Letters and Papers Concerning the Trans-Persian Railway and Other Railways in Persia [‎198v] (396/442)

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The Trans-Persian Railwajj. [ LORDS ]
The Trans-Persian Railway.
India, that since the year 1872 the question
of railways in Persia, including the Trans
continental railway, has been a thoroughly
live issue. In 1872 there v T as, if I remember
aright, a Committee of the House of
Commons appointed. That w r as the first
Committee which inquired into this question
of Persian railways. From 1872 to 1888
there was a stream of applications from
Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, Americans,
to Persia for concessions, some of them on a
grand and magnificent scale and others
entirely insignificant. Still there was a
constant series of applications ; and at the
end of it all—as I interrupted the noble
Earl towards the end of his speech to say—
at the end of it all Persia possesses only six
miles of railway, which runs to the shrine
of a Persian saint. Then came the period
from 1888 to 1890. The noble Earl must
be fully cognisant of the stream of tele
grams and despatches that went on during
those two years between the late Lord
Salisbury and his Ministers both at St.
Petersburg and Teheran, all going fully into
the very kind of arguments—the more
important of them, at all events—wdiich the
noble Earl has brought forward to-night,
and coming to a conclusion. There was a
pause from 1890 onw'ards, and then
came the pamphlet of Captain Rettich,
referred to by the noble Earl, on which the
noble Earl himself wrote a very elaborate
antagonistic Memorandum. I submit,
therefore, that the noble Earl greatly
exaggerated when he suggested that w r e had
sprung something upon Europe or upon this
country or upon Parliament.
The question entered a new phase about
the end of 1910, and this proposal was
submitted for our consideration. I would
like to ask the noble Earl what he would
have done if this proposal for a Societe
d’Etudes had been brought before him.
Were we to say, “ We will not look at it;
we have a frontier policy in India conse
crated ”—as the noble Earl would have put
it most eloquently—“ by the decisions of
great men for many generations ; we will
not listen to this ? ” That would have been
a very heroic attitude. There is not a man
in this House who is not fully conscious of
all the arguments that the noble Earl has
brought forward to-night about keeping as
long as ever we can a frontier on the Persian
side of mountain and of desert. The
military advantage of preserving that
frontier, if we could do it, is quite obvious,
and we do not want all this trumpet-
Viscount Morley.
blowing—I am not referring for the moment
to the noble Earl—all this trumpet-blowing
in the newspapers and so forth as to the
dangers to which we are exposing India.
Let me go back. What would you have
done ? There is no doubt that any detri
ment to that frontier of mountains and
desert does expose India to some dis
advantages. But suppose we had said,
when this proposal was made, “ We will
turn our backs upon all proposals of this
kind ; we will not listen.” Would that
blunt and bluff negative have been an
extinguisher to the whole business ? The
noble Earl is a great deal too well acquainted
with the currents and sub-currents, diplo
matic, commercial, and political, which are
running to suppose for a moment that the
business would remain under that extin
guisher. It would not be so ; and anybody
must have a very superficial knowledge of
the political and diplomatic conditions and
relations of this country in connection with
India, among other things, who would
dream for a moment that nothing would
follow. The question which has been left
all these years would undoubtedly remain,
but it would have assumed a new aspect;
and when the noble Earl says, and says truly
enough, that this may involve a change in
the conditions of frontier policy, I would
point out that you wnuld not have avoided
that by simply giving a point-blank refusal
to this proposal. A man must have a very
superficial knowledge—I am not thinking of
the noble Earl—of the diplomatic state of
Europe and must have a very narrow power
of political imagination if he does not see,
after we had declined, gruffly or with polite
evasions, to assent to anything involving
the principle of the Trans-Persian railway,
that a set of arrangements easily and
naturally devised, in view of all the political
and military consequences involved in them,
would or might have led—I think would
have led—to a very large extension in other
ways from those which now alarm the noble
Earl of frontier defence and military expen
diture in India. That is a point that I do
urgently press upon your Lordships. The
Government of India is just as sensible as
we are that a point-blank refusal to assent,
not to the railway, but to an examination of
the present proposal, might have led to
combinations that would involve disadvan
tages to our Indian position much more
serious in their character than the disadvan
tages that could arise from this limited
co-operation. The noble Earl talked a