obstinately with the death or capture of the last man. An inducement was
needed. This we contrived by playing not for the game but for points,
scoring the result of each game and counting the points towards the
decision of a campaign. Our campaign was to our single game what a
rubber is to a game of whist. We made the end of a war 200, 300, or 400
or more points up, according to the number of games we wanted to play,
and we scored a hundred for each battle won, and in addition 1 for each
infantry-man, 1-1/2 for each cavalry-man, 10 for each gun, 1/2 for each
man held prisoner by the enemy, and 1/2 for each prisoner held at the
end of the game, subtracting what the antagonist scored by the same
scale. Thus, when he felt the battle was hopelessly lost, he had a
direct inducement to retreat any guns he could still save and surrender
any men who were under the fire of the victors' guns and likely to be
slaughtered, in order to minimise the score against him. And an interest
was given to a skilful retreat, in which the loser not only saved points
for himself but inflicted losses upon the pursuing enemy.

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

And at last our rules have reached stability, and we regard them now
with the virtuous pride of men who have persisted in a great undertaking
and arrived at precision after much tribulation. There is not a piece of
constructive legislation in the world, not a solitary attempt to meet a
complicated problem, that we do not now regard the more charitably for