雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第3章:思考什麼是思考(37)
Dear Mother,
親愛的媽媽：
Thank you for socks etc.
謝謝你的短襪等等
Am thinking of going to Russia some time in vac but have not yet quite made up my mind.
我想放假某時去蘇聯待一陣子，但還沒決定。
I have joined an organisation called the 'Anti-War Council'tically rather communist.
我加入了一個組織叫作反戰委員會，在政治上相當於共產主義。
Its programme is principally to organize strikes amongst munitions and chemical workers when government intends to go to war.
我們的主要計劃是，當政府想要發動戰爭時，就組織軍火和化工行業罷工。
It gets up a guarantee fund to support the workers who strike.
我們建立了保障基金，來支持罷工的工人。
There has been a very good play on here by Bernard Shaw called 'Back to Methuselah'.
最近這邊有一部很好的戲劇，作者是蕭伯納，叫作《千歲人》。
Yours, Alan
你的 艾倫
For a short time, Anti-War Councils sprung up across Britain and united pacifists, communists and internationalists against a 'national' war.
在不久的一段時間裏，反戰委員會在英國蓬勃發展，並聯合了和平主義者、共產主義者和國際主義者，共同反對全國性的大規模戰爭。
Selective strikes had, in fact, prevented the British government from intervening on the Polish side against the Soviet Union in 1920.
精心安排的罷工，在1920年確實阻止了英國政府插手波蘭反蘇。
But for Alan the real point lay not in political commitments, but in the resolve to question authority.
但對於艾倫來說，真正的重點不在於政治貢獻，而在於一種質疑權威的決心。
Since 1917 Britain had been deluged by propaganda to the effect that Bolshevik Russia was the kingdom of the devil, but in 1933 anyone could see that something had gone completely wrong with the western trading and business system.
自從1917年，英國拼命地鼓吹，布爾什維克主義的蘇聯是惡魔的王國，但到了1933年，每個人都看到，西方資本主義的某些東西是完全錯誤的。
With two million people unemployed, there was no precedent for what was above all a baffling situation, in which no one knew what should be done.
兩百萬人罷工，這種令人迷惘的情形沒有先例，在這種情況下，誰也不知道該怎麼辦。
Soviet Russia, after its second revolution of 1929, offered the solution of state planning and control, and there was great interest among intellectual circles in how it was working.
蘇聯在1929年的第二次革命後，提出宏觀調控作爲解決辦法，知識界都很感興趣這要如何運作，
It was the testing-ground of the Modern.
這是現代世界的試驗田。
Alan probably enjoyed riling his mother with a nonchalant 'rather communist': the point lay not in this or that label, but in the fact that his generation were going to think for themselves, take a wider view of the world than their parents had done, and not be frightened by bogey words.
艾倫也許很喜歡用假裝平靜的相當於共產主義這樣的話來惹怒他的母親──重點不在於標籤，而在於他這一代人要獨立思考，用比父母更廣闊的視角去看世界，而不是被輿論嚇倒。
