discontent spread to the officer class??

The immediate families of the generals and the admirals are well fed: a despot does not economize on his generals.

But there are the cousins and aunts and nephews.

Their privations are almost beyond endurance.

In behalf of what??

Leninism-Marxism, as understood by Exegete Mao.

To whom will the generals stay loyal??

There is little doubt if they had a secret ballot, they would vote for food for their family, in place of ideological purity out on the farm.

It is another question whether `` they '' -- or a single general, off in a corner of China, secure for a few ( galvanizing??

) days at least from instant retaliation -- will defy the Party.

But the disposition to rebel is most definitely there.