Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎80r] (163/312)

were killed and four wounded out of the guard
j of twenty, and under cover of the morning
mists and among the rocks the murderers were
soon safe from pursuit. The news of the out
rage spread all down the frontier line, every
tribe wavering between the prospect of a return
to old guerilla ways and the orderly habits they
j were beginning to learn, and in the end it was
a triumph of British administration that the out
laws found so few to sympathise with them ac
tively. But the murderers themselves rallied all
their clan about them, and for a year kept the
I whole frontier in disorder and alarm. The
I authorities were not to be irritated into
exceptional procedure. A rigid blockade
of the passes was established, and,
when winter came round, the Mahomed
j Kheyls, shut up in the bleak barren hills, had no
| pasturage for their flocks. They dared not tres-
1 pass into the territories of other tribes, but
the bitter price demanded of them for permission
' to re-enter British territory kept them in out
lawry till the starvation could no longer be
borne. Then, after fifteen months of exile,
all the leaders of the tribe, with the women and
children, came down to the camp of the Sahibs.
An eye-witness has described their return :" The
men, with heads bare (among Orientals the
uttermost expression of abject submission) and
ropes about their necks, cast down their arms be
fore the British officials, and, throwing them
selves on the ground, begged for pardon, whilst
some of the women and children sat huddled
■ together in the background, others spread them
selves like locusts over the garden, and devoured
j greedily every edible green thing they could
find." Due punishment was inflicted upon the
tribe, and since then they have not given
trouble. v
The episode discloses something of the system
of frontier administration, but at the present
moment, when such an important responsibility
has devolved upon the officers in charge of
the border districts, a more detailed
sketch will be of interest. For the protec
tion of our frontier—about a thousand miles
in length—has been established a chain of forts
and outposts, situated at the mouths of the
more important passes. A good road connects
each with the next, and this is patrolled by
local militia. But force and threats are not the
main agents of our civilisation. These are for
bearance and conciliation. Even when a tribe
goes into outlawry, Jn consequence of some gross
outrage, there is no blood exacted for the blood
shed, but the whole tribe is besieged in its
own block of mountains, and the humiliation of
voluntary surrender forced upon the outlaws.
They feel this more than the fine that is im-
posed and the confiscation of pastures. Some- i
times a keener point is put upon their disgrace
by making a tribe burn down with their own
hands one of their own villages, worthless erec
tions of grass and leaves, and rebuilt in a few
hours. But it galls the mountalheer more to
set a torch to the rubbish than to suffer impri
sonment. Nevertheless, when the application of
force is necessary, the means at hand are ample
for complete retribution ; and against the
military power standing to arms all down the
line, a universal rebellion would make no head. |
The Punjab Frontier Force consists of eleven
regiments of infantry, one of guides, five of
cavalry, two light field batteries, and two moun
tain batteries, in all twelve thousand men.
Being amply provided with carriage the force can
be mobilised in a few hours. Besides these, 1
the minor frontier outposts are garrisoned by
local militia. These, of course, in a general
outbreak might fraternise with the separate
clans from which they are drawn ; but their de
fection, while giving the rebels no material in-
i crease of strength, would not detract at all from
the adequacy of the regulars to cope with the
emergency. It cannot be too strongly em
phasised that the rigime is one of clemency and
patient forbearance, and in time it will become
| a tradition along the frontier, as it has indis-
I putably become in other parts of India, that
the British ■ Government is-too strong to be
shaken from its policy of steady calm or pro
voked into extraordinary procedure by acts of
petty malignity. When a Viceroy of India was
stabbed a few years ago by an assassin, every
city in,the empire was restless with apprehension
of the wrath of England. But the astonished
nations of Hindustan saw only the murderer tried
in the usual way, sentenced with all the forms
and ceremonies of an ordinary trial, and hanged .
as if he were only a common criminal. The ver
nacular press reflected the feeling of the natives
of the country exactly when it spoke with re
spectful awe of our courageous adherence to the
very letter of our laws at a moment of such
great excitement. With the same dignified
policy of unswerving justice we shall subdue to
admiration of us and respect for our laws the |
wild creatures of the Western frontier.
' jw
THE CABINET AND ITS EASTERN DIFFICULTIES.
W hen at the beginning of last week it was known that S iiere
A li had resolved to challenge a war with England, and that he
had done so in a way which left no choice as to the acceptance
of the challenge, it was reported that the Cabinet would " con
sider without delay the measures to be adopted in an emergency
as trying as any of which the present generation of England have
had experience." And no sooner was this announcement made
than we thought ourselves justified, after consideration of the
circumstances of the case, in denying the probability of any such
meeting of the Cabinet. As some of our readers may remember,
the argument was this. After all, Ministers are but men^ with
some of the weaknesses as well as some of the sterner qualities of
their kind. They have reputations to lose. It is possible^ for
them to be placed in awkward and even ridiculous positions.
No more than other people can they be indifferent to the
discovery that they have not been so wise, or so courageous, or
so triumphant as they held themselves out to be. And it was
not to be expected, therefore, that they should be the first to
acknowledge that at a momentous crisis they had so managed
matters as to plunge the country deeper into the manifest dangers
which they undertook to preserve it from, and from which they
announced that they had preserved it. If, after dispersing to dis
tant holiday resorts in confidence that nothing was likely to happen
to disturb their well-earned repose, they were suddenly to meet
together to consider what measures were to be taken in respect of
these Indian difficulties, what would the inference have been ? The
inference would have been that they recognized those difficulties as
serious. But if they are serious, they are so because they are
due to Russian hostility, made audacious by the triumph of
Russia over their weak, distracted, aimless, overawed, discomfited
selves. Why, therefore, should they push forward to acknow
ledge themselves disconcerted by this same audacious hostility, or
to seem to be so ? What more natural than that they should
hesitate to make a great Government matter of armed operations
which are nothing less than war for the preservation of India
against Russia? How could they be expected to make haste to