  Lattice regularizations of the bosonic string allow no tachyons. This has
often been viewed as the reason why these theories have never managed to make
any contact to standard continuum string theories when the dimension of
spacetime is larger than two. We study the continuum string theory in large
spacetime dimensions where simple mean field theory is reliable. By keeping
carefully the cutoff we show that precisely the existence of a tachyon makes it
possible to take a scaling limit which reproduces the lattice-string results.
We compare this scaling limit with another scaling limit which reproduces
standard continuum-string results. If the people working with lattice
regularizations of string theories are akin to Gulliver they will view the
standard string-world as a Lilliputian world no larger than a few lattice
spacings.
