The Preponderance of historical evidence now available provides a sound underpinning for the general thesis that throughout his struggle for power, Mao Tse-tung has always worked within a Marxist-Leninist framework; that he, like other Communist leaders before him, has not hesitated to improvise within that framework; and that the success of his greatest improvisation—the use of Chinese peasants as the main force in the revolutionary struggle—is actually a negation of fundamental Marxist-Leninist tenets. This analysis has been thoroughly and ably developed by Benjamin Schwartz and needs no elaboration.

Until 1945, the Japanese nation had never suffered a really major defeat. Humiliations, actual as well as imaginary, had been imposed, but never outright and final loss of a war, never invasion and occupation since the descent of the Yamato people themselves from the high plain of heaven. Her remoteness in fact, and in the calculation of her leaders, her unique polity under the rule of a dynasty established for ages eternal in the minds of her people had saved Japan on each previous threatening occasion. But this time there was no escape. Japan lost the war, and all Japanese know that she lost. Just as, at an earlier date, the country provided a unique laboratory for the student of social stability and of cultural integration–a much neglected laboratory, unfortunately–so, now Japan offers the opportunity for a study of society under the most extreme forms of stress. What have been the effects of war, of catas-trophically losing war, upon Japanese society?