xv MASS MEETINGS AND MISSIONARIES 22Q
children stood in little groups on the fringe of the
crowd. I had never seen so many peasants before:
between these loess hills beat the heart of living
China.
No brass-lunged town-crier could have reached
across that crowd: and there were no loud-speakers.
After a brief salutation bawled through a megaphone,
three other platforms were rigged, and the meeting
began. With intervals, and a constant change of
speakers, it continued throughout the whole after-
noon.
Everyone spoke—peasants, soldiers, officers,
officials, school-teachers, school-children. And as
fresh speakers mounted the platforms, fresh con-
tingents of listeners crowded to hear them. The field
took on the appearance of a country fair; on the edge
of the crowd, family groups gathered, and ate food in
the open from field-kitchens and provision stalls. The
theatre was popular at intervals.
A mass meeting of this representative character
had never been held in south Shensi before. To us it
was a revelation of the strength and unity of the
common people. For here the peasants heard their
own problems discussed; the forced levies of rice
for the anti-Red campaigns were condemned, the
iniquitous surtaxes that took their last miserable
savings, the notorious corruption of certain specified
local officials. Many resolutions were passed before
the afternoon drew to an end. And the one slogan
that the hoarse voices took up most insistently, the
shout that raised clenched fists above the shoulders of
the crowd, was "Chung kuojenpu ta chung kuojen!"
—Chinese don't fight against Chinese!
Yet at that very moment Nanking troops were