2018年英语四级美文：War

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　　War

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　　Some pessimistic historians think the whole society of man runs in cycles

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　　and that one of the phases is war.

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　　The optimists, on the other hand,

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　　think war is not like a flood or a spell of bad weather.

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　　They believe that it is more like a disease

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　　for which a cure could be found if the cause were known.

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　　Because war is the ultimate drama of life and death,

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　　stories and pictures of it

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　　are more interesting than those about peace.

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　　This is so true that all of us,

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　　and perhaps those of us on television more than most,

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　　are often caught up in the action of war to the exclusion of the ideas of it.

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　　If it is true, as we would like to think it is,

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　　that our age is more civilized than age past,

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　　we must all agree that it’s very strange that in the twentieth century,

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　　we have killed more than 70 millions of our fellowmen on purpose, at war.

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　　Probably the reason we are able to do both — that is,

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　　believe on the one hand that we are more civilized

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　　and on the other hand wage war to kill —

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　　is that killing is not so personal an affair in war as it once was.

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　　The enemy is invisible.

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　　One man doesn’t look another in the eye and kill him with a sword.

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　　The enemy, dead or alive, is largely unseen.

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　　He is killed by remote control:

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　　a loud noise, a distant puff of smoke and then...silence.

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　　The pictures of the victim’s wife and children,

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　　which he carries in his breast pocket,

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　　are destroyed with him.

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　　He is not heard to cry out.

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　　The question of compassion or pity or remorse does not enter into it.

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　　The enemy is not a man, he is a statistic.

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　　It is true, too,

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　　that more people are being killed at war now than previously

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　　because we’re better at doing it than we used to be.

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　　One man with one modern weapon can kill thousands.