188宝金博页面版

in 1812,Napoieon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, led his Grand Army into Russia. He was prepared for the fierce resistance of the Russian people defending their homeland. He was prepared for the long march across Russian soil to Moscow, the capital city. But he was not prepared for the devastating enemy that met him in Moscow—the raw, bitter, bleak Russian winter. In 1941, Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, launched an attack against the Soviet Union, as Russia then was called. Hitler’s military might was unequaled. His war machine had mowed down resistance in most of Europe. Hitler expected a short campaign but, like Napoleon before him, was taught a painful lesson. The Russian winter again came to the aid of the Soviet soldiers. My mentor, Curt Carlson, is the wealthiest man in Minnesota, owner of a hotel and travel company with sales in the neighborhood of $9 billion. I had to get a meeting in New York one day, and Curt generously offered me a ride in his jet. It happened to be a day Minnesota was hit with one of the worst snowstorms in years. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was closed for the first time in decades. Then, though the storm continued to pound us, the airport opened a runway for small craft only. As we were taxiing down it to take off, Curt turned to me and said gleefully,” Look, Harvey, no tracks in the snow!” Curt Carlson, 70 years old at the time, rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, could still sparkle with excitement about being first. From my standpoint, that’s what it’s all about. Prepare to win. Never stop learning. Believe in yourself, even when no one else dose. Fine a way to make a difference. Then go out and make your own tracks in the snow. The mere fact that America still attracts millions of people is evidence that it is not in decline. People aren’t attracted to a place of decline. Signs of decline are sure to be found in a place as complex as America: debt, crime, the homeless, drugs, dropouts. But the main characteristic of America, the first and most enduring impression, is dynamism, energy, aggressiveness, forward movement. It is so hard to think of this nation in decline when you know that there are vast regions of the planet which are absolutely paralyzed, incapable of any improvement at all. It is difficult for me to agree with Paul Kennedy’s thesis in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers that America must inevitably follow historical precedent. That’s the way history used to be--- all powerful nations declined and gave way to other empires. But maybe there is another way to look at what is happening. I have a sense that what is going on here concerns much more than the fate of a nation. It may be that the Euro-centered American nation is declining as it gives way to a new Pacific civilization that will include, but not be limited to, America. Historically speaking, America may not decline, but instead fuse with the Pacific culture to create a kind of vast Pacific collage, a mix of Hispanic and Asian cultures linked through the most modern communication technologies. For thirty tears now I have been studying my fellowmen. I do not know very much about them. I shrug my shoulders when people tell me that their first impressions of a person are always right. I think they must have small insight or great vanity. For my own part I find that the longer I know people the more they puzzle me. These reflections have occurred to me because I read in his morning’s paper that Edward Hyde Burton had died at Kobe. He was a merchant and he had been in business in Japan for many years. I knew him very little, but he interested me because once he gave me a great surprise. Unless I had heard the story from his own lips, I should never have believed that he was capable of such an action. It was more startling because both in appearance and manner he suggested a very definite type. Here if ever was a man all of a piece. He was a tiny little fellow, not much more than five feet four in height, and very slender, with white hair, a red face much wrinkled, and blue eyes. I suppose he was about sixty when I knew him. He was always neatly and quietly dressed in accordance with his age and station. Though his offices were in Kobe, Burton often came down to Yokohama. I happened on one occasion to be spending a few days there, waiting for a ship, and I was introduced to him at the British Club. We played bridge together. He played a good game and a generous one. He did not talk very much, either then or later when we were having drinks, but what he said was sensible. He had a quiet, dry humor. He seemed to be popular at the club and afterwards, when he had gone, they described him as one of the best. It happened that we were both staying at the Grand Hotel and next day he asked me to dine with him. I met his wife, fat, elderly, and smiling, and his two daughters. It was evidently a united and affectionate family. I think the chief thing that struck me about Burton was his kindliness. There was something very pleasing in his mild blue eyes. His voice was gentle; you could not imagine that he could possibly raise it in anger; his smile was benign. Here was a man who attracted you felt in him a real love for his fellows. At the same time he like his game of cards and his cocktail,, he could tell with point a good and spicy story, and in his youth he had been something of an athlete. He was a rich man and he had made every penny himself. I suppose one thing that made you like him was that he was so small and frail; he aroused your instincts of protection. You felt that he could not bear to hurt a fly. As Godbey points out , the stress we feel arises not from a shortage of time, but from the surfeit of things we try to cram into it. “it’s the kid in the candy store,” he says. “there’s just so many good things to do. The array of choices is stunning. Our free time is increasing, but not as fast as our sense of the necessary.” A more successful remedy may lie in understanding the problem rather than evading it. Before the industrial revolution, people lived in small communities with limited communications. Within the confines of their village, they could reasonably expect to know everything that was to be known, see everything that was to be seen, and do everything that was to be done. Today, being curious by nature, we are still trying to do the same. But the global village is a world of limitless possibilities, and we can never achieve our aim. It is not more time we need: it is fewer desires. We need to switch off the cell-phone and leave the children to play by themselves. We need to buy less, read less and travel less. We need to set boundaries for ourselves, or be doomed to mounting despair.