I felt that the public would naturally inquire by what previous process of training he had acquired, not merely his consummate skill in the great game of war, but his experience of Asiatics and marvellous influence over their minds.
The earlier portions of this book will serve to answer such inquiries; they will show the gradual development of my brother's character and powers, and that those exploits which astonished the world by their skill and daring, were but the natural results of the high idea of the soldier's profession which he proposed to himself, honestly and consistently worked out during ten years of training, in perhaps the finest school that ever existed for soldiers and administrators. They will explain how it was that, in the midst of a struggle for the very existence of our empire, he was able to call into being and bring into the field around Delhi an "invincible and all but ubiquitous" body of cavalry.
The dragon's teeth which came up armed men, had been sown by him long before in his earlier career in the Punjaub. There, by many a deed of daring and activity, by many a successful stratagem and midnight surprise, by many a desperate contest, he had taught the Sikhs, first to dread him as an enemy, and then to idolize him as a leader. Already in 1849 the Governor-General had had "frequent occasions of noticing not only his personal gallantry, but the activity, energy, and intelligence with which he discharged whatever duties were intrusted to him." Even then the name of Hodson, although unknown in England, except to the few who watched his course with the eyes of affection, was a sound of terror to the Sikhs, and a bugbear to their children. In 1852 he earned this high praise from one best qualified to judge: "Lieutenant Hodson, marvellously attaching the Guides to himself by the ties of mutual honor, mutual daring, and mutual devotion, has on every opportunity proved that the discipline of a public school and subsequent University training are no disqualification for hazardous warfare, or for the difficult task of keeping wild tribes in check."
The title given to this book will sufficiently indicate the principle on which, particularly in the first part, I have made selections from my brother's letters. My object has been to show what a soldier's life in India may be, and what in his case it was; how wide and varied is the field which it opens for the exercise of the highest and noblest qualities, intellectual and moral, of our nature; and how magnificently he realized and grasped the conception.