From a Photo. by West.
Truly an astounding claim! It was not allowed by the umpire, but the fertile brain whence it originated is never likely to let its owner come to grief for want of an expedient.
As a rule possible actual wars are not often played: more usually imaginary countries are established in some part of Europe and given the ships which it is most desired to study. Admiralty charts are used, and an immense amount of study of harbours is thus put in as pastime, while these little wars give prominence to such minor operations as attacks on coastguard stations and so forth, which could not well enter into a larger war. Usually, too, there is some special theme—international law, perhaps, one time, gleaning and sifting intelligence another time, and so forth.
What was, perhaps, the funniest war ever carried out had "Intelligence Sifting" as its theme. The combatants were allowed to procure information of each other's plans by any means they chose—any trick being regarded as legitimate. The gamut of the possible was run in no time. Both sides enrolled their friends as spies, and a silver-haired old lady, who liked to hear officers talk of their professions, was most deadly to one player. Two others, wishing to ensure private discussion, hired a motor-car. They had only gone some little way into the country when a policeman sprang from the hedge and stopped them. After the usual protests the policeman admitted an element of doubt in the case; if they would drive him to the police-station he would have his stop-watch tested in their presence. They took him on board and, as motorists have done before and since, marooned him far away after an hour's drive. By then, plans being decided, they went home by devious routes, thinking no more of the marooned policeman. Not till some days afterwards did it dawn on them that the policeman was a bogus one—an enemy who had availed himself of this means of learning their secret plans!
They were not, however, without resource. The day following the discovery they called on the ship which the chief "admiral" of the other side served in. Keeping out of sight, they waited till he went to his cabin; then, slipping in, gagged and bound him, after which they proceeded to rifle his cabin. Plans were soon found, but false information had been disseminated once or twice, and they were wary. They continued the search, being at last rewarded by finding the whole plan of campaign concealed inside a telescope.
After this they departed happy, and made their dispositions accordingly, handing these in to the umpire long before the gagged one—for they left him gagged and bound—was able to release himself.
Total failure was theirs: their wily enemy had in some way anticipated their raid, and the plan concealed in the telescope had been carefully prepared for their undoing!
It must not be supposed, however, that a war game is often so frivolous as this one, for in the ordinary way any such "spying" is strictly forbidden. Yet few games, perhaps, have been more useful than this one, for certainly half the players must have had impressed upon them in the most direct and unexpectedly forcible of ways the urgent necessity of taking no information for granted and also of sifting it all most carefully, which was the object sought. And if in the hereafter any one of them is the repository of important Service secrets he will have to be a very wily spy who secures them from him. There cannot be much wrong while young officers can be found ready to sacrifice such little leisure as they get in studying war problems for amusement.
It is only in the British Navy that—so far as I can ascertain—this is done. In other navies officially supervised games are plentiful enough, but with them, of course, there is not the same interest. Here and there isolated foreign ships have the game on board and use it for purposes akin to those for which the inventor designed it. Two such ships are the Russian Bayan and Novik—the only two ships which have, so far, distinguished themselves in the present war.
In connection with the former ship it is interesting to note that her captain was a regular attendant at the Grand Duke Alexander's games in St. Petersburg, and used there to be laughingly called the "War-Game Skobeleff." Skobeleff, it will be remembered, was that Russian general who, in the Turco-Russian War, led a hundred desperate forlorn hopes untouched, though all around him were killed or wounded. Any ship played by Captain Wiren of the Bayan used to have similar extraordinary luck; as one Russian officer, who must have Irish blood in him, put it: "The enemy's hits on him were all misses." Strangely enough, the same luck has followed him in the present war—the Bayan survived the torpedo attack of February 8th; in the battle of the 9th, though she charged the Japanese fleet, she was untouched; in the action of the 25th February, when Captain Wiren, with three Russian cruisers, tried to fight the entire Japanese squadron, two were badly mauled, but the Bayan was not hurt.