And this is also the best preparation for war. We must carry forward the glorious tradition of "supporting the government and cherishing the people", strengthen the unity between the army and the people, strengthen the building of the militia and the national defense and do a still better job in all our work. For the past three years, it is precisely because the people have supported the army that renegades, enemy agents, absolutely unrepentant persons in power taking the capitalist road and counter-revolutionaries have failed in their attempts to undermine this great people's army of ours.

The People's Liberation Army is the mighty pilar of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Chairman Mao has pointed out many times: From the Marist point of view the main component of the state is the army. The Chinese People's Liberation Army personally founded and led by Chairman Mao is the army of the workers and peasants, the army of the proletariat. It has performed great historic feats in the struggle for overthrowing the three great mountains of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism, and in the struggles for defending the motherland, for resisting U.S. aggression and aiding Korea and for smashing aggression by imperialism, revisionism and the reactionaries.

In the Great Proletarian Ciltural Revolution, large numbers of commanders and fighters have taken part in the work of "three supports and two militaries" (i.e., support industry, support agriculture, support the broad masses of the Left, military control, political and military training) and representatives of the army have taken part in the three-in-one combination; they have tempered themselves in the class struggle, strengthened their ties with the masses, promoted the ideological revolutionizing of the army, made new contributions to the people.