POSSIBLE SOURCE OF MAO'S INFALLIBILITY
In a graphic account of a tour which she and other Australian and New Zealand students recently made of China, Janet Lang reports in the February 27 Newsweek that one of.the outstanding impressions they received was the "appalling ignorance of the outside world which almost all the Chinese displayed." She mentions specifically, "Most young Red.Guards we met had never heard of Winston Churchill, or even of Trotsky, though they know .all about ‘Comrade Ted Hill,' the leader of Australia's tiny pro-Chinese Communist splinter party.'
The 20-year-old Miss Lang describes a conversation with their guides and some "Red Guard friends" about Mao. "I asked how they could.be so sure that Mao is infallible. Such a question clearly seemed absurd. 'Mao reads the foreign newspapers,' one of them answered with assurance. 'He knows what's going on. He must be right -- look what he's done for China.'"
It is to be hoped that Miss Lang assured her Red Guard friends that reading the foreign newspapers does not exactly guarantee infallibility. But the implication that it is highly desirable to read something besides quotations from the works of Mao would seem to indicate that at least one Red Guard has not yet firmly grasped the true nature of the "cultural revolution."