雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第5章:解謎接力賽(76)
None of this was quite what Churchill had in mind when calling the British people to brace themselves to their duties, or speaking of the Empire that might last a thousand years.
But duty and empires did not solve ciphers, and Churchill never bargained for an Alan Turing.
但是責任和帝國並不能解開德國密碼，而丘吉爾卻從未期待過艾倫·圖靈。If the danger of direct invasion diminished, the attack on shipping was itself an invasion of the British metabolism.
如果說直接侵略的危險減小了，那麼對貿易的攻擊，就是對英國運轉機制的侵略。
In the first year of war the sinkings by U-boats had not been the dominating problem.
在戰爭的第一年，被U型潛艇擊沉並不是最重要的問題，More significant were the disposition of the merchant fleets of newly occupied and neutral countries,
更重要的是新佔領的和中立國家的商船隊的部署，the closure to trade of both the Channel and the Mediterranean, and the reduced capacity of British ports and inland transport to absorb whatever arrived.
海峽和地中海貿易的中斷，還有英國港口吞吐量的減少。From late 1940, however, the position began to clarify.
不過，從1940年末開始，情況變得清楚了。The British-controlled merchant fleet had to supply an island separated by only twenty miles from an enemy continent, and to do so from bases thousands of miles across submarine-infested seas.
英國的商船隊需要供給一個離敵人的大陸只有20英里的島，而且中間經過了一個潛艇遍佈的海域。Britain also had to continue the economic system on which vast populations around the globe depended, and to remain at war at all,
英國還要維持全球的貿易網點，而且爲了保持交戰狀態，had to attack Italy in a Middle East which was now as distant from Britain as was New Zealand.
還必須去攻擊意大利，對英國來說，意大利現在就像新西蘭一樣遠。
