文艺；书评；艾森豪威尔总统；哦，幸运儿！

　　A Republican president who was touched by fortune；

　　一位受到命运青睐的共和党总统；

　　Eisenhower: In War and Peace. By Jean Edward Smith.

　　《战争与和平中的艾森豪威尔》，作者：简·爱德华·史密斯。

　　Napoleon believed that ability counts for little in military men if they are not also blessed with opportunity; what he wanted most were lucky generals. Jean Edward Smith's superb new biography of the “military statesman” who became the 34th president of the United States shows how often Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower's opportunities owed much to what Niccolò Machiavelli called fortuna.

　　拿破仑相信：对于军人来说，如果不是天生好运，那么能力再强也是无济于事。他最渴望得到的就是好运的将军。简·爱德华·史密斯这本杰出的新传记就展示了其主人公一生有很多机会得归功于尼可罗·马基亚维利所谓的fortuna（好运）。他就是美国第34届总统，“军人政治家”德怀特·“艾克”·艾森豪威尔。

　　He was lucky that West Point adopted competitive entry in time for him to be selected and that he was allowed to serve in spite of a football injury. His career was rescued repeatedly by older generals, who recognised his ability. His guardian angel, Fox Conner, whom he met at Camp Meade in 1919, became a lifelong mentor. Conner protected him from court martial over a trivial allowance claim in 1921, sent him to the general staff school at Fort Leavenworth in 1925, and a year later rescued him from command of the 24th Regiment, a unit for black soldiers which had such a bad name it was known as the “infantry's Siberia”.

　　他很幸运，正好赶上了西点军校开始实施通过考试竞争入学的新规定，让他可以顺利入学。同时，尽管他之前因为打美式足球曾经受过伤，他还是很幸运的得以入伍。他的戎马生涯曾有几次几近断送，幸亏那些赏识他才华的前辈将军们出手相救。1919年，他在米德训练营结识了他的守护天使福克斯·康纳中将。康纳后来成为了艾森豪威尔一生的导师。1921年因为一次不起眼的津贴申请事件艾森豪威尔几乎被告上军事法庭，是康纳保下了他。1925年康纳将艾森豪威尔送到了李文沃斯堡总参谋学院进修，一年以后又是康纳把他从第24步兵团内调救出来。当时第24团主要由黑人士兵组成，在军队里臭名昭著，被称为是“步兵的西伯利亚”。

　　Opportunity came at last when George Marshall chose Eisenhower to be commander of all American forces in Europe in 1942, a year after America entered the war, and then when Franklin Roosevelt chose him, instead of Marshall, as the D-Day commander, partly because of Winston Churchill's dislike of Marshall.

　　最终，机会在美国参战的第二年光顾。1942年，乔治·马歇尔挑选艾森豪威尔作为美军驻欧洲司令。之后，富兰克林·罗斯福又选他，而不是马歇尔作为诺曼底登陆的司令，其中有一部分原因是温斯顿·丘吉尔不喜欢马歇尔。

　　It was an almost miraculous career. Although he had seen no action, Eisenhower was promoted over 228 senior officers when he took over the American high command in north Africa, and he leapfrogged over more experienced British soldiers when he was made commander in chief of the allied forces just seven months later, in 1943. Yet neither north Africa nor the first European landings in Italy was well handled. Mr Smith, a well-known American biographer and former professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, acknowledges Eisenhower's many talents. But unlike several previous American writers (including Eisenhower's own grandson), he does not do so by portraying British commanders as almost uniformly incompetent in comparison.

　　他的军旅生涯几近奇迹。虽然没有实战经验，艾森豪威尔被破格提升，越过228名高级军官，一路升到美军驻北非司令。七个月后，在1943年，他又越过一些经验更丰富的英国军人被提升为盟军总司令。但是不管是在北非的行动，还是在欧洲的意大利登陆他都不能说是执行得很好。史密斯先生是一位著名的美国传记作家，也是多伦多大学的前政治经济学教授。他承认艾森豪威尔有很多天赋。但是和其之前的几位美国作家（包括艾森豪威尔的亲孙子）不同，他并没有把英国的司令们描绘成几乎是清一色的无能军官来体现艾森豪威尔的才干。

　　Another virtue is Mr Smith's sophisticated handling of Eisenhower's infatuation for his beautiful Anglo-Irish driver, Kay Summersby, the subject of much prurient speculation. Mr Smith lists the circumstantial opportunities and concludes: “Whether he and Kay were intimate remains a matter of conjecture. But there is no question they were in love.”

　　史密斯传记的另一个亮点在于其对于另一段故事进行了精细处理，那就是艾森豪威尔对他那位美丽的英国－爱尔兰混血司机，凯·萨默斯比的迷恋。围绕着这个故事有很多不干不净的流言。史密斯列出了一些环境上的机遇并得出结论：“他和凯是否有亲密关系还未可知，但是他们相爱这一点是毋庸置疑的。”

　　Eisenhower's luck held good in 1945 when he told George Marshall he meant to leave Mamie, his wife of 29 years, for Summersby. Marshall stamped on the idea and Eisenhower ran for president. Mr Smith attributes the unusual bitterness of the 1952 campaign less to political partisanship than to fear: the Democrats' fear that Senator Joe McCarthy would publicly describe their candidate, Adlai Stevenson, as homosexual and Eisenhower's fear that his correspondence with Marshall over his proposed divorce would be leaked.

　　艾森豪威尔的好运气在1945年依然不减。当时，他告诉乔治·马歇尔他想要与和他结婚了29年的妻子玛米离婚，和萨默斯比在一起。马歇尔打消了他的这个念头，之后艾森豪威尔参选总统。史密斯认为1952年大选出奇尖锐更大程度上是因为恐惧而不是政党分歧：民主党害怕参议员乔·麦卡锡会公开把他们的候选人阿德莱·史蒂文森描绘成一个同性恋，而艾森豪威尔则害怕他和马歇尔之间关于离婚提议的信件会被公布出来。

　　Much of John Kennedy's political magic came from the way journalists contrasted his youth and vigour with Eisenhower's elderly bumbling, his illnesses and his golf. But political craftiness was as important for Eisenhower as his good fortune, as laid out in a 1994 biography by Fred Greenstein, a Princeton academic, entitled “The Hidden-Hand Presidency”. In fact, Kennedy played golf much better than Eisenhower did.

　　后来的记者们常把约翰·肯尼迪的年轻活力和艾森豪威尔的年迈笨拙、疾病缠身和高尔夫兴趣加以对比。约翰·肯尼迪的政治魔力很大程度上正是来源于这些对比。但是如普林斯顿学者弗莱德·格林斯坦1994年所写的传记《深藏不露的总统》所描绘的一样，政治狡狯对于艾森豪威尔来说和他的好运一样重要。而且实际上肯尼迪的高尔夫球打得可比艾森豪威尔好多了。

　　The Eisenhower that Mr Smith portrays was not just a “military statesman”—as Britain's General Montgomery called him—but also a very successful president. He ended the war in Korea, refused to allow America to get involved in rescuing the French in Indochina (one idea had been to drop three atom bombs there), forced Britain, France and Israel to back down over Suez and faced down China over the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. At home he sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to escort nine black children to school. He presided over peace and, on the whole, prosperity.

　　史密斯描绘的艾森豪威尔不仅仅像英国将军蒙哥马利所说的那样：是一位“军人政治家”，他也是一位非常成功的总统。他结束了朝鲜战争，拒绝让美国被牵涉到在中南半岛援救法国一事中（当时的一个建议是在那儿投三颗原子弹），逼迫英国、法国和以色列在苏伊士问题上让步，还在金门妈祖危机时压倒了中国。在国内他派出第101空降师前往阿肯色州的小石城，护送九位黑人孩童上学。他的总统任期是一段和平时期，而且整体上来说经济繁荣。

　　Eisenhower also left two mighty endowments for the North American economy. He pushed through the visionary St Lawrence Seaway, which takes seagoing ships to Chicago. As a young officer in 1919 he had accompanied the army's first convoy across a continent where you sometimes had to navigate roadless tracts with a compass. Thirty-six years later he sent to Congress the legislation that created the interstate highway system. A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower believed in strong government, and knew how to use it.

　　艾森豪威尔也为美国经济留下了两笔巨大的财富。他促成了具有远见的圣劳伦斯航道的兴建，这使得海运船舰可以开到芝加哥。1919年身为一名年轻官员时，美国军方第一次派出横跨美国大陆的车队，他曾随同前往，一路上有很多地方他们必须穿过无路的通道，仅靠指南针导向。36年之后，他向国会递交了一份立法，之后该立法创造了美国州际高速公路系统。作为一位财政保守分子，艾森豪威尔相信强势政府，而且他也知道应该如何使用这样的政府。