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



II

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE


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 It has completely superseded all the spiral-spring and other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

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

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