xvni THE RED ARMY MARCHES 375
quartered in two small houses. We were welcomed
by their commander—a youthful commissar in a
black uniform who might have been a few years
over thirty. He was the oldest man in the party; the
average age of the rest, I calculated, was about
seventeen.
They clustered around us like schoolboys—these
youths who were more heavily armed than any
Government troops I had ever seen. The cleanest
thing about most of them was their revolvers, but
all had the glow of health, and a steady look about
the eyes that would have marked them out from
any other group of Chinese of their age. A boy of
thirteen, with an enormous hand-grenade bumping
from his belt, brought us tea, laughing all the time
at the strange appearance of the first foreigner he had
seen.
There is something the Red Army does to its
young recruits. All who have come in contact with
the Chinese "Reds" (and this includes, in recent
months, a number of American journalists) have
noticed at once the change of personality they put
on with the red star. There is gaiety, comradeship,
a touch of recklessness—for the average age in the
Red Armies is probably under twenty; but there is
also a strength and self-reliance which is not common
among Chinese brought up in the old family tradi-
tions. With this goes an openness of manner that is
curiously Western; the whole personality seems to
come to the surface.
This troop belonged to the Fourth Front Army,
under Hsu Hai-tung; they were comparatively "raw,"
as compared with the veteran troops of Pen Teh-huai
and the First Red Army. But most of these youngsters