Mao’s Last Campaign

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I N HIS 26 years of stewardship of the vast Chinese realm, Chairman Mao Tse-tung has been praised as much as he has been condemned. No one can deny that he is one of the titans of human history, one of those rare phenomena who, as the Chinese philosopher Mencius theorized, emerges but once in every 500 years. His mission is not yet completed, and the time has not come for any fair assessment of his accomplishments. But when future historians finally do come to judge him, it is more than likely that they will find his greatest achievements to have been his genius for inspiring men to act and then controlling their actions, and making the impossible possible and then controlling the possible. Chairman Mao's whole career has been an extravaganza of power. His philosophy of life has been centered on power; and as politician, he speaks always in terms of power. Perhaps his best-known axiom is that political power grows out of the barrel of gun. He holds both the power and the gun, thus affording himself double guarantee for his position of primacy in China. But if it is true, as Lord Acton said, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, in Chairman Mao's case it may be more true to say that he corrupts power. He bends power to his uses, enabling him to do what his predecessors had failed to do, or had not even attempted to do. It has not always been smooth sailing. He has failed as often as he has succeeded. But for the moment, still at the height of his power, his successes impress more than his failures hurt. He moved nation that traditionally was reluctant to move. He brought order out of chaos, and disciplined people who were once described as a heap of sand. He established effective government in country hitherto considered ungovernable. He imposed maximum government where even minimum government was resented. He has built an impressive network