LUMSDEN OF THE GUIDES.*
IN the opinion of his biographers, and of the world also, Sir Harry Lumsden received but a very inadequate recognition of the services which he rendered to his country. But there
was one title, at least—a prouder one than any that it was in the power of a Government to confer—which he achieved for himself, and by which he will always be remembered, and
that is the title of this volume,—" Lumsden of the Guides." It was to him that the famous corps, which for nearly half a century now has carried off the chief honours of Indian frontier warfare, owed not only its origin, but its first training and organisation. Sir Henry Lawrence, during the first Afghan War, had seen the difficulties incurred by a want of guides and interpreters, and resolved that for the future a regular place for these necessary adjuncts should be found in the ranks of the army, British and native. According to the late Sir Henry Daly, whom the authors quote— "The Guides, originally one troop of cavalry and two com- panies of infantry, were raised by Major-General Sir Harry Barnett Lumsden, then a Lieutenant. Lumsden possessed characteristics for the task in a rare degree. A daring sports- man, full of endurance, hardy and strong of frame, with an instinctive knowledge of men which gave him a power which none under him ever questioned. Life in the Punjab in those times was full of incidents, and few were the days which did not test self-dependence and soldierly intelligence. Henry Lawrence quickly gauged Lumsden's genius. In addition to the strength begat by the stirring scenes in which he moved, Lumsden breathed among giants. The Lavrrences, Edwardes, the Nichol- sons were his associates. It is hardly enough to say that on the enrolment of the Guides each man's personal history was known to Lumsden. Men from every wild and warlike tribe were repre- sented in its ranks—men habituated to war and sport, the danger and vicissitudes of border life : Afridis and Goorkha.s, Sikhs and Huzaras, Wuziris, Pathans of every class, and even Kafirs, speaking all the tongues of the border, Persian, Pfishtil, etc., dialects unknown to the men of the plains. In many cases the Guides had a camp language or patois of their own. Lumsden sought out the men notorious for desperate deeds, leaders in forays, who kept the passes into the hills, and lived amid in- accessible rocks. He made Guides of them. Tempted by regular pay and enterprise, many joined the corps and became con- spicuous for daring and fidelity. On the border, and in the ranks of the Guides, tales, abundant in humour, were told of Lumsden's interviews with men who had defied all authority, and had never been seen in the plains but for murder and plunder."
In other words, he tamed the wolves by making watch- dogs of them. More than one famous soldier on the Indian' frontier tried the same experiment, but none carried it to so successful an issue. The Corps of Guides became famous not only for reckless daring and patient endurance, but also for their discipline and fidelity. And the man who per- formed this miracle—who could take the worst elements of a turbulent country and turn them to the beat uses in the cause of peace—could have been no common man and possessed of no ordinary genius for ruling his fellow-men. The story of Dilawur Khan is typical of the corps to which he belonged, He was an accomplished scoundrel who made a precarious
livelihood by a system of robbery that proved his possession, at least, of considerable courage and dexterity. To the ordinary mind the obvious remedy in Dilavrar's case would have been to catch him and hang him. Lumsden, however, made a Guide of him by acts of persuasion that were peculiarly his own. And the result was a brave soldier,—" who soon rose to be a native officer, and one of the most trusted men in the regiment, finally falling at his post of duty as a Guide, basely betrayed on a mission on which he of all men should never have been sent.' That the watch-dog should still remain wolf at the bottom • Lumsden of The Guides. By General Sir Peter Lutnsden, 0.0.8., C.S.I., and 0. R. Elam* C.S.I. London : John Murray. [16..]
was, of course, sometimes inevitable. An amusing instance of the old unregenerate nature that still lay beneath the discipline of his trusted soldiers was once offered to Lumsden _ on the ocoasion of an inspection of his corps by Sir John Lawrence :—
" Sir John, though cordially relying on Lumsden's judgment, spent two or three days in cultivating a personal knowledge, as was his habit, with all that came before him ; and thus it seemed to the men of the Guides that their leader was harassed by explanations instead of being with them as usual in the field or at sports. The night before Sir John was to march with his retinue from Murdan, Lumsden, after Sir John had gone to bed, went outside and sat on the parapet of the fort. After a while, an Afridi orderly, who always attended Lumsden in sport or fight, crept up to him and said, 'Since the great Lawrence came you have been worried and distressed; many have observed this, and that be is always looking at papers, asking questions, and overhauling your accounts. Has he said anything to pain you ? Is he interfering with you ? Ile starts for Peshavrur to-morrow morning; there is no reason why he should reach it."
During the great Mutiny the Guides did splendid service, but by a hard fate the man who had practically made them was not privileged to lead them. When the revolt broke out, Lumsden, together with his brother, were engaged in a mission to Candahar ; and at Candahar they were obliged to remain, as it was judged at headquarters that Lumsden's presence was even more necessary there than it could be at the head of his own men. His position was, under the circum- stances, a very difficult and anxious one; but his own difficulties and anxieties must have seemed insignificant
beside the bitterness of forced inaction. The whole of India was engaged in a struggle for life or death; his own men, who were almost his own children, were in the front of the fray ; and he himself had to sit still outside and watch. What news he had came from Herbert Edwardes at Peshawur, whose sympathy and untiring zeal in keeping Lumsden informed must have afforded the latter the best consolation that was possible under the circumstances. Edwardes, too, had to watch ; but it was one thing to watch at the important post of Peshawar, with the possibility of action, and quite another to watch at Candahar and feel one- self helpless. The letters received from Edwardes were preserved by Sir Harry Lumsden, and constitute quite one of the most interesting features of this book. Edwardes was a brilliant writer as well as a great soldier and administrator, and his sketches of events as they passed, with an occasional forecast of what might be expected to happen, are masterly. He was quick to see what his countrymen at home and in India took a long time in realising,—namely, that the much deplored delay before Delhi was really a providential dispensation in our interests. Delhi was the drain into which the vortex of revolution was sweeping all the mutinous factions of the country. "One after another," he writes, "the rebel regiments have been attached to the vortex, and got themselves buried in successive fights. It is no longer every station that we have to recover, but Delhi alone. The future peace of this country would have been much more remote if we had had to hunt brigades over Bengal."
The chief obstacle that stood in the way of Lumsden's ad- vancement to more important posts was his rooted dislike to office work. He was essentially a man of action, and of action out of doors. He says in one of his letters :—" As you know, I do not mind any amount of work, but office work and confinement indoors is not my speciality; I would always rather ride twenty miles than write a note." And Sir Richard Pollock, who knew him well, writes of him in the same strain :—
"Never was any man who had such high qualifications for administrative work so intensely averse to it. I suppose because he hated putting pen to paper. While commanding the Guides he took civil work temporarily to oblige the Government, but deliberately and without hesitation declined to be a frontier com- missioner, though he must have well known that the appointment would lead to the very highest posts, such as Hyderabad, or to a lieutenant-governorship of a province."
But the same authority records that Lumsden "was a head and shoulders above all his contemporaries in his knowledge of native character (especially Pathans) and his ability to get good and loyal service out of them," and these qualifications are more rare and more useful than merely official ones. Lumsden's work in India was such as very few men could have undertaken at all.
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