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西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033835]
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23 民主的力量
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希特勒的胜利进一步压缩了世界上民主政权的生存空间。人们自然要思考民主政权是否有希望在世界上任何地方都生存下来。然而，独裁政权横扫世界，给人带来的印象不过是海市蜃楼。事实上，至少现存老牌民主政权经历了战争的冲击、革命的洗礼和重度财政紊乱的侵扰。当前独裁政权覆盖范围颇广，实则扩张程度相比战争打响前没有增长多少。仅有一个重要国家是例外，那就是意大利。意大利近来才完成国家统一，成为强权大国，而且就实施代议制政府而言，意大利经验最少。至于其余独裁政权，可以说过去十五年法西斯和共产主义仅在没有建立民主制度的地区取得了胜利。
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列宁和斯大林在俄国的独裁就是建立在沙皇政府崩溃的基础上。日本也只是粗略模仿了民主政体的形式，就止步不前了。而中欧和巴尔干人民的专政统治者们连一代人的政治自由和政治责任都不清楚。希特勒所推翻的共和国自诞生以来就半死不活。但是，如斯堪的纳维亚、瑞士、法国、英国及其自治领和美国，这些老牌民主政权尚存：那些了解十九世纪民主、生活在自由主义后续影响下的人们，并没有陷入混乱之中，亦没有向独裁者卑躬屈膝。
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有位智者曾指出，革命并不推翻政府；而是政府崩溃，革命随之而来。近十五年历史充分证明了上述概括。克伦斯基没有推翻沙皇。克伦斯基欲在沙皇政权的废墟上重组政府，他失败了，而列宁组建了政府。
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德国那些拥护共和的革命党人没有推翻霍亨索伦王朝，而是德国皇帝出逃，致使其政府意志消沉。魏玛体系未能给德国带来一个政府。经过一系列有始无终的选举，德国人证明了自己还未学会如何高效运作代议制政府。也就是在此期间，希特勒掌握了权利。
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过去的数年危机让民主政权间的显著区别得以显现：有些有能力承受，有些则无力应对。低效民主政权在危机风暴中解体；稳固的民主政权则能在危机时刻团结力量，集中权力，消除危机后能够放松下来。首先要列举的是1926年的法国，其伟大的民主政权展现了上述能力。面对看似失控的通货膨胀，政权集中至普恩加莱的手上，后来秩序恢复了。能展现如此能力的第二个民主政权是英国的政权。1931年，面对可能一触即溃的局面，英国人集中权力，控制住了险情。第三个民主政权则是我们自己的政权，过去几周里它证明了自己的能力。
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把1926年法国、1931年英国和1933年美国的国家集权视为席卷亚欧独裁大潮的一部分，这样的观点完全是误解。上述三国所发生的情况和有些国家恰恰相反，三个国家的统治阶层并没有崩溃、变为独裁。法国、英国还有我们国家能强化民主，因为民主政权一直以来非常牢固。被法西斯推翻的民主政权，则一向脆弱不堪。
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所以，我们理应相信，只要在一个民族传统里，民主根深蒂固，其政府可能是众多政府形式中最稳固，最能久经考验的一种。我们一代人的经历似乎从根本上证明了：民主政府的建立很不容易，要不断地去经历、去吸取经验，一旦民主政府建立，它将能够承受暴风骤雨。
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（罗选民 译）
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西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033836]
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24 TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION
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By Charles A. Beard
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TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION, by Charles A. Beard, in his Whither Mankind? , Longmans, Green and Company, publishers;reprinted in Lippmann and Nevins’s A Modern Reader , Boston, D.C.Heath and Company, 1936, pp. 166, 167.
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Charles A. Beard （1874-1948）, American historian, taught politics at Columbia University from 1907 to 1917. He went to Japan in 1922 to direct the Institute for Municipal Research in Tokyo, and next year was adviser to Viscount Goto, Japanese Minister for Home Affairs, after the great earthquake. Thereafter he devoted himself to writing and to activity in the affairs of civic and learned organizations.
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What is called Western or modern civilization by way of contrast with the civilization of the Orient or medieval times is at bottom a civilization that rests upon machinery and science as distinguished from one founded upon agriculture or handicraft commerce. It is in reality a technological civilization. It is only about two hundred years old, and, far from shrinking in its influence, is steadily extending its area into agriculture as well as handicrafts. If the records of patent offices, the statistics of production, and the reports of laboratories furnish evidence worthy of credence, technological civilization, instead of showing signs of contraction, threatens to overcome and transform the whole globe.
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Considered with respect to its intrinsic nature, technological civilization presents certain precise characteristics. It rests fundamentally on power-driven machinery which transcends the physical limits of its human directors, multiplying indefinitely the capacity for the production of goods. Science in all its branches—physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology—is the servant and upholder of this system. The day of crude invention being almost over, continuous research in the natural sciences is absolutely necessary to the extension of the machine and its market, thus forcing continuously the creation of new goods, new processes, and new modes of life. As the money for learning comes in increasing proportions from taxes on industry and gifts by the captains of capitalism, a steady growth in scientific endowments is to be expected, and the scientific curiosity thus aroused and stimulated will hardly fail to expand—and to invade all fields of thought with a technique of ever-refining subtlety. Affording the demand for the output of industry are the vast populations of the globe; hence mass production and marketing are inevitable concomitants of the machine routine.
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For the present, machine civilization is associated with capitalism, under which large-scale production has risen to its present stage, but machine civilization is by no means synonymous with capitalism—that ever-changing system of exploitation. While the acquisitive instinct of the capitalist who builds factories and starts mass production is particularly emphasized by economists and is, no doubt, a factor of immense moment, it must not be forgotten that the acquisitive passion of the earth’s multitudes for the goods, the comforts, and the securities of the classes is an equal, if not a more important, force, and in any case is likely to survive capitalism as we know it. Few choose nakedness when they can be clothed, the frosts of winter when they can be warm, or the misery of bacterial diseases when sanitation is offered to them. In fact, the ascetics and flagellants of the world belong nowhere in the main stream of civilization—and are of dubious utility and service in any civilization.
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Though machine civilization has here been treated as if it were an order, it in fact differs from all others in that it is highly dynamic, containing within itself the seeds of constant reconstruction. Everywhere agricultural civilizations of the pre-machine age have changed only slowly with the fluctuations of markets, the fortunes of governments, and the vicissitudes of knowledge, keeping their basic institutions intact from century to century. Pre-machine urban civilizations have likewise retained their essential characteristics through long lapses of time. But machine civilization based on technology, science, invention, and expanding markets must of necessity change—and rapidly. The order of steam is hardly established before electricity invades it; electricity hardly gains a fair start before the internal combustion engine overtakes it. There has never been anywhere in the world any order comparable with it, and all analogies drawn from the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and the Orient are utterly inapplicable to its potentialities, offering no revelations as to its future.
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Notes
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technological civilization, a civilization that rests upon machinery, upon the industrial arts.
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patent offices, the offices from which patents are issued. A patent is a government grant conferring to the inventor the exclusive privilege of making or selling a new invention.
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credence, belief.
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intrinsic nature, nature of the thing in and of itself naturally; inherent nature; essential nature.
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concomitants, accompanying things; things that go along together with.