My purpose in this lecture is merely to give our students and their parents a notion of what the Service actually is and does, and to urge my young countrymen to claim their rightful share in the good things of a career which still probably offers higher interests and greater attractions than those offered by any other branch of the Service of the Crown.
The only official career which, to my thinking, can compare with the Indian Civil Service in the attractions presented to an able youth with spirit and ambition is that of the Royal Engineers. The 'Sapper' has the world for his oyster. His opportunities are not confined by the limits of India; and, as recent examples testify, he may aspire, not only to the ordinary prizes of his profession, but to the rank of a Colonial Governor in Africa or Australia, or of Commander-in-Chief in India. A clever lad with a strong bent for mathematics will probably be well advised to try for the Royal Engineers at seventeen or eighteen years of age rather
