English Quiz 208

(English Quiz 208)

1. Half a century ago, the Prime Minister of France came up with a novel idea. Then as now, the world was occupied with the specter of war in the Middle East--this one precipitated by Egypt's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. As troops from France and Britain geared up to attempt to take back the canal, Guy Mollet, France's Socialist Prime Minister, secretly presented his British counterpart Anthony Eden with a proposal: What if France and Britain became one country? The idea was quickly dropped, and when its details were disclosed for the first time earlier this year, citizens of both countries had to suppress their incredulity. These days, it seems, France and Britain are separated by much more than the English Channel. Aside from their distinctive histories and identities, Britain and France in recent years have been on totally different trajectories--London up, Paris down. Personal relations between the two leaders of the past decade, President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Tony Blair, have been prickly. Opposing positions on everything from the war in Iraq to European farm subsidies have at times degenerated into public shouting matches. But the pendulum of history is about to swing again. In Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, the two nations are soon to get new leaders who are closer in outlook and personality than any French President and British Prime Minister in living memory. While nobody dreams of reviving the Mollet plan, the two men have an opportunity to put Britain and France back into the same orbit--with potentially significant consequences for the U.S., which for the first time in years is being cheered rather than jeered by a French leader.
Q: 試翻 "While nobody dreams of ... a French leader."

2. At first sight, Brown and Sarkozy hardly seem like soul mates. Sarkozy, who won an easy victory in the French presidential run-off election on May 6, is the son of a Hungarian emigre aristocrat. A mediocre student who still refers painfully to the "humiliations" of his childhood, Sarkozy embraced Gaullist conservatism as a young man, when most of his French contemporaries were reveling in the make-love-not-war spirit of the late 1960s. He triumphed in the French vote by consistently painting himself as the candidate able to lift the nation out of its economic torpor. "Together we will write a new page in our history," he promised the country in his victory speech. By contrast, Brown, who, barring any last-minute surprise, will succeed Blair this summer, represents continuity: as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he has steered British government economic policy for the past decade. Brown is unlike Sarkozy in that his ambition has been evident since his youth. The son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Brown so excelled at school that he was accepted into the University of Edinburgh at age 16, then worked his way up through the ranks of Britain's Labour Party at a time when it was still saddled with socialist dogma.
Q: 試翻 "He triumphed in himself ... it economic torpor."
Q: 試翻 "By contrast, ... for the past decade."

3. For all these differences of background, however, Sarkozy and Brown have some unexpected similarities on the big issues: economics, national identity and foreign policy. Both extol the importance of a strong work ethic and advocate free markets--but with caveats. Both have a controversial nationalist bent: while Brown talks about the importance of "Britishness" and has openly resisted the idea of giving up the pound to join Europe's common currency, Sarkozy is seeking to establish tighter citizenship criteria for immigrants. Both feel warm about the U.S. but are cool toward President Bush. Neither gets emotional over the idea of European unity, preferring to see what works--and what doesn't. Both are impatient, often short-tempered and, say their critics, sometimes authoritarian. And both have had to wait their turn to assume power. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank, says Sarkozy, Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel could create a dynamic team at Europe's core. All three, he says, "are Atlanticist, economically liberal--more or less--and take a pragmatic rather than ideological approach to the European Union and its institutions."
Q: 試翻 "Both have controversial nationalist bent ... tighter citizenship criteria for immigrants."