"It's charm lay in the combination of actual skill in shooting, with the planning of cunning device in strategy and tactic." Rt. Hon. C.F.G. Masterman "I had reveries…." mused H.G. Wells in his old age, "…I used to fight battles whenever I went for a walk alone. I used to walk about Bromley, a small rather undernourished boy, meanly clad and whistling detestably through his teeth, and no one suspected that a phantom staff pranced about me and phantom orderlies galloped at my commands, to shift the guns and concentrate fire on those houses below to launch the final attack upon yonder distant ridge…." For the greater part of his life Wells was haunted by the fading memories of his boyhood war fantasies. So much so that they became something of an embarrassment to him in later years. For the adult Wells was politically aware, and had strong pacifist convictions. Yet despite a declared aversion to war in any form, the small boy within him continued to fight glorious imaginary battles in an imagined world." After several false starts in his working life, Wells eventually found his true vocation as a professional writer. The need for private daydreaming as an escape from a humdrum reality was over; Wells could now direct his fertile imagination into more useful channels. Novels about ordinary life; science fiction; even grand themes for a modern Utopia. But there always remained, in the back of his mind, the comfortable less-subtle fantasy world of his early youth. Occasionally he would allow it to emerge in print. In 1911, when Wells was 45, he wrote a slender volume for children entitled Floor Games, in which he described in wistful detail the elaborate adventure games he enjoyed together with his two young sons, Gip and Frank, on their nursery floor. Using an assortment of materials: child's building blocks, cardboard, toy soldiers, clockwork motors from defunct model trains - in short anything that might fall in hand in an Edwardian nursery - Wells created an intricate world in miniature. Floor games, Wells insisted, should at all times be conducted in a rowdy spirit of fun. Civilized fun though, for Wells the reformer could not allow his young readers to escape without lecturing them on the follies of war. In one passage, while enthusing over the improved quality of the toy soldiers of that era (Britain's naturally, though Wells doesn't say so), the author laments the lack of any compensatory civilian figures. "Consequent upon this dearth," he grumbles, "our little world suffers from an exaggerated curse of militarism and even the grocer wears epaulettes!" Later on he was moved to remark that "only emperors, Kings and very silly small boys … take an undying interest in uniforms and reviews." Wells' gentle moralizing in Floor Games doesn't carry the conviction it was to have in later years, and the closing pages of that book reveal distinct traces of the Bromley daydreamer: "Of the War Game I must either write volumes or nothing. For the present let it be nothing. Some day, perhaps, I will write a great book about the War Game and tell of battles and campaigns and strategy and tactics…." Wells kept that promise, and the result was Little Wars published in 1913 as a companion volume to Floor Games, and treasured by wargamers since then as the foundation stone of their hobby. Wells was not alive to witness the astonishing boom in amateur wargaming that began in the 1960's and it is probable that he would not have been flattered to be put on a pedestal as "Founding Father" of wargaming. His autobiographical remarks about the hobby of wargaming are derogatory: "…Men in responsible positions, L.S. Amery, for example, Winston Churchill, George Trevelyan, C.F.G. Masterman, whose imaginations were manifestly built upon a similar framework … remained puerile in their political outlook because of its persistence." Although not a politician himself, Wells conveniently overlooks the fact that he only conquered the habit at an advanced age! Little Wars enjoyed an immediate and lasting success despite its author's later reservations about its subject matter. It miraculously survived the Great War and continued to be published until 1931, after which it remained a sought-after classic until it and its companion volume Floor Games were republished by Quantum reprints in 1966. A further republication was undertaken by Arms & Armour press in 1970. Thus the book has been around long enough to inspire several generations of wargamers, most of whom, it is hoped, have not suffered from "an exaggerated curse of militarism" about which Wells gave warnings in his autobiography of 1934: "Adolph Hitler is nothing more than one of my 13-year old reveries come real. A whole generation of Germans has failed to grow up!" With its poignant anti-war message in its final chapter, Little Wars could almost be taken as a satire on the futility of modern warfare. Yet it can hardly be called a classic in the accepted literary sense. What the book does have in plenty is charm. Wells was a charmer; and - like several of his author acquaintances - a prankster too. One of his cronies, the author G.K. Chesterton, has described how he and Wells invented an imaginary game called 'Gype' whose sole purpose was to give the brush-off to unwanted visitors. When one of these unfortunates called, Wells and Chesterton would appear to be deeply involved in a game of 'Gype', simulating intense concentration and mouthing obscure and incomprehensible game-terms to each other. After waiting a few minutes in frustrated silence, the visitor would leave quietly to stifled laughter from the 'gamesplayers'' The story of how Little Wars came to be written has elements of a Wellsian prank. It has been said that Wells' publisher, Frank Palmer, first persuaded wells to write a book about wargaming. Palmer had chanced upon a copy of an advertising booklet issued by the Britain's firm of toy soldier manufacturers in 1908 entitled The Great War Game for Young and Old. After Palmer had excitedly sung its praises, Wells hurried away to dash off a two-part article on the subject that initially appeared in Windsor Magazine in December 1912 and January 1913. However, according to John G. Garrett, author of World Encyclopedia of Model Soldiers, it has now been established that Wells himself was the author of the Britain's booklet! Garrett then goes on to tarnish Wells' reputation as founding father of wargaming by suggesting that the idea was cribbed from an obscure American publication entitled Tin Army of the Potomac by W.H. Downes, Boston, 1880. (Interestingly, publication of that book pre-dates by only a year the wargames recorded between Lloyd Osbourne and his step-father Robert Louis Stevenson - another candidate for father figure of wargaming. Stevenson's games would appear to bear a very strong resemblance to Downes' work.) To be fair to Wells he never claimed to have originated the hobby. "This is no new thing," he states, "No crude novelty; but a thing tested by time, ancient and ripe in all its essentials for all its perennial freshness - like Spring". Smooth words from a seasoned hand at the game! Little Wars radiates charm; it also reflects its author's enthusiasm. There is no doubting that Wells had a boyish gusto for his pet project. When he presented himself at his publisher's office to discuss terms for the manuscript of Little Wars, Palmer and his staff were completely overwhelmed by Wells' energetic efforts at getting everyone involved in a game. Wells unwrapped box after box of toy soldiers all the time extolling the virtues of the game he was about to demonstrate. Then for three hours he crawled about the floor on his hands and knees, firing toy cannons and urging Palmer and the others to follow his example. At the end of it everyone, with the exception of Wells, was utterly exhausted. Wells came away with the contract safe in his pocket! Wells discreet but casual name-dropping during the course of the narrative of Little Wars reveals that several of his famous friends were involved in the development of the prototype. The author Jerome K. Jerome, for instance, is loosely veiled as "J.K.J." Also mentioned are a mysterious "Mr. M" and his brother "Captain M", described as "hot from the Great War in South Africa". One of these "M's" is undoubtedly the Liberal politician Charles Masterman who has left a vivid description of what a typical Wellsian wargame could be like: "I remember…the invention of the War Game, in which I claim to have some part of authorship…. Everything depended upon rapidity. So that I have seen harmless guests, entering for tea, greeted ferociously with the injunction: "Sit down and keep your mouth shut"….a game which began at 10 and only ended at 7:30, in which wells had illegitimately pressed non-combatants into his army - firemen, cook, shopkeepers and the like - and in which a magnificent shot from the other end of the floor destroyed a missionary fleeing on a dromedary - the last representative of the nation which had marched so gaily into battle so many hours before." "The boyhood imagination was still active", commented Wells' biographers Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie, "H.G. liked nothing better than fantasies in which his enemies were routed!" The urgency and terrible retribution of a Wellsian game is not achieved by repeated throws of dice; all depends on a player's skill and ingenuity in a) knocking over his opponent's figures and b) keeping his own forces out of range of his opponent's fire. In pre-Wellsian games, players had to find mutual agreement over the best way to carry this out. In Robert Louis Stevenson's game, for instance, marbles and cuff-links were the missiles; while in less sophisticated games, pebbles, even clods of earth, might be hurled at opposing forces! There was also much conjecture as to the best method of sending projectiles on their way; should it be catapult, pop-gun, elastic garter or mere flick of the wrist? One of Wells' greatest contributions to wargaming's state-of-the-art was to standardize the weapon! As in real warfare, technology on the toy soldier front had increased by leaps and bounds during the latter part of the 19th century. Apart from their increasing range of model figures, Britain's also manufactured a range of spring breech-loading model cannon. Wells experimented with them all, and finally decided on the replica of a 4.7" naval gun for his games. This gun measured seven and three-quarter inches from end to end, and was, Wells declared: "a priceless gift to boyhood." It fired a 1" length of wood dowel with reasonable accuracy up to several yards, and even had a screw adjustment for the elevation or depression of its barrel. Wells, and the generation of wargamers who followed his example, agreed that the 4.7" breech-loader was "an altogether elegant weapon." According to Wells, Little Wars was born out of a chance shot from a 4.7" at his home in Sandgate near Folkestone. He and author Jerome K. Jerome had lunched in a room littered with toys belonging to Wells' sons. Prior to the serving of coffee, Jerome bragged about his prowess and issued a challenge to Wells that was accepted. Thus, wrote wells, was "fired that day a shot that still echoes round the world…. let us parallel the cannonade of Valmy and call it the Cannonade of Sandgate…." One thing led to another, and before long the Wells household was reverberating to noisy antics that would once have been frowned upon by the author of Floor Games. Although Wells dedicated Little Wars to boys, he left the upper age limit optional, for in his case at least it was intended as an adults-only pursuit. He went as far as to annex the Floor Games apparatus for his wargame terrain, and eventually took over the nursery too, so that he and his cronies could play undisturbed by "alien sounds, trampling skirt-swishers, chatterers", etc. "It was an easy task for the head of the household to evict his offspring," he writes, and adds somewhat heartlessly "I forget what became of the children." In the period 1908-13, the Wellsian wargame grew in size and scope, gathering a system of rules that in time began to resemble military Kriegspiel. Soon after his initial articles were published in Windsor Magazine, Wells entered into a correspondence with various "military people," some of whom poured out their hearts to him with gloomy tales about the dull and unsatisfactory wargames they were forced to conduct in their professional capacity. The one factor that impressed them most about the Wellsian game was its non-reliance upon the services of an umpire: the bane of junior players, and considered by them to be an accursed heirloom left them by the Prussians! The end result of this correspondence was the appendix to Little Wars contributed by a certain "Colonel Mark Sykes," and which, in spite of its good intentions, misdirected amateur wargaming back towards the realm of Kriegspiel, a route by which it was never to return. Whether Wells himself adopted the various "improvements" - factors of logistics, engineering, entrainment, etc., was never disclosed. Perhaps Wells sensed that here was a hobby that could become unmanageable; already his Little Wars was proving a buxom infant - having outgrown the nursery floor and expanded into his garden. Or perhaps there was another reason. One can picture Wells crawling happily around his lawn, getting green patches on the knees of his white flannel trousers. One can also imagine that he glanced up occasionally, frowning towards the horizon where a real Great War was looming. With his sure gift of prophecy, Wells would have realized that his time for playing was nearly over. Today's wargamers tend to dismiss the Wellsian game as antiquated and naïve. Towards the end of his life Wells thought so too. "Up to 1914," he writes in his autobiography, "I found a lively interest in playing a war game, with toy soldiers and guns…. I like to think I grew up out of that stage somewhere between 1916 and 1920, and began to think about war as a responsible adult should." For Wells, the impact of World War One had been traumatic: "like the shock of an unsuspected big gun fired suddenly within a hundred yards." Nevertheless at first he supported the war - notably in an article written on the eve of the 4th August 1914 entitled: "The War That Will End War." That phrase was to become a national slogan. By 1916 he had come to regret his earlier jingoism; even felt to some extent personally responsible for the carnage that was being wrought over the western front. Towards the end of his life Wells sunk into bitter depression, and survived, by only one year, yet another great war. Three decades earlier he had warned in his book Little Wars that the suffering involved in a Great War would be too monstrously big for reason. "My game is just as good as their game," he wrote, "and saner…." The pity of it is that mankind wouldn't listen! Footnote: The Tin Army of the Potomac [LW131] Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #130 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com