ガルシアへの手紙
知らない人も知っている人ももう一度原文で
おはようございます。
2018年2月の配信記事です。
「ガルシアへの手紙」の話を知っている方も多いと思いますが、改めてこの話を紹介して自らへの戒めというか指針にしたいと思いましてメモがわりに書いておきます。
もともと、アメリカで1899年に出された原作「A Message to Garcia（Elbert Hubbard）」はほんの小さな小冊子で、日本語で翻訳しても数ページほどの分量です。
ですので、ぜひ原文で読んでください。
英語だから全文は厳しくても、最初と最後の部分だけでもぜひ。
この小冊子が世界に与えた衝撃は大きく、その影響力は1913年の時点で世界で4000万部印刷されたという事実から容易に推測できます。
世界中で1億人が読み、そして日本の明治天皇陛下も絶賛したとのことです。今も、NATO（北大西洋条約機構）軍の将兵への教本となっています。
それでも、時の経過というのは厳しく、何しろ100年以上前の本になりますので、現代では知らない方もいると思うのであえて言及します。
世界中が読んだ名著であり、そして、ゲティスバーグという片田舎で簡単に話された手短な話が、米国史上最大級に有名になったかのリンカーン大統領演説であるというのに似たものを感じます。
それでは早速紹介します。
ガルシアへの手紙
エルバート・ハバード（1899年）
筆者勝手抄訳
キューバ戦争において、私の記憶の中に、
火星が大接近した衝撃に似た最もはっきりと思いだす人物がいる。
アメリカとスペインとの間で、キューバをめぐって戦争が起きた時、
合衆国はどうしても、反乱軍のリーダーと連絡をとらなくてはならなくなった。
そのリーダーの名はガルシアという。
キューバの山奥の要塞にいるらしい。
どこにあるのか誰も知らない。
郵便も電報も届かない。
しかし、大統領は将軍ガルシアの協力を取りつけなくてはならない。
事態は至急を要する。
どうすればいいのだ！
誰かが大統領に進言した。
「ガルシアを見つけ出せる者がいるとしたら、それは、ローワンという者です」
ローワンは呼ばれた。
そして、大統領からガルシアへの手紙を受け取った。
私は、ローワンという名の者が、
どのようにガルシアへの手紙を受け取り、
それを防水の小袋に密封し胸に革ひもでしばりつけ、
四日後の夜に小舟でキューバの海岸に上陸し、
ジャングルの中に消えていき、
敵地を歩いて横断し、
ガルシアに手紙を渡し、
三週間後に別の海岸に現れたか、
それを詳しく語ろうとは思わない。
ただ、言いたいのは、次のことである。
マッキンレー大統領はローワンにガルシアへの手紙を渡したが、
そのときローワンは、その手紙を黙って受け取り、
「ガルシアはどこにいるのですか」
などとはひとことも聞かなかった
ということである。
この者こそ、ブロンズで型にとり、その銅像を永遠に国中の学校に置くべき人物である。
私たちに必要なのは、学校における机上の勉強ではなく、あれこれ細かな知識技能でもない。
ローワンのように背骨をビシッと伸ばしてやることである。
自らの力で物事に取り組もうという精神を教えることである。
勇気を教えることである。
そうすれば、人々は、
信頼に忠実に応えられる人物、
すぐ行動に移せる人物、
精神を集中できる人物となり、
そしてガルシアに手紙を持っていく人物となるであろう。
…（中略）…
この、ガルシアに手紙を届けられる人の願いは、何であろうと聞き入れられる。
このような人は、どこの都市でも、どこの街でも、どこの村でも求められている。
このような人は、どこの会社でも、どこの店でも、どこの工場でも求められている。
世界中が、このような人間を、必死に、呼び求めているのだ。
世界はいつでも、本当にどこでも、必要としているのだ。
ガルシアへ手紙を届けられる人間を。
…いかがでしたでしょうか。
このような駄文ブログ記事全てを吹き飛ばす衝撃の文章だと思います。
繰り返しますが、ぜひ原文で読んでください。
それでは本日も頑張っていきましょう。
まずは切れてしまった指定ゴミ袋から買ってこようと思いました筆者からは以上です。
（平成30年2月16日 金曜日）
以下原文引用（NATO軍の配賦冊子 https://www.nato.int/nrdc-it/about/message_to_garcia.pdf より）
1899
A Message to Garcia
By Elbert Hubbard
In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out
on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.
When war broke out between Spain & the United
States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly
with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was
somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one
knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could
reach him. The President must secure his cooperation,
and quickly.
What to do!
Some one said to the President, “There’s a fellow by
the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if
anybody can.”
Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered
to Garcia. How “the fellow by the name of Rowan”
took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch,
strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night
off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared
into the jungle, & in three weeks came out on the other
side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country
on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I
have no special desire now to tell in detail.
The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave
Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took
the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the
Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in
deathless bronze and the statue placed in every
college of the land. It is not book-learning young men
need, nor instruction about this and that, but a
stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be
loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their
energies: do the thing- “Carry a message to Garcia!”
General Garcia is dead now, but there are other
Garcias.
No man, who has endeavored to carry out an
enterprise where many hands were needed, but has
been well nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of
the average man- the inability or unwillingness to
concentrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance,
foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, & half-hearted
work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by
hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men
to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness
performs a miracle, & sends him an Angel of Light for
an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You
are sitting now in your office- six clerks are within call.
Summon any one and make this request: “Please look
in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum
for me concerning the life of Correggio”.
Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the
task?
On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a
fishy eye and ask one or more of the following
questions:
Who was he?
Which encyclopedia?
Where is the encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
Don’t you mean Bismarck?
What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?
Is he dead?
Is there any hurry?
Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up
yourself?
What do you want to know for?
And I will lay you ten to one that after you have
answered the questions, and explained how to find
the information, and why you want it, the clerk will
go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to
find Garcia- and then come back and tell you there is
no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but
according to the Law of Average, I will not.
Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to
your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under the
C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say,
“Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.
And this incapacity for independent action, this moral
stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness
to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put
pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not
act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit
of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club
seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce”
Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place.
Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who
apply, can neither spell nor punctuate- and do not
think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?
“You see that bookkeeper,” said the foreman to me in a
large factory.
“Yes, what about him?”
“Well he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up
town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all
right, and on the other hand, might stop at four
saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street,
would forget what he had been sent for.”
Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to
Garcia?
We have recently been hearing much maudlin
sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizen of
the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer
searching for honest employment,” & with it all often
go many hard words for the men in power.
Nothing is said about the employer who grows old
before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’erdo-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient
striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when
his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a
constant weeding-out process going on. The employer
is constantly sending away “help” that have shown
their incapacity to further the interests of the business,
and others are being taken on. No matter how good
times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard
and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer- but out
and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go.
It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts
every employer to keep the best- those who can carry
a message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not
the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet
who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because
he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion
that his employer is oppressing, or intending to
oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not
receive them. Should a message be given him to take
to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it
yourself.”
Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work,
the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No
one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a
regular fire-brand of discontent. He is impervious to
reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the
toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.
Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no
less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our
pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are
striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working
hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is
fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line
dowdy indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the
heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise,
would be both hungry & homeless.
Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have;
but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to
speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeedsthe man who, against great odds has directed the
efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s
nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes.
I have carried a dinner pail & worked for day’s wages,
and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know
there is something to be said on both sides. There is no
excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no
recommendation; & all employers are not rapacious
and high-handed, any more than all poor men are
virtuous.
My heart goes out to the man who does his work
when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at
home. And the man who, when given a letter for
Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any
idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of
chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught
else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go
on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long
anxious search for just such individuals. Anything
such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare
that no employer can afford to let him go. He is
wanted in every city, town and village- in every office,
shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such:
he is needed, & needed badly- the man who can carry
a message to Garcia.
-THE END-
▷▷次の記事は
