雙語+MP3|美國學生世界歷史89 昨天、今天、明天

89
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
昨天、今天、明天

     THERE is a candy shop near where I live. On its sign it says, "Made Fresh Every Hour." History is being made every day. It is being made fresh every hour. We read about it in the newspapers and the magazines, or hear about it on the radio or television.
     Up to this time, history has been marked by the story of one war after another-some big, some small, some short, some long. Almost always a fight has been going on somewhere. It has been War, War, War-Fight, Fight, Fight. Children scratch, kick, and bite. But the older we get, the less do we use our fists and feet to settle quarrels. Fighting seems to be a sign of childhood-that we are kids-and our fights, that we call wars, a sign of how young the world really is and we really are-a sign that the world is still but a minute or two old.
     Now we admire and praise as heroes Horatius, Leonidas, Joan of Arc, General Eisenhower, and those who have defended their countries against the attacks of the enemy, as we would admire a man who stops a burglar or a murderer who attacks his family in the night. But those, whether kings, generals, or princes, who do the attacking and take life with no other excuse than to add to their power or wealth or glory, are no better than burglars, who go forth with a gun and a blackjack to waylay, rob, and murder for the same purpose. War kills, war destroys, war costs millions of lives and billions of dollars-money that could be used to make us happy, to make the world a better place, instead of causing bitterness, suffering, misery, and unhappiness, widows, and orphans. No one is better off, not even the winner. War is a terrible game, in which even the winner loses.
     This is certain: If wars do not end, they will be fought with weapons so deadly that all the people of a country or even of a continent may be killed. Already atomic bombs explode with such a blast that one bomb can blow a whole city to smithereens. Perhaps, if wars continue, there won't be anyone left alive in the whole wide world; and that will be the end of human history.
     Perhaps wars can be stopped. Many people everywhere go on trying and hoping to end the danger of another war. It isn't easy to prevent wars, but if the United Nations can act like a fire department to put out wars like fires before they get burning too fiercely, then the world can go on with years of peace. New inventions will be used for peace instead of war.
     Already man's inventions seem more magical than magic itself. Airplanes and helicopters and spaceships take the place of flying carpets. They're much better, too, than flying carpets for there really are airplanes, but magic carpets never flew except in man's imagination. Whatever you can imagine, no matter how wild your imagination is, will probably someday be invented-if wars can be prevented. You can imagine an invention to prevent all wars and you can be pretty sure it will someday be in use-if another war doesn't spoil everything first.
     Inventions are not quite the same as discoveries. If a thing was there all the time but people didn't know about it, it became a discovery, not an invention.
     Discoveries and inventions! Discoveries have been just as important as inventions in the last hundred years and seem just as magical. Of course there are no more continents to discover, but there are still wonderful discoveries being made all the time.
     Some of the most important discoveries have been about diseases and how to prevent them. These discoveries have long names like:
     Vaccination! Smallpox used to be everywhere. It was a deadly disease. The discovery of how to prevent it by vaccination has saved maybe as many lives as war has taken.
     Pasteurization of milk! Do you know what that is? It was named for the Frenchman who discovered how to kill deadly germs. You can guess his name. Yes, it was Pasteur.
     Inoculation! Do you know what that is? Has the doctor ever given you an injection from a needle to protect you from tetanus or typhoid?
     Anesthetics! Do you know what that is? Anesthetics put you to sleep if you have to have an operation. Think of the suffering the discovery of anesthetics has prevented.
     Penicillin! Do you know what this is? It was discovered just in time to save the lives of many wounded men in World War II.
     I wish I could tell you about inventions like the electric eye and radar and jet propulsion. I wish I could tell you about famous scientists like Charles Steinmetz and Albert Einstein. I wish I could tell you about all the inventions and discoveries-from vacuum cleaners to cyclotrons, from air conditioners to electron microscopes, from dynamos to lasers and quasars and human-heart transplants. And blood plasma-an African American, Charles Drew, figured out how to store this in blood banks so it, too, could be used to save the wounded fighting men. You see, scientists can be war heroes just as much as the soldiers! I wish I could tell you about all of them, but I can't. There isn't room in this book for the story of these and dozens of other wonderful things; and besides, I'd never catch up, for new discoveries and inventions are being made all the time-"Made Fresh Every Hour."
     This story ends here, but only for the moment, for history is a continuing story and keeps going on and on. Even while you are reading this line, scientists are working on inventions and discoveries that may be in the history books of the future.
     If you were living in the year 10,000 A.D., as some boy or girl will be, your history would only be just begun when you had reached where we are now. Even World War II would then seem as long ago as the fights of the Stone Age men seem to us. You might think of us and all our wonderful inventions in the same way that we now think of the discovery of copper and bronze.
     Perhaps then people will no longer use trains, boats, automobiles, or even airplanes, but go from place to place as on some magic carpet, simply by wishing. Perhaps then they will no longer use letters, telephones, radio, television, or even computers, but read each other's thoughts at any distance.
     Perhaps by then people will know how to build factories that don't poison the air and water and to use earth's resources wisely so we don't run out. And perhaps people will have learned to share, so that everyone in the whole wide world has enough food to eat and a decent place to live. Perhaps, best of all, people by then will know how to settle their problems without fighting wars.
     And so on-World without end-AMEN!