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LITTLE WARS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Uniform 'with this volume

FLOOR GAMES

With over ioo Illustrations from Photographs and
Drawings by J. R. Sinclair.

"This book will arrest the attention of grown-ups ; it
invests Floor Games with a romance and a reality they
have never before possessed — will keep the young people
absorbed for hours together. Mr Wells makes a world
teeming with life and movement, a wholly delightful
world. Parents and children alike should, and doubtless
will, remember Mr Wells in their prayers. He has
placed them heavily in his- debt by telling them of the
game of the wonderful islands, of the building of cities,
of funiculars, marble towers and castles, in this book of
books." — Birminghatn Post.

LITTLE WARS

A GAME FOR BOYS

FROM TWELVE YEARS OF AGE TO ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY

AND FOR THAT MORE INTELLIGENT SORT OF GIRLS WHO

LIKE BOYS' GAMES AND BOOKS

WITH AN APPENDIX ON KRIEGSPIEL

H. G. WELLS

THE AUTHOR OF

"FLOOR GAMES"

AND SEVERAL MINOR AND INFERIOR WORKS

WITH MARGINAL DRAWINGS BY
J. R. SINCLAIR

LONDON

frank; r palmar

RED LION COURT

iTHE NEW

POBUC LIB!

TIL06« POONOATI

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 OT? . CHAL-
LENGE

APPENDIX-
LITTLE WARS AND KRIEGSPIEL

PAGE

43
47
55

101

LIST OF
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGES

SHOWING COUNTRIES PREPARED FOR

THE WAR GAME (INDOOR) . . io-ii

SHOWING THE WAR GAME IN THE

OPEN AIR . . . . .18, 19,30

THE BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM—

I. General View of the Battlefield and Red

.Army . . . ■ 31

II. A Near View of the Blue Army . 40

III. Position of both Armies after first move . 4 1

IV. The Battle developing rapidly . 52
Wa. Red Cavalry charging the Blue Guns . 53
Vb. After the Cavalry Melee ... 62

Via. Prisoners being led to the rear . . 63

Vlb. Position of Armies at end of Blue's third

• : ■rn'on-e ' . "..' '. • . 72

VII. Red's Left Wing attempting to join the

Main Body; . \ ) . . . 73

VIII. The Red Armv supers .Heavy Loss . 84

IX. Complete V'uicry of. ' the. Blue Army . 85

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 pre-
sent time, an account of how to make
little warfare, and hints of the most
priceless sort for the recumbent strate-
gist. . . .

But first let it be noted in passing

8 LITTLE WARS

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. . . .

OF THE LEGENDARY PAST 9

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 cata-
pult, 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. . . .

%s&

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 breech-
loader gun. This priceless gift to
boyhood appeared somewhen towards
the end of the last century, a gun cap-
able 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

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SHOWING COUNTRIES PREPARED FOR THE WAR GAME.

MODERN BEGINNINGS n

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 alto-
gether elegant weapon.

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

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

12 LITTLE WARS

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 some-
how 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

MODERN BEGINNINGS 13

believe that if one set up a few obstacles
on the floor, volumes of the British
Encyclopaedia 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

i4 LITTLE WARS

toy soldiers, set out a lumpish Encyclo-
paedic 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

MODERN BEGINNINGS 15

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 y^Ei
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 im-
provement.

Improvement came almost simul-
taneously in several directions. First
there was the development of the
Country. The soldiers did not stand
well on an ordinary carpet, the Encyclo-

mfnmwmmm-

1 6 LITTLE WARS

paedia 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, chatter-
ers, 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.)

MODERN BEGINNINGS 17

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 propor-
tion) 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 per-
fected war game was in existence. We
discovered it was easy to cut out and
bend and gum together paper and card-
board 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 repre-

LITTLE WARS

sent 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 repre-
sented 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

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THE WAR GAME IN THE OPEN AIR.

MODERN BEGINNINGS 19

and bridges, lead to ineffective cannon-
ades, 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 land-
scapes 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.

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

20 LITTLE WARS

necessary to provide for the replace-
ment 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 re-
stored 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 re-

MODERN BEGINNINGS 21

duced 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

LITTLE WARS

a long time, because we shot with ex-
treme care and deliberation, and they
were hard to bring to a decisive finish.
The guns were altogether too predom-
inant. 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

MODERN BEGINNINGS

Great War in South Africa, came in most
helpfully — to quicken it. Manifestly
the guns had to be reduced to manage-
able 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 lire 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, point-
ing 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 con-
cealed and sheltered gunners. It was

LITTLE WARS

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 eventful-
ness one would expect in the hurry and
passion of real fighting. It also made
the game brisker. We have since also

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MODERN BEGINNINGS 25

made a limit, sometimes of four minutes,
sometimes of five minutes, to the inter-
val 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 ap-
proximates 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 —

26 LITTLE WARS

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 im-
portance as to determine the battle.
But this form of battle we have since

MODERN BEGINNINGS 27

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

28 LITTLE WARS

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 isola-
tion. 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 with-
out 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

MODERN BEGINNINGS 29

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

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3°

LITTLE WARS

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

THE WAR GAME IN THE OPEN AIR.

MODERN BEGINNINGS 31

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

32 LITTLE WARS

result to hand-to-hand encounters.
They abolish Horatius Cocles.

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

MODERN BEGINNINGS

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

LITTLE WARS

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 con-
trived 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,
i£ for each cavalry-man, 10 for each
gun, I for each man held prisoner by the
enemy, and J for each prisoner held at
the end of the game, subtracting what
the antagonist scored by the same scale.

MODERN BEGINNINGS 35

Thus, when he felt the battle was hope-
lessly 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 cur-
tains we found the first player was at a

3 6 LITTLE WARS

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 tribula-
tion. There is not a piece of con-
structive 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 extra-

MODERN BEGINNINGS 37

ordinarily 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 bat-
teries 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 milee
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 van-
tage, and here are troops massing among

LITTLE WARS

farm buildings for a vigorous attack.
The combat grows hot round some vital
point. Move follows move in swift suc-
cession. 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.

Ill

THE RULES

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

The Country

(i) 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

rStjjF \

40 LITTLE WARS

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

(i) 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 subse-
quent move as if they touched the back
line at its nearest point. The Second

THE RULES

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 cur-
tain it is drawn back when they are
ready, and the game then begins.

(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 no 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

42 LITTLE WARS

about to move stands at attention a
yard behind his back line until the
timekeeper says " Go." He then pro-
ceeds 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 be-
fore the next move, during which any
disturbance of the Country can be
rearranged and men accidentally over-
turned 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

THE RULES

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.)

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

44 LITTLE WARS

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

(3) 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.

(4) 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 de-
pressed, 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

THE RULES 45

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 posi-
tion. 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 wThich a gun

LITTLE WARS

can move will be determined by the
men it is with ; if there are at least
four cavalry-men with it, they can take
ft* 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.

(5) 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.

(6) When men are knocked over by
a shot they are dead, and as many men
are dead as a shot knocks over or causes

THE RULES

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 re-
bounds 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

(i) A man or a body of men which
has less than half its own number of

LITTLE WARS

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 con-
tact, measuring from any point of their
persons, weapons, or horses, are sup-
posed to take part in the melee. At
the end of the move the two players

THE RULES

examine the melee and dispose of the
men concerned according to the fol-
lowing rules : —

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

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

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

(b\) If it is isolated (see i 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.

5o LITTLE WARS

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.

(bz) But if the inferior force is not
isolated (see i 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 com-
pleted 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

THE RULES 51

for the adjustment does not count as
part of the usual interval for considera-
tion. 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 re-

LITTLE WARS

turn 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 tn&lie^ any prisoners
made in the first melee will not count
as combatants in the second meke.
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

THE RULES

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 four-
teen men in the second meke 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

LITTLE WARS

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.

(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 im-
portant. 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 ;

THE RULES 55

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

56 LITTLE WARS

for points ; you score ioo for the
victory, and 10 for every gun you hold
or are in a position to take, 11 for
every cavalry-man, i for every infantry-
man still alive and uncaptured, i for
every man of yours prisoner in the
hands of the enemy, and i 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 ioo 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

A OAAW

y^ki^

THE RULES

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 ori-

LITTLE WARS

ginal 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 be-
comes 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.

THE RULES 59

Composition of Forces

Except in the above cases, or when
otherwise agreed upon, the forces en-
gaged 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
manoeuvre comfortably on a front of
4 or 5 feet. Most of our games have
been played with about 80 infantry,

60 LITTLE WARS

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 pro-
portionally 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 — be-
cause of the difficulty of keeping large
bodies of this force under cover — leads
simply to early heavy losses by gun-fire
and violent and disastrous charging. The
composition of a force may, of course,
be varied considerably. One good Fight

THE RULES 61

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 i each,
cavalry as 11, 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 no infantry
with 4.

Size of the Soldiers

The soldiers used should be all of
one size. The best British makers

:
-

LITTLE WARS

have standardised sizes, and sell
fantry and cavalry in exactly propor-
tioned 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.

T«^ VTm.,

; o».--

c i

Sketch Plan of the Battle of Hook' Farm

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 war-
fare, 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 ringers 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,

64 LITTLE WARS

red scar, a sabre cut, grows lurid over
one eye. He expands — all over he
expands. He clears his throat start-
lingly, 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, uYas, Sir!"

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,

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 65

though perhaps it is not my function
to say so. The enemy was slightly
stronger, both in cavalry and infantry,
than myself* ; he had the choice of
position, and opened the ball. Never-
theless I routed him. I had with me
a compact little force of 3 guns, 48
infantry, and 25 horse. My instruc-
tions 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, evi-
dently 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

* A slight but pardonable error on the part of
the gallant gentleman. The forces were exactly-
equal.

66 LITTLE WARS

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.*
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

* Here again the gallant gentleman errs ; this
time he magnifies.

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 67

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 DCE, 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

68 LITTLE WARS

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. Through-
out 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

^/urm/^

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 69

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

*29v<D)

^(j^^iv

i/JTPuu-.

LITTLE WARS

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 hold-
ing 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 in-
fantry 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

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 71

forward a feeble little infantry attack,
that we cut up with the utmost ease,
taking several prisoners, made a dis-
astrous 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 cross-
fire completely destroyed his chances
of retreat from this ill-chosen last stand,
and there presently we disabled his
second gun. I now turned my atten-
tion 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

ft/ ff*'.

LITTLE WARS

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

<^>

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 73

as possible in order to permit of a
full and exact explanation.

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 photo-
graphs. 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 meas-
ured from that line. Red has broken
his force into two, a fatal error, as we

LITTLE WARS

shall see, in view of the wide space of
open ground between the farm and
the church. He has i 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 por-
tions of Red's force from each other),
and then, leaving the gun there with

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 75

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 al-
ready 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

jgli^ggcf:

76 LITTLE WARS

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 in-
fantry 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.

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 77

Some of his cavalry are exposed to the
right of the farm, but most are com-
pletely 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 in^
effective, 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 out-
numbered, 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 5*2 shows the result of Red's

78 LITTLE WARS

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 eifect 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, for-
getting 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

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 79

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 there-
fore 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 unsuccess-
ful shooting — he had wanted to hit
more cavalry — and by the gun-trail
mistake. Moreover, he had counted
his antagonist wrongly, and thought

LITTLE WARS

he could arrange a melee of twenty
against twenty.

Figure $b shows the game at the
same stage as 5*2, 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 50.

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

<^s4£S

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 81

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 6i 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

LITTLE WARS

did do in the actual game was to lose
his head, and when 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 com-
plete bird's-eye view of the battle.)
He then sent forward and isolated six
or seven men in a wild attempt to re-
capture 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 tak-
ing refuge behind the cottage.) There
can be little question of the entire

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 83

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 build-
ing 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 re-
turn to fact. Figure 8 gives the dis-
astrous consequences of Red's last move.
Blue has moved, his guns have slaugh-
tered ten of Red's wretched foot, and a

84 LITTLE WARS

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 reced-
ing to the right. The mike 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

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 85

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.

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 effec-
tive 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

86 LITTLE WARS

of the battle. Red's position is alto-
gether 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 help-
less 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.

BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 87

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.

EXTENSIONS AND AMPLIFICA-
TIONS 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

AMPLIFICATIONS

there is no need to lengthen the dura-
tion 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 ex-
tensive 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

9°

LITTLE WARS

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 par-
ticular box would have to be disclosed
and the men stood out. Troops with-
out 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 introduc-
tion of the problem of provisions and
supplies. Little toy Army Service

AMPLIFICATIONS

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 de-
scribed 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

LITTLE WARS

campaign, divisional commanders, bat-
teries 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

AMPLIFICATIONS

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 hav-
ing 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

LITTLE WARS

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

AMPLIFICATIONS

players who are well acquainted with
the game 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.

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 dispro-
portionate 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 grovel-

A SORT OF CHALLENGE 97

ling 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 trum-
pet ! How much better is this amiable
miniature than the Real Thing! Here
is a homeopathic remedy for the ima-
ginative strategist. Here is the pre-
meditation, 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 gra-
cious, bold, sweet, and charming thing,
that we who are old enough to remem-
ber a real modern war know to be the
reality of belligerence. This world is

it***

98 LITTLE WARS

for ample living; we want security and
freedom ; all of us in every country, ex-
cept 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 prac-
titioners 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

A SORT OF CHALLENGE 99

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 pro-
portions, 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 dis-
concerting and exasperating sentence
for the admirers and practitioners of
Big War. I have never yet met in

A109/26'

IOO

LITTLE WARS

little battle any military gentleman, any
captain, major, colonel, general, or
eminent commander, who did not pres-
ently 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 con-
vinced, 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 con-
ceivable, 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 particu-
larly 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 j 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 educa-
tional 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

102 LITTLE WARS

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

APPENDIX 103

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 trans-
port, 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 3X3XI 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

104 LITTLE WARS

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,

APPENDIX 105

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.

106 LITTLE WARS

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 j 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 con-
secutive moves, they are out of action.

APPENDIX

107

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.*

Rules as to Cavalry Charging :

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

* 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.

108 LITTLE WARS

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.

APPENDIX 109

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 meUe 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 retreat-
ing 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 circum-
stances will lose nothing. The infantry will have to
continue to retire until their tormentors have extermin-
ated 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.

no LITTLE WARS

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

APPENDIX in

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. /

PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH.

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Full text of "Little wars : a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girls who like boys' games and books"

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