What is the overall theme/general message of "Game of Chess" by T.S. Eliot?

“A Game of Chess” is considerably less riddled with allusion and quotes than “The Burial of the Dead.” The name itself comes from Thomas Middleton’s seventeenth-century play A Game of Chess, which posited the said game as an allegory to describe historical machinations –- specifically the brewing conflict between England and Spain. What might the game allegorize for Eliot? He offers it up as one of several activities, when the woman demands: “What shall we ever do?” Simply a slot in a strict numerical ordering of the day, chess recalls “lidless eyes,” as its players bide the time and wait “for a knock upon the door.” We are not far removed from the masses crowding London Bridge, their eyes fixed on their feet. Modern city-dwellers who float along in a fog are neither dead nor living; their world is an echo of Dante’s Limbo. Chess belongs therefore to this lifeless life; it is the quintessential game of the wasteland, dependent on numbers and cold strategies, devoid of feeling or human contact. Interaction is reduced to a set of movements on a checkered board.