毛泽东选集/论持久战

#§1.It will soon be July 7, the first anniversary of the great War of Resistance Against Japan.

# Rallying in unity, persevering in resistance and persevering in the united front, the forces of the whole nation have been valiantly fighting the enemy for almost a year.

# The people of the whole world are attentively following this war, which has no precedent in the history of the East, and which will go down as a great war in world history too.

# Every Chinese suffering from the disasters of the war and fighting for the survival of his nation daily yearns for victory.

# But what actually will be the course of the war?

# Not everyone has found answers to these questions; in fact, to this day most people have not done so.

# Therefore the defeatist exponents of the theory of national subjugation have come forward to tell people that China will be subjugated, that final victory will not be China's.

# On the other hand, some impetuous friends have come forward to tell people that China will win very quickly without having to exert any great effort.

# But are these views correct?

# We have said all along they are not.

# This is partly because we did not do enough propaganda and explanatory work, and partly because the development of objective events had not yet fully and clearly revealed their inherent nature and their features to the people, who were thus not in a position to foresee the over-all trend and the outcome and hence to decide on a complete set of policies and tactics.

# Now things are better, the experience of ten months of war has been quite sufficient to explode the utterly baseless theory of national subjugation and to dissuade our impetuous friends from their theory of quick victory.

# In these circumstances many people are asking for a comprehensive explanation.

# All the more so with regard to protracted war, not only because of the opposing theories of national subjugation and quick victory but also because of the shallow understanding of its nature.

# "Our four hundred million people have been making a concerted effort since the Lukouchiao Incident, and the final victory will belong to China."

# Our perseverance in the War of Resistance and in the united front has been possible because of many factors. # Internally, they comprise all the political parties in the country from the Communist Party to the Kuomintang, all the people from the workers and peasants to the bourgeoisie, and all the armed forces from the regular forces to the guerrillas; internationally, they range from the land of socialism to justice-loving people in all countries; in the camp of the enemy, they range from those people in Japan who are against the war to those Japanese soldiers at the front who are against the war.

# In short, all these forces have contributed in varying degrees to our War of Resistance.

# Every man with a conscience should salute them.

# We Communists, together with all the other ant-Japanese political parties and the whole people, have no other course than to strive to unite all forces for the defeat of the diabolical Japanese aggressors.

# July 1 this year will be the 17th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

# A serious study of protracted war is necessary in order to enable every Communist to play a better and greater part in the War of Resistance.

# Therefore my lectures will be devoted to such a study.

# I shall try to speak on all the problems relevant to the protracted war, but I cannot possibly go into everything in one series of lectures.

#§2.All the experience of the ten months of war proves the error both of the theory of China's inevitable subjugation and of the theory of China's quick victory.