THE RED GUARDS: Today, China; Tomorrow, The World

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Planned Disorder. If the Guards get their orders mixed up, the reason is understandable: their instructions are often conflicting. For example, last week began with editorials in People's Daily, the official party publication, ordering the Guards drastically to curtail their activities, and to leave the peasants alone to reap the harvest. Yet later in the week at an other monster rally, under the smiling gaze of Mao, Lin Piao congratulated the Guards for "acting correctly." Following Lin, Chou managed in one speech to tell the Guards to 1) stay away from the farms, and 2) go and help with the harvest.

Did the confusion—and the vio lence it was bound to provoke—represent a fissure within the top leadership? Perhaps. But the more likely explanation lay in the peculiar psychology of the Guards' creator. Years ago Mao reflected that a revolution is "not the same as inviting people to dinner or writing an essay or painting a picture. A brief reign of terror," he mused, was necessary to make a revolution work.

Reaching into the past for the Guards, Mao had probably also reached into the past for his plan of action. He had brought terror of a new and terrible sort to his hapless land. Whether its reign would be brief, not even Mao could answer.