The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve
years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books, by H. G. Wells

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Title: Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books

Author: H. G. Wells

Posting Date: April 30, 2009 [EBook #3691]
Release Date: January, 2003
First Posted: August 4, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Sly. HTML version by Al Haines.











Little Wars

(A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and
for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books)

With an Appendix on Kriegspiel


By

H. G. Wells




CONTENTS

   I. OF THE LEGENDARY PAST
  II. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE
 III. THE RULES--
        The Country
        The Move
        Mobility of the Various Arms
        Hand-to-Hand Fighting and Capturing
        Varieties of the Battle-Game
        Composition of Forces
        Size of the Soldiers
  IV. THE BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM
   V. EXTENSIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS OF LITTLE WAR
  VI. ENDING WITH A SORT OF CHALLENGE

APPENDIX--
  LITTLE WARS AND KRIEGSPIEL




I

OF THE LEGENDARY PAST


"LITTLE WARS" is the game of kings--for players in an inferior social
position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to one
hundred and fifty--and even later if the limbs remain sufficiently
supple--by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women.
This is to be a full History of Little Wars from its recorded and
authenticated beginning until the present time, an account of how to
make little warfare, and hints of the most priceless sort for the
recumbent strategist....

But first let it be noted in passing that there were prehistoric
"Little Wars." This is no new thing, no crude novelty; but a thing
tested by time, ancient and ripe in its essentials for all its perennial
freshness--like spring. There was a Someone who fought Little Wars in
the days of Queen Anne; a garden Napoleon. His game was inaccurately
observed and insufficiently recorded by Laurence Sterne. It is clear
that Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim were playing Little Wars on a scale
and with an elaboration exceeding even the richness and beauty of the
contemporary game. But the curtain is drawn back only to tantalise us.
It is scarcely conceivable that anywhere now on earth the Shandean Rules
remain on record. Perhaps they were never committed to paper....

And in all ages a certain barbaric warfare has been waged with soldiers
of tin and lead and wood, with the weapons of the wild, with the
catapult, the elastic circular garter, the peashooter, the rubber ball,
and such-like appliances--a mere setting up and knocking down of men.
Tin murder. The advance of civilisation has swept such rude contests
altogether from the playroom. We know them no more....




II

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE


THE beginning of the game of Little War, as we know it, became possible
with the invention of the spring breechloader gun. This priceless gift
to boyhood appeared somewhen towards the end of the last century, a gun
capable of hitting a toy soldier nine times out of ten at a distance of
nine yards. It has completely superseded all the spiral-spring and other
makes of gun hitherto used in playroom warfare. These spring
breechloaders are made in various sizes and patterns, but the one used
in our game is that known in England as the four-point-seven gun. It
fires a wooden cylinder about an inch long, and has a screw adjustment
for elevation and depression. It is an altogether elegant weapon.

It was with one of these guns that the beginning of our war game was
made. It was at Sandgate--in England.

[Illustration: Showing a country prepared for the war game]

[Illustration: Showing countries prepared for the war game]

The present writer had been lunching with a friend--let me veil his
identity under the initials J. K. J.--in a room littered with the
irrepressible debris of a small boy's pleasures. On a table near our own
stood four or five soldiers and one of these guns. Mr J. K. J., his more
urgent needs satisfied and the coffee imminent, drew a chair to this
little table, sat down, examined the gun discreetly, loaded it warily,
aimed, and hit his man. Thereupon he boasted of the deed, and issued
challenges that were accepted with avidity....

He fired that day a shot that still echoes round the world. An
affair--let us parallel the Cannonade of Valmy and call it the Cannonade of
Sandgate--occurred, a shooting between opposed ranks of soldiers, a
shooting not very different in spirit--but how different in results!--from
the prehistoric warfare of catapult and garter. "But suppose," said
his antagonists; "suppose somehow one could move the men!" and
therewith opened a new world of belligerence.

The matter went no further with Mr J. K. J. The seed lay for a time
gathering strength, and then began to germinate with another friend, Mr
W. To Mr W. was broached the idea: "I believe that if one set up a few
obstacles on the floor, volumes of the British Encyclopedia and so
forth, to make a Country, and moved these soldiers and guns about, one
could have rather a good game, a kind of kriegspiel."...

Primitive attempts to realise the dream were interrupted by a great
rustle and chattering of lady visitors. They regarded the objects upon
the floor with the empty disdain of their sex for all imaginative
things.

But the writer had in those days a very dear friend, a man too ill for
long excursions or vigorous sports (he has been dead now these six
years), of a very sweet companionable disposition, a hearty jester
and full of the spirit of play. To him the idea was broached more
fruitfully. We got two forces of toy soldiers, set out a lumpish
Encyclopaedic land upon the carpet, and began to play. We arranged to
move in alternate moves: first one moved all his force and then the
other; an infantry-man could move one foot at each move, a cavalry-man
two, a gun two, and it might fire six shots; and if a man was moved up
to touch another man, then we tossed up and decided which man was dead.
So we made a game, which was not a good game, but which was very amusing
once or twice. The men were packed under the lee of fat volumes, while
the guns, animated by a spirit of their own, banged away at any exposed
head, or prowled about in search of a shot. Occasionally men came into
contact, with remarkable results. Rash is the man who trusts his life
to the spin of a coin. One impossible paladin slew in succession nine
men and turned defeat to victory, to the extreme exasperation of the
strategist who had led those victims to their doom. This inordinate
factor of chance eliminated play; the individual freedom of guns turned
battles into scandals of crouching concealment; there was too much
cover afforded by the books and vast intervals of waiting while the
players took aim. And yet there was something about it.... It was a
game crying aloud for improvement.

Improvement came almost simultaneously in several directions. First
there was the development of the Country. The soldiers did not stand
well on an ordinary carpet, the Encyclopedia made clumsy cliff-like
"cover", and more particularly the room in which the game had its
beginnings was subject to the invasion of callers, alien souls,
trampling skirt-swishers, chatterers, creatures unfavourably impressed
by the spectacle of two middle-aged men playing with "toy soldiers" on
the floor, and very heated and excited about it. Overhead was the day
nursery, with a wide extent of smooth cork carpet (the natural terrain
of toy soldiers), a large box of bricks--such as I have described in
Floor Games--and certain large inch-thick boards.

It was an easy task for the head of the household to evict his
offspring, annex these advantages, and set about planning a more
realistic country. (I forget what became of the children.) The thick
boards were piled up one upon another to form hills; holes were bored
in them, into which twigs of various shrubs were stuck to represent
trees; houses and sheds (solid and compact piles of from three to six
or seven inches high, and broad in proportion) and walls were made with
the bricks; ponds and swamps and rivers, with fords and so forth
indicated, were chalked out on the floor, garden stones were brought in
to represent great rocks, and the "Country" at least of our perfected
war game was in existence. We discovered it was easy to cut out and bend
and gum together paper and cardboard walls, into which our toy bricks
could be packed, and on which we could paint doors and windows, creepers
and rain-water pipes, and so forth, to represent houses, castles, and
churches in a more realistic manner, and, growing skilful, we made
various bridges and so forth of card. Every boy who has ever put
together model villages knows how to do these things, and the attentive
reader will find them edifyingly represented in our photographic
illustrations.

There has been little development since that time in the Country. Our
illustrations show the methods of arrangement, and the reader will see
how easily and readily the utmost variety of battlefields can be made.
(It is merely to be remarked that a too crowded Country makes the guns
ineffective and leads to a mere tree to tree and house to house
scramble, and that large open spaces along the middle, or rivers without
frequent fords and bridges, lead to ineffective cannonades, because of
the danger of any advance. On the whole, too much cover is better than
too little.) We decided that one player should plan and lay out the
Country, and the other player choose from which side he would come. And
to-day we play over such landscapes in a cork-carpeted schoolroom, from
which the proper occupants are no longer evicted but remain to take an
increasingly responsible and less and less audible and distressing share
in the operations.

[Illustration: Showing the war game in the open air]

[Illustration: The war game in the open air]

We found it necessary to make certain general rules. Houses and sheds
must be made of solid lumps of bricks, and not hollow so that soldiers
can be put inside them, because otherwise muddled situations arise. And
it was clearly necessary to provide for the replacement of disturbed
objects by chalking out the outlines of boards and houses upon the floor
or boards upon which they stood.

And while we thus perfected the Country, we were also eliminating all
sorts of tediums, disputable possibilities, and deadlocks from the game.
We decided that every man should be as brave and skilful as every other
man, and that when two men of opposite sides came into contact they
would inevitably kill each other. This restored strategy to its
predominance over chance.

We then began to humanise that wild and fearful fowl, the gun. We
decided that a gun could not be fired if there were not six--afterwards
we reduced the number to four--men within six inches of it. And we ruled
that a gun could not both fire and move in the same general move: it
could either be fired or moved (or left alone). If there were less than
six men within six inches of a gun, then we tried letting it fire as
many shots as there were men, and we permitted a single man to move a
gun, and move with it as far as he could go by the rules--a foot, that
is, if he was an infantry-man, and two feet if he was a cavalry-man. We
abolished altogether that magical freedom of an unassisted gun to move
two feet. And on such rules as these we fought a number of battles. They
were interesting, but not entirely satisfactory. We took no prisoners--a
feature at once barbaric and unconvincing. The battles lingered on a
long time, because we shot with extreme care and deliberation, and they
were hard to bring to a decisive finish. The guns were altogether too
predominant. They prevented attacks getting home, and they made it
possible for a timid player to put all his soldiers out of sight behind
hills and houses, and bang away if his opponent showed as much as the
tip of a bayonet. Monsieur Bloch seemed vindicated, and Little War had
become impossible. And there was something a little absurd, too, in the
spectacle of a solitary drummer-boy, for example, marching off with a
gun.

But as there was nevertheless much that seemed to us extremely pretty
and picturesque about the game, we set to work--and here a certain Mr
M. with his brother, Captain M., hot from the Great War in South Africa,
came in most helpfully--to quicken it. Manifestly the guns had to be
reduced to manageable terms. We cut down the number of shots per move to
four, and we required that four men should be within six inches of a gun
for it to be in action at all. Without four men it could neither fire
nor move--it was out of action; and if it moved, the four men had to go
with it. Moreover, to put an end to that little resistant body of men
behind a house, we required that after a gun had been fired it should
remain, without alteration of the elevation, pointing in the direction
of its last shot, and have two men placed one on either side of the end
of its trail. This secured a certain exposure on the part of concealed
and sheltered gunners. It was no longer possible to go on shooting out
of a perfect security for ever. All this favoured the attack and led to
a livelier game.

Our next step was to abolish the tedium due to the elaborate aiming of
the guns, by fixing a time limit for every move. We made this an outside
limit at first, ten minutes, but afterwards we discovered that it made
the game much more warlike to cut the time down to a length that would
barely permit a slow-moving player to fire all his guns and move all his
men. This led to small bodies of men lagging and "getting left," to
careless exposures, to rapid, less accurate shooting, and just that
eventfulness one would expect in the hurry and passion of real fighting.
It also made the game brisker. We have since also made a limit,
sometimes of four minutes, sometimes of five minutes, to the interval
for adjustment and deliberation after one move is finished and before
the next move begins. This further removes the game from the chess
category, and approximates it to the likeness of active service. Most of
a general's decisions, once a fight has begun, must be made in such
brief intervals of time. (But we leave unlimited time at the outset for
the planning.)

As to our time-keeping, we catch a visitor with a stop-watch if we can,
and if we cannot, we use a fair-sized clock with a second-hand: the
player not moving says "Go," and warns at the last two minutes, last
minute, and last thirty seconds. But I think it would not be difficult
to procure a cheap clock--because, of course, no one wants a very
accurate agreement with Greenwich as to the length of a second--that
would have minutes instead of hours and seconds instead of minutes, and
that would ping at the end of every minute and discharge an alarm note
at the end of the move. That would abolish the rather boring strain of
time-keeping. One could just watch the fighting.

Moreover, in our desire to bring the game to a climax, we decided that
instead of a fight to a finish we would fight to some determined point,
and we found very good sport in supposing that the arrival of three men
of one force upon the back line of the opponent's side of the country
was of such strategic importance as to determine the battle. But this
form of battle we have since largely abandoned in favour of the old
fight to a finish again. We found it led to one type of battle only,
a massed rush at the antagonist's line, and that our arrangements
of time-limits and capture and so forth had eliminated most of the
concluding drag upon the game.

Our game was now very much in its present form. We considered at various
times the possibility of introducing some complication due to the
bringing up of ammunition or supplies generally, and we decided that it
would add little to the interest or reality of the game. Our battles are
little brisk fights in which one may suppose that all the ammunition and
food needed are carried by the men themselves.

But our latest development has been in the direction of killing hand to
hand or taking prisoners. We found it necessary to distinguish between
an isolated force and a force that was merely a projecting part of a
larger force. We made a definition of isolation. After a considerable
amount of trials we decided that a man or a detachment shall be
considered to be isolated when there is less than half its number of its
own side within a move of it. Now, in actual civilised warfare small
detached bodies do not sell their lives dearly; a considerably larger
force is able to make them prisoners without difficulty. Accordingly we
decided that if a blue force, for example, has one or more men isolated,
and a red force of at least double the strength of this isolated
detachment moves up to contact with it, the blue men will be considered
to be prisoners.

That seemed fair; but so desperate is the courage and devotion of lead
soldiers, that it came to this, that any small force that got or seemed
likely to get isolated and caught by a superior force instead of waiting
to be taken prisoners, dashed at its possible captors and slew them
man for man. It was manifestly unreasonable to permit this. And in
considering how best to prevent such inhuman heroisms, we were reminded
of another frequent incident in our battles that also erred towards
the incredible and vitiated our strategy. That was the charging of
one or two isolated horse-men at a gun in order to disable it. Let me
illustrate this by an incident. A force consisting of ten infantry and
five cavalry with a gun are retreating across an exposed space, and a
gun with thirty men, cavalry and infantry, in support comes out upon a
crest into a position to fire within two feet of the retreating cavalry.
The attacking player puts eight men within six inches of his gun and
pushes the rest of his men a little forward to the right or left in
pursuit of his enemy. In the real thing, the retreating horsemen would
go off to cover with the gun, "hell for leather," while the infantry
would open out and retreat, firing. But see what happened in our
imperfect form of Little War! The move of the retreating player began.
Instead of retreating his whole force, he charged home with his mounted
desperadoes, killed five of the eight men about the gun, and so by the
rule silenced it, enabling the rest of his little body to get clean away
to cover at the leisurely pace of one foot a move. This was not like
any sort of warfare. In real life cavalry cannot pick out and kill its
equivalent in cavalry while that equivalent is closely supported by other
cavalry or infantry; a handful of troopers cannot gallop past well and
abundantly manned guns in action, cut down the gunners and interrupt
the fire. And yet for a time we found it a little difficult to frame
simple rules to meet these two bad cases and prevent such scandalous
possibilities. We did at last contrive to do so; we invented what we call
the melee, and our revised rules in the event of a melee will be found
set out upon a later page. They do really permit something like an actual
result to hand-to-hand encounters. They abolish Horatius Cocles.

[Illustration: The war game in the open air]

[Illustration: Fig. 1--Battle of Hook's Farm.  General View of the
Battlefield and Red Army]

We also found difficulties about the capturing of guns. At first we had
merely provided that a gun was captured when it was out of action and
four men of the opposite force were within six inches of it, but we
found a number of cases for which this rule was too vague. A gun, for
example, would be disabled and left with only three men within six
inches; the enemy would then come up eight or ten strong within six
inches on the other side, but not really reaching the gun. At the next
move the original possessor of the gun would bring up half a dozen men
within six inches. To whom did the gun belong? By the original wording
of our rule, it might be supposed to belong to the attack which had
never really touched the gun yet, and they could claim to turn it upon
its original side. We had to meet a number of such cases. We met them
by requiring the capturing force--or, to be precise, four men of
it--actually to pass the axle of the gun before it could be taken.

All sorts of odd little difficulties arose too, connected with the use
of the guns as a shelter from fire, and very exact rules had to be made
to avoid tilting the nose and raising the breech of a gun in order to
use it as cover....

We still found it difficult to introduce any imitation into our game of
either retreat or the surrender of men not actually taken prisoners in a
melee. Both things were possible by the rules, but nobody did them
because there was no inducement to do them. Games were apt to end
obstinately with the death or capture of the last man. An inducement was
needed. This we contrived by playing not for the game but for points,
scoring the result of each game and counting the points towards the
decision of a campaign. Our campaign was to our single game what a
rubber is to a game of whist. We made the end of a war 200, 300, or 400
or more points up, according to the number of games we wanted to play,
and we scored a hundred for each battle won, and in addition 1 for each
infantry-man, 1-1/2 for each cavalry-man, 10 for each gun, 1/2 for each
man held prisoner by the enemy, and 1/2 for each prisoner held at the
end of the game, subtracting what the antagonist scored by the same
scale. Thus, when he felt the battle was hopelessly lost, he had a
direct inducement to retreat any guns he could still save and surrender
any men who were under the fire of the victors' guns and likely to be
slaughtered, in order to minimise the score against him. And an interest
was given to a skilful retreat, in which the loser not only saved points
for himself but inflicted losses upon the pursuing enemy.

At first we played the game from the outset, with each player's force
within sight of his antagonist; then we found it possible to hang a
double curtain of casement cloth from a string stretched across the
middle of the field, and we drew this back only after both sides had set
out their men. Without these curtains we found the first player was at a
heavy disadvantage, because he displayed all his dispositions before his
opponent set down his men.

And at last our rules have reached stability, and we regard them now
with the virtuous pride of men who have persisted in a great undertaking
and arrived at precision after much tribulation. There is not a piece of
constructive legislation in the world, not a solitary attempt to meet a
complicated problem, that we do not now regard the more charitably for
our efforts to get a right result from this apparently easy and puerile
business of fighting with tin soldiers on the floor.

And so our laws all made, battles have been fought, the mere beginnings,
we feel, of vast campaigns. The game has become in a dozen aspects
extraordinarily like a small real battle. The plans are made, the
Country hastily surveyed, and then the curtains are closed, and the
antagonists make their opening dispositions. Then the curtains are drawn
back and the hostile forces come within sight of each other; the little
companies and squadrons and batteries appear hurrying to their
positions, the infantry deploying into long open lines, the cavalry
sheltering in reserve, or galloping with the guns to favourable advance
positions.

In two or three moves the guns are flickering into action, a cavalry
melee may be in progress, the plans of the attack are more or less
apparent, here are men pouring out from the shelter of a wood to secure
some point of vantage, and here are troops massing among farm buildings
for a vigorous attack. The combat grows hot round some vital point. Move
follows move in swift succession. One realises with a sickening sense of
error that one is outnumbered and hard pressed here and uselessly cut
off there, that one's guns are ill-placed, that one's wings are spread
too widely, and that help can come only over some deadly zone of fire.

So the fight wears on. Guns are lost or won, hills or villages stormed
or held; suddenly it grows clear that the scales are tilting beyond
recovery, and the loser has nothing left but to contrive how he may get
to the back line and safety with the vestiges of his command....

But let me, before I go on to tell of actual battles and campaigns, give
here a summary of our essential rules.




III

THE RULES


HERE, then, are the rules of the perfect battle-game as we play it in an
ordinary room.


THE COUNTRY

(1) The Country must be arranged by one player, who, failing any other
agreement, shall be selected by the toss of a coin.

(2) The other player shall then choose which side of the field he will
fight from.

(3) The Country must be disturbed as little as possible in each move.
Nothing in the Country shall be moved or set aside deliberately to
facilitate the firing of guns. A player must not lie across the Country
so as to crush or disturb the Country if his opponent objects. Whatever
is moved by accident shall be replaced after the end of the move.


THE MOVE

(1) After the Country is made and the sides chosen, then (and not until
then) the players shall toss for the first move.

(2) If there is no curtain, the player winning the toss, hereafter
called the First Player, shall next arrange his men along his back line,
as he chooses. Any men he may place behind or in front of his back line
shall count in the subsequent move as if they touched the back line at
its nearest point. The Second Player shall then do the same. But if a
curtain is available both first and second player may put down their men
at the same time. Both players may take unlimited time for the putting
down of their men; if there is a curtain it is drawn back when they are
ready, and the game then begins.

[Illustration: Fig. 2--Battle of Hook's Farm.  A Near View of the Blue
Army]

[Illustration: Fig. 3--Battle of Hook's Farm.  Position of both Armies
after first move.]

(3) The subsequent moves after the putting down are timed. The length of
time given for each move is determined by the size of the forces
engaged. About a minute should be allowed for moving 30 men and a minute
for each gun. Thus for a force of 110 men and 3 guns, moved by one
player, seven minutes is an ample allowance. As the battle progresses
and the men are killed off, the allowance is reduced as the players may
agree. The player about to move stands at attention a yard behind his
back line until the timekeeper says "Go." He then proceeds to make his
move until time is up. He must instantly stop at the cry of "Time."
Warning should be given by the timekeeper two minutes, one minute, and
thirty seconds before time is up. There will be an interval before the
next move, during which any disturbance of the Country can be rearranged
and men accidentally overturned replaced in a proper attitude. This
interval must not exceed five or four minutes, as may be agreed upon.

(4) Guns must not be fired before the second move of the first player--not
counting the "putting down" as a move. Thus the first player puts
down, then the second player, the first player moves, then the second
player, and the two forces are then supposed to come into effective
range of each other and the first player may open fire if he wishes to
do so.

(5) In making his move a player must move or fire his guns if he wants
to do so, before moving his men. To this rule of "Guns First" there is
to be no exception.

(6) Every soldier may be moved and every gun moved or fired at each
move, subject to the following rules:


MOBILITY OF THE VARIOUS ARMS

(Each player must be provided with two pieces of string, one two feet in
length and the other six inches.)

(I) An infantry-man may be moved a foot or any less distance at each
move.

(II) A cavalry-man may be moved two feet or any less distance at each
move.

(III) A gun is in action if there are at least four men of its own side
within six inches of it. If there are not at least four men within that
distance, it can neither be moved nor fired.

(IV) If a gun is in action it can either be moved or fired at each
move, but not both. If it is fired, it may fire as many as four shots
in each move. It may be swung round on its axis (the middle point of
its wheel axle) to take aim, provided the Country about it permits;
it may be elevated or depressed, and the soldiers about it may, at
the discretion of the firer, be made to lie down in their places to
facilitate its handling. Moreover, soldiers who have got in front of the
fire of their own guns may lie down while the guns fire over them. At
the end of the move the gun must be left without altering its elevation
and pointing in the direction of the last shot. And after firing, two
men must be placed exactly at the end of the trail of the gun, one on
either side in a line directly behind the wheels. So much for firing. If
the gun is moved and not fired, then at least four men who are with the
gun must move up with it to its new position, and be placed within six
inches of it in its new position. The gun itself must be placed trail
forward and the muzzle pointing back in the direction from which it
came, and so it must remain until it is swung round on its axis to fire.
Obviously the distance which a gun can move will be determined by the
men it is with; if there are at least four cavalry-men with it, they can
take the gun two feet, but if there are fewer cavalry-men than four and
the rest infantry, or no cavalry and all infantry, the gun will be
movable only one foot.

(V) Every man must be placed fairly clear of hills, buildings, trees,
guns, etc. He must not be jammed into interstices, and either player may
insist upon a clear distance between any man and any gun or other object
of at least one-sixteenth of an inch. Nor must men be packed in contact
with men. A space of one-sixteenth of an inch should be kept between
them.

(VI) When men are knocked over by a shot they are dead, and as many men
are dead as a shot knocks over or causes to fall or to lean so that they
would fall if unsupported. But if a shot strikes a man but does not
knock him over, he is dead, provided the shot has not already killed a
man. But a shot cannot kill more than one man without knocking him over,
and if it touches several without oversetting them, only the first
touched is dead and the others are not incapacitated. A shot that
rebounds from or glances off any object and touches a man, kills him; it
kills him even if it simply rolls to his feet, subject to what has been
said in the previous sentence.


HAND-TO-HAND FIGHTING AND CAPTURING

(1) A man or a body of men which has less than half its own number of
men on its own side within a move of it, is said to be isolated. But if
there is at least half its number of men of its own side within a move
of it, it is not isolated; it is supported.

(2) Men may be moved up into virtual contact (one-eighth of an inch or
closer) with men of the opposite side. They must then be left until the
end of the move.

(3) At the end of the move, if there are men of the side that has just
moved in contact with any men of the other side, they constitute a
melee. All the men in contact, and any other men within six inches of
the men in contact, measuring from any point of their persons, weapons,
or horses, are supposed to take part in the melee. At the end of the
move the two players examine the melee and dispose of the men concerned
according to the following rules:--

Either the numbers taking part in the melee on each side are equal or
unequal.

(a) If they are equal, all the men on both sides are killed.

(b) If they are unequal, then the inferior force is either isolated or
(measuring from the points of contact) not isolated.

(i) If it is isolated (see (1) above), then as many men become
prisoners as the inferior force is less in numbers than the superior
force, and the rest kill each a man and are killed. Thus nine against
eleven have two taken prisoners, and each side seven men dead. Four of
the eleven remain with two prisoners. One may put this in another way by
saying that the two forces kill each other off, man for man, until one
force is double the other, which is then taken prisoner. Seven men kill
seven men, and then four are left with two.

(ii) But if the inferior force is not isolated (see (1) above), then
each man of the inferior force kills a man of the superior force and is
himself killed.

And the player who has just completed the move, the one who has charged,
decides, when there is any choice, which men in the melee, both of his
own and of his antagonist, shall die and which shall be prisoners or
captors.

All these arrangements are made after the move is over, in the interval
between the moves, and the time taken for the adjustment does not count
as part of the usual interval for consideration. It is extra time.

The player next moving may, if he has taken prisoners, move these
prisoners. Prisoners may be sent under escort to the rear or wherever
the capturer directs, and one man within six inches of any number of
prisoners up to seven can escort these prisoners and go with them.
Prisoners are liberated by the death of any escort there may be within
six inches of them, but they may not be moved by the player of their
own side until the move following that in which the escort is killed.
Directly prisoners are taken they are supposed to be disarmed, and if
they are liberated they cannot fight until they are rearmed. In order
to be rearmed they must return to the back line of their own side. An
escort having conducted prisoners to the back line, and so beyond the
reach of liberation, may then return into the fighting line.

Prisoners once made cannot fight until they have returned to their
back line. It follows, therefore, that if after the adjudication of a
melee a player moves up more men into touch with the survivors of this
first melee, and so constitutes a second melee, any prisoners made in
the first melee will not count as combatants in the second melee. Thus
if A moves up nineteen men into a melee with thirteen of B's--B having
only five in support--A makes six prisoners, kills seven men, and has
seven of his own killed. If, now, B can move up fourteen men into melee
with A's victorious survivors, which he may be able to do by bringing
the five into contact, and getting nine others within six inches of
them, no count is made of the six of B's men who are prisoners in the
hands of A. They are disarmed. B, therefore, has fourteen men in the
second melee and A twelve, B makes two prisoners, kills ten of A's men,
and has ten of his own killed. But now the six prisoners originally made
by A are left without an escort, and are therefore recaptured by B. But
they must go to B's back line and return before they can fight again.
So, as the outcome of these two melees, there are six of B's men going
as released prisoners to his back line whence they may return into the
battle, two of A's men prisoners in the hands of B, one of B's staying
with them as escort, and three of B's men still actively free for
action. A, at a cost of nineteen men, has disposed of seventeen of B's
men for good, and of six or seven, according to whether B keeps his
prisoners in his fighting line or not, temporarily.

[Illustration: Fig. 4--Battle of Hook's Farm.  The Battle developing
rapidly.]

[Illustration: Fig. 5a--Battle of Hook's Farm.  Red Cavalry charging
the Blue Guns.]

(4) Any isolated body may hoist the white flag and surrender at any
time.

(5) A gun is captured when there is no man whatever of its original
side within six inches of it, and when at least four men of the
antagonist side have moved up to it and have passed its wheel axis going
in the direction of their attack. This latter point is important. An
antagonist's gun may be out of action, and you may have a score of men
coming up to it and within six inches of it, but it is not yet captured;
and you may have brought up a dozen men all round the hostile gun, but
if there is still one enemy just out of their reach and within six
inches of the end of the trail of the gun, that gun is not captured: it
is still in dispute and out of action, and you may not fire it or move
it at the next move. But once a gun is fully captured, it follows all
the rules of your own guns.


VARIETIES OF THE BATTLE-GAME

You may play various types of game.

(1) One is the Fight to the Finish. You move in from any points you like
on the back line and try to kill, capture, or drive over his back line
the whole of the enemy's force. You play the game for points; you score
100 for the victory, and 10 for every gun you hold or are in a position
to take, 1-1/2 for every cavalry-man, 1 for every infantry-man still
alive and uncaptured, 1/2 for every man of yours prisoner in the hands
of the enemy, and 1/2 for every prisoner you have taken. If the battle
is still undecided when both forces are reduced below fifteen men, the
battle is drawn and the 100 points for victory are divided.

Note--This game can be fought with any sized force, but if it is fought
with less than 50 a side, the minimum must be 10 a side.

(2) The Blow at the Rear game is decided when at least three men of one
force reach any point in the back line of their antagonist. He is then
supposed to have suffered a strategic defeat, and he must retreat his
entire force over the back line in six moves, i.e. six of his moves.
Anything left on the field after six moves capitulates to the victor.
Points count as in the preceding game, but this lasts a shorter time and
is better adapted to a cramped country with a short back line. With a
long rear line the game is simply a rush at some weak point in the first
player's line by the entire cavalry brigade of the second player.
Instead of making the whole back line available for the Blow at the
Rear, the middle or either half may be taken.

(3) In the Defensive Game, a force, the defenders, two-thirds as strong
as its antagonist, tries to prevent the latter arriving, while still a
quarter of its original strength, upon the defender's back line. The
Country must be made by one or both of the players before it is
determined which shall be defender. The players then toss for choice of
sides, and the winner of the toss becomes the defender. He puts out his
force over the field on his own side, anywhere up to the distance of one
move off the middle line--that is to say, he must not put any man within
one move of the middle line, but he may do so anywhere on his own side
of that limit--and then the loser of the toss becomes first player, and
sets out his men a move from his back line. The defender may open fire
forthwith; he need not wait until after the second move of the first
player, as the second player has to do.


COMPOSITION OF FORCES

Except in the above cases, or when otherwise agreed upon, the forces
engaged shall be equal in number and similar in composition. The methods
of handicapping are obvious. A slight inequality (chances of war) may be
arranged between equal players by leaving out 12 men on each side and
tossing with a pair of dice to see how many each player shall take of
these. The best arrangement and proportion of the forces is in small
bodies of about 20 to 25 infantry-men and 12 to 15 cavalry to a gun.
Such a force can maneuver comfortably on a front of 4 or 5 feet. Most of
our games have been played with about 80 infantry, 50 cavalry, 3 or 4
naval guns, and a field gun on either side, or with smaller proportional
forces. We have played excellent games on an eighteen-foot battlefield
with over two hundred men and six guns a side. A player may, of course,
rearrange his forces to suit his own convenience; brigade all or most of
his cavalry into a powerful striking force, or what not. But more guns
proportionally lead to their being put out of action too early for want
of men; a larger proportion of infantry makes the game sluggish, and
more cavalry--because of the difficulty of keeping large bodies of this
force under cover--leads simply to early heavy losses by gunfire and
violent and disastrous charging. The composition of a force may, of
course, be varied considerably. One good Fight to a Finish game we tried
as follows: We made the Country, tossed for choice, and then drew
curtains across the middle of the field. Each player then selected his
force from the available soldiers in this way: he counted infantry as 1
each, cavalry as 1-1/2, and a gun as 10, and, taking whatever he liked
in whatever position he liked, he made up a total of 150. He could, for
instance, choose 100 infantry and 5 guns, or 100 cavalry and no guns, or
60 infantry, 40 cavalry, and 3 guns. In the result, a Boer-like cavalry
force of 80 with 3 guns suffered defeat at the hands of 110 infantry
with 4.


SIZE OF THE SOLDIERS

The soldiers used should be all of one size. The best British makers
have standardised sizes, and sell infantry and cavalry in exactly
proportioned dimensions; the infantry being nearly two inches tall.
There is a lighter, cheaper make of perhaps an inch and a half high that
is also available. Foreign-made soldiers are of variable sizes.




IV

THE BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM


AND now, having given all the exact science of our war game, having told
something of the development of this warfare, let me here set out the
particulars of an exemplary game. And suddenly your author changes. He
changes into what perhaps he might have been--under different
circumstances. His inky fingers become large, manly hands, his drooping
scholastic back stiffens, his elbows go out, his etiolated complexion
corrugates and darkens, his moustaches increase and grow and spread, and
curl up horribly; a large, red scar, a sabre cut, grows lurid over one
eye. He expands--all over he expands. He clears his throat startlingly,
lugs at the still growing ends of his moustache, and says, with just a
faint and fading doubt in his voice as to whether he can do it, "Yas,
Sir!"

[Illustration: Fig. 5b--Battle of Hook's Farm.  After the Cavalry Mêlée]

[Illustration: Fig. 6a--Battle of Hook's Farm.  Prisoners being led to
the rear.]

Now for a while you listen to General H. G. W., of the Blue Army. You
hear tales of victory. The photographs of the battlefields are by a
woman war-correspondent, A. C. W., a daring ornament of her sex. I
vanish. I vanish, but I will return. Here, then, is the story of the
battle of Hook's Farm.

"The affair of Hook's Farm was one of those brisk little things that
did so much to build up my early reputation. I did remarkably well,
though perhaps it is not my function to say so. The enemy was slightly
stronger, both in cavalry and infantry, than myself [Footnote: A slight
but pardonable error on the part of the gallant gentleman. The forces
were exactly equal.]; he had the choice of position, and opened the
ball. Nevertheless I routed him. I had with me a compact little force of
3 guns, 48 infantry, and 25 horse. My instructions were to clear up the
country to the east of Firely Church.

"We came very speedily into touch. I discovered the enemy advancing upon
Hook's Farm and Firely Church, evidently with the intention of holding
those two positions and giving me a warm welcome. I have by me a
photograph or so of the battlefield and also a little sketch I used upon
the field. They will give the intelligent reader a far better idea of
the encounter than any so-called 'fine writing' can do.

"The original advance of the enemy was through the open country behind
Firely Church and Hook's Farm; I sighted him between the points marked
A A and B B, and his force was divided into two columns, with very
little cover or possibility of communication between them if once the
intervening ground was under fire. I reckoned about 22 to his left and
50 or 60 to his right. [Footnote: Here again the gallant gentleman
errs; this time he magnifies.] Evidently he meant to seize both Firely
Church and Hook's Farm, get his guns into action, and pound my little
force to pieces while it was still practically in the open. He could
reach both these admirable positions before I could hope to get a man
there. There was no effective cover whatever upon my right that would
have permitted an advance up to the church, and so I decided to
concentrate my whole force in a rush upon Hook's Farm, while I staved
off his left with gun fire. I do not believe any strategist whatever
could have bettered that scheme. My guns were at the points marked D C
E, each with five horsemen, and I deployed my infantry in a line between
D and E. The rest of my cavalry I ordered to advance on Hook's Farm from
C. I have shown by arrows on the sketch the course I proposed for my
guns. The gun E was to go straight for its assigned position, and get
into action at once. C was not to risk capture or being put out of
action; its exact position was to be determined by Red's rapidity in
getting up to the farm, and it was to halt and get to work directly it
saw any chance of effective fire.

"Red had now sighted us. Throughout the affair he showed a remarkably
poor stomach for gun-fire, and this was his undoing. Moreover, he was
tempted by the poorness of our cover on our right to attempt to outflank
and enfilade us there. Accordingly, partly to get cover from our two
central guns and partly to outflank us, he sent the whole of his left
wing to the left of Firely Church, where, except for the gun, it became
almost a negligible quantity. The gun came out between the church and
the wood into a position from which it did a considerable amount of
mischief to the infantry on our right, and nearly drove our rightmost
gun in upon its supports. Meanwhile, Red's two guns on his right came
forward to Hook's Farm, rather badly supported by his infantry.

"Once they got into position there I perceived that we should be done
for, and accordingly I rushed every available man forward in a vigorous
counter attack, and my own two guns came lumbering up to the farmhouse
corners, and got into the wedge of shelter close behind the house
before his could open fire. His fire met my advance, littering the
gentle grass slope with dead, and then, hot behind the storm of shell,
and even as my cavalry gathered to charge his guns, he charged mine.
I was amazed beyond measure at that rush, knowing his sabres to be
slightly outnumbered by mine. In another moment all the level space
round the farmhouse was a whirling storm of slashing cavalry, and
then we found ourselves still holding on, with half a dozen prisoners,
and the farmyard a perfect shambles of horses and men. The melee was
over. His charge had failed, and, after a brief breathing--space for
my shot--torn infantry to come up, I led on the counter attack. It was
brilliantly successful; a hard five minutes with bayonet and sabre,
and his right gun was in our hands and his central one in jeopardy.

"And now Red was seized with that most fatal disease of generals,
indecision. He would neither abandon his lost gun nor adequately attack
it. He sent forward a feeble little infantry attack, that we cut up
with the utmost ease, taking several prisoners, made a disastrous
demonstration from the church, and then fell back altogether from the
gentle hill on which Hook Farm is situated to a position beside and
behind an exposed cottage on the level. I at once opened out into a
long crescent, with a gun at either horn, whose crossfire completely
destroyed his chances of retreat from this ill-chosen last stand, and
there presently we disabled his second gun. I now turned my attention
to his still largely unbroken right, from which a gun had maintained a
galling fire on us throughout the fight. I might still have had some
stiff work getting an attack home to the church, but Red had had enough
of it, and now decided to relieve me of any further exertion by a
precipitate retreat. My gun to the right of Hook's Farm killed three of
his flying men, but my cavalry were too badly cut up for an effective
pursuit, and he got away to the extreme left of his original positions
with about 6 infantry-men, 4 cavalry, and 1 gun. He went none too soon.
Had he stayed, it would have been only a question of time before we shot
him to pieces and finished him altogether."

So far, and a little vaingloriously, the general. Let me now shrug my
shoulders and shake him off, and go over this battle he describes a
little more exactly with the help of the photographs. The battle is a
small, compact game of the Fight-to-a-Finish type, and it was arranged
as simply as possible in order to permit of a full and exact
explanation.

[Illustration: Fig. 6b--Battle of Hook's Farm.  Position of Armies at
end of Blue's third move.]

[Illustration: Fig. 7--Battle of Hook's Farm.  Red's Left Wing
attempting to join the Main Body.]

Figure 1 shows the country of the battlefield put out; on the right is
the church, on the left (near the centre of the plate) is the farm.
In the hollow between the two is a small outbuilding. Directly behind
the farm in the line of vision is another outbuilding. This is more
distinctly seen in other photographs. Behind, the chalk back line is
clear. Red has won the toss, both for the choice of a side and, after
making that choice, for first move, and his force is already put out
upon the back line. For the sake of picturesqueness, the men are not put
exactly on the line, but each will have his next move measured from that
line. Red has broken his force into two, a fatal error, as we shall
see, in view of the wide space of open ground between the farm and the
church. He has 1 gun, 5 cavalry, and 13 infantry on his left, who are
evidently to take up a strong position by the church and enfilade Blue's
position; Red's right, of 2 guns, 20 cavalry, and 37 infantry aim at the
seizure of the farm.

Figure 2 is a near view of Blue's side, with his force put down. He has
grasped the strategic mistake of Red, and is going to fling every man at
the farm. His right, of 5 cavalry and 16 infantry, will get up as soon
as possible to the woods near the centre of the field (whence the fire
of their gun will be able to cut off the two portions of Red's force
from each other), and then, leaving the gun there with sufficient men
to serve it, the rest of this party will push on to co-operate with the
main force of their comrades in the inevitable scrimmage for the farm.

Figure 3 shows the fight after Red and Blue have both made their first
move. It is taken from Red's side. Red has not as yet realised the
danger of his position. His left gun struggles into position to the
left of the church, his centre and right push for the farm. Blue's five
cavalry on his left have already galloped forward into a favourable
position to open fire at the next move--they are a little hidden in the
picture by the church; the sixteen infantry follow hard, and his main
force makes straight for the farm.

Figure 4 shows the affair developing rapidly. Red's cavalry on his right
have taken his two guns well forward into a position to sweep either
side of the farm, and his left gun is now well placed to pound Blue's
infantry centre. His infantry continue to press forward, but Blue, for
his second move, has already opened fire from the woods with his right
gun, and killed three of Red's men. His infantry have now come up to
serve this gun, and the cavalry who brought it into position at the
first move have now left it to them in order to gallop over to join the
force attacking the farm. Undismayed by Red's guns, Blue has brought his
other two guns and his men as close to the farm as they can go. His
leftmost gun stares Red's in the face, and prevents any effective fire,
his middle gun faces Red's middle gun. Some of his cavalry are exposed
to the right of the farm, but most are completely covered now by the
farm from Red's fire. Red has now to move. The nature of his position is
becoming apparent to him. His right gun is ineffective, his left and his
centre guns cannot kill more than seven or eight men between them; and
at the next move, unless he can silence them, Blue's guns will be mowing
his exposed cavalry down from the security of the farm. He is in a fix.
How is he to get out of it? His cavalry are slightly outnumbered, but he
decides to do as much execution as he can with his own guns, charge the
Blue guns before him, and then bring up his infantry to save the
situation.

Figure 5a shows the result of Red's move. His two effective guns have
between them bowled over two cavalry and six infantry in the gap between
the farm and Blue's right gun; and then, following up the effect of his
gunfire, his cavalry charges home over the Blue guns. One oversight he
makes, to which Blue at once calls his attention at the end of his move.
Red has reckoned on twenty cavalry for his charge, forgetting that
by the rules he must put two men at the tail of his middle gun. His
infantry are just not able to come up for this duty, and consequently
two cavalry-men have to be set there. The game then pauses while the
players work out the cavalry melee. Red has brought up eighteen men to
this; in touch or within six inches of touch there are twenty-one Blue
cavalry. Red's force is isolated, for only two of his men are within a
move, and to support eighteen he would have to have nine. By the rules
this gives fifteen men dead on either side and three Red prisoners to
Blue. By the rules also it rests with Red to indicate the survivors
within the limits of the melee as he chooses. He takes very good care
there are not four men within six inches of either Blue gun, and both
these are out of action therefore for Blue's next move. Of course Red
would have done far better to have charged home with thirteen men only,
leaving seven in support, but he was flurried by his comparatively
unsuccessful shooting--he had wanted to hit more cavalry--and by the
gun-trail mistake. Moreover, he had counted his antagonist wrongly, and
thought he could arrange a melee of twenty against twenty.

Figure 5b shows the game at the same stage as 5a, immediately after
the adjudication of the melee. The dead have been picked up, the three
prisoners, by a slight deflection of the rules in the direction of the
picturesque, turn their faces towards captivity, and the rest of the
picture is exactly in the position of 5a.

It is now Blue's turn to move, and figure 6a shows the result of his
move. He fires his rightmost gun (the nose of it is just visible to
the right) and kills one infantry-man and one cavalry-man (at the tail
of Red's central gun), brings up his surviving eight cavalry into
convenient positions for the service of his temporarily silenced guns,
and hurries his infantry forward to the farm, recklessly exposing them
in the thin wood between the farm and his right gun. The attentive
reader will be able to trace all this in figure 6a, and he will also
note the three Red cavalry prisoners going to the rear under the escort
of one Khaki infantry man.

Figure 6b shows exactly the same stage as figure 6a, that is to say, the
end of Blue's third move. A cavalry-man lies dead at the tail of Red's
middle gun, an infantry-man a little behind it. His rightmost gun is
abandoned and partly masked, but not hidden, from the observer, by a
tree to the side of the farmhouse.

And now, what is Red to do?

The reader will probably have his own ideas, as I have mine. What Red
did do in the actual game was to lose his head, and then at the end of
four minutes' deliberation he had to move, he blundered desperately. He
opened fire on Blue's exposed centre and killed eight men. (Their bodies
litter the ground in figure 7, which gives a complete bird's-eye view of
the battle.) He then sent forward and isolated six or seven men in a
wild attempt to recapture his lost gun, massed his other men behind the
inadequate cover of his central gun, and sent the detachment of infantry
that had hitherto lurked uselessly behind the church, in a frantic and
hopeless rush across the open to join them. (The one surviving cavalry-man
on his right wing will be seen taking refuge behind the cottage.)
There can be little question of the entire unsoundness of all these
movements. Red was at a disadvantage, he had failed to capture the farm,
and his business now was manifestly to save his men as much as possible,
make a defensive fight of it, inflict as much damage as possible with
his leftmost gun on Blue's advance, get the remnants of his right across
to the church--the cottage in the centre and their own gun would have
given them a certain amount of cover--and build up a new position about
that building as a pivot. With two guns right and left of the church he
might conceivably have saved the rest of the fight.

That, however, is theory; let us return to fact. Figure 8 gives the
disastrous consequences of Red's last move. Blue has moved, his guns
have slaughtered ten of Red's wretched foot, and a rush of nine Blue
cavalry and infantry mingles with Red's six surviving infantry about the
disputed gun. These infantry by the definition are isolated; there are
not three other Reds within a move of them. The view in this photograph
also is an extensive one, and the reader will note, as a painful
accessory, the sad spectacle of three Red prisoners receding to the
right. The melee about Red's lost gun works out, of course, at three
dead on each side, and three more Red prisoners.

Henceforth the battle moves swiftly to complete the disaster of Red.
Shaken and demoralised, that unfortunate general is now only for
retreat. His next move, of which I have no picture, is to retreat the
infantry he has so wantonly exposed back to the shelter of the church,
to withdraw the wreckage of his right into the cover of the cottage,
and--one last gleam of enterprise--to throw forward his left gun into
a position commanding Blue's right.

[Illustration: Fig. 8--Battle of Hook's Farm.  The Red Army suffers
Heavy Loss.]

[Illustration: Fig. 9--Battle of Hook's Farm.  Complete Victory of
the Blue Army.]

Blue then pounds Red's right with his gun to the right of the farm and
kills three men. He extends his other gun to the left of the farm, right
out among the trees, so as to get an effective fire next time upon the
tail of Red's gun. He also moves up sufficient men to take possession of
Red's lost gun. On the right Blue's gun engages Red's and kills one man.
All this the reader will see clearly in figure 9, and he will also note
a second batch of Red prisoners--this time they are infantry, going
rearward. Figure 9 is the last picture that is needed to tell the story
of the battle. Red's position is altogether hopeless. He has four men
left alive by his rightmost gun, and their only chance is to attempt to
save that by retreating with it. If they fire it, one or other will
certainly be killed at its tail in Blue's subsequent move, and then the
gun will be neither movable nor fireable. Red's left gun, with four men
only, is also in extreme peril, and will be immovable and helpless if
it loses another man.

Very properly Red decided upon retreat. His second gun had to be
abandoned after one move, but two of the men with it escaped over his
back line. Five of the infantry behind the church escaped, and his third
gun and its four cavalry got away on the extreme left-hand corner of
Red's position. Blue remained on the field, completely victorious, with
two captured guns and six prisoners.

There you have a scientific record of the worthy general's little
affair.




V

EXTENSIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS OF LITTLE WAR


Now that battle of Hook's Farm is, as I have explained, a simplification
of the game, set out entirely to illustrate the method of playing; there
is scarcely a battle that will not prove more elaborate (and eventful)
than this little encounter. If a number of players and a sufficiently
large room can be got, there is no reason why armies of many hundreds of
soldiers should not fight over many square yards of model country. So
long as each player has about a hundred men and three guns there is no
need to lengthen the duration of a game on that account. But it is too
laborious and confusing for a single player to handle more than that
number of men.

Moreover, on a big floor with an extensive country it is possible to
begin moving with moves double or treble the length here specified, and
to come down to moves of the ordinary lengths when the troops are within
fifteen or twelve or ten feet of each other. To players with the time
and space available I would suggest using a quite large country,
beginning with treble moves, and, with the exception of a select number
of cavalry scouts, keeping the soldiers in their boxes with the lids on,
and moving the boxes as units. (This boxing idea is a new one, and
affords a very good substitute for the curtain; I have tried it twice
for games in the open air where the curtain was not available.) Neither
side would, of course, know what the other had in its boxes; they might
be packed regiments or a mere skeleton force. Each side would advance on
the other by double or treble moves behind a screen of cavalry scouts,
until a scout was within ten feet of a box on the opposite side. Then
the contents of that particular box would have to be disclosed and the
men stood out. Troops without any enemy within twenty feet could be
returned to their boxes for facility in moving. Playing on such a scale
would admit also of the introduction of the problem of provisions and
supplies. Little toy Army Service waggons can be bought, and it could be
ruled that troops must have one such waggon for every fifty men within
at least six moves. Moreover, ammunition carts may be got, and it may be
ruled that one must be within two moves of a gun before the latter can
be fired. All these are complications of the War Game, and so far I have
not been able to get together sufficient experienced players to play on
this larger, more elaborate scale. It is only after the smaller simpler
war game here described has been played a number of times, and its
little dodges mastered completely, that such more warlike devices become
practicable.

But obviously with a team of players and an extensive country, one could
have a general controlling the whole campaign, divisional commanders,
batteries of guns, specialised brigades, and a quite military movement
of the whole affair. I have (as several illustrations show) tried Little
Wars in the open air. The toy soldiers stand quite well on closely mown
grass, but the long-range gun-fire becomes a little uncertain if there
is any breeze. It gives a greater freedom of movement and allows the
players to lie down more comfortably when firing, to increase, and even
double, the moves of the indoor game. One can mark out high roads and
streams with an ordinary lawn-tennis marker, mountains and rocks of
stones, and woods and forests of twigs are easily arranged. But if the
game is to be left out all night and continued next day (a thing I have
as yet had no time to try), the houses must be of some more solid
material than paper. I would suggest painted blocks of wood. On a large
lawn, a wide country-side may be easily represented. The players may
begin with a game exactly like the ordinary Kriegspiel, with scouts
and boxed soldiers, which will develop into such battles as are here
described, as the troops come into contact. It would be easy to give the
roads a real significance by permitting a move half as long again as in
the open country for waggons or boxed troops along a road. There is a
possibility of having a toy railway, with stations or rolling stock into
which troops might be put, on such a giant war map. One would allow a
move for entraining and another for detraining, requiring the troops to
be massed alongside the train at the beginning and end of each journey,
and the train might move at four or five times the cavalry rate. One
would use open trucks and put in a specified number of men--say twelve
infantry or five cavalry or half a gun per truck--and permit an engine
to draw seven or eight trucks, or move at a reduced speed with more. One
could also rule that four men--the same four men--remaining on a line
during two moves, could tear up a rail, and eight men in three moves
replace it.

I will confess I have never yet tried over these more elaborate
developments of Little Wars, partly because of the limited time at my
disposal, and partly because they all demand a number of players who
are well acquainted with the same on each side if they are not to last
interminably. The Battle of Hook's Farm (one player a side) took a whole
afternoon, and most of my battles have lasted the better part of a day.




VI

ENDING WITH A SORT OF CHALLENGE


I COULD go on now and tell of battles, copiously. In the memory of the
one skirmish I have given I do but taste blood. I would like to go on,
to a large, thick book. It would be an agreeable task. Since I am the
chief inventor and practiser (so far) of Little Wars, there has fallen
to me a disproportionate share of victories. But let me not boast. For
the present, I have done all that I meant to do in this matter. It is
for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend, some soldiers and
some guns, and show by a grovelling devotion your appreciation of this
noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game that I have given you.

And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable
miniature than the Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic remedy for the
imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the
strain of accumulating victory or disaster--and no smashed nor
sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country
sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and
embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every
gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to
remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. This
world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in
every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see
the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead
toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for
mankind--splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more
and more and more--and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a
general end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly
scare-monger, and these excitable "patriots," and those adventurers, and
all the practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with
cork carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to
knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers--tons,
cellars-full--and let them lead their own lives there away from us.

My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size.
Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way
of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating
of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I am _prepared_.
I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl
my moustache and hurl defiance eastward from my home in Essex across the
narrow seas. Not only eastward. I would conclude this little discourse
with one other disconcerting and exasperating sentence for the admirers
and practitioners of Big War. I have never yet met in little battle any
military gentleman, any captain, major, colonel, general, or eminent
commander, who did not presently get into difficulties and confusions
among even the elementary rules of the Battle. You have only to play at
Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing
Great War must be.

Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive
game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only
are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too
monstrously big for reason, but--the available heads we have for it, are
too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realisation conceivable,
and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.




APPENDIX

LITTLE WARS AND KRIEGSPIEL


THIS little book has, I hope, been perfectly frank about its intentions.
It is not a book upon Kriegspiel. It gives merely a game that may be
played by two or four or six amateurish persons in an afternoon and
evening with toy soldiers. But it has a very distinct relation to
Kriegspiel; and since the main portion of it was written and published
in a magazine, I have had quite a considerable correspondence with
military people who have been interested by it, and who have shown a
very friendly spirit towards it--in spite of the pacific outbreak in its
concluding section. They tell me--what I already a little suspected--that
Kriegspiel, as it is played by the British Army, is a very dull and
unsatisfactory exercise, lacking in realism, in stir and the unexpected,
obsessed by the umpire at every turn, and of very doubtful value in
waking up the imagination, which should be its chief function. I am
particularly indebted to Colonel Mark Sykes for advice and information
in this matter. He has pointed out to me the possibility of developing
Little Wars into a vivid and inspiring Kriegspiel, in which the element
of the umpire would be reduced to a minimum; and it would be ungrateful
to him, and a waste of an interesting opportunity, if I did not add this
Appendix, pointing out how a Kriegspiel of real educational value for
junior officers may be developed out of the amusing methods of Little
War. If Great War is to be played at all, the better it is played the
more humanely it will be done. I see no inconsistency in deploring
the practice while perfecting the method. But I am a civilian, and
Kriegspiel is not my proper business. I am deeply preoccupied with a
novel I am writing, and so I think the best thing I can do is just to
set down here all the ideas that have cropped up in my mind, in the
footsteps, so to speak, of Colonel Sykes, and leave it to the military
expert, if he cares to take the matter up, to reduce my scattered
suggestions to a system.

Now, first, it is manifest that in Little Wars there is no equivalent
for rifle-fire, and that the effect of the gun-fire has no resemblance
to the effect of shell. That may be altered very simply. Let the rules
as to gun-fire be as they are now, but let a different projectile be
used--a projectile that will drop down and stay where it falls. I find
that one can buy in ironmongers' shops small brass screws of various
sizes and weights, but all capable of being put in the muzzle of the 4'7
guns without slipping down the barrel. If, with such a screw in the
muzzle, the gun is loaded and fired, the wooden bolt remains in the gun
and the screw flies and drops and stays near where it falls--its range
being determined by the size and weight of screw selected by the gunner.
Let us assume this is a shell, and it is quite easy to make a rule that
will give the effect of its explosion. Half, or, in the case of an odd
number, one more than half, of the men within three inches of this shell
are dead, and if there is a gun completely within the circle of three
inches radius from the shell, it is destroyed. If it is not completely
within the circle, it is disabled for two moves. A supply waggon is
completely destroyed if it falls wholly or partially within the radius.
But if there is a wall, house, or entrenchment between any men and the
shell, they are uninjured--they do not count in the reckoning of the
effect of the shell.

I think one can get a practical imitation of the effect of rifle-fire
by deciding that for every five infantry-men who are roughly in a line,
and who do not move in any particular move, there may be one (ordinary)
shot taken with a 4'7 gun. It may be fired from any convenient position
behind the row of five men, so long as the shot passes roughly over the
head of the middle man of the five.

Of course, while in Little Wars there are only three or four players,
in any proper Kriegspiel the game will go on over a larger area--in
a drill-hall or some such place--and each arm and service will be
entrusted to a particular player. This permits all sorts of complicated
imitations of reality that are impossible to our parlour and playroom
Little Wars. We can consider transport, supply, ammunition, and the
moral effect of cavalry impact, and of uphill and downhill movements.
We can also bring in the spade and entrenchment, and give scope to
the Royal Engineers. But before I write anything of Colonel Sykes'
suggestions about these, let me say a word or two about Kriegspiel
"country."

The country for Kriegspiel should be made up, I think, of heavy blocks
or boxes of wood about 3 x 3 x 1/2 feet, and curved pieces (with a
rounded outline and a chord of three feet, or shaped like right-angled
triangles with an incurved hypotenuse and two straight sides of 3 feet)
can easily be contrived to round off corners and salient angles. These
blocks can be bored to take trees, etc., exactly as the boards in Little
Wars are bored, and with them a very passable model of any particular
country can be built up from a contoured Ordnance map. Houses may be
made very cheaply by shaping a long piece of wood into a house-like
section and sawing it up. There will always be someone who will touch up
and paint and stick windows on to and generally adorn and individualise
such houses, which are, of course, the stabler the heavier the wood used.
The rest of the country as in Little Wars.

Upon such a country a Kriegspiel could be played with rules upon
the lines of the following sketch rules, which are the result of a
discussion between Colonel Sykes and myself, and in which most of the
new ideas are to be ascribed to Colonel Sykes. We proffer them, not as
a finished set of rules, but as material for anyone who chooses to work
over them, in the elaboration of what we believe will be a far more
exciting and edifying Kriegspiel than any that exists at the present
time. The game may be played by any number of players, according to the
forces engaged and the size of the country available. Each side will be
under the supreme command of a General, who will be represented by a
cavalry soldier. The player who is General must stand at or behind his
representative image and within six feet of it. His signalling will be
supposed to be perfect, and he will communicate with his subordinates
by shout, whisper, or note, as he thinks fit. I suggest he should be
considered invulnerable, but Colonel Sykes has proposed arrangements
for his disablement. He would have it that if the General falls within
the zone of destruction of a shell he must go out of the room for three
moves (injured); and that if he is hit by rifle-fire or captured he
shall quit the game, and be succeeded by his next subordinate.


Now as to the Moves.

It is suggested that:
  Infantry shall move one foot.
  Cavalry shall move three feet.
    The above moves are increased by one half for troops in twos
    or fours on a road.
  Royal Engineers shall move two feet.
  Royal Artillery shall move two feet.
  Transport and Supply shall move one foot on roads, half foot
    across country.
  The General shall move six feet (per motor), three feet across country.
  Boats shall move one foot.
  In moving uphill, one contour counts as one foot; downhill, two
  contours count as one foot. Where there are four contours to one
  foot vertical the hill is impassable for wheels unless there is a road.

Infantry.
  To pass a fordable river = one move.
  To change from fours to two ranks = half a move.
  To change from two ranks to extension = half a move.
  To embark into boats = two moves for every twenty men
    embarked at any point.
  To disembark = one move for every twenty men.

Cavalry.
  To pass a fordable river = one move.
  To change formation = half a move.
  To mount = one move.
  To dismount = one move.

Artillery.
  To unlimber guns = half a move.
  To limber up guns = half a move.
  Rivers are impassable to guns.

NEITHER INFANTRY, CAVALRY, NOR ARTILLERY CAN FIRE AND MOVE IN ONE MOVE.

Royal Engineers.
  No repairs can be commenced, no destructions can be begun,
    during a move in which R.E. have changed position.
  Rivers impassable.

Transport and Supply.
  No supplies or stores can be delivered during a move if T. and S.
    have moved.
  Rivers impassable.


Next as to Supply in the Field:

All troops must be kept supplied with food, ammunition, and forage. The
players must give up, every six moves, one packet of food per thirty
men; one packet of forage per six horses; one packet of ammunition per
thirty infantry which fire for six consecutive moves.

These supplies, at the time when they are given up, must be within six
feet of the infantry they belong to and eighteen feet of the cavalry.

Isolated bodies of less than thirty infantry require no supplies--a
body is isolated if it is more than twelve feet off another body. In
calculating supplies for infantry the fractions either count as thirty
if fifteen or over, or as nothing if less than fifteen. Thus forty-six
infantry require two packets of food or ammunition; forty-four infantry
require one packet of food.

N.B.--Supplies are not effective if enemy is between supplies and troops
they belong to.

Men surrounded and besieged must be victualled at the following rate:--

One packet food for every thirty men for every six moves.

One packet forage every six horses for every six moves.

In the event of supplies failing, horses may take the place of food, but
not of course of forage; one horse to equal one packet.

In the event of supplies failing, the following consequences ensue:--

Infantry without ammunition cannot fire (guns are supposed to have
unlimited ammunition with them).

Infantry, cavalry, R.A., and R.E. cannot move without supply--if
supplies are not provided within six consecutive moves, they are out
of action.

A force surrounded must surrender four moves after eating its last
horse.


Now as to Destructions:

To destroy a railway bridge R.E. take two moves; to repair, R.E. take
ten moves.

To destroy a railway culvert R.E. take one move; to repair R.E. take
five moves. To destroy a river road bridge R.E. take one move; to
repair, R.E. take five moves.

A supply depot can be destroyed by one man in two moves, no matter how
large (by fire).

Four men can destroy the contents of six waggons in one move.

A contact mine can be placed on a road or in any place by two men in six
moves; it will be exploded by the first pieces passing over it, and will
destroy everything within six inches radius.*


Next as to Constructions:

Entrenchments can be made by infantry in four moves.* They are to be
strips of wood two inches high tacked to the country, or wooden bricks
two inches high. Two men may make an inch of entrenchment.

Epaulements for guns may be constructed at the rate of six men to one
epaulement in four moves.*

[* Notice to be given to umpire of commencement of any work or the
placing of a mine. In event of no umpire being available, a folded
note must be put on the mantelpiece when entrenchment is commenced,
and opponent asked to open it when the trench is completed or the
mine exploded.]


Rules as to Cavalry Charging:

No body of less than eight cavalry may charge, and they must charge in
proper formation.

If cavalry charges infantry in extended order--

If the charge starts at a distance of more than two feet, the cavalry
loses one man for every five infantry-men charged, and the infantry
loses one man for each sabre charging.

At less than two feet and more than one foot, the cavalry loses one man
for every ten charged, and the infantry two men for each sabre charging.

At less than one foot, the cavalry loses one man for every fifteen
charged, and the infantry three men for each sabre charging.

If cavalry charges infantry in close order, the result is reversed.

Thus at more than two feet one infantry-man kills three cavalry-men,
and fifteen cavalry-men one infantry-man.

At more than one foot one infantry-man kills two cavalry, and ten
cavalry one infantry.

At less than one foot one infantry-man kills one cavalry, and five
cavalry one infantry.

However, infantry that have been charged in close order are immobile
for the subsequent move.

Infantry charged in extended order must on the next move retire one
foot; they can be charged again.

If cavalry charges cavalry:--

If cavalry is within charging distance of the enemy's cavalry at the end
of the enemy's move, it must do one of three things--dismount, charge,
or retire. If it remains stationary and mounted and the enemy charges,
one charging sabre will kill five stationary sabres and put fifteen
others three feet to the rear.

Dismounted cavalry charged is equivalent to infantry in extended order.

If cavalry charges cavalry and the numbers are equal and the ground
level, the result must be decided by the toss of a coin; the loser
losing three-quarters of his men and obliged to retire, the winner
losing one-quarter of his men.

If the numbers are unequal, the melee rules for Little Wars obtain if
the ground is level.

If the ground slopes, the cavalry charging downhill will be multiplied
according to the number of contours crossed. If it is one contour, it
must be multiplied by two; two contours, multiplied by three; three
contours, multiplied by four.

If cavalry retires before cavalry instead of accepting a charge, it must
continue to retire so long as it is pursued--the pursuers can only be
arrested by fresh cavalry or by infantry or artillery fire.

If driven off the field or into an unfordable river, the retreating
body is destroyed.

If infantry find hostile cavalry within charging distance at the end
of the enemy's move, and this infantry retires and yet is still within
charging distance, it will receive double losses if in extended order if
charged; and if in two ranks or in fours, will lose at three feet two
men for each charging sabre; at two feet, three men for each charging
sabre. The cavalry in these circumstances will lose nothing. The
infantry will have to continue to retire until their tormentors have
exterminated them or been driven off by someone else.

If cavalry charges artillery and is not dealt with by other forces, one
gun is captured with a loss to the cavalry of four men per gun for a
charge at three feet, three men at two feet, and one man at one foot.

If artillery retires before cavalry when cavalry is within charging
distance, it must continue to retire so long as the cavalry pursues.


The introduction of toy railway trains, moving, let us say, eight feet
per move, upon toy rails, needs rules as to entraining and detraining
and so forth, that will be quite easily worked out upon the model of
boat embarkation here given. An engine or truck within the circle of
destruction of a shell will be of course destroyed.

The toy soldiers used in this Kriegspiel should not be the large
soldiers used in Little Wars. The British manufacturers who turn out
these also make a smaller, cheaper type of man--the infantry about an
inch high--which is better adapted to Kriegspiel purposes.

We hope, if these suggestions "catch on," to induce them to manufacture
a type of soldier more exactly suited to the needs of the game,
including tray carriers for troops in formation and (what is at present
not attainable) dismountable cavalry that will stand.

We place this rough sketch of a Kriegspiel entirely at the disposal of
any military men whose needs and opportunities enable them to work it
out and make it into an exacter and more realistic game. In doing so, we
think they will find it advisable to do their utmost to make the game
work itself, and to keep the need for umpire's decisions at a minimum.
Whenever possible, death should be by actual gun- and rifle-fire and not
by computation. Things should happen, and not be decided. We would also
like to insist upon the absolute need of an official upon either side,
simply to watch and measure the moves taken, and to collect and check
the amounts of supply and ammunition given up. This is a game like real
war, played against time, and played under circumstances of considerable
excitement, and it is remarkable how elastic the measurements of quite
honest and honourable men can become.

We believe that the nearer that Kriegspiel approaches to an actual
small model of war, not only in its appearance but in its emotional
and intellectual tests, the better it will serve its purpose of trial
and education.









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