I guess, if it
comes to that, they both typified it.
Chapter 14
The Red Glutton
As we went along next day through the town of Maubeuge we heard singing;
and singing was a most rare thing to be hearing in this town. In a
country where no one smiles any more who belongs in that country,
singing is not a thing which you would naturally expect to hear. So we
turned off of our appointed route.
There was a small wine shop at the prow of a triangle of narrow streets.
It had been a wine shop. It was now a beer shop. There had been a
French proprietor; he had a German partner now. It had been only a few
weeks--you could not as yet measure the interval of time in terms of
months--since the Germans came and sat themselves down before Maubeuge
and blew its defenses flat with their 42-centimeter earthquakes and
marched in and took it. It had been only these few weeks; but already
the Germanizing brand of the conqueror was seared deep in the galled
flanks of this typically French community.
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