teresting.
Dr. Giles produced a work primarily intended for scholars of
the Chinese civilization and language. It contains the Chinese
text of Sun Tzu, the English translation, and voluminous notes
along with numerous footnotes. Unfortunately, some of his notes
and footnotes contain Chinese characters; some are completely
Chinese. Thus, a conversion to a Latin alphabet etext was
difficult. I did the conversion in complete ignorance of Chinese
(except for what I learned while doing the conversion). Thus, I
faced the difficult task of paraphrasing it while retaining as
much of the important text as I could. Every paraphrase
represents a loss; thus I did what I could to retain as much of
the text as possible. Because the 1910 text contains a Chinese
concordance, I was able to transliterate proper names, books, and
the like at the risk of making the text more obscure. However,
the text, on the whole, is quite satisfactory for the casual
reader, a transformation made possible by conversion to an etext.
However, I come away from this task with the feeling of loss
because I know that someone with a background in Chinese can do a
better job than I did; any such attempt would be welcomed.

Bob Sutton
al876@cleveland.freenet.edu
bobs@gnu.ai.mit.edu

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INTRODUCTION

Sun Wu and his Book
-------------------

Ssu-ma Ch`ien gives the following biography of Sun Tzu: [1]
--

Sun Tzu Wu was a native of the Ch`i State. His ART OF
WAR brought him to the notice of Ho Lu, [2] King of Wu. Ho
Lu said to him: "I have carefully perused your 13 chapters.
May I submit your theory of managing soldiers to a slight
test?"
Sun Tzu replied: "You may."
Ho Lu asked: "May the test be applied to women?"
The answer was again in the affirmative, so arrangements
were made to bring 180 ladies out of the Palace. Sun Tzu
divided them into two companies, and placed one of the King's
favorite concubines at the head of each. He then bade them
all take spears in their hands, and addressed them thus: "I
presume you know the difference between front and back, right
hand and left hand?"
The girls replied: Yes.
Sun Tzu went on: "When I say "Eyes front," you must
look straight ahead. When I say "Left turn,"