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
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