_“I leave no sons_ _To perpetuate my name;_ _But I leave two daughters--_ _LEUCTRA and MANTINEA_ _Who will transmit my fame_ _To remotest posterity.”_ * * * * * _“For empire and greatness it importeth most that a people do profess arms as their principal honor, study and occupation.”--Sir Francis Bacon._ * * * * * _“There is nothing truly imposing but Military Glory.”--Napoleon._ * * * * * _“The conquered in war, sinking beneath the tribute exacted by the victor and not daring to utter their impotent hatred, bequeath to their children miseries so extreme that the aged have not further evil to fear in death, nor the youthful any good to hope in life.”--Xenocles._ * * * * * _“War is an element established by the Deity in the order of the World; perpetual peace upon this Earth we inhabit is a dream.”--Von Moltke._ 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.