双语+MP3|美国学生世界历史85 短短二十年

85
A Short Twenty Years
短短二十年

     HOW long is a piece of string? That's a silly question and probably would get a silly answer.
     How long is twenty years? That sounds like a silly question too, but it's not as silly as it sounds. To a dog twenty years is a long time, more than a lifetime. To a man, twenty years is not so long. In the history of the world, twenty years is just a tiny moment.
     It was twenty years-twenty years and a few months-between the end of World War I and the start of World War II. Now, twenty years between two huge world wars is a very short time. Most countries had not fully recovered from World War I before World War II began. This chapter is about those twenty years of peace.
     When World War I ended, people everywhere hoped and prayed that there would be no more wars. World War I was even called the "War to End All Wars." When World War I ended, the leaders of the Allied governments met at Versailles in France and drew up a peace treaty known as the Treaty of Versailles.
     The treaty said that Germany should have a little army big enough to keep order in Germany but not big enough to make war with. There were to be no army or navy airplanes in Germany, no army tanks, and no submarines. The treaty also said that Germany would have to pay large sums of money to the Allied nations to help pay for what it had destroyed in the war.
     Then to try to keep the peace, a League of Nations was set up with headquarters in Switzerland. The greatest invention I can think of would be some thing or some way to keep wars from starting. People hoped the League of Nations would be the great invention that would keep wars from breaking out. Each country was to send men to act for that country at the meetings of the League. When war threatened, the League would warn the warlike country and ask it to bring its case before the judges of a World Court and let them settle the trouble there instead of having the question decided by war.
     The League of Nations tried, but it didn't succeed. There were several reasons for this. One was that the United States decided not to join the League. The United States did not want the League to be able to say when the United States would have to send soldiers to help stop another country from making war, in case war started in spite of the World Court's decision.
     Another reason that the League didn't work was that there was no way it could make nations do what it told them. It could only ask that the nations do what it wanted them to do. It could not make them do it.
     A sign may say "KEEP OFF THE GRASS." If you walk on the grass in spite of the sign, the sign can't stop you, but a nearby policeman can. The League of Nations was like a "KEEP OFF" sign without a policeman.
     Never before, I suppose, did so many people hope and pray that wars could be stopped. Other ways to stop wars, besides the League of Nations, were tried, too.
     People thought that if nations were not so heavily armed, it might help. The countries with the biggest navies held a conference in Washington and agreed to limit the size of their navies. People thought, too, that if all the countries of the world solemnly promised not to make war, it might help. So an anti-war treaty was made. More than fifty countries signed this treaty and promised to give up war.
     Yet wars did break out again, in spite of the League of Nations, in spite of limiting the navies, in spite of the anti-war treaty. There was no force in the world that could be used to stop a war when one started. When a building catches fire in a city, someone calls the fire department. Firemen come rushing with their fire engines and put the fire out. When a fist fight starts in a city, someone calls the police department, and policemen are sent to stop the fight.
     But there was no fire department or police department to put out a war when it started. Before long, wars started again. Even the twenty years of peace between world wars were not free from wars. The first new war was in Asia.
     After Commodore Perry had opened Japan to foreign trade, Japan had quickly become an industrial nation. Japan had learned the bad things as well as the good things of our civilization. It had built a large war-making modern army and navy. In 1931, Japan used that army to take the northern part of China, called Manchuria, away from China. Later the Japanese started to take over all of China. Of course the Chinese fought to keep the Japanese from doing this. Other countries wrote letters to the Japanese government saying they did not like to see Japan using its armies against China.
     "What about that anti-war treaty you signed?" these other countries said to Japan.
     But as no other country tried to stop the Japanese by force, the war continued. The Chinese fought hard, but they had very few army supplies and soon Japan had taken all the eastern coast of China and driven the Chinese government into western China. The League of Nations didn't know how to stop the war, and this war was still going on when World War II started.
     While this was going on in Asia, another war had started in Africa. The Italian army marched into the ancient country of Ethiopia. Ethiopia was the same country as the ancient Axum. Do you remember Axum's famous king, who became a Christian in 350 A.D.? That's right. His name was Ezana.
     Since the time of King Ezana, Ethiopia had always been independent and ruled by a king. Italy had tried to conquer Ethiopia fifty years earlier and had failed. Now the Ethiopian king's army had a few guns, but his soldiers were mostly armed with spears. The Italian army used airplanes, bombs, artillery, and even poison gas, and so it soon conquered the Ethiopians.
     Then a civil war broke out in Spain, in Europe. One set of Spaniards fought another set of Spaniards about which group would govern Spain. Instead of trying to stop the war, Russia sent soldiers to help one side, and Germany and Italy sent soldiers to help the other side.
     One, two, three-war, war, war-China, Ethiopia, Spain. The League of Nations hadn't been able to stop the Japanese from attacking China. It couldn't keep Italy from taking Ethiopia though it tried to punish Italy by stopping other countries from sending supplies to Italy. But Italy took Ethiopia anyway. The League had not stopped the war in Spain. As an invention for stopping wars, the League of Nations hadn't worked.

President Roosevelt about to address the nation on the radio
罗斯福总统正要发表全国广播讲话
     There were other important happenings besides wars in this twenty years of peace. For the first ten years of the peace, people were busy making and selling and buying and using the peacetime things that they could not enjoy while World War I was going on. In the United States, almost everyone who wanted to work could get a job. Factories were busy turning out everything from automobiles to clothes-pins. Business was booming. People were making money and spending it. Many people thought these booming times would go on forever. But they were wrong. The boom didn't last. What businessmen call a depression followed the boom. Good jobs became scarce. Millions of people could not get jobs at all. Factories could not sell as many things as they could make. Many factories had to close. This caused more people to be without jobs. How can a man or woman get money to buy food or clothes or anything if he or she can't find a job? Thus the last ten years of the peace were a troubled time of depression.
     The depression had been going on for several years and people were getting desperate when a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected. He became president just when the depression seemed hopeless, when everything looked black and gloomy. People were afraid of what would happen to them. The first day he was president, Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Roosevelt seemed to know what to do. He asked that laws be passed so money could be given to people who could not find work.
     Then the government hired thousands of people to work in any way they could. Artists painted pictures, musicians gave concerts, writers wrote books, laborers raked leaves, dug ditches, built parks, and did many other kinds of work; and all these people were paid for their work by the government. Roosevelt tried out many new ways of running the country. His way of being president became known as the New Deal.
     Roosevelt helped the poor people at the expense of the rich people. And yet Roosevelt's family had always been rich, and Roosevelt himself was a rich man. When he was thirty nine years old, he had become ill with polio that left him with his legs paralyzed. After that he could stand only with the help of canes and with steel braces on his legs. He couldn't walk at all but could take a few steps leaning on someone's arm. But in spite of such a handicap, Roosevelt twice became governor of the state of New York and at last president of the United States.
     A president of the United States is elected for four years. Every four years the people vote for their next president. Roosevelt was elected for a second four years. The Father of his Country, George Washington, had been made president for two terms of four years each. Washington had refused to be elected for three terms. Since George Washington had refused a third term, no president had ever been elected three times. But when Franklin D. Roosevelt's eight years were up, he became president a third time-for four more years, four years longer than any president had been before. And when twelve years were up, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president a fourth time. That would have made sixteen years as president for Roosevelt if he had not died before his fourth term was over. Roosevelt was president from 1933 to 1945. No other man had been president more than eight years, nor been elected more than twice. Roosevelt had been elected four times in a row.
     Roosevelt wasn't able to stop the depression right away. He did show people that everything wasn't hopeless, and he did keep people from going hungry and perhaps starving. But it cost the American people millions and millions of dollars.
     Before Roosevelt's third term had begun, the twenty years of peace were over. World War II had started in Europe. The people of the United States hoped their country could keep out of this war. But Roosevelt felt that America might be attacked even though the war was far away across the ocean. He led the country into getting ready for war in case it came to us. And when we were attacked, Roosevelt led the country through the war to victory against Germany, Japan, and Italy. He died a month before the Germans surrendered.
     Twenty years of peace-twenty years of an invention-to-stop-wars that didn't work-a boom and depression, and then the biggest and worst war of all. How long is twenty years? It was a short time indeed between two world wars.