17. an editorial in the Liberation Army Journal
 on 12 January declared that the new body would open
 "ferocious fire" on the "handful" in power within the
 armed forces who had taken the "capitalist road."
 The Army journal reaffirmed the assertion made in People's
 Daily and Red Flag on 11 January that the Cultural Revolution
 had been "pushed" to a new stage by recent events and
 reminded readers that the army is the "mainstay of the proletarian
 dictatorship"--i.e., the chief instrument of
 domestic controls. According to poster reports, Lin Piao
 made a speech before the Cultural Revolution Group a few
 days earlier in which he declared that the country was
 in a "state of civil war."
 18. The scope and nature of the opposition in the
 military leadership is suggested by charges surfaced several
 days after the reorganization of the army purge
 machinery. Posters put up on 15 January charged that
 important party and military leaders had been involved
 in a coup plot hatched by Ho Lung in February 1966. Ho,
 a marshal until ranks were abolished in 1965 and a member
 of the military affairs committee of the central
 committee, was said to have headed a group which included
 "many" military leaders from the general staff,
 the air force, navy, and the Peking and Chengtu Military
 regions; 19 were eventually identified by name.
 19. The charge that plotting of some kind had been going
 on among the military is credible, and involvement of
 officers in the Chengtu Military Region--the stronghold
 of Southwest Bureau chief Li Ching-chuan-and the key
 Peking Military Region makes sense. It seems unlikely,
 however, that the details of the accusation, particularly
 the date adduced, are accurate. The charges should probably
 best be viewed as symbolic ones, revealing opposition
 but masking its true nature. It would thus appear that
 the crimes were not actually plotting a "palace coup," and
 that the indictment may have been backdated--perhaps in
 order to conceal the fact that Maoist forces were currently
 facing strong opposition within the military leadership
 over the issue of using the armed forces as Mao's
 fist to win quick political victory in the provinces.
 20. The fall of Tao Chu, denounced in poster attacks
 shortly after his last appearance on 29 December,
 is another reflection of the depth of the struggle that
 was under way in December. Until around the middle
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