No sooner does a man become suspect to the ultimate authorities than his previous record, hitherto praised, is re-examined and captious criticism proves that he was a traitor from the beginning, like Trotsky, Bukharin, Chicherin, and Zinoviev. The profound vitality of the Chinese Communist movement as a quasi-religious, self-sacrificial organization is demonstrated by the fact that it has weathered these storms. The terrible hunger for a guidance in life, an insight into the ethical meanings of things, and an absolute which asks nothing but acceptance and obedience--these factors call for courage, humility, abasement, fortitude. They do not favor imagination, individual integrity of thought, or the examination of fact. There has been no indication whatever, despite the wishful thinking of Western liberals, that the mentality of the Chinese Red leaders is one whit different from that of Western Communists. They talk practical democracy, moderation, collaboration with the Kuomintang; they do so because this is the Comintern's China policy, just as they have fought the National Government in the past when the Soviet authorities disliked Chiang more than they did Japan. Their all-China collaboration is no doubt sincere; but the sincerity is based not on the wish to collaborate, but on what, in their special phrasing, is termed the "objective" analysis of the situation. If the Soviet Union, the chief "proletarian" force in the world, turned against Chiang, the Communist _ipso facto_ would be against collaboration. The war of China against Japan would no longer be a war of "national liberation" but an "inter-imperialist" war in which the true interests of the "working classes" would be against _both_ sides. This provides to Marxians, under the name "science," an absolute, infallible guide to ethics in practical politics, because it presumes to reveal the inescapable long-range meaning of human affairs. The supposition that daily affairs may in fact possess none but short-range meaning, outside of slow, general, nearly impalpable changes in ecology, demography, and genetics, etc., is anathema to the Marxians. A humanism trained to deal directly, pragmatically, and simply with events is as far beyond the Chinese Communists as it is beyond other Marxians.