Page:China in Revolt (1926).pdf/9

 Lenin used to say that it was difficult to win over revolutionaries with a stick, with fists, but that at times it is very easy to win them by kindness. This truth, spoken by Lenin, should never be forgotten, comrades. In any case, it is clear that the Japano-American imperialists have pretty well understood the significance of this truth. For this reason we must make a definite distinction between friendliness and compliments addressed to the Canton people and the fact that the imperialists, who distribute their friendliness most liberally, cling most desperately to "their" concessions and railways in China, from which they do not wish to be "liberated" at any price.

The second mark in connection with the theses before us concerns the question of the revolutionary armies in China. The point is that the question of the army is evaded or undervalued in the theses. This is their second defect. The advance of the Cantonese towards the North is generally regarded not as the growth of the Chinese revolution, but as a fight of the Canton generals against Wu Pei-Fu and Sun Chuan Fang, as a fight for supremacy of one group of generals against another group of generals. This is a great mistake, comrades. The revolutionary armies in China are the most important factor in the fight of the Chinese workers and peasants for their liberation. Is it then a mere coincidence that until May or June of this year the situation in China was regarded as the rule of the reaction which had set in after the defeat of Feng Yu Hsiang's army, but that in the summer of this year it was only necessary for the victorious Canton troops to advance northwards and occupy Hupe in order to change the picture fundamentally in favor of the revolution? No, it was not a coincidence; for the advance of the Canton troops meant a blow aimed at imperialism, a blow aimed at its agents in China, it meant the freedom of assembly, freedom to strike,