Paths of Glory by Irvin S. Cobb — Read

Undoubtedly Sherman said it. This is my text and as illustration for / my text I take the case of the town of La Buissiere.

The Germans took the town of La Buissiere after stiff fighting on August / twenty-fourth. I imagine that possibly there was a line in the / dispatches telling of the fight there; but at that I doubt it, because / on that same date a few miles away a real battle was raging between the / English rear guard, under Sir John French, of the retreating army of the / Allies, falling back into France, and the Germans. Besides, in the sum / total of this war the fall of La Buissiere hardly counts. You might say / it represents a semicolon in the story of the campaign. Probably no / future historian will give it so much as a paragraph. In our own Civil / War it would have been worth a page in the records anyway. Here upward / of three hundred men on both sides were killed and wounded, and as many / more Frenchmen were captured; and the town, when taken, gave the winners / the control of the river Sambre for many miles east and west. Here, / also, was a German charge with bayonets up a steep and well-defended / height; and after that a hand-to-hand melee with the French defenders on / the poll of the hill.