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  3. In their idle moments, historians occasionally speculate on how the world would be different if Adolf Hitler had passed the entr

In their idle moments, historians occasionally speculate on how the world would be different if Adolf Hitler had passed the entr

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问题    In their idle moments, historians occasionally speculate on how the world would be different if Adolf Hitler had passed the entrance exam to the Art Academy of Vienna, where he applied twice in the early years of the 20th century. 【R1】__________
   On the contrary, the world is better off that a certain British statesman with a gift for inspiring rhetoric never allowed his love of painting to interfere with his career in politics. 【R2】__________One can’t help wishing that Hitler had been a better artist—and being grateful that Winston Churchill wasn’t.
   That, anyway, is one lesson to be drawn from the PBS documentary series, whose first segment airs this week, "Chasing Churchill," a travelogue narrated by the late prime minister’s granddaughter Celia Sandys, of the places he visited and loved. Whether he was headed for the gentle flower-draped hills of Provence or the stark deserts of North Africa, his habit, except during the war, was the same—painting. He was especially partial to romantically rugged scenery by sunset; if the light was better at dawn, says Sandys, he would not have been awake to see it.
   Churchill bonded over painting with the American general, later president, Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s tastes ran to plashing streams, run-down barns and birch-studded snowscapes in a style that might be called Greeting Card Pastoral. He was appropriately modest about his works, which he described as "daubs." Churchill, a far more accomplished and ambitious artist, was well aware of his amateur status. 【R3】__________
   Politics is not a profession that ordinarily rewards creativity, which may be why so few politicians are willing to display it; it’s probably no coincidence that these three were among the most conspicuously self-assured world leaders of the 20th century. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 interrupted plans to release a novel by Saddam Hussein with the forthright title Get Out of Here, Curse You! He had published three others, all critically acclaimed in the Iraqi press and best sellers, presumably because they were required reading in Iraqi schools. 【R4】__________
   Safely out of office in 1995, former president Jimmy Carter published a book of poetry on subjects ranging from childhood reminiscence to geopolitics. The habits of a longtime politician die hard, even when he turns his hand to poetry; the slim volume bears 14 dedications spread over two pages.
   Poetry is, of course, the most self-revelatory of arts. 【R5】__________Hitler, too, was the only one of the three who occasionally populated his drawings with human figures, usually drawn badly and tiny compared with the real estate. Admittedly people are harder to draw than mountains and clouds, but perhaps the choice of subject by men who ruled vast territories is no coincidence. Alone in his aerie, the great man surveys his unpopulated domain: the artist as commander in chief.
   [A] The 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli wrote 18 novels, some of them fairly racy by the standards of the time.
   [B] Unfortunately, doubt has been cast on his literary credentials in the form of allegations that the books were actually written by a committee of officials from the Ministry of Information and Culture.
   [C] But paintings, too, can reveal something about the hands that made them: Eisenhower’s blandness; Hitler’s bombastic obsession with monumental buildings such as the Vienna and Munich opera houses.
   [D] Presumably, if he’d been allowed to pursue his dream, he would have inflicted on the world only a large number of mediocre watercolors, rather than World War II and the Holocaust.
   [E] Otherwise Britain might have gained a collection of derivative post-impressionist landscapes to clutter the antiques shops of Portobello Road, and lost the war to Nazi Germany.
   [F] Equipped with canvas, oils and camel’s-hair brushes, he parked himself behind an easel and in front of the landscape and commenced to smoke cigars, drink champagne and paint.
   [G] But Hitler for many years regarded himself as an artist by profession. An authorized book of his watercolors referred to him in 1937 as "at once the First Fuehrer and the First Artist of our Reich."
【R2】
选项
答案E
解析 本段开头的On the contrary说明本段是承接上文的一个相反例证，这个人是英国的政治家(a certain British statesman)，有着绘画天赋，但他没让绘画妨碍(interfere with)其政治生涯。联系此空后的Winston Churchill。可知本段讲的是丘吉尔。空格处应该与丘吉尔或绘画有关。E符合要求，其中的otherwise一词假设了与空格前相反的情况，如果他对画画的喜爱妨碍了其政治生涯，那么英国可能会多一些风景画，而输掉对纳粹的战争(lost the war to Nazi Germany)。E与空格前的内容(包括上一段)相似，均为对历史人物的假设。空格后的句子既提到希特勒又提到丘吉尔，反过来印证了该句前面的内容应提到此二人的情况。由此可见，答案为E。
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