翻译题 3.The second admirable quality of our gentry and professional class is the refusal to take bribes. Perhaps "refusal" is too strong a word, for he would be a daring man who even attempted to bribe this type of gentleman. "It would be like violating a nun!" as a "crook" once said to me, when for a moment he contemplated buying a private advantage from an English official. It is seldom thought of, and it is hardly ever done. Our Civil Servants in India, for instance, have repeated opportunities of making a lot of money by taking bribes, but I remember only one case of even a suspicion of corruption. This reputation for incorruptibility is the greatest of our advantages in administering the Empire. Its rarity among nearly all the other peoples I have known raises our officials almost to the level of divine superiority, and without it we could not hold the Empire together, nor would it be worth the pains. A businessman who has worked long under the system of concessions in Russia tells me that it is now impossible to bribe the Commissar or other high officials there. That is an immense advance, for under Tsarism one had only to signify the chance of a good bribe and one got what one wanted. But nowadays on the suspicion of bribery both parties are shot off-hand. It is a drastic way of teaching what we have somehow learnt so smoothly that we are scarcely conscious of the lesson or of our need of it. Yet there was need. Less than two centuries ago, bribery ran riot among our aristocracy and politicians, so that a Prime Minister could boast that every man had his price. The change is remarkable, and in spite of all that can be justly said against our Public Schools, I think it may be traced to an unconscious sense of honour somehow instilled among the boys.