Ridiculing the dead

Some lad at chessgames.com posted this.

It comes from the St Paul Despatch, 1901.

The writer mentions Young and indeed slips intio Young mode.
(who, as the poster suggests, may one day be hailed as the founder of Modern Chess.)

The player in question is Nicholas Menelaus MacLeod (you don't get names like these days) 1870-1965.


"MacLeod plays chess on a plane peculiarly his own. His games are.
therefore, to be criticised not from the standpoint of the hand book,
but from the principles laid down by Young, which is known as synthetical chess.

That is to say, each move is made from a base of operation that brings all
pieces into immediate play with the least possible waste of time, while at
the same time protecting that base about the king in the best formative manner.

In doing this, the opponent wonders at the beginning of the game what
kind of man is entrenched on the other side of the board.

He becomes more or less wary as he notices that MacLeod is fortifying a weak point here and there.

Then he commences to send his scouts further out and the report comes in
that MacLeod's forces are sleeping on their arms.

Then he sounds the bugle, for a grand charge on the left wing.

He deploys all of his doughty knights in the skirmish. There is more or less
blood shed. But the line ahead is as strong as adamant.

But he has forgotten his right wing, now unsupported;
he sees the clouds of battle gather on that fatal weak point.

He seeks to recall his scattered army, but too late.

The sleepy warrior pours a deadly broadside on the unsupported infantry
and we gracefully capitulate.