PREFACE
“To become a good General one well may begin by playing at Chess.”—Prince de Condé.
Except the theatre of actual Warfare, no spot known to man furnishes such facilities for the practice of combined strategy, tactics and logistics as does the surface of the Chess-board.
To those familiar with the Science of Strategetics, it needs no proof that ability to play a good game at Chess, indicates the possession of faculties common to all great military commanders.
At a certain point, the talent of Morphy for Chess-play and the talent of Napoleon for Warfare become merged; and beyond this point, their methods of thought and of action are identical.
Opportunity to display, and in most spectacular fashion, their singular and superlative genius, was not wanting to either.
But unlike the ferocious Corsican, whose “only desire is to find myself on the battlefield,” the greatest of all Masters at Chess, found in the slaughter of his fellow-creatures no incentive sufficient to call forth those unsurpassed strategetical powers, which recorded Chess-play shows he possessed.
From this sameness of talent, common to the great Chess-player and the great military commander, arises the practical utility of the Royal Game.
For by means of Chess-play, one may learn and practice in their highest interpretation, mental and physical processes of paramount importance to the community in time of extreme peril.
From such considerations and for the further reason that in a true Republic all avenues to greatness are open to merit, scientific Chess-play should be intelligently and systematically taught in the public schools. “A people desirous of liberty will entrust its defense to none but themselves,” says the Roman maxim, and in crises, woe to that land where the ruler is but a child in arms, and where the disinclination of the people towards its exercise is equalled by their unfamiliarity with the military habit.
Despite the ethics of civilization, the optimism of the “unco guid” and the unction even of our own heart’s deep desire, there seems no doubt but that each generation will have its wars.
“Pax perpetua,” writes Leibnitz, “exists only in God’s acre.” Here on earth, if seems that men forever will continue to murder one another for various reasons; all of which, in the future as in the past, will be good and sufficient to the fellow who wins; and this by processes differing only in neatness and despatch.
Whether this condition is commendable or not, depends upon the point of view. Being irremediable, such phase of the subject hardly is worth discussing. However, the following by a well-qualified observer, is interesting and undeniably an intelligent opinion, viz.: