EXCITEMENT HIGH OVER "SELECTED WORKS"
[The following report, entitled "Red Letter Day for PLA Airforce Unit," appeared in the August 29 daily bulletin of the Hsinhua News Agency under a Peking dateline.]
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August 25 was a red letter day for the airmen and members of ground crews of an airforce unit under the Peking military command. On that day, they all bought copies of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung.
They had been tremendously eager to obtain the books, for Chairman Mao's thought is the red sun in their hearts. For years they had persisted in. studying his writings © and living according to his instructions. By so doing, they had found an inexhaustible source of strength and inspiration.
Many of them did not sleep much on the previous night as they were too elated at the thought of being able to fulfill their cherished ambition the next day. Some spent the whole night decorating the station with posters and slogans, and others got up early that morning to give the camp a thorough cleaning.
As the decorated lorry, laden with newly printed volumes of Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, appeared in the distance, the airmen and members of the ground crews lined up at the station entrance burst into thunderous cheers. They shouted: "Long live Chairman Mao!" "Long live the Chinese Communist Party!"
Leading mémbers of the unit, who had come along with the lorry, presented the airmen with the books in the course of a solemn ceremony.
As soon as they got the books, the airmen opened them and began to study. In
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the light of Chairman Mao's "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan," they discussed the great proletarian cultural revolution and the revolutionary actions taken by the Red Guards to wipe out the old ideas, culture, habits and customs. They expressed the view that Chairman Mao was the greatest Marxist-Leninist of today. The fundamental point in Mao Tse-tung's thought was criticism, struggle, and revolution. The spirit of the Red Guards of daring to rise up in revolution was good, and they, as PLA [People's Liberation Army] men, supported the Red Guard's actions.
Airman Chu Yun-ying had for some time been an enthusiastic student of Mao Tsetung's writings and, as a result, he had made rapid progress politically. When he again studied "Serve the People," from which he had constantly obtained inspiration in his work, he said: "I shall always be loyal to Chairman Mao. I shall study Mao Tsetung's thought diligently, implement it resolutely, disseminate it enthusiastically and valiantly defend it."
MAO