Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎146r] (300/312)

table; that it is (" was" in 1874) bringing her nearer and
nearer to positions which, even if she does not deliberately seek to
secure them, she must, by the force of circumstances ultimately
attain ; when he urges that, these positions once gained, she could
easily and without any question of invasion of India, expose us to
extreme danger, disquietude, and cost in that region, besides utterly
paralyzing our action in any European question in which we
might find ourselves opposed to Russia; when. Sir Bartle
Frere, we say, is thus arguing, he is merely repeating, with the
added force of his reputation and authority, what we and others
have wearied ourselves and the public with repeating for years
past. But how many of us knew, how many of us were allowed
to suspect, that what we were saying as outsiders was being
repeated in nearly the same words by men in the position of Sir
Bartle Frere ? When views like these were being ridiculed
as alarmism by those " thoughtful persons" who are now
engaged in thoughtfully eating their words, did the Govern
ment of the day, by any of its representatives, let fall a hint
that the •" alarmism " of the outsider was the serious alarm of the
soberest and most experienced officials ? When the " irrespon
sible" journalist was accused of panic-mongering, was the public
permitted to know that a responsible administrator, so highly
trusted as to be selected for most, difficult tasks outside the
sphere of his ordinary employment, was himself a large dealer in
this very same commodity of alarm ? Has it not, on the con
trary, been the cue of successive Ministries and their hacks
to encourage the cheap ridicule of Russophobia, or even,
like Lord Salisbury, to swell the chorus of derision ? Has
it not been their chosen part to discourage and suppress
the opinions of men like Sir Bartle Frere, to do all in
their power to make it appear that the only persons who
held such opinions were English politicians of the type of the I
late Mr. Urquhart, or Anglo-Indian soldiers the English
counterparts of General Kaufmann ? Have we not been sedu- 1
lously taught that all the best and most trustworthy of Indian
civil administrators were wedded to that policy of masterly
inactivity to which Sir Stafford Northcote, speaking last
year on behalf of the Cabinet, gave his so unqualified adhesion ?
We know that this is so; and, knowing it, we ought not to
hesitate to call such conduct by its right name. In this, as in
too many other instances, the English people have been systema
tically blinded or left in blindness by their rulers. The people,
the authority from which Ministers nowadays profess with
such ostentatious deference to derive their policy, have been
studiously kept in ignorance of many of the most essential
data for arriving at a sound judgment. Everything that could
be done has been done to prevent them from seeing more
than on e side of th e case upo n which they are or m ust one j
day be called upon to pronounce; that side being the one
which it suited ministerial weakness, or the supposed exigencies
of party policy, that the nation should believe the stronger.
And we see now to what a pass our affairs have been brought by
; this long course of bamboozling. It has led to this—that
now when the hour for preparation has passed, and the hour
for action, prepared or unprepared, has struck, the Government
are seeking to justify enforced action by tardy admissions, which
in reality only condemn them for ever having allowed the neces
sity to arise. The very futility of the defensive measures which
Sir Bartle Frere proposed four years ago is the measure of
what has been lost by delay. Effective possibly in 1874, they
are obyiously inadequate now. The time has come when the
alarmists" of a former period, and the "converted optimists"
of to-day are alike unable to propose any other remedy for the
Indian mischief than the sword—or a bad bargain with the enemy
when ^ he has passed within our gates. And we have to thank
the discordant rabble called our Government that so it is.
A MUSSULMAN ADMONITION TO SHERE ALL
A n article which lately appeared in a Mussulman paper, al-Jawaib, seems
to have excited some attention. The following translation of it may
therefore be welcome :—
When we had begun to hope that matters were about to settle down into something
like order, a telegram reaches us which scatters our hopes to the wind. We refer to
the misunderstanding which has arisen between his Highness Shere 'Aly Khan, the Amir
of Afghanistan, and the Government of the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of
India. The tension between the two has already reached a dangerous crisis, and
there can be no doubt that it will seriously affect Muslim States generally, and
the Sublime Porte in particular. This misunderstanding, as we stated in a former
number of the al-Jaudib, originated in the despatch by Russia of a special mission to
the Amir, composed of a number of staff and political officers, with an escort ®f 2,000
soldiers of the army of observation in Central Asia, the whole under tlie command
•of General Schouvaloff. According to the Russian journals, the object of
this mission was to confirm the relations and commercial interests at present
existing between Russia and Afghanistan. A telegram also states that Russia's
aim in this matter is to conciliate the Amir, We have no notion of fiadino-
fault with his Highness Shere 'Aly for his reception of the mission ; but we
beg to observe that the manner in which he welcomed the enemies of the Muslims
to his country, so different to what has been usual hitherto, calls for grave comment. He
had his soldiers drawn up to do honour to the chief of the mission, and to show him
that he had an army at hand capable of meeting the English in the field. Be it borne
in mind here that the English have certain rights over that kingdom too well known
to be mentioned, and that when they saw that Samarkand, Khokand, Khiva, and other
Central Asian Muslim States had been annexed by Russia, they also, to borrow the