Regarding the violence and ‘real-war’ simulations of wargame, with everything that entails of people dying, family becoming orphaned, etc…; I really love this text in the conclusion of HG Wells Little Wars’ rulesbook.
You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a
blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the
most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the
masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason,
but — the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific
realisation conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.
Full conclusion for those interested :
I COULD go on now and tell of battles, copiously. In the memory of the one skirmish I have
given I do but taste blood. I would like to go on, to a large, thick book. It would be an
agreeable task. Since I am the chief inventor and practiser (so far) of Little Wars, there has
fallen to me a disproportionate share of victories. But let me not boast. For the present, I have
done all that I meant to do in this matter. It is for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend,
some soldiers and some guns, and show by a grovelling devotion your appreciation of this
noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game that I have given you.
And if I might for a moment trumpet ! How much better is this amiable miniature than the
Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the
premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or ,disaster — and no smashed nor
sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties,
none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or
embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old
enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. This world is
for ample living; we want security and freedom ; all of us in every country, except a few dull-
witted, energetic bores, want to see the manhood of the world at something better than apeing
the little lead toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind —
splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more and more, — and
so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general end ; and let us put this prancing
monarch and that silly scare-monger, and these excitable " patriots," and those adventurers,
and all the practitioners of Welt Politik , into one vast Temple of War, with cork carpets
everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to knock down, and cities and fortresses,
and unlimited soldiers — tons, cellars-full, — and let them lead their own lives there away
from us.
My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size. Here is War, done
down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way of mankind, even as our fathers turned
human sacrifices into the eating of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I
am prepared . I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl my
moustache and hurl defiance eastward from my home in Essex across the narrow seas. Not
only eastward. I would conclude this little discourse with one other disconcerting and
exasperating sentence for the admirers and practitioners of Big War. I have never yet met in
little battle any military gentleman, any major, colonel, general, or eminent commander, who
did not presently get into difficulties and confusions among even the elementary rules of the
Battle. You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a
blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the
most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the
masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason,
but — the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific
realisation conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.
