The toy shops of our world today suffer from a profound absence. Tin soldiers no longer line their aisles, waiting to be called into service. The noble educator of the greatest generations is now relegated to specialists’ shops. Fine though those shops may be, our society would benefit if more children had toy soldiers to play with in their formative years.

The toy soldier is unique among toys in that he has an opponent and invites opposition. Once a child has grown old enough to begin aping the real world, she or he sets up an objective for the toys, and hopefully their friends bless them with competition. Rules (or, more often, norms of argumentation) are established to determine the feasability of achieving those objectives. A simple Kriegspiel develops.

In this way, the toy soldier models the real world better than any other toy. The world is and always will be a place of endless tension between competing forces. A child’s blocks and drawing-books may teach them reasoning, but cannot teach them the limits of reason. From toy battles the child learns two things. First, opposition is inevitable, and will come not just from the “enemy.” Little armies are afflicted by what military men call “friction of war” — they are hard to maneuver and fall over at the most inconvenient times. Second, the best way to overcome opposition is with aggressive initiative — forcing them to respond to you, rather than responding to them.

The school of the toy soldier educated many of the great leaders of the past. Winston Churchill, in tin wars against his brotherJack, learned from toy soldiers the craftiness about battle that he used to such effect against the host of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It is not just military men who have learned from their toys. Understanding of friction and instinctive intiative are military virtues, but they have equal value in the civilian world.

The “prince of paradox,” philosopher and toy soldier fanatic G.K. Chesterton, thought toy soldiers were the only way to study war at any age. “A man writing an article on military strategy,” he thought, “is simply a man writing an article; a horrid sight. But a boy making a campaign with tin soldiers is like a General making a campaign with live soldiers.”

The glory days of the tin soldiers were brief. They began in 1893, when Englishman William Britain invented a way to make toy soldiers hollow and thus cut their price in half. By 1914, some 10 million toy soldiers a year were being produced at Great Britain. Today they are increasingly hard to find. To case the toy shops in any major city is to discover that there are few military figures available in bulk. The toy guns which once boomed in childrens’ play-rooms are silent.

Children will always find ways to play war. Video games, the new war toys, are an awful substitute. They teach children (falsely) that violence is enjoyable, easy to use, and sanitary. Toy soldiers do the opposite — indeed, in their heydey, they were seen as an antidote to rampant militarism. H.G. Wells, who revolutionized tin war with his 1913 book Little Wars, insisted that “I have never yet met in little battle any military gentleman, any captain, major, colonel, general, or eminent commander, who did not presently get into difficulties and confusions among even the elementary rules of the Battle. You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be.”

Toy soldiers are not only boys’ toys. Wells thought they were appropriate for the “more intelligent sort of girl” — which we now know includes as many of them as of boys. In an age that aspires to ensuring that daughters have as much freedom as sons to become secretaries of defense and military commanders, why not toy soldiers beside Barbie?

Fortunately, toy shops are no longer the only place to recruit toy armies. It is not hard to hunt down toy soldiers, cheap or fine, if one is willing to do a little bit of Googling. There is no better present for a young boy or girl this Christmas. Order a few — and don’t hesitate to enjoy yourself and provide an opponent. As the toy-maker Britain once said: “Inside every man, there is a small boy who wants to come out and play.”

T.S. Allen, a graduate of West Point, is a second lieutenant in the United States Army. The views expressed in his work are his own and do not reflect the position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense or any other part of the United States Government. He is posted to London.