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发帖数: 684 | 1 这里英文NB哄哄的人很多，看看宋美龄演讲你能听懂多少，读懂多少
你要是连宋美龄讲演的最后那一句都理解不了，我看还是不要浪费时间了。
军版关于宋的谑误太多。
为了忠于历史，我特意上传英文原版影音和英文稿。请注意这个稿子是宋亲自准备的，
是历史上第二个女性有机会在美国国会演讲，也是第一个中国人这样做。这个讲演有重
要的史学意义. 请别忘了，她当时是代表整个中国来作这个讲演的。在抗战的早期，她
多次去前线劳军，冒生命危险,死里逃生，数次受伤。她和努力和民国政府给当代的
PRC留下了许多历史遗产如：联合国发起国，联合国安理会常任理事国，许多世界一流
的科学家和艺术家，包括两弹元勋等。这些历史贡献是超越意识形态的。
这个演讲应该编入所有华人学校的英文教科书。
我个人最喜欢的一句宋美龄语录：We write our destiny; we become what we do.
片断:
录音全版：
2-1:
2-2:
讲演原文(全)
Addresses to the House of Representatives and to the Senate, February 18,
1943.
by Soong May-ling
Mr. Speaker and Members of the congress of the United States:
At any time it would be a privilege for me to address Congress, more
especially this present august body which will have so much to do in shaping
the destiny of the world. In speaking to Congress I am literally speaking
to the American people. The Seventy-seventh Congress and their
representatives, fulfilled the obligations and responsibilities of its trust
by declaring war on the aggressors. That part of the duty of the people’s
representatives was discharged in 1941. The task now confronting you is to
help win the war and to create and uphold a lasting peace which will justify
the sacrifices and sufferings of the victims of aggression.
Before enlarging on this subject, I should like to tell you a little about
my long and vividly interesting trip to your country from my own land which
has bled and borne unflinchingly the burden of war for more than 5 1/2 years
. I shall not dwell, however, upon the part China has played in our united
effort to free mankind from brutality and violence. I shall try to convey to
you, however imperfectly, the impressions gained during the trip.
First of all, I want to assure you that the American people have every right
to be proud of their fighting men in so many parts of the world. I am
particularly thinking of those of your boys in the far-flung, out-of-the-way
stations and areas where life is attended by dreary drabness—this because
their duty is not one of spectacular performance and they are not buoyed up
by excitement of battle. They are called upon, day after colorless day, to
perform routine duties such as safeguarding defenses and preparing for
possible enemy action. It has been said, and I find it true from personal
experience, that it is easier to risk one’s life on the battlefield than it
is to perform customary humble and humdrum duties which, however, are just
as necessary to winning the war. Some of your troops are stationed in
isolated spots quite out of reach of ordinary communications. Some of your
boys have had to fly hundreds of hours over the sea from an improvised
airfield in quests often disappointingly fruitless, of enemy submarines.
They, and others, have to stand the monotony of waiting—just waiting. But,
as I told them, true patriotism lies in possessing the morale and physical
stamina to perform faithfully and conscientiously the daily tasks so that in
the sum total the weakest link is the strongest.
Your soldiers have shown conclusively that they are able stoically to endure
homesickness, the glaring dryness, and scorching heat of the Tropics, and
keep themselves fit and in excellent fighting trim. They are amongst the
unsung heroes of this war, and everything possible to lighten their tedium
and buoy up their morale should be done. That sacred duty is yours. The
American Army is better fed than any army in the world. This does not mean,
however, that they can live indefinitely on canned food without having the
effects tell on them. These admittedly are the minor hardships of war,
especially when we pause to consider that in many parts of the world,
starvation prevails. But peculiarly enough, often times it is not the major
problems of existence which irk a man’s soul; it is rather the pin pricks,
especially those incidental to a life of deadly sameness, with tempers
frayed out and nervous systems torn to shreds.
The second impression of my trip is that America is not only the cauldron of
democracy, but the incubator of democratic principles. At some of the
places I visited, I met the crews of your air bases. There I found first
generation Germans, Italians, Frenchmen, Poles, Czechoslovakians, and other
nationals. Some of them had accents so thick that, if such a thing were
possible, one could not cut them with a butter knife. But there they were—
all Americans, all devoted to the same ideals, all working for the same
cause and united by the same high purpose. No suspicion or rivalry existed
between them. This increased my belief and faith that devotion to common
principles eliminates differences in race, and that identity of ideals is
the strongest possible solvent of racial dissimilarities.
I have reached your country, therefore, with no misgivings, but with my
belief that the American people are building and carrying out a true pattern
of the Nation conceived by your forebears, strengthened and confirmed. You,
as representatives of the American people, have before you the glorious
opportunity of carrying on the pioneer work of your ancestors, beyond the
frontiers of physical and geographical limitations. Their brawn and thews
braved undauntedly almost unbelievable hardships to open up a new continent.
The modern world lauds them for their vigor and intensity of purpose, and
for their accomplishment. Your have today before you the immeasurably
greater opportunity to implement these same ideals and to help bring about
the liberation of man’s spirit in every part of the world. In order to
accomplish this purpose, we of the United Nations must now so prosecute the
war that victory will be ours decisively and with all good speed.
Sun-tse, the well-known Chinese strategist said, “In order to win, know
thyself and thy enemy.” We have also the saying: “It takes little effort
to watch the other fellow carry the load.”
In spite of these teachings from a wise old past, which are shared by every
nation, there has been a tendency to belittle the strength of our opponents.
When Japan thrust total war on China in 1937 military experts of every
nation did not give China even a ghost of a chance. But when Japan failed to
bring China cringing to her knees as she vaunted, the world took solace in
this phenomenon by declaring that they had overestimated Japan’s military
might.
Nevertheless, when the greedy flames of war inexorably spread in the Pacific
following the perfidious attack on Pearl Harbor, Malaya, and lands in and
around the China Sea, and one after another of these places fell, the
pendulum swung to the other extreme. Doubts and fears lifted their ugly
heads and the world began to think that the Japanese were Nietzschean
supermen, superior in intellect and physical prowess, a belief which the
Gobineaus and the Houston Chamberlains and their apt pupils, the Nazi
racists, had propounded about the Nordics.
Again, now the prevailing opinion seems to consider the defeat of the
Japanese as of relative unimportance and that Hitler is our first concern.
This is not borne out by actual facts, nor is it to the interests of the
United Nations as a whole to allow Japan to continue not only as a vital
potential threat but as a waiting sword of Damocles, ready to descend at a
moment’s notice.
Let us not forget that Japan in her occupied areas today has greater
resources at her command than Germany.
Let us not forget that the longer Japan is left in undisputed possession of
these resources, the stronger she must become. Each passing day takes more
toll in lives of both Americans and Chinese.
Let us not forget that the Japanese are an intransigent people.
Let us not forget that during the first 4 1/2 years of total aggression
China has borne Japan’s sadistic fury unaided and alone.
The victories won by the United Sates Navy at Midway and the Coral Sea are
doubtless steps in the right direction—they are merely steps in the right
direction—for the magnificent fight that was waged at Guadalcanal during
the past 6 months attests to the fact that the defeat of the forces of evil
though long and arduous will finally come to pass. For have we not on the
side of righteousness and justice staunch allies in Great Britain, Russia,
and other brave and indomitable peoples? Meanwhile the peril of the Japanese
juggernaut remains. Japanese military might must be decimated as a fighting
force before its threat to civilization is removed.
When the Seventy-seventh Congress declared war against Japan, Germany, and
Italy, Congress for the moment had done its work. It now remains for you,
the present Representatives of the American people, to point the way to win
the war, to help construct a world in which all peoples may henceforth live
in harmony and peace.
May I not hope that it is the resolve of Congress to devote itself to the
creation of the post-war world? To dedicate itself to the preparation for
the brighter future that a stricken world so eagerly awaits?
We of this generation who are privileged to help make a better world for
ourselves and for posterity should remember that, while we must not be
visionary, we must have vision so that peace should not be punitive in
spirit and should not be provincial or nationalistic or even continental in
concept, but universal in scope and humanitarian in action, for modern
science has so annihilated distance that what affects one people must of
necessity affect all other peoples.
The term “hands and feet” is often used in China to signify the
relationship between brothers. Since international interdependence is now so
universally recognized, can we not also say that all nations should become
members of one corporate body?
The 160 years of traditional friendship between our two great peoples, China
and America,which has never been marred by misunderstandings, is
unsurpassed in the annals of the world.
I can also assure you that China is eager and ready to cooperate with you
and other peoples to lay a true and lasting foundation for a sane and
progressive world society which would make it impossible for any arrogant or
predatory neighbor to plunge future generations into another orgy of blood.
In the past China has not computed the cost to her manpower in her fight
against aggression, although she well realized that manpower is the real
wealth of a nation and it takes generations to grow it. She has been soberly
conscious of her responsibilities and has not concerned herself with
privileges and gains which she might have obtained through compromise of
principles. Nor will she demean herself and all she holds dear to the
practice of the market place.
We in China, like you, want a better world, not for ourselves alone, but for
all mankind, and we must have it. It is not enough, however, to proclaim
our ideals or even to be convinced that we have them. In order to preserve,
uphold, and maintain them, there are times when we should throw all we
cherish into our effort to fulfill these ideals even at the risk of failure.
The teachings drawn from our late leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, have given our
people the fortitude to carry on. From 5 1/2 years of experience we in China
are convinced that it is the better part of wisdom not to accept failure
ignominiously, but to risk it gloriously. We shall have faith that, at the
writing of peace, American and our other gallant allies will not be obtunded
by the mirage of contingent reasons of expediency.
Man’s mettle is tested both in adversity and in success. Twice is this true
of the soul of a nation. |
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