Daily Dialogue — June 7, 2018

General Mireau: Hello there, soldier. Ready to kill more Germans?
Soldier: Yes, sir.
General Mireau: Looking over your rifle, I see. Well, that’s the way. A soldier’s best friend. You be good to it and it will always be good to you.

— Paths of Glory (1957), screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson, novel by Humphrey Cobb

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Combat.

Trivia: The title is a quotation from Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy written in a country churchyard’: “The paths of glory lead but to the grave”.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Older men leading younger men into war with false bravado and platitudes.