'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎586] (677/748)

686
PERSIA
Persian sovereigns, viceroys, governors, or vassals, that it is in
habited by a people of Persian rather than Afghan traditions and
sympathies, and that it is severed by no physical or ethnographical
barrier from Meshed. Twice in this century has the cupidity of
Persia for her old possession brought a Persian army to the walls
of the Afghan fortress, entailing on each occasion diplomatic
rupture, and on the second open war with Great Britain. Behind
her weak barriers she now sits frightened and sullen, hating but
powerless to prevent the reproach of an Afghan garrison in the
ancient capital of Khorasan. It was to this sense of baffled cupi
dity that Lord Beaconsfield appealed when, in his contemplated
partition of Afghanistan after the war of 1878, he committed the-
inexplicable error of proposing once again to hand over Herat to
Persia, thereby giving the lie to one of the few uniform precepts
that have been observed by Great Britain in her Central Asian
policy of this century, and forgetting that, in surrendering Herat
to the Shah, he was in reality vicariously abandoning the so-called
4 Key of India ' to the tender mercies of the Czar. 1
. The ill-feeling between Persian and Afghan was not mended
by the result of the Seistan arbitration, which angered both parties,
and particularly the Amir Shir Ali; nor was it improved after the
last Anglo-Afghan war by the refuge, given under the form of a
veiled incarceration, to Ayub Khan at Teheran. If it has since
slumbered, it is only because Abdur Rahman Khan is too formid
able a neighbour to admit of any tricks being played on the frontier,
and because, weak and vacillating as the Asiatic policy of Great
Britain has been in many respects, it has at least, with the single
exception of Lord Beaconsfield's blunder, retained consistency in
this—that it has always cried, and would still cry c Hands off' to-
any attempt made by the Shah to regain an Afghan dominion that
perished with Nadir Shah and can never be recovered. It may
! Lord Beaconsfield's plan of handing over Herat to Persia was explained by
Sir H. Rawlinson in the Nineteenth Century of February 18S0. General Grodekoff,.
in his Russian book, The War in Turlwmania, vol. ii. p. 296, quotes the text of
the proposed agreement (as to the accuracy or authenticity of which I am not
able to speak). According to him, Herat Was to be surrendered to Persia, arr
English resident was to be stationed there, English officers were to be admitted
in order to fortify the city and drill the Persian garrison, no foreign agents were
to be tolerated, and England was to have the right to introduce troops if any
danger threatened the Persian domination. This was an attempt to shift the
responsibility of holding Herat on to the shoulders of Persia, and could only have
resulted in failure.