I HAVE told you already, how on the first battlefield of any consequence that was visited by our party I picked up, from where it lay in the track of the Allies' retreat, a child's rag doll. It was a grotesque1 thing of print cloth, with sawdust insides. I found it at a place where two roads met. Presumably some Belgian child, fleeing with her parents before the German advance, dropped it there, and later a wagon2 or perhaps a cannon3 came along and ran over it. The heavy wheel had mashed4 the head of it flat.
In impressions which I wrote when the memory of the incident was vivid in my mind, I said that, to me, this shabby little rag doll typified Belgium. Since then I have seen many sights. Some were dramatic and some were pathetic, and nearly all were stirring; but I still recall quite clearly the little picture of the forks of the Belgian road, with a back[Pg 370]ground of trampled5 fields and sacked houses, and just at my feet the doll, with its head crushed in and the sawdust spilled out in the rut the ongoing6 army had made. And always now, when I think of this, I find myself thinking of Belgium.
They have called her the cockpit of Europe. She is too. In wars that were neither of her making nor her choosing she has borne the hardest blows—a poor little buffer7 state thrust in between great and truculent8 neighbors. To strike at one another they must strike Belgium. By the accident of geography and the caprice of boundary lines she has always been the anvil9 for their hammers. Jemmapes and Waterloo, to cite two especially conspicuous10 examples among great Continental11 battles, were fought on her soil. Indeed, there is scarcely an inch of her for the possession of which men of breeds not her own—Austrians and Spaniards, Hanoverians and Hollanders, Englishmen and Prussians, Saxons and Frenchmen—have not contended. These others won the victories or lost them, kept the spoils or gave them up; she wore the scars of the grudges12 when the grudges were settled. So there is a reason for calling her the cockpit of the nations; but, as I said just now, I shall think of her as Europe's rag doll—a thing to be clouted13 and kicked about; to be crushed under the hoofs14 and the heels; to be bled and despoiled15 and ravished.
[Pg 371]
Thinking of her so, I do not mean by this comparison to reflect in any wise on the courage of her people. It will be a long time before the rest of the world forgets the resistance her soldiers made against overbrimming odds16, or the fortitude17 with which the families of those soldiers faced a condition too lamentable18 for description.
Unsolicited, so competent an authority as Julius C?sar once gave the Belgians a testimonial for their courage. If I recall the commentaries aright, he said they were the most valorous of all the tribes of Gaul. Those who come afterward20 to set down the tale and tally21 of the Great War will record that through the centuries the Belgians retained their ancient valor19.
First and last, I had rather exceptional opportunities for viewing the travail22 of Belgium. I was in Brussels before it surrendered and after it surrendered. I was in Louvain when the Germans entered it and I was there again after the Germans had wrecked23 it. I trailed the original army of invasion from Brussels southward to the French border, starting at the tail of the column and reaching the head of it before, with my companions, I was arrested and returned by another route across Belgium to German soil.
Within three weeks thereafter I started on a ten-day tour which carried me through Liège, Namur, Huy, Dinant and Chimay, and[Pg 372] brought me back by Mons, Brussels, Louvain and Tirlemont, with a side trip to the trenches24 before Antwerp—roughly, a kite-shaped journey which comprehended practically all the scope of active operations among the contending armies prior to the time when the struggle for western Flanders began. Finally, just after Antwerp fell, I skirted the northern frontiers of Belgium and watched the refugees pouring across the borders into Holland. I was four times in Liège and three times in Brussels, and any number of times I crossed and recrossed my own earlier trails. I traveled afoot; in a railroad train, with other prisoners; in a taxicab, which we lost; in a butcher's cart, which we gave away; in an open carriage, which deserted26 us; and in an automobile28, which vanished.
I saw how the populace behaved while their little army was yet intact, offering gallant29 resistance to the Germans; I saw how they behaved when the German wedge split that army into broken fragments and the Germans were among them, holding dominion31 with the bayonet and the bullet; and finally, six weeks later, I saw how they behaved when substantially all their country, excluding a strip of seaboard, had been reduced to the state of a conquered fief held and ruled by force of arms.
By turns I saw them determined32, desperate, despairing, half rebellious33, half subdued34; re[Pg 373]signed with the resignation of sheer helplessness, which I take it is a different thing from the resignation of sheer hopelessness. It is no very pleasant sight to see a country flayed35 and quartered like a bloody36 carcass in a meat shop; but an even less pleasant thing than that is to see a country's heart broken. And Belgium to-day is a country with a broken heart.
These lines were written with intent to be printed early in January. By that time Christmas was over and done with. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in lieu of the Christmas carols, the cannon had rung its brazen37 Christmas message across the trenches, making mockery of the words: "On earth peace, good will toward men." On our side of the ocean the fine spirit of charity and graciousness which comes to most of us at Christmastime and keeps Christmas from becoming a thoroughly38 commercialized institution had begun to abate39 somewhat of its fervor40.
To ourselves we were saying, many of us: "We have done enough for the poor, whom we have with us always." But not always do we have with us a land famous for its fecundity41 that is now at grips with famine; a land that once was light-hearted, but where now you never hear anyone laugh aloud; a land that is half a waste and half a captive province; a land that cannot find bread to feed its hungry mouths, yet is called on to pay a tribute[Pg 374] heavy enough to bankrupt it even in normal times; a land whose best manhood is dead on the battleground or rusting42 in military prisons; whose women and children by the countless43 thousands are either homeless wanderers thrust forth44 on the bounty45 of strangers in strange places, or else are helpless, hungry paupers46 sitting with idle hands in their desolated47 homes—and that land is Belgium.
Having been an eyewitness48 to the causes that begot49 this condition and to the condition itself, I feel it my duty to tell the story as I know it. I am trying to tell it dispassionately, without prejudice for any side and without hysteria. I concede the same to be a difficult undertaking50.
Some space back I wrote that I had been able to find in Belgium no direct proof of the mutilations, the torturings and other barbarities which were charged against the Germans by the Belgians. Though fully51 a dozen seasoned journalists, both English and American, have agreed with me, saying that their experiences in this regard had been the same as mine; and though I said in the same breath that I could not find in Germany any direct evidence of the brutalities charged against the Belgians by the Germans, the prior statement was accepted by some persons as proof that my sympathy for the Belgians had been chilled through association with the Germans. No such thing. But what I desire now is the op[Pg 375]portunity to say this: In the face of the present plight53 of this little country we need not look for individual atrocities54. Belgium herself is the capsheaf atrocity55 of the war. No matter what our nationality, our race or our sentiments may be, none of us can get away from that.
Going south into France from the German border city of Aix-la-Chapelle, our automobile carried us down the Meuse. On the eastern bank, which mainly we followed during the first six hours of riding, there were craggy cliffs, covered with forests, which at intervals56 were cleft57 by deep ravines, where small farms clung to the sides of the steep hills. On the opposite shore cultivated lands extended from the limit of one's vision down almost to the water. There they met a continuous chain of manufacturing plants, now all idle, which stretched along the river shore from end to end of the valley. Culm and flume and stack and kiln58 succeeded one another unendingly, but no smoke issued from any chimney; and we noted59 that already weeds were springing up in the quarry60 yards and about the mouths of the coal pits and the doorways61 of the empty factories.
Considering that the Germans had to fight their way along the Meuse, driving back the French and Belgians before they trusted their columns to enter the narrow defiles63, there was in the physical aspect of things no great amount[Pg 376] of damage visible. Stagnation64, though, lay like a blight65 on what had been one of the busiest and most productive industrial districts in all of Europe. Except that trains ran by endlessly, bearing wounded men north, and fresh troops and fresh supplies south, the river shore was empty and silent.
In twenty miles of running we passed just two groups of busy men. At one place a gang of German soldiers were strengthening the temporary supports of a railroad bridge which had been blown up by the retiring forces and immediately repaired by the invaders66. In another place a company of reserves were recharging cases of artillery67 shells which had been sent back from the front in carload lots. There were horses here—a whole troop of draft horses which had been worn out in that relentless68, heartbreaking labor69 into which war sooner or later resolves itself. The drove had been shipped back this far to be rested and cured up, or to be shot in the event that they were past mending.
I had seen perhaps a hundred thousand head of horses, drawing cannon and wagons70, and serving as mounts for officers in the first drive of the Germans toward Paris, and had marveled at the uniformly prime condition of the teams. Presumably these sorry crow-baits, which drooped71 and limped about the barren railroad yards at the back of the siding where the shell loaders squatted72, had been[Pg 377] whole-skinned and sound of wind and joint73 in early August.
Two months of service had turned them into gaunt wrecks74. Their ribs75 stuck through their hollow sides. Their hoofs were broken; their hocks were swelled76 enormously; and, worst of all, there were great raw wounds on their shoulders and backs, where the collars and saddles had worn through hide and flesh to the bones. From that time on, the numbers of mistreated, worn-out horses we encountered in transit77 back from the front increased steadily78. Finally we ceased to notice them at all.
I should explain that the description I have given of the prevalent idleness along the Meuse applied79 to the towns and to the scattered80 workingmen's villages that flanked all or nearly all the outlying and comparatively isolated81 factories. In the fields and the truck patches the farming folks—women and old men usually, with here and there children—bestirred themselves to get the moldered and mildewed82 remnants of their summer-ripened crops under cover before the hard frost came.
Invariably we found this state of affairs to exist wherever we went in the districts of France and of Belgium that had been fought over and which were now occupied by the Germans. Woodlands and cleared places, where engagements had taken place, would, within a month or six weeks thereafter, show astonishingly few traces of the violence and[Pg 378] death that had violated the peace of the countryside. New grass would be growing in the wheel ruts of the guns and on the sides of the trenches in which infantry83 had screened itself. As though they took pattern by the example of Nature, the peasants would be afield, gathering84 what remained of their harvests—even plowing85 and harrowing the ground for new sowing. On the very edge of the battle front we saw them so engaged, seemingly paying less heed86 to the danger of chance shell-fire than did the soldiers who passed and repassed where they toiled87.
In the towns almost always the situation was different. The people who lived in those towns seemed like so many victims of a universal torpor88. They had lost even their sense of inborn89 curiosity regarding the passing stranger. Probably from force of habit, the shopkeepers stayed behind their counters; but between them and the few customers who came there was little of the vivacious90 chatter91 one has learned to associate with dealings among the dwellers92 in most Continental communities.
We passed through village after village and town after town, to find in each the same picture—men and women in mute clusters about the doorways and in the little squares, who barely turned their heads as the automobile flashed by. Once in a while we caught the sound of a brisker tread on the cobbled street; but when we looked, nine times in ten[Pg 379] we saw that the walker was a soldier of the German garrison93 quartered there to keep the population quiet and to help hold the line of communication.
I think, though, this cankered apathy94 has its merciful compensations. After the first shock and panic of war there appears to descend95 on all who have a share in it, whether active or passive, a kind of numbed96 indifference97 as to danger; a kind of callousness98 as to consequences, which I find it difficult to define in words, but which, nevertheless, impresses itself on the observer's mind as a definite and tangible99 fact. The soldier gets it, and it enables him to endure his own discomforts100 and sufferings, and the discomforts and sufferings of his comrades, without visible mental strain. The civic101 populace get it, and, as soon as they have been readjusted to the altered conditions forced on them by the presence of war, they become merely sluggish102, dulled spectators of the great and moving events going on about them. The nurses and the surgeons get it, or else they would go mad from the horrors that surround them. The wounded get it, and cease from complaint and lamenting103.
It is as though all the nerve ends in every human body were burnt blunt in the first hot gush104 of war. Even the casual eyewitness gets it. We got it ourselves; and not until we had quit the zone of hostilities105 did we shake it off. Indeed, we did not try. It made for subsequent[Pg 380] sanity106 to carry for the time a drugged and stupefied imagination.
Barring only Huy, where there had been some sharp street fighting, as attested107 by shelled buildings and sandbag barricades108 yet resting on housetops and in window sills, we encountered in the first stage of our journey no considerable evidences of havoc109 until late in the afternoon, when we reached Dinant. I do not understand why the contemporary chronicles of events did not give more space to Dinant at the time of its destruction, and why they have not given it more space subsequently.
I presume the reason lies in the fact that the same terrible week which included the burning of Louvain included also the burning of Dinant; and in the world-wide cry of protestation and distress110 which arose with the smoke of the greater calamity111 the smaller voice of grief for little ruined Dinant was almost lost. Yet, area considered, no place in Belgium that I have visited—and this does not exclude Louvain—suffered such wholesale112 demolition113 as Dinant.
Before war began, the town had something less than eight thousand inhabitants. When I got there it had less than four thousand, by the best available estimates. Of those four thousand more than twelve hundred were then without food from day to day except such as the Germans gave them. There were almost no able-bodied male adults left. Some had[Pg 381] fled, some were behind bars as prisoners of the Germans, and a great many were dead. Estimates of the number of male inhabitants who had been killed by the graycoats for offenses114 against the inflexible115 code set up by the Germans in eastern Belgium varied116. A cautious native whispered that nine hundred of his fellow townsmen were "up there"—by that meaning the trenches on the hills back of the town. A German officer, newly arrived on the spot and apparently117 sincere in his efforts to alleviate118 the misery119 of the survivors120, told us that, judging by what data he had been able to gather, between four and six hundred men and youths of Dinant had fallen in the house-to-house conflicts between Germans and civilians121, or in the wholesale executions which followed the subjugation123 of the place and the capture of such ununiformed belligerents124 as were left.
In this instance subjugation meant annihilation. The lower part of the town, where the well-to-do classes lived, was almost unscathed. Casual shell-fire in the two engagements with the French that preceded the taking of Dinant had smashed some cornices and shattered some windows, but nothing worse befell. The lower half, made up mainly of the little plaster-and-stone houses of working people, was gone, extinguished, obliterated125. It lay in scorched126 and crumbled127 waste; and in it, as we rode through, I saw, excluding soldiers, just two[Pg 382] living creatures. Two children, both little girls, were playing at housekeeping on some stone steps under a doorway62 where there was no door, using bits of wreckage128 for furniture. We stopped a moment to watch them. They had small china dolls.
The river, flowing placidly130 along between the artificial boundaries of its stone quays131, and the strange formation of cliffs, rising at the back to the height of hundreds of feet, were as they had been. Soldiers paddled on the water in skiffs and thousands of ravens132 flickered133 about the pinnacles134 of the rocks, but between river and cliff there was nothing but ruination—the graveyard135 of the homes of three thousand people.
Yes, it was the graveyard not alone of their homes but of their prosperity and their hopes and their ambitions and their aspirations—the graveyard of everything human beings count worth having. This was worse than Herve or Battice or Vise, or any of the leveled towns we had seen. Taken on the basis of comparative size, it was worse even than Louvain, as we discovered later. It was worse than anything I ever saw—worse than anything I ever shall see, I think.
These hollow shells about us were like the picked cadavers136 of houses. Ends of burnt and broken rafters stood up like ribs. Empty window openings stared at us like the eye sockets137 in skulls138. It was not a town upon[Pg 383] which we looked, but the dead and rotting bones of a town.
Just over the ragged139 line that marked the lowermost limits of the destructive fury of the conquerors140, and inside the section which remained intact, we traversed a narrow street called—most appropriately, I thought—the Street of Paul the Penitent141, and passed a little house on the shutters142 of which was written, in chalked German script, these words: "A Grossmutter"—grandmother—"ninety-six years old lives here. Don't disturb her." Other houses along here bore the familiar line, written by German soldiers who had been billeted in them: "Good people. Leave them alone!"
The people who enjoyed the protection of these public testimonials were visible, a few of them. They were nearly all women and children. They stood in their shallow doorways as our automobile went by bearing four Americans, two German officers and the orderly of one of the officers—for we had picked up a couple of chance passengers in Huy—and a German chauffeur143. As we interpreted their looks, they had no hate for the Germans. I take it the weight of their woe144 was so heavy on them that they had no room in their souls for anything else.
Just beyond Dinant, at Anseremme, a beautiful little village at the mouth of a tiny river, where artists used to come to paint pictures and sick folks to breathe the tonic145 bal[Pg 384]sam of the hills, we got rooms for the night in a smart, clean tavern146. Here was quartered a captain of cavalry147, who found time—so brisk was he and so high-spirited—to welcome us to the best the place afforded, to help set the table for our belated supper, and to keep on terms of jovial148 yet punctilious149 amiability150 with the woman proprietor151 and her good-looking daughters; also, to require his troopers to pay the women, in salutes152 and spoken thanks, for every small office performed.
The husband of the older woman and the husband of one of the daughters were then serving the Belgian colors, assuming that they had not been killed or caught; but between them and this German captain a perfect understanding had been arrived at. When the head of the house fixed155 the prices she meant to charge us for our accommodations, he spoke153 up and suggested that the rate was scarcely high enough; and also, since her regular patrons had been driven away at the beginning of the war, he advised us that sizable tips on our leaving would probably be appreciated.
Next morning we rose from a breakfast—the meat part of it having been furnished from the German commissary—to find twenty lancers exercising their horses in a lovely little natural arena156, walled by hills, just below the small eminence157 whereon the house stood. It was like a scene from a Wild West exhibition at home, except that these German horsemen[Pg 385] lacked the dash of our cowpunchers. Watching the show from a back garden, we stood waist deep in flowers, and the captain's orderly, when he came to tell us our automobile was ready, had a huge peony stuck in a buttonhole of his blouse. I caught a peep at another soldier, who was flirting158 with a personable Flemish scullery maid behind the protection of the kitchen wall. The proprietress and her daughters stood at the door to wave us good-by and to wish us, with apparent sincerity159, a safe journey down into France, and a safe return.
To drop from this cozy160, peaceful place into the town of Dinant again was to drop from a small earthly paradise into a small earthly hell. Somewhere near the middle of the little perdition our cavalry captain pointed161 to a shell of a house.
"A fortnight ago," he told us, "we found a French soldier in that house—or under it, rather. He had been there four weeks, hiding in the basement. He took some food with him or found some there; at any rate, he managed to live four weeks. He was blind, and nearly deaf, too, when we found out where he was and dug him out—but he is still alive."
One of us said we should like to have a look at a man who had undergone such an entombment.
"No, you wouldn't," said the captain; "for he is no very pleasant sight. He is a slobbering idiot."
[Pg 386]
In the Grand Place, near the shell-riddled Church of Notre Dame—built by the Bishops162 in the thirteenth century, restored by the Belgian Government in the nineteenth, and destroyed by the German guns in the twentieth—a long queue of women wound past the doorway of a building where German noncommissioned officers handed out to each applicant163 a big loaf of black soldier bread.
"Oh, yes; we feed the poor devils," the German commandant, an elderly, scholarly looking man of the rank of major, said to us when he had come up to be introduced. "When our troops entered this town the men of the lower classes took up arms and fired at our soldiers; so the soldiers burned all their houses and shot all the men who came out of those houses.
"All this occurred before I was sent here. Had I been the commander of the troops, I should have shot them without mercy. It is our law for war times, and these Belgian civilians must be taught that they cannot fire on German soldiers and not pay for it with their lives and their homes. With the women and children, however, the case is different. On my own responsibility I am feeding the destitute164. Every day I give away to these people between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred loaves of bread; and I give to some who are particularly needy165 rations25 of tea and sugar and coffee and rice. Also, I sell to the[Pg 387] butcher shops fresh and salt meat from our military stores at cost, requiring only that they, in turn, shall sell it at no more than a fair profit. So long as I am stationed here I shall do this, for I cannot let them starve before my eyes. I myself have children."
It was like escaping from a pesthouse to cross the one bridge of Dinant that remained standing154 on its piers166, and go winding167 down the lovely valley, overtaking and passing many German wagon trains, the stout168, middle-aged169 soldier drivers of which drowsed on their seats; passing also one marching battalion170 of foot-reserves, who, their officers concurring171, broke from the ranks to beg newspapers and cigars from us. On the mountain ash the bright red berries dangled172 in clumps174 like Christmas bells, and some of the leaves of the elm still clung to their boughs175; so that the wide yellow road was dappled like a wild-cat's back with black splotches of shadow. Only when we curved through some village that had been the scene of a skirmish or a reprisal176 did the roofless shells and the toppled walls of the houses, standing gaunt and ugly in the sharp sunlight, make us realize that we were still in the war tracks.
As nearly as we could tell from our brief scrutiny177 a great change had come over the dwellers in southern Belgium. In August they had been buoyant and confident of the ultimate outcome and very proud of the be[Pg 388]havior of their little army. Even when the Germans burst through the frontier defenses and descended178 on them in innumerable swarms179 they were, for the most part, not daunted180 by those evidences of the invaders' numerical superiority and of their magnificent equipment. The more there were of the Germans the fewer of them there would be to come back when the Allies, over the French border, fell on them. This we conceived to be the mental attitude of the villagers and the peasants; but now they were different. The difference showed in all their outward aspects—in their gaits; in their drooped shoulders and half-averted faces; and, most of all, in their eyes. They had felt the weight of the armed hand, and they must have heard the boast, filtering down from the officers to the men, and from the men to the native populace, that, having taken their country, the Germans meant to keep it; that Belgium, ceasing to be Belgium, would henceforth be set down on the map as a part of Greater Prussia.
Seeing them now, I began to understand how an enforced docility182 may reduce a whole people to the level of dazed, unresisting automatons183. Yet a national spirit is harder to kill than a national boundary—so the students of these things say. A little flash of flaming hate from the dead ashes of things; a quick, darting184 glance of defiance185; a hissed186 word from a seemingly subdued man or woman; a shrill,[Pg 389] hostile whoop187 from a ragged youngster behind a hedge—things such as these showed us that the courage of the Belgians was not dead. It had been crushed to the ground, but it had not been torn up by the roots. The roots went down too far. The under dog had secret dreams of the day to come, when he should not be underneath188, but on top.
Even had there been no abandoned customhouses to convince us of it, we should have known when we crossed from southern Belgium into northern France; for in France the proportion of houses that had suffered in punitive189 attacks was, compared with Belgium, as one to ten. Understand, I am speaking of houses that had been deliberately190 burned in punishment, and not of houses that stood in the way of the cannon and the rapid-fire guns, and so underwent partial or complete destruction as the result of an accidental yet inevitable191 and unavoidable process. Of these last France, to the square mile, could offer as lamentably192 large a showing as Belgium; but buildings that presented indubitable signs of having been fired with torches rather than with shells were few.
Explaining this and applauding it, Germans of high rank said it presented direct and confirmatory proof of their claim that sheer wanton reprisals193 were practically unknown in their system of warfare194. Perhaps I can best set forth the German attitude in this regard by[Pg 390] quoting a general whom we interviewed on the subject:
"We do not destroy for the pleasure it gives us. We destroy only when it is necessary. The French rural populace are more rational, more tractable195 and much less turbulent than the Belgians. To a much greater degree than the Belgians they have refrained from acts against our men that would call for severe retaliatory196 measures on our part. Consequently we have spared the houses and respected the property of the French noncombatants."
Personally I had a theory of my own. So far as our observations went, the people living immediately on both sides of the line were an interrelated people, using the same speech and being much alike in temperament197, manners and mode of conduct. I reached the private conclusion that, because of the chorus of protest that arose from all the neutral countries, and particularly from the United States, against the severities visited on Belgium in August and September, the word went forth to the German forces in the field that the scheme of punishment for offenders198 who violated the field code should be somewhat softened200 and relaxed. However, that is merely a personal theory. I may be absolutely wrong about it. The German general who interpreted the meaning of the situation may have been absolutely right about it. Certainly the physical testimony201 was on his side.
[Pg 391]
Also, it seemed to me, the psychology202 of the people—particularly of the womenfolk—in northern France was not that of their neighbors over the frontier. In a trade way the small shopkeepers here faced ruin; the Belgians already had been ruined. The Frenchwomen, whose sons and brothers and husbands and fathers were at the front, walked in the shadow of a great fear, as you might tell by a look into the face of any one of them. They were as peppercorns between the upper millstone and the nether203, and the sound of the crunching204 was always in their ears, even though their turn to be ground up had not yet come.
For the Belgian women, however, the worst that might befall had already happened to them; their souls could be wrung205 no more; they had no terror of the future, since the past had been so terrible and the present was a living desolation of all they counted worth while. You might say the Frenchwomen dreaded206 what the Belgians endured. The refilled cup was at the lips of France; Belgium had drained it dry.
Yet in both countries the women generally manifested the same steadfast207 and silent patience. They said little; but their eyes asked questions. In the French towns we saw how bravely they strove to carry on their common affairs of life, which were so sadly shaken and distorted out of all normality by the earthquake of war.
[Pg 392]
For currency they had small French coins and strange German coins, and in some places futile-looking, little green-and-white slips, issued by the municipality in denominations208 of one franc and two francs and five francs, and redeemable209 in hard specie "three months after the declaration of peace." For wares210 to sell they had what remained of their depleted211 stocks; and for customers, their friends and neighbors, who looked forward to commercial ruin, which each day brought nearer to them all. Outwardly they were placid129 enough, but it was not the placidity212 of content. It bespoke213 rather a dumb, disciplined acceptance by those who have had fatalism literally214 thrust on them as a doctrine215 to be practiced.
Looking back on it I can recall just one woman I saw in France who maintained an unquenchable blitheness216 of spirit. She was the little woman who managed the small café in Maubeuge where we ate our meals. Perhaps her frugal217 French mind rejoiced that business remained so good, for many officers dined at her table and, by Continental standards, paid her well and abundantly for what she fed them; but I think a better reason lay in the fact that she had within her an innate218 buoyancy which nothing—not even war—could daunt181.
She was one of those women who remain trig and chic219 though they be slovens by instinct. Her blouse was never clean, but she wore it with an air. Her skirt testified that[Pg 393] skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout220 fly. Even the hole in her stocking gave her piquancy221; and she had wonderful black hair, which probably had not been combed properly for a month, and big, crackling black eyes. They told us that one day, a week or two before we came, she had been particularly cheerful—so cheerful that one of her patrons was moved to inquire the cause of it.
"Oh," she said, "I am quite content with life to-day. I have word that my husband is a prisoner. Now he is out of danger and you Germans will have to feed him—and he is a great eater! If you starve him then I shall starve you."
At breakfast Captain Mannesmann, who was with us, asked her in his best French for more butter. She paused in her quick, birdlike movements—for she was waitress, cook, cashier, manager and owner, all rolled into one—and cocking a saucy222, unkempt head at him asked that the question be repeated. This time, in his efforts to be understood, he stretched his words out so that unwittingly his voice, took on rather a whining223 tone.
"Well, don't cry about it!" she snapped. "I'll see what I can do."
Returning from the battle front our itinerary224 included a long stretch of the great road that runs between Paris and Brussels, a road much favored formerly225 by auto27 tourists,[Pg 394] but now used almost altogether for military purposes. Considering that we traversed a corner of the stage of one of the greatest battles thus far waged—Mons—and that this battle had taken place but a few weeks before, there were remarkably226 few evidences remaining of it.
With added force we remarked a condition that had given us material for wonderment in our earlier journeyings. Though a retreating army and an advancing army, both enormous in size, had lately poured through the country, the houses, the farms and the towns were almost undamaged.
Certain contrasts which took on a heightened emphasis by reason of their brutal52 abruptness227, abounded228 all over Belgium. You passed at a step, as it were, from a district of complete and irreparable destruction to one wherein all things were orderly and ordered, and much as they should be in peaceful times. Were it not for the stagnated229 towns and the depression that berode the people, one would hardly know these areas had lately been overrun by hostile soldiers and now groaned230 under enormous tithes231. In isolated instances the depression had begun to lift. Certain breeds of the polyglot232 Flemish race have, it appears, an almost unkillable resilience of temper; but in a town a mile away all those whom we met would be like dead people who walked.
[Pg 395]
Also, there were many graves. If we passed a long ridged mound233 of clay in a field, unmarked except by the piled-up clods, we knew that at this spot many had fought and many had fallen; but if, as occurred constantly, one separate mound or a little row of separate mounds234 was at the roadside, that probably meant a small skirmish. Such a grave almost always was marked by a little wooden cross, with a name penciled on it; and often the comrades of the dead man had hung his cap on the upright of the cross. If it were a French cap or a Belgian the weather would have worn it to a faded blue-and-red wisp of worsted. The German helmets stood the exposure better. They retained their shape.
On a cross I saw one helmet with a bullet hole right through the center of it in front. Sometimes there would be flowers on the mound, faded garlands of field poppies and wreaths of withered235 wild vines; and by the presence of these we could tell that the dead man's mates had time and opportunity to accord him greater honor than usually is bestowed236 on a soldier killed in an advance or during a retreat.
Mons was reached soon, looking much as I imagine Mons must always have looked; and then, after a few stretching and weary leagues, Brussels—to my mind the prettiest and smartest of the capital cities of Europe, not excluding[Pg 396] Paris. I first saw Brussels when it was as gay as carnival—that was in mid-August; and, though Liège had fallen and Namur was falling, and the German legions were eating up the miles as they hurried forward through the dust and smoke of their own making, Brussels still floated her flags, built her toy barricades, and wore a gay face to mask the panic clutching at her nerves.
Getting back four days later I found her beginning to rally from the shock of the invasion. Her people, relieved to find that the enemy did not mean to mistreat noncombatants who obeyed his code of laws, were going about their affairs in such odd hours as they could spare from watching the unending gray freshet that roared and pounded through their streets. The flags were down and the counterfeit237 lightheartedness was gone; but essentially238 she was the same Brussels.
Coming now, however, six weeks later, I found a city that had been transformed out of her own customary image by captivity239 and hunger and hard-curbed resentment240. The pulse of her life seemed hardly to beat at all. She lay in a coma241, flashing up feverishly242 sometimes at false rumors244 of German repulses245 to the southward.
Only the day before we arrived a wild story got abroad among the starvelings in the poorer quarters that the Russians had taken Berlin and had swept across Prussia and were now[Pg 397] pushing forward, with an irresistible246 army, to relieve Brussels. So thousands of the deluded247 populace went to a bridge on the eastern outskirts248 of the town to catch the first glimpse of the victorious249 oncoming Russians; and there they stayed until nightfall, watching and hoping and—what was more pitiable—believing.
From what I saw of him I judged that the military governor of Brussels, Major Bayer, was not only a diplomat250 but a kindly251 and an engaging gentleman. Certainly he was wrestling most manfully, and I thought tactfully, with a difficult and a dangerous situation. For one thing, he was keeping his soldiers out of sight as much as possible without relaxing his grip on the community. He did this, he said, to reduce the chances of friction252 between his men and the people; for friction might mean a spark and a spark might mean a conflagration253, and that would mean another and greater Louvain. We could easily understand that small things might readily grow into great and serious troubles. Even the most docile-minded man would be apt to resent in the wearer of a hated uniform what he might excuse as over-officiousness or love of petty authority were the offender199 a policeman of his own nationality. Brooding over their own misfortunes had worn the nerves of these captives to the very quick.
In any event, be the outcome of this war what it may, I do not believe the Belgians[Pg 398] can ever be molded, either by kindness or by sternness, into a tractable vassal254 race. German civilization I concede to be a magnificent thing—for a German; but it seems to press on an alien neck as a galling255 yoke256. Belgium under Berlin rule would be, I am sure, Alsace and Lorraine all over again on a larger scale, and an unhappier one. She would never, in my humble257 opinion, be a star in the Prussian constellation258, but always a raw sore in the Prussian side.
In Major Bayer's office I saw the major stamp an order that turned over to the acting259 burgomaster ten thousand bags of flour for distribution among the more needy citizens. We were encouraged to believe that this was by way of a free gift from the German Government. It may have been made without payment or promise of payment. In regard to that I cannot say positively260; but this was the inference we drew from the statements of the German officers who took part in the proceeding261. As for the acting burgomaster, he stood through the scene silent and inscrutable, saying nothing at all. Possibly he did not understand; the conversation—or that part of it which concerned us—was carried on exclusively in English. His face, as he bowed to accept the certified262 warrant for the flour, gave us no hint of his mental processes.
Major Bayer claimed a professional kinship with those of us who were newspaper men,[Pg 399] as he was the head of the Boy Scout263 movement in Germany and edited the official organ of the Boy Scouts264. He had a squad265 of his scouts on messenger duty at his headquarters—smart, alert-looking youngsters. They seemed to me to be much more competent in their department than were the important-appearing German Secret Service agents who infested266 the building. The Germans may make first-rate spies—assuredly their system of espionage267 was well organized before the war broke out—but I do not think they are conspicuous successes as detectives: their methods are so delightfully268 translucent269.
Major Bayer had been one of the foremost German officers to set foot on Belgian soil after the severance270 of friendly relations between the two countries. "I believe," he said, "that I heard the first shot fired in this war. It came from a clump173 of trees within half an hour after our advance guard crossed the boundary south of Aachen, and it wounded the leg of a captain who commanded a company of scouts at the head of the column. Our skirmishers surrounded the woods and beat the thickets271, and presently they brought forth the man who had fired the shot. He was sixty years old, and he was a civilian122. Under the laws of war we shot him on the spot. So you see probably the first shot fired in this war was fired at us by a franc-tireur. By his act he had forfeited272 his life, but personally I[Pg 400] felt sorry for him; for I believe, like many of his fellow countrymen who afterward committed such offenses, he was ignorant of the military indefensibility of his attack on us and did not realize what the consequences would be.
"I am sure, though, that the severity with which we punished these offenses at the outset was really merciful, for only by killing273 the civilians who fired on us, and by burning their houses, could we bring home to thousands of others the lesson that if they wished to fight us they must enlist274 in their own army and come against us in uniforms, as soldiers."
Within the same hour we were introduced to Privy275 Councilor Otto von Falke, an Austrian by birth, but now, after long service in Cologne and Berlin, promoted to be Director of Industrial Arts for Prussia. He had been sent, he explained, by order of his Kaiser, to superintend the removal of historic works of art from endangered churches and other buildings, and turn them over to the curator of the Royal Belgian Gallery, at Brussels, for storage in the vaults276 of the museum until such time as peace had been restored and they might be returned with safety to their original positions.
"So you see, gentlemen," said Professor von Falke, "the Germans are not despoiling277 Belgium of its wealth of pictures and statues. We are taking pains to preserve and perpetuate278 them. They belong to Belgium—not to us;[Pg 401] and we have no desire to take them away. Certainly we are not vandals who would wantonly destroy the splendid things of art, as our enemies have claimed."
He was plainly a sincere man and he was much in love with his work; that, too, was easy to see. Afterward, though, the thought came to us that, if Belgium was to become a German state by right of seizure279 and conquest, he was saving these masterpieces of Vandyke and Rubens, not for Belgium, but for the greater glory of the Greater Empire.
However, that was beside the mark. What at the moment seemed to us of more consequence even than rescuing holy pictures was that all about us were sundry280 hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who did not need pictures, but food. You had only to look at them in the streets to know that their bellies281 felt the grind of hunger. Famine knocked at half the doors in that city of Brussels, and we sat in the glittering café of the Palace Hotel and talked of pictures!
We called on Minister Brand Whitlock, whom we had not seen—McCutcheon and I—since the Sunday afternoon a month and a half before when we two left his official residence in a hired livery rig for a ride to Waterloo, which ride extended over a thousand miles, one way and another, and carried us into three of the warring countries. Mention of this call gives me opportunity to say in parenthesis282, so[Pg 402] to speak, that if ever a man in acutely critical circumstances kept his head, and did a big job in a big way, and reflected credit at a thousand angles on himself and the country that had the honor to be served by him, that man was Brand Whitlock. To him, a citizen of another nation, the people of forlorn Brussels probably owe more than to any man of their own race.
Grass was sprouting283 from between the cobbles of the streets in the populous284 residential285 districts through which we passed on the way from the American Ministry286 to our next stopping place. Viewed at a short distance each vista287 of empty street had a wavy288 green beard on its face; and by this one might judge to what a low ebb289 the commerce and the pleasure of the city had fallen since its occupation. There was one small square where goats and geese might have been pastured. It looked as though weeks might have passed since wagon wheels had rolled over those stones; and the town folks whose houses fronted on the little square lounged in their doorways, with idle hands thrust into their pockets, regarding us with lackluster, indifferent eyes. It may have been fancy, but I thought nearly all of them looked griped of frame and that their faces seemed drawn290. Seeing them so, you would have said that, with them, nothing mattered any more.
We saw a good many people, though, who[Pg 403] were taking for the moment an acute and uneasy interest in their own affairs, at the big city prison, where we spent half an hour or so. Here, in a high-walled courtyard, we found upward of two hundred offenders against small civic regulations, serving sentences ranging in length from seven days to thirty. Perhaps one in three was a German soldier, and probably one in ten was a woman or a girl; the rest were male citizens of all ages, sizes and social grading, a few Congo negroes being mixed in. Most of the time they stayed in their cells, in solitary291 confinement292; but on certain afternoons they might take the air and see visitors in the bleak293 and barren inclosure where they were now herded294 together.
By common rumor243 in Brussels the Germans were shooting all persons caught secretly peddling295 copies of French or English papers or unauthorized and clandestine296 Belgian papers; since only orthodox German papers were permitted to be sold. The Germans themselves took no steps to deny these stories, but in the prison we found a large collection of forlorn newsdealers. Having been captured with the forbidden wares in their possession, they had mysteriously vanished from the ken30 of their friends; but they had not been "put against the wall," as they say in Europe. They had been given fourteen days apiece, with a promise of six months if they transgressed297 a second time.
[Pg 404]
One little man, with the longest and sleekest298 and silkiest black whiskers I have seen in many a day, recognized us as Americans and drew near to tell us his troubles in a confidential299 whisper. By his bleached300 indoor complexion301 and his manners anyone would have known him for a pastry302 cook or a hairdresser. A hairdresser he was; and in a better day than this, not far remote, had conducted a fashionable establishment on a fashionable boulevard.
"Ah, I am in one very sad state," he said in his twisted English. "I start for Ostend to take winter garments for my two small daughters, which are there at school, and they arrest me—these Germans—and keep me two days in a cowshed, and then bring me back here and put me here in this so-terrible-a-place for two weeks; and all for nothing at all."
"Didn't you have a pass to go through the lines?" I asked. "Perhaps that was it."
"I have already a pass," he said; "but when they search me they find in my pockets letters which I am taking to people in Ostend. I do not know what is in those letters. People ask me to take them to friends of theirs in Ostend and I consent, not knowing it is against the rule. They read these letters—the Germans—and say I am carrying news to their enemies; and they become very enrage303 at me and lock me up. Never again will I take letters for anybody anywhere.
[Pg 405]
"Oh, sirs, if you could but see the food we eat here! For dinner we have a stew304—oh, such a stew!—and for breakfast only bread and coffee who is not coffee!" And with both hands he combed his whiskers in a despair that was comic and yet pitiful.
He was standing there, still combing, as we came away.
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收听单词发音
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1
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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3
cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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4
mashed
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| a.捣烂的 | |
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5
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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ongoing
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| adj.进行中的，前进的 | |
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buffer
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| n.起缓冲作用的人(或物)，缓冲器；vt.缓冲 | |
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8
truculent
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| adj.野蛮的，粗野的 | |
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anvil
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| n.铁钻 | |
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10
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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12
grudges
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| 不满，怨恨，妒忌( grudge的名词复数 ) | |
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13
clouted
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| adj.缀补的，凝固的v.（尤指用手）猛击，重打( clout的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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14
hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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15
despoiled
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| v.掠夺，抢劫( despoil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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16
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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17
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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18
lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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19
valor
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| n.勇气，英勇 | |
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20
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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21
tally
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| n.计数器，记分，一致，测量；vt.计算，记录，使一致；vi.计算，记分，一致 | |
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22
travail
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| n.阵痛；努力 | |
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23
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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24
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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26
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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29
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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30
ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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32
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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34
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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35
flayed
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| v.痛打( flay的过去式和过去分词 )；把…打得皮开肉绽；剥（通常指动物）的皮；严厉批评 | |
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36
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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37
brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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38
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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39
abate
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| vi.(风势，疼痛等)减弱，减轻，减退 | |
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40
fervor
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| n.热诚；热心；炽热 | |
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41
fecundity
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| n.生产力；丰富 | |
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42
rusting
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| n.生锈v.（使）生锈( rust的现在分词 ) | |
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43
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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44
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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45
bounty
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| n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与 | |
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46
paupers
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| n.穷人( pauper的名词复数 )；贫民；贫穷 | |
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47
desolated
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| adj.荒凉的，荒废的 | |
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48
eyewitness
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| n.目击者，见证人 | |
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49
begot
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去式 )；产生，引起 | |
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50
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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51
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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52
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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53
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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54
atrocities
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| n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪 | |
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55
atrocity
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| n.残暴，暴行 | |
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56
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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57
cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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58
kiln
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| n.（砖、石灰等）窑，炉；v.烧窑 | |
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59
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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60
quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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61
doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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62
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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63
defiles
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| v.玷污( defile的第三人称单数 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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64
stagnation
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| n. 停滞 | |
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65
blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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66
invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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67
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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68
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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69
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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70
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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71
drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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73
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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74
wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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75
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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76
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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77
transit
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| n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过 | |
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78
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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79
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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80
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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81
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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82
mildewed
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| adj.发了霉的，陈腐的，长了霉花的v.（使）发霉，（使）长霉( mildew的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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83
infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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84
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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85
plowing
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| v.耕( plow的现在分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过 | |
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86
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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87
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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88
torpor
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| n.迟钝；麻木；（动物的）冬眠 | |
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89
inborn
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| adj.天生的，生来的，先天的 | |
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90
vivacious
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| adj.活泼的，快活的 | |
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91
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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92
dwellers
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| n.居民，居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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93
garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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94
apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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95
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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96
numbed
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| v.使麻木，使麻痹( numb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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97
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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98
callousness
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99
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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100
discomforts
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| n.不舒适( discomfort的名词复数 )；不愉快，苦恼 | |
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101
civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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102
sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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103
lamenting
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| adj.悲伤的，悲哀的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的现在分词 ) | |
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104
gush
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| v.喷，涌；滔滔不绝(说话)；n.喷，涌流；迸发 | |
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105
hostilities
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| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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106
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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107
attested
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| adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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108
barricades
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| 路障，障碍物( barricade的名词复数 ) | |
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109
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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110
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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111
calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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112
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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113
demolition
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| n.破坏,毁坏,毁坏之遗迹 | |
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114
offenses
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| n.进攻( offense的名词复数 )；（球队的）前锋；进攻方法；攻势 | |
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115
inflexible
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| adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的 | |
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116
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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117
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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118
alleviate
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| v.减轻，缓和，缓解(痛苦等) | |
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119
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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120
survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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121
civilians
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| 平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓 | |
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122
civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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123
subjugation
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| n.镇压，平息，征服 | |
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124
belligerents
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| n.交战的一方（指国家、集团或个人）( belligerent的名词复数 ) | |
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125
obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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126
scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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127
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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128
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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129
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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130
placidly
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| adv.平稳地，平静地 | |
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131
quays
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| 码头( quay的名词复数 ) | |
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132
ravens
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| n.低质煤；渡鸦( raven的名词复数 ) | |
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133
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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134
pinnacles
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| 顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 )； 顶点； 尖顶； 小尖塔 | |
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135
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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136
cadavers
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| n.尸体( cadaver的名词复数 ) | |
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137
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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138
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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139
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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140
conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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141
penitent
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| adj.后悔的；n.后悔者；忏悔者 | |
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142
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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143
chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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144
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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145
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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146
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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147
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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148
jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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149
punctilious
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| adj.谨慎的，谨小慎微的 | |
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150
amiability
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| n.和蔼可亲的，亲切的，友善的 | |
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151
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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152
salutes
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| n.致敬，欢迎，敬礼( salute的名词复数 )v.欢迎，致敬( salute的第三人称单数 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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153
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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154
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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155
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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156
arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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157
eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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158
flirting
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 ) | |
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159
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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160
cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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161
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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162
bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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163
applicant
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| n.申请人，求职者，请求者 | |
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164
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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165
needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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166
piers
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| n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 )；（常设有娱乐场所的）突堤；柱子；墙墩 | |
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167
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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169
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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170
battalion
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| n.营；部队；大队(的人) | |
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171
concurring
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| 同时发生的，并发的 | |
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172
dangled
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| 悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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173
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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174
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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175
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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176
reprisal
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| n.报复，报仇，报复性劫掠 | |
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177
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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178
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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179
swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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180
daunted
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| 使（某人）气馁，威吓( daunt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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181
daunt
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| vt.使胆怯，使气馁 | |
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182
docility
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| n.容易教，易驾驶，驯服 | |
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183
automatons
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| n.自动机，机器人( automaton的名词复数 ) | |
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184
darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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185
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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186
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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187
whoop
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| n.大叫，呐喊，喘息声；v.叫喊，喘息 | |
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188
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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189
punitive
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| adj.惩罚的，刑罚的 | |
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190
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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191
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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192
lamentably
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| adv.哀伤地，拙劣地 | |
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193
reprisals
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| n.报复（行为）( reprisal的名词复数 ) | |
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194
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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195
tractable
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| adj.易驾驭的；温顺的 | |
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196
retaliatory
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| adj.报复的 | |
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197
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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198
offenders
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| n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 )；犯规者；罪犯；妨害…的人（或事物） | |
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199
offender
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| n.冒犯者，违反者，犯罪者 | |
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200
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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201
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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202
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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203
nether
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| adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会 | |
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204
crunching
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| v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的现在分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄 | |
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205
wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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206
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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207
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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208
denominations
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| n.宗派( denomination的名词复数 )；教派；面额；名称 | |
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209
redeemable
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| 可赎回的，可补救的 | |
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210
wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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211
depleted
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| adj. 枯竭的, 废弃的 动词deplete的过去式和过去分词 | |
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212
placidity
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| n.平静，安静，温和 | |
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213
bespoke
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| adj.（产品）订做的；专做订货的v.预定( bespeak的过去式 )；订（货）；证明；预先请求 | |
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214
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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215
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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216
blitheness
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| n.blithe（快乐的）的变形 | |
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217
frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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218
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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219
chic
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| n./adj.别致(的)，时髦(的)，讲究的 | |
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220
trout
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| n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属) | |
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221
piquancy
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| n.辛辣，辣味，痛快 | |
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222
saucy
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| adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的 | |
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223
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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224
itinerary
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| n.行程表，旅行路线；旅行计划 | |
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225
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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226
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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227
abruptness
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| n. 突然，唐突 | |
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228
abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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229
stagnated
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| v.停滞，不流动，不发展( stagnate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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230
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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231
tithes
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| n.（宗教捐税）什一税，什一的教区税，小部分( tithe的名词复数 ) | |
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232
polyglot
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| adj.通晓数种语言的；n.通晓多种语言的人 | |
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233
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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234
mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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235
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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236
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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237
counterfeit
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| vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的 | |
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238
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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239
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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240
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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241
coma
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| n.昏迷，昏迷状态 | |
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242
feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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243
rumor
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| n.谣言，谣传，传说 | |
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244
rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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245
repulses
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| v.击退( repulse的第三人称单数 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
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246
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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247
deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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248
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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249
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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250
diplomat
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| n.外交官，外交家；能交际的人，圆滑的人 | |
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251
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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252
friction
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| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
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253
conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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254
vassal
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| n.附庸的；属下；adj.奴仆的 | |
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255
galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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256
yoke
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| n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶 | |
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257
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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258
constellation
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| n.星座n.灿烂的一群 | |
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259
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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260
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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261
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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262
certified
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| a.经证明合格的；具有证明文件的 | |
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263
scout
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| n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索 | |
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264
scouts
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| 侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员 | |
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265
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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266
infested
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| adj.为患的，大批滋生的（常与with搭配）v.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的过去式和过去分词 )；遍布于 | |
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267
espionage
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| n.间谍行为，谍报活动 | |
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268
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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269
translucent
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| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
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270
severance
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| n.离职金；切断 | |
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271
thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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272
forfeited
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| （因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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273
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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274
enlist
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| vt.谋取(支持等)，赢得；征募；vi.入伍 | |
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275
privy
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| adj.私用的；隐密的 | |
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276
vaults
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| n.拱顶( vault的名词复数 )；地下室；撑物跳高；墓穴 | |
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277
despoiling
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| v.掠夺，抢劫( despoil的现在分词 ) | |
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278
perpetuate
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| v.使永存，使永记不忘 | |
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279
seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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280
sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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281
bellies
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| n.肚子( belly的名词复数 )；腹部；（物体的）圆形或凸起部份；腹部…形的 | |
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282
parenthesis
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| n.圆括号，插入语，插曲，间歇，停歇 | |
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283
sprouting
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| v.发芽( sprout的现在分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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284
populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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285
residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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286
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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287
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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288
wavy
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| adj.有波浪的，多浪的，波浪状的，波动的，不稳定的 | |
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289
ebb
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| vi.衰退，减退；n.处于低潮，处于衰退状态 | |
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290
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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291
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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292
confinement
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| n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限 | |
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293
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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294
herded
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| 群集，纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 )； 放牧； （使）向…移动 | |
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295
peddling
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| 忙于琐事的，无关紧要的 | |
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296
clandestine
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| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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297
transgressed
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| v.超越( transgress的过去式和过去分词 )；越过；违反；违背 | |
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298
sleekest
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| 时髦的( sleek的最高级 )； 光滑而有光泽的； 保养得很好的； 线条流畅的 | |
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299
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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300
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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301
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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302
pastry
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| n.油酥面团，酥皮糕点 | |
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303
enrage
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| v.触怒，激怒 | |
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304
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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