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The World Set Free-Part13_H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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suddenly dived down over beyond the trees.

' "From Holland to the Alps this day," I thought, "there must be



crouching and lying between half and a million of men, trying to

inflict irreparable damage upon one another. The thing is idiotic



to the pitch of impossibility. It is a dream. Presently I shall

wake up." . . .



'Then the phrase changed itself in my mind. "Presently mankind

will wake up."



'I lay speculating just how many thousands of men there were

among these hundreds of thousands, whose spirits were in



rebellion against all these ancient traditions of flag and

empire. Weren't we, perhaps, already in the throes of the last



crisis, in that darkest moment of a nightmare's horror before the

sleeper will endure no more of it--and wakes?



'I don't know how my speculations ended. I think they were not

so much ended as distracted by the distant thudding of the guns



that were opening fire at long range upon Namur.'

Section 7



But as yet Barnet had seen no more than the mildest beginnings of

modern warfare. So far he had taken part only in a little



shooting. The bayonet attack by which the advanced line was

broken was made at a place called Croix Rouge, more than twenty



miles away, and that night under cover of the darkness the rifle

pits were abandoned and he got his company away without further



loss.

His regiment fell back unpressed behind the fortified lines



between Namur and Sedan, entrained at a station called Mettet,

and was sent northward by Antwerp and Rotterdam to Haarlem.



Hence they marched into North Holland. It was only after the

march into Holland that he began to realise the monstrous and



catastrophic nature of the struggle in which he was playing his

undistinguished part.



He describes very pleasantly the journey through the hills and

open land of Brabant, the repeated crossing of arms of the Rhine,



and the change from the undulating scenery of Belgium to the

flat, rich meadows, the sunlit dyke roads, and the countless



windmills of the Dutch levels. In those days there was unbroken

land from Alkmaar and Leiden to the Dollart. Three great



provinces, South Holland, North Holland, and Zuiderzeeland,

reclaimed at various times between the early tenth century and



1945 and all many feet below the level of the waves outside the

dykes, spread out their lush polders to the northern sun and



sustained a dense industrious population. An intricate web of

laws and custom and tradition ensured a perpetualvigilance and a



perpetual defence against the beleaguering sea. For more than two

hundred and fifty miles from Walcheren to Friesland stretched a



line of embankments and pumping stations that was the admiration

of the world.



If some curious god had chosen to watch the course of events in

those northern provinces while that flanking march of the British



was in progress, he would have found a convenient and appropriate

seat for his observation upon one of the great cumulus clouds



that were drifting slowly across the blue sky during all these

eventful days before the great catastrophe. For that was the



quality of the weather, hot and clear, with something of a

breeze, and underfoot dry and a little inclined to be dusty. This



watching god would have looked down upon broad stretches of

sunlit green, sunlit save for the creeping patches of shadow cast



by the clouds, upon sky-reflecting meres, fringed and divided up

by masses of willow and large areas of silvery weeds, upon white



roads lying bare to the sun and upon a tracery of blue canals.

The pastures were alive with cattle, the roads had a busy



traffic, of beasts and bicycles and gaily coloured peasants'

automobiles, the hues of the innumerable motor barges in the



canal vied with the eventfulness of the roadways; and everywhere

in solitary steadings, amidst ricks and barns, in groups by the



wayside, in straggling villages, each with its fine old church,

or in compact towns laced with canals and abounding in bridges






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