The Road to Glory by E. Alexander Powell — Read

Twenty-two centuries or thereabouts ago a Greek soldier of fortune named Xenophon found himself in a most trying and perilous situation. Lured by avarice, adventure, and ambition, he had accepted a commission in a legion of Hellenic mercenaries, ten thousand strong, who had been engaged by Cyrus to assist him in ousting his brother from the throne of Persia. But at Cunaxa Cyrus had met his death and his forces complete disaster, the Greek legionaries being left to make their way back to Europe as best they might. Under Xenophon's daring and resourceful leadership they set out on that historic retreat across the plains of Asia Minor which their leader was to make immortal with his pen, eventually reaching Constantinople, after an absence of fifteen months and a total journey of about three thousand five hundred miles, with little save their weapons and their lives. Xenophon's story of the March of the Ten Thousand as told in his "Anabasis," is the most famous military narrative ever written; it is used as a text-book in colleges and schools, and is familiar wherever the history of Greece is read.

Yet how many of those who know the "Anabasis" by heart are aware that Xenophon's exploit has been surpassed on our own continent, in our own times, and by our own countrymen? Where is the text-book which contains so much as a reference to the march of the _One Thousand_? How many of the students who can glibly rattle off the details of Xenophon's march across the Mesopotamian plains have ever even heard of Doniphan's march across the plains of Mexico? During that march, which occupied twelve months, a force of American volunteers, barely a thousand strong, traversed upward of six thousand miles of territory, most of which was unknown and bitterly hostile, and returned to the United States bringing with them seventeen pieces of artillery and a hundred battle-flags taken on fields whose names their countrymen had never so much as heard before. Because it is the most remarkable campaign in all our history, and because it is too glorious an episode to be lost in the mists of oblivion, I will, with your permission, tell its story.