Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎86v] (176/312)

INDIAN GENERALS, PAST AND PRESENT.
T he Hon. Miss Eden's "Up the Country," a journal written by Lord
Auckland's sister while he was Governor-General of India, gives a glimpse
of the General Elphinstone who was afterwards to obtain so unenviable
a notoriety as commander of the force which capitulated at Cabul. The
lady is in the Governor-General's camp at Futtehpoor, in the North-West
Provinces, marching down to Allahabad, preparatory to returning to
Calcutta, after a long sojourn in Upper India, during which the occu
pation of Afghanistan had been established with apparent success. And
Miss Eden writes :—" General Elphinstone passed through camp to-day "
—February 6, 1840, or about two years before the massacre—^in his
palanquin, and stopped for about two hours, and came to see us
He is in a shocking state of gout, poor man !—one arm in a sling and
very lame, but otherwise is a young-looking general for India. He hates
being here. He is wretched because nobody understands his London
topics, or knows his London people General E. said, ' I got a
hint, and rather a strong one, from the Governor-General to take Delhi
on my way to Meerut, and look at the troops there, and be active in
my command.' He went off with a heavy heart to his palanquin, which
must be a shaky conveyance for gout. He cannot, of course, speak a
word of Hindustani, neither can his aide-de-camp." " I have a negro,"
said the General to the lady, " who speaks English, but I could not bring
jhim dawk." "I suppose," she adds, "he means a native." This was the
sort of man who was thought good enough for an Indian command in
those days; and to Miss Eden it seemed quite natural and proper that
a broken-down club lounger should be sent out for one. Not that he
was much worse than the usual run of generals thirty or forty years
ago, except that they were not all gouty. The custom was to select
some man who had been ten or twelve years on half-pay, and whose
pockets wanted replenishing, and send him out from his club or from
Bath or Cheltenham to India for a five years' command, where the old
gentleman would twaddle away about his reminiscences of London life with
an easy sense of superiority to the people about him : and this General
Elphinstone appears to have done, being at the same time an absolute
cipher so far as the business of his command was concerned. The fact
was that the Duke of Wellington, who always had rather a contempt for
other generals, in his latter days became almost indifferent about the fitness
or otherwise of the recipients of his patronage. In his view one man was
about as good as another. It must be added that the Company's generals
were seldom much better. If they knew more about the country and the
troops under them, they were usually even older than the generals of the
Queen s service. All went smoothly along, however, in peace time, when
there was little or nothing to be done. Or, if a campaign had to be
fought these gallant old gentlemen managed somehow to scrape along,
helped on their horses by their grooms and through their work by their
staff—who, however, were in too many cases not much fitter for their work
than the generals. Of course all were not of this sort; here and there a
man like Gilbert or Nott, young in spite of his years, would come to the
front; but these were the exception. Old men who had to be held on
their horses, to whom a canter would have been fatal, and who could not
boast of mental or professional qualifications to make up for their
physical deficiencies, were only too common. Still, it was not necessary
to transfer Elphinstone from the peaceful retirement of the Meerut
command to that of Afghanistan. But this was merely one instance among
many of the dementia which possessed the Indian Government with
respect to the occupation of Cabul: it was of a piece with sending all
the w^es and children of the troops to join them there, and the esta
blishment of our magazines outside the Cabul cantonment, inviting bv
their unprotected state the enemy's attack.
, These and such like mistakes will certainly not be repeated; and it
is satisfactory to know that the officers named for commands are all men
of approved intelligence and vigour. General Roberts, lately Quarter
master of the Bengal army, is still, we believe, a regimental major of
artillery. General Donald Stewart has distinguished himself in numerous
campaigns, and especially by a most daring ride from Agra to Delhi in
the height of the Mutiny, on a line swarming with enemies, and from
which every trace of British rule had been swept away. The present
Adjutant-General of the Indian army, General Lumsden, has probably a
better knowledge of the scene of coming action than any living officer,
gamed during a service of many years on the frontier; it may be
mentioned, too, that lie accompanied his brother's mission to Afghanistan,
which was shut up in Cabul during the eventful summer of 1857. Sir
Paul Haines, the Commander-in-Chief in India, served as an aide-de
camp on Lord Gough's staff in the Sutlej campaigns, and afterwards
c P m ^ an a ^ atta ^ on i n the Crimea. It is not likely, however, that
the Commander-in-Chief will himself take the field on this occasion.
The Gc/es has an article written inT mysteriously allusive tone to
which we believe we can supply the key. That paper says :
Wc cannot say whether any despatches regarding the mission of General Stolieteff to
have P assed between the Cabinets of St. Petersburg and St. James's; but we
can boldly affirm that Russia's answer was not to a question arising out of the
refusal of the Ameer to receive the Embassy of Sir Neville Chamberlain. . . Under
any circumstances we consider it most important to know the date of the interchanged
despatches. While it was simply a question of explaining a step not as yet denounced by
the British press and the Ministry as a step hostile to England, the Russian Government
€®uld give its explanation a somewhat apologetic form ; but now that that moment has
by Russia is openly accused in England of having instigated Afghanistan, and to
such an explanation as Great Britain would now think of demanding from St. Petersburg
it would simply be impossible to send any reply resembling an apology.
Now m July it "was simply a question of explaining a step not denounced
by the British press &c., as a step hostile to England." And if we are
not mistaken, m July—last July—the British Government asked for some
explanation of the mission to Cabul, which was then known to them •
and then, also, it was not only possible for the Russian Government
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