The Position of the Powers, 1885–1914

大国的地位（1885～1914）

In the face of such unnervingly specific figures, that a certain power possessed 2. 7 percent of world manufacturing production in 1913, or that another had an industrial potential in 1928 which was only 45 percent of Britain’s in 1900, it is worth reemphasizing that all these statistics are abstract until placed within a specific historical and geopolitical context. Countries with virtually identical industrial output might nonetheless merit substantially different ratings in terms of Great Power effectiveness, because of such factors as the internal cohesion of the society in question, its ability to mobilize resources for state action, its geopolitical position, and its diplomatic capacities. Given the limitations of space, it will not be possible in this chapter to do for all the Great Powers what Correlli Barnett sought to do in his large-scale study of Britain some years ago. But what follows will try to remain close to Barnett’s larger framework, in which he argues that the power of a nation-state by no means consists only in its armed forces, but also in its economic and technological resources; in the dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted; in the efficiency of its social and political organization. It consists most of all in the nation itself, the people; their skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative; their beliefs, myths and illusions. And it consists, further, in the way all these factors are related to one another. Moreover national power has to be considered not only in itself, in its absolute extent, but relative to the state’s foreign or imperial obligations; it has to be considered relative to the power of other states. 25

在这些令人不安的具体数字面前，即在1913年时某个大国只占世界制造业产量的2.7%，或者另一个大国在1928年其工业潜力只相当于英国1900年的45%，以下事实就值得再加强调：只有把这些统计数字放在特定的历史或地缘政治的背景下考察，它们才有实际意义。但是，由于诸如社会内部的凝聚力、大国为国家采取行动而动员资源的能力、它在地缘政治上的地位及其外交能力等因素，工业生产实际相同的国家在大国实力方面的分类仍有很大的不同。因篇幅所限，本章不可能像科雷里·巴尼特几年前对英国进行大规模研究时所做的那样，对各大国也进行那样规模的研究。但下面的论述将力图尽量地接近巴尼特的更大的框架，他对这种框架的描述是：

There is perhaps no better way of illustrating the diversity of grand-strategical effectiveness than by looking in the first instance at the three relative newcomers to the international system, Italy, Germany, and Japan. The first two had become united states only in 1870–1871; the third began to emerge from its self-imposed isolation after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In all three societies there were impulses to emulate the established powers. By the 1880s and 1890s each was acquiring overseas territories; each, too, began to build a modern fleet to complement its standing army. Each was a significant element in the diplomatic calculus of the age and, at the latest by 1902, had become an alliance-partner to an older power. Yet all these similarities can hardly outweigh the fundamental differences in real strength which each possessed.

一个民族国家的力量并不仅仅存在于其武装部队，而且存在于其经济和技术资源，存在于用以指导其外交政策的灵活性、预见能力和果敢性，存在于其社会和政治机构的工作效率。最重要的是，国家力量存在于其国家本身，即存在于民族中；存在于他们的技术、能力、雄心、纪律、创造性中；存在于他们的信念、神话及其幻想中。进一步讲，还存在于这些因素相互联系的方式中。此外，在考虑国家力量时，不能只考虑它本身和它的绝对范围，还得顾及其国外的或帝国的义务，还得与其他国家的力量联系起来考虑。

要说明重大战略影响的多样性，最好的方法也许是看一看意大利、德国、日本这三个国际体系的较新成员的例子。前两个国家直到1870～1871年才成为统一的国家。日本直到1868年明治维新后，才开始从自我封闭的孤立状态中摆脱出来。在这三个社会中，都有与原有的大国进行竞争的动力。到19世纪80年代和90年代，每个国家都在获取海外领土，也已开始建立一支现代化的舰队补充自己的常备军。它们都是这一时期外交事务中的重要组成部分。最后，到1902年时，每个国家都已变成某个老牌大国的联盟伙伴。然而，所有这些相似之处都不能抵消每个国家拥有的实力上的真正差别。

Italy

意大利

At first sight, the coming of a united Italian nation represented a major shift in the European balances. Instead of being a cluster of rivaling small states, partly under foreign sovereignty and always under the threat of foreign intervention, there was now a solid block of thirty million people growing so swiftly that it was coming close to France’s total population by 1914. Its army and its navy in this period were not especially large, but as Tables 19 and 20 show, they were still very respectable.

乍一看，一个统一的意大利的出现使欧洲的均势发生了重大变化。它已不再是部分主权操在外国人手里、经常受外来干涉威胁的相互敌对的一群小城邦，而是一个有3000万人口的稳固的整体，其人口增加很快，到1914年时已接近法国的人口。这个时期它的陆海军规模不是特别大，但正如表19和表20表明的那样，他们还是不容忽视的。

Table 19. Military and Naval Personnel of the Powers, 1880–1914 26

表19 1880～1914年各大国的陆海军人数

（单位：万人）

Table 20. Warship Tonnage of the Powers, 1880–191427

表20 1880～1914年各大国的战舰吨位

（单位：万吨）

In diplomatic terms, as was noted above,28 the rise of Italy certainly impinged upon its two Great Power neighbors, France and Austria-Hungary; and while its entry into the Triple Alliance in 1882 ostensibly “resolved” the Italo-Austrian rivalry, it confirmed that an isolated France faced foes on two fronts. Within just over a decade from its unification, therefore, Italy seemed a full member of the European Great Power system, and Rome ranked alongside the other major capitals (London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Constantinople) as a place to which full embassies were accredited.

如上所示，从外交上看，意大利的兴起必然冲击着它的两大邻国——法国和奥匈帝国。它在1882年加入三国同盟，这表面上“解决了”意奥两国的对抗，也进一步确立了孤立的法国两面受敌的局势。所以，就在它统一后10年的时间里，意大利似乎已完全成为欧洲大国体系中的一员，罗马也同其他首都（伦敦、巴黎、柏林、圣彼得堡、维也纳、君士坦丁堡）一样，成为外国派遣全权大使驻节的地方。

But the appearance of Italy’s Great Power status covered some stupendous weaknesses, above all the country’s economic retardation, particularly in the rural south. Its illiteracy rate—37. 6 percent overall and again far greater in the south— was much higher than in any other western or northern European state, a reflection of the backwardness of much of Italian agriculture—smallholdings, poor soil, little investment, sharecropping, inadequate transport. Italy’s total output and per capita national wealth were comparable to those of the peasant societies of Spain and eastern Europe rather than those of the Netherlands or Westphalia. Italy had no coal; yet, despite its turn to hydroelectricity, about 88 percent of Italy’s energy continued to come from British coal, a drain upon its balance of payments and an appalling strategical weakness. In these circumstances, Italy’s rise in population without significant industrial expansion was a mixed blessing, since it slowed its industrial growth in per capita terms relative to the other western Powers,29 and the comparison would have been even more unfavorable had not hundreds of thousands of Italians (usually the more mobile and able) emigrated across the Atlantic each year. All this made it, in Kemp’s phrase, “the disadvantaged latecomer. ”30

但是，意大利以大国地位出现却掩盖了它的一些致命弱点。首先是整个国家经济的停滞，特别是南部乡村地区。它的文盲率在全国为37.6%，而其南部更为严重，远远高于西欧和北欧的任何国家。这反映了意大利大部分农业地区的落后性——小农经济、贫瘠的土壤、少量的投资、实物地租、不能满足需要的运输条件。意大利的生产和人均国民财富只能与西班牙和东欧的农业社会相比，而不能与荷兰或威斯特伐利亚相比。其次，意大利无煤，而且，尽管已转向水力发电，但它88%的能源仍来自英国的煤，这就成了维持收支平衡的沉重负担，相应地也就成了可怕的战略弱点。在工业没有获得重大进展的前提下，意大利的人口增加就成了一个祸福参半的事情。因为它与其他西方大国相比，减缓了人均工业增长率；假如每年没有成千上万的意大利人（往往是很有活力和才干的人）横渡大西洋向彼岸移民，这种对比对意大利就更为不利，用肯普的话来说，所有这些，使意大利成为“不利的后来者”。

This is not to say that there was no modernization. Indeed, it is precisely about this period that many historians have referred to “the industrial revolution of the Giolittian era” and to “a decisive change in the economic life of our country. ”31 At least in the north, there was a considerable shift to heavy industry—iron and steel, shipbuilding, automobile manufacturing, as well as textiles. In Gerschrenkon’s view, the years 1896–1908 witnessed Italy’s “big push” toward industrialization; indeed, Italian industrial growth rose faster than anywhere else in Europe, the population shift from the countryside to the towns intensified, the banking system readjusted itself in order to provide industrial credit, and real national income moved sharply upward. 32 Piedmontese agriculture showed similar steps forward.

但这并不是说，意大利就没有现代化了。的确，正是在这一时期，许多历史学家提到了“乔利蒂[3]时代的工业革命”和“我国的经济生活中发生了决定性的变化”。至少在北方，已发生了向重工业方面的重大转移。在格申克龙看来，1896～1908年，意大利经历了朝工业化方向的“大奋进”。的确，这时意大利的工业发展速度比欧洲其他任何地方都快，人口从农村向城镇的转移加快了，银行体系为提供工业信用贷款重新进行了自我调整，国际的实际收入在迅速上升，皮埃蒙特地区的农业也表现出相似的前进步伐。

However, once the Italian statistics are placed in comparative prospective, the gloss begins to fade. It did create an iron and steel industry, but in 1913 its output was one-eighth that of Britain, one-seventeenth that of Germany, and only two-fifths that of Belgium. 33 It did achieve swift rates of industrial growth, but that was from such a very low beginning level that the real results were not impressive. At the outset of the First World War, it had not achieved even one-quarter of the industrial strength which Great Britain possessed in 1900, and its share of world manufacturing production actually dropped, from a mere 2. 5 percent in 1900 to 2. 4 percent in 1913. Although Italy marginally entered the listings of Great Powers, it is worth noting that—Japan excluded—every other of these powers had two or three times its industrial muscle; some (Germany and Britain) had sixfold the amount, and one (the United States) over thirteen times.

然而，一旦把有关意大利的统计数字进行比较性的剖析，其光泽就显得暗淡了。它确实创建了钢铁工业，但它在1913年的产量只是英国的1/8，德国的l/7，比利时的2/5。其工业增长率确实很快，但起点很低，以致其成果并不怎么显著。在第一次世界大战爆发时，它的工业能力尚未达到英国1900年的1/4。它在世界制造业生产中所占的份额实际上下降了，从1900年仅有的2.5%，下降到1913年的2.4%。尽管意大利勉强够格进入大国行列，但需要指出的是，除日本外，其他每个大国的工业潜力都是其两倍、三倍，有的国家（德国、英国）是它的6倍，还有一个国家（美国）是它的13倍以上。

This might have been compensated for somewhat by a relatively greater degree of national cohesion and resolve on the part of the Italian population, but such elements were absent. The loyalties which existed in the Italian body politic were familial and local, perhaps regional, but not national. The chronic gap between north and south, which the industrialization of the former only exacerbated, and the lack of any great contact with the world outside the village community in so many parts of the peninsula were not helped by the hostility between the Italian government and the Catholic Church, which forbade its members to serve the state. The ideals of risorgimento, hailed by native and admiring foreign liberals, did not penetrate very far down Italian society. Recruitment for the armed services was difficult, and the actual location of army units according to strategical principles, rather than regional political calculations, was impossible. Civil-military relationships at the top were characterized by a mutual miscomprehension and distrust. The general antimilitarism of Italian society, the poor quality of the officer corps, and the lack of adequate funding for modern weaponry raised doubts about Italian military effectiveness long before the disastrous 1917 battle of Caporetto or the 1940 Egyptian campaign. 34 Its unification wars had relied upon the intervention of France, and then the threat to Austria-Hungary from Prussia. The 1896 catastrophe at Adowa (in Abyssinia) gave Italy the awful reputation of having the only European army defeated by an African society without means of effective response. The Italian government decision to make war in Libya in 1911–1912, which took the Italian general staff itself by surprise, was a financial disaster of the first order. The navy, looking very large in 1890, steadily declined in relative size and was always of questionable efficiency. Successive Mediterranean commander in chiefs of the Royal Navy always hoped that the Italian fleet would be neutral, not allied, if it ever came to a war with France in this period. 35

假如意大利有较强的民族内聚力和其民族所表现出来的决心，这些弱点也许能多少得到弥补，但这些因素都不存在。意大利国家中存在的忠诚是家族性的、地方性的，也许是地区性的，但绝不是全国性的。这样，早就开始发展的北方工业化只能加剧北方同南方的差距；这个半岛许多地方的村社团体缺乏与外界的重要联系。由于意大利政府同天主教会的对立没有改善，天主教会禁止其教徒为这个国家服务。受本国人欢迎和外国自由主义者羡慕的复兴思想并没有渗透到意大利社会中去。军队征兵很困难，而且按战略需要而不按地区政治的考虑分驻军队是不可能的。高层文官和军队的关系的特点是相互不理解和不信任。普遍的反军国主义情绪、军官素质的低劣以及缺乏制造现代武器所需要的资金等，增强了人们对其军事力量的怀疑。这种怀疑早在灾难性的1917年卡波雷托战役或1940年的埃及战役中就产生了。它的统一战争靠的是法国的干涉和后来普鲁士对奥匈帝国的威胁。1896年在阿杜瓦（在阿比西尼亚）的大惨败使意大利信誉扫地，意大利军队是唯一被一个没有有效反击手段的非洲国家打败了的欧洲军队。意大利政府做出的使其总参谋部感到意外的1911～1912年在利比亚进行战争的决定，是最严重的财政上的灾难。意大利的海军在1890年时看起来很强大，但其相对的规模却越来越小，并且战斗力通常令人怀疑。地中海地区的英国皇家海军的几任总司令总是希望意大利舰队保持中立而不是结盟，如果英国和法国在这个时期交战的话。

The consequences of all this upon Italy’s strategical and diplomatic position were depressing. Not only was the Italian general staff acutely aware of its numerical and technical inferiority compared with the French (especially) and the Austro- Hungarians, but it also knew that Italy’s inadequate railway network and the deeprooted regionalism made impossible large-scale, flexible troop deployments in the Prussian manner. And not only was the Italian navy aware of its deficiencies, but Italy’s vulnerable and lengthy coastline made its alliance politics extremely ambivalent, and thus made strategic planning more chaotic than ever. The alliance treaty that Italy signed in 1882 with Berlin was comforting at first, particularly when Bismarck seemed to paralyze the French; but even then the Italian government kept pressing for closer ties with Britain, which alone could neutralize the French fleet. When, in the years after 1900, Britain and France moved closer together and Britain and Germany moved from cooperation to antagonism, the Italians felt that they had little alternative but to tack toward the new Anglo-French combination. The residual dislike of Austria-Hungary strengthened this move, just as the respect for Germany and the importance of German industrial finance in Italy checked it from being an open break. Thus by 1914, Italy occupied a position like that of 1871. It was “the least of the Great Powers,”36 frustratingly unpredictable and unscrupulous in the eyes of its neighbors, and possessing commercial and expansionist ambitions in the Alps, the Balkans, North Africa, and farther afield which conflicted with the interests of both friends and rivals. Economic and social circumstances continued to weaken its power to influence events, and yet it remained a player in the game. In sum, the judgment of most other governments seems to have been that it was better to have Italy as a partner than as a foe; but the margin of benefit was not great. 37

所有这些对意大利战略和外交地位产生的影响是令人沮丧的。意大利总参谋部非常清楚，无论在数量上还是在技术上，无论是与法国相比还是与奥匈帝国相比，意大利都处于劣势，而且它还知道，铁路运输的不足和根深蒂固的地方主义，使得意大利不能像普鲁士那样对军队进行大规模的灵活调动。不仅意大利海军明白它的低效率，而且意大利易受攻击，加上漫长的海岸线，都使其结盟政治处于很矛盾的境地。因此使战略计划的制订比以往任何时期都混乱。意大利同柏林在1882年签订的盟约起初是令人鼓舞的，特别是当俾斯麦看来要使法国陷于瘫痪时；甚至在此时，意大利政府也努力同英国保持着十分密切的关系，因为仅仅英国一个国家就能抵消法国舰队的力量。1900年以后的几年中，当英、法关系趋于密切，而英国和德国由合作走向对立时，意大利人感到，除了见风使舵、转向新的英法联盟外，几乎别无选择。讨厌奥匈帝国的残余情绪，加速了这种行动，正如尊重德意志的心理及德意志在意大利的工业金融中的重要性妨碍了意大利与其公开决裂一样。因此，到1914年时，意大利又处于像1871年那样的境地。它是“大国中最小的一个”，在其邻国心目中，它令人失望地使人捉摸不透，并且寡廉鲜耻；它对阿尔卑斯地区、巴尔干地区、北非和更远的地区怀有商业上的和扩张主义的野心，这样就与敌友的利益都发生了冲突。经济和社会状况继续削弱着它影响事态发展的能力。它仍然是钩心斗角的角逐中的一方。简言之，在其他大多数国家的政府看来，与意大利为敌，不如与其结成伙伴；但二者之间的利害差距并不大。

Japan

日本

Italy was a marginal member of the Great Power system in 1890, but Japan wasn’t even in the club. For centuries it had been ruled by a decentralized feudal oligarchy consisting of territorial lords (daimyo) and an aristocratic caste of warriors (samurai). Hampered by the absence of natural resources and by a mountainous terrain that left only 20 percent of its land suitable for cultivation, Japan lacked all of the customary prerequisites for economic development. Isolated from the rest of the world by a complex language with no close relatives and an intense consciousness of cultural uniqueness, the Japanese people remained inward-looking and resistant to foreign influences well into the second half of the nineteenth century. For all these reasons, Japan seemed destined to remain politically immature, economically backward, and militarily impotent in World Power terms. 38 Yet within two generations it had become a major player in the international politics of the Far East.

1890年时意大利是大国体系中一位刚够格的成员，而日本甚至还未进入这个俱乐部。几个世纪以来，日本一直被由各霸一方的大领主和武士贵族集团组成的分散的封建寡头集团所统治。由于缺乏自然资源并受多山地区的限制，日本只有20%的土地宜于耕种，它缺乏经济发展通常应具备的所有先决条件。日本人民因具有一种没有相近语种的复杂的语言和强烈的独特文化的意识，而孤立于世界其他地区之外，所以直到19世纪下半期的相当长一段时期，他们仍保持内向的特性，对外部影响持抵制态度。由于所有这些原因，日本似乎注定在政治上不成熟，在经济上落后，用大国标准来衡量，它在军事上也软弱。但在两代人的时间里，它已成为远东国际政治中的一个主要角色。

The cause of this transformation, effected by the Meiji Restoration from 1868 onward, was the determination of influential members of the Japanese elite to avoid being dominated and colonized by the West, as seemed to be happening elsewhere in Asia, even if the reform measures to be taken involved the scrapping of the feudal order and the bitter opposition of the samurai clans. 39 Japan had to be modernized not because individual entrepreneurs wished it, but because the “state” needed it. After the early opposition had been crushed, modernization proceeded with a dirigisme and commitment which makes the efforts of Colbert or Frederick the Great pale by comparison. A new constitution, based upon the Prusso-German model, was established. The legal system was reformed. The educational system was vastly expanded, so that the country achieved an exceptionally high literacy rate. The calendar was changed. Dress was changed. A modern banking system was evolved. Experts were brought in from Britain’s Royal Navy to advise upon the creation of an up-to-date Japanese fleet, and from the Prussian general staff to assist in the modernization of the army. Japanese officers were sent to western military and naval academies; modern weapons were purchased from abroad, although a native armaments industry was also established. The state encouraged the creation of a railway network, telegraphs, and shipping lines; it worked in conjunction with emerging Japanese entrepreneurs to develop heavy industry, iron, steel, and shipbuilding, as well as to modernize textile production. Government subsidies were employed to benefit exporters, to encourage shipping, to get a new industry set up. Japanese exports, especially of silk and textiles, soared. Behind all this lay the impressive political commitment to realize the national slogan fukoku kyohei (“rich country, with strong army”). For the Japanese, economic power and military/naval power went hand in hand.

从1868年起，日本实行明治维新。这次改革的原因是，日本的上层统治者决心避免日本像在亚洲其他地方正在发生的那样被西方控制和殖民化，即使要采取的改革措施会引起封建秩序的衰落并遭到武士集团的激烈反对，日本也不得不实行现代化。这并不是因为个别的企业家希望这样，而是因为“国家”的需要。早期的反对势力被粉碎后，现代化以一种使柯尔贝尔或腓特烈大帝的努力相形见绌的统治经济和信念在进行着。日本制定了一部以普鲁士德国的宪法为蓝本的宪法，对法制进行了改革。教育制度也有很大发展，使这个国家的人民达到了罕见的高识字率。历法和穿着也都改变了。一种现代银行体制逐渐形成。从英国皇家海军请来的专家为日本建立一支现代海军出谋划策，从普鲁士总参谋部请来的专家帮助它实现陆军的现代化。日本军官被派往西方国家的陆军和海军学院学习，尽管本国已建立起军火工业，但仍从国外购买现代化武器。政府鼓励建立铁路网、电报和航运线；它还与日本新出现的企业家们一起发展重工业和钢铁、造船业，并使纺织业生产现代化。政府的补贴使出口商受益，补贴还用于鼓励航运和建立一个新的工业。日本的出口产品，特别是丝绸和纺织品猛增。在所有这一切的背后，有着引人注目的政治义务，即实现国家“富国强兵”的号召。对于日本人来说，经济实力和陆海军实力是同步发展的。

But all this took time, and the handicaps remained severe. 40 Although the urban population more than doubled between 1890 and 1913, numbers engaged on the land remained about the same. Even on the eve of the First World War, over threefifths of the Japanese population was engaged in agriculture, forestry, and fishing; and despite all the many improvements in farming techniques, the mountainous countryside and the small size of most holdings prevented an “agricultural revolution” on, say, the British model. With such a “bottom-heavy” agricultural base, all comparisons of Japan’s industrial potential or of per capita levels of industrialization were bound to show it at or close to the lower end of the Great Power lists (see Tables 14 and 17 above). While its pre-1914 industrial spurt can clearly be detected in the large rise of its energy consumption from modern fuels and in the increase in its share of world manufacturing production, it was still deficient in many other areas. Its iron and steel output was small, and it relied heavily upon imports. In the same way, although its shipbuilding industry was greatly expanded, it still ordered some warships elsewhere. It also was very short of capital, needing to borrow increasing amounts from abroad but never having enough to invest in industry, in infrastructure, and in the armed services. Economically, it had performed miracles to become the only nonwestern state to go through an industrial révolution in the age of high imperialism; yet it still remained, compared to Britain, the United States, and Germany, an industrial and financial lightweight.

但所有这些发展是需要时间的，不利条件仍然很严重。尽管1890年至1913年城市人口增加了一倍多，但种地的人数几乎仍与原来一样多。甚至到了第一次世界大战前夕，仍有3/5以上的日本人在从事农业、林业和渔业；而且尽管农耕技术有了许多改进，但多山的农村和大多数是小块土地的经营，阻碍了说像英国那样的“农业革命”的发生。由于这种“极落后的”农业基础，日本的工业潜力或人均工业化水平与其他国家一经比较，都必然使它处于或接近于末流大国的地位（见前面的表14和表17）。虽然1914年以前其工业的突然兴起可以从其现代燃料能源消耗的大幅度增长和在世界制造业产量中所占份额的增加中清楚地看到，但它在其他方面仍很欠缺。它的钢铁产量很低，严重依赖进口。同样，虽然它的造船业有了很大发展，但它仍从其他国家定购军舰。它还很缺乏资本，需要越来越多地举借外债，但从来不足以向工业、基础工业和军事部门投资。在经济上，它完成了一个奇迹，在帝国主义鼎盛时期成为经历工业革命的唯一的非西方国家；但与英国、美国和德国相比，它在工业和金融方面仍是一个无足轻重的国家。

Two further factors, however, aided Japan’s rise to Great Power status and help to explain why it surpassed, for example, Italy. The first was its geographical isolation. The nearby continental shore was held by nothing more threatening than the decaying Chinese Empire. And while China, Manchuria, and (even more alarming) Korea might fall into the hands of another Great Power, geography had placed Japan far closer to those lands than any one of the other imperialist states—as Russia was to find to its discomfort when it tried to supply an army along six thousand miles of railway in 1904–1905, and as the British and American navies were to discover several decades later as they wrestled with the logistical problems involved in the relief of the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Malaya. Assuming a steady Japanese growth in East Asia, it would only be by the most extreme endeavors that any other major state could prevent Japan from becoming the predominant power there in the course of time.

还有两个因素帮助了日本上升到大国地位，并有助于说明它为什么会超过意大利。第一个因素是地理上的隔绝状态。其附近的大陆海岸由当时腐朽的中华帝国所有，不足为患。当中国东北和（甚至更使它恐慌的）朝鲜可能落入另一个大国手中时，地理环境使日本比其他任何一个帝国主义国家都更为接近这些地区。俄国在1904～1905年试图沿着6000英里的铁路运送军队时就感到了不便，几十年之后英美海军救援菲律宾、中国香港和马来亚时，就发现需要尽力克服后勤的困难。假如日本的势力在东亚稳步发展的话，其他任何一个大国只有尽最大努力才能防止日本在那个时代在那个地区变成一个占统治地位的国家。

The second factor was moral. It seems indisputable that the strong Japanese sense of cultural uniqueness, the traditions of emperor worship and veneration of the state, the samurai ethos of military honor and valor, the emphasis upon discipline and fortitude, produced a political culture at once fiercely patriotic and unlikely to be deterred by sacrifices and reinforced the Japanese impulses to expand into “Greater East Asia,” for strategical security as well as markets and raw materials. This was reflected in the successful military and naval campaigning against China in 1894, when those two countries quarreled over their claims in Korea. 41 On land and sea, the better-equipped Japanese forces seemed driven by a will to succeed. At the end of that war, the threats of the “triple intervention” by Russia, France, and Germany compelled an embittered Japanese government to withdraw its claims to Port Arthur and the Liaotung Peninsula, but that merely increased Tokyo’s determination to try again later. Few, if any, in the government dissented from Baron Hayashi’s grim conclusion:

第二个因素是士气。毋庸置疑的是，日本人对文化的独特性的强烈意识，对天皇崇拜和国家崇拜的传统，军人的光荣感和勇猛的武士道精神，对纪律和刚毅的强调，产生了一种强烈的爱国主义和不畏牺牲的政治文化，加强了日本为战略上的安全和获取市场及原材料而扩张为“大东亚”圈这一目标的动力。这反映在1894年同中国进行的成功的陆战和海战中，那次战争是由于两国在朝鲜的权利的争执引起的。在陆上和海上，装备较好的日本军队似乎是被获胜愿望所驱使。在战争结束时，俄国、法国和德国“三方干涉”的威胁，迫使愤怒的日本政府撤回了它对中国大连和辽东半岛的要求，但这只不过增强了东京日后再干的决心。在政府中，不同意林权助男爵得出的严厉结论的人即使有，为数也不多：

If new warships are considered necessary we must, at any cost, build them: if the organization of our army is inadequate we must start rectifying it from now; if need be, our entire military system must be changed. …

如果我们认为必须有新的战舰，就要不惜任何代价去建造；如果我们军队的组织不合适，我们必须从现在起就开始整顿；如果需要，我们的整个军事体制就必须进行变革……

At present Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of national power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives, Japan will decide her own fate …,42

现在日本必须保持冷静和坚持自己的主张，以便使对它的猜疑自然平息；在此期间，必须巩固国家力量的基础；我们必须在东方静观和等待机会，这个机会总有一天会到来。当这一天到来时，日本将决定它自己的命运……

Its time for revenge came ten years later, when its Korean and Manchurian ambitions clashed with those of czarist Russia. 43 While naval experts were impressed by Admiral Togo’s fleet when it destroyed the Russian ships at the decisive battle of Tsushima, it was the general bearing of Japanese society which struck other observers. The surprise strike at Port Arthur (a habit begun in the 1894 China conflict, and revived in 1941) was applauded in the West, as was the enthusiasm of Japanese nationalist opinion for an outright victory, whatever the cost. More remarkable still seemed the performance of Japan’s officers and men in the land battles around Port Arthur and Mukden, where tens of thousands of soldiers were lost as they charged across minefields, over barbed wire, and through a hail of machine-gun fire before conquering the Russian trenches. The samurai spirit, it seemed, could secure battlefield victories with the bayonet even in the age of mass industrialized warfare. If, as all the contemporary military experts concluded, morale and discipline were still vital prerequisites of national power, Japan was rich in those resources.

10年之后，当它对朝鲜和中国东北的野心与沙皇俄国的野心发生冲突时，报复的时机到来了。如果说海军大将东乡平八郎的舰队在对马海峡的决战中摧毁俄国舰队使海军战史专家们对日本舰队留下了深刻的印象，那么日本社会总的态度则使其他观察家们感到震惊。日本对大连进行了出其不意的打击（这种做法始于1894年同中国的战争，后在1941年再度使用），日本民族主义者为获得彻底胜利而不惜付出一切代价的热情在西方受到了欢迎。更引人注目的似乎还是日本军队在大连和沈阳周围的陆战中的表现，在这次战斗中，有数万名士兵冲过布雷区，越过铁丝网，冒着俄国人重机枪的扫射，在攻占俄军战壕之前丧生。即使在大规模工业化的年代，武士道精神加上刺刀似乎也能保证战场上的胜利。就如所有同时代的军事专家们断言的，如果士气和纪律仍然是国家实力极为重要的先决条件的话，日本在这些资源方面是非常富有的。

Even then, however, Japan was not a full-fledged Great Power. Japan had been fortunate to have fought an even more backward China and a czarist Russia which was militarily top-heavy and disadvantaged by the immense distance between St. Petersburg and the Far East. Furthermore, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 had allowed it to fight on its home ground without interference from third powers. Its navy had relied upon British-built battleships, its army upon Krupp guns. Most important of all, it had found the immense costs of the war impossible to finance from its own resources and yet had been able to rely upon loans floated in the United States and Britain. 44 As it turned out, Japan was close to bankruptcy by the end of 1905, when the peace negotiations with Russia got under way. That may not have been obvious to the Tokyo public, which reacted furiously to the relatively light terms with which Russia escaped in the final settlement. Nevertheless, with victory confirmed, Japan’s armed forces glorified and admired, its economy able to recover, and its status as a Great Power (albeit a regional one) admitted by all, Japan had come of age. No one could do anything significant in the Far East without considering its response; but whether it could expand further without provoking reaction from the more established Great Powers was not at all clear.

但是即使那时，日本也不是一个羽毛丰满的大国。日本很幸运地战胜了更为落后的中国和军界上层臃肿、因圣彼得堡和远东之间相距遥远而处境不利的俄国。此外，1902年缔结的英日同盟也使它得以在不受第三国干涉的情况下，在自己熟悉的区域里作战。其海军依靠的是英国制造的战舰，其陆军依靠的是克虏伯制造的枪炮。最重要的是，它发现自己的资源不可能在财政上负担战争的巨额费用，只能够依赖在英美筹措的贷款。结果是，1905年底在与俄国进行和平谈判时，日本财政已处于崩溃的边缘。东京的公众对此可能感觉不太明显，他们对使俄国在最后达成的协议中得以摆脱困境的较为宽容的条件感到愤怒。但结果是，由于胜利已经肯定，日本军队感到自豪并受到了赞扬，其经济得以恢复，而且其大国地位（尽管是地区性的）得到了所有大国的承认，日本成熟了。在远东，如不考虑它的反应就做不成任何重要事情；但它是否能够进一步扩张而不引起资格更老的大国的反应，彼时还一点儿也不清楚。

Germany

德国

Two factors ensured that the rise of imperial Germany would have a more immediate and substantial impact upon the Great Power balances than either of its fellow “newcomer” states. The first was that, far from emerging in geopolitical isolation, like Japan, Germany had arisen right in the center of the old European states system; its very creation had directly impinged upon the interests of Austria- Hungary and France, and its existence had altered the relative position of all of the existing Great Powers of Europe. The second factor was the sheer speed and extent of Germany’s further growth, in industrial, commercial, and military/naval terms. By the eve of the First World War its national power was not only three or four times Italy’s and Japan’s, it was well ahead of either France or Russia and had probably overtaken Britain as well. In June 1914 the octogenarian Lord Welby recalled that “the Germany they remembered in the fifties was a cluster of insignificant states under insignificant princelings”;45 now, in one man’s lifetime, it was the most powerful state in Europe, and still growing. This alone was to make “the German question” the epicenter of so much of world politics for more than half a century after 1890.

有两个因素确保了德意志帝国的崛起将比其“新来的”伙伴对大国之间的均势产生更直接和更大的影响。第一个因素是，德国远不像日本那样是一个从孤立状态中出现的国家，而是在旧的欧洲国家体系的中心崛起的，它的建立直接冲击着奥匈帝国和法国的利益，而它的存在改变了当时欧洲各大国之间的相对地位。第二个因素是德国在工业、商业和陆海军方面进一步发展的绝对速度和程度。到第一次世界大战前夕，它的国力不仅是意大利和日本的3倍或4倍，而且还超过了法国或俄国，很可能还赶上了英国。1914年6月，80多岁的韦尔比勋爵回忆说：“他们记得在19世纪50年代时，德意志是一群由无足轻重的王室成员统治下的无足轻重的邦”；现在，在一个人的有生之年中，它是欧洲最强大的国家，而且仍在发展。单是这一点就使得“德国问题”成为1890年以后半个多世纪里这么多世界政治事务的中心。

Only a few details of Germany’s explosive economic growth can be offered here. 46 Its population had soared from 49 million in 1890 to 66 million in 1913, second only in Europe to Russia’s—but since Germans enjoyed far higher levels of education, social provision, and per capita income than Russians, the nation was strong both in the quantity and the quality of its population. Whereas, according to an Italian source, 330 out of 1,000 recruits entering its army were illiterate, the corresponding ratios were 220/1,000 in Austria-Hungary, 68/1,000 in France, and an astonishing 1/1,000 in Germany. 47 The beneficiaries were not only the Prussian army, but also the factories requiring skilled workers, the enterprises needing welltrained engineers, the laboratories seeking chemists, the firms looking for managers and salesmen—all of which the German school system, polytechnical institutes, and universities produced in abundance. By applying the fruits of this knowledge to agriculture, German farmers used chemical fertilizers and large-scale modernization to increase their crop yields, which were much higher per hectare than in any of the other Great Powers. 48 To appease the Junkers and the peasants’ leagues, German farming was given considerable tariff protection in the face of more cheaply produced American and Russian foodstuffs; yet because of its relative efficiency, the large agricultural sector did not drag down per capita national income and output to anything like the degree it did in all the other continental Great Powers.

这里只能提供一点点有关德国经济飞速发展的细节。它的人口从1890年的4900万猛增到1913年的6600万，在欧洲仅次于俄国，但由于德国比俄国的教育水平、社会供应和人均收入都高得多，所以这个国家的人口在数量上和质量上都是强大的。据一份意大利的资料反映，意大利军队招募的每千名新兵中，有330名是文盲；而奥匈帝国是每千人中有220名，法国是每千人中有68名，令人吃惊的是，德国每千人中只有一个文盲。获益的不仅是普鲁士军队，而且还有需要熟练工人的工厂，需要受过良好训练的工程师的企业，寻求化学家的实验室，期望得到管理人员和推销员的公司——德国的学校体制、多种科技的学院和大学，能够大量培养上述的人才。通过把这些知识的成果运用到农业上去，德国的农民使用化肥和大规模实行现代化来提高粮食产量，它每公顷的产量比其他任何一个大国都高得多。为了安抚容克豪族和农民组成的团体，德国的农业实行了许多关税保护措施以对付粮食生产成本更低的美国和俄国；而由于它的高效率，巨大的农业部门并没有使人均国民收入和产量降低到像欧洲大陆其他国家因农业而降低的水平。

But it was in its industrial expansion that Germany really distinguished itself in these years. Its coal production grew from 89 million tons in 1890 to 277 million tons in 1914, just behind Britain’s 292 million and far ahead of Austria-Hungary’s 47 million, France’s 40 million, and Russia’s 36 million. In steel, the increases had been even more spectacular, and the 1914 German output of 17. 6 million tons was larger than that of Britain, France, and Russia combined. More impressive still was the German performance in the newer, twentieth-century industries of electrics, optics, and chemicals. Giant firms like Siemens and AEG, employing 142,000 people between them, dominated the European electrical industry. German chemical firms, led by Bayer and Hoechst, produced 90 percent of the world’s industrial dyes. This success story was naturally reflected in Germany’s foreign-trade figures, with exports tripling between 1890 and 1913, bringing the country close to Britain as the leading world exporter; not surprisingly, its merchant marine also expanded, to be the second-largest in the world by the eve of the war. By then, its share of world manufacturing production (14. 8 percent) was higher than Britain’s (13. 6 percent) and two and a half times that of France (6. 1 percent). It had become the economic powerhouse of Europe, and even its much-publicized lack of capital did not seem to be slowing it down. Little wonder that nationalists like Friedrich Naumann exulted at these manifestations of growth and their implications for Germany’s place in the world. “The German race brings it,” he wrote. “It brings army, navy, money and power. … Modern, gigantic instruments of power are possible only when an active people feels the spring-time juices in its organs. ”49

但就是在它的工业发展中，德国才真正地在这些年里显示出特色。它的煤产量从1890年的8900万吨上升到1914年的2.77亿吨，只落后于英国的2.92亿吨，远远领先于奥匈帝国的4700万吨、法国的4000万吨和俄国的3600万吨。德国钢产量的增长更加惊人，1914年，德国1760万吨的产量高于英、法、俄三国的产量总和。更引人注目的还是德国在电力、光学和化学等20世纪新兴工业中所取得的进展。像西门子和AEG公司这样的大公司，雇用着14.2万名工人，它们控制着欧洲的电力工业。德国以拜尔和霍奇斯特为首的化学公司生产了世界工业染料的90%。这段成功的历史自然反映在德国的外贸数字中，从1890年到1913年，德国的出口增加了两倍，使它接近世界头号出口国英国。以下事实并不使人感到惊讶：它的商船大大增加了，在第一次世界大战前夕成为世界第二大商船拥有国。那时，它在世界制造业中所占的份额（14.8%）高于英国（13.6%），约是法国的2.5倍（6.1%）。它已成为欧洲的经济动力源泉，甚至它广为宣传的资本短缺似乎也没有降低它的发展速度。民族主义者弗雷德里希·瑙曼为这些发展以及这些发展对德国的世界地位所具有的含义感到欢欣鼓舞，几乎没有什么人对这种情景感到不解。瑙曼写道：“德意志种族带来了发展，发展又带来了陆军、海军、钱和权力……只有当一个活跃的民族在它的喉管里感觉到春天的甘汁时，现代的、庞大的权力工具才可能产生。”

That publicists such as Naumann and, even more, such rabidly expansionist pressure groups as the Pan-German League and the German Navy League should have welcomed and urged the rise of German influence in Europe and overseas is hardly surprising. In this age of the “new imperialism,” similar calls could be heard in every other Great Power; as Gilbert Murray wickedly observed in 1900, each country seemed to be asserting, “We are the pick and flower of nations … above all things qualified for governing others. ”50 It was perhaps more significant that the German ruling elite after 1895 also seemed convinced of the need for large-scale territorial expansion when the time was ripe, with Admiral Tirpitz arguing that Germany’s industrialization and overseas conquests were “as irresistible as a natural law”; with the Chancellor Bülow declaring, “The question is not whether we want to colonize or not, but that we must colonize, whether we want it or not”; and with Kaiser Wilhelm himself airily announcing that Germany “had great tasks to accomplish outside the narrow boundaries of old Europe” although he also envisaged it exercising a sort of “Napoleonic supremacy,” in a peaceful sense, over the continent. 51 All this was quite a change of tone from Bismarck’s repeated insistence that Germany was a “saturated” power, keen to preserve the status quo in Europe and unenthused (despite the colonial bids of 1884–1885) about territories overseas. Even here it may be unwise to exaggerate the particularly aggressive nature of this German “ideological consensus”52 for expansion; statesmen in France and Russia, Britain and Japan, the United States and Italy were also announcing their country’s manifest destiny, although perhaps in a less deterministic and frenetic tone.

像瑙曼这样的宣传家们，甚至还有像泛德意志联盟和德意志海上联盟这样狂热的扩张主义集团，竟欢迎和敦促德国增强在欧洲和海外的影响，这不怎么令人吃惊。在这一“新帝国主义时期”，在其他任何一个大国里，都能听到相类似的呼吁。就如吉尔伯特·默里在1900年所作的令人厌恶的评论，每一个国家似乎都会宣称，“我们是所有民族中的精华……最有资格统治其他民族”。也许更重要的是，1895年以后，德国的统治者上层似乎也相信需要在时机成熟时大规模地扩张领土。海军上将蒂尔皮茨坚持认为，德国的工业化和海外征服“像自然法则一样不可抗拒”；首相比洛宣称，“问题不是我们是否要殖民，而是我们必须殖民，不管我们是否想殖民”；威廉皇帝自己也轻率地宣布，德国“要在旧欧洲狭窄的边界之外完成重要任务”，虽然他也想到过德国在和平的意义上在欧洲大陆行使“拿破仑式的霸权”。所有这些，与俾斯麦一再坚持的德国是一个“饱和的”、渴望维持欧洲现状而对海外领土没有热情的（尽管1884～1885年有过殖民企图）国家的腔调相比，是一种彻底的转变。在这里夸大德国“意识形态上一致”要求扩张的特殊的侵略性是不明智的；法国和俄国、英国和日本、美国和意大利的政治家们也宣布了它们国家的天定命运，尽管他们也许是以一种不那么带决定论的、狂热的语调宣布的。

What was significant about German expansionism was that the country either already possessed the instruments of power to alter the status quo or had the material resources to create such instruments. The most impressive demonstration of this capacity was the rapid buildup of the German navy after 1898, which under Tirpitz was transformed from being the sixth-largest fleet in the world to being second only to the Royal Navy. By the eve of war, the High Seas Fleet consisted of thirteen dreadnought-type battleships, sixteen older ones, and five battlecruisers, a force so big that it had compelled the British Admiralty gradually to withdraw almost all its capital-ship squadrons from overseas stations into the North Sea; while there were to be indications (better internal construction, shells, optical equipment, gunnery control, night training, etc. ) that the German vessels were pound for pound superior. 53 Although Tirpitz could never secure the enormous funds to achieve his real goal of creating a navy “equally strong as England’s,”54 he nonetheless had built a force which quite overawed the rival fleets of France or Russia.

有关德国扩张主义的重点是，要么这个国家已拥有改变现状的实力手段，要么它已拥有创造这种手段的物资资源。关于这种能力的最明显的说明，是1898年之后德国迅速建设海军，其海军的规模在蒂尔皮茨的领导下从世界的第六位变为仅次于英国的帝国海军。到大战前夕，由13艘无畏级战列舰、16艘旧式战列舰和5艘战列巡洋舰组成的这支公海舰队，成为一支迫使英国海军部逐渐把驻扎在海外的主力舰队撤往北海的强大力量；那时有迹象（较好的内部结构、炮弹、光学设备、舰炮控制、夜间训练等）表明，德国舰船从整体上来说比较优良。虽然蒂尔皮茨一直未能得到大量资金以实现其最终创建一支“同英国一样强大”的舰队的目标，但他确实建立了一支足以威慑敌对的法国和俄国舰队的力量。

Germany’s capacity to fight successfully on land seemed to some observers less impressive; indeed, at first sight, the Prussian army in the decade before 1914 appeared eclipsed by the far larger forces of czarist Russia, and matched by those of France. But such appearances were deceptive. For complex domestic-political reasons, the German government had opted to keep the army to a certain size and to allow Tirpitz’s fleet substantially to increase its share of the total defense budget. 55 When the tense international circumstances of 1911 and 1912 caused Berlin to decide upon a large-scale expansion of the army, the swift change of gear was imposing. Between 1910 and 1914, its army budget rose from $204 million to $442 million, whereas France’s grew only from $188 million to $197 million—and yet France was conscripting 89 percent of its eligible youth compared with Germany’s 53 percent to achieve that buildup. It was true that Russia was spending some $324 million on its army by 1914, but at stupendous strain; defense expenditures consumed 6. 3 percent of Russia’s national income, but only 4. 6 percent of Germany’s. 56 With the exception of Britain, Germany bore the “burden of armaments” more easily than any other European state. Furthermore, while the Prussian army could mobilize and equip millions of reservists and—because of their better education and training—actually deploy them in front-line operations, France and Russia could not. The French general staff held that their reservists could only be used behind the lines;57 and Russia possessed neither the weapons, boots, and uniforms to equip its theoretical reserve army of millions nor the officers to supervise them. But even this does not probe the full depths of the German military capacity, which was also reflected in such unquantifiable factors as good internal lines of communication, faster mobilization schedules, superior staff training, advanced technology, and so on.

对某些观察家来说，德国成功地在陆上作战的能力给人的印象不那么深刻；的确，乍一看，在1914年前的10年里，普鲁士军队与规模大得多的沙俄军队相比就相形见绌了，而法国的军队也和它差不多。但这种表象容易使人误解。由于复杂的国内政治原因，德国政府选择了把它的军队维持在一定的规模上，并允许蒂尔皮茨的舰队大量增加其在整个国防预算中的份额。当1911年和1912年的国际紧张局势导致柏林决定大规模发展其陆军时，装备上的迅速变化是很明显的。从1910年到1914年，其陆军的预算从2.04亿美元增至4.42亿美元，而法国只从1.88亿美元增至1.97亿美元——但法国把89%的适龄青年征召入伍，而德国只招募了53%的适龄青年就实现了这种军事动员。到1914年，俄国已为其陆军花费了3.24亿美元，但却甚感紧张：国防开支占俄国国民收入的6.3%，而德国的只占4.6%。除英国之外，德国比欧洲其他任何国家更容易承受“武装的重负”。此外，当普鲁士军队能够动员和装备数百万后备役军人，而且——由于其更好的教育和训练——实际上能把它们部署在前线采取行动时，法国和俄国却不能。法国总参谋部坚持认为，其后备役军人只能在后方使用；而俄国既没有武器、靴子和军服来装备其数百万理论上存在的后备军，也无军官来管理他们。但即使如此，也仍未弄清德国军事能力究竟达到了什么程度，因为它还反映在诸如良好的国内交通线、快速的动员体制、优良的参谋训练、先进的技术等不能用数量来表达的因素上。

But the German Empire was weakened by its geography and its diplomacy. Because it lay in the center of the continent, its growth appeared to threaten a number of other Great Powers simultaneously. The efficiency of its military machine, coupled with Pan-German calls for a reordering of Europe’s boundaries, alarmed both the French and the Russians and drove them closer to each other. The swift expansion of the German navy upset Britain, as did the latent German threat to the Low Countries and northern France. Germany, in one scholar’s phrase, was “born encircled. ”58 Even if German expansionism was directed overseas, where could it go without trespassing upon the spheres of influence of other Great Powers? A venture into Latin America could only be pursued at the cost of war with the United States. Expansion in China had been frowned upon by Russia and Britain in the 1890s and was out of the question after the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905. Attempts to develop the Baghdad Railway alarmed both London and St. Petersburg. Efforts to secure the Portuguese colonies were checked by the British. While the United States could apparently expand its influence in the western hemisphere, Japan encroach upon China, Russia and Britain penetrate into the Middle East, and France “round off” its holdings in northwestern Africa, Germany was to go empty-handed. When Bülow, in his famous “hammer or anvil” speech of 1899, angrily declared, “We cannot allow any foreign power, any foreign Jupiter to tell us: ‘What can be done? The world is already partitioned,’ ” he was expressing a widely held resentment. Little wonder that German publicists called for a redivision of the globe. 59

但德意志帝国被它的地理环境和外交削弱了。因为它位于欧洲大陆的中心，它的发展似乎要同时威胁到许多其他大国。其军事机器的效能，再加上泛德意志重组欧洲边界的号召，使法国和俄国感到恐慌，迫使它们彼此之间更为接近。德国海军的迅速发展使英国感到极度不安，就像德国对低地国家和法国北部的潜在威胁一样。用一位学者的话来说，德国“天生就被包围住了”。即使德国的扩张是指向海外的，但如不侵入其他大国的势力范围，又能到哪里去呢？向拉丁美洲冒险只能以与美国进行战争为代价。19世纪90年代，它在中国的扩张一直遭到俄国和英国的反对，而且当1905年日本人取得对俄战争的胜利后就成为不可能的了。建造巴格达铁路的企图使伦敦和圣彼得堡都感到惊恐不安。想把葡萄牙殖民地搞到手的努力受到了英国人的阻拦。当美国可以明目张胆地在西半球扩大自己的势力，日本侵入中国，俄国和英国向中东渗透，法国“完善”其在非洲西北部的据点时，德国却两手空空。当比洛在其1899年著名的《锤子或铁砧》的演说中愤怒地宣称“我们不能允许任何外国或任何外国的朱庇特神来告诉我们‘能做什么呢？世界已经被瓜分完毕’”时，他表达了一种普遍存在的不满情绪。没有什么人对德国的宣传家们重新分割世界的呼吁感到疑惑不解。

To be sure, all rising powers call for changes in an international order which has been fixed to the advantage of the older, established powers. 60 From a Realpolitik viewpoint, the question was whether this particular challenger could secure changes without provoking too much opposition. And while geography played an important role here, diplomacy was also significant; because Germany did not enjoy, say, Japan’s geopolitical position, its statecraft had to be of an extraordinarily high order. Realizing the unease and jealousy which the Second Reich’s sudden emergence had caused, Bismarck strove after 1871 to convince the other Great Powers (especially the flank powers of Russia and Britain) that Germany had no further territorial ambitions. Wilhelm and his advisers, eager to show their mettle, were much less careful. Not only did they convey their dissatisfaction with the existing order, but—and this was the greatest failure of all—the decision-making process in Berlin concealed, behind a facade of high imperial purpose, a chaos and instability which amazed all who witnessed it in close action. Much of this was due to the character weaknesses of Wilhelm II himself, but it was exacerbated by institutional flaws in the Bismarckian constitution; with no body (like a cabinet) collectively possessing responsibility for overall government policy, different departments and interest groups pursued their aims without any check from above or ordering of priorities. 61 The navy thought almost solely of a future war with England; the army planned to eliminate France; financiers and businessmen wished to move into the Balkans, Turkey, and the Near East, eliminating Russian influence in the process. The result, moaned Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg in July 1914, was to “challenge everybody, get in everyone’s way and actually, in the course of all this, weaken nobody. ”62 This was not a recipe for success in a world full of egoistic and suspicious nation-states.

可以肯定的是，所有正在崛起的大国都呼吁改变已经固定下来的对旧的、老资格的大国有利的国际秩序。从强权政治的观点来看，问题是这种特殊的挑战是否能在不招致太多反对的情况下改变旧的国际秩序。地理环境发挥着重要作用，外交也很重要；也就是说，因为德国没有日本那样的地缘政治形势，它治国的本领就需要有非常高的水平。由于已认识到第二帝国的突然出现引起了不安和妒忌，俾斯麦在1871年之后一直努力使其他大国（特别是侧翼国家俄国和英国）相信德国没有进一步的领土野心。但是急于表明其气概的威廉及其顾问们太不谨慎了，他们不仅公开表示对现存秩序不满，而且——这是最大的失败——柏林的决策过程表明，隐藏在帝国重要目的表象后面的是混乱和不稳定，这使所有目睹在机密行动中这一过程的人感到吃惊。这种情况有许多应归咎于威廉二世个人的性格弱点，但它被俾斯麦宪法制度上的缺陷加剧了。由于没有任何人（像一个内阁一样）对政府的全面政策集体负责，不同的部门和利益集团都去追求它们自己的目标，上边对此不作任何检查，也不规定哪是重点。海军只考虑将来同英国的战争；陆军的计划是消灭法国；金融家和商人们则希望进入巴尔干、土耳其和近东，并在此过程中消除俄国的势力。首相贝特曼·霍尔维格在1914年7月悲叹道，结果将是“向每一方挑战，又妨碍了每一方，而且在所有这些进程中实际上削弱不了任何一方”。在一个充满自私自利并疑虑重重的国家里，这不是一个成功的窍门。

Finally, there remained the danger that failure to achieve diplomatic or territorial successes would affect the delicate internal politics of Wilhelmine Germany, whose Junker elite worried about the (relative) decline of the agricultural interest, the rise of organized labor, and the growing influence of Social Democracy in a period of industrial boom. It was true that after 1897 the pursuit of Weltpolitik was motivated to a considerable extent by the calculation that this would be politically popular and divert attention from Germany’s domestic-political fissures. 63 But the regime in Berlin always ran the dual risk that if it backed down from a confrontation with a “foreign Jupiter,” German nationalist opinion might revile and denounce the Kaiser and his aides; whereas, if the country became engaged in an all-out war, it was not clear whether the natural patriotism of the masses of workers, soldiers, and sailors would outweigh their dislike of the archconservative Prusso-German state. While some observers felt that a war would unite the nation behind the emperor, others feared it would further strain the German sociopolitical fabric. Again, this needs to be placed in context—for example, German internal weaknesses were hardly as serious as those in Russia or Austria-Hungary, but they did exist, and they certainly could affect the country’s ability to engage in a lengthy “total” war.

最后，仍存在一种危险：如不能在外交上和领土上获得成功，将影响威廉德国微妙的国内政治，威廉的容克上层担忧其农业利益会（相对）减少，担心有组织的工人的兴起和工业繁荣时期社会民主党影响的发展。1897年以后，对强权政治的追求确实在很大程度上受到了这些考虑的推动，这将在政治上受到欢迎并转移对德国国内的政治分歧的注意力。但柏林的政权通常要冒双重危险：如果它在与“外国朱庇特”的对峙中退却，德国的民族主义势力可能会谩骂和谴责这位皇帝及其助手们；而如果国家全力参加一场战争，却又不清楚广大工人群众、士兵和水兵们自发的爱国主义是否将超过他们对非常保守的普鲁士—德意志国家的厌恶。当一些观察家认为一场战争将使全国团结起来支持皇帝时，其他人则担心它将进一步加剧德国社会政治结构的紧张状况。还有，这需要在各方面联系起来看，例如，德国国内的弱点不像俄国或奥匈帝国的弱点那么明显，但确实存在，而且它们肯定会影响这个国家参加一场长期的“总体战争”的能力。

It has been argued by many historians that imperial Germany was a “special case,” following a Sonderweg (“special path”) which would one day culminate in the excesses of National Socialism. Viewed solely in terms of political culture and rhetoric around 1900, this is a hard claim to detect: Russian and Austrian anti- Semitism was at least as strong as German, French chauvinism as marked as the German, Japan’s sense of cultural uniqueness and destiny as broadly held as Germany’s. Each of the powers examined here was “special,” and in an age of imperialism was all too eager to assert its specialness. From the criterion of power politics, however, Germany did possess unique features which were of great import. It was the one Great Power which combined the modern, industrialized strength of the western democracies with the autocratic (one is tempted to say irresponsible) decision-making features of the eastern monarchies. 64 It was the one “newcomer” Great Power, with the exception of the United States, which really had the strength to challenge the existing order. And it was the one rising Great Power which, if it expanded its borders farther to the east or to the west, could only do so at the expense of powerful neighbors: the one country whose future growth, in Calleo’s words, “directly” rather than “indirectly” undermined the European balance. 65 This was an explosive combination for a nation which felt, in Tirpitz’s phrase, that it was “a life-and-death question … to make up the lost ground. ”66

许多历史学家争辩说，德意志帝国“情况特殊”，它遵循的是有朝一日将在国家社会主义的暴行中达到顶点的“特殊道路”。只从1900年前后的政治文化和花言巧语来看，这是一个很难检验的主张：俄国和奥地利的反犹主义至少与德国一样强烈，法国的沙文主义与德国的一样明显，日本对文化的独特性和天定命运的观念与德国持有的一样广泛。这些被观察的每一个大国都是“特殊的”，它们在帝国主义时代都太急于宣称其特殊性了。但从强权政治的标准来看，德国确实具有很重要的特性。它是一个把西方民主国家的现代化、工业化的力量，与东方君主国专断的（也有人可能说是不负责任的）决策结合在一起的大国。它是除美国之外“新出现的”大国，它的确有能力向现存秩序挑战。它是一个正在崛起的大国，如果它进一步向东或向西扩大它的边界，只能损害其强大的邻国的利益：用卡利奥的话来说，这个国家将来的发展会“直接”而不是“间接”地动摇欧洲的均势。按照蒂尔皮茨的说法，德国认为“弥补其失去的地盘……是一个生死存亡的问题”，对这样一个国家来说，这是一个爆炸性的结合。

It seemed a vital matter to the rising states to break through, but it was even more urgent for those established Great Powers now under pressure to try to hold their own. Here again, it will be necessary to point to the very significant differences between the three Powers in question, Austria-Hungary, France, and Britain—and perhaps especially between the first-named and the last. Nonetheless, the charts of their relative power in world affairs would show all of them distinctly weaker by the end of the nineteenth century than they had been fifty or sixty years earlier,67 even if their defense budgets were larger and their colonial empires more extensive, and if (in the case of France and Austria-Hungary) they still had territorial ambitions in Europe. Furthermore, it seems fair to claim that the leaderships within these nations knew the international scene had become more complicated and threatening than that which their predecessors had faced, and that such knowledge was forcing them to consider radical changes of policy in an effort to meet the new circumstances.

对于一个要进行突破的正在崛起的国家来说，这似乎是一个至关重要的问题，而对于那些在目前的压力之下要努力据守自己地盘的老资格的大国来说，这个问题更为迫切。这里有必要再次指出三个正在被谈论的大国——奥匈帝国、法国和英国之间的重要差别，特别是奥匈帝国和最后一个英国之间的差别。但是，有关它们在世界事务中各自力量的图表将表明，它们在19世纪末与它们在50或60年前相比，都明显变弱了，虽然它们的防务预算更多，殖民帝国的版图更大，而且它们（就法国和奥匈帝国来说）在欧洲还有领土野心。不仅如此，指出下面这一点似乎是公平的：这些国家的领导人都知道，与他们的前任相比，国际形势变得更加复杂，险象丛生，而这种认识正迫使他们考虑彻底改变政策，以努力适应新的形势。

Austria-Hungary

奥匈帝国

Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire was by far the weakest of the established Great Powers—and, in Taylor’s words, slipping out of their ranks68—this is not obvious from a glance at the macroeconomic statistics. Despite considerable emigration, its population rose from 41 million in 1890 to 52 million in 1914, to go well clear of France and Italy, and some way ahead of Britain. The empire also underwent much industrialization in these decades, though the pace of change was perhaps swifter before 1900 than after. Its coal production by 1914 was a respectable 47 million tons, higher than either France’s or Russia’s, and even in its steel production and energy consumption it was not significantly inferior to either of the Dual Alliance powers. Its textile industry experienced a surge in output, brewing and sugar-beet production rose, the oilfields of Galicia were exploited, mechanization occurred on the estates of Hungary, the Skoda armaments works multiplied in size, electrification occurred in the major cities, and the state vigorously promoted railway construction. 69 According to one of Bairodas calculations, the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s GNP in 1913 was virtually the same as France’s,70 which looks a little suspect—as does Farrar’s claim that its share of “European power” rose from 4. 0 percent in 1890 to 7. 2 percent in 1910. 71 Nonetheless, it is clear that the empire’s growth rates from 1870 to 1913 were among the highest in Europe, and that its “industrial potential” was growing faster even than Russia’s. 72

虽然奥匈帝国是已经确立的强国中最弱的一个（用泰勒的话来说，它正在从强国的行列中悄悄消失），但是这一点从宏观的经济统计数字来看并不明显。尽管大量地向外移民，它的人口仍然从1890年的4100万上升到1914年的5200万，远远超过了法国和意大利，在某种程度上也超过了英国。在这几十年里，帝国实现了高度工业化，其经济发展速度，在1900年以前可能比以后更快。到1914年，它的煤产量已相当可观，达到4700万吨，既高于法国，也高于俄国。甚至在钢产量和能源消耗方面，它也绝不比这两个协约国中的任何一国差。它的纺织工业产量经历了历史上的一个高峰期，酿酒和甜菜的产量也有所提高。加利西亚的油田已被开采，庄园实现了机械化。斯科达兵工厂的规模成倍扩大，主要城市正实现电气化，铁路建设在国家的促进下蓬勃发展。根据贝洛克的一项统计，奥匈帝国1913年的国民生产总值实际上与法国相同，这看起来有些值得怀疑——就像法勒公布的材料一样可疑，该材料说，1890年它在“欧洲强国”中所占的比例为4%，到1910年上升到7.2%。然而，很明显，奥匈帝国从1870年到1913年的增长率在欧洲属于最高之列，它的“工业潜力”的增长速度甚至比俄国更快。

Once one examines Austria-Hungary’s economy and society in more detail, however, significant flaws appear. Perhaps the most fundamental of these was the enormous regional differences in per capita income and output, which to a large degree mirrored socioeconomic and ethnic diversities in a territory stretching from the Swiss Alps to the Bukovina. It was not merely the fact that in 1910 73 percent of the population of Galicia and Bukovina were employed in agriculture compared with 55 percent for the empire as a whole; much more significant and alarming was the enormous disparity of wealth, with per capita income in Lower Austria (850 crowns) and Bohemia (761 crowns) being far in excess of those in Galicia (316 crowns), Bukovina (310 crowns), and Dalmatia (264 crowns). 73 Yet while it was in the Austrian provinces and Czech lands that industrial “takeoff” was occurring, and in Hungary that agricultural improvements were under way, it was in those povertystricken Slavic regions that the population was increasing the fastest. In consequence, Austria-Hungary’s per capita level of industrialization remained well below that of the leading Great Powers, and despite all the absolute increases in output, its share of world manufacturing production hovered around a mere 4. 5 percent in those decades. This was not a strong economic base on which a country with Austria-Hungary’s strategical tasks could rest.

但是，一旦更加细致地考察奥匈帝国的经济和社会状况，就会发现它存在着重大的缺陷。其中最基本的缺陷可能是人均收入和产量存在着巨大的地区性差异，这在很大程度上反映了从瑞士阿尔卑斯山到布科维纳地区的社会经济和种族差异，还反映了下述的鲜明差距：1910年，加利西亚和布科维纳73%的人口从事农业，而整个帝国55%的人口从事农业；更主要、更令人惊异的是财富的巨大的不均，下奥地利（850克朗）和波希米亚（761克朗）的人均收入，远远超过加利西亚（316克朗）、布科维纳（310克朗）和达尔马提亚（264克朗）。还有，在奥地利行省和捷克土地上工业正在起飞、匈牙利农业改良正在进行的同时，被贫穷困扰的斯拉夫地区，人口正以最快的速度增长着。结果使奥匈帝国工业化的人均水平远低于其他主要强国。在这几十年中，尽管它所有产品产量都有了绝对增长，但它在世界制造业生产的总产量中所占的比例仍然徘徊在4.5%左右。对肩负着战略任务的奥匈帝国来说，它所依靠的经济基础并不是强大的。

This relative backwardness might have been compensated for by a high degree of national-cultural cohesion, such as existed in Japan or France; but, alas, Vienna controlled the most ethnically diverse cluster of peoples in Europe74—when war came in 1914, for example, the mobilization order was given in fifteen different languages. The age-old tension between German speakers and Czech speakers in Bohemia was not the most serious of the problems facing Emperor Francis Joseph and his advisers, even if the “Young Czech” movement was making it sound so. The strained relations with Hungary, which despite its post-1867 status as an equal partner clashed with Vienna again and again over such issues as tariffs, treatment of ethnic minorities, “Magyarization” of the army, and so on, were such that by 1899, western observers feared the breakup of the entire empire and the French foreign minister, Delcassé, secretly renegotiated the terms of the Dual Alliance with Russia in order to prevent Germany from succeeding to the Austrian lands and access to the Adriatic coast. By 1905, indeed, the general staff in Vienna was quietly preparing a contingency plan for the military occupation of Hungary should the crisis worsen. 75 Vienna’s list of nationality problems did not stop with the Czechs and the Magyars. The Italians in the south resented the stiff Germanization in their territories, and looked over the border for help from Rome—as the captive Rumanians, to a lesser degree, looked eastward to Bucharest. The Poles, by contrast, were quiescent, in part because the rights they enjoyed under the Habsburg Empire were superior to those obtaining in the German- and Russian-dominated territories. But by far the largest danger to the unity of the empire came from the South Slavs, since dissident groups within seemed to be looking toward Serbia and, more distantly, toward Russia. Compromises with South Slav aspirations were urged from time to time, by more liberal circles in Vienna, but they were fiercely resisted by the Magyar gentry, who both opposed any diminution of Hungary’s special status and also kept up their strong discrimination of ethnic minorities within Hungary itself. Since a political solution of this issue was denied to the moderates, the door was open for Austro- German nationalists like the chief of staff, General Conrad, to argue that the Serbs and their sympathizers should be dealt with by force. Despite the restraint exercised by Emperor Francis Joseph himself, this always remained a last resort if the Empire’s survival did really seem to be threatened.

存在于日本和法国的那种民族文化高度的内聚力，对于民族关系相当复杂的奥匈帝国来说反而成了不良因素。维也纳控制着欧洲最众多的民族——当1914年大战来临时，动员令要以15种不同的民族语言下达。在波希米亚地区说德语和说捷克语的人之间由来已久的紧张关系，并不是弗朗西斯·约瑟夫皇帝及其顾问们所面临的最严重的问题。虽然“青年捷克”运动给这种紧张关系蒙上了最严重的阴影，虽然匈牙利在1867年以后获得了与之同等的伙伴地位，它还是免不了就诸如关税、少数民族的待遇、军队的“匈牙利化”等问题不断地与维也纳发生冲突，双方的关系达到了一触即发的紧张程度，以至于到1899年西方的观察家们曾经担心整个帝国就要崩溃。法国外长德尔卡塞为此曾秘密地与俄国重新商谈结成两国联盟的条件，目的在于防止德国接管奥地利领地和占有亚得里亚海岸。到1905年，维也纳的总参谋部确实在悄悄地准备着应急计划，以便在危机恶化时对匈牙利实行军事占领。维也纳所遇到的民族问题，不仅仅是捷克人和匈牙利人的问题，而且南部的意大利人也反对在他们的土地上强行德意志化，并寄望于边界那边，企求罗马的援助——就像被控制的罗马尼亚人在较小的程度上求助于东部的布加勒斯特一样。相比之下，波兰人比较平静，其部分原因是他们在奥匈帝国统治之下比在德国和俄国统治的区域享有比较优越的权利。但是，迄今对帝国联合体的最大威胁来自南部的斯拉夫人，因为帝国内部持不同政见的集团似乎寄希望于塞尔维亚，甚至更远处的俄国。在维也纳，自由主义人士时常敦促政府向南部的斯拉夫人的要求进行妥协，但匈牙利贵族强烈反对这些妥协。他们既反对匈牙利特殊的地位受到任何削弱，同时又在匈牙利境内对少数民族大加歧视。由于温和主义者要求对这一问题实行政治解决的办法遭到了政府的拒绝，这就为总参谋长康拉德将军之流的奥地利—德意志民族主义者打开了方便之门。他们坚持以武力对付塞尔维亚人及其同情者。这一主张虽然遭到了弗朗西斯·约瑟夫皇帝本人的阻止，但是如果帝国的生存真正受到了威胁，它仍不失为一项最后解决问题的有效办法。

All of this undoubtedly effected Austria-Hungary’s power, and in a whole number of ways. It was not that multi-ethnicity inevitably meant military weakness. The army remained a unifying institution, and extraordinarily adept at using a whole array of languages of command; nor had its old skills of divide and rule been forgotten when it came to garrisons and deployments. But it was increasingly difficult to rely upon the wholehearted cooperation of the Czech or Hungarian regiments in certain circumstances, and even the traditional loyalty of the Croats (used for centuries along the “military border”) was eroded by Hungarian persecution. What was more, Vienna’s classic answer to all of these particularist grievances was to smother them with committees, with new jobs, tax concessions, additional railway branch lines, and so on. “There were, in 1914, well over 3,000,000 civil servants, running things as diverse as schools, hospitals, welfare, taxation, railways, posts, etc. … so … that there was not much money left for the army itself. ”76 According to Wright’s figures, defense appropriations took a far smaller share of “national (i. e. , central government) appropriations” in the Austria- Hungarian Empire than in any of the other Great Powers. 77 In consequence, while its fleet never had enough funds to match even the Italian, let alone the French, navy in the Mediterranean, allocations to the army were between one-third and onehalf of those which the Russian and Prussian armies enjoyed. The army’s weapons, especially artillery, were out-of-date and far too few. Because of lack of funds, only about 30 percent of the available manpower was conscripted, and many of them were sent on “permanent leave” or received only eight weeks training. It was not a system geared to produce masses of competent reserves in wartime. 78

所有这些无疑在很多方面影响了奥匈帝国的实力，这并不是说众多的民族一定意味着军事上的脆弱。帝国军队保持了统一的组织，善于使用多种语言的指挥系统，以及在驻防和部署兵力时惯用的分而治之的手法。但是，在某种情况下，依靠捷克或匈牙利部队的合作日益困难，甚至克罗地亚人（几个世纪以来用于“军事边界”地带）传统的忠诚也被匈牙利人的迫害所腐蚀。而且维也纳对付这些地区利益主义者的不满的一贯反应是，用设立专门问题委员会、提供新的工作、减免税收、增加铁路支线等办法来加以遏制。“在1914年，文职公务员的人数超过300万，他们管理学校、医院、社会福利、税收、铁路、邮电等各种各样的事务……于是……没有充足的钱留给军队。”根据赖特的统计，奥匈帝国的国防拨款在“国家（即中央政府）拨款”中所占的比例，比其他任何强国都少得多。结果它的舰队从来也没有充足的资金以赶上意大利，更不用说在地中海的法国海军了。军队的给养也只有俄国和普鲁士军队所享有的1/3到一半左右。军队的武器，特别是火炮已经过时，而且数量有限。由于缺乏资金，只有可征用人力的30%应征入伍，他们之中的大部分被放了长假，或只受到8周的训练。这种制度难以造就战时大量合格的后备军。

As the international tensions built up in the decade or so after 1900, the Austro- Hungarian Empire’s strategical position appeared parlous indeed. Its internal divisions threatened to split the country asunder, and complicated relations with most of its neighbors. Its economic growth, although marked, was not allowing it to catch up with leading Great Powers such as Britain and Germany. It spent less per capita on defense than many of the other powers, and it conscripted a far smaller ratio of its eligible youth into the army than any of the continental nations. To cap it all, it seemed to have so many possible foes that its general staff had to plan for a whole variety of campaigns—a complication which very few of the other Great Powers were distracted with.

1900年以后约10年时间里，国际紧张局势加剧，奥匈帝国的战略地位越发岌岌可危，内部分裂使国家面临分崩离析的威胁，同时使它与大多数邻国的关系复杂起来。经济的增长虽然显著，但它却无法赶上英、德这些主要强国。它用在国防上的人均费用比许多其他强国要少，应征入伍的青年在适龄青年中所占的比例，比其他任何大陆国家都少得多。最后再加上它似乎有很多的潜在的敌人，结果帝国总参谋部不得不为众多的战役制订计划——这是其他国家很少在上面分散精力的麻烦事。

That the Austro-Hungarian Empire had so many potential enemies was itself due to its unique geographical and multinational situation. Despite the Triple Alliance, the tensions with Italy became greater after 1900, and on several occasions Conrad advocated a military blow against this southern neighbor; even if his proposal was firmly rejected by both the foreign ministry and the emperor, the garrisons and fortresses along the Italian frontier were steadily built up. Much farther afield, Vienna had to worry about Rumania, which by 1912 became a distinct threat as it moved into the opposite camp. But the country which attracted the most venom was Serbia, which, with Montenegro, seemed a magnet to the South Slavs within the empire and thus a cancerous growth which had to be eliminated. The only problem with that agreeable solution was that an attack upon Serbia could well provoke a military response from Austria-Hungary’s most formidable rival, czarist Russia, which would invade the northeastern front just as the bulk of the Austro-Hungarian army was pushing southward, past Belgrade. Although even the hyperbelligerent Conrad asserted that it was “up to the diplomats”79 to keep the empire from having to fight all these foes at once, his own pre-1914 war plans reveal the fantastic military juggling act for which the army had to prepare. While a main force (AStaffel) of nine army corps would be prepared for deployment against either (!) Italy or Russia, a smaller group of three army corps would be mobilized against Serbia- Montenegro (Minimalgruppe Balkan). In addition, a strategic reserve of four army corps (B-Staffel) would hold itself ready “either to reinforce A-Staffel and make it into a powerful offensive force, or, if there were no danger from either Italy or Russia, to join Minimalgruppe Balkan for an offensive against Serbia. ”80

奥匈帝国有如此之多的潜在敌人，是由于它本身独特的地理位置和多民族的国情造成的。虽然有三国联盟，但同意大利的关系在1900年以后变得更加紧张。康拉德在某些场合鼓吹向这个南方邻国发动军事进攻，尽管他的意见遭到了外交大臣和皇帝的强烈反对，但是沿着意大利边境的驻军和要塞仍然在不断加强。再扯远一点，罗马尼亚也在使维也纳感到不安，因为在1912年，罗马尼亚已经加入了敌对阵营，这对它构成了明显的威胁。但是最有敌意的地区是塞尔维亚，它与门的内哥罗一道似乎是帝国内吸引南部斯拉夫人的一块磁铁，因此帝国必须除掉这一病患。恰当的解决办法所带来的唯一问题是，对塞尔维亚的进攻很可能会引起奥匈帝国最可怕的敌人——沙皇俄国的军事反应，它很可能会在奥匈帝国的大批军队经过贝尔格莱德向南挺进时，入侵东北边境。因此，最好战的康拉德声称，“将通过外交家”使帝国避免同时向所有的敌人开战。他1914年制订的战争计划中，暴露了军队不得不准备进行军事玩火行动。当由几个军组成的主力部队（A梯队）做好了战斗部署，准备去对付意大利或俄国时，一个由3个军组成的较小的集团军（巴尔干小分队）将被动员去进攻塞尔维亚—门的内哥罗。此外，一个由4个军（B梯队）组成的战略预备部队，将随时准备增援A梯队，使之变成一支强大的进攻力量，如果没有来自意大利或俄国的危险，就加入巴尔干小分队进攻塞尔维亚。

“The heart of the matter,” it has been said, “was simply that Austria-Hungary was trying to act the part of a great power with the resources of a second-rank one. ”81 The desperate efforts to be strong on all fronts ran a serious risk of making the empire weak everywhere; at the very least, they placed superhuman demands upon the empire’s railway system, and upon the staff officers who would control it. More than that, these operational dilemmas confirmed what most observers in Vienna had reluctantly accepted since 1870: that in the event of a Great Power war, Austria- Hungary needed German support. This would not be the case in a purely Austro- Italian war (although that, despite Conrad’s frequent fears, was the least likely contingency); but German military assistance certainly would be required if Austria- Hungary became embroiled in a war with Serbia, and the latter was then aided by Russia; hence the repeated attempts by Conrad prior to 1914 to secure Berlin’s assurances on this point. Finally, the baroque nature of this operational planning reflects once again what many contemporaries could see but some later historians have declined to admit:82 that if the nationalist explosions of discontent in the Balkans, and in the empire itself, continued to go off, the chances of preserving Kaiser Joseph’s unique but anachronistic inheritance were well-nigh impossible. And when that happened, the European equilibrium was bound to be undermined.

有人认为，“问题的核心在于奥匈帝国企图以二流国家的物力扮演一流强国的角色”，企图在各条战线上都强大起来。这种不顾一切的努力，使帝国出现了到处衰落的严重风险。至少，这些努力给帝国的铁路系统及控制它的官员提出了不切实际的要求。不仅如此，这种军事上的进退维谷证实了维也纳大多数观察家自1870年以来不愿接受的事实：一旦大国战争爆发，奥匈帝国就需要德国的援助。如果只是纯粹的奥意战争（虽然它是最不可能的危急事件，尽管康拉德时常担心），情况可能还不致如此。但是奥匈帝国卷入塞尔维亚的战争，塞尔维亚人因此得到俄国的援助，那么德国的军事援助肯定是必需的。因此在1914年以前，康拉德为使柏林保证在这一问题上的许诺而进行了不懈的努力。最后，这种军事计划的荒诞性又一次反映了很多当代人能观察到但后来的某些历史学家又不愿承认的事实：如果在巴尔干和帝国本土内部爆发的民族主义不满情绪继续激化，那么维护约瑟夫皇帝所独有的但又不合时代潮流的继承权几乎是不可能的。当这样的事情发生时，欧洲的均势注定要被打破。

France

法国

France in 1914 possessed considerable advantages over Austria-Hungary. Perhaps the most important was that it had only one enemy, Germany, against which its entire national resources could be concentrated. This had not been the case in the late 1880s, when France was challenging Britain in Egypt and West Africa and engaged in a determined naval race against the Royal Navy, quarreling with Italy almost to the point of blows, and girding itself for the revanche against Germany. 83 Even when more cautious politicians drew the country back from the brink and then moved into the early stages of their alliance with Russia, the French strategical dilemma was still an acute one. Its most formidable foe, clearly, was the German Empire, now more powerful than ever. But the Italian naval and colonial challenge (as the French viewed it) was also disturbing, not only for its own sake, but because a war with Italy would almost certainly involve its German ally. For the army, this meant that a considerable number of divisions would have to be stationed in the southeast; for the navy, it exacerbated the age-old strategical problem of whether to concentrate the fleet in Mediterranean or Atlantic ports or to run the risk of dividing it into two smaller forces. 84

1914年，法国具有比奥地利远为有利的条件，其中最主要的是它只有一个敌人——德国。它可以集中国家的全部力量对付德国。可是在19世纪80年代后期，情况并非如此，那时法国在埃及和西非向英国挑战，并与英国皇家海军展开军备竞赛。同意大利的纠纷也几乎达到了大动干戈的程度。与此同时，它还准备向德国进行报复。甚至当较为谨慎的政治家们把国家从战争边缘上拉回来，然后进入与俄国结盟的早期阶段时，法国面临的战略困境仍然很严重。它的最可怕的敌人德意志帝国，现在显然比以往更强大了。但是，意大利的海军和在殖民扩张方面的挑战（如法国人所见）也是令人不安的。这不仅是由于意大利自身的缘故，而且同意大利进行战争几乎肯定会使它的盟国德国卷进来。对于法国陆军来说，这意味着它将不得不把大量的师驻守在其东南边境。对海军来说，一个老的战略问题变得更加棘手：它是把舰队集中在地中海港口还是大西洋的港口，还是冒险将舰队分成两支较小的兵力？

All this was compounded by the swift deterioration in Anglo-French relations which followed the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. From 1884, the two countries were locked into an escalating naval race, which on the British side was associated with the possible loss of their Mediterranean line of communications and (occasionally) with fears of a French cross-Channel invasion. 85 Even more persistent and threatening were the frequent Anglo-French colonial clashes. Britain and France had quarreled over the Congo in 1884–1885 and over West Africa throughout the entire 1880s and 1890s. In 1893 they seemed to be on the brink of war over Siam. The greatest crisis of all came in 1898, when their sixteen-year rivalry over control of the Nile Valley climaxed in the confrontation between Kitchener’s army and Marchanda small expedition at Fashoda. Although the French backed down on that occasion, they were energetic and bold imperialists. Neither the inhabitants of Timbuktu nor those of Tonkin would have regarded France as a power in decline, far from it. Between 1871 and 1900, France had added 3. 5 million square miles to its existing colonial territories, and it possessed indisputably the largest overseas empire after Britain’s. Although the commerce of those lands was not great, France had built up a considerable colonial army and an array of prime naval bases from Dakar to Saigon. Even in places which France had not colonized, such as the Levant and South China, its influence was large. 86

所有这些都因1882年英国占领埃及以后，英法关系的迅速恶化而复杂起来。从1884年起，两国暗地里进行着逐渐升级的海军军备竞赛，对英国来说，军备竞赛与以下的前景有关：它有丧失地中海交通线的可能，（偶尔）还担心法国会越过英吉利海峡入侵英国。更持久更具威胁的是英法之间关于殖民地的不断冲突。在1884年至1885年，英法为争夺刚果发生争吵；在整个19世纪80年代和90年代，两国为争夺西非闹得不可开交；1893年为争夺泰国，它们几乎处于战争边缘。最大的危机出现于1898年，当时双方为争夺尼罗河流域的控制权进行了长达16年之久的对抗，基切纳的军队与马尔尚的小分队在法绍达的冲突使对抗达到顶点。虽然当时法国人退让了，但他们仍是精力旺盛、胆大妄为的帝国主义者。廷巴克图[4]和东京[5]的居民无人认为作为强国的法国正在衰落。1871～1900年，法国殖民地领土又增加了350万平方英里，它无可争辩地成为仅次于英国的最大的海外殖民帝国。虽然那些地区的商业不很发达，法国仍在从达喀尔到西贡之间的广大范围内建立起了庞大的殖民地军队和一些优良的海军基地。即使在没有进行殖民化的地区，如地中海东部沿岸以及中国南部，它的影响也很大。

France had been able to carry out such a dynamic colonial policy, it has been argued, because the structures of government had permitted a small group of bureaucrats, colonial governors, and parti colonial enthusiasts to effect “forward” strategies which the fast-changing ministries of the Third Republic had little chance to control. 87 But if the volatile state of French parliamentary politics had inadvertently given a strength and consistency to its imperial policy—by placing it in the hands of permanent officials and their friends in the colonial “lobby”— it had a far less happy impact upon naval and military affairs. For example, the swift changes of regime brought with them new ministers of marine, some of whom were mere “placemen,” others of whom had strongly held (but always varying) opinions on naval strategy. In consequence, although large sums were allocated to the French navy in these decades, the money was not well spent: the building programs reflected the frequent changes from one administration’s preference for a guerre de course (commerce-raiding) strategy to another’s firm support for battleships, leaving the navy itself with a heterogeneous collection of ships which were no match for those of the British or, later, the Germans. 88 But the impact of politics upon the French navy paled by comparison with the effect upon the army, where the strong dislike shown by the officer corps toward republican politicians and a whole host of civil-military clashes (of which the Dreyfus affair was merely the most notorious) weakened the fabric of France and placed in question both the loyalty and the efficiency of the army. Only with the remarkable post-1911 nationalist revival could these civil-military disputes be set aside in the common crusade against the German enemy; but there were many who wondered whether too heavy a dose of politics had not done irreparable damage to the French armed forces. 89

有人争辩说，法国能够贯彻这样一个有活力的殖民政策，是因为政府机构允许一小撮官僚、殖民地总督和半殖民地热心拥护者推行“前进”战略，这种战略是第三共和国变换迅速的内阁几乎没有机会加以控制的。但是，虽然法国议会政治多变的状况无意识地加强和坚定了它的帝国政策——通过把帝国政策交由常务官员及他们在殖民地问题上的“院外集团”的朋友们来掌握，但它对海军和陆军事务的影响却远不是令人愉快的。例如，政府的经常更迭使海军部长不断变换，他们之中有的人只会做官，有的人对海军战略有自己的看法，但又经常变化。在这几十年里，政府给法国海军的大量拨款没有发挥作用，这从建设计划中可以看出来。有的负责官员偏爱海上劫掠（商业掠夺）战略，有的则坚决主张建造战舰。结果留给海军的是各类舰船的大杂烩，使之无法与英国或后来的德国海军相抗衡。然而帝国政策对海军的影响与对陆军的影响相比较，就显得相形见绌了。在陆军中，军官团对共和国政治家们表现出强烈的反感，加上文官与军人之间的许多冲突（包括臭名昭著的德雷福斯事件），削弱了法国的实力，这就使人们对军队的忠诚和战斗力产生了怀疑。只是由于1911年以后出现了明显的民族振兴，文官和军人的争端才被搁置一边，以便共同对抗德国。但是仍有很多人怀疑，这种政策是否已经给法国武装部队带来难以弥补的损失。

The other obvious internal constraint upon French power was the state of its economy. 90 The position here is a complex one, and has been made the more so by economic historians’ predilections for different indices. On the positive side:

在国内，另一个明显束缚法国军事力量的因素，是它的经济状况。这里的情况也比较复杂，经济历史学家对许多不同指数的偏爱，也使它变得更加复杂化了。其中有利的因素有：

This period saw a great development in banking and financial institutions participating in industrial investment and in foreign lending. The iron and steel industry was established on modern lines and great new plants were built, especially on the Lorraine orefield. On the coalfields of northern France the familiar, ugly landscape of an industrial society took place. Important strides were made in engineering and the newer industries. … France had its notable entrepreneurs and innovators who won a leading place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in steel, engineering, motor cars and aircraft. Firms like Schneider, Peugeot, Michelin and Renault were in the vanguard. 91

在这一时期，参加工业投资和对外信贷的银行和金融机构有了巨大的发展，并建立了现代化的钢铁工业。特别是在洛林矿区，新的工厂纷纷建成。在法国北部的产煤区，出现了工业社会通常具有的、破烂不堪的情景。在工程技术和新兴工业方面取得了重大的进展……法国有著名的企业家和革新家，19世纪末和20世纪初，他们在钢铁、工程技术、汽车和飞机制造等方面享有领先地位。施奈德、标致汽车、米其林和雷诺等公司走在时代的前列。

Until Henry Ford’s mass-production methods were developed, indeed, France was the leading automobile producer in the world. There was a further burst of railwaybuilding in the 1880s, which together with improved telegraphs, postal systems, and inland waterways, increased the trend toward a national market. Agriculture had been protected by the Meline tariff of 1892, and there remained a focus upon producing high-quality goods, with a large per capita added value. Given these indices of absolute economic expansion and the small increase in the number of Frenchmen during these decades, measurement of output which are related to France’s population look impressive—e. g. , per capita growth rates, per capita value of exports, etc.

的确，在亨利·福特大规模生产法发明之前，法国一直是世界上重要的汽车生产国。19世纪80年代，铁路建设有突飞猛进的发展，它同改进电报业、邮政和内河航运一道推动着国内市场的形成。农业受到1892年《梅里纳关税法案》的保护，同时它继续集中生产高质量的产品，人均产值大增。由于在这几十年里绝对经济增长的指数和法国人口的少量增加，产量与法国人口的对比统计是令人难忘的，例如人均增长率和出口产品的人均值等，都是如此。

Finally, there was the undeniable fact that France was immensely rich in terms of mobile capital, which could be (and systematically was) applied to serve the interests of the country’s diplomacy and strategy. The most impressive sign of this had been the very rapid paying off the German indemnity of 1871, which, in Bismarck’s erroneous calculation, was supposed to cripple France’s strength for many years to come. But in the period following, French capital was also poured out to various countries inside Europe and without. By 1914, France’s foreign investments totaled $9 billion, second only to Britain’s. While these investments had helped to industrialize considerable parts of Europe, including Spain and Italy, they had also brought large political and diplomatic benefits to France itself. The slow weaning of Italy away from the Triple Alliance at the turn of the century was attended, if not fully caused, by the Italian need for capital. Franco-Russian loans to China, in exchange for railway rights and other concessions, were nearly always raised in Paris and funneled through St. Petersburg. France’s massive investments in Turkey and the Balkans—which the frustrated Germans could never manage to match prior to 1914—gave it an edge, not only in politico-cultural terms, but also in securing contracts for French rather than German armaments. Above all, the French poured money into the modernization of their Russian ally, from the floating of the first loan on the Paris market in October 1888 to the critical 1913 offer of lending 500 million francs—-on condition that the Russian strategic railway system in the Polish provinces be greatly extended, so that the “Russian steamroller” could be mobilized the faster to crush Germany. 92 This was the clearest demonstration yet of France’s ability to use its financial muscle to bolster its own strategic power (although the irony was that the more efficient the Russian military machine became, the more the Germans had to prepare to strike quickly against France).

最后，一个不容否认的事实是：法国的流动资本极其丰富，它可以被用来（系统地用来）为国家的外交和战略服务。最令人难忘的标志是它很快便偿清了1871年对德国的赔款，这项赔款按照俾斯麦的错误估计是想使法国的力量在以后瘫痪多年。在随后的时期里，法国资本仍旧大量地涌向欧洲内外的许多国家。到1914年，法国的对外投资总额为90亿美元，仅次于英国。包括西班牙和意大利在内的欧洲大部分地区，都受到投资的帮助，实现了工业化，同时也给法国带来了大量政治和外交的利益。在进入20世纪之际，如果说意大利资金短缺并不是造成它逐渐脱离三国同盟的全部原因，那么至少它是与这些同时发生的。法国和俄国给中国贷款，在巴黎进行筹措，并通过圣彼得堡集中起来，目的在于换取筑路权和其他特权。法国在土耳其和巴尔干的投资——是受挫的德国人在19世纪以前绝对无法相比的——不仅在政治文化方面，而且在取得购买法国武器而不是德国武器的合同方面，都占了优势。最重要的是，法国人投资帮助他们的俄国同盟实现了现代化。从1888年10月在巴黎市场上第一次筹款，直到1913年提供5亿法郎的紧急贷款，条件是俄国要在波兰诸行省大大延伸其铁路网，以便把“俄国的不可抗拒的力量”迅速调过来击溃德国。这是到那时为止有效地利用它的财力支持自己战略力量的最有力的证明（虽然具有讽刺意味的是，俄国的军事机器效率越高，德国人越要加紧准备攻击法国）。

Yet once again, as soon as comparative economic data are used, this positive image of France’s growth fades away. While it was certainly a large-scale investor abroad, there is little evidence that this capital brought the country the optimal return, either in terms of interest earned93 or in a rise in foreign orders for French products: all too often, even in Russia, German merchants grabbed the lion’s share of the import trade. Germany’s proportion of exported European manufacturers had already overtaken France’s in the early 1880s; by 1911, it was almost twice as high. But this in turn reflected the awkward fact that whereas the French economy had suffered from vigorous British industrial competition a generation or two earlier, it was now being affected by the rise of the German industrial giant. With truly rare exceptions like the automobile industry, the comparative statistics time and time again measure this eclipse. By the eve of war, its total industrial potential was only about 40 percent of Germany’s, its steel production was little over one-sixth, its coal production hardly one-seventh. What coal, steel, and iron were produced was usually more expensive, coming from smaller plants and poorer mines. Similarly, for all the alleged advances of the French chemical industry, the country was massively dependent upon German imports. Given its small plants, out-of-date practices, and heavy reliance upon protected local markets, it is not surprising that France’s industrial growth in the nineteenth century had been coldly described as “arthritic … hesitant, spasmodic, and slow. ”94

然而，我们一旦引入比较经济数据，法国经济发展的真实形象便失去了光彩。虽然它无疑是一个海外投资大国，但几乎没有证据证明这些资本给国家带来了理想的报偿：无论是就所得利润而言，还是在增加外国对法国产品的订货方面都是如此。甚至在俄国，德国商人经常得到进口贸易中最大的份额。德国在欧洲出口制造商中所占的比例在19世纪80年代早期已经超过法国，到1911年几乎是法国的两倍。但是，这反过来又反映了这样一个使人难堪的事实，早在一代人或两代人之前，法国的经济就遭受着英国工业的有力竞争，而这时又受到德国工业巨人崛起的冲击。除了像汽车工业这样极少数的例外，统计数字一再表明法国经济黯然失色。到大战前夕，它的工业总潜力只相当于德国的40%左右，钢产量则刚超过德国的1/6，煤产量几乎不足德国的1/7。由于是在较小的工厂和贫穷的矿区生产，因此煤、钢和铁的成本通常比较高。同样，尽管法国化学工业已有发展，但它仍依赖从德国进口。由于工厂小，生产方法陈旧，再加上严重依赖受到保护的国内市场，19世纪法国工业的发展，被冷酷地描写成步履蹒跚、踌躇不前、时起时落、进展缓慢的过程，这是不足为奇的。

Nor were its bucolic charms any consolation, at least in terms of relative power and wealth. The blows dealt by disease to silk and wine production were never fully recovered from; and what the Meline tariff did, in its effort to protect farm incomes and preserve social stability, was to slow down the drift from the land and to support inefficient producers. With agriculture still accounting for 40 percent of the active population around 1910 and still overwhelmingly composed of smallholdings, this was an obvious drag upon both French productivity and overall wealth. Bairoch’s data show the French GNP in 1913 only 55 percent of Germany’s and its share of world manufacturing production around 40 percent of Germany’s; Wright has its national income as being $6 billion in 1914 to Germany’s $12 billion. 95 Another war with its eastern neighbor, should France stand alone, could only repeat the result of 1870–1871.

它田园生活的魅力也不能令人得到安慰，至少就相对实力和财富而言是这样。自然灾害对丝绸和酿酒业的打击从来就没有恢复过来；极力保护农业收入，维护社会稳定的《梅里纳关税法案》的实施结果，延缓了人口从农村转入城市，从而扶植了低效的生产者。1910年前后，法国有活动能力的人口中有41%从事农业，而他们绝大多数是经营小块土地，这对法国的生产力和整个国家财富显然是个累赘。贝罗克的统计资料表明，1913年法国的国民生产总值相当于德国的55%，它在世界制造业中所占的比重只相当于德国的40%左右；赖特的统计证明，1914年法国国民收入为60亿美元，而德国为120亿。如果法国同其东部邻国单独进行一次战争，只能重现1870～1871年战争的结局。

On many of these comparative indices, France had also slipped well behind the United States, Britain, and Russia as well as Germany, so that by the early twentieth century it was only the fifth among the Great Powers. Yet it was the erosion of French power vis-à-vis Germany which mattered, simply because of the bitter relations between the two countries. In this respect, the trends were ominous. Whereas Germany’s population rose by nearly eighteen million between 1890 and 1914, France’s increased by little over one million. This, together with Germany’s greater national wealth, meant that however much the French strained to keep up militarily, they were always outdistanced. By conscripting over 80 percent of its eligible youth, France had produced a staggeringly large army for its size, at least according to certain measurements: for instance, the eighty divisions it could mobilize from a population of 40 million compared favorably with the Austrians’ forty-eight divisions from a population of 52 million. But this was to little avail against imperial Germany. Not only could the Prussian general staff, employing its better-trained reserves, mobilize somewhat over one hundred divisions, but it had a vast manpower potential to draw upon—almost ten million men in the requisite age group, compared with France’s five million; and it possessed the fantastic figure of 112,000 well-trained NCOs—the key element in an expanding army—compared with France’s 48,000. Moreover, although Germany allocated a smaller proportion of its national income to military spending, it devoted much more in absolute terms. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s the French high command had struggled in vain against “a condition of unacceptable inferiority”;96 on the eve of the First World War, the confidential memoranda about the German material superiority were equally alarming: “4,500 machine guns to 2,500 in France, 6,000 77-millimeter cannon to 3,800 French 75s, and an almost total monopoly in heavy artillery. ”97 The last aspect in particular showed French weaknesses at their worst.

从这些比较数据便可看出，法国像落后于德国那样，已在相当大的程度上落后于美国、英国和俄国，所以到20世纪初，法国在强国中只能位居第五位。可是，法国实力的削弱对与德国对抗来说是事关重大的，而这完全是因为两国关系恶化。在这方面，趋势不妙。德国在1890～1914年人口增加了将近l800万，而法国只增加了100万多一点。这个事实，再加上德国拥有雄厚的财力，意味着无论法国怎样加紧维持军事力量，它都落后于德国。通过征召80%的适龄青年入伍，法国造就了一支规模非常庞大的军队，至少根据某些统计数据是这样。例如，法国能从4000万人口中动员80个师，这与奥地利从5200万中只能动员48个师相比，是很可观的，但用来反对德意志帝国则是无济于事的。使用训练有素的后备役的普鲁士总参谋部，不仅能动员大约100多个师，而且还拥有可征召的庞大的潜在人力——几乎有l000万人是适龄青年，相比之下，法国只有500万；它拥有为数惊人的11.2万名受过良好训练的军士，这是扩大军队的关键因素，相比之下，法国只有4.8万名军士。虽然德国把国民收入的较小部分用于军费开支，但它所投入的绝对金额要多得多。法国最高统帅部为反对“无法接受的劣势状态”而进行的徒劳斗争贯穿着整个19世纪70至80年代，在第一次世界大战前夕，关于德国物质条件占优势的秘密备忘录同样令人惊慌：它拥有“4500挺机枪，而法国只有2500挺；它拥有6000门77毫米的火炮，而法国只有3800门75毫米火炮；并且它几乎完全垄断了重炮”。这最后一点尤其表明了法国人最糟糕的弱点。

And yet the French army went into battle in 1914 confident of victory, having dropped its defensive strategy in favor of an all-out offensive, reflecting the heightened emphasis upon morale which Grandmaison and others attempted to inculcate into the army—psychologically, one suspects, as compensation for these very material weaknesses. “Neither numbers nor miraculous machines will determine victory,” General Messing preached. “This will go to soldiers with valor and quality—and by this I mean superior physical and moral endurance, offensive strength. ”98 This assertiveness was associated with the “patriotic revival” in France which took place after the 1911 Moroccan crisis and which suggested the country would fight far better than it had in 1870, despite the class and political divisions which had made it appear so vulnerable during the Dreyfus affair. Most military experts assumed that the war to come would be short. What mattered, therefore, was the number of divisions which could immediately be put into the field, not the size of the German steel and chemical industries nor the millions of potential recruits Germany possessed. 99

然而，法国军队却带着必胜的信念投入了1914年的战斗。他们放弃了防御战略，竭尽全力地进攻，这反映了他们更加强调格兰梅森和其他人企图提高军队士气的愿望——人们猜想这是想在心理上弥补那些物质弱点。梅辛将军鼓吹：“决定战争胜利的不是军队人数和精良的武器，而是士兵的勇猛和素质——这里我指的是超群的体质和心理承受能力、进攻的力量。”这一论断与发生在1911年摩洛哥危机之后的“爱国主义复兴”是紧密相关的。虽然在德雷福斯事件过程中，阶级和政治的分化使国家显得如此脆弱，但这种复兴的爱国情绪仍然认为，国家能比1870年战争打得漂亮得多。大多数军事专家认为，行将到来的战争是短暂的，因此，重要的是有多少个师能投入战斗，而不是德国拥有大规模的钢铁和化学工业，也不是德国拥有几百万潜在的兵源。

This revival of national confidence was perhaps most strongly affected by the improvement in France’s international position secured by the foreign minister, Delcassé, and his diplomats after the turn of the century. 100 Not only had they nursed and maintained the vital link to St. Petersburg despite all the diplomatic efforts of the Kaiser’s government to weaken it, but they had steadily improved relations with Italy, virtually detaching it from the Triple Alliance (and thus easing the strategical problem of having to fight in Savoy as well as Lorraine). Most important of all, the French had been able to compose their colonial differences with Britain in the 1904 entente, and then to convince leading members of the Liberal government in London that France’s security was a British national interest. Although domestic-political reasons in Britain precluded a fixed alliance, the chances of France obtaining future British support improved with each addition to Germany’s High Seas Fleet and with every indication that a German strike westward would go through neutral Belgium. If Britain did come in, the Germans would have to worry not only about Russia but about the effect of the Royal Navy on its High Seas Fleet, the destruction of its overseas trade, and a small but significant British expeditionary force deployed in northern France. Fighting the Boches with Russia and Britain as one’s allies had been the French dream since 1871; now it seemed a distinct reality.

这种民族自信心的复兴可能受法国国际地位改善的影响最大，这样的国际地位是外交部长德尔卡塞以及19世纪末和20世纪初他的外交家们争得的。他们不仅建立并保护了与圣彼得堡的重要关系（尽管德皇政府做出种种外交手段来削弱它），而且还稳固地改善了同实际上已从三国同盟分裂出来的意大利的关系，因而缓解了在萨瓦和洛林两地同时作战的问题。最重要的是，法国能够在1904年协约中调和与英国关于殖民问题的纠纷，从而使伦敦自由党政府确信法国的安全就是英国的国家利益。虽然英国国内的政治因素排除了两国成立同盟的可能性，但随着德国加强公海舰队以及有迹象表明德国将穿过中立的比利时向西进攻，法国得到英国援助的机会便增加了。如果英国介入，德国不仅担心俄国介入的问题，而且要为英国皇家舰队对公海舰队的影响、德国海外贸易的毁灭和人数少但意义重大的英国远征军部署在法北部而发愁。与俄、英两国联合起来，作为一个联盟向德国开战，这是法国自1871年以来的梦想，看来它将成为确切的现实。

France was not strong enough to oppose Germany in a one-to-one struggle, something which all French governments were determined to avoid. If the mark of a Great Power is a country which is willing and able to take on any other, then France (like Austria-Hungary) had slipped to a lower position. But that definition seemed too abstract in 1914 to a nation which felt psychologically geared up for war,101 militarily stronger than ever, wealthy, and, above all, endowed with powerful allies. Whether even a combination of all those features would enable France to withstand Germany was an open question; but most Frenchmen seemed to think it would.

法国当时还没有足够的力量同德国单独作战，这也是法国历届政府决心避免的事情。如果一个大国的标志就是愿意并有能力同任何一个强国作战，那么法国和奥匈帝国一样，会降到更低的地位。但是，这个定义在1914年对下述这样一个国家来说未免太抽象了：这个国家在心理上感觉在积极备战，军事上比以往强大，很富裕，更重要的是拥有强大的盟国。即使这些因素结合到一起，是否能使法国顶住德国仍是一个未知数。但大多数法国人似乎认为能够做到这一点。

Great Britain

英国

At first sight, Britain was imposing. In 1900 it possessed the largest empire the world had ever seen, some twelve million square miles of land and perhaps a quarter of the population of the globe. In the preceding three decades alone, it had added 4. 25 million square miles and 66 million people to the empire. It was not simply a critical later historian but also the French and the Germans, the Ashanti and the Burmese, and many others at the time, who felt as follows:

英国给人的第一印象就令人难忘。1900年它是亘古未有的最大帝国，拥有l200万平方英里的土地和占世界1/4的人口。仅仅在过去30年间，帝国的土地就增加了425万平方英里，人口增加了6600万。不仅后来持批判态度的历史学家，而且法国人、德国人、阿散蒂[6]人和缅甸人，以及当时其他民族的人，都有如下感觉：

There had taken place, in the half-century or so before the [1914] war, a tremendous expansion of British power, accompanied by a pronounced lack of sympathy for any similar ambition on the part of other nations. … If any nation had truly made a bid for world power, it was Great Britain. In fact, it had more than made a bid for it. It had achieved it. The Germans were merely talking about building a railway to Bagdad. The Queen of England was Empress of India. If any nation had upset the world’s balance of power, it was Great Britain. 102

在1914年大战爆发前半个世纪左右的时间里，英国的力量得到了惊人的膨胀，同时它对任何抱有同样野心的其他国家显然没有丝毫的同情心……如果确实有某个国家企图称霸世界，那就是英国。事实上，它不仅是企图称霸世界，而且是已经称霸于世界。德国人只是谈论着要修建通往巴格达的铁路，而英国女王实际上已经是印度女皇。如果说某个国家打破了世界力量的均势，那么这个国家就是英国。

There were other indicators of British strength: the vast increases in the Royal Navy, equal in power to the next two largest fleets; the unparalleled network of naval bases and cable stations around the globe; the world’s largest merchant marine by far, carrying the goods of what was still the world’s greatest trading nation; and the financial services of the City of London, which made Britain the biggest investor, banker, insurer, and commodity dealer in the global economy. The crowds who cheered their heads off during Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee festivities in 1897 had some reason to be proud. Whenever the three or four world empires of the coming century were discussed, it—but not France, or Austria-Hungary, or many other candidates—was always on the short list of members.

英国实力的标志反映在许多方面：皇家海军力量的激增，其实力相当于其他任何两个最大的舰队之和，全球各地都有无与伦比的海军基地网和海底电缆通信站，拥有当时世界上最大的商船队，运载着世界最大贸易国的货物；伦敦金融区的金融服务业，使英国成为全球经济最大的投资者、银行家、保险商以及商品交易者。1897年，在维多利亚女王[7]即位60周年庆典期间，忘乎所以、脱帽欢呼的英国人完全有理由感到自豪。每当人们谈论20世纪世界上3个或4个帝国时，英国——而不是法国，也不是奥匈帝国或其他后起的国家——总是处于为数不多的成员之列。

However, if viewed from other perspectives—say, from the sober calculations of the British “official mind,”103 or from that of later historians of the collapse of British power—the late nineteenth century was certainly not a time when the empire was making a “bid for world power. ” On the contrary, that “bid” had been made a century earlier and had climaxed in the 1815 victory, which allowed the country to luxuriate in the consequent half-century of virtually unchallenged maritime and imperial preeminence. After 1870, however, the shifting balance of world forces was eroding British supremacy in two ominous and interacting ways. The first was that the spread of industrialization and the changes in the military and naval weights which followed from it weakened the relative position of the British Empire more than that of any other country, because it was the established Great Power, with less to gain than to lose from fundamental alterations in the status quo. Britain had not been as directly affected as France and Austria-Hungary by the emergence of a powerful, united Germany (only after 1904–1905 would London really have to grapple with that issue). But it was the state most impinged upon by the rise of American power, since British interests (Canada, naval bases in the Caribbean, trade and investment in Latin America) were much more prominent in the western hemisphere than those of any other European country;104 it was the country most affected by the expansion of Russian borders and strategic railways in Turkestan, since everyone could see the threat which that posed to British influence in the Near East and Persian Gulf, and ultimately perhaps to its control of the Indian subcontinent;105 it was the country which, by enjoying the greatest share of China’s foreign trade, was likely to have its commercial interests the most seriously damaged by a carving up of the Celestial Empire or by the emergence of a new force in that region;106 similarly, it was the power whose relative position in Africa and the Pacific was affected the most by the post-1880 scramble for colonies, since it had (in Hobsbawm’s phrase) “exchanged the informal empire over most of the underdeveloped world for the formal empire of a quarter of it”107—which was not a good bargain, despite the continued array of fresh acquisitions to Queen Victoria’s dominions.

但是，如果从其他观点看来，从英国“官方思想”的角度来冷静考虑，或从研究英国实力受挫的历史学家的统计来看，19世纪晚期肯定不是英帝国正“企图称霸世界”的时代，相反，早在一个世纪之前英国已经做出了这种“企图”，并在1815年的胜利中达到顶峰。这使英国在此后的半个世纪里繁荣起来，这是英国在海上和帝国争霸中几乎所向无敌的时代。然而，1870年以后，世界力量对比正以两种可怕的、相互影响的方式削弱着英国的霸权。首先是其他国家随之进行的工业及陆、海军实力的改革，使大英帝国的地位相对受到削弱，因为正是这个大国在现状的变化中所失大于所得。英国也受到德国这个强大而又统一的国家出现的影响，但不如法国和奥匈帝国那么直接（只在1904～1905年英国才不得不解决这一问题）。但是，英国受到的最厉害的冲击是美国的崛起，因为英国在西半球的利益（加拿大、加勒比海军事基地及在拉美的贸易和投资），远比任何欧洲国家都更加突出；英国受俄国边界扩张和土耳其斯坦战略铁路的影响很大，因为它对英国在近东及波斯湾的势力，甚至最终对在印度次大陆的统治都构成了威胁。英国占有中国对外贸易的最大份额，它的商业利益可能因为天朝帝国的被分割，或有新势力出现于中国，而受到最严重的损害。同样，英国在太平洋地区和非洲的相对地位，都因1880年以后列强争夺殖民地而受到影响，因为它（用霍布斯鲍姆的话说）“用遍及大多数不发达国家的非正式帝国，去换取一个相当于非正式帝国1/4的正式帝国”，是一笔不合算的交易，尽管维多利亚女王的新领地还在不断扩大。

While some of these problems (in Africa or China) were fairly new, others (the rivalry with Russia in Asia, and with the United States in the western hemisphere) had exercised many earlier British administrations. What was different now was that the relative power of the various challenger states was much greater, while the threats seemed to be developing almost simultaneously. Just as the Austro- Hungarian Empire was distracted by having to grapple with a number of enemies within Europe, so British statesmen had to engage in a diplomatic and strategical juggling act that was literally worldwide in its dimensions. In the critical year of 1895, for example, the Cabinet found itself worrying about the possible breakup of China following the Sino-Japanese War, about the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as a result of the Armenian crisis, about the looming clash with Germany over southern Africa at almost exactly the same time as the quarrel with the United States over the Venezuela-British Guiana borders, about French military expeditions in equatorial Africa, and about a Russian drive toward the Hindu Kush. 108 It was a juggling act which had to be carried out in naval terms as well; for no matter how regularly the Royal Navy’s budget was increased, it could no longer “rule the waves” in the face of the five or six foreign fleets which were building in the 1890s, as it had been able to do in midcentury. As the Admiralty repeatedly pointed out, it could meet the American challenge in the western hemisphere, but only by diverting warships from European waters, just as it could increase the size of the Royal Navy in the Far East, but only by weakening its squadrons in the Mediterranean. It could not be strong everywhere. Finally, it was a juggling act which had to be carried out in military terms, by the transfer of battalions from Aldershot to Cairo, or from India to Hong Kong, to meet the latest emergencies—and yet all this had to be done by a small-scale volunteer force that had been completely eclipsed by mass armies on the Prussian model. 109

这些问题中，一些（在非洲或中国）是新出现的，另一些（与俄国在亚洲、与美国在西半球的竞争）则是英国以前历届政府都感到担忧的。现在不同的是，许多挑战国的实力相对强大得多，而各种威胁几乎同时出现。如同奥匈帝国因不得不应付欧洲内部的许多敌人而分散精力一样，英国的政治家们也不得不在确实具有世界规模的外交和战略活动中玩弄花招。例如，在危急的1895年，英国内阁被众多问题搞得焦头烂额：中日战争之后中国可能崩溃；亚美尼亚危机造成的奥斯曼帝国的垮台；在与美国就委内瑞拉—英属圭亚那边界问题进行争吵的同时，与德国在南非洲发生了正在逼近的冲突；法国在赤道非洲的军事远征；俄国向兴都库什的推进等。海军方面也不得不在活动中玩花招，因为无论皇家海军的预算怎样有规律地增长，在19世纪90年代正在建造的五六支外国舰队面前，它再也不能像19世纪中叶那样“称霸海上”了。正如英国海军部反复指出的那样，它有能力在西半球接受美国的挑战，但只有把战舰从欧洲海域调去才能做到；同样它有能力扩大皇家海军在远东的规模，但这必须削弱在地中海的舰队。它不可能处处强大。最后，陆军也不得不玩弄花招，把几个营从奥尔德肖特调往开罗，或者从印度调到中国香港，以解燃眉之急——而所有这些都是小规模的志愿部队去执行的，他们根本比不上普鲁士式的强大的部队。

The second, interacting weakness was less immediate and dramatic, but perhaps even more serious. It was the erosion of Britain’s industrial and commercial preeminence, upon which, in the last resort, its naval, military, and imperial strength rested. Established British industries such as coal, textiles, and ironware increased their output in absolute terms in these decades, but their relative share of world production steadily diminished; and in the newer and increasingly more important industries such as steel, chemicals, machine tools, and electrical goods, Britain soon lost what early lead it possessed. Industrial production, which had grown at an annual rule of about 4 percent in the period 1820 to 1840 and about 3 percent between 1840 and 1870, became more sluggish; between 1875 and 1894 it grew at just over 1. 5 percent annually, far less than that of the country’s chief rivals. This loss of industrial supremacy was soon felt in the cutthroat competition for customers. At first, British exports were priced out of their favorable position in the industrialized European and North American markets, often protected by high tariff barriers, and then out of certain colonial markets, where other powers competed both commercially and by placing tariffs around their new annexations; and, finally, British industry found itself weakened by an ever-rising tide of imported foreign manufacturers into the unprotected home market—the clearest sign that the country was becoming uncompetitive.

英国互相影响着的两个弱点中的第二个弱点，不太直接，也不大引人注目，但或许更为严重。它是工业和商业优势的削弱，这种优势是英国海军、陆军和帝国实力最终依赖的基础。在这几十年中，已建立起来的英国工业，诸如煤炭、纺织和铁器制造业的绝对产量有所提高，但它们在世界总产量中所占的相对份额却逐渐下降；在钢铁、化学、机床和电器等新兴的越来越重要的工业中，英国很快失去了早期那种具有领先能力的地位。工业产量在1820年至1840年、1840年至1870年期间，年平均增长率为4%和3%左右，以后增长更加缓慢，1875年至1894年的年平均增长率只有1.5%多一点，远远低于它的主要对手。工业霸权的丧失很快反映在争夺买主这一方面。首先英国的出口商品漫天要价，使它们丧失了在经常受到高关税保护的工业化的欧洲和北美市场的优越地位，尔后，又丧失了某些殖民地市场，在那里其他列强不仅在商业上与其竞争，而且还在它们新获得的领土上设立关卡。最后，由于进口的外国工业品涨潮般地涌向国内未受保护的市场，英国工业又受到削弱——这是最明显的标志，说明英国越来越缺乏竞争力。

The slowdown of British productivity and the decrease in competitiveness in the late nineteenth century has been one of the most investigated issues in economic history. 110 It involved such complex issues as national character, generational differences, the social ethos, and the educational system as well as more specific economic reasons like low investment, out-of-date plant, bad labor relations, poor salesmanship, and the rest. For the student of grand strategy, concerned with the relative picture, these explanations are less important than the fact that the country as a whole was steadily losing ground.

19世纪晚期，英国生产力的衰退和竞争力的下降，是经济史中研究最多的问题之一。它涉及到民族特征、时代差异、社会精神气质和教育制度等许多复杂的问题，以及像投资少、工厂陈旧、劳资关系恶化、推销无术等具体的经济原因。对于从事比较研究、具有高度战略眼光的研究者们来说，这些解释不比英国从总体上正稳步地丧失其地位这一事实更重要。虽然1880年英国在世界制造业总产量中仍然占有22.9%的比例，但到1913年已减到13.6%；

Whereas in 1880 the United Kingdom still contained 22. 9 percent of total world manufacturing output, that figure had shrunk to 13. 6 percent by 1913; and while its share of world trade was 23. 2 percent in 1880, it was only 14. 1 percent in 1911–1913. In terms of industrial muscle, both the United States and imperial Germany had moved ahead. The “workshop of the world” was now in third place, not because it wasn’t growing, but because others were growing faster.

1880年它在世界贸易中所占的份额为23.2%，而在1911～1913年却只占14.1%。就工业实力而言，美国和德国已走到了前面。昔日的“世界工厂”现在只能名列第三位，这不是因为它没有发展，而是因为其他列强发展得更快。

Nothing frightened the thinking British imperialists more than this relative economic decline, simply because of its impact upon British power. “Suppose an industry which is threatened [by foreign competition] is one which lies at the very root of your system of National defence, where are you then?” asked Professor W. A. S. Hewins in 1904. “You could not get on without an iron industry, a great Engineering trade, because in modern warfare you would not have the means of producing, and maintaining in a state of efficiency, your fleets and armies. ”111 Compared with this development, quarrels over colonial borders in West Africa or over the future of the Samoan Islands were trivial. Hence the imperialists’ interests in tariff reform—abandoning the precepts of free trade in order to protect British industries—and in closer ties with the white dominions, in order to secure both defense contributions and an exclusive imperial market. Britain had now become, in Joseph Chamberlain’s frightening phrase, “the weary Titan, [staggering] under the too vast orb of its fate. ”112 In the years to come, the First Lord of the Admiralty warned, “the United Kingdom by itself will not be strong enough to hold its proper place alongside of the U. S. , or Russia, and probably not Germany. We shall be thrust aside by sheer weight. ”113

再也没有比相对经济衰退更能使好思考的英帝国主义者感到恐惧的了。这正是因为它对英国的实力有重大影响。“假如受到（外国竞争）威胁的工业恰好是你国防体系的根基，那么你会处于什么地位？”1904年W·A·S·休因斯教授问道，“如果没有钢铁工业，没有一个强大的工程技术行业，你就无法发展，因为在现代战争中你将缺乏建设你的舰队和军队并维持其战斗力的手段。”与钢铁工业和工程技术的发展相比较，为西非的殖民地边界问题，或为萨摩亚岛未来的归属问题而发生的争吵就显得微不足道了。因此英帝国主义者的利益在于关税改革（放弃自由贸易方案以便保护英国工业），在于密切与白人领地的关系，以便获取对国防的贡献和保护帝国的独立市场。按照约瑟夫·张伯伦令人毛骨悚然的名言，英国变成了“疲倦的泰坦，在它巨大的命运轨道上（摇晃）”。海军大臣警告说，在行将到来的岁月里，“联合王国依靠自己的力量无法占有与美国和俄国并驾齐驱的应有地位，甚至有可能赶不上德国。我们将被真正的实力抛到一边”。

Yet if the imperialists were undoubtedly right in the long term—“will the Empire which is celebrating one centenary of Trafalgar survive for the next?” the influential journalist Garvin asked gloomily in 1905114—they nearly all tended to exaggerate the contemporary perils. The iron and steel trades and the machine-tool industry had been overtaken in various markets, but were certainly not wiped out. The textile industry was enjoying an export boom in the years prior to 1914, which only in retrospect would be seen as an Indian summer. The British shipbuilding industry —vital for both the Royal Navy and the flourishing merchant marine—was still in a class of its own, launching over 60 percent of the world’s merchant tonnage and 33 percent of its warships in these decades, which offered some consolation to those who feared that Britain had become too dependent upon imported foodstuffs and raw materials in wartime. It was true that if Britain became involved in a lengthy, mass-industrialized conflict between the Great Powers, it would find that much of its armaments industry (e. g. , shells, artillery, aircraft, ball bearings, optical equipment, magnetos, dyestuffs) was inadequate, reflecting the traditional assumption that the British army was to be deployed and equipped for small colonial wars and not gigantic continental struggles. But for the greater part of this period, those were exactly the sort of conflicts in which the army was involved. And if the exhausting, lengthy “modern” warfare of trenches and machine guns which at least some pundits were already forecasting in 1898 did come to pass, then the British would not be alone in wanting the correct matériel.

但是，如果说从长远观点来看英帝国主义者无疑是正确的话，那么“正在庆祝特拉法尔加海战一百周年纪念日的帝国能否在下一个100年里继续生存下去呢”？一位有影响的新闻记者（加文）在1905年这样悲伤地问道。他们都有夸大当时危险的倾向。英国的钢铁贸易和机床制造业在许多市场上被超过，但是肯定没有被彻底击败。纺织业在1914年以前的许多年里享有出口繁荣，回顾起来反能被视为回春期。英国的造船业——对皇家海军和繁荣的商船航运都是至关重要的——在这几十年中仍然保持原有的地位，下水商船的吨位占世界商船总吨位的60%，战舰占33%，这使那些唯恐英国在战时过分依赖进口食品和原材料的人感到一些安慰。的确，如果英国卷入列强之间旷日持久的大规模工业化的冲突中，它将发现许多军事工业（例如，弹药、大炮、飞机、滚珠轴承、光学仪器、永磁发电机和染料等）是不够的，这便印证了传统的看法，即认为英国军队只能从事小规模的殖民战争，而不能进行大规模的陆战。但是在这一时期的大部分时间里所进行的正是这类陆军参与的战争。如果令人精疲力竭的、漫长的、战壕加机关枪的“现代”战争真的爆发了，像有些有识之士在1898年就已预测的那样，缺乏必要的物资和武器的将不仅仅是英国。

That Britain also possessed economic strengths in this period ought to be a warning, therefore, against too gloomy and sweeping a portrayal of the country’s problems. In retrospect one can assert, “From 1870 to 1970 the history of Britain was one of steady and almost unbroken decline, economically, militarily and politically, relative to other nations, from the peak of prosperity and power which her industrial revolution had achieved for her in the middle of the nineteenth century”;115 but there is also a danger of exaggerating and anticipating the pace of that decline and of ignoring the country’s very considerable assets, even in the nonindustrial sphere. It was, in the first place, immensely wealthy, both at home and abroad, though the British Treasury felt itself under heavy pressure in the two decades before 1914 as the newer technology more than doubled the price of an individual battleship. Moreover, the increases in the size of the electorate were leading to considerable “social” spending for the first time. Yet if the increases in payments for “guns and butter” looked alarming in absolute terms, this was because the night-watchman state had been taking so little of an individual’s income in taxes, and spending so little of the national income for government purposes. Even in 1913, total central and local government expenditure equaled only 12. 3 percent of GNP. Thus, although Britain was one of the heaviest spenders on defense prior to 1914, it needed to allocate a smaller share of its national income to that purpose than any other Great Power in Europe;116 and if archimperialists tended to disparage Britain’s financial strength as opposed to industrial power, it did have the quite fantastic sum of around $19. 5 billion invested overseas by then, equaling some 43 percent of the world’s foreign investments,117 which were an undoubted source of national wealth. There was no question that it could pay for even a large-scale, expensive war if the need arose; what was more doubtful was whether it could preserve its liberal political culture—of free trade, low government expenditures, lack of conscription, reliance chiefly upon the navy—if it was forced to devote more and more of its national resources to armaments and to modern, industrialized war. 118 But that it had a deep enough purse was indisputable.

因此，在这一时期英国仍然拥有经济实力这个事实，应该是对英国存在的问题所作的悲观和笼统的描写的一个警告。回顾往事，人们可以得出结论：“1870年到1970年的英国史，就是一部在经济、军事和政治上与其他国家相比几乎不断衰退的历史。它从19世纪中期产业革命给它带来的繁荣和实力的巅峰逐渐衰落下来。”但是，仍然有一种夸大衰退和预测衰退提前来临，以及忽视英国甚至在非工业界的巨大财力的危险。首先是英国在国内和国外拥有巨大的财富。虽然英国财政部在1914年以前的20年里由于新技术使单艘战舰的价格提高一倍多而感到压力沉重，而且选民数目的增加第一次导致了可观的“社会”开销，但是如果说“大炮加黄油”增加的开支在绝对数目上看起来令人吃惊的话，那是因为这个“守夜国”收取的个人所得税一直很少，而用于政府开支的国民收入也同样少。甚至在1913年，英国中央和地方政府的全部支出仅相当于国民生产总值的12.3%。因此，虽然在1914年以前英国是国防开支最大的国家之一，但它需拨出的款项在国民收入中所占的份额比欧洲任何大国都少；虽然主要的帝国主义者倾向于在反对英国工业力量的同时，贬低其财政实力，但当时英国在海外拥有约195亿美元的相当可观的投资，此数大约占世界对外投资的43%，这无疑是国家财富的源泉。如果战争需要，它确实有能力担负一场大规模和高消费的战争。值得怀疑的是，如果它被迫把越来越多的国家资源用于武装和现代的工业化战争，它能否继续保持它的自由政治文化——自由贸易，低廉的政府开支，免征兵役，主要依靠海军？但是英国有足够雄厚的资财是毋庸置疑的。

Certain other factors also enhanced Britain’s position among the Great Powers. Although it was increasingly difficult to think of defending the landward borders of the empire in an age when strategic railways and mass armies were undermining the geopolitical security of India and other possessions,119 the insularity of the British Isles remained as great an advantage as ever—freeing its population from the fears of a sudden invasion by neighboring armies, allowing the emphasis upon sea power rather than land power, and giving its statesmen a much greater freedom of action over issues of war and peace than those enjoyed by the continental states. In addition, although the possession of an extensive and hard-to-defend colonial empire implied immense strategical problems, it also brought with it considerable strategical advantages. The great array of imperial garrisons, coaling stations, and fleet bases, readily reinforceable by sea, placed it in an extremely strong position against European powers in any conflict fought outside the continent. Just as Britain could send aid to its overseas possessions, so they (especially the self-governing dominions and India) could assist the imperial power with troops, ships, raw materials, and money—and this was an age when politicians in Whitehall were carefully cultivating their kinsmen overseas in the cause of a more organized “imperial defense. ”120 Finally, it might cynically be argued that because British power and influence had been extended so much in earlier times, Britain now possessed lots of buffer zones, lots of less-than-vital areas of interest, and therefore lots of room for compromise, especially in its spheres of so-called “informal empire. ”

其他一些因素也提高了英国在列强中的地位，虽然在战略铁路和大量陆军正在破坏印度和其他殖民地的地缘政治的安全时代，保卫帝国陆地边界变得越来越困难，但英国仍然同以往一样保持着一个很大的有利条件——它的人民不必担心邻国部队的突然入侵，它能够重点发展海军而不是陆军，在战争与和平问题上，它的政治家们具有比大陆国家更大的行动自由。此外，虽然它取得的庞大的、难以防卫的殖民帝国蕴藏着巨大的战略难题，但也给英国带来了相当可观的战略优势。很容易从海上得到增援的大批帝国驻军，加煤港和舰队基地使它在欧洲大陆以外与欧洲列强进行的任何冲突中，处于极其强有力的地位。如同英国能帮助它的海外殖民地一样，海外殖民地（特别是印度和自治领）也能为帝国提供军队、船舰、原材料和筹措资金——这时正是白厅的政治家们为建立更有组织的“帝国防卫”而谨慎地在海外培养亲属关系的时代。最后有一种讽刺意义的说法是，由于英国的实力和影响在早年扩展得如此之大，英国现在拥有许多缓冲地带、许多无关痛痒的地区，因此，特别是在其所谓的“非正式帝国”范围内，拥有诸多妥协余地。

Much of the public rhetoric of British imperialism does not suggest that concessions and withdrawals were the order of the day. But the careful assessment of British strategic priorities—which the system of interdepartmental consultation and Cabinet decision-making allowed121—went on, year after year, examining each problem in the context of the country’s global commitments, and fixing upon a policy of compromise or firmness. Thus, since an Anglo-American war would be economically disastrous, politically unpopular, and strategically very difficult, it seemed preferable to make concessions over the Venezuela dispute, the isthmian canal, the Alaska boundary, and so on. By contrast, while Britain would be willing to bargain with France in the 1890s over colonial disputes in West Africa, southeast Asia, and the Pacific, it would fight to preserve its hold on the Nile Valley. A decade later, it would make attempts to defuse the Anglo-German antagonism (by proposing agreements over naval ratios, the Portuguese colonies, and the Baghdad Railway); but it was much more suspicious of offering promises concerning neutrality if a continental war should arise. While Foreign Secretary Grey’s efforts toward Berlin prior to 1914 were about as successful as Salisbury’s earlier bids to reach Asian accords with St. Petersburg, they both revealed a common assumption that diplomacy could solve most problems that arose in world affairs. To suggest, on the one hand, that Britain’s global position around 1900 was as weakened as it was to be in the late 1930s, and to argue, on the other, that there had been “a tremendous expansion of British power” prior to 1914, upsetting the world’s balances,122 are equally one-sided portraits of what was a much more complex position.

英帝国主义的许多公开的动听的论调并不能表明妥协与退让是那个时代的法则。但是对英国战略优势的仔细评估——在各部之间协商和内阁决策制度允许的范围内——年复一年地进行着，它考察英国在全球义务中的每一个问题，确定妥协或强硬的政策。因此，由于英美战争在经济上将是灾难性的，在政治上是不受欢迎的，以及在战略上是举步维艰的，英国似乎宁愿在委内瑞拉争端以及巴拿马运河、阿拉斯加边界等问题上做出让步。相比之下，19世纪90年代，英国愿意在西非、东南亚以及太平洋地区的殖民地纠纷问题上同法国达成协议，却为捍卫它对尼罗河流域的控制而不惜诉诸武力。10年以后，它愿意为缓和英德的对立做出努力（通过对海军比例、葡萄牙的殖民地以及巴格达铁路等问题达成协议），但是双方是否能就大陆战争爆发时保持中立问题做出承诺就值得怀疑了。外交大臣格雷在1914年以前试图接近德国的努力，大致同较早时索尔兹伯里勋爵试图在亚洲问题上与圣彼得堡达成协议的活动一样成功，两者揭示了一个共同的假设，通过外交途径能够解决世界事务中的大部分问题。一方面主张1900年前后英国的世界地位被削弱到20世纪30年代晚期的水平，而另一方面却认为1914年以前英国的实力得到了巨大的发展，以致打破了世界均势。这两种意见对于一个极其复杂的形势来说，同样是片面的。

In the several decades before the First World War, then, Great Britain had found itself overtaken industrially by both the United States and Germany, and subjected to intense competition in commercial, colonial, and maritime spheres. Nonetheless, its combination of financial resources, productive capacity, imperial possessions, and naval strength meant that it was still probably the “number-one” world power, even if its lead was much less marked than in 1850. But this position as number one was also the essential British problem. Britain was now a mature state, with a builtin interest in preserving existing arrangements or, at least, in ensuring that things altered slowly and peacefully. It would fight for certain obvious aims—the defense of India, the maintenance of naval superiority especially in home waters, probably also the preservation of the European balance of power—but each issue had to be set in its larger context and measured against Britain’s other interests. It was for this reason that Salisbury opposed a fixed military commitment with Germany in 1889 and 1898–1901, and that Grey strove to avoid a fixed military commitment against Germany in 1906–1914. While this made Britain’s future policy frustratingly ambiguous and uncertain to decision-makers in Paris and Berlin, it reflected Palmerston’s still widely held claim that the country had permanent interests but not permanent allies. If the circumstances which allowed such freedom of action were diminishing as the nineteenth century ended, nevertheless the traditional juggling act between Britain’s various interests—imperial versus continental,123 strategic versus financial124—continued in the same old fashion.

然而在第一次世界大战前的几十年间，大不列颠发现自己在工业上已被美国和德国超过，并且在商业、殖民地和海上领域受到了激烈的竞争。然而，它的财源、生产力、帝国殖民地以及海军力量等诸因素的综合力量，意味着它可能仍是世界“第一”强国，虽然它的领先地位已远不如1850年那样显著，但保持世界第一强国的地位仍然是英国的基本问题。英国现在已是个成熟的国家，它对保护现存秩序，或至少保证事态以缓慢和平的方式发展具有内在的兴趣。为了某些明显的目的，它不惜使用武力——保卫印度，特别是在自己的海域内保持英国海军的优势。可能的话要保持欧洲的均势。但每一个问题都必须置于更广泛的背景中加以考虑，对照英国其他的利益加以权衡。正是由于这个原因，在1889年和1898～1901年，索尔兹伯里勋爵反对与德国一道承担明确的军事义务，而格雷则竭力避免在1906年至1914年承担反对德国的明确的军事义务。这使巴黎和柏林的决策人沮丧地感到英国未来的对外政策是模糊不清的，同时也反映了巴麦尊勋爵那个依然被人们广为接受的主张：英国拥有永久的利益，但无永久的盟国。随着19世纪的结束，即使行动自由的余地越来越少，存在于英国内部众多利益集团之间的传统的欺诈行为——帝国与大陆对立，战略与财政对立——仍会以旧的方式继续下去。

Russia

俄国

The empire of the czars was also, by most people’s reckonings, an automatic member of the select club of “world powers” in the coming twentieth century. Its sheer size, stretching from Finland to Vladivostok, ensured that—as did its gigantic and fast-growing population, which was nearly three times that of Germany and nearly four times that of Britain. For four centuries it had been expanding, westward, southward, eastward, and despite setbacks it showed no signs of wanting to stop. Its standing army had been the largest in Europe throughout the nineteenth century, and it was still much bigger than anybody else’s in the approach to the First World War, with 1. 3 million frontline troops and, it was claimed, up to 5 million reserves. Russia’s military expenditures, too, were extremely high and with the “extraordinary” capital grants on top of the fast-rising “normal” expenditures may well have equaled Germany’s total. Railway construction was proceeding at enormous speed prior to 1914—threatening within a short time to undermine the German plan (i. e. , the so-called Schlieffen Plan) to strike westward first—and money was also being poured into a new Russian fleet after the war with Japan. Even the Prussian General Staff claimed to be alarmed at this expansion of Russian might, with the younger Moltke asserting that by 1916 and 1917 Prussia’s “enemies’ military power would then be so great that he did not know how he could deal with it. ”125 Some of the French observers, by contrast, looked forward with great glee to the day when the Russian “steamroller” would roll westward and flatten Berlin. And a certain number of Britons, especially those connected with the St. Petersburg embassy, were urging their political chiefs that “Russia is rapidly becoming so powerful that we must retain her friendship at almost any cost. ”126 From Galicia to Persia to Peking, there was a widespread concern at the growth of Russian might.

大多数人估计，在即将到来的20世纪，沙皇俄国也会自动成为严格选择会员的“世界强国”俱乐部中的一员。俄国从芬兰延至海参崴的总面积确保了这个地位——就像它的数目庞大、增长迅速的人口一样，它的人口约相当于德国的3倍、英国的4倍。4个世纪以来，俄国一直向西部、南部和东部扩张，尽管受到挫败，也没有任何要停止的迹象。在整个19世纪，俄国的常备军一直是欧洲规模最大的；在临近第一次世界大战时，它也仍然比其他国家的军队大得多，拥有130万前线部队和号称500万的后备军。俄国的军费开支也是非常大的，除了快速增长的“正常”军费外，还有“特别拨款”，所以数量可能等于德国（军费）的总和。铁路建设在1914年以前以飞快的速度发展着——在短时期内，威胁并暗中破坏了德国首先向西部袭击的计划（例如所谓施利芬计划）。日俄战争后，大量的金钱被投资于建设一支新型的俄国舰队。俄国势力的扩张甚至使普鲁士总参谋部都感到惊恐不安，小毛奇[8]断言，到1916和1917年，普鲁士的“敌人”的军事力量将会强大到使普鲁士不知如何去对付的地步。与此相反，一些法国观察家们怀着愉快的心情，期待着俄国人用“高压手段”席卷西部、挫败柏林的那一天的到来。一部分英国人，特别是那些与圣彼得堡大使馆有联系的人，极力劝说他们的政界首脑，“俄国很快将成为强国，我们必须不惜一切代价与它保持友好关系”。从加里西亚到波斯湾到中国，都在关注着俄国势力的发展。

Was Russia really on the point of becoming the gendarme of Europe once more, as these statements might suggest? Assessing that country’s effective strength has been a problem for western observers from the eighteenth century to the present, and it has always been made the harder by the paucity of reliable runs of comparative data, by the differences between what the Russians said to foreigners and said to themselves, and by the dangers of relying upon sweeping subjective statements in the place of objective fact. Surveys, however thorough, of “how Europe judged Russia before 1914” are not the same as an exact analysis of “the power of Russia” itself. 127 From the plausible evidence which does exist, however, it seems that Russia in the decades prior to 1914 was simultaneously powerful and weak—depending, as ever, upon which end of the telescope one peered down. To begin with, it was now much stronger industrially than it had been at the time of the Crimean War. 128

俄国真的会如这些言论所暗示的那样，再次成为欧洲宪兵吗？对从18世纪至今的西方观察家来说，估算它的实力一直是个难题。由于缺乏可靠的、可用于比较的资料，由于俄国人对内和对外说法各异，加上有完全用主观说法代替客观事实的危险，这就使得这种估算更为困难了。“1914年以前欧洲评估俄国”的工作不论多么深入透彻，毕竟不同于对“俄国力量”本身的确切分析。

Between 1860 and 1913—a very lengthy period—Russian industrial output grew at the impressive annual average rate of 5 percent, and in the 1890s the rate was closer to 8 percent. Its steel production on the eve of the First World War had overtaken France’s and Austria-Hungary’s, and was well ahead of Italy’s and Japan’s. Its coal output was rising even faster, from 6 million tons in 1890 to 36 million tons in 1914. It was the world’s second-largest oil producer. While its longestablished textile industry also increased—again, it had many more cotton spindles than France or Austria-Hungary—there was also a late development of chemical and electrical industries, not to mention armaments works. Enormous factories, frequently employing thousands of workers, sprang up around St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other major cities. The Russian railway network, already some 31,000 miles in 1900, was constantly augmented, so that by 1914 it was close to 46,000 miles. Foreign trade, stabilized by Russia’s going onto the gold standard in 1892, nearly tripled between 1890 and 1914, when Russia became the world’s sixthlargest trading nation. Foreign investment, attracted not only by Russian government and railway bonds but also by the potentialities of Russian business, brought enormous amounts of capital for the modernization of the economy. This great stream of funds joined the torrents of money which the state (flushed from increased customs receipts and taxes on vodka and other items of consumption) also poured into economic infrastructure. By 1914, as many histories have pointed out, Russia had become the fourth industrial power in the world. If these trends continued, might it not at last possess the industrial muscle concomitant with its extent of territory and population？

从确实存在着的、似乎站得住脚的证据中可以看出，俄国似乎在1914年以前的几十年中，既是强大的，也是软弱的。这要取决于用望远镜的哪一头来观察。首先，同克里米亚战争时期相比，在工业上俄国已经强大得多。从1860年到1913年——一个很长的时期——俄国的工业产量以年平均5%的惊人速度增长着。19世纪80年代，这一增长率接近8%。第一次世界大战前夕，它的钢产量就已经赶上了法国和奥匈帝国，并远远超过了意大利和日本。俄国的煤产量甚至提高得更快，1890年为600万吨，到1914年已达3600万吨。它还是世界第二大产油国。在建立已久的纺织业——它又比法国和奥匈帝国拥有更多的纱锭——发展的同时，俄国还有新发展起来的化学和电力工业，更不用说它的军事工业了。在圣彼得堡、莫斯科和其他大城市，出现了通常雇有成千上万工人的众多的工厂。俄国的铁路网在1900年约长达3.1万英里，1914年已接近4.6万英里。由于俄国在1892年采用的金本位制稳定了对外贸易，对外贸易在1890年至1914年增长了近两倍，使俄国在当时成为世界第六大贸易国。不仅俄国政府和铁路债券，而且俄国商业的潜力都吸引着国外的投资，给经济的现代化提供了巨额资金。这笔流入的巨额资金，加上源源不断的大量金钱（从增长的关税及伏特加酒等其他消费品中得到的税收），都被该国投入经济基础建设。许多历史学家指出，到1914年，俄国已成为世界第四大工业国。如果按这种趋势发展下去，难道俄国不会最终具有与其幅员辽阔和人口众多的优势相称的工业力量吗？

A look through the telescope from the other end, however, produces a quite different picture. Even if there were approximately three million workers in Russian factories by 1914, that represented the appallingly low level of 1. 75 percent of the population; and while firms which employed ten thousand workers in one textile factory looked impressive on paper, most experts now agree that those figures may be deceptive, since the spindles were used through the night by fresh “shifts” of men and women in this labor-rich but technology-poor society. 129 What was perhaps even more significant was the extent to which Russian industrialization, despite some indigenous entrepreneurs, was carried out by foreigners—a successful international firm like Singer, for example, or the large numbers of British engineers —or had at the least been created by foreign investors. “By 1914,90 percent of mining, almost 100 percent of oil extraction, 40 percent of the metallurgical industry, 50 percent of the chemical industry and even 28 percent of the textile industry were foreign-owned. ”130 This was not in itself an unusual thing—Italy’s position was somewhat similar—but it does show an extremely heavy reliance upon foreign entrepreneurship and capital, which might or might not (as in 1899 and 1905) keep up its interest, rather than upon indigenous resources for industrial growth. By the early twentieth century, Russia had incurred the largest foreign debt in the world and, to keep the funds flowing in, needed to offer above-average market rates to investors; yet the outward payments of interest were increasingly larger than the “visible” trade balances: in sum, a precarious situation.

但从望远镜的另一头望去，却是一幅截然不同的景象。1914年俄国的工厂即使大约有300万工人，也只占人口的1.75%，这个水平是很低的。而在一所雇用1万名工人的纺纱厂，纸面数字给人印象颇深，但大多数专家现在认为那些数字也许是骗人的，因为在那个劳动力充足、技术落后的国家，纺织厂的那些纱锭通宵地被新来替班的男女工人轮流使用。也许更值得注意的是俄国的工业化程度，尽管有一些土生土长的企业家，但工业化是由外国人来实行的——例如由像辛格这样成功的国际商号，或是由大批的英国工程师来实行——或至少有些企业由外国投资者创办。“到1914年，90%的采矿业、近100%的炼油业、40%的冶金业、50%的化学工业，甚至28%的纺织业的所有权都归外国。”就事情本身来看并不奇怪——意大利就有某些相似之处，但这确实表明俄国极其严重地依赖外国企业和资本，而不是利用本国资源发展工业，而过分依赖外国资本不一定能（像1899年和1905年那样）维持它的利润。20世纪初，俄国已经是世界上最大的债务国了。为了不断吸收外资，俄国需要为投资者提供高于国际市场的平均利率，因而对外支付的利息日益大于“有形”贸易的余额。简言之，这是一种不稳定的状况。

That was, perhaps, just one more sign of an “immature” economy, as was the fact that the largest part of Russian industry was devoted to textiles and food processing (rather than, say, engineering and chemicals). Its tariffs were the highest in Europe, to protect industries which were simultaneously immature and inefficient, yet the flood of imported manufactures was rising with every increase in the defense budget and railway building. But perhaps the best indication of its underdeveloped status was the fact that as late as 1913, 63 percent of Russian exports consisted of agricultural produce and 11 percent of timber,131 both desperately needed to pay for the American farm equipment, German machine tools, and the interest on the country’s vast foreign debt—which, however, they did not quite manage to do.

也许这正是“不成熟”经济的另一个标志。正如事实所表明的那样，俄国工业的最大部门是纺织业和食品加工业（而不是像机械工程和化工那样的工业）。为了保护其既不成熟效率又低的工业，它的关税是欧洲最高的，而随着每次国防预算和铁路建筑的增加，进口产品也在增加。但最能说明这种发展落后状况的，也许是直到1913年，俄国的出口货物中63%还是农产品，11%是木材。这两种产品的收入都极需用来支付美国农业机械设备、德国机床及其自身大量的外债利息——这些，农产品和木材是无法满足的。

Yet the assessment of Russian strength is worse when it comes to comparative output. Although Russia was the fourth-largest industrial power before 1914, it was a long way behind the United States, Britain, and Germany. In the indices of its steel production, energy consumption, share of world manufacturing production, and total industrial potential, it was eclipsed by Britain and Germany; and when these figures are related to population size and calculated on a per capita basis, the gap was a truly enormous one. In 1913 Russia’s per capita level of industrialization was less than one-quarter of Germany’s and less than one-sixth of Britain’s. 132

如果再看相对的产量，对它的力量的估计就更糟了。虽然俄国在1914年以前是第四大工业国，但要赶上美国、英国、德国还有很长一段距离。其钢产量、能源消耗、在世界制造业生产中所占份额和全部工业潜力指数，与英国和德国相比黯然失色，当把这些数字与人口规模联系起来，并按人口平均计算时，这一差距的确很大。1913年，俄国人均工业化水平不到德国的1/4，不及英国的l/6。

At base, the Russia which in 1914 overawed the younger Moltke and the British ambassador to St. Petersburg was a peasant society. Some 80 percent of the population derived its livelihood from agriculture, and a good part of the remainder continued to have ties to the village and the commune. This deadening fact needs to be linked to two others. The first is that most of Russia’s enormous increase in population—61 million new mouths between 1890 and 1914 alone—occurred in the villages, and in the most backward (and non-Russian) regions, where poor soil, little fertilizer, and wooden plows were common. Secondly, all the comparative international data of this period show how inefficient Russian agriculture was overall—its crop yield for wheat being less than a third of Britain’s and Germany’s, for potatoes being about half. 133 Although there were modern estates and farms in the Baltic region, in so many other areas the effect of the communal possession of land and the medieval habit of strip-farming was to take away the incentive for individual enterprise. So too did the periodic redistribution of the lands. The best way to increase one’s family share of land was simply to breed more and more sons before the next redistribution. This structural problem was not aided by the poor communications, the unpredictable but dreadful impact of the climate upon the crops, and the great disparity between the “surplus” provinces in the south and the overcrowded, less fertile “importing” provinces in old Russia proper. In consequence, while agricultural output did steadily increase over these decades (at about 2 percent annually), its gains were greatly eroded by the rise in population (1. 5 percent annually). And because this enormous agricultural sector was increasing its per capita output by a mere 0. 5 percent annually, the real national product of Russia was only expanding at about 1 percent per head134—much less than those of Germany, the United States, Japan, Canada, and Sweden, and of course, a quite different figure from the much-quoted annual industrial increases of 5 or 8 percent.

在1914年使小毛奇和英国驻圣彼得堡大使感到恐慌的俄国，基本上是一个农业社会。大约80%的人口以农业为生，其余相当一部分人仍然束缚在农庄和村社中。这一不大光彩的事实需要同另外两个事实联系起来。第一，俄国增加的大部分人口——仅1890年到1914年就有6100万新生儿——是在农村和最落后（非俄罗斯族）的地区出生的，这些地区土壤贫瘠，很少使用肥料，普遍用木犁耕地。第二，这一时期所有可比较的国际资料表明俄国农业的低效率是全面的——小麦产量不足英国和德国的1/3，土豆产量大约是英国和德国的一半。虽然在波罗的海地区有现代种植园和农场，但在其他许多地区，土地的村社所有及中世纪式的条带耕作制，消除了个人经营的积极性。土地定期重新分配也产生了这种影响，增加一户土地份额的最好办法就是在下次土地重新分配前，多多养出几个儿子。落后的交通工具、变幻无常的恶劣气候对农作物产生的影响，南部有“盈余”的省份和不太肥沃的、需要“进口”的原来的俄国本土省份之间的差距，是无助于解决这个结构性问题的。结果是，农业产量这几十年确实在持续增长（每年大约增长2%），但收获的粮食却被增多的人口（每年增长1.5%）大量消耗掉了。由于其农业的很大部分，每年的人均产量仅增长0.5%，俄国的实际国民生产的增长人均数就仅有约1%——比德国、美国、日本、加拿大、瑞典少得多。当然，这与大量引用的年增长率5%或8%的工业方面的数字大不相同。

The social consequences of all this are also a factor in any assessment of Russian power. Professor Grossman observes that “the extraordinarily swift growth of industry tended to be associated with great sluggishness—and even significant reverses—in other sectors, especially in agriculture and personal consumption; it also tended to outpace the modernization of society, if one may be permitted the phrase. ”135 It is, in fact, a most seeming phrase. For what was happening was that a country of extreme economic backwardness was being propelled into the modern age by political authorities obsessed by the need “to acquire and retain the status of a European Great Power. ”136 Thus, although one certainly can detect considerable self-driven entrepreneurial activities, the great thrust toward modernization was state-inspired and related to military needs—railways, iron and steel, armaments, and so on. But in order to afford the vast flow of imported foreign manufactures and to pay interest on the enormous foreign debt, the Russian state had to ensure that agricultural exports (especially wheat) were steadily increased, even in period of great famine, like 1891; the slow increase in farm output did not, in many years, imply a better standard of living for the deprived and undernourished peasantry. By the same token, in order to pay for the state’s own extremely heavy capital investments in industrialization and in defense expenditures, high (chiefly indirect) taxes had to be repeatedly raised and personal consumption squeezed. To use an expression of the economic historians, the czarist government was securing “forced” savings from its helpless populace. Hence the staggering fact that “by 1913 the average Russian had 50 percent more of his income appropriated by the state for current defense than did the average Englishman, even though the Russian’s income was only 27 percent of that of his British contemporary. ”137

所有这些社会状况都是估价俄国实力的因素。格罗斯曼教授观察到，“工业方面异乎寻常的迅速发展，可能多与其他方面，特别是农业和个人消费方面的大停滞甚至重大的倒退有关。它还可能超过社会的现代化。如果人们允许这样表达的话”。事实上，这似乎是最真实的措辞。一个经济上极端落后的国家被迷恋于“得到并保持欧洲大国地位”的政治当权者们硬是推入了现代化的时代，因此，尽管有人肯定会发现相当多的、自发的企业活动，但实现现代化的巨大推动力是受到国家鼓励的，而且与军需——铁路、钢铁、武器装备等有关。但是，为了支付大批进口的外国产品和巨额的外债利息，俄国政府不得不确保农产品（特别是小麦）的出口量稳步增加，即使在像1891年那样的大饥馑时期也是如此；多年来，农业产量的缓慢增长并不意味着被剥夺了生活必需品的、营养不良的农民的生活水平有所提高。出于同样的原因，国家为了支付工业化中负担极为沉重的基本建设投资和国防费用，不得不一再征收很高的税额（主要是间接税）和压缩个人消费。按照经济史学家们的看法，沙皇政府硬是从无依无靠的平民手中“强行索取”他们的积蓄。因此，就出现了这样一个令人惊愕的事实：“到1913年，平均每一个俄国人的收入用于防务的部分高于英国人平均负担的50%，虽然俄国人的收入仅相当于英国人当时的27%。”

The larger social costs of this unhealthy combination of agrarian backwardness, industrialization, and top-heavy military expenditures are easy to imagine. In 1913, while 970 million rubles were allocated by the Russian government to the armed forces, a mere 154 million rubles were spent upon health and education; and since the administrative structure did not give the localities the fiscal powers of the American states or English local government, that inadequacy could not be made up elsewhere. In the fast-growing cities, the workers had to contend with no sewerage, health hazards, appalling housing conditions, and high rents. There were fantastic levels of drunkenness—a short-term escape from brute reality. The mortality rate was the highest in Europe. Such conditions, the discipline enforced within the factories, and the lack of any appreciable real rise in living standards produced a sullen resentment of the system which in turn offered an ideal breeding ground for the populists, Bolsheviks, anarchosyndicalists, radicals—indeed, for anybody who (despite the censorship) argued for drastic changes. After the epic 1905 unrest, things cooled off for a while; but in the three years 1912–1914 the incidence of strikes, mass protests, police arrests, and killings was spiraling to an alarming degree. 138 Yet that sort of ferment paled by comparison with the issue which has frightened all Russian leaders from Catherine the Great to the present regime—the “peasant question. ” When bad harvests and high prices occurred, they interacted with the deep resentments against high rents and grim working conditions to produce vast outbreaks of agrarian unrest. After 1900, the historian Norman Stone records:

这种落后的农业、工业化和最为沉重的军费开支的不健康的结合，给社会造成了更大的牺牲是不难想象的。1913年，俄国政府把9.7亿卢布拨给了武装部队，而花在卫生教育上的经费只有1.54亿卢布；而且由于中央政府机构没有给予地方当局像美国各州或英国地方政府所拥有的那种财政权，经费的不足无法从其他方面得到弥补。在发展迅速的城市中，工人们不得不同排水系统缺乏、公害和差得惊人的住房条件及高税率等现象作斗争。出现了疯狂酗酒的现象——这是一种暂时摆脱残酷现实的手段。俄国的死亡率在欧洲最高。工厂里强制性的纪律，人们的生活水平没有真正提高等状况，导致了对制度的不满，这反过来为民粹派分子、布尔什维克分子、工团主义者、激进派分子——的确，为任何（尽管有检查制度）极力主张大变革的人，提供了一个理想的温床。1905年那场具有历史意义的动乱之后，局势平息了一段时期。但在1912～1914年的3年当中，罢工事件、群众抗议活动、警察逮捕及屠杀不断加剧，达到令人惊恐的程度。但这类动乱如果与从叶卡捷琳娜二世到当今统治者都感到惊恐的问题——“农民问题”比较，就相形见绌了。当农业歉收和价格上涨同时发生时，它们同对高税率和恶劣的工作条件的强烈不满相互影响，就导致了多次农民骚乱。历史学家诺曼·斯通写道：

The provinces of Poltyra and Tambov were, for the greater part, devastated; manor houses burned down, animals mutilated. In 1901 there were 155 interventions by troops (as against 36 in 1898) and in 1903, 322, involving 295 squadrons of cavalry and 300 battalions of infantry, some with artillery. 1902 was the high point of the whole thing. Troops were used to crush the peasantry on 365 occasions. In 1903, for internal order, a force far greater than the army of 1812 was mustered. … In sixty-eight of the seventyfive districts of the central Black Earth there were “troubles”—fifty-four estates wrecked. The worst area was Saratov. 139

1900年以后，波尔塔瓦省和坦波夫省的大部分田地都荒芜了；庄园的房屋被烧毁了，牲畜被肢解。1901年军队的干涉达155起（1898年只有36起），1903年达322起，动用了295个骑兵中队和300个步兵营，有些还配备有火炮。1902年是整个事件的最高潮，部队被用于镇压农民达365次。1903年，为了维护国内秩序，聚集了一支比1812年强大得多的军队……在黑土中部的75个地区中，有68个地区出现了“动乱”——54个种植园被毁坏。最严重的地区是萨拉托夫。

Yet when the minister for the interior, Stolypin, tried to reduce this discontent by breaking up the peasant communes after 1908, he simply provoked fresh unrest— whether from villages determined to keep their communal system or from newly independent farmers who swiftly went bankrupt. Thus, “Troops were needed on 13,507 occasions in January 1909, and 114,108 occasions that [whole] year. By 1913, there were 100,000 arrests for ‘attacks on State power. ’ ”140 Needless to say, all this strained a reluctant army, which was also busy crushing the resentful ethnic minorities—Poles, Finns, Georgians, Latvians, Estonians, Armenians—who were seeking to preserve the grudging concessions over “Russification” which they had obtained during the regime’s weakness in 1905–1906. 141 Any further military defeat would once again see such groups striving to escape Muscovy’s domination. Although we do not have the exact breakdown, there was doubtless a heavy proportion of such groups in the staggering total of two million Russians who got married in August 1914—in order to avoid being drafted into the army.

1908年后，俄国内政部长斯托雷平企图通过解散农民的村社来压服这种不满，但他无疑在煽起新的动乱——动乱不是发自那些决心保留公社制度的村庄，就是来自新自主的很快破产的农民。因此，“1901年1月，需出动部队13507次，那一年全年达114108次。到1913年，因‘攻击国家政权’而被捕的达10万人”。自然，这一切使这支还要忙于镇压那些怀有不满情绪的少数民族的军队不得不疲于作战——这些波兰人、芬兰人、格鲁吉亚人、拉脱维亚人、爱沙尼亚人、亚美尼亚人，寻求保留其在1905～1906年中央政权软弱时在“俄罗斯化”问题上获得的不满意的让步。任何一次军事失败后都会再次出现这些少数民族为摆脱莫斯科的统治所进行的努力。虽然我们没有确切的统计数字，但1914年8月，200万结婚的俄国人中，少数民族无疑占了很大比例，目的是为了逃避征兵。

In short, it is not simply from the perspective of the post-Bolshevik Revolution that one can see that Russia before 1914 was a sociopolitical tinderbox, and very likely to produce large conflagrations in the event of further bad harvests, or reductions in the factory workers’ standards of living, or—possibly—a great war. One is bound to use the words “very likely” here, since there also existed (alongside these discontents) a deep loyalty to czar and country in many areas, an increasingly nationalistic assembly, broad Pan-Slavic sympathies, and a corresponding hatred of the foreigner. Indeed, there was many a feckless publicist and courtier, in 1914 as in 1904, who argued that the regime could not afford to appear reticent in great international issues. If it came to war, they urged, the nation would firmly support the pursuit of victory. 142

简言之，人们不是仅仅根据对布尔什维克革命后的剖析而看出1914年以前的俄国是一个社会和政治的火药库，假如出现更严重的歉收，或者工人生活水平的下降，或者发生一场大战，就很可能引起一场大爆炸。此处一定要用“很可能”一词。因为在很多地区（与这些不满分子一起）还存在着对沙皇和国家的深深的忠诚，还有一个民族主义日甚的议会，还广泛存在着对泛斯拉夫主义的同情，以及相应的对外国人的仇视。的确，和1904年一样，1914年还有许多无能的宣传家和奉承者，他们坚持认为，在重大的国际问题上，这个政权决不能保持沉默。他们极力主张，如果参战，这个国家就一定要坚定地支持争取胜利的行动。

But could such a victory be assured, given Russia’s likely antagonists in 1914? In the war against Japan, the Russian soldier had fought bravely and stolidly enough— as he had in the Crimea and in the 1877 war against Turkey—but incompetent staffwork, poor logistical support, and unimaginative tactics all had had their effect. Could the armed services now take on Austria-Hungary—and, more particularly, the military-industrial powerhouse of imperial Germany—with any better result? Despite all of its own absolute increases in industrial output in this period, the awful fact was that Russia’s productive strength was actually decreasing relative to Germany’s. Between 1900 and 1913, for example, its own steel production rose from 2. 2 to 4. 8 million tons, but Germany’s leaped forward from 6. 3 to 17. 6 million tons. In the same way, the increases in Russia’s energy consumption and total industrial potential were not as large, either absolutely or relatively, as Germany’s. Finally, it will be noticed that in the years 1900–1913 Russia’s share of world manufacturing production sank, from 8. 8 percent to 8. 2 percent, because of the expansion of the German and (especially) the American shares. 143 There were not encouraging trends.

但在1914年，俄国在面临可能的对手的情况下，它能肯定赢得胜利吗？在对日战争中，俄国士兵作战非常勇敢沉着——如同在克里米亚和1877年对土耳其的战争中一样——但参谋工作的软弱无力、后勤支援的严重不足，以及死板的战术都起了作用。同奥匈帝国较量，特别是同有强大军事和工业力量的德意志帝国较量，会有更好的结果吗？尽管这一时期俄国的工业产量有了绝对的增长，但可怕的事实是，同德国相比，俄国的生产力实际上是在不断下降。例如，1900～1913年，它的钢产量从220万吨增加到480万吨，但德国的钢产量却从630万吨跃至l760万吨。同样，俄国的能源消耗和工业潜力在绝对数量或相对比重上都不如德国。最后，我们还注意到，1900～1913年，由于德国和（特别是）美国在世界制造业所占比重迅速增加，俄国所占比重从8.8%下降到8.2%。这中间看不到有任何令人鼓舞的趋势。

But, it has been argued, “by the yardstick with which armies were measured in 1914,” Russia was powerful, since “a war which tested economics and state bureaucratic structures as well as armies” was not anticipated by the military experts. 144 If so, one is left wondering why contemporary references to German military power drew attention to Krupp steel, the shipyards, the dyestuffs industry, and the efficiency of German railways as well as front-line forces. 145 Nonetheless, if it is simply the military figures which matter, then the fact that Russia was creating ever more divisions, artillery batteries, strategic railways, and warships did impress. Assuming that a war would be a short one, these sorts of general statistics all pointed to Russia’s growing strength.

但是，有人争辩说，“用1914年时衡量军队的标准来衡量”，俄国是强大的，因为“一场像考验军队那样考验一个国家经济和国家官僚机构的战争”，不是军事专家们所能预料到的。如果那样的话，人们就会疑惑，为什么同一时代有关德国军事力量的资料注意了前线的军队，又注意了克虏伯的钢铁、造船厂、染料工业和德国铁路系统的效率。而且，如果仅仅军事方面的数字是重要的，那么，俄国正在创建有史以来最多的师、炮兵连、战略铁路和军舰这一事实，应给人以深刻的印象。假设战争是短暂的，这类一般性的统计数字应可表明俄国正在发展的力量。

Once this superficial level of number-counting is discarded, however, even the military issue becomes altogether more problematical. Once again, the decisive factor was Russia’s socioeconomic and technical backwardness. The sheer size of its vast peasant population meant that only one-fifth of each annual cohort was actually conscripted into the armed forces; to have taken in every able-bodied man would have caused the system to collapse in chaos. But those peasants who were recruited could hardly be regarded as ideal material for a modern industrialized war. Thanks to the crude and overheavy concentration upon armaments rather than the broader, more subtle areas of national strength (e. g. , general levels of education, technological expertise, bureaucratic efficiency), Russia was frightfully backward at the personnel level. As late as 1913 its literacy rate was only 30 percent, which, as one expert has tartly remarked, “was a much lower rate than for mid-eighteenthcentury England. ”146 And while it was all very well to vote vast sums of money for new recruits, would they be of much use if the army possessed too few trained NCOs? The experts in the Russian general staff, looking with “feelings of inferiority and envy” at Germany’s strength in that respect, thought not. They were also aware (as were some foreign observers) of the desperate shortages of good officers. 147 Indeed, from the evidence now available, it appears that in almost all respects— heavy artillery, machine guns, handling of large numbers of infantry, levels of technical training, communications, and even its large fleet of aircraft—the Russian military was acutely conscious of its weaknesses. 148

但当撇开这些肤浅水平的统计数字不管时，甚至军事问题也会变得更成问题。决定性的因素仍是俄国在社会经济和技术上的落后。农村规模巨大的人口量意味着，每年的征召实际上只有1/5的人入伍；吸收所有体格健壮的青年入伍会造成制度在一片混乱中崩溃。而那些入伍的农民是难以作为现代工业化战争的理想兵员的。由于把注意力拙劣地过于集中在军械方面，而不去注意国家力量中更广泛、更敏感的问题（例如教育总体水平、科技知识、官僚机构的效能），俄国在人员素质方面的落后是令人吃惊的。至1913年，其识字率只有30%。一位专家一针见血地指出，这一比率“要比18世纪中叶的英国低得多”。在很顺利地投票通过拨出一大笔征募新兵的经费时，拥有极少经过培训的军士的军队能有多少用呢？在这一方面，带着“自卑而嫉妒”的感情去看待德国力量的俄国总参谋部的专家们认为没有用。他们也意识到了本国（如外国观察家意识到的那样）极其缺乏优秀军官。的确，从目前可得到的资料来看，几乎在各个方面——重炮兵、机枪、对众多步兵的指挥、技术训练水平、通信联络甚至庞大的飞机群——俄国军界都敏锐地意识到了自己的弱点。

The same sort of gloomy conclusions arose when Russia’s planned mobilization and strategic-railway system were examined in detail. Although the overall mileage of the railway network by 1914 seemed impressive, once it was set against the immense distances of the Russian Empire—or compared with the much denser systems of western Europe—its inadequacy became clear. In any case, since many of these lines were built on the cheap, the rails were often too light and the bedding for the track too weak, and there were too few water tanks and crossings. Some locomotives burned coal, others oil, others wood, which further complicated things —but that was a small problem compared with the awkward fact that the army’s peacetime locations were quite different from its wartime deployment areas and affected by its deliberate dispersion policy (Poles serving in Asia, Caucasians in the Baltic provinces, etc. ). Yet if a great war came, the masses of troops had somehow to be efficiently transported by the inadequate staff of the railway battalions, of whom “over a third were wholly or partly illiterate, while three-quarters of the officers had no technical training. ”149

当仔细检查俄国有计划的动员和战略铁路系统时，出现了同样令人沮丧的结论。虽然到1914年，铁路网的总英里数看上去颇为可观，但一旦把它和沙皇帝国广袤的领土相比——或者与西欧稠密得多的铁路网相比——就显得很不相称了。总之，由于许多铁路线的造价很低，所以铁轨通常都太轻，铁道的路基太脆弱，储水箱和叉道口太少。一些机车烧煤，一些机车燃油，另一些用木料，这使事情更加复杂化，但这同下面这些棘手事实相比不过是个小问题——部队在和平时期驻扎的位置与战时部署的地区相距甚远，并受到俄国有意识的分散政策的影响（波兰人在亚洲服役，高加索人在波罗的海各省服役等）。一旦大战爆发，大批部队不得不迅速地以某种方式通过兵员不足的铁路部队有效地进行转移。但这些兵员中“有1/3以上的人是文盲或半文盲，3/4的军官没有受到技术培训”。

The mobilization and deployment problem was exacerbated by the almost insuperable difficulty caused by Russia’s commitments to France and Serbia. Given the country’s less efficient railway system and the vulnerability of the forces deployed in the Polish salient to a possible “pincer” attack from East Prussia and Galicia, it had seemed prudent prior to 1900 for the Russian high command to stay on the defensive at the outset of war and steadily to build up its military strength; and, indeed, some strategists still argued that case in 1912. Many more generals, however, were keen to smash Austria-Hungary (against which they were confident of victory) and, as the tension between Vienna and Belgrade mounted, to help the latter in the event of an Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia. Yet for Russia to concentrate its forces on the southern front was made impossible by the fear of what Germany might do. For decades after 1871, the planners had assumed that a Russo- German war would begin with a massive and swift German assault eastward. But when the outlines of the Schlieffen Plan became clear, St. Petersburg came under enormous French pressure to launch offensives against Germany as soon as it could, in order to relieve its western ally. Fear of having France eliminated, together with Paris’s tough insistence that further loans be tied to improvements in Russia’s offensive capabilities, compelled the Russian planners to agree to strike westward as quickly as possible. All this had caused enormous wrangles within the general staff in the few years before 1914, with the various schools of thought disagreeing over the number of army corps to be deployed on the northern as opposed to the southern front, over the razing of the old defensive fortresses in Poland (in which, absurdly, so much of the new artillery was sited), and over the feasibility of ordering a partial rather than a complete mobilization. Given Russia’s diplomatic obligations, the ambivalence was perhaps understandable; but it did not help the cause of producing a smoothly run military machine which would secure swift victories against its foes. 150

由于俄国对法国和塞尔维亚承担了义务而引起的无法克服的困难，动员和部署问题日益恶化。鉴于这个国家铁路系统效率较低，和部署在波兰突出地带的兵力易受到来自东普鲁士和加里西亚的“钳形”攻势，所以对于俄军最高统帅部来说，俄军似乎在1900年以前战争爆发时应该谨慎地处于守势，并逐渐建立起它的军事力量。的确，一些战略家在1912年还在争论这个问题。但还有许多将军们渴望击溃奥匈帝国（他们有信心取胜），而且当维也纳和贝尔格莱德之间的紧张关系加剧时，一旦奥匈帝国入侵塞尔维亚，就帮助后者。但对俄国来说，由于担心德国可能会采取行动，在南部战线集结军队就变得不可能了。在1871年之后的几十年里，计划的制订者们一直认为，一场俄德战争将会以德国向东大规模地突然袭击开始。但当施利芬计划的大纲昭然若揭时，圣彼得堡受到法国的巨大压力，被要求开始尽快地向德国发起进攻，以缓和其西方盟国受到的压力。由于担心法国被消灭，加之巴黎强硬地坚持将进一步提供贷款与俄国提高进攻能力之事相联系，这就迫使俄国的计划制订者们同意尽快向西发起进攻。所有这一切，在1914年以前的几年里，在总参谋部内部引起了种种争论，各派意见就多个军部署在北线还是南线，就拆毁波兰旧的防御工事（荒唐的是，在这些工事中，部署了那么多新大炮），就下令部分动员而不是全部动员的可行性等问题，意见不一。鉴于俄国所承担的外交义务，这一矛盾心理也许是可以理解的，但这无助于达到使军事机构顺利运转的目的，而只有这样才会保证对敌斗争迅速取得胜利。

This catalogue of problems could be extended almost ad nauseam. The fifty divisions of Russian cavalry, thought vital in a country with few modern roads, required so much fodder—there were about one million horses!—that they alone would probably produce a breakdown in the railway system; supplying hay would certainly slow down any sustained offensive operation, or even the movement of reserves. Because of the backwardness of its transport system and the internalpolicing roles of the military, literally millions of its soldiers in wartime would not be considered front-line troops at all. And although the sums of money allocated to the army prior to 1914 seemed enormous, much of it was consumed by the basic needs of food, clothing, and fodder. Similarily, despite the large-scale increases in the fleet and the fact that many of the new designs have been described as “excellent,”151 the navy required a much higher level of technical training as well as more frequent tactical practice among its personnel to be truly effective; since it had neither (the crews were still based mainly on shore) and was forced to divide its fleet between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the prospects for Russian sea power were not good—unless it fought only the Turks.

这一系列问题推而广之，达到几乎令人厌烦的程度。在现代化道路不多的俄国非常重要的50个骑兵师，需要那么多的饲料——约有100万匹马——仅这一项也许就可以导致铁路系统的瘫痪。供应干草自然会放慢持久性的进攻行动，甚至后备军的调动。由于其运输系统的落后和部队在国内所负的治安任务，它号称的数百万士兵根本不能被认为是战时可以作战的士兵。虽然在1914年以前给军队的拨款数目似乎很多，但绝大部分被食品、服装、饲料等基本需求用掉了。类似的情况是，尽管大规模地扩充了舰队，而且确有许多新的设计被描述为“极好的”，但海军仍需要水平高得多的技术培训和在其人员中更经常地进行战术实践训练，以便使他们真正具有战斗力。由于俄国海军均不具备上述的要求（水兵们依然以岸上基地为主），而且它不得不把其舰队分驻在波罗的海和黑海，所以俄国海上力量的前景并不那么乐观——除非它只对土耳其人作战。

Finally, no assessment of Russia’s overall capacities in this period can avoid some comments upon the regime itself. Although certain foreign conservatives admired its autocratic and centralized system, arguing that it gave a greater consistency and strength to national policies than the western democracies were capable of, a closer examination would have revealed innumerable flaws. Czar Nicholas II was a Potemkin village in person, simple-minded, reclusive, disliking difficult decisions, and blindly convinced of his sacred relationship with the Russian people (in whose real welfare, of course, he showed no interest). The methods of governmental decision-making at the higher levels were enough to give “Byzantinism” a bad name: irresponsible grand dukes, the emotionally unbalanced empress, reactionary generals, and corrupt speculators, outweighing by far the number of diligent and intelligent ministers whom the regime could recruit and who, only occasionally, could reach the czar’s ear. The lack of consultation and understanding between, say, the foreign ministry and the military was at times frightening. The court’s attitude to the assembly (the Duma) was one of unconcealed contempt. Achieving radical reforms in this atmosphere was impossible, when the aristocracy cared only for its privileges and the czar cared only for his peace of mind. Here was an elite in constant fear of workers’ and peasants’ unrest, and yet, although government spending was by far the largest in the world in absolute terms, it kept direct taxes on the rich to a minimum (6 percent of the state’s revenue) and placed massive burdens upon foodstuffs and vodka (about 40 percent). Here was a country with a delicate balance of payments, but with no chance of preventing (or taxing) the vast outflow of monies which Russian aristocrats spent abroad. Partly because of the traditions of heavy-handed autocracy, partly because of the inordinately flawed class system, and partly because of the low levels of education and pay, Russia lacked those cadres of competent civil servants who made, for example, the German, British, and Japanese administrative systems work. Russia was not, in reality, a strong state; and it was still one which, given the drift in leadership, was capable of blundering unprepared into foreign complications, notwithstanding the lessons of 1904.

最后，对俄国这一时期的全部能力进行的评估，不可避免地要对它的政权本身作一些评论。虽然某些外国保守主义者十分赞赏俄国的专制和中央集权体制，认为这一制度使国家的政策比西方民主国家所能办到的更具连贯性、更为有力，但如果我们更为仔细地进行考察，就会发现它有无数的缺陷。沙皇尼古拉二世看起来像一个波将金村的人，他头脑简单，深居简出，不喜欢处理难题，盲目自信他与俄国人民（当然，他对他们的真正幸福并没表现出丝毫兴趣）的神圣关系。政府更高阶层的决策方法是以给“拜占庭主义”一个坏的名字：不负责任的大公、情绪易于激动的女皇、反动的将军、腐败的投机商，其影响远远超过了沙皇政府可以吸取其偶尔进言的众多勤勉和聪慧的大臣们的影响。各部之间，比如说外交部和国防部之间，缺乏磋商和理解的状况，有时令人感到吃惊。宫廷对议会（杜马）采取的是一种公然蔑视的态度。贵族们只关心他们的特权，沙皇只求心境的安宁，在这种气氛中，要实现激进的改革是不可能的。其统治阶层常常惧怕工人和农民骚动，虽然政府开支的绝对数字为世界之最，但它对富人征收的直接税一直保持在最低限度（占国家岁入的6%），而且把大量税收负担放在粮食和伏特加酒上（约占40%）。这是一个收支平衡基础很脆弱的国家，但却无法防止（或谴责）因俄国贵族在国外花销而出现的大量资金外流。部分是因为暴虐的专制统治的传统，部分是因为缺陷太多的阶级制度，还因为教育和薪金水平较低，俄国缺乏使德国、英国、日本的行政系统运转的那种干练的文职骨干官员。实际上，俄国不是一个强大的国家；它仍然是这样一个国家：由于领导阶层的放任，它在没有作准备的情况下卷入外部纠纷而犯错误，却不接受1904年的教训。

How then, are we to assess the real power of Russia in these years? That it was growing in both industrial and military terms year by year was undoubted. That it possessed many other strengths—the size of its army, the patriotism and sense of destiny in certain classes of society, the near-invulnerability of its Muscovite heartland—was also true. Against Austria-Hungary, against Turkey, perhaps now even against Japan, it had good prospects of fighting and winning. But the awful thing was that its looming clash with Germany was coming too early for Russia to deal with. “Give the state twenty years of internal and external peace,” boasted Stolypin in 1909, “and you will not recognize Russia. ” That may have been true, even if Germany’s strength was also likely to increase over the same period. Yet according to the data produced by Professors Doran and Parsons (see Chart 1), the “relative power” of Russia in these decades was just rising from its low point after 1894 whereas Germany’s was close to its peak. 152

那么我们该怎么估价俄国在这几年里的实力呢？其工业与军事方面年年在发展是无疑的。它拥有其他多方面的力量——部队的规模、某些社会阶层所具有的爱国主义精神和使命感、一定程度上不易遭受攻击的莫斯科中心地带——这些都是事实。在对奥匈帝国和土耳其，也许还有对日本的战争中，俄国获胜的前景都是乐观的。但对俄国来说，可怕的是与德国若隐若现的冲突来得太早了，早得使俄国不能应付。1909年斯托雷平夸口说：“如果给这个国家20年国内外的和平时间，你们就会认不出俄国了。”这也许是真的，即使在同一时期德国的力量也可能增加，但根据多兰和帕森斯教授提供的资料（见图1），俄国这几十年里的“相对力量”正在从1894年后的低起点上升，而德国的力量则接近巅峰了。

注：L=低点年度H=高点年度I=年度曲线点

Chart 1. The Relative Power of Russia and Germany

图1 俄国与德国实力对比

And while that may be too schematized a presentation to most readers, it had indeed been true (as mentioned previously) that Russia’s power and influence had declined throughout much of the nineteenth century in rough proportion to her increasing economic backwardness. Every major exposure to battle (the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War) had revealed both new and old military weaknesses, and compelled the regime to endeavor to close the gap which had opened up between Russia and the western nations. In the years before 1914, it seemed to some observers that the gap was again being closed, although to others manifold weaknesses still remained. Since it could not have Stolypin’s required two decades of peace, it would once again have to pass through the test of war to see if it had recovered the position in European power politics which it possessed in 1815 and 1848.

对大多数读者来说，这样的描述可能太程式化了，但在19世纪的大部分时间里，俄国的力量和影响确实是（像前面所提到的）与其日益落后的经济成比例地衰落了。每一次重大战役的爆发（克里米亚战争、日俄战争），都暴露了新、旧两方面军事力量上的弱点，这就迫使该政权努力缩短俄国与西方已经拉开的距离。1914年前的几年里，对某些观察家来说，差距似乎又一次接近了，尽管另一些人认为，许多方面的薄弱环节依然存在。由于俄国不可能得到斯托雷平要求的20年和平时间，它将再度不得不通过战争的考验，看一看它是否恢复了它在1815年和1848年欧洲强权政治中所拥有的那种地位。

United States

美国

Of all the changes which were taking place in the global power balances during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there can be no doubt that the most decisive one for the future was the growth of the United States. With the Civil War over, the United States was able to exploit the many advantages mentioned previously—rich agricultural land, vast raw materials, and the marvelously convenient evolution of modern technology (railways, the steam engine, mining equipment) to develop such resources; the lack of social and geographical constraints; the absence of significant foreign dangers; the flow of foreign and, increasingly, domestic investment capital—to transform itself at a stunning pace. Between the ending of the Civil War in 1865 and the outbreak of the Spanish- American War in 1898, for example, American wheat production increased by 256 percent, corn by 222 percent, refined sugar by 460 percent, coal by 800 percent, steel rails by 523 percent, and the miles of railway track in operation by over 567 percent. “In newer industries the growth, starting from near zero, was so great as to make percentages meaningless. Thus the production of crude petroleum rose from about 3,000,000 barrels in 1865 to over 55,000,000 barrels in 1898 and that of steel ingots and castings from less than 20,000 long tons to nearly 9,000,000 long tons. ”153 This was not a growth which stopped with the war against Spain; on the contrary, it rose upward at the same meteoric pace throughout the early twentieth century. Indeed, given the advantages listed above, there was a virtual inevitability to the whole process. That is to say, only persistent human ineptitude, or nearconstant civil war, or a climatic disaster could have checked this expansion—or deterred the millions of immigrants who flowed across the Atlantic to get their share of the pot of gold and to swell the productive labor force.

19世纪后半期到20世纪初，在全球实力对比所发生的一切变化中，对未来最富有决定性作用的是美国的崛起，这应该是毫无疑问的。随着内战的结束，美国可以利用其多方面的有利条件——肥沃的农田、丰富的原材料以及开发这些资源的现代工艺技术的发展（铁路、蒸汽机、采矿设备等）。由于没有社会、地理上的限制，没有明显的外来危险，所以外来的和国内的投资额日益增加，并以惊人的速度改变着其自身面貌。譬如，在内战结束时的1865年到美西战争爆发时的1898年，美国小麦产量增加了256%，谷物增加了222%，精糖增加了460%，煤炭增加了800%，钢轨增加了523%，投入运行的铁路线的长度增加了567%以上。“几乎从零开始的新型工业发展的速度是如此之快，以致用百分比计算显得毫无意义了。原油产量从1865年的300万桶一跃而为1898年的5500万桶，钢锭和铸件由不足2万吨猛增到900万吨。”这种发展并未因对西班牙开战而停滞不前；正相反，在整个20世纪初期，它仍以同样惊人的速度上升着。上述这些优势贯穿着发展的全过程。换句话说，只有因循守旧及连绵不断的内战或自然灾害，才可能对这种必然发展的趋势产生某种阻碍，或者对数百万横渡大西洋寻求栖身之所并加入这里的劳动大军的移民流入造成阻碍。

The United States seemed to have all the economic advantages which some of the other powers possessed in part, but none of their disadvantages. It was immense, but the vast distances were shortened by some 250,000 miles of railway in 1914 (compared with Russia’s 46,000 miles, spread over an area two and a half times as large). Its agricultural yields per acre were always superior to Russia’s; and if they were never as large as those of the intensively farmed regions of western Europe, the sheer size of the area under cultivation, the efficiency of its farm machinery, and the decreasing costs of transport (because of railways and steamships) made American wheat, corn, pork, beef, and other products cheaper than any in Europe. Technologically, leading American firms like International Harvester, Singer, Du Pont, Bell, Colt, and Standard Oil were equal to, or often better than, any in the world; and they enjoyed an enormous domestic market and economies of scale, which their German, British, and Swiss rivals did not. “Gigantism” in Russia was not a good indicator of industrial efficiency;154 in the United States, it usually was. For example, “Andrew Carnegie was producing more steel than the whole of England put together when he sold out in 1901 to J. P. Morgan’s colossal organization, the United States Steel Corporation. ”155 When the famous British warship designer Sir William White made a tour of the United States in 1904, he was shaken to discover fourteen battleships and thirteen armored cruisers being built simultaneously in American yards (although, curiously, the U. S. merchant marine remained small). In industry and agriculture and communications, there was both efficiency and size. It was therefore not surprising that U. S. national income, in absolute figures and per capita, was so far above everybody else’s by 1914. 156

美国似乎拥有其他国家部分拥有的一切经济优势，而无它们的劣势。到1914年，横贯全国的25万英里铁路线沟通了幅员辽阔的美国（俄国当时有4.6万英里铁路，但延伸面积却是美国的2.5倍）。美国农业每英亩的产量始终高于俄国。假如美国的农产品产量从来都不比西欧集约化的农业地区的产量高的话，在其纯耕地面积、农机的效用以及降低运输费用等方面（因为铁路和航运业发达），也会使美国的小麦、谷物、猪肉、牛肉及其他农产品的价格比欧洲任何一国便宜。从工艺技术上来看，处于领先地位的美国的国际联合收割机公司、辛格、杜邦、贝尔、科尔特和标准石油公司，都赶上或超过了世界上其他国家。这是德国、英国和瑞士等竞争对手无法相比的。在俄国，采用大集团形式并不是提高工业效益的好方法，但美国则相反。例如，1901年，安德鲁·卡内基将美国钢铁公司出售给J·P·摩根财团时，其钢产量比整个英格兰的钢产量还要高。著名的英国战舰设计师威廉·怀特1904年周游美国时，惊奇地发现美国厂家在同时建造14艘战列舰和13艘铁甲巡洋舰（虽然如此，奇怪的是，美国商船队仍然还很小）。美国在工业、农业和交通运输方面，规模和效率都是很高的。因此到1914年，美国国民收入按绝对指数和平均值计算，都远远超过上述各国，这是毫不奇怪的。

The consequences of this rapid expansion are reflected in Table 21, and in the pertinent comparative statistics. In 1914, the United States was producing 455 million tons of coal, well ahead of Britain’s 292 million and Germany’s 277 million. It was the largest oil producer in the world, and the greatest consumer of copper. Its pig-iron production was larger than those of the next three countries (Germany, Britain, France) combined, and its steel production almost equal157 to the next four countries (Germany, Britain, Russia, and France). Its energy consumption from modern fuels in 1913 was equal to that of Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary together. It produced, and possessed, more motor vehicles than the rest of the world together. It was, in fact an entire rival continent and growing so fast that it was coming close to the point of overtaking all of Europe. According to one calculation, indeed, had these growth rates continued and a world war been avoided, the United States would have overtaken Europe as the region possessing the greatest economic output in the world by 1925. 158 What the First World War did, through the economic losses and dislocations suffered by the older Great Powers, was to bring that time forward, by six years, to 1919. 159 The “Vasco da Gama era”—the four centuries of European dominance in the world—was coming to an end even before the cataclysm of 1914.

表21及其他有关的比较统计数字反映了美国经济的迅猛发展。1914年美国煤产量为4.55亿吨，大大超过英国（2.92亿吨）和德国（2.77亿吨）。美国也是世界上最大的石油生产国，同时又是铜的最大消费国。它的生铁产量比其他三国（德国、英国、法国）的总和还要多，钢产量几乎与其他4国（德国、英国、俄国、法国）持平。1913年，美国现代燃料的能源消费等于英国、德国、法国、俄国和奥匈帝国的总消费量。它生产、拥有的汽车比世界其他国家的总和还要多。实际上，美国才是整个欧洲大陆真正的竞争对手，它发展得如此之快，已接近或赶上整个欧洲的水平。根据这种推算，假如增长率继续上升并能够避免一场世界战争的话，到1925年，它很可能成为最强的经济大国而压倒欧洲。然而，由于老牌大国在战争中所遭受的经济损失和经济失调，由于第一次世界大战的爆发，这一推算的时间提前了6年，到1919年美国的经济实力就已压倒了欧洲。甚至在1914年的大灾难到来之前，“瓦斯科·达·伽马时代”——欧洲统治世界的400年历史就已宣告结束。

Table 21. National Income, Population, and per Capita Income of the Powers in 1914

表21 1914年各大国国民收入、人口以及人均收入对比表

The role of foreign trade in the United States’ economic growth was small indeed (around 8 percent of its GNP derived from foreign trade in 1913, compared with Britain’s 26 percent),160 but its economic impact upon other countries was considerable. Traditionally, the United States had exported raw materials (especially cotton), imported finished manufactures, and made up the usual deficit in “visible” trade by the export of gold. But the post-Civil War boom in industrialization quite transformed that pattern. Swiftly becoming the world’s largest producer of manufactures, the United States began to pour its farm machinery, iron and steel wares, machine tools, electrical equipment, and other products onto the world market. At the same time, the Northern industrialists’ lobby was so powerful that it ensured that foreign products would be kept out of the home market by higher and higher tariffs; raw materials, by contrast, or specialized goods (like German dyestuffs) were imported in ever-larger quantities to supply American industry. But while the surge in the country’s industrial exports was the most significant change, the “transportation revolution” also boosted American farm exports. With the cost of carrying a bushel of wheat from Chicago to London plummeting from 40 cents to 10 cents in the half-century before 1900, American agricultural produce streamed across the Atlantic. Corn exports peaked in 1897 at 212 million bushels, wheat exports in 1901 at 239 million bushels; this tidal wave also included grain and flour, meat and meat products. 161

当时外贸在美国经济发展中所占的比重的确很小（1913年外贸只占国民生产总值的8%左右，相比之下，英国则占26%），但美国的经济对其他国家的冲击是不可忽视的。美国传统上是出口原材料（特别是棉花），进口成品，以出口黄金来弥补贸易亏空。但内战后工业化的迅速发展改变了这种模式。美国开始将农机、钢铁制品、机床、电气设备和其他产品打入国际市场，很快就成了世界上最大的工业品生产国。与此同时，北部工业家们的院外活动集团势力强大，保证了通过越来越高的关税抵制外国货进入国内市场。相比之下，原材料或特需物资（如德国的染料）却大量进口，以供应美国工业。工业品源源不断地出口是最重大的变化，同时“运输革命”也促进了农产品的出口。美国农产品，以被销往大西洋彼岸的小麦为例，在1900年以前的半个世纪里，从芝加哥运往伦敦所需的运费，由原来的1蒲式耳40美分降低为10美分。谷物出口在1897年达到高峰，为2.12亿蒲式耳。1901年小麦出口达到2.39亿蒲式耳，这一出口浪潮还包括谷物、面粉、肉类以及肉制品。

The consequences of this commercial transformation were, of course, chiefly economic, but they also began to affect international relations. The hyperproductivity of American factories and farms caused a widespread fear that even its enormous domestic market might soon be unable to absorb these goods, and led powerful interest groups (midwestern farmers as well as Pittsburgh steel producers) to press the government to give all sorts of aid to opening up, or at least keeping open, markets overseas. The agitation to preserve an “open door” in China and the massive interest shown in making the United States the dominant economic force in Latin America were only two of the manifestations of this concern to expand the country’s share of world trade. 162 Between 1860 and 1914 the United States increased its exports more than sevenfold (from $334 million to $2,365 billion), yet because it was so protective of its own market, imports increased only fivefold (from $356 million to $1,896 billion). Faced with this avalanche of cheap American food, continental European farmers agitated for higher tariffs—which they usually got; in Britain, which had already sacrificed its grain farmers for the cause of free trade, it was the flood of American machines, and iron and steel, which produced alarm. While the journalist W. T. Stead wrote luridly of “the Americanization of the world”—the phrase was the title of his book of 1902— Kaiser Wilhelm and other European leaders hinted at the need to combine against the “unfair” American trading colossus. 163

这种商业转变的后果虽然主要是经济方面的，但也开始影响国际关系。美国工厂、农场的产品过剩引起了广泛的担忧，即担心庞大的国内市场不久将无力吸收这些产品。这就促使大财团（中西部农场主、匹兹堡钢铁公司等生产厂家）向政府施加压力，要求提供多种援助以开发海外市场，或至少保证海外市场的开放，并鼓动政府维护对中国的“门户开放”政策和使美国成为支配拉丁美洲经济的巨大力量，这是美国扩张其在世界贸易份额中所关心的两个方面。1860年至1914年，美国出口额增加了6倍以上（由3.34亿美元增至23.65亿美元），然而为了有效地保护其国内市场，进口量只增加了4倍（由3.56亿美元增至18.96亿美元）。面对美国低廉物品的大量涌入，欧洲大陆的农场主们鼓动提高关税——他们通常也只能做到这一点。英国的自由贸易牺牲了谷物农场主们的利益。美国的机器和钢铁的大量涌入也引起了英国的恐慌。新闻记者W·T·斯特德以辛辣的笔触提到了“世界的美国化”，1902年他出版的一本著作就是以此命名的。与此同时，威廉皇帝和其他欧洲领导人暗示有必要联合对付“不公平”的美国贸易巨人。

Perhaps even more destabilizing, although less well understood, was the impact of the United States upon the world’s financial system and monetary flows. Because it had such a vast surplus in its trade with Europe, the latter’s deficit had to be met by capital transfers—joining the enormous stream of direct European investments into U. S. industry, utilities, and services (which totaled around $7 billion by 1914). Although some of this westward flow of bullion was reversed by the returns on European investments and by American payments for services such as shipping and insurance, the drain was a large one, and constantly growing larger; and it was exacerbated by the U. S. Treasury’s policy of accumulating (and then just sitting on) nearly one-third of the world’s gold stock. Moreover, although the United States had by now become an integral part of a complete global trading system—running a deficit with raw-materials-supplying countries, and a vast surplus with Europe—its own financial structure was underdeveloped. Most of its foreign trade was done in sterling, for example, and London acted as the lender of last resort for gold. With no central bank able to control the financial markets, with a stupendous seasonal outflow and inflow of funds between New York and the prairie states conditioned solely by the grain harvest and that by a volatile climate, and with speculators able to derange not merely the domestic monetary system but also the frequent calls upon gold in London, the United States in the years before 1914 was already becoming a vast but unpredictable bellows, fanning but also on occasions dramatically cooling the world’s trading system. The American banking crisis of 1907 (originally provoked by an attempt by speculators to corner the market in copper), with consequent impacts on London, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, was merely one example of the way the United States was impinging upon the economic life of the other Great Powers, even before the First World War. 164

但是，更能造成不稳定的因素是美国对世界金融体系和货币流通的冲击，虽然这一点尚未被人们充分认识。由于美国在同欧洲的贸易中具有巨大的贸易顺差，欧洲必须以资本转移来弥补逆差，从而与美国工业、公共事业和服务行业的直接投资的洪流（到1914年总投资额达70亿美元）融合在一起。尽管西流的一些金条，可以通过欧洲投资所获得的利润和由美国支付的航运业、保险业一类的服务行业回收一些，但外流仍然是严重的，而且在继续加剧。这种状况又因美国财政部储存世界黄金储备近1/3的政策（当时正在讨论）而更加严重。美国到这时已成为完整的全球贸易体系中的一个组成部分，它在同原材料供应国的贸易中出现赤字，在同欧洲的贸易往来中又有大量盈余，但它的金融体制并不完备。例如，美国大部分对外贸易用的是英镑，伦敦则充当了黄金的最后债权人。由于没有控制金融市场的中央银行，由于纽约和伊利诺伊周围各州之间巨额黄金的季节性流入流出仅仅取决于谷物的收成，还由于投机商们不仅扰乱了国内货币体系，而且扰乱了伦敦黄金市场，在1914年前的几年里，美国已变成了一个巨大而无法测定的风箱，它不仅可以随时兴风作浪，而且偶尔还能戏剧性地将世界贸易体系的动荡平息下来。后来波及到伦敦、阿姆斯特丹和汉堡的1907年美国银行业危机（是投机商企图垄断铜的市场引起的），仅是第一次世界大战前美国冲击其他大国经济生活的一例。

This growth of American industrial power and overseas trade was accompanied, perhaps inevitably, by a more assertive diplomacy and by an American-style rhetoric of Weltpolitik. 165 Claims to a special moral endowment among the peoples of the earth which made American foreign policy superior to those of the Old World were intermingled with Social Darwinistic and racial arguments, and with the urging of industrial and agricultural pressure groups for secure overseas markets. The traditional, if always exaggerated, alarm about threats to the Monroe Doctrine was accompanied by calls for the United States to fulfill its “Manifest Destiny” across the Pacific. While entangling alliances still had to be avoided, the United States was now being urged by many groups at home into a much more activist diplomacy—which, under the administrations of McKinley and (especially) Theodore Roosevelt, was exactly what took place. The 1895 quarrel with Britain over the Venezuelan border dispute—justified in terms of the Monroe Doctrine— was followed three years later by the much more dramatic war with Spain over the Cuban issue. Washington’s demand to have sole control of an isthmian canal (instead of the older fifty-fifty arrangement with Britain), the redefinition of the Alaskan border despite Canadian protests, and the 1902–1903 battlefleet preparations in the Caribbean following the German actions against Venezuela were all indications of U. S. determination to be unchallenged by any other Great Power in the western hemisphere. As a “corollary” of this, however, American administrations showed themselves willing to intervene by diplomatic pressure and military means in Latin American countries such as Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic when their behavior did not accord with United States norms.

美国工业的实力和海外贸易的崛起，必然伴随着更加专横的外交和具有美国风格的强权政治。美国人声称，在世界各民族中，他们具有一种使美国外交政策优于旧世界各国的特殊的道义才能，这些主张不仅掺杂着社会达尔文主义和种族论据，而且也掺杂着工业和农业压力集团要求获取海外市场的心理。传统的也时常被夸大的那种关于门罗主义受到威胁的警报，伴随着号召美国跨越太平洋去完成“天定命运”的要求。尽管美国不得不回避那种陷入困境的联盟，但在国内各类集团的敦促下需要开展更积极的外交。在麦金莱——特别是西奥多·罗斯福政府的领导下，美国展开了积极的外交活动。1895年与英国就委内瑞拉边界争端发生争吵（用门罗主义的条件来解释是正确的），3年后又发生了由于古巴问题而引起的更加戏剧性的美西战争。华盛顿要求单独控制地峡运河（以代替过去那种与英国对半控制的安排）。美国不顾加拿大抗议，坚持重新划定阿拉斯加边界，随着德国对委内瑞拉采取的行动，1902～1903年将舰队停泊在加勒比海，这一切都表明美国决心在西半球不受任何一个大国的挑战。其必然结果是，美国政府表现出了以外交压力和军事手段干涉尼加拉瓜、海地、墨西哥、多米尼加共和国等拉丁美洲国家的意愿，如果它们的行为不符合美国的行为准则的话。

But the really novel feature of American external policy in this period were its interventions and participation in events outside the western hemisphere. Its attendance at the Berlin West Africa Conference in 1884–1885 had been anomalous and confused: after grandiose speeches by the U. S. delegation in favor of free trade and open doors, the subsequent treaty was never ratified. Even as late as 1892 the New York Herald was proposing the abolition of the State Department, since it had so little business to conduct overseas. 166 The war with Spain in 1898 changed all that, not only by giving the United States a position in the western Pacific (the Philippines) which made it, too, a sort of Asiatic colonial power, but also by boosting the political fortunes of those who had favored an assertive policy. Secretary of State Hay’s “Open Door” note in the following year was an early indication that the United States wished to have a say in China, as was the commitment of 2,500 American troops to the international army sent to restore order in China in 1900. Roosevelt showed an even greater willingness to engage in grosse Politik, acting as mediator in the talks which brought an end to the RussoJapanese War, insisting upon American participation in the 1906 conference over Morocco, and negotiating with Japan and the other Powers in an attempt to maintain the “Open Door” in China. 167 Much of this has been seen by later scholars less as being based upon a sober calculation of the country’s real interests in the world than as reflecting an immaturity of foreign-policy style, an ethnocentric na veté, and a wish to impress audiences both at home and abroad—traits which would complicate a “realistic” American foreign policy in the future;168 but even if that is true, the United States was hardly alone in this age of imperialist bombast and nationalist pride. In any case, except in Chinese affairs, such diplomatic activism was not maintained by Roosevelt’s successors, who preferred to keep the United States free from international events occurring outside the western hemisphere.

美国在这个时期扩张政策的新特点是干涉、参与西半球以外所发生的事件。1884～1885年，美国列席在柏林召开的西非会议，这个行动是反常的、令人费解的：美国代表团发表了关于自由贸易和门户开放的夸夸其谈的演说，但后来签订的条约并未被批准。到1892年，《纽约先驱论坛报》还建议废除国务院，因为它在海外可做的事情寥寥无几。1898年的战争改变了这一切，这不仅给了美国在西太平洋（菲律宾）一席之地，还使它成为又一种类型的亚洲殖民主义大国，也使那些赞成专横政策的人时来运转。国务卿海约翰在次年“门户开放”的照会中较早地暗示，美国希望在中国有发言权。同样，1900年美国派遣2500人的军队参加八国联军，以“恢复”中国的秩序。[9]罗斯福甚至更显示出开展大国政治的兴趣，他在结束日俄战争的会谈中充当了调停者，坚持要美国参加1906年关于摩洛哥问题的会议，与日本及其他大国举行谈判，企图维护在中国的“门户开放”政策。后来的学者认为，这大部分事实与其说反映出他在认真盘算其在世界上的真正利益，倒不如说反映了他在对外政策方面的不成熟，他的种族中心主义的幼稚性，和他想给国内外群众留下深刻印象的愿望。这些特征将使美国未来的“现实主义”外交政策变得错综复杂。即使如此，在帝国主义猖獗和民族主义尊严盛行的时期，很难说只有美国是这样的。但无论如何，除中国事务外，罗斯福的追随者们并未坚持这种积极的外交，他们宁愿不参与西半球以外所发生的国际事件。

Along with these diplomatic actions went increases in arms expenditures. Of the two services, the navy got the most, since it was the front line of the nation’s defenses in the event of a foreign attack (or a challenge to the Monroe Doctrine) and also the most useful instrument to support American diplomacy and commerce in Latin America, the Pacific, and elsewhere. Already in the late 1880s, the rebuilding of the fleet had commenced, but the greatest boost came at the time of the Spanish- American War. Since the easy naval victories in that conflict seemed to justify the arguments of Admiral Mahan and the “big navy” lobby, and since the strategists worried about the possibility of a war with Britain and then, from 1898 onward, with Germany, the battle fleet was steadily built up. The acquisition of bases in Hawaii, Samoa, the Philippines, and the Caribbean, the use of naval vessels to act as “policemen” in Latin America, and Roosevelt’s dramatic gesture of sending his “great white fleet” around the world in 1907 all seemed to emphasize the importance of sea power.

随着外交活动的开展，军费也增加了，在两个军种中，海军军费增加最多，因为它是国家防御外来进攻（或对门罗主义的挑战）的前沿，也是支撑美国在拉丁美洲、太平洋地区以及其他地方开展外交、经商最有用的工具。在19世纪80年代后期，重建舰队的工作已经开始，而在美西战争时达到了最高潮。由于在那次冲突中，海战轻而易举地取胜似乎证明了马汉海军上将以及主张建立“庞大海军”的院外集团的观点是正确的，还由于战略家们对与英国作战的可能性和从1898年起与德国作战的可能性的担心，建造战舰的速度加快了。对夏威夷、萨摩亚群岛、菲律宾和加勒比海的基地的取得，使用海军舰只在拉丁美洲充当“国际警察”的行动，以及1907年罗斯福派遣其“大白舰队”环行世界的戏剧性举动，似乎都强调了海上力量的重要性。

Consequently, while the naval expenditures of $22 million in 1890 represented only 6. 9 percent of total federal spending, the $139 million allocated to the navy by 1914 represented 19 percent. 169 Not all of this was well spent—there were too many home fleet bases (the result of local political pressures) and too few escort vessels—but the result was still impressive. Although considerably smaller than the Royal Navy, and with fewer Dreadnought-type battleships than Germany, the U. S. Navy was the third largest in the world in 1914. Even the construction of a U. S. - controlled Panama Canal did not stop American planners from agonizing over the strategical dilemma of dividing the fleet, or leaving one of the country’s coastlines exposed: and the records of some officers in these years reveal a somewhat paranoid suspicion of foreign powers. 170 In fact, given its turn-of-the-century rapprochement with Great Britain, the United States was immensely secure, and even if it feared the rise of German sea power, it really had far less to worry about than any of the other major powers. 171

1890年，美国2200万美元的海军费用只占整个联邦开支的6.9%，而后来在1914年拨给海军1.39亿美元，占联邦支出的19%。这些费用的使用并不都是合理的。国内舰队基地太多（这是地方上政治压力的结果），护卫舰船太少，但还是给世界留下了很好的印象。虽然美国海军远比英国皇家海军规模小，而且无畏级战列舰也比德国少，但1914年美国海军居世界第三位。然而即使美国控制的巴拿马运河的开凿，也没有解除美国计划者对这样一个战略难题的苦恼：把舰队分散在两大洋，或是让美国一侧的海岸线暴露于敌人。近年来一些官员的记录暴露出美国对别的大国抱有一些类似偏执狂的怀疑。事实上，随着20世纪初与英国的和解，美国是非常安全的，即使担心德国海上实力的崛起，也远没有必要像其他大国那样发愁。

The small size of the U. S. military was in many ways a reflection of that state of security. The army, too, had been boosted by the war with Spain, at least to the extent that the public realized how minuscule it actually was, how disorganized the National Guard was, and how close to disaster the early campaigning in Cuba had come. 172 But the tripling of the size of the regular army after 1900 and the additional garrisoning tasks it acquired in the Philippines and elsewhere still left the service looking insignificant compared with that of even a middle-sized European country like Serbia or Bulgaria. Even more than Britain, the United States clung to a laissez-faire dislike of mass standing armies and avoided fixed military obligations to allies. Less than 1 percent of its GNP went to defense. Despite its imperialist activities in the period 1898–1914, therefore, it remained what the sociologist Herbert Spencer termed an “industrial” society rather than a “military” society like Russia. Since many historians have suggested that “the rise of the superpowers” began in this period, it is worth noting the staggering differences between Russia and the United States by the eve of the First World War. The former possessed a frontline army about ten times as large as the latter’s; but the United States produced six times as much steel, consumed ten times as much energy, and was four times larger in total industrial output (in per capita terms, it was six times more productive). 173 No doubt Russia seemed the more powerful to all those European general staffs thinking of swiftly fought wars involving masses of available troops; but by all other criteria, the United States was strong and Russia weak.

美国小规模的军事力量在很多方面反映了它的安全状况。陆军也是在对西班牙开战时兴起的。它至少发展到了这样的程度：公民认识到它实际上规模是多么小，国民警卫队是何等混乱，早年的古巴战役可以说是一场灾难。1900年后，美国正规军的规模扩大了两倍，在菲律宾和其他地方又担负了驻防任务，但与塞尔维亚或保加利亚那样的欧洲中等国家相比，陆军仍显得微不足道。与英国相比，美国甚至对维持大量常备军有一种放任主义的厌恶情绪，并且避免对盟国负担明确的军事义务，只有近1%的国民生产总值用于防务。尽管它在1898年至1914年这一时期有帝国主义行为，但社会学家赫伯特·斯潘塞主张，宁肯称它为“工业”社会，而不称它为像俄国那样的“军事”社会。由于很多历史学家假设超级大国的兴起就起源于这一时期，值得指出的是，第一次世界大战前夕，俄、美两国之间有惊人的差别，前者拥有的前线部队是后者的10倍左右，但是美国的钢产量却是俄国的6倍，消耗的能源是俄国的10倍，工业总出口量是俄国的4倍（以人均值计，生产力是俄国的6倍）。毫无疑问，对所有考虑投入大批现役部队进行速决战的欧洲总参谋部来说，俄国似乎更强，但用其他一切标准来衡量，则是美国强，俄国弱。

The United States had definitely become a Great Power. But it was not part of the Great Power system. Not only did the division of powers between the presidency and the Congress made an active alliance policy virtually impossible, but it was also clear that no one was in favor of abandoning the existing state of very comfortable isolation. Separated from other strong nations by thousands of miles of ocean, possessing a negligible army, content to have achieved hemispheric dominance and, at least after Roosevelt’s departure, less eager to engage in worldwide diplomacy, the United States in 1913 still stood on the edges of the Great Power system. And since most of the other countries after 1906 were turning their attention from Asia and Africa to developments in the Balkans and North Sea, it was perhaps not surprising that they tended to see the United States as less a factor in the international power balances than had been the case around the turn of the century. That was yet another of the common pre-1914 assumptions which the Great War itself would prove wrong.

美国肯定已经成为大国，但它并非大国体系的成员国。这不仅是由于总统与国会之间的分权使积极的结盟政策实际上不可能实施，而且很清楚，无人赞同放弃非常舒服的孤立现状。美国与其他强国中间有数千英里的海洋相隔，拥有一支微不足道的军队，只满足于对西半球的统治权。至少在罗斯福离职之后，美国对从事世界范围的外交不怎么感兴趣，所以它在1913年仍处在大国体系的边缘。由于1906年以后大部分国家把注意力从亚洲、非洲转移到对巴尔干和北海的开发，所以人们对以下的事实或许并不感到惊奇：与刚进入20世纪前后的时期相比，它们更不愿把美国看成是一个影响国际力量对比的因素。这又是一个1914年以前普遍持有的假设，它被第一次世界大战证明是错误的。