Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" — John Shaqi
Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars"Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars"
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Games; Games -- Juvenile literature
WE always build twin cities, like London and Westminster, or
Buda-Pesth, because two of us always want, both of them, to be mayors
and municipal councils, and it makes for local freedom and happiness to
arrange it so; but when steam railways or street railways are involved
we have our rails in common, and we have an excellent law that rails
must be laid down and switches kept open in such a manner that anyone
feeling so disposed may send a through train from their own station
back to their own station again without needless negotiation or the
personal invasion of anybody else's administrative area. It is an
undesirable thing to have other people bulging over one's houses,
standing in one's open spaces, and, in extreme cases, knocking down and
even treading on one's citizens. It leads at times to explanations that
are afterwards regretted.
We always have twin cities, or at the utmost stage of coalescence a
city with two wards, Red End and Blue End; we mark the boundaries very
carefully, and our citizens have so much local patriotism (Mr.
Chesterton will learn with pleasure) that they stray but rarely over
that thin little streak of white that bounds their municipal
allegiance. Sometimes we have an election for mayor; it is like a
census but very abusive, and Red always wins. Only citizens with two
legs and at least one arm and capable of standing up may vote, and
voters may poll on horseback; boy scouts and women and children do not
vote, though there is a vigorous agitation to remove these
disabilities. Zulus and foreign-looking persons, such as East Indian
cavalry and American Indians, are also disfranchised. So are riderless
horses and camels; but the elephant has never attempted to vote on any
occasion, and does not seem to desire the privilege. It influences
public opinion quite sufficiently as it is by nodding its head.
We have set out and I have photographed one of our cities to illustrate
more clearly the amusement of the game. Red End is to the reader's
right, and includes most of the hill on which the town stands, a shady
zoological garden, the town hall, a railway tunnel through the hill, a
museum (away in the extreme right-hand corner), a church, a rifle
range, and a shop. Blue End has the railway station, four or five
shops, several homes, a hotel, and a farm-house, close to the railway
station. The boundary drawn by me as overlord (who also made the hills
and tunnels and appointed the trees to grow) runs irregularly between
the two shops nearest the cathedral, over the shoulder in front of the
town hall, and between the farm and the rifle range.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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