来自George Orwell 高级英语补充材料Marrekech

Supplementary Reading : George Orwell “Burmese Days” Question: What are the points of each man in the dialogue?

P40 a dialogue between an Indian doctor and Mr. Flory, an English man in Burma

…for Englishman was bitterly anti-English and the Indian fanatically loyal. Dr. Veraswami had a passionate admiration for the English, which a thousand snubs from Englishmen had not shaken. He would maintain with positive eagerness that he, as an Indian, belonged to an inferior and degenerate race. His faith in British justice was so great that even when, at the jail, he had to superintend a flogging or a hanging, and would come home with his black face faded grey and dose himself with whisky, his zeal did not falter. …

“My dear doctor,” said Flory,, “ how can you make out that we are in this country for any purpose except to steal? It’s so simple. The official holds the Burman down while the business man goes through his pockets. … The British Empire is simply a device for giving trade monopolies to the English – or rather to gangs of Jews and Scotchmen.”

“My friend, it iss pathetic to me to hear you talk so. It is truly pathetic. You say you are here to trade? Of course you are. Could the Burmese trade for themselves? Can they make machinery, ships, railways, roads? They are helpless without you. What would happen to the Burmese forests if the English were not here? They would be sold immediately to the Japanese, who would gut and ruin them. Instead of which, in your hands, actually they are improved. And while your business men develop the resources of our country, your officials are civilizing us, elevating us to their level, from pure public spirit. It is a magnificent record of self-sacrifice. “Bosh, my dear doctor,….we’ve never taught a single useful manual trade to the Indians. We daren’t; frightened of the competition in industry….”

“ My friend, …at least, you have brought to us law and order. The unswerving British Justice and the Pax Britannica.”

“ Of course, I don’t deny,” Flory said, “that we modernize this country in certain ways. We can’t help doing so. In fact, before we’ve finished we’ll have wrecked the whole Burmese national culture. But we’re not civilizing them, we’re only rubbing our dirt on to them. Where’s it going to lead, this uprush of modern progress, as you call it? Just to our own dear old swinery of gramophones and billycock hats. Sometimes I think that in two hundreds years all this--- all this will be gone – forests, villages, monasteries, pagodas all vanished. And instead, pink villas fifty yards apart; all over those hills, as far as you can see, villa after villa, with all these gramophones playing the same tune. And all the forests shaved flat –chewed into woodpulp for the News of the World, or sawn up into gramophone cases……

“My friend, … Consider that there are other achievements of your countrymen. They construct roads, they irrigate deserts, they conquer famines, they build schools, they set up hospitals, they combat plague, cholera, leprosy, smallpox, venereal disease_-----” “Having brought it themselves,” put in Flory

“No, sir, returned the doctor, eager to claim this distinction for his own countrymen. “No, sir, it wass the Indians who introduced venereal disease into this country. The Indians introduce diseases, and the English cure them. There iss the answer to all your pessimism and seditiousness.

(iss is the original spelling from the book, indicating the special way the Indian man speaks)

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