英语演讲稿：on his seventieth birthday
we are opposed to that theory.
Socialism, which is perfectly clear and unmistakable, says the thing you have got to take care of is your distribution.
We have to begin with that, and private property, if it stands in the way of good distribution, has got to go.
A man who holds public property must hold it on the public condition on which, for instance, i carry my walking stick.
I am not allowed to do what i like with it.I must not knock you on the head with it.
We say that if distribution goes wrong, everything else goes wrong-religion, morals – government.
and we say, therefore (this is the whole meaning of our socialism}, we must begin with distribution and take all the necessary steps.
I think we are keeping it in our minds because our business is to take care of the distribution of wealth in the worid1 and i tell you, as i have told you be fore, that i don’t think there are two men, or perhaps one man, in our 47,000,000 who approves of the existing distribution of wealth.
I will go even further and say that you will not find a single person in the whole of the civilized world who agrees with the existing system of the distribution of wealth.
It has been reduced to a blank absurdity.
I think the day will come when we will be able to make the distinction between us and the capitalists.
We must get certain leading ideas before the people.
We should announce that we are not going in for what was the old-fashioned idea of redistribution, but the redistribution of income.
Let it always be a question of income.
I have been very happy here to night.
I entirely understand the distinction made by our chairman to night when he said you hold me in social esteem and a certain amount of personal affection.
I am not a sentimental man, but l am not insensible to all that.
I know the value of all that, and it gives me, now that 1 have come to the age of seventy (it will not occur again and i am saying it for the first time), a great feeling of pleasure that l can say what a good many people can’t say.
注释：
1.be opposed to 反对;
例句：Mr Clarke has shown himself to be resolutely opposed to compromise.
克拉克先生已表示自己坚决反对妥协。
2.distribution.n.分配，分布;
例句：The civil war is obstructing distribution of famine relief by aid agencies.
内战阻碍着救援机构对饥荒赈济物资的配给。
3.wealth.n.财产，财富;
例句：Economic reform has brought relative wealth to peasant farmers.
经济改革给农民带来了相对的财富。
4.absurdity.n.荒谬; 谬论; 荒谬的行为
例句：I find myself growing increasingly angry at the absurdity of the situation.
对如此荒谬可笑的情况我感到越来越生气。