First World War—a Century on,Time to Hail the Peacemakers

Adam Hochschild

∷思含 選 劉宇佳 注

If we were still naming wars as colourfully as they used to—the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of Jenkins’ Ear1. War of the Spanish Succession: 西班牙王位繼承之戰（1701—1714），由于西班牙哈布斯堡王朝絕嗣，法國波旁王室與奧地利哈布斯堡王室為爭奪西班牙王位而引發的一場歐洲大部分國家參與的大戰；War of Jenkins’ Ear: 詹金斯的耳朵戰爭（1739—1748），大不列顛與西班牙之間的一場軍事沖突，西班牙帝國最終獲勝?！獁e should call the one that began 100 years ago today the War of Unintended Consequences.

No one, certainly, intended to create what Winston Churchill would later call a “crippled2. crippled: 受重創的，殘廢的。, broken world”.Austria-Hungary, which declared war on 28 July 1914,merely wanted to dismember Serbia, where irredentists were stirring up ethnic Serbs in Austrian territory.3. Austria-Hungary: 奧匈帝國；dismember: 瓜分；Serbia:塞爾維亞，南斯拉夫成員共和國名；irredentist: 民族統一者。Russia, which backed Serbia, wanted to come to the aid of fellow Eastern Orthodox Slavs, and to undo the racial humiliation of losing a war to Japan a decade earlier.4. back: 支持；Eastern Orthodox: 東正教，又稱正教會或正統教會，是基督教的主要宗派之一；Slav: 斯拉夫人，歐洲各民族和語言集團匯總人數最多的一支；undo: 去除；humiliation: 恥辱。Once the fatal tangle of alliances had drawn more countries into the con flict, each one claimed that it was only defending itself against a conspiracy of its enemies.5. 各同盟國的重大糾紛使越來越多的國家加入到沖突中來，每個國家都聲稱是為了抵御敵國的陰謀。fatal: 重大的，致命的；tangle: 糾紛；alliance: 同盟國；conspiracy:陰謀。Granted, desire for territory lay beneath the surface—France dreamed of recapturing the lost Alsace-Lorraine,for example, and Germany of establishing its primacy over the tottering tsarist empire in eastern Europe—but these ambitions, too, were limited, not world-changing.6. 當然，人們會掩飾自己想要掠奪領土的欲望——比如說，法國試圖奪回失去的阿爾薩斯—洛林，德國欲在東歐動蕩的獨裁制帝國中占領首位——但是，他們這些野心也都是有限制的，并未改變世界。recapture: 收復，奪回；Alsace-Lorraine: 阿爾薩斯—洛林，法國東北部地區；tottering: 動蕩的；tsarist: 獨裁制的，沙皇式的。

一戰犧牲戰士墓碑

回首一戰，已是百年。這場史無前例的戰爭給人類帶來了巨大的災難和創傷。無數的士兵和無辜的民眾在戰爭中死去，呼吁和平的人們也總是受到戰爭發動者的打壓，遭受著辱罵和囚禁。而戰后，一座座紀念碑平地而起，書寫著戰士們的豐功偉績，卻很少有人會為和平主義者豎起一面高旗。人們不禁感嘆，難道和平主義者們就不值得我們去紀念嗎？

Look, however, at what the war wrought7. wrought: v. 造成巨大破壞，wreak的過去式。. More than nine million troops were killed, and, depending on how you count them, as many as 10 million civilians. In Turkey, Russia, the Balkans and elsewhere,unprecedented millions of people became homeless refugees.8. Balkans: 巴爾干半島各國；unprecedented: 空前的；refugee:難民。Some 21 million soldiers were wounded. In Britain, 41,000 men had one or more limbs amputated; in France, so many had mangled faces that they formed a National Union of Dis figured Men.9. amputate: 截肢；mangled face:毀容；dis figured: 破相的。The toll was particularly appalling among the young. Of every 20 British men between 18 and 32 in 1914, three were killed and six wounded.Surely many a family shared the feelings of a despairing couple who engraved on their son’s tombstone at Gallipoli: “What harm did he do Thee, O Lord?”10. engrave: 雕刻；Gallipoli: 蓋里博盧半島；thee: 你，古英語thou的賓格。

Beyond the carnage11. carnage: 大屠殺。, the war changed our world for the worse in almost every possible way. Without the vast slaughter, misery and upheaval of the war, would the most extreme group of revolutionaries still have come to power in Russia?12. slaughter: 屠殺；upheaval: 動亂；revolutionary: 革命分子。And in Germany, the war left a toxic legacy of resentment that Hitler would brilliantly manipulate to win power.13. toxic: 有毒的；resentment: 憤恨；manipulate: 操縱。Already by 1918, rightwing Germans were blaming the country’s military setbacks on the Jews. It is impossible to imagine the Second World War without the first.

We will be asked to do a lot of commemorating14. commemorate: 紀念。over these next four and a half years, but whom and what should we commemorate,and in what spirit? Today most people would surely agree that the war of 1914-1918 was not fought for the lofty motives that each side claimed, and that we all would be better off if it had not been fought at all.15. lofty: 崇高的；be better off: 境況富裕，更舒適。Before he died, Harry Patch, the last surviving British veteran16. veteran: 老兵。of the war, said it best:“It was not worth even one life.” Yet all the traditional ways we remember wars make little space for this feeling.17. 然而，人們所有紀念戰爭的傳統方式都沒有考慮到這種感受。

Think, for example, of the hundreds of cemeteries that spread across the old Western Front,18. cemetery: 墓地；Western Front:西方戰線，用來形容整個一戰或二戰中位于德國以西，協約國以東的軍事爭奪。這種“武裝邊境爭奪”的形式在整個戰時被稱為“戰線”。the densest collection of young men’s graves in the world. All are immaculately19. immaculately: 潔凈整齊地。maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and its counterparts from other countries. One of the most beautiful is on a hillside outside the French town of Albert and holds the remains of some 160 British soldiers, almost all killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme20. Battle of the Somme: 索姆河戰役，是一戰中期英法軍隊在法國北部索姆河地區對德軍陣地的進攻作戰?！猘 particularly senseless battle in a particularly senseless war. Among the comments in the visitors’ book one recent summer day were: “Paid our respects to three of our townsfolk,” “Thanks, lads,” and“Sleep on, boys.” Only a single visitor, out of hundreds, struck a different note: “Never again.” Of course we should remember the dead, especially those whose lives were tragically cut short in their youth. But there is a vast difference between honouring the memory of a family member and honouring the cause for which he died.

The customary ways of looking back on war too easily allow us to confuse the two: military cemeteries with the gravestones in ranks like soldiers on parade, parades themselves, statues (which are almost invariably of generals), and war museums and their exhibits of tanks, planes, machine guns, artillery pieces and other technology for meting out death.21. 人們回顧戰爭的習慣性方式使我們太容易混淆那兩點：一排排如游行列隊般的軍事公墓，閱兵式，雕像（幾乎總是將軍），戰爭博物館，以及坦克、飛機、機關槍、重炮群和其他一些致命技術的展覽等。customary: 習慣的；parade:游行，檢閱；artillery: 火炮；mete out: 給予。Let us remember the dead, yes, in these years ahead, but let us also remember the men and women who recognised the war for the madness it was and did all they could to stop it. In Germany, radicals like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were jailed for their opposition, as was the American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs22. Rosa Luxemburg: 羅莎·盧森堡（1871—1919），國際共產主義運動史上杰出的革命家，被列寧譽為“革命之鷹”；Karl Liebknecht: 卡爾·李卜克內西（1871—1919），德國共產黨創始人之一，國際共產主義運動中著名的宣傳鼓動家和組織家；Eugene V. Debs: 尤金·V. 德布斯（1855—1926），美國工會領袖，國際工人聯合會與世界產業工人聯盟創始人之一?！獁ho was still in prison in 1920 when he received nearly a million votes for president. The pioneer social worker Jane Addams23. Jane Addams: 簡·亞當斯（1860—1935），美國社會學家，因爭取婦女、黑人移民的權利而獲1931年諾貝爾和平獎。helped organise a conference in neutral Holland in 1915 that brought together women from warring countries on both sides. The great French political leader Jean Jaurès spoke out boldly and repeatedly against the war he saw coming, and, because of this, was assassinated in a Paris cafe several days before it began.24. Jean Jaurès: 讓·饒勒斯（1859—1914），法國社會黨領導人、歷史學家，主張教會與政府分離；assassinate: 暗殺。

No country should be more proud of its anti-war activists from that era than Britain. More than 20,000 British men of military age refused conscription, and,usually because they also refused the alternative work offered conscientious objectors—which could be in a munitions factory25. conscription: 征兵；conscientious objector: 基于道德或宗教信仰不肯服兵役者；munitions: 軍需品?！猰ore than 6,000 went to prison for their beliefs. Behind bars also for their opposition to the war were Britain’s leading investigative journalist, Edmund Dene Morel, and its greatest philosopher, Bertrand Russell26. Bertrand Russell: 伯特蘭·羅素（1872—1970），20世紀西方最著名、影響最大的學者及和平主義社會活動家之一。.

Why is there no blue plaque outside Pentonville prison, where Morel served six months at hard labour, honouring the other war resisters locked up there as well?27. 莫雷爾在本頓維爾監獄服役六個月，為什么監獄外面沒有擺放藍色牌匾來紀念他，以及其他被囚禁在這里的戰爭反對者呢？blue plaque: 藍色牌匾，一種安置在公共場合的永久標記，以紀念某地與某個有名事件或人物之間的關聯。Every leading country in North America and Europe has spruced up28. spruce up: 打扮，裝修。its war museums for these anniversary years, but why are there so few museums about those who fought for peace?

尤金·V. 德布斯

伯特蘭·羅素

埃米莉·霍布豪斯

Russell wrote eloquently about his own con flicted feelings,describing himself as being “tortured by patriotism… Love of England is very nearly the strongest emotion I possess, and in appearing to set it aside at such a moment, I was making a very dif ficult renunciation.”29. eloquently: 雄辯地；torture: 折磨；patriotism：愛國主義；renunciation:放棄，宣布終止。Yet he never ceased to believe that “this war is trivial30. trivial: 微不足道的。, for all its vastness. No great principle is at stake31. at stake: 處于危險中，在緊要關頭。,no great human purpose is involved on either side… The English and French say they are fighting in defence of democracy,but they do not wish their words to be heard in Petrograd or Calcutta”.32. Petrograd: 彼得格勒；Calcutta: 加爾各答（印度城市）。

In 1916 the intrepid33. intrepid: 勇敢的。human rights campaigner Emily Hobhouse34. Emily Hobhouse: 埃米莉·霍布豪斯（1860—1926），英國改革家和社會工作者。travelled to France, then to neutral Switzerland,and from there to Berlin, where she went to call on the German foreign minister, whom she had known before the war. With him she discussed possible peace terms, and brought back some ideas on this score in which she tried to interest the British government. Although her lone-wolf mission did help spur an exchange of civilian internees, British of ficials were swift to dismiss her as a subversive eccentric.35. 雖然她只身一人的行動確令部分戰俘得到釋放，但英國政府很快就將她視為古怪的破壞分子。internee: 被拘留者；swift: 迅速的；subversive: 破壞性的；eccentric: 古怪的人。Yet in this entire cataclysm36. cataclysm: 災難。that so darkened the face of a continent, she was the sole human being who travelled from one side to the other and back again in an effort to end it. People like her deserve monuments as great as those for any general.