IT was Sunday when I saw Louvain in the ashes of her desolation. We were just back then from the German trenches2 before Antwerp; and the hollow sounds of the big guns which were fired there at spaced intervals3 came to our ears as we rode over the road leading out from Brussels, like the boomings of great bells. The last time I had gone that way the country was full of refugees fleeing from burning villages on beyond. Now it was bare, except for a few baggage trains lumbering4 along under escort of shaggy gray troopers. Perhaps I should say they were gray-and-yellow troopers, for the plastered mud and powdered dust of three months of active campaigning had made them of true dirt color.
Oh, yes; I forgot one other thing: We over-took a string of wagons5 fitted up as carryalls and bearing family parties of the burghers to[Pg 407] Louvain to spend a day among the wreckage6. There is no accounting7 for tastes. If I had been a Belgian the last thing I should want my wife and my baby to see would be the ancient university town, the national cradle of the Church, in its present state. Nevertheless there were many excursionists in Louvain that day.
The Germans had taken down the bars and sight-seers came by autobusses from as far away as Aix-la-Chapelle and from Liège and many from Brussels. They bought postal8 cards and climbed about over the mountain ranges of waste, and they mined in the débris mounds9 for souvenirs. Altogether, I suppose some of them regarded it as a kind of picnic. Personally I should rather go to a morgue for a picnic than to Louvain as it looks to-day.
I tried hard, both in Germany among the German soldiers and in Belgium among the Belgians, to get at the truth about Louvain. The Germans said the outbreak was planned, and that firing broke out at a given signal in various quarters of the town; that, from windows and basements and roofs, bullets rained on them; and that the fighting continued until they had smoked the last of the inhabitants from their houses with fire and put them to death as they fled. The Belgians proclaimed just as stoutly11 that, mistaking an on marching regiment12 for enemies, the Germans fired on their own people; and then, in rage at having[Pg 408] committed such an error and to cover it up, they turned on the townspeople and mixed massacre13 with pillaging14 and burning for the better part of a night and a day.
I could, I think, sense something of the viewpoint of each. To the Belgian, a German in his home or in his town was no more than an armed housebreaker. What did he care for the code of war? He was not responsible for the war. He had no share in framing the code. He took his gun, and when the chance came he fired—and fired to kill. Perhaps, at first, he did not know that by that same act he forfeited15 his life and sacrificed his home and jeopardized16 the lives and homes of all his neighbors. Perhaps in the blind fury of the moment he did not much care.
Take the German soldier: He had proved he was ready to meet his enemy in the open and to fight him there. When his comrade fell at his side, struck down by an unseen, skulking17 foe18, who lurked19 behind a hedge or a chimney, he saw red and he did red deeds. That in his reprisals20 he went farther than some might have gone under similar conditions is rather to have been expected. In point of organization, in discipline, and in the enactment21 of a terribly stern, terribly deadly course of conduct for just such emergencies, his masters had gone farther than the heads of any modern army ever went before. You see, all the laboriously23 built-up ethics24 of[Pg 409] civilized25 peace came into direct conflict with the bloody26 ethics of war, which are never civilized, and which frequently are born in the instant and molded on the instant to suit the purposes of those who create them. And Louvain is perhaps the most finished and perfect example we have in this world to-day to show the consequences of such a clash.
I am not going to try to describe Louvain. Others have done that competently. The Belgians were approximately correct when they said Louvain had been destroyed. The Germans were technically27 right when they said not over twenty per cent of its area had been reduced; but that twenty per cent included practically the whole business district, practically all the better class of homes, the university, the cathedral, the main thoroughfares, the principal hotels and shops and cafés. The famous town hall alone stood unscathed; it was saved by German soldiers from the common fate of all things about it. What remained, in historic value and in physical beauty, and even in tangible28 property value, was much less than what was gone forever.
I sought out the hotel near the station where we had stayed, as enforced guests of the German army, for three days in August. Its site was a leveled gray mass, sodden29, wrecked30 past all redemption; ruined beyond all thought of salvage31. I looked for the little inn at which we had dined. Its front wall[Pg 410] littered the street and its interior was a jumble32 of worthlessness. I wondered again as I had wondered many times before what had become of its proprietor—the dainty, gentle little woman whose misshapen figure told us she was near the time for her baby.
I endeavored to fix the location of the little sidewalk café where we sat on the second or the third day of the German occupation—August twenty-first, I think, was the date—and watched the sun go out in eclipse like a copper33 disk. We did not know it then, but it was Louvain's bloody eclipse we saw presaged34 that day in the suddenly darkened heavens. Even the lines of the sidewalks were lost. The road was piled high with broken, fire-smudged masonry35. The building behind was a building no longer. It was a husk of a house, open to the sky, backless and frontless, and fit only to tumble down in the next high wind.
As we stood before the empty railroad station, in what I veritably believe to be the forlornest spot there is on this earth, a woman in a shawl came whining36 to sell us postal cards, on which were views of the desolation that was all about us.
"Please buy some pictures," she said in French. "My husband is dead."
"When did he die?" one of us asked.
She blinked, as though trying to remember.
"That night," she said as though there had[Pg 411] never been but one night. "They killed him then—that night."
"Who killed him?"
"They did."
She pointed37 in the direction of the square fronting the station. There were German soldiers where she pointed—both living ones and dead ones. The dead ones, eighty-odd of them, were buried in two big crosswise trenches, in a circular plot that had once been a bed of ornamental38 flowers surrounding the monument of some local notable. The living ones were standing39 sentry40 duty at the fence that flanked the railroad tracks beyond.
"They did," she said; "they killed him! Will you buy some postal cards, m'sieur? All the best pictures of the ruins!"
She said it flatly, without color in her voice, or feeling or emotion. She did not, I am sure, flinch41 mentally as she looked at the Germans. Certainly she did not flinch visibly. She was past flinching42, I suppose.
The officer in command of the force holding the town came, just before we started, to warn us to beware of bicyclists who might be encountered near Tirlemont.
"They are all franc-tireurs—those Belgians on wheels," he said. "Some of them are straggling soldiers, wearing uniforms under their other clothes. They will shoot at you and trust to their bicycles to get away. We've caught and killed some of them, but there are[Pg 412] still a few abroad. Take no chances with them. If I were in your place I should be ready to shoot first."
We asked him how the surviving populace of Louvain was behaving.
"Oh, we have them—like that!" he said with a laugh, and clenched43 his hand up in a knot of knuckles44 to show what he meant. "They know better than to shoot at a German soldier now; but if looks would kill we'd all be dead men a hundred times a day." And he laughed again.
Of course it was none of our business; but it seemed to us that if we were choosing a man to pacify45 and control the ruined people of ruined Louvain this square-headed, big-fisted captain would not have been our first choice.
It began to rain hard as our automobile46 moved through the wreckage-strewn street which, being followed, would bring us to the homeward road—home in this instance meaning Germany. The rain, soaking into the débris, sent up a sour, nasty smell, which pursued us until we had cleared the town. That exhalation might fully47 have been the breath of the wasted place, just as the distant, never-ending boom of the guns might have been the lamenting48 voice of the war-smitten land itself.
I remember Liège best at this present distance by reason of a small thing that occurred[Pg 413] as we rode, just before dusk, through a byway near the river. In the gloomy, wet Sunday street two bands of boys were playing at being soldiers. Being soldiers is the game all the children in Northern Europe have played since the first of last August.
From doorways49 and window sills their lounging elders watched these Liège urchins50 as they waged their mimic51 fight with wooden guns and wooden swords; but, while we looked on, one boy of an inventive turn of mind was possessed52 of a great idea. He proceeded to organize an execution against a handy wall, with one small person to enact22 the r?le of the condemned53 culprit and half a dozen others to make up the firing squad54.
As the older spectators realized what was afoot a growl55 of dissent56 rolled up and down the street; and a stout10, red-faced matron, shrilly57 protesting, ran out into the road and cuffed58 the boys until they broke and scattered59. There was one game in Liège the boys might not play.
The last I saw of Belgium was when I skirted her northern frontier, making for the seacoast. The guns were silent now, for Antwerp had surrendered; and over all the roads leading up into Holland refugees were pouring in winding60 streams. They were such refugees as I had seen a score of times before, only now there were infinitely61 more of them than ever before: men, women and children,[Pg 414] all afoot; all burdened with bags and bundles; all dressed in their best clothes—they did well to save their best, since they could save so little else—all or nearly all bearing their inevitable62 black umbrellas.
They must have come long distances; but I marked that none of them moaned or complained, or gave up in weariness and despair. They went on and on, with their weary backs bent63 to their burdens and their weary legs trembling under them; and we did not know where they were going—and they did not know. They just went. What they must face before them could not equal what they left behind them; so they went on.
That poor little rag doll, with its head crushed in the wheel tracks, does not after all furnish such a good comparison for Belgium, I think, as I finish this tale; for it had sawdust insides—and Belgium's vitals are the vitals of courage and patience.
The End
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1 Forsaken | |
adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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2 trenches | |
深沟,地沟( trench的名词复数 ); 战壕 | |
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3 intervals | |
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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4 lumbering | |
n.采伐林木 | |
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5 wagons | |
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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6 wreckage | |
n.(失事飞机等的)残骸,破坏,毁坏 | |
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7 accounting | |
n.会计,会计学,借贷对照表 | |
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8 postal | |
adj.邮政的,邮局的 | |
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9 mounds | |
土堆,土丘( mound的名词复数 ); 一大堆 | |
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11 stoutly | |
adv.牢固地,粗壮的 | |
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12 regiment | |
n.团,多数,管理;v.组织,编成团,统制 | |
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13 massacre | |
n.残杀,大屠杀;v.残杀,集体屠杀 | |
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14 pillaging | |
v.抢劫,掠夺( pillage的现在分词 ) | |
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15 forfeited | |
(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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16 jeopardized | |
危及,损害( jeopardize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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17 skulking | |
v.潜伏,偷偷摸摸地走动,鬼鬼祟祟地活动( skulk的现在分词 ) | |
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18 foe | |
n.敌人,仇敌 | |
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19 lurked | |
vi.潜伏,埋伏(lurk的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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20 reprisals | |
n.报复(行为)( reprisal的名词复数 ) | |
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21 enactment | |
n.演出,担任…角色;制订,通过 | |
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22 enact | |
vt.制定(法律);上演,扮演 | |
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23 laboriously | |
adv.艰苦地;费力地;辛勤地;(文体等)佶屈聱牙地 | |
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24 ethics | |
n.伦理学;伦理观,道德标准 | |
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25 civilized | |
a.有教养的,文雅的 | |
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26 bloody | |
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染 | |
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27 technically | |
adv.专门地,技术上地 | |
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28 tangible | |
adj.有形的,可触摸的,确凿的,实际的 | |
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29 sodden | |
adj.浑身湿透的;v.使浸透;使呆头呆脑 | |
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30 wrecked | |
adj.失事的,遇难的 | |
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31 salvage | |
v.救助,营救,援救;n.救助,营救 | |
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32 jumble | |
vt.使混乱,混杂;n.混乱;杂乱的一堆 | |
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33 copper | |
n.铜;铜币;铜器;adj.铜(制)的;(紫)铜色的 | |
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34 presaged | |
v.预示,预兆( presage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35 masonry | |
n.砖土建筑;砖石 | |
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36 whining | |
n. 抱怨,牢骚 v. 哭诉,发牢骚 | |
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37 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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38 ornamental | |
adj.装饰的;作装饰用的;n.装饰品;观赏植物 | |
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39 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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40 sentry | |
n.哨兵,警卫 | |
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41 flinch | |
v.畏缩,退缩 | |
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42 flinching | |
v.(因危险和痛苦)退缩,畏惧( flinch的现在分词 ) | |
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43 clenched | |
v.紧握,抓紧,咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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44 knuckles | |
n.(指人)指关节( knuckle的名词复数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝v.(指人)指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝 | |
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45 pacify | |
vt.使(某人)平静(或息怒);抚慰 | |
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46 automobile | |
n.汽车,机动车 | |
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47 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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48 lamenting | |
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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49 doorways | |
n.门口,门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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50 urchins | |
n.顽童( urchin的名词复数 );淘气鬼;猬;海胆 | |
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51 mimic | |
v.模仿,戏弄;n.模仿他人言行的人 | |
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52 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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53 condemned | |
adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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54 squad | |
n.班,小队,小团体;vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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55 growl | |
v.(狗等)嗥叫,(炮等)轰鸣;n.嗥叫,轰鸣 | |
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56 dissent | |
n./v.不同意,持异议 | |
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57 shrilly | |
尖声的; 光亮的,耀眼的 | |
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58 cuffed | |
v.掌打,拳打( cuff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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60 winding | |
n.绕,缠,绕组,线圈 | |
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61 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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62 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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63 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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