One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (24 page)

FROM: The pen of your enlightened Chairman Mao Tse-tung.

TO: The Department of Geophysical Research, Peking Academy of Sciences.

Comrades:

Regretfully, and due to its unfortunate exposure, I have had to cancel my brilliant stratagem to destroy the Capitalist West by means of our Great Leap Downward.

However, as I said in my speech of February 27th, 1957, which you no doubt recall, it is “sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of Socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks, or the exertion of tremendous efforts.”

I now propose to approach the problem from another direction. This plan will be known as the Great Leap Inwards. The duty of your Department is to supply me with the precise date, hour, minute and second when I should signal our beloved population of 750,000,000 to jump simultaneously into the Pacific Ocean, thereby causing maximum water-displacement, which will
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