revealing翻译原文

2021年1月20日发(作者：财路)
一：


Effect of the great depression

It is difficult to measure the human cost of the Great Depression. The
material hardships were bad enough. Men and women lived on lean-tos made
of scrap wood and metal, and families went without meat and fresh vegetables
for months, existing on a diet of soup and beans. The psychological burden
was even greater: Americans suffered through year after year of grinding
poverty with no letup in sight. The unemployed stood in line for hours waiting
for relief checks, veterans sold apples or pencils on street corners, their
manhood ---once prized sp highly by the nation ---now in question. People left
the city for the countryside but found no salvation on the farm. Crops rotted in
the fields because prices were too low to make harvesting worthwhile; sheriffs
fended off angry crowds as banks foreclosed long overdue mortgages on once
prosperous farms.

Few escaped the suffering. African Americans who had left the poverty of
the rural South for factory jobs in the North were among the first to be laid off.
Mexican Americans, who had flowed in to replace European immigrants, met
with competition from angry citizens, now willing to do stoop labor in the fields
and work as track layers on the railroads. Immigration officials used
technicalities to halt the flow across the Rio Drande and even to reverse it;
nearly a half million Mexicans were deported in the 1930s, including families
with children born in the United States.

The poor --- black, brown, and white---survived because they knew better
than most Americans how to exist in poverty. They stayed in bed in cold
weather, both to keep warm and to avoid unnecessary burning up of calories;
they patched their shoes with pieces of rubber from discarded tires, heated
only the kitchens of their homes, and ate scraps of food that others would
reject.

The middle class, which had always lived with high expectations, was hit
hard. Professionals and white-collar workers refused to ask for charity even
while their families went without food one New York dentist and his wife
turned on the gas and left a note saying ,
we are forced to accept relief money .
mortgage payments lost their homes and them faced eviction when they could
not pay the rent. Health care declined. Middle-class people stopped going to
doctors and dentists regularly, unable to make the required cash payment in
advance for services rendered.

Even the well-to-do were affected, giving up many of their former luxuries
and weighed down with guilt as they watched former friends and business
associations join the ranks of the impoverished.
the Depression
dropped out of college.

Many Americans sought escape in movement. Men, boys, and some
women, rode the rails in search of jobs, hopping freights to move south in the
winter or west in the summer. On the Missouri Pacific alone, the number of
vagrants increased form just over 13,000 in 1929 to nearly 200,000 in 1931.
One town in the Southwest hired special policemen to keep vagrants form
leaving the box cars. Those who became tramps had to keep on the move, but
they did find a sense of community in the hobo jungles that sprang up along
the major railroad routes . Here a man could find a place to eat and sleep, and
people with whom to share his misery . Louis Banks, a black veteran , told
interviewer Studs Terkel what these informal camps ere like:

Black and white, it didn't make any difference who you are,'cause
everybody was poor. All friendly, sleep in a jungle .We used to take a big pot
and cook food, cabbage, meat and beans all together.

We all set together,
we made a tent. Twenty-five or thirty would be out on the side of the rail, white
and colored: They didn't have no mothers or sisters ,they didn't have no
home ,they were dirty ,they had overalls on, they didn't have no food ,they
didn't have anything.
二：
The U.S.-Europe Divide
President Bush is making a noble effort to pull together the fraying alliance, but the
fact is Europeans and Americans no longer share a common view of the world. On the
all- important question of power-the utility of power, the morality of power- they have
parted ways. Europeans believe they are moving beyond power into a self-contained
world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. Europe itself
has entered a post-
historical paradise, the realization of Immanuel Kant’s “Perpetual
Peace”. The United States, meanwhile, remains mired
in history, exercising power in
the
anarchic
Hobbesian
world
where
international
rules
are
unreliable
and
where
security and the promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of
military
might.
This
is
why,
on
major
strategic
and
international
questions
today,
Americans
are
from
Mars
and
Europeans
are
from
Venus:
They
agree
on
little
and
understand on another less and less.
Why
the
divergent
perspectives?
They
are
not
deeply
rooted
in
national
character.
Two
centuries
ago
American
statesmen
appealed
to
international
law
and
disdained
“power
politics”,
while
European
statesmen
spoke
of
raison
d’etat.
Europeans
marched off to World War I believing in power and martial glory, while Americans
talked of arbitration treaties. Now the roles have reversed.
Part of the reason is the enormous shift in the balance of power. The gap between the
United
States
and
Europe
opened
wide
as
a
result
of
World
War
II
and
has
grown
wider
in
the
past
decade.
America’s
unparalleled
military
strength
has
predict
ably
given
it
a
greater
propensity
to
use
force
and
a
more
confident
belief
in
the
moral
legitimacy of power. Europe’s relative weakness has produced an aversion to force as
a tool of international relations. Europeans today, like Americans 200 years ago, seek
a world where strength doesn’t matter so much, where unilateral action by powerful is
forbidden, where all nations regardless of their strength are protected by commonly
agreed rules of behavior. For many Europeans, progress toward such a world is more
important than eliminating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein
For Americans, the
Hobbesian
world
is
not
so
frightening.
Unilateralism
is
naturally
more
attractive
to
those
with
the
capacity
to
act
unilaterally.
And
international
law
constrains
strong
nations more than it does the weak. Because of the disparity of power, Americans and
Europeans even view threats differently. A person armed only with a knife may decide
that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger
—
trying to kill the bear is riskier
than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. But a person with a rifle will likely
make a different calculation: Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn’t
need to? Americans could imagine successfully invading Iraq and toppling Saddam,
and therefore more than 70 percent of Americans favored the action. Europeans, not
surprisingly, found it unimaginable and frightening.
But it is not just the power gap that divides Americans and Europeans today. Europe’s
relatively
pacific
strategic
culture
is
also
the
product
of
its
war-like
past.
The
European Union is a monument to Europe’s rejection of the old power politics. Who
knows
the
dangers
of
Machtpolitik
better
than
a
French
or
German
citizen?
As
the
British diplomat Robert Cooper recently noted,
Europe today lives in a “postmodern
system” that does not rest on a balance of power but on “the rejection of force” and on
“self
-
enforced
rules
of
behavior”.
Raison
d’etat
has
been
“replaced
by
a
moral
consciousness”.

American
realists
may
scoff,
but
within
the
confines
of
Europe
the
brutal
laws
of
power politics really have been repeated. Since
World
War
II European
society
has
been
shaped
not
by
the
traditional
exercise
of
power
but
by
the
unfolding
of
a
geopolitical miracle: The German lion has lain down with the French lamb. The new
Europe has succeeded not by balancing power but by transcending power. And now
Europeans
have
become
evangelists
for
their
“postmodern”
gospel
of
international
relations. The application of the European miracle to the rest of the world has become
Europe’s new mission.

This
has
put
Europeans
and
Americans
on
a
collision
course.
Americans
have
not
lived the European miracle. They have no experience of promoting ideals and order
successfully
without
power.
Their
memory
of
the
post
50
years
is
of
a
Cold
War
struggle
that
was
eventually
won
by
strength
and
determination,
not
by
the
spontaneous triumph of moral consciousness. As good children of the Enlightenment,
Americans believe in human perfectibility. But Americans from Donald Rumsield to
Madeleline Albright also believe that global security and a liberal order depend on the
United
States
—

that
“indispensable
nation”
—
wielding
its
power
in
the
dangerous,
Hobbesian world that still flourishes, at least outside Europe.
There
is
no
sure
cure
for
this
transatlantic
divergence.
Those
on
both
sides
of
the
Allantic who implored Europe to increase its military capabilities are right
—
though a
Europe that has so little belief in power is unlikely to spend the money to get more of
it. Those who ask Americans to
show some generosity of spirit, what
the Founders
called “a decent respect for the opinion of mankind”, are also right. The United States
should honor multilateralism and the rule of law when it can, and try to build some
international
political
capital
for
those
times
when
unilateral
action
is
unavoidable.
But even if it does, will Europeans show the necessary tolerance for American power?

三：

The Origin of Valentine
’
s Day



Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are
exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is
this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday? The history of
Valentine's Day -- and its patron saint -- is shrouded in mystery. But we do
know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as
we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman
tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with
this ancient rite?


One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the
third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men
made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage
f
or young men -- his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the
decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.
When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help
Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.



According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting
himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl --
who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement.
Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your
Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the
Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a
sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It's no surprise that by
the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.
While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to
commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial -- which probably
occurred around 270 A.D -- others claim that the Christian church may have decided
to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to 'christianize'
celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the
official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were
ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat
called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February,
February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture,
as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. To begin the festival,
members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave
where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have
been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for
fertility, and a dog, for purification. The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips,
dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both
women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman