But obviously with a team of players and an extensive country, one could
have a general controlling the whole campaign, divisional commanders,
batteries 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 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 having 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 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