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.