"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....