SCOTSMEN DID IT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 57, 26 July 1940, Page 23

SCOTSMEN DID IT

HE article in last week’s Listener on "Little Wars" raised some queries about the originator of the game, given in our account as H. G. Wells. While it is true that Wells devised this form-of the game (in 1913) the’ military game of little wars, conducted on different lines with less elaborate countryside and armaments, and more elaborate rules to’ make up for these deficiencies, had its origin from a Scotsman. James Keith made himself famous working for the Tsar of all the Russias in the eighteenth century. He held many high positions and later became a Field Marshal of Prussia. While in Germany, he invented the war game of Kreigsschachspiel, now generally shortened to Kreigspiel. This form of "war game a is not, like Wells’s, played with toy soldiers, but with blocks and flags, etc., to represent the troops. Keith was not the only Scotsman to make early and interesting contributions to the game of war. The Reverend Alexander John Forsyth (1769-1843), Minister of Bellhelvie, combined belligerency and religion by inventing the percussion lock, an achievement which was received with about as much enthusiasm as the tank in the last war, but which ultimately had a tremendous effect on warfare. P Preceding him was Colonel Patrick Ferguson, who invented the breechloader, and after them came General Sir Henry Burnett Lumsden, Laird of that fiery place, Bellhelvie (1821-1896). He invented khaki,