The issues raised by Sam and Hal in MWAN #120 about the ethicality or propriety of wargaming are fascinating food for thought and discussion. I would like to express some thoughts that represent my view of this topic - your mileage will vary I am sure. It occurred to me that one way to begin this is to consider what makes wargaming different from model railroading. Wargaming and model railroading share many of the same fascinations - they both include craft and model making activities, they both produce visually appealing results, they both involve the joys and rewards of research and historical study. Yet, I have never heard anyone question the ethical nature of model railroading or it's social appropriateness. Why? I think we can identify two potential reasons: wargaming is inherently a competitive activity and the basis for wargaming is violent conflict and war. If we assume that model railroading is a socially appropriate activity, then one or both of these factors must be why wargaming might be viewed as socially inappropriate. I would have to assume that competitiveness, per se, is not viewed by most people as inappropriate or immoral. Our society abounds with competitiveness. Curiously perhaps, not being a terrible competitive person myself, this is one of the things I like least about wargaming! Fortunately, our hobby provides a wide spectrum of games to match various competitive styles. There are wargames that provide balanced tournaments for those who love to compete and there are wargames that provide adventure and twists and fateful turns for those who, like me, don't care at all if they win or lose, but just want to see how the story turns out. Ironically the manner in which our hobby adjusts to the competitive needs of the hobbyist works to prove how un-warlike wargaming really is. No real world general ever desired anything but a completely 'unfair' battle (in their favor of course), or didn't care if they won or lost!! This simple fact, perhaps as much as any, clearly demonstrates the overwhelming 'game' nature of wargaming. Thus we are left, to no one's surprise I am sure, with the issue of the appropriateness of using violent conflict and war as the basisfor our hobby. Trying to cut to the chase as much as possible, let's go directly to Tariq's figure of seven million dead in the Belgian Congo during its colonial experience. I think we can safely agree that there is nothing we can do to change their fate, they will stay just as exploited and just as dead as they currently are regardless of whether we play colonial wargames or not - or anything else for that matter. I guess I would like to ask the question of Tariq, if wargames related to this historical fact are inappropriate, then where do we draw the line as to what is appropriate relative to these deaths? We could ignore their history entirely, forget (or in the case of most people probably, never discover), that they existed, that they were conquered, brutally subjugated and exploited. Somehow I find that a terribly inappropriate and even immoral option. First of all it is marking them and their sufferings as worthless when it happened, and secondly it is basically saying that studying their history is worthless to us now. I can only view either option as ignorant at best. It seems to me that the best thing we can do as beings of the present for the victims of the atrocious wrongs of the past is to study their histories, learn from them, and do whatever we can to prevent them from happening again in our time or the future. And, I would put forward that wargaming is a valid method of doing such study. It would perhaps be pointed out that reading a history of the period is also a great way to study these things, and I would entirely agree. But, I would assert that wargaming provides unique features that books do not. As probably all wargamers have experienced, there is that moment when suspension of disbelief allows you to truly wonder at what it must have really been like for those that were there. It is one thing to read about facing modern armaments with primitive weapons, it is another to figuratively do it on a wargames table and gain some empathy for the predicament that is frequently difficult if not impossible to gain from reading a book. Perhaps Sam's friends would grant me that point, but I imagine that they still might feel that playing a wargame implies you are having fun with something related to those seven million dead. This I think is confusing the reality of the event with the history of the event. No one is enjoying the actual suffering and deaths of those people. We are enjoying the process by which we are studying the history of that period. If that is wrong then it must be equally wrong to enjoy reading a book about the same period or taking a class about the period or speaking to an expert knowledgeable in the period and feeling that you have profited by doing such and enjoying that feeling. Indeed if that is wrong we must condemn much of the great literature of the world. What would War and Peace be without war? What would Henry V, Macbeth, Hamlet, and even Romeo and Juliet be without violent conflict? Would Star Wars' movies and the Lord of the Rings trilogy be packing the theaters without plot lines involving massive enslavement of the unfortunate and even planetary destruction? Are readers of mysteries and detective stories to be condemned because these books deal with murder most foul? Undoubtedly it would be pointed out that these all, to a greater or lesser degree, are fictional. - but so are our wargames! Our battles on the table top are no more real than the battle of Borodino contained within the pages of War and Peace is the true battle - perhaps less so, as ours never seem to come out like the real one! But our involvement with the history behind these fictions may be greater because of the wonderful ability of gaming to add dimensions to the story. We are not confronted with just the written word, but with representations of the combatants and the terrain over which they fought. We do not just read of the decisions made, but must make decisions. We can not find out 'what happened' by flipping to the end of the book, but must endure the suspense of waiting until the results of our decisions are determined and the end is known - often a frustrating and agonizing experience! Indeed I have come to think of wargaming (at least as I enjoy playing it) as being closer to impromptu theater than anything else. We start with a plot line, a cast of leading characters, a set, props, and hundreds or thousands of extras, and we interactively create and act out a story; and in the process we discover things about the characters and ourselves and the basis of the plot. Is this so very different from "what if ing" as we read history or visualizing the action while reading historical fiction? If the reader of a great work of fiction or of a historical work is not to be condemned for the 'people' that die every time a page is turned, why should a wargamer be condemned for the 'people' that die every time the dice are rolled? Are the 'dead' of one any more real than the 'dead' of the other? Is one more disrespectful of the actual participants of the history than the other? Are either disrespectful to the actual participants? Now please do not think me a Pollyanna about this issue - I do not think that all wargamers play wargames all the time just to empathetically connect to the history, victims, and participants of past wars. I have known many wargamers who are so completely disconnected from the history of a gaming period that a Zulu and a Space Marine are completely interchangeable in all moral, ethical, and historical senses! They just like to play games and in many cases are as blissfully ignorant of the cold realities of the real world, current or historical, as a new born babe. But even for these innocents, wargaming is most certainly not a glorification of violence. If you want to see glorification of real violence, tune in an NFL game and watch the fans go wild when the home town line backer blindsides the opposing quarterback on a critical third down play - that is real violence and real glorification. I would put forward that wargaming, as a participatory exercise and not just an observational one, is inescapably an educational experience for all that partake of it. - even if they do not intend it to be. I would like to finish with this quote from Little Wars by H. G. Wells (as everyone probably knows, a noted pacifist of his time): My game is just as good as their game [speaking of real war], 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. ... 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 realize 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 realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do. Back to MWAN # 122 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2003 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com