第一次世界大战

　　2015复习正是强化复习阶段，在考研英语中占了40分，所以考研英语阅读是英语科目中重要的一项。名师老师曾建议过考研生需要坚持每天泛读10-15分钟的英文原刊。强烈推荐了杂志《经济学人》.杂志中的文章也是考研英语的主要材料来源.希望考研考生认真阅读，快速提高考研英语阅读水平。 　　The First World War 　　第一次世界大战 　　Look back with angst 　　再回首 忧心忡忡 　　A century on, there are uncomfortable parallelswith the era that led to the outbreak of the FirstWorld War 　　一战过去已有一个世纪，回望一战却发现与当今世界有不少相似之处，令人不安。 　　AS NEW YEAR approached a century ago, most people in the West looked forward to 1914with optimism. 　　一个世纪前，同是新年将至，许多西方人对即将来临的1914年充满期待。 　　The hundred years since the Battle of Waterloo had not been entirely free of disastertherehad been a horrific civil war in America, some regional scraps in Asia, the Franco-Prussianwar and the occasional colonial calamity. 　　滑铁卢战役百年来，世界仍未完全摆脱灾难美国爆发严重内战，亚洲部分地区变成废墟，普法战争爆发，殖民地灾难时有发生。 　　But continental peace had prevailed. 　　不过，各大陆整体来说还是和平的。 　　Globalisation and new technologythe telephone, the steamship, the trainhad knitted theworld together. 　　全球化进程加深，加上电话，蒸汽船，火车等新技术应运而生，世界各国紧密相连。 　　John Maynard Keynes has a wonderful image of a Londoner of the time, sipping his morningtea in bed and ordering the various products of the whole earth to his door, much as hemight today from Amazonand regarding this state of affairs as normal, certain andpermanent, except in the direction of further improvement. 　　凯恩斯精彩描绘了当时伦敦人的生活情景，躺在床上啧吧啧吧喝着早茶，订购来自全世界各地的各种产品还送货上门，就像现在从亚马逊上购物一样他们认为这种状态正常，必然且不变，要变也只会变更好。 　　The Londoner might well have had by his bedside table a copy of Norman Angell s The GreatIllusion, which laid out the argument thatEurope s economies were so integrated that war wasfutile. 　　他们的床头桌上可能还放着一本诺曼?安吉尔的《大幻觉》，例举种种说明欧洲经济高度一体化，战争无用。 　　Yet within a year, the world was embroiled in a most horrific war. 　　然而不到一年，整个世界卷入了一场极端可怕的战争。 　　It cost 9m livesand many times that number if you take in the various geopolitical tragediesit left in its wake, from the creation of Soviet Russia to the too-casual redrawing of MiddleEastern borders and the rise of Hitler. 　　一战中，900万人丧生;一战后，苏联建国，中东地区的国家边界被草率划定，希特勒迅速崛起，若把这些尾随一战而来的地缘政治惨剧都囊括在内的话，死亡人数可就要翻好几番了。 　　From being a friend of freedom, technology became an agent of brutality, slaughtering andenslaving people on a terrifying scale. 　　而科技，从自由之友摇身变成暴行的代理人，无数人因此遭屠杀、被奴役。 　　Barriers shot up around the world, especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s. 　　世界各地壁垒林立，在20世纪30年代经济大萧条时期更是如此。 　　The globalisation that Keynes s Londoner enjoyed only really began again in 1945or, somewould argue, in the 1990s, when eastern Europe was set free and Deng Xiaoping s reformsbegan bearing fruit in China. 　　凯恩斯笔下伦敦人享受的全球化真正再次出现已是1945年，或是有人认为的20世纪90年代，那时西欧解放，邓小平在中国的改革开放已初见成效。 　　The driving force behind the catastrophe that befell the world a century ago wasGermany,which was looking for an excuse for a war that would allow it to dominate Europe. 　　德国一直伺机寻找借口发动战争欲征服欧洲，是百年前那场大灾难的助推手。 　　Yet complacency was also to blame. 　　然而他国的骄傲自满也难辞其咎。 　　Too many people, inLondon,Parisand elsewhere, believed that because BritainandGermanywere each other s biggest trading partners after America and there was therefore noeconomic logic behind the conflict, war would not happen. 　　不论是在伦敦、巴黎还是其它地方，有太多人认为英德两国互为仅次于美国的第二大贸易合作伙伴，也就不会有经济方面的纠纷，战争也就不会爆发。 　　As Keynes put it, The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and culturalrivalries, of monopolies, restrictions and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to thisparadise, were little more than the amusements ofdaily newspaper. 　　正如凯恩斯所言，军国主义和帝国主义，种族和文化对抗，贸易垄断、限制和排外等种种计划和政策正如失乐园的撒旦化身大蛇一样，然而在伦敦人看来，不过是日报上的娱乐资讯罢了。 　　Playing your role 　　演好角色 　　Humanity can learn from its mistakes, as shown by the response to the economic crisis,which was shaped by a determination to avoid the mistakes that led to the Depression. 　　从经济危机的应对便可看出，人类能从错误中吸取教训，尤其当人们下定决心不再重蹈经济大萧条的覆辙时。 　　The memory of the horrors unleashed a century ago makes leaders less likely to stumbleinto war today. 　　回忆起百年前这场恐怕的战争，各国便不太可能再度卷入战争。 　　So does the explosive power of a modern conflagration: the threat of a nuclear holocaust isa powerful brake on the reckless escalation that dispatched a generation of young meninto the trenches. 　　同样，想到现代冲突带来的爆炸威力：核毁灭的威胁有力的刹住了不顾后果的冲突升级，新一代年轻男子也就无需匍匐战壕了。 　　Yet the parallels remain troubling. 　　然而当今世界与一战的诸多相似之处，仍令人担忧。 　　The United StatesisBritain, the superpower on the wane, unable to guarantee globalsecurity. 　　现在的美国类似当时的英国，同是月满正亏的超级大国，同样无法保证全球安全。 　　Its main trading partner,China, plays the part of Germany, a new economic power bristlingwith nationalist indignation and building up its armed forces rapidly. 　　中国，美国最主要的贸易伙伴，则类似当时的德国，同为新兴经济力量，同样充斥着愤懑的民族主义者，同样在迅速地构建军事力量。 　　Modern Japan is France, an ally of the retreating hegemon and a declining regional power. 　　日本就如当时的法国，同为衰退霸权国的同盟者，在地区的影响力同样下降。 　　The parallels are not exactChina lacks the Kaiser s territorial ambitions and America sdefence budget is far more impressive than imperial Britain sbut they are close enoughfor the world to be on its guard. 　　不过，并无完全相同，中国缺少德国扩张的野心，美国的国防预算也远强于那时的英帝国。然而，这种高度相似已足以令世界提高警惕。 　　Which, by and large, it is not. 　　但总体上并未引起世界各国的重视。 　　The most troubling similarity between 1914 and now is complacency. 　　自满才是1914年与当今世界最令人担忧的相似点。 　　Business people today are like businesspeople then: too busy making money to notice theserpents flickering at the bottom of their trading screens. 　　商人还像那时的的商人：忙着挣钱，对电子交易屏下若隐若现的撒旦毒蛇浑然不知。