'The Times' Dec 05, 1923; pg 18; Issue 43516
Major H.C. FINNIS
A correspondent writes: -- The news of the murder by Wazir raiders on November 30 of Major H. C. Finnis, O.B.E., I.A., Political Agent of the Zhob District of Baluchistan, brings grief to a very large circle of friends at home and abroad.

By his death the British Government loses an officer of great promise, whose place it will not be easy in these days to fill. For he was one of that adventurous, but small, band of officers who, from the early days of their Government service, devote themselves to a lifelong career in the wild tracts of Baluchistan, on the North-West Frontier of India. To some it has brought distinction and honours; to others, as the records, especially of the last 12 months, show death by the bullet of the lurking enemy or the knife of the assassin.

After joining the 14th Sikhs, Major Finnis found himself with his regiment in Quetta, and became A.D.C. to the Chief Commissioner of Baluchistan, who, recognising his abilities, obtained his appointment to the Political Department of the Government of India, which he joined in January, 1912.

By the time the Great War broke out in 1914 he had already shown promise of a successful polital future, and was holding temporary charge of the important district of Quetta. The war necessitated a return of military service, and Major Finnis joined the 15th Sikhs in France. He was fortunate enough, after arduous service, to be one of the very few officers of that distinguished regiment to escape unscathed, and was then sent to rejoin his old regiment, the 14th Sikhs, in Gallipoli, where he rendered further gallant service, and was taken on to the personal staff of General Sir Francis Davies on the Egyptian front.

Recalled to military service in India at the end of 1916, Major Finnis saw more service in Mesopotamia, and was unable to rejoin the Political Department until 1919, when, after serving as Assistant and then Political Agent of the Khaibar, he was appointed to the important charge of the Zhob District of Baluchistan, a wild tract, about the size of Ireland in area, bordering on Afghanistan on the west and Waziristan an the north, where the turbulent tribesmen ever need a patient but firm and intrepid officer to control and rule them. In the discharge of his duty there Major Finnis has now met his death. Few will be more widely regretted, not only by the frontier tribesmen whom his firmness and sympathy won to friendship, but by his many friends and brother officers at home and abroad, to whom he endeared himself by his smiling cheerfulness and unshaken equability with which he met every circumstance of life. Always the same in manner to high and low, whether native tribesmen, subaltern, civil governor, or field-marshal, he was able to extract the seemingly impossible from them all, often to their own suprise.