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In the preface to her biography of Sun Yat-sen, Lyon Sharman writes of the difficulty of drawing a realistic portrait of the symbol of modern Chinese nationalism. Even working in China immediately after Sun's death in 1925, the author attempting an untrammelled biography was hampered not only by the paucity of reliable data but also, and more seriously, by the fact that the Kuomintang had forbidden overt criticism of Sun and of his ideas. The fact that her volume on Sun is still the best available nearly thirty years after publication is a tribute both to the author's assiduousness and to her empathy for China and the Chinese.

Poetry and politics are rare companions in the competitive world of practical affairs today. In Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev, with peasant shrewdness, is addicted to Russian proverbs to enliven his rhetoric; but there are few indications that he is sympathetic with the creative writer and none that he himself will rank with Pushkin in the annals of his nation's literature. In Washington, the appearance of Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in January 1961 was an event at once exceptional and gratifying to admirers of Frost's artistic integrity; the elderly poet's advice to the young president of the United States to stress the Irish and underplay the Harvard hi his background may yet have enduring significance. Only in Peking, however, do we find a world leader who combines distinctive political abilities and literary talents. Indeed the juxtaposition of strategic and artistic instincts hi Mao Tse-tung is so unusual in the post-Churchillian world that the case merits more than passing note.

On December 26, 1961, Mao Tse-tung, master and master-mind of the Communist Party of China for the past quarter century, reached the age of sixty-eight. Whileder Altein Peking still appears reasonably durable, he has nevertheless reached the stage in his career where the succession problem may soon pass from the sphere of speculation to that of political reality. Well aware of the intra-party struggle in Moscow following Stalin's death, Mao Tse-tung has already taken steps to avoid internecine strife in China. Practically speaking, he has made his selection.

Aretrospective assessment at mid-century might have suggested that the course of Chinese history between 1900 and 1950 recorded only two events of enduring political significance: the first, the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty in October 1911 and, with it, destruction of the imperial system which had lasted for two millennia; the second, the establishment of the People's Republic of China in October 1949 and, through it, commitment to accelerated modernization and forced industrialization along lines similar to those plotted earlier by the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, assessment of the future might well have concluded, with prescience born of objectivity, that the effect of the Chinese Communist explosion on both Chinese and world politics would merit a major effort on the part of American social science research.

The man who faces his typewriter to set down a thousand words of coherent comment on the Communist revolution in China confronts not only a massive experiment in social engineering but also the fact that his interpretation of that experiment will expose as much of the author as it does of the revolution. Some observers, moved by a deep attachment to the distinctive cultural unity of China and by an antiquarian admiration for the achievements of her traditional elite, seek, as if by public subscription, the preservation of China's relics. Others, more concerned with Communism than with China, see in Mao Tse-tung's progress only the relentless efforts of a new, technological despotism to mould man to the purposes of the totalitarian state. In this revolution, as in others before, the contemporary observer is prone to apply his own measure and thus to fall victim to his own distortion.