'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎79] (110/714)

THAN SCASP1A
79
and furs of the East, it will in a few years' time be the artery of
the whole of Central Asia, along which the life-blood of half a
continent will throb, commingling the already half-amalgamated
strains of East and West. This railway is a far more potent
weapon to Russia in her subjugation of Asia than half a dozen
Geok Tepes or a dozen Panjdehs. It marks a complete and blood
less absorption. Great credit must be allowed to General Annenkoff
for the inexhaustible energy with which he has worked for this
consummation.
Touching the facilities of the line for English travellers, I
heard that less objection is now raised to the appearance of
Facilities stran g ers t ^ an was formerly the case, though this appeared
for English to be a general belief rather than an induction from
travellers recorc [ e( j cases. So great, however, is the traffic upon the
line that a stranger might conceivably travel along it unobserved.
He would, however, of course, be liable to be warned off or sent
back if he could not produce a special permit from St. Petersburg.
It is possible, as time goes on, that the stringency of these
regulations may be relaxed. Nevertheless, the experience of
subsequent English travellers upon the railway, including a lady,
was not a favourable one. They were treated with some discourtesy
and suspicion, the First Secretary of a British Legation being
actually brought, upon a fictitious charge, before a Russian police
court at Samarkand. These amenities were, I subsequently heard,
intended as a reply to my own too truthful description of Russian
affairs and policy in Central Asia. 1
I have already spoken of the Mullah Kari-Krasnovodsk exten
sion, now sanctioned. The suggested branch from Charjui to Kerki
along the left bank of the Amu Daria, which was a good deal
talked about at the time of the Afghan war scare in the spring
of 1889, has since disappeared from view, and will probably not
1 I am tempted to say in this context that there is small inducement to any
English writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. to endeavour to treat Russia with fairness or generosity in matters
where the two nations happen to be political or national rivals. After issuing a
work which aspired, and was, I believe, considered, to render greater justice to-
Russian labours and aims in Central Asia than any recent publication, the only
Russian acknowledgment that I received was a sneering article from the best-
known Russian writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. in the English press, the blackening out of every passage
of my book that was anything but complimentary to Russia by the Press Censor
ship of that country, and the remark, in a leading Russian newspaper, that if an
Englishman could pay such a tribute to the merks of Russians in Central Asia,
what fools must the latter be not to take greater advantage of our innocence !