Today, Mao is not only the most influential Communist in China, but probably, next to Stalin, the most powerful Red on earth. With Kremlin approval, he controls, temporarily more than four hundred and sixty million people, which is three times the population of the United States and double that of Russia. A typical student of the methods of Moscow, in spite of his devotion to Confucius and Plato, he has no compunction whatever about condemning thousands to death upon suspicion that their loyalties are slipping. Aware of this quality in him, Japanese and Korean Communist representatives have declared him, “The Symbol of the struggle for emancipation of all the peoples of the Orient.” They claim he has attained his position of power through his sincere and idealistic solicitude for China’s masses and his realism in bringing about reforms. His enemies, however, intimate that his “realism” has not excluded any means to gain his ends, from walking out of attempted peace conferences to assassinations. The second most important man in Communist China, now that the war with the Chinese Nationalists is over, is Chu Teh, pronounced “Ju Duh,” Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Communist Armies. He is often called the “Red Heart” of Communist China, as contrasted with Mao’s nickname of the “Red Brain.” Number Two in the Hierarchy is a plump, jolly, genial-appearing fellow. Looking anything but a martinet, he has a broad, disarming smile which shows a wide expanse of pink gum. He loves to trot about chucking little children under the chin. Born with a gold spoon in his mouth, he was a reckless though courageous child who always wanted to be a soldier and kept breaking away from an early existence of luxury and high living. Rich at the outset, he became even richer through “squeeze” in a government financial post. Son of a family of overlords, he rose to power and wealth despite his addiction to opiates while still a youth. His early use of opium can be laid to his parents. They spread the thick, gooey, sweet-smelling stuff on sugar cane and gave it to him to suck at night—a common practice of the time to still an infant’s nocturnal wails. Chu Teh had a large family of wives, concubines and children. He was past forty when he decided to leave them all and devote his entire future and fortune to the revolutionary ideal that burned fanatically within him. After squandering part of his wealth and donating the rest to the Communist cause, he plundered public funds in order to leave his large household well established in a comfortable residence.