One of the earliest experimenters with the naval war game was the ubiquitous Kaiser. He took to it keenly, and himself played it often with his admirals. One day, so runs the story in the German Navy, the Kaiser was winning hand over fist, his fleet, led by his flagship, bearing down upon the enemy. Excitement was high, when at the critical moment the Kaiser's fleet suddenly disappeared!
The Kaiser gazed at the deserted board and then at his admirals. An "awkward pause" is said to have ensued, and the writer for one can quite believe that. It is undoubtedly an awkward thing to seem to have played tricks with an Emperor so as to cheat him out of victory.
"Where is my fleet?" asked the Kaiser.
"I do not know, sire," exclaimed his chief opponent, a famous admiral.
He saluted as he spoke, and thereupon there fell to the floor, apparently from down the admiral's sleeve, three of the missing warships! What the admiral felt is better imagined than described.
Fortunately for his reputation one model still remained stuck in his sleeve. In moving his own ships he had rested his arm on the Kaiser's vessels, and so lifted the lot unawares. All's well that ends well, and the Kaiser laughed most heartily; but there is an admiral in the German fleet whom it is in no way wise to talk to about naval war game.
However, this admiral is not the only one who has met misadventure from war-game models, no less a person than the Japanese Admiral Togo heading the list of those who have had "naval war-game hand"—the result of inadvertently leaning on the masts of a model ship!
To resume the description. Every player has assigned to him a particular ship, and this he moves simultaneously with all the others at the direction of his "admiral." Each move nominally occupies a minute of time—actually it usually takes more, and it is in the ways and means adopted to balance this that most of the confidential rules exist. A most essential part of the game is to counterfeit with all possible realism the hurry-scurry of an actual battle.
A NAVAL WAR-GAME TARGET—ACTUAL SIZE.