Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎26r] (52/312)

since all such measures of Russian aggression
or intrigue against our peace in India were con
ceived and set in motion long before a single
Indian soldier took ship at Bombay.
The same Muscovite organs, however,, while
they openly avow the broken faith of their
Government, indicate what is likely to be its
present policy. " The Oxus expedition," says
the journal we have quoted, "will only be
revived as a measure of defence," and per
haps we shall hear of similar extenuations as
regards the action % of Shere Aei . Yet the
Dooranee chief did not send his forces and his
insolent order down the Khyber without an un
derstanding with his Russian guest as to what
was to follow when the British reinforced their
Mission with the troops which will make it an
army. He may have been promised open sup
port, in which event our occupation of Candahar
would, perhaps, be answered by a Russian march
on Merv; but this is eminently improbable, and
in all likelihood Shere Ali has been privately
educated in the arts of that " unofficial warfare "
which was so dexterously practised in Servia, and
will know how to stand alone, even when Russia
disowns any share in his proceedings. In such a
case he would, no doubt, receive substantial
though secret assistance from her in the way of
money, arms, or political combinations ; and it
maybe that a programme of this sort lurks behind
the otherwise incomprehensible arrogance of the
Afghan Prince. If it be so, then the real enemy
is not at Oabul, but at St. Petersburg; and
measure? must be taken to put a stop, and a very
decided stop, to machinations which^ might be
ventured upon with Turkey, but must not be
tried upon Great Britain. As for Shere Ali
and Afghanistan, the tremors which they seem
to induce in certain feeble or ignorant minds is j
pitiable. Anybody who knows the true history !
of the disaster of 1841-42 must be aware that
nothing more than a brigade of our troops was
concerned in it, and that Nott and Pollock
swept the whole country bare of resistance im
mediately afterwards, while the Afghans them
selves, when Gilbert drove them from the Pun
jab after the Battle of Goojerat, used to say,
" The English blood upon our snows has all
melted away." There is nothing, therefore, in
this morose barbarian or his rude troops to give
any uneasiness to the Viceroy's Government, so
long as his expiation is made as plain and public
as his defiance. But in the Power behind him
there exists a false and restless foe who must not
be allowed to skulk from responsibility under
the mask of fair phrases and specious assurances.
We can suffer no "unofficial warfafe" in the
neighbourhood of the Hindoo Khosh. What is
resolved on with regard to our future relations
with Cabul must have reference henceforward to
the whole question of Central and Southern
Asia, and to the absolute necessity for removing
beyond earshot of Indian bazaars the very
whisper of Muscovite influence. It may be less
convenient for Russia just now than for us to
have the entire problem raised ; but, whether
convenient or not, our statesmen must not let
the minor subject of Afghanistan blind them to
the larger matter involved in the act of that subtle
aggressor who has at last stolen his way up to the
very gates of India, and borrowed a barbarous
flag wherewith to offer us a challenge.
UL AND THE FRONT
TJETTA TO CANDAHAR.
The telegrams we publish this mormng
justify the anxiety with which all Europe has
now turned its eyes towards Cabul and the
North-Western frontier of India. The kingdom
of the *Ameer, owing to the Chinese jealousy
with which he and his subjects exclude
foreigners from the country, has had but few
explorers, and but little is generally known
about it. It is, however, apart from its
present political aspect, a country full of
interest for the student as the theatre
of Arab conquest and Islamite growth,
the scene of Tartar invasion and havoc, a
very hotbed of Mohammedan bigotry and fana
ticism, the arena of Shia and Sunni hostility,
the battlefield of Afghans and Persians, the scene
of British conquests and disasters. I^ut to the
general public it presents itself to-day as a coun
try of which but scanty information is avail
able, although one which, physically and po
litically, is full of interest to every Eng
lishman. As if nature had designed it to be
the object of the world's attention, Af
ghanistan stands up from the great plains of
India and the Khanates as an elevated table-land.
The Mountains of the Hindu Koosh tower up on
its eastern frontier as a landmark to all Asia,
and point out to every invader the way to
India. From the great range irregular spurs
diverge in every direction, and cover Afghanis
tan with a network of mountain chains. Be
tween them lie valleys of surpassing fertility,
and watered by perennial streams. Here
every enemy of India has recruited his
forces, and more than once the hardy
mountaineers have themselves poured through
i the passes of the Suleiman range that separates
I Afghanistan from India, to ravage the territories
of the infidels of Hindostan. But the India of
to-day is not the country that Mahmoud of
Ghuzni knew so well how to plunder, and every
turn of events seems to conspire to change it
more. Time was, and only twenty years ago, |
when we were content with the Indus as our
western boundary, and the Ameer of Cabul
exercised such influence as he could up to that
great river.
Compared with the Indus, the sacred Ganges,
is a thing of yesterday. For the Indus, or
Sindhu, was known to the ancient world from;
the very earliest days. Rising amidst the deso-/
late grandeur of the northern Himalayas, close/
to the fountain heads of the other great Asiati^
streams, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, th^
river at first wanders westward, reluctant to leave
the sublime highlands of its birth. Through scenes
of terrific wildness, snow-clad ranges solemn im!
their desolation, and dark valleys chaotic withstu-1
pendens rocks, the Indus finds its way northward !
of Cashmere, the rose kingdom, to Gilgit, the home
of and cradle of some of the most curious myths
of Eastern folk lore. Then, turning southward,
past the home of the fairy Peri and the awful
Harginn, it brawls along past the pine-clad hills
where the Bear king holds his dread court—
forbidden ground to men—and, forcing its way
through the lower Himalaya spurs, issues upon
British India immediately above Peshawur.
Keeping south, passes the Khyber defile, re
ceiving from the west the streams that escape
from the Afghan hills, and from the East the |
united flood of the five rivers that give the Pun-1
jab its name. They are all streams of great au-
tiquity in history—the Hydaspes, and Acesines,
the Hydrastes, Hyphasis, and Hesudrus—and,
combined, give the Indus a noble volume. It then
enters Sind as the Nile of Asia, rolling a stately
fertilising flood along to the sea, into which,
amid shifting islands and levels of green pas
turage, it debouches by many mouths.
In history and in common talk the Indus is
called the western boundary of our Indian
Empire. But history lags, and people talking
together prefer metaphor to exact fact. " From
the Indus to the Bay of Bengal " is a compre-
jhensive, convenient, and symmetrical phrase,*
but our fate in India—the fate that forbidsi
the conqueror to cease from conquest—has noW
Carried us beyond the great river. When we
struck empire from the hand of the Lion of 1
the Punjab, the great Sikh chieftain Runjeet
Singh, our frontier outposts reddened the
spurs of the Suleiman range far beyond the
Indus ; and when, tardily exasperated, we drove
the Ameers of Sind from their capitals, the
border line was again carried westward through
their principality to the marches of Beluchistan.
Yet once again we have had to Step forward
westward, and this time into the very heart of
the Beluchis country to Quetta. To make plain
the necessity for this advance, we must recall to
our readers a striking parallel in Cabul history.
For twenty years Afghanistan or Cabul had
been an anxiety to the Indian Government.
First it was the Persian Court that troubled the
outlook, but history records how we kept the
word of Lord Canning, that " Great Britain
will not allow any attempt on the part of the
Shah to effect a change in the possession of the
countries lying between Persia and British
India and when, in 1856, Dost , Ma
homed Khan, then Ameer of Cabul,
asked .the Indian Government what would
happen when an enemy, appeared at his gates,
he received the reply, " When the event occurs,
it will be dealt with. If the Persian or the
Russian should come, it will bo as an enemy of
the English, and the English will rid you of
their own foes." The clouds thickened, and
Cabul asked for help from Calcutta. It was
made a condition of this assistance that British
officers should be deputed to the chief towns of
Afghanistan to advise the Ameer and his pro
vincial governors on emergencies, and to keep