Gandhi’s pacifism can be separated to some extent from his other teachings. (46)Its motive was religious, but he claimed also for it that it was a definite technique, a method, capable of producing desired political results. Gandhi’s attitude was not that of most Western pacifists. Satyagraha, (47)the method Gandhi proposed and practiced, first evolved in South Africa, was a sort of nonviolent warfare, a way of defeating the enemy without hurting him and without feeling or arousing hatred. It entailed such things as civil disobedience, strikes, lying down in front of railway trains, enduring police charges without running away and without hitting back, and the like. Gandhi objected to “passive resistance” as a translation of Satyagraha: in Gujuruti, it seems the word means “firmness in the truth.” (48)In his early days Gandhi served as a stretcher-bearer on the British side in the Boer War, and he was prepared to do the same again in the war of 1914-1918. Even after he had completely renounced violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. Since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not and, (49)indeed, he did not take the fruitless and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins. Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer is: “What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated?”(50)I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the “you’re another” type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and his answer was on record in Mr. Louis Fisher’s Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fisher, Gandhi’s view was that the German Jews ought tocommit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.”
答案
46.其动机是宗教性质的,但他也说这是一种明显的技巧,一种方法,它可以产生预期的政治效果。
47.这个由甘地提出并付诸实践的方法,最早起源于南非,是一种非暴力的斗争方式,用既不伤害对方又不会引发仇恨的手段打败敌人。
48.早年间,在布尔战争期间甘地曾经为英方抬过担架,而且在1914-1918年战争期间他又准备这么做。
49.而且也确实没有采取毫无意义的、不诚实的态度,假装说在所有战争中参战双方完全一样,因而谁获得胜利都无所谓。
50.我必须说,我从未从任何一个西方和平主义者那里听到过对该问题的诚实的答复,但是却听大了大量的躲闪之词,通常都是“你是另外一回事”之类的回答。
总体分析
本文是一篇介绍甘地的和平主义的文章。文章先介绍了甘地的和平主义的性质、来源、具体形式等。接着指出了甘地作为和平主义者的独特之处:首先,他虽然反对暴力,但并不否认战争的立场;其次,他不躲避回答棘手的问题。
本文考查的知识点:后置定语、插入语、it做形式主语的主语从句等。