单选题 Directions: There are ten
blanks in the following passage. For each numbered blank, there are four choices
marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best one and mark your answer on the
ANSWER SHEET with a single line through the center.
Most of the people who appear most
often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals
and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are
often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or
launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the {{U}}(31) {{/U}} of the
year, or manured a field; but we know {{U}}(32) {{/U}} about the killers
and destroyers. People think a great deal of them, so {{U}}(33) {{/U}}
so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will
find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most
people believe that the greatest countries are {{U}}(34) {{/U}} that
have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them
as conquerors. It is just possible they are, {{U}}(35) {{/U}} they are
not the most civilized. Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at
fighting is to be good in the way in {{U}}(36) {{/U}} an animal or a
savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other
people to fight for you and {{U}}(37) {{/U}} them how to do it most
efficiently -- this, after all, is {{U}}(38) {{/U}} conquerors and
generals have done -- is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels.
Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way
of settling their disputes other {{U}}(39) {{/U}} by seeing which side
can kill off the greater number of other side, and then {{U}}(40) {{/U}}
that that side which has killed most has won.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[注释] length of the year意思为“一年的天数(时间长度)”；其他选项意思与语境不相符合。