OF THE LEGENDARY PAST
"LITTLE WARS" is the game of kings—for players in an inferior social position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to one hundred and fifty—and even later if the limbs remain sufficiently supple—by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women. This is to be a full History of Little Wars from its recorded and authenticated beginning until the present time, an account of how to make little warfare, and hints of the most priceless sort for the recumbent strategist....
But first let it be noted in passing that there were prehistoric "Little Wars." This is no new thing, no crude novelty;
「LITTLE WARS」は、王たちのゲームです―社会的地位が下位のプレーヤーのための。12歳から百五十歳の―手足が十分柔軟であり続ければればもっと後でも―どの年齢の男の子にも、より良い地位の女の子にも、また、数少ないまれな才能のある女性にも遊べます。これは、記録され認証された初期から現在までの全「History of Little Wars」に、ほとんど戦争を起こさない方法の報告に、そして怠けている戦略家のための最も極めて貴重なタイプのヒントにもなる予定です…
しかし、ちなみに最初は、有史以前の「Little Wars」があったことに注目しましょう。それは、新しいもの、自然のままの変わったものではありません。
but a thing tested by time, ancient and ripe in its essentials for all its perennial freshness—like spring.
There was a Someone who fought Little Wars in the days of Queen Anne; a garden Napoleon. His game was inaccurately observed and insufficiently recorded by Laurence Sterne. It is clear that Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim were playing Little Wars on a scale and with an elaboration exceeding even the richness and beauty of the contemporary game. But the curtain is drawn back only to tantalise us. It is scarcely conceivable that anywhere now on earth the Shandean Rules remain on record. Perhaps they were never committed to paper....
アン女王の時代に「Little Wars」を戦ったある「誰か（Someone）」がいました。庭園のナポレオンです。ローレンス・スターンによる、彼のゲームの不正確な観察と不十分な記録があります。 そして、アンクル・トービーとトリム伍長が、現代のゲームの豊かさと美しささえ上回る スケールで、細やかに「Little Wars」で遊んでいたことは明白です。しかし、カーテンはまた引かれて、我々をじらすばかり。現在地球上のどこかに、Shandean Rulesが記録に残り続けていることは、ほとんど考えられません。おそらく、紙には決して書き留められなかったのです....
And in all ages a certain barbaric warfare has been waged with soldiers of tin and lead and wood, with the weapons of the wild, with the catapult, the elastic circular garter, the peashooter, the rubber ball, and such-like appliances—a mere setting up and knocking down of men. Tin murder. The advance of civilisation has swept such rude contests altogether from the playroom. We know them no more....
THE beginning of the game of Little War, as we know it, became possible with the invention of the spring breechloader gun. This priceless gift to boyhood appeared somewhen towards the end of the last century, a gun capable of hitting a toy soldier nine times out of ten at a distance of nine yards.
「Little War」ゲームの開始は、我々には周知のように、バネ元込め銃の発明によって可能になりました。少年たちへのこの極めて貴重な贈り物は、先の世紀の終わり頃に現われました。9ヤード離れたところにおもちゃの兵士に10回に9回当てることができる銃です。
