Not having had a griping Editorial for some time, this month I am concerned with some of the minor irritations that make life difficult! The first two moans can soon be remedied if the people concerned give a little thought to their actions. Daily I receive two or three letters asking for information (much of it will take hours to research) without the courtesy of a stamped addressed envelope. And to add to the burden, some of the writers are not even subscribers to the Newsletter! Postage is too expensive these days for me to answer such letters even if I had the time to cope with some of the voluminous enquiries. Next, I wish that those impatient people who cannot resist the urge to pick up a telephone, (sometimes as late as eleven o'clock at night) and ring me up to ask where they can buy figures for the Carlist Revolt or what colour were the breeches of the Tyrolean Light Horse in 1813? These invasions of privacy often occur during a television programme or a football match but at any time they are an imposition. Arnold J. Hendrick is an American whose chief contribution to the hobby of war gaming seems to revolve around making up a commercial naval wargame out of Fletcher Pratt's rules and coming out in print with dogmatic personal opinions. In a recent issue of Armchair General he attacked wargames rules by myself and Mike Arnowitz, stating among other things that they were historically worthless. In the last issue of the same magazine, he again refers to the subject saying: "Well I'm all in favour of honesty, forthrightness, etc., etc., I'm afraid the English don't see it quite the same way so I am expecting momentarily a bomb in the mail from Don." Fletcher-Pratt is dead so he cannot object to his rules being pinched and whilst Hendrick was doing this Mike Arnowitz was getting himself killed fighting for America in Vietnam -- but I am still alive and kicking! Hendrick falls into the same pit as many other of the "intense realism" brigade by assuming that wargaming has to make some great contribution to the history of the art of warfare. This is far from being the case. It is a hobby that can be all things to all men, a game played for enjoyment that bears only the most coincidental resemblance to anything that ever took place on a battlefield. No rules , manipulations, or wishful thinking will ever alter those facts and Hendrick shows no signs whatsoever of being a big enough person to make any such revolutions alteration in these aspects of the hobby. Wearing different sorts of hats or tunics to suit whatever period you are fighting does not make the wargame realistic nor the wargamer anything resembling a real life commander. It is far easier to handle a wargames army 2,000 strong on the tabletop than make even a couple of browned-off soldiers do what you tell them! Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 112 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1971 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com