Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎143r] (294/312)

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JhyuS
SIB BABTLE FBERE ON AFGHANISTAN.
We publish the following letter addressed by
Sir Bartle Frere in 1874 to the late Sir John Kaye.
It is an important contribution towards the forma
tion of public opinion on the present crisis in our
relations with Afghanistan :—
" 24, Chapel-sfcreet, Belgrave-square,
June 12,1874.
" My dear Kaye,—Many thanks for the papers regard
ing the Central Asian question. I have not seen Raw-
linson's nor Burne's papers, and in what you sent me I find
nothing new as regards the facts of the case—nothing, |
I mean, beyond what the newspapers tell us, and what has
been, in fact, foreseen for the last quarter of a century, for
we find the whole clearly predicted in Sir John M'Neill's
pamphlet, which reached its third edition during the
Crimean War, and in what many others have published
since, besides what many more of us have written officially,
and not published. The one new feature is that official
politicians in India seem now at last seriously alarmed,
and there is much risk that, like all men when they at last
perceive a danger they have long been unable to recognize,
they may rush in the wrong direction.
" However, the policy of ' masterly inactivity ' seems at
last abandoned by most of its former advocates. They no
longer close their eyes and turn their backs on obvious
dangers which are rapidly approaching. All agree that
the time is come when ' something must be done but
what is that ' something ' to be ? The Russians threaten
Merv, and are steadily advancing along their whole fron
tier line. Our advisers all say, ' We, too, must advance
one of them adds, ' We must saturate Turkestan with j
British influence and British goods and all seem to agree
that we must make any move onwards byRussia a casus belli.
" As for Turkestan, it is quite right to open any trade
routes we can in that direction, and if we can induce the
people there'and in Thibet to trade with India more ex
tensively, so much the better. It is an object well worth
all the trouble and expense of such Missions as Forsyth's
to attain. I would only urge that we should look at such
questions occasionally from a Chinese point of view, con
sider how our Mission affects our relations with China, and
take good care that our alliance with the Ameer of Turkes
tan does not injuriously affect our position at Pekin. As i
a barrier against Russian advance, a Turkestan alliance
seems to me of little value. Of course, it is well at all
times to be on the alert, to have our attention directed in
that direction, and to have constant, late, and accurate in
formation of all that goes on in that quarter. The day
may come when it may be very important to us to have a
good name and good friends in Turkestan, whence a few
active officers might in time of need make a useful flank
impression on any force threatening India from the north -
west. But Turkestan is not an easy route for invading
India, and not likely to be used against us unless it should
be so entirely neglected as, like any unguarded postern, to
invite the approach of the invader.
" As for Merv, I do not in the least underrate the im
portance to us of its occupation by Russia. But our threat
to make such occupation of a troublesome refuge for fron
tier robbers and man-stealers a casus belli would be worse
than simply ineffectual. It would not stop the Russian
advance in the least. It would merely, if the Russians re
garded our threat at all, postpone that one step till, as in
the case of the abrogation of the obnoxious clauses regard
ing the Black Sea in the Treaty of Paris, the step, in itself
a necessary, one and useful to civilization and good order,
irrespective of Russian interests, would be taken at a mo
ment when we could not go to war with any chance of
fighting to good purpose.
'' A little consideration will show that this must be the
case. What is it that impels Russia to advance ? We are
pretty well agreed that the impulse is the same as that
which impelled ourselves from Calcutta to Peshawur. We
were a strong, united, aggressive, and growing Power, in
contact with States so disunited and demoralized that
their power was paralyzed and had no inherent vigour
j and capacity for resistance, still less for growth. Hence
they invariably gave way and crumbled before us, and
when there was any inherent vigour left in them to
resist they always gave us some good cause for quarrel and
were soon worsted in fair fight. We never stopped in con-
i quering India for considerations of home policy or in
obedience] to any orders from London. Some of our
greatest acquisitions were made, in our own generation, by
men who came out sincerely determined to avoid extension
of boundary, but the course of conquest was never stayed
till we got to the barriers of the mountain regions which
surround India on the land side. All this was in spite of
the most constant and positive orders from home and the
most sincere wish on the part of men at the head of affairs
in India to obey those orders.
" It is the same with Russia, with this difference, that,
instead of public opinion at home being, as was the case in
England, strongly and sincerely pronounced against further
extension of territory, there are in Russia, as I need not
tell you, two opposite political parties. Neither of them
objects, on any moral ground, to extension of territory ;
but one of them, including the Emperor himself and some
of the best and most able financiers and enlightened politi
cians, is strongly opposed to further extension in Asia on
grounds of expediency. The great mercantile party of
protectionists, many of the Russianized Germans, who are
more Russian than the Russians, most of the military and
the ultra-national politicians", on the other hand, are enthu
siastic supporters of further schemes of conquest, and this
party is by far the more popular and powerful.
" If we, with our strong political discipline, with the
earnest desire of Viceroys to obey orders, and with a still
more earnest desire on the part of the nation at large to
avoid conquest ; if we, so favourably situated for absten
tion from aggressive warfare, found circumstances too
strong for us, and were unwillingly forced on from the sea
i n the Himalayas, what chance has the Russian Govern
ment, or that party in it which dreads further conquest, of
resisting the pressure of the same kind, but much greater
in degree, which forces them to break up and annex the
savage hordes intervening between them and India ? I
need not to you repeat how the annexation comes about;
how the civilized Power, theirs as well as ours, is forced to
put its best men in contact with the uncivilized neigh
bour ; how if the frontier commander is ambitious, his
uncivilized neighbours give him constant and apparently
justifiable cause for hostilities, which in the end must
always lead to the victorious advance of the stronger and
more civilized Power; how, if the frontier commander is
conscientious or unambitious, the uncivilized neighbour
gravitates to the stronger Power by a process less violent
than in the former case, but even more certain ; how, when
any semi-civilized * Humpty Dumpty' gets his fall, ' all
bhe king's horses and all the king's men' are utterly unable
to set him up again ; how there is life and power of reco
very after the most damaging defeat and disaster
In the most mismanaged branch of the civilized
Power, and how there is nothing but death and
decay in the uncivilized ; how the one Power is
insensibly and by internal vigour urged to grow and ag
gress, while the other has no inherent force of resistance,
unless he gives up his antiquated arms and indiscipline,
and takes to himself the powerful weapons and military
array of civilized nations, which are of no avail,—in fact,
which cannot long exist, unless he abandons also his bar
barous habits and policy of finance and internal adminis
tration ; in a word, unless he enters the ranks of civilized
nations. All these things you know and have seen, and
therefere, I need not argue to you that, while Russia is a
civilized, living, and growing Power, the wishes even of
the all-powerful Czar and his ablest councillors are of little
avail in stopping her career of growth and conquest among
the least civilized races of Asia.
" But the Russians have one source of impulse which
moves them more powerfully than it does us, though we,
too, feel something of it. I mean the religious crusading
element ; this, as you know, is studiously discouraged and
generally distrusted by our politicians, and though there is
a strong missionary impulse in many classes of the com
munity sufficiently strong to insure respectful treatment
from those who do not share it among the governing class,
it is by no means a fashionable and hardly a popular
political impulse. But it is quite otherwise in Russia,
where, whatever of real loyalty exists, is inseparably
bound up with religion, and whatever is religious is
actively propagandist and hostile to non-Christian Powers.
To a modern religious Russian the prospect of a war with
a Mahomed an or an idolatrous Prince has the same aspect
and excites the same feelings as a crusade did among reli
gious Englishmen in the middle ages. I only mention this be
cause I think it is one of the forces impelling Russia onwards
of which we take less account as a political force than it de- !
serves. It is in many ways a great source of strength to j
her. So is the declared policy of the Russian Government, j
to spare no pains to put down slavery wherever her in- I
fluence extends—such slavery, I mean, as that prevalent
among the Turcomans and throughout Central Asia. Con- |
trast our feelings, or the feelings of intelligent Americans, |
when they heard that the slave markets in Khiva and i
Bokhara were abolished, with what you and I felt when
we ineffectually ground our teeth as we read of what
poor Stoddart and Conolly were suffering, and we may
have some faint idea of the national credit, the
sense of duty performed, and the impulse to do more,
which patriotic Russians feel when they consider what they
are doing in Asia. The work may not be very perfect, but
their feeling regarding it reckons for much in weighing
political forces, as compared with the half-hearted shilly- |
shallying of our ordinary dealings with such questions, ■!
when we get beyond the bounds of India and the four
corners of an Act of Parliament.
" The result, of all thy ia that Russia w ilTeo onuwhether
her (xovemmenfe wish it or not, till something stops her j
and what will stop her ? Nothing that I can see, except
an impassable barrier, such as we found in the mountain
chain of the Himalayas ; or a political barrier,such as find
ing herself on a frontier which she cannot pass without
fighting an equally powerful nation on the other side ; and
where that powerful nation is civilized like herself, and
able and willing to give her honest hearing and reasonable
redress with regard to all frontier discussions, and to
require equal justice from her.
" A * neutral zone,' consisting of the territory of uncivil
ized Powers, is worse than useless as a barrier, simply
because the uncivilized Power is, by the nature of things,
sure to act in a way which would give an aggressive and
growing Power on its border an irresistible cause for ad
vance ; or, if the civilized Power is sufficiently strong and
determined to abstain from aggression, the weak and un
civilized Power must gravitate towards the stronger body
and become in time a part of it, without formal annexation
or aggression.
" For similar reasons, it will not be a sufficient check on
the Russian advance to find themselves on the frontier of
an uncivilized Power under our influence or protection,
unless we are prepared to use that influence to direct the
uncivilized Power in all its relations with its neighbours.
We must be prepared not only to support the protected
State when right, but to force it to make satisfaction when
wrong; otherwise we stall not close the opening for in
terference by the other civilized Power on the opposite
s ido, because we can offer no effectual guarantee that our