Army Lists

The war in South Africa has made and consolidated several notable reputations, but, perhaps, no single officer will have come out of it with greater accession of both popularity and professional esteem than the gallant cavalryman who is commonly know as "B.P". A few years ago Baden-Powell was chiefly known as a smart and resourceful Hussar, who had done good work in Zululand in 1888, and was a recognised authority on polo, pig-sticking, and sport generally.

The son of a well-known Oxford professor, he had entered the 13th Hussars at the age of 19 in 1876, had been adjutant of his regiment, A.D.C at the Cape, and Assistant Military Secretary at Malta, and had won the Kadir Cup "after pig" at Cawnpore. But he did not come to the front as a campaigner until the Ashanti Expedition of 1896, when he was employed on special duty in charge of native levies, and, incidentally, by the Daily Chronicle as a Correspondant. His letters to the latter were afterwards expanded into a volume entitled "The Downfall of Prempeh", which proved him to possess considerable literary and descriptive power. Indeed his intellectual capacity, apart from soldiering, is very marked, and in singing, painting, and amateur acting, as well as in literature, this versatile sabreur takes keen pleasure when not engaged in the sterner pursuit of hunting men.