Franklin K.‏ Young

“ One who is opposed by such blockheads, necessarily must gain advantages continually; for conduct so opposite to all the laws of the Art, is, in itself, sufficient to incur ruin. It is for such negligence on his own part that one often has cause bitterly to reproach himself. But such errors, especially on the part of great players, are exemplary lessons for the student, who from them may learn to be more prudent, circumspect, and wise.
Those who make a mere pastime of Chess, who have no desire for the true benefit of the game, do not deserve information. ”

“ He possesses talent without ambition and serves the state without regard to his own interest. At the head of the army, he contents himself with restoring discipline and beating the enemy. When addressing the assembly, he is equally unmoved by the disapprobation or the applause of the multitude.
“We laugh at his singularities and we have discovered an admirable secret for revenging ourselves for his contempt. He is the only general we have left—but we do not employ him; he is the most upright and perhaps the most intelligent of our counsellors—but we do not listen to him. ”

“ It is distressing, to be afflicted with the absurdities of men, who, victims of the fancy, confound enthusiasm with capability and mistake mania for talent. The world is full of such people, who, in all honesty thinking themselves philosophers, are only visionaries enamoured of their own lunatic illusions.
The true discipline for the student who aspires to proficiency at Chess-play, is, in every succeeding game, to imitate more closely the play of the Great Masters ”

“ 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. ”

“ Inflated in good fortune, groveling in adversity, these players never attain to that sage contemplation, which renders the scientific practice of Chess so indescribably beautiful.
There is another class of Chess-players who from mere levity of mind are incapable of steadily pursuing any fixed plan; but who overturn, move by move, even such advantages as their good fortune may have procured. There are others, who, although possessed of great vivacity of mind and eager for information, yet lack that patience necessary to receive instruction. ”

“ The province of Grand Reconnaissance is exactly to determine the relative advantages and disadvantages in time, numbers, organization, topography, mobility and position, which appertain to hostile armies contained in the same strategetic plane; and to designate those Corps d’armee by which such advantages are materially expressed.
Those processes which appertain to the making of Grand Reconnaissance, necessarily are argumentative; inasmuch as all the facts never are determinate. ”

“ PRINCIPLE The King is the SOURCE from whence the Chess-pieces derive all power of movement; and from his ability to move, emanates ALL power for attack and for defence possessed by a Chessic army.
This faculty of mobility, derived from the existence of the kindred King, is the all essential element in Chess-play, and to increase the mobility of the kindred pieces and to reduce that of the adverse pieces is the simple, sure and only scientific road to victory ”

“ These players at the game cannot benefit by example. The follies of others afford them no useful lesson. Each generation of such “wood-shifters,” has blindly followed in the footsteps of those preceding and daily is guilty of errors which times innumerable have been fully exposed.
It is the darling habit of such folk to treat the great things in Chess with levity and to dignify those insignificant matters which appertain to the game when used as a plaything. ”

“ All benefit to be derived from the advantage in Numbers is limited to the active and scientific use of every corp d’armee; otherwise excess of Numbers, not only is of no avail, but easily may degenerate into fatal disadvantage by impeding the decisive action of other kindred corps. Says Napoleon: “It is only the troops brought into action, that avails in battles and campaigns—the rest does not count.”
A loss in Numbers at chess-play occurs only when two pieces are lost for one, or three for two, or one for none, and the like. ”

“ Thus it is that while every Chesspiece represents a perfectly appointed and equally powerful body of troops, these corps d’armee in Chessplay as in scientific warfare are not duplicates, except to others of their own class. Each of these corps d’armee is made up of Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery in correct proportion to the service they are to perform and such proportions are determined not by simple arithmetic, but by those deployments, developments, evolutions, and manoeuvres, which such corps d’armee is constructed promptly and efficiently to execute. ”

“ However vast one’s capabilities may be, there is no mind so comprehensive but that it has much to learn from other minds which have preceded it, and no talent is so potential but that its development is proportional to its exercise.
For no matter how broad and exact one’s knowledge, the application of such knowledge alone constitutes Art, and the value of such knowledge always is commensurate to the degree of skill attained in the use of it. ”

“ Some, fettered by prejudice from their infancy, wish not, or are unable to break their chains; others, delighting in frivolity know not a word of mathematics and enjoy life without allowing their pleasures to be interrupted by a moment of reflection. Should one thinking man in a thousand be discovered it will be much; and it is for him that men of talent write.
“The rest naturally are offended, for nothing so enrages the mediocre mind as to be compelled to admit to itself its own inferiority. ”

“ The reason for this is: whenever men invited by curiosity, seek to examine circumstantially even the less intricate situations on the Chess-board, they at once become lost in a labyrinth abounding in obscurities and contradictions. Those, who ignorant of the synthetic method of calculation, are compelled to depend upon their analytic powers, quickly find that these, on account [11] of the number of unknown quantities, are utterly inadequate.
Any attempt to calculate the true move in Chess-play by analysis, other than in situations devoid of unknown quantities, is futile. ”

“ The part that the General, whether in Chess-play or in Warfare, has to act, always is more difficult because he must not permit himself the least mistake, but is bound to behave with prudence and sagacity throughout a long series of intricate processes. A single false deduction, or a movement of the enemy unintelligible to a commander, may lead him to commit an irremediable error ”

“ I found in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in War; that they were nourished in War and wasted in Peace; taught by War and deceived by Peace; trained by War and betrayed by Peace ”

“ In all our modern-day mis-interpretations of the ethics of Chess and our characteristic Twentieth Century looseness of practice as applied to Chess-play, perhaps there exists no greater absurdity, than that subversion of ordinary intelligence, daily evinced by permitting a piece which cannot move, to give check. ”

“ Only by intelligent reflection upon their own experience and upon the experiences of others, can one acquire knowledge.
The triviality of crowding the memory with things that may or may not be true, is the merest mimicry of education. ”

“ To hold that a piece disqualified by the laws of the game can nullify the activities of a piece in full possession of its powers, is to assert that black is white, that the moon is made of green cheese, that the tail can wag the dog, or any other of those things which have led the German to promulgate his caustic formula on the Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ PRINCIPLE All else being equal the advantage of Numbers is decisive of victory in battle and Campaign.
Things being unequal, the advantage in Numbers may be nullified by adverse advantages in Organization, Topography, Mobility, Time and Position. ”

“ It is sufficient for Mobility that it provide superior facilities for movement; it is for Strategy to define the Line of Movement; for Logistics, by means of this Line of Movement, to bring into action in proper times and sequence, the required force, and for Tactics, with this force, to execute the proper evolutions.
Mobility derives its importance from three things which may occur severally or in combination, viz.:
1. All power for offense or for defense is eliminated from a Chess-piece the instant it loses its ability to move. ”

“ Tilly has a great army of old lads with iron faces that dare look an enemy in the eye; they are confident of victory, have never been beaten and do not know what it means to fly. Tilly tells his men he will beat me and the old man is as likely to do it as to say it.”—Gustavus Adolphus. ”

“ The chief requisite for success when acting against an adverse Grand Column in Presence, is the advantage in POSITION.
The primary process is that of a Grand Manoeuvre against an adverse army acting in the Formation by Wings, and the object of such Grand Manoeuvre always is, by availing to the uttermost of its situation upon the Tactical Center, i.e., upon the area midway between the adverse Wings thus isolated from each other; to act in overwhelming Numbers, first against one and then against the other hostile bodies. ”

“ Lastly, there are not a few whose way of thinking and the validity of whose calculations, depend upon their good or ill digestion.
It is in vain that such people endeavor to divine things beyond their understanding. Hence it is, that among those incapable of thought, or too indolent for mental effort, the game proceeds in easy fashion until routine is over. Afterward, at each move, the most probable conjecture passes for the best reason and victory ultimately rests with him whose blunders are least immediately consequential.
Understanding of high art is dispensed only to the few ”

“ In the words of the Count de Saxe:
“The power of custom is absolute. To depart from it is a crime, and the most inexcusable of all crimes is to introduce innovations. For most people, it is sufficient that a thing is so, to forever allow it to remain so.” ”

“ But as the power of the Queen can be exerted only upon one point, obviously, her observation of the remaining twenty-six points is merely a manifestation of mobility, and her display of force is limited to a single square. ”

“ For the normal advantage that attaches to the first move in a game of Chess is vastly enhanced by a peculiarity in the mathematical make-up of the surface of the Chess-board, whereby, he who makes the first move may secure to himself the advantage in mobility, and conversely may inflict upon the second player a corresponding disadvantage in mobility. ”

“ Chess teaches to conduct campaigns, to win battles, and to move troops securely and effectively in the presence of and despite the opposition of an equal or superior enemy.
Military schools graduate boys as second-lieutenants commanding a platoon. Chess graduates Generals, able to mobilize Corps d’armee, whatever their number or location; to develop these into properly posted integers of a grand Strategic Front and to manoeuvre and operate the army as a Strategetic Unit, in accordance to the laws of the Strategetic art and the principles of the Strategetic science. ”

“ Creative, or foundational War, is that in which the natural restlessness and love of contest among men, is disciplined into modes of beautiful—though it may be fatal—play; in which the natural ambition and love of Power is chastened into aggressive conquest of surrounding evil; and in which the natural instincts of self-defence [x] are sanctified by the nobleness of the institutions which they are appointed to defend. ”

“ It is a fundamental of Chess mathematics that the King cannot be exposed to capture.
Furthermore, it is to be noted as equally fundamental, that:
1. A piece exerts no force against that point upon which it is posted; 2. That whatever power a piece exerts, always is exerted against some other point than the point upon which it stands; and that; 3. In order to exert such power, it is an all-essential that the piece move from the point which it occupies to the point at which its power is to be exerted. ”

“ At his pleasure he may move to and occupy either of the sixty-four squares of the Chess-board, in a minimum of one and in a maximum of seven moves. The only obstacles to his march are distance and the opposition of an enemy.
The Strategical weakness of the Topographical Horizon [76] peculiar to the King arises from its always taking on and maintaining the physical form of a plain. Consequently it is vulnerable to attack from all sides and what is far worse, it readily is commanded and from a superior topographical post, by every adverse piece, except the King and Pawn. ”

“ At the same time the student should thoroughly instruct himself in military history, topography, logic, mathematics, and the science of fortification. With all of these the strategist must be familiar.
But his chief aim must be to perfect his judgment and to bring it to the highest degree of broadness and exactness.
This is best done by contemplation of the works of the Great Masters.
The past history of Chess-play, is the true school for those who aspire to precedence in the Royal Game. ”