Explore "Paths of Glory" by Irvin S. Cobb on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Have you ever seen three hundred thousand men and one hundred thousand / horses moving in one compact, marvelous unit of organization, discipline / and system? If you have not seen it you cannot imagine what it is like. / If you have seen it you cannot tell what it is like. In one case the / conceptive faculty fails you; in the other the descriptive. I, who have / seen this sight, am not foolish enough to undertake to put it down with / pencil on paper. I think I know something of the limitations of the / written English language. What I do mean to try to do in this chapter is / to record some of my impressions as I watched it.
In beginning this job I find myself casting about for comparisons to set / up against the vision of a full German army of seven army corps on the / march. I think of the tales I have read and the stories I have heard of / other great armies: Alaric's war bands and Attila's; the First Crusade; / Hannibal's cohorts, and Alexander's host, and Caesar's legions; the / Goths and the Vandals; the million of Xerxes -- if it was a million -- and / Napoleon starting for Moscow.