Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎85v] (174/312)

Sir,— It is high time to ask the people of England, respecting the
r Perish India " and " large maps " policy, the question with which Artemus
Ward replied to Brigham Young's statement that he had seventy-five wives,
and certainly was married ; " And pray how do you like it—so far as you
have got?" How do the people of England, and how does the Govern
ment like it? Casting up the diminished Conservative vote at Truro,
" See," cries the Daily News, " the result of a ' spirited foreign policy'
that is to say, with the irony off it, of your spiritless " Perish India " policy.
The Government was forewarned from the first that " the brooding East"
would judge the issue of the late war by the fate of Kars. If Kars was
restored to the Turks Russia had lost; but if it was left in the hands of
the Russians the star of England had set; and its final surrender at Berlin
by England was the signal to Shere Ali to definitively throw in his lot with
the Russians, and make common cause with them against us.
The Government set the restoration of Bayazid against the sur
render of Kars, pleading that so they had saved the commercial
interests of Turkey and England. In reality, they thereby simply capped
a portentous military disaster by a crushing commercial blunder. Russia
has always sought to supersede the ancient commercial route between
Trebizond, Bayazid, and on to Merv, by the railway line from Poti
to Tifiis, and thence, by way of Baku, across the Caspian to Merv;
but hitherto unsuccessfully, owing to the failure of the harbour at Poti.
But in Batoum Russia has now secured the best harbour in all that part of
the Black Sea coast; and as the Russian Government has already
deputed a party of engineers to select a route for uniting it with the Tifiis
railway, it will probably not be long before this line absorbs all the
to-and-fro trade between Europe and Central Asia. Batoum is, in fact,
the key to the trade of Central Asia, essentially an English trade, and
its acquisition was of vital importance to Russia in the prosecution of her
secular policy against English commercial interests, and a more fatal blow
to our political influence in Turkey and Persia than even the surrender of
Kars, the most renowned stronghold of Imperial power in all Asia. So
much, so far, for a spiritless " Perish India " foreign policy.
Those who then backed the Radical Opposition, and their abettors
within the Cabinet, in this suicidal policy of the " Schouvaloff-Salisbury "
" project of a Memorandum" are the very ones who, now that it^ is
producing its inevitable consequences along our north-western Indian
frontier, are loudest in alarm; but their thought is still rather to
damage the Government, than, by a thoroughly informed criticism, to
advise and support it in the measures it should adopt to meet the
emergency which has startled the country. There is a pressing necessity
for immediate action; and it is as childish as it is ignorant to waste
time and temper in denouncing Sir Henry Rawlinson's " Memorandum
on the Central Asian Question" of July, 1868, or the fantastic policy
attributed to Lord Lytton, which exists only in the imagination of
his accusers. There is no such thing known, there is no such
thing possible, as " Lord Salisbury's policy" or " Lord Lytton's policy,"
but only the impersonal policy, founded on a strict Induction of
historical and contemporary facts, of the Government of India.
. Lord Lytton's delay is a political and, I understand, also a military
error of the first magnitude. As for Sir Henry Rawlinson, his
policy is one of gradual consolidation of our hold along our north
west frontier, and had it only been steadily pursued during the last
ten years, instead of being persistently disregarded and ridiculed by the
India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. , we should not now have to meet the cost of a second
Afghan war; and, it is not too much to say, Europe would have
been altogether spared the misery of the late fraudulent and pitiless
war. Ever since the alliance of the three Emperors—those three arch-
anarchs of Europe—the Russian Legation at Teheran has been increased
by a number of apparently wealthy young Russian officers, with nothing to
do ostensibly but enjoy themselves. At the same time, native Russian
agents were secretly established at Cabul and Khelat. The young
Russians at Teheran soon made themselves popular everywhere in
society—Persian and European ; but wherever they went they
decried the English as a nation of selfish shopkeepers, and extolled
the name and fame of Russia. They so well succeeded in bringing the
British Legation itself into disrepute that the very English in Teheran,
the subordinates of the telegraph establishment and others of their
class, at last, in all their disputes with the natives, took to going to the
Russian Minister for redress instead of to the British Minister. These
young Russians also travel about in disguise with the trading and
pilgrim caravans in various parts of Persia, Turkey, and Turkestan,
everywhere magnifying Russia, and prophesying the loss of India by
England. At the same time a flotilla has been in preparation at
Samara, on the Volga, capable of transporting 100,000 men from the
heart of Russia to any point on the northern frontier of Persia.
The contempt into which we have been brought soon began to show
itself openly. On the Shah's birthday, the year before last, a party of
officials discharged fireworks under the windows of the British Lega
tion—the most degrading insult that could be offered to us in Persian
eyes. Again, at Resht, the other day, when the Shah landed on his
return from St. Petersburg and Vienna, the Russian Cossacks who were
there whistled right into the face of the English consul as they passed
him on the road, and tried to charge another Englishman who was
present into the ditch, riding at him full gallop, to the infinite delight
of the sycophant Persians. In Afghanistan it has culminated in the
insult offered to the Indian Government by Shere Ali, who owes to us
the settlement both of the Oxus boundary and the Seistan boundary.
u'E5s 1 uieq11 y puB bj SuioS siu^qDjam ' uoYuumuuife^ ptJe 1
'sassjutiioa 'sjaotgo asq 5u9a9ad jou him "bissn^j 'XajjjnjL joj jqSg o? s-iaqjo pue
'ag^a 'sjssai^ pamonb suia^q pcnqsug; 'ibq; sxbs so/of) aqj,
jo uoii^dnooo ano Xq UBisiireqSjv jo Xiipjjnau aqi pa^oiA SBq oq^ si
i^qi spua^uoo v/Cuisa/i ?o/zoj\f aqj puB 'jusumaaAOf) ueisstry; 9qj 01 pajuasajd
uaaq ptsq piqis;} o; uoissiui ubissn-g aqj Suipsdsai qsqSug ub ;Bq}
jaodsa sqj uo ^ipajosip Moiqj sjacted Sjnqsjsjaj aqj^ 'uoijisodap siq ui pua
ppoM qoxqM soBjd Xbui saouBqjinsip ;Bqi rjqSnoqi si ji ptre 'aaauiy aqj oj
ajpscvq sq 05 pres sj - b sj^pjis aqi jo jxed aajBsaS sqx "pitjuoo Xub aq }ou Xbui
aasqi ]|B asyB tjBjqi iqgnoqj si ;i ijBqj inq 'sdooji qsqug sqi asoddo oj sjajjBtib
Sm,—It is high time to ask the people of England, respecting the
r Peiish India " and " large maps " policy, the question with which Artemus
Ward replied to Brigham Young's statement that he had seventy-five wives,
and certainly was married : " And pray how do you like it—so far as you
have got?" How do the people of England, and how does the Govern
ment like it? Casting up the diminished Conservative vote at Truro,
" See," cries the Daily News, " the result of a 4 spirited foreign policy' I
that is to say, with the irony off it, of your spiritless " Perish India " policy.
The Government was forewarned from the first that " the brooding East"
would judge the issue of the late war by the fate of Kars. If Kars was
restored to the Turks Russia had lost; but if it was left in the hands of
the Russians the star of England had set; and its final surrender at Berlin
by England was the signal to Shere Ali to definitively throw in his lot with
the Russians, and make common cause with them against us.^
The Government set the restoration of Bayazid against the sur
render of Kars, pleading that so they had saved the commercial
interests of Turkey and England. In reality, they thereby simply capped
a portentous military disaster by a crushing commercial blunder. Russia
has always sought to supersede the ancient commercial route between
Trebizond, Bayazid, and on to Merv, by the railway line from Poti
to Tiflis, and thence, by way of Baku, across the Caspian to Merv; |
but hitherto unsuccessfully, owing to the failure of the harbour at Poti.
But in Batoum Russia has now secured the best harbour in all that part of
the Black Sea coast; and as the Russian Government has already
deputed a party of engineers to select a route for uniting it with the Tiflis
railway, it will probably not be long before this line absorbs all the
to-and-fro trade between Europe and Central Asia. Batoura is, in fact,
the key to the trade of Central Asia, essentially an English trade, and
its acquisition was of vital importance to Russia in the prosecution of her
secular policy against English commercial interests, and a more fatal blow
to our political influence in Turkey and Persia than even the surrender of
Kars, the most renowned stronghold of Imperial power in all Asia. So
much, so far, for a spiritless " Perish India " foreign policy.
Those who then backed the Radical Opposition, and their abettors
within the Cabinet, in this suicidal policy of the " Schouvaloff-Salisbury "
"project of a Memorandum" are the very ones who, now that it is
producing its inevitable consequences along our north-western Indian
frontier, are loudest in alarm; but their thought is still ^ rather to
damage the Government, than, by a thoroughly informed criticism, to
advise and support it in the measures it should adopt to meet the
emergency which has startled the country. There is a pressing necessity
for immediate action; and it is as childish as it is ignorant to waste
time and temper in denouncing Sir Henry Rawlinson's " Memorandum
on the Central Asian Question" of July, 1868, or the fantastic policy
attributed to Lord Lytton, which exists only in the imagination of
his accusers. There is no such thing known, there is no such
thing possible, as " Lord Salisbury's policy" or " Lord Lytton's policy,"
but only the impersonal policy, founded on a strict induction of
historical and contemporary facts, of the Government of India.
Lord Lytton's delay is a political and, I understand, also a military
error of the first magnitude. As for Sir Henry Rawlinson, his
policy is one of gradual consolidation of our hold along our north
west frontier, and had it only been steadily pursued during the last
ten years, instead of being persistently disregarded and ridiculed by the
India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. , we should not now have to meet the cost of a second
Afghan war; and, it is not too much to say, Europe would have,
been altogether spared the misery of the late fraudulent and pitiless
war. Ever since the alliance of the three Emperors—those three arch-
anarchs of Europe—the Russian Legation at Teheran has been increased
by a number of apparently wealthy young Russian officers, with nothing to
do ostensibly but enjoy themselves. At the same time, native Russian
agents were secretly established at Cabul and Khelat. The young
Russians at Teheran soon made themselves popular everywhere in
society—Persian and European ; but wherever they went they
decried the English as a nation of selfish shopkeepers, and extolled
the name and fame of Russia. They so well succeeded in bringing the
British Legation itself into disrepute that the very English in Teheran,
the subordinates of the telegraph establishment and others of their
class, at last, in all their disputes with the natives, took to going to the
Russian Minister for redress instead of to the British Minister. These
young Russians also travel about in disguise with the trading and
pilgrim caravans in various parts of Persia, Turkey, and Turkestan,
everywhere magnifying Russia, and prophesying the loss of India by
England. At the same time a flotilla has been in preparation at
Samara, on the Volga, capable of transporting 100,000 men from the
heart of Russia to any point on the northern frontier of Persia.
The contempt into which we have been brought soon began to show
itself openly. On the Shah's birthday, the year before last, a party of
officials discharged fireworks under the windows of the British Lega
tion—the most degrading insult that could be offered to us in Persian
eyes. Again, at Resht, the other day, when the Shah landed on his
return from St. Petersburg and Vienna, the Russian Cossacks who were
there whistled right into the face of the English consul as they passed
him on the road, and tried to charge another Englishman who was
present into the ditch, riding at him full gallop, to the infinite delight
of the sycophant Persians. In Afghanistan it has culminated in the
insult offered to the Indian Government by Shere Ali, who owes to us
the settlement both of the Oxus boundary and the Seistan boundary.
Ever since a native Russian agent has been secretly established at Cabul
he has refused all communication with us; and now, seeing the Russians
gathered in force by the fords of the Oxus, and hearing of the surrender
of Kars, and frenzied by the death of his heir, in "a bloody humour" he
has dared to openly defy us, with every circumstance that could add
injury to the offence. What must Cavagnari's feelings have been as he
rode back baffled between the two native princes ? and what must the
two princes have thought ? What he felt every Englishman is feeling now,
and what they thought the teeming millions throughout India are thinking
as one man.
In the face of such untoward circumstances, it is indeed high time to
ask the people of England, in respect of the " Perish India " and " large
maps " policy of the Schouvaloff-Salisbury Administration—for it is theirs
now, and no longer Lord Beaconsfield's—" And pray how do you like it,
so far as you have got ? " And also, how does the Government itself, from
the electioneering point of view, like it ?—I am. Sir, your obedient servant,
October 1. Iran.