战前星期天，本文主要内容关键词为：战前论文,星期天论文，此文献不代表本站观点，内容供学术参考，文章仅供参考阅读下载。
On Sunday,in a remote valley in the West of England,where the people are few and scattered and placid（注：那里人烟稀少、人口分散，居民性情温和。）,there was no more sign among them then among the quiet hills of the anxiety that holds the world（注：像在宁静的山中一样，他们中没有任何笼罩着世界的忧心忡忡的迹象。正常语序应为：there was no more sign of the anxiety that holds the world among them than among the quiet hills．）.They had no news and seemed to want none.The postmaster had been ordered to stay all day in his little post-office,and that was something unusual that interested them,but only because it affected the postmaster（注：那是令他们感兴趣的一件不寻常的事，但也只是因为它影响到邮政所长而已。）.
It rained in the morning,but the afternoon was clear and glorious and shining,with all the distances revealed far into the heart of Wales and to the high ridges of the Welsh mountains.The cottages of that valley are not gathered into villages,but two or three together or lonely among their fruittrees on the hillside; and the cottagers,who are always courteous and friendly,said a word or two as one went by,but just what they would have said on any other day and without any question about the war.Indeed,they seemed to know,or to wish to know,as little about that as the earth itself,which beautiful there at any time,seemed that afternoon to wear an extreme and pathetic beauty（注：事实上，他们与大地一样，似乎对战争知之甚少，或是不想知道。这片土地任何时候都景色秀丽，但那天下午却呈现出一种极度的凄美。）.The country,more than any other in England,has the secret of peace.It is not wild,though it looks into the wildness of Wales; but all its cultivation,its orchards and hopyards and fields of golden wheat,seem to have the beauty of time upon them,as if men there had long lived happily upon the earth with no desire for change nor fear of decay（注：既没有要求改变的欲望，也没有对于衰亡的恐惧。）.It is not the sad beauty of a past cut off from the present,but a mellowness that the present inherits from the past（注：这不是与现今截然断开的过去所拥的凄清美，而是现在从往昔继承而来的那份丰盈美。）; and in the mellowness all the hillside seems a garden to the spacious farmhouses and the little cottages; each led up to by its own narrow,flowery lane.There the meadows are all lawns with the lustrous green of spring（注：春日的丰茂葱绿。） even in August,and often over-shadowed by old fruit-trees -- cherry,or apple,or pear; and on Sunday after the rain there was an April glory and freshness.added to the quiet of the later summer（注：晚夏的静谧中另有一番4月的灿烂与清新。）.
Nowhere and never in the world can there have been a deeper peace; and the bells from the little red church down by the river seemed to be the music of it,as the song of birds is the music of spring.There one saw how beautiful the life of man can be,and how men by the innocent labours of many generations can give to the earth a beauty it has never known in its wildness.And all this peace,one knew,was threatened; and the threat came into one's mind as if it were a soundless message from over the great east-ward plain; and with it the beauty seemed unsubstantial and strange（注：有了它，美景显得既虚幻又陌生it指战争的威胁。）,as if it were sinking away into the past,as if it were only a memory of childhood.
So it is always when the mind is troubled among happy things,and then one almost wishes they could share one's troubles and become more real with it.It seemed on that Sunday that a golden age had lasted till yesterday,and that the earth had still to learn the news of its ending.and this change had come,not by the will of Good,not even by the will of man,but because some few men far away were afraid to be open and generous with each other（注：因为远方有那么少数的一些人不敢对人坦诚相待、宽大为怀。）.There was a power in their hands so great that it frightened them.There was a spring that they knew they must not touch,and,like mischievous and nervous children,they had touched it at last,and now all the world was to suffer for their mischief.
So the next morning one saw a reservist in his uniform（注：穿着制服的预备役军人。） saying goodbye to his wife and children at his cottage-gate and then walking up the hill that leads out of the valley with a cheerful smile still on his face.There was the first open sign of trouble,a very little one,and he made the least of it（注：他尽量不声张。）; and,after all,this valley is very far from any possible war,and its harvest and its vintage of perry and cider will surely be gathered in peace.
But what happiness can there be in that peace,or what security in the mind of man,when the madness of war is let loose in so many other valleys? Here there is beauty inherited from the past,and added to the earth by man's will; but the men here are of the same nature and subject to the same madness as those who are gathering to fight on the frontiers（注：这里的居民与那些集结在边境准备厮杀的士兵一样，具有同样的人性，又被同样的疯狂所驱使。）.We are all men with the same power of making and destroying,with the same divine foresight mocked by the same animal blindness（注：具有同样非凡、却被同样的盲目兽性嘲弄的预知能力。）.We ourselves may not be in fault today,but it is human beings in no way different from us（注：与我们毫无二致的人类。） who are doing what we abhor and they abhor even while they do it.There is a fate,coming from the beast in our own past,that the present man in us has not yet mastered,and for the moment that fate seems a malignity in the nature of the universe（注：宇宙本性中的邪恶之处。） that mocks us even in the beauty of these lonely hills.But it is not so,for we are not separate and indifferent like the beasts; and if one nation for the moment forgets our common humanity and its future then another must take over that sacred charge and guard it without hatred or fear until the madness is passed.May that be our task now,so that we may wage war only for the future peace of the world and with the lasting courage that needs no stimulant of hate（注：但愿它成为我们现时的任务，我们便可以带着无须仇恨催动的永恒勇气，只为世界未来的和平而战。that指捍卫我们共同的人性和人类的前途。）