when the selection lies among young officers who have still to win their
spurs. Yet from among old or young, experienced or inexperienced, it
would have been impossible to have selected an officer with higher
qualifications for the work in hand than the young man on whom the
choice fell.

Born of a soldier stock, and already experienced in war, Harry Lumsden
possessed all the finest attributes of the young British officer. He was
a man of strong character, athletic, brave, resolute, cool and
resourceful in emergency; a man of rare ability and natural aptitude for
war, and possessed, moreover, of that magnetic influence which
communicates the highest confidence and devotion to those who follow.
In addition he was a genial comrade, a keen sportsman, and a rare friend
to all who knew him. Such, then, was the young officer selected by Sir
Henry Lawrence to raise the Corps of Guides.

That the commencement should be not too ambitious, it was ruled that the
first nucleus should consist only of one troop of cavalry and two
companies of infantry, with only one British officer. But as this story
will show, as time and success hallowed its standards, this modest squad
expanded into the corps which now, with twenty-seven British officers
and fourteen hundred men, holds an honoured place in the ranks of the
Indian Army.

Following out the principle that the corps was to be for service and not
for show, the time-honoured scarlet of the British Army was laid aside
for the dust-coloured uniform which half a century later, under the now
well-known name of _khaki_, became the fighting dress of the whole of
the land forces of the Empire.