Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎72v] (148/312)

gliould be well iuformed as to the actual condition
of liidiau fiuancca, and the danger of throwing
theru into hopeless embarraasiuent by additional
burdens. Lord Salisbury and Sir Staf
ford NoiithcotS cannot plead ignorance
of this danger ai a reason why they
should not use all their influence to
rev«rs8 the policy of colle»gue<i whose rashness is
stimulated by a supreme indifference to financial
details. If (heir advice is not listened to, we trust
that the Council of the Skoretaey of State for
India will exert their constitutional power of
resisting any attempt to add to the debt of India.
We trust that they will not only prevent India's
being saddled wifh the cost of the Afghan war,
but that they will use every means in their
power to prevent such an extension of frontier
as Lord Lytton , acting upon the instructions
of Lord BttACONSFiELD, seems to meditate.
The English people must awake to the fact
that India cannot alford to pay for the contem
plated extension, and that the burden must be
borne by themselves if it is to be in
curred. The belief that there is no valid reason for
Lncurring it at all is sanctioned by the authority
of the most trusted servants of the Crown, who
have given their energies to the administration of
Indian affairs. A year a^o (his was the avowed
opinion of Sir Si afford Northcotk himself, at
a. time when, according to all appearances,
an aggressive policy had already been agreed
upon between Lord Beaconsfield and his
nominee, and bad actually been initiated
by the Viceroy . The Chancellor of the Ex-
dheftuer will deserve ill of his country if he
allows his influence to be overborne, and con
sents to a policy of which he has put his disap
proval on record. He knows what would be tha
dangers of such a policy in India, and he knows
also in what condition the English Exchequer is
to be charged with unnecessary burdens. The
present state of the revenue, as the returns of
the last quarter show, does not invite fresh expen
diture at the cost of England. Yet if ^he English
people insist on or acquiesce in Lord Beacons-
field's Imperial policy, they must certainly pay
for it. India, as a matter of right, ought not to
do so. As a matter of fact, she cannot.
THE AFGHANS.
(FROM A COREESPONDENT.)
One of the incidents on the occasion of the visit i
to the Khyber Pass, an account of which appeared
in last week's Daily ffews, was that of an old man j
who invited us into his village, which he said was
not far from the mouth of the pass. He had been
presented with a couple of empty soda water
bottles, and they seemed to his mind to be very
valuable articles, so ranch so that the invitation
was the result. He even promised us " Kuch
Kana," which might be translated dinner or supper
according to the hour of the day ; if we
would deign to honour his abode with our
presence. He was very pressing in his desire for
us to go with him. My Pashtoo-speaking friend,
who, I may say, was Captain Speedy, then
attached to the 10th Punjaub Infantry, and who
by the knowledge which he afterwards acquired
of the Abyssinian language was of great service as
interpreter during the expedition to that country,
carried on the conversation with the old
man, and the turn it took became interesting as
bearing on the character of the people of that
country, On Speedy expressing his doubts on this
head, and asking if they were not all murderers
and robbers, who ought to be frying in jehennm,
an idiomatic allusion to the under world which
is common in conversation among the people of
Cabul, the old man looked with astonish
ment and an air of injured innocence
overspread his strongly-marked Jewish features,
which struck me forcibly at the time, and he re-
pudiated with force the imputation ma(fe against
his countrymen. As to danger in going with him,
he seemed to ask what we could mean by the
supposition. On being asked to mentiou the
name of any person in the pass of good character,
he made us laugh by coolly pointing to himself as
an individual of unblemished renown. As the two
empty soda-water bottles were the most respect
able-looking objects which went to make up the
full-length portrait of him as he stood bafore us,
the nature of his claims to being a person of good
fame may perhaps be realised. We had other
reasons for not accepting the invitation
than that of the character of those we
were likely to meet. So we refused to be his
guests. So far as I could judge the man was
pleased with such gifts as the two bottles, and his
heart seemed to respond, and heace his askins: us
to come in and see his home and have something
to eat. For myselt I had no doubts of the man's
honesty, although it was evident, from his ap
pearance, that he was a poor man—the value ho
attached to the " buckshcese" of the bottles was
an evidence so far of his position in life. If it
could have been done I should not have hesitated
to so with him.
The reputation of the Afghans is undoubtedly
bad. They have a proverb among them
selves, "That a man going to Hindostan
may etain wealth, but a man going to
Afghanistan may lose his head." The
political condition of the country will explain this
uncertainty of life, without having to suppose
that the race are in heart worse than their neigh
bours. The tribes, or " Khails,'" as they are
termed, live some of them semi-independent, and
some of them wholly independent, of the ruler
who occupies the Guddee at Cabul. Those tribes
quarrel and make war among themselves. They
are Highlanders of the Rob Eoy type, levying
blacKinail wherever they have a chance. They
are all armed with some weapon or another, the
principal article teing the " charra," or long
sword-like knife, which leaves its sheath on the
slightest provocation, and one could scarcely
suppose it could return again without
doing some deadly damage. In fact it seldom
does, when Afghan blood is up, hence these
people are inured to a rough and lawless life j
among their wild mountain homes. Add to this !
a bad and unstable Government, whose acts are !
as unscrupulous as the robber bands who infest
! the country, and the reason for the uncertainty
j connected with life and property in Afghanistan
I must be easily recognised.
The race belongs to a high type, and even in i
their worst acts some good touches may be dis
cerned which should make us hopeful of
the country. In the case of the man,
vtho stabbed Lord Mayo in the Andaman
Islands, if we take the murder which he
committed in Peshawur, and for which he was
sentenced to be hanged, as a case in point, it was
done as a duty, a sort of sacred duty he owed to
his clan. He was in a comfortable situation, re
spected and liked by his master and mistress, and
this enviable position, for such situations are much
desired by the natives, he threw to the winds, he
sacrificed himself for others. Bellew, in his ac
count of the mission which he accompanied into Af
ghanistan, tells a most remarkable story, which
may be quoted as illustrating not only the deter
mination which the race is capable of, but of a
sense of honour— such was the word the relator used;
and although it isonly honour among thieves, there
was mixed with it a desire for the honour of the
family to which the hero of the story belonged,
which would be creditable anywhere. The person
who tells the tale was called Khan Gul, and he
was one of the actors in it. The whole of his
family had at a former period become a band of
robbers, which occupation they practised, seem
ingly on the sly, and their neighbours were kept
in the dark about their doings. They had deter
mined on robbing a house at some distance, and,
1 going there during the'* night, they made a hole
through the mud wall. Khan Gul's brother, like
Oliver Twist, was passed in; and he began to
hand out whatever was within his reach. The people
in the house chanced to wake up, upon which
the brother tried to make his escape ; but while
while in the act of returning through the hole in
the wall those on the inside caught him by the
feet. Now began a tug like the " tug of war;" |
fiercely they pulled to get him out of the hole, but 1
it was useless; those within had one or two hold- !
ing on to each leg, and the burglar was held as if !
in a vice. The fear that they would be recog
nised and detected became at last the dominant
feeling; and as they could not possibly pull him
out, they determined on an extreme measure, and i
| one so very extreme that it is hard to believe that
| it could have occurred to any others than these
1 knife-using Afghans. The only plan left to pre-
1 vent identity was to cut off the head, carrying it i
away, and leave the body; and the very
striking part of this tale lies in the fact
that it was done at the suggestion of the
man himself, and, at he expressed it at the insf-ant,
so that "the honour of the family might be pre-