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LONDON, DECEMBER 4, 1907.

MEN OF THE DAY.

No. Mxcvi.—LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR GEORGE LUCK, K.C.B.

SEVEN-AND-SIXTY years one month and nine days ago Lieutenant-General Sir George Luck, K.C.B., was born at the market-town of Malling in Kent, the home for generations of his old Kentish family of prestigious name. He took his education in the gentle and leisurely fashion affected by the private schools of the 'Forties, which in the educational sphere at any rate never roared, and joined the army at the age of eighteen. Nine years later he attained the rank of captain in the Innis-killing Dragoons, and in 1867 became lieutenant-colonel of the Fifteenth Hussars. During the twenty-one years it had taken him to reach that rank he had constantly shown himself a keen soldier, with his heart in his work; and after five years' command of the Fifteenth Hussars he was appointed brigadier-general commanding the Sind district. He proved so efficient and successful in the discharge of the duties of this command that two years later he was appointed Inspector-General of Cavalry in India, and after six years took the command of the Quetta district. In 1895 he became Inspector-General of Cavalry in Great Britain and Ireland; and in 1897 was created K.C.B. But though he discharged the function of Inspector-General with all the peaceful content consistent with a vigorous and punctual performance of its duties, he had never been the man to miss a chance of active service, and he commanded the Fifteenth Hussars in the field during both the Afghan and Boer wars. In the year 1905 he was appointed His Majesty's Lieutenant of the Tower. As one whose childhood had been spent in the roaring 'Forties, he would naturally have preferred that the lions should not have been removed from it before his term of office; but none the less he filled the post with all the picturesqueness which attends an alert and stern military bearing. He has never attained a newspaper notoriety, but he has done much more honest work for the Empire than many who have.

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MEN OF THE DAY. No. 337.

MAJOR-GENERAL SIR PETER STARK LUMSDEN, G.C.B., C.S.I.

THERE is no older or better family in Scotland than that of the Lumsdens, which came originally from Cumberland. Its name is enshrined in the famous Raghun Roll which gives the list of those who swore fealty to Edward I. at Berwick in 1296, and it has been established in Aberdeenshire for some four hundred years. Lumsdens served with the Scottish Archers in France and Germany, a Lumsden was one of Gustavus Adolphus' Colonels, and it was Sir James Lumsden who on a famous occasion defended Dundee till his detachment was reduced to eight men, so that he was taken and his body hung over the gateway of the town. In the beginning of the present century there went out to India Thomas, a younger son of the house, who was the first subaltern enrolled in the Bengal Horse Artillery, who became a Colonel, and who warred valiantly for England all his life. He left three sons to the Queen's Indian Army. William Lumsden fell storming a gate before Delhi with Nicholson's column. Harry Burnett Lumsden was one of the original Punjab political officers selected by Henry Lawrence, raised the Corps of Guides, and fought in every border campaign from 1846 to 1857.

Sir Peter was born in the camp at Muttra on the 9th November, 1827, and is now in his eight-and-fiftieth year. He was sent home to school in Aberdeenshire, was afterwards at Twickenham and Wimbledon, and at twenty entered Addiscombe College, whence he went to India. Young Lumsden proved a true Aberdonian, frank of speech, uncompromising in conduct, plain and straightforward, and fearless in action. He made some enemies because he would do no jobs, nor even so much as recommend a field officer for a C.B. on account of an action in which not a shot was fired; but those under whom he has served have never failed to become his fastest friends, among whom he has counted such men as Lord Clyde, Sir John Lawrence, Lord Napier of Magdala, Lord Strathnairn, and Lord Sandhurst. He is the only officer in the Army who has held both the Quartermaster-Generalship and the Adjutant-Generalship, besides having been Chief of the Staff to the Indian Army.

He was selected by Mr. Gladstone's Government to conduct upon the spot the delimitation of the Afghan frontier with the Russians. Long left by that Government to await the arrival of Russians who never came, he displayed great tact when they did come, in avoiding with them a conflict which he had been ordered to decline. The massacre of the Afghans at Penj-deh, which followed as a matter of course, was succeeded by the presentation of a sword of honour to its perpetrator, Komaroff, on the part of Russia; and on the part of England, by the recall of Sir Peter, whose warnings had been proved to be only too well founded, and whose presence on the frontier was regarded as a danger to Russia equally by the Czar and by the Czar's personal friend and political tool, Mr. Gladstone. Sir Peter was therefore ordered home, and it is to the Tories that he owes the honour, all too tardily bestowed on him, of being made a G.C.B.

Sir Peter is eminently a frontier officer. He had been sent on a mission to Afghanistan in 1857; and in the Afghan war his knowledge of the country, the people, and the language proved invaluable. He has always shown himself as ready in action and as fertile in resource as he is prudent in council. He is a great worker, yet a modest man who has never pushed himself. He is thoroughly honourable and completely honest, has an iron frame, and is fearless alike of personal danger and of official responsibility. In short Sir Peter is a splendid soldier and an independent man.