快速查题-中学教师资格证试题

      Campaigning on the Indian frontier is an experience by itself. Neither the landscape nor the people find their counterparts

in any other portion of the globe. Valley walls rise steeply five or six thousand feet on every side. The columns crawl through

a maze of giant corridors down which fierce snow-fed torrents foam under skies of brass. Amid these scenes of savage

brilliancy there dwells a race whose qualities seem to harmonize with their environment. Except at harvest time, when

self-preservation requires a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a

warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sun-baked clay, but

with battlements, turrets, loopholes, drawbridges, etc. complete. Every village has its defence. Every family cultivates its

vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combinations of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one

another. Nothing is ever forgotten, and very few debts are left unpaid. For the purposes of social life, in addition to the

convention about harvest-time, a most elaborate code of honour has been established and is on the whole faithfully observed. A man who knew it and observed it faultlessly might pass unarmed from one end of the frontier to another. The slightest

technical slip would, however, be fatal. The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest; and his valleys, nourished alike by endless sunshine and abundant water, are fertile enough to yield with little labour the modest material requirements of a sparse

population.

       Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts: the rifle and the British Government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the rifle was nowhere more

appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole

new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one’s own house and fire at

one’s neighbour nearly a mile away. One could lie in wait on some high crag, and at hitherto unheard of ranges hit a horseman far below. Even villages could fire at each other without the trouble of going far from home. Fabulous prices were therefore

offered for these glorious products of science. Rifle-thieves scoured all India to reinforce the efforts of the honest smuggler. A steady flow of the coveted weapons spread its genial influence throughout the frontier, and the respect which the Pathan tribesmen entertained for Christian civilization was vastly enhanced.

     The action of the British Government on the other hand was entirely unsatisfactory. The great organizing, advancing,

absorbing power to the southward seemed to be little better than a monstrous spoil-sport. If the Pathan made forays into the

plains, not only were they driven back (which after all was no more than fair),but a whole series of subsequent interferences

took place, followed at intervals by expeditions which toiled laboriously through the valleys, scolding the tribesmen and

exacting fines for any damage which they had done. No one would have minded these expeditions if they had simply come,

had a fight and then gone away again. In many cases this was their practice under what was called the “butcher and bolt

policy” to which the Government of India long adhered. But towards the end of the nineteenth century these intruders began to make roads through many of the valleys, and in particular the great road to Chitral. They sought to ensure the safety of these

roads by threats, by forts and by subsidies. There was no objection to the last method so far as it went. But the whole of this

tendency to road-making was regarded by the Pathans with profound distaste. All along the road people were expected to

keep quiet, not to shoot one another, and above all not to shoot at travellers along the road. It was too much to ask, and a

whole series of quarrels took their origin from this source.

      President Arling has put his long awaited economic restructuring program before the Congress. It provides a coordinated

program of investment credits, research grants, education reforms, and changes designed to make American industry more

competitive. This is necessary to reverse economic slide into unemployment, lack of growth, and trade deficits that have

plagued the economy for the past six years.

      The most liberal wing of the President’s party has called for stronger and more direct action. They want an incomes policy

to check inflation while federal financing helps rebuild industry behind a wall of protective tariffs.

     The Republicans, however, decry even the modest, graduated tax increases in the President’s program. They want tax

cuts and more open market. They say if federal money has to be injected into the economy, let it through defence spending.

     Both these alternatives ignore the unique nature of the economic problem before us. It is not simply a matter of markets or

financing. The new technology allows vastly increased production for those able to master it. But it also threatens those who

fail to adopt it with permanent second-class citizenship in the world economy. If an industry cannot lever itself up to the leading stage of technological advances, then it will not be able to compete effectively. If it cannot do this, no amount of government

protectionism or access to foreign markets can keep it profitable for long.  Without the profits and experience of technological excellence to reinvest, that industry can only fall still further behind its foreign competitors.

    So the crux is the technology and that is where the President’s program focused. The danger is not that a plan will not be

passed, it is that the ideologues of right and left will distort the bill with amendments that will blur its focus on technology. The

economic restructuring plan should be passed intact.  If we fail to restructure our economy now, we may not get a second

chance.