When the news arrived that Major Cavagnari and his companions had fallen
victims to the fury of the Kabul populace, the _Daily Telegraph_ "called
aloud, before Heaven, for a punishment which should ring from end to end
of the Continent of Asia." It is a pity that so much fine and eloquent
indignation should be expended on the Afghans instead of those who are
truly responsible for the catastrophe which has evoked it. If ever there
was a future event which might be predicted with absolute certainty, it
was that Major Cavagnari and his companions would perish precisely as
they have done. Twice, within forty years, have we invaded Afghanistan,
although on both occasions we have frankly avowed that with the
inhabitants of the country we had no cause of quarrel whatever.
Nevertheless, we carried fire and sword wherever we went, cutting down
their fruit trees, burning their villages, and leaving their women and
children shelterless under a winter sky. What could we expect as the
fruit of such acts, except that our victims--knowing, as we did, that
they were revengeful, passionate, and too ignorant to forecast the
consequences of their actions--should retaliate in kind the moment that
they had the opportunity? The first invasion of Afghanistan is now known
by general consent as "the iniquitous war;" but it is open to question
if even that war was so elaborately contrived, or so long laboured for
as this--the first act of which has terminated in the slaughter of Major
Cavagnari and his escort.
The circumstances which preceded it are briefly these. For eighteen
months Lord Lytton had attempted, by alternate threats and cajolery, to
prevail upon the Ameer Shere Ali to make a surrender of his
independence, and become a vassal of the Indian Empire. These attempts
having failed, war was declared against him on the pretence that he had
insulted us before all Asia by declining to receive a "friendly" mission
sent by the Indian Government. This mission was _not_ friendly. It was
notorious throughout India that it would go to Kabul charged with an
_ultimatum_ which offered the Ameer the choice of war, or the sacrifice
of his independence. But even this mission the Ameer never refused to
receive--nay, it is certain that he would have received it if the
opportunity had been given to him, so great was the value he attached to
English friendship. But what the Government of India desired was not the
reception of the mission, but a pretext for making war upon the Ameer.
It knew that the policy which it meditated in Afghanistan would so
completely destroy the sovereignty of the Ameer, that it was impossible
he should agree to it. At the same time, it was impossible to declare
war against an independent prince, simply because he declined to divest
himself of his independence. The war must, somehow or another, be made
to appear as if it were due to some act of the Ameer. Consequently,
almost from the hour in which the announcement was made that the mission
was to start, the Ameer was plied with insults and menaces which, if
they were not intended to drive him to some act of overt hostility, had
no purpose at all. And when these proved unavailing, Lord Lytton
directed Sir Neville Chamberlain to attempt to force his way through the
Khyber Pass, without waiting for the permission of the Ameer. In the
most courteous manner the Afghan officer, in command at the Khyber,
intimated to the mission that, without the sanction of his master, it
was impossible to allow it to proceed; and this refusal was instantly
telegraphed to England as a deliberate insult which must be wiped out in
blood. From first to last, so far as his conduct towards us is
concerned, the Ameer was absolutely blameless. During his entire reign
his consistent endeavour had been to draw closer the ties of amity
between himself and us. The Russian mission had forced its way to Kabul,
despite of all his endeavours to hinder its advance; and there can be no
question that but for the previous action of Lord Lytton that mission
would never have come to Afghanistan. But eighteen months before that
occurrence Lord Lytton had withdrawn our Native Agent from the Court of
the Ameer. This had been done as a mark of displeasure, and a proof that
no alliance of any kind existed between the two States. This proceeding
Lord Lytton followed up by the occupation of Quetta, although he was
well aware that such an occupation would be interpreted--and rightly--by
the Ameer, as a menace to his independence, and the harbinger of war. So
it came about that when the Russian mission knocked for admission at the
doors of his capital, the Ameer found himself on the one side threatened
by Russia, and on the other abandoned and threatened by Lord Lytton.
Lord Lytton, in point of fact, is as directly responsible for the entry
of the Russian mission to Kabul as he is for the dispatch of his own.
But if Lord Lytton's treatment of the Ameer was cruel and ungenerous,
criminal, at least to an equal extent, was his treatment of the people
over whom he ruled. At that time there was an appalling amount of
suffering all over India. The country had been ravaged by a series of
famines. In the Punjab prices were abnormally high. The North-West
Provinces were still unrecovered from a dearth, during which the
Government of India had exhibited a rapacity and indifference to human
suffering which would, with difficulty, be credited in England. Terrible
as is the mortality resulting from a famine in India, the death-roll
represents but a tenth part of the suffering which such visitations
inflict. For every human being that dies, ten are left, without money
and without physical strength, to struggle feebly for existence on the
margin of the grave. They cannot give a fair day's work for a fair day's
wage. They may reckon themselves fortunate if their enfeebled powers can
earn just sufficient to keep body and soul together. For all these
wretched beings--and last year in Upper India they numbered many
millions--the smallest rise of price in the necessities of life means
death from hunger. A war, therefore, with the enormous rise of prices
which it would immediately produce, was nothing less than a sentence of
torture and death passed upon tens of thousands of our own subjects.
Undeterred, however, by the warnings of experience, deaf to
considerations of humanity and justice, the Government of India started
on its wild-goose chase after a "Scientific Frontier." The victims whom
it trampled to death in this mad chase have never been numbered--they
never can be numbered. The Afghans who died in defence of their village
homes form but a hundredth part of them. The residue was composed of our
own mute and uncomplaining subjects.
A war thus wantonly commenced resulted in a failure as ignominious as it
deserved. Long before the Treaty of Gundamuck the ambitious policy of
the Government had become an object of contempt and ridicule all over
India. It was known that Lord Lytton and his advisers were at their
wit's end to discover something which might be made to do duty as a
"Scientific Frontier," and so bring a misjudged enterprise to a
conclusion. But it is the peculiarity of our Ministers to believe that
they can arrest the inexorable sequence of cause and effect by a
dexterous manipulation of the faculty of speech. Lord Beaconsfield
appears to have imparted to his colleagues his own belief in the
omnipotence of phrases to remove mountains, and make rough places
smooth. So the Treaty of Gundamuck was no sooner signed than Ministers
and Ministerial journals raised a great hymn of triumph over the
wondrous things which they had wrought in Afghanistan. The one solid
national advantage to be derived from the sacrifice of Cavagnari and his
comrades, is that this method of treating facts will have to be laid
aside. Lord Lytton is not likely to appeal again to his "carefully
verified facts" as a proof that he is a much wiser man than Lord
Lawrence. Lord Cranbrook will not again express his conviction that the
"objections (to an English Resident) expressed by Shere Ali will be
shown to have been without substantial foundation." Yakoub Khan and his
five attendants are all that remain of that "strong, friendly, and
independent Afghanistan" which Mr. Stanhope informed the House of
Commons had been created by the war. The anguished cry of the _Daily
Telegraph_ "for a punishment which shall ring from end to end of the
Continent of Asia" is the latest expression of the "results incalculably
beneficial to the two countries" which, according to Lord Lytton, were
to flow from the Peace of Gundamuck.
A failure in policy more signal and more complete than this it is
impossible to imagine. But it is to be noted that the Ministerial
journals are doing their utmost to save the "Scientific Frontier" from
the destruction which has overtaken the projects of the Ministry. And so
long as a belief in this Frontier is cherished anywhere, the return to a
safe and rational policy is obstructed. In the following pages,
therefore, I shall, firstly, endeavour to show that the (so-called)
"Scientific Frontier" is as purely fictitious as the "strong, friendly,
and independent Afghanistan" which we were told had been created out of
chaos by means of the war. And, secondly, I shall discuss the various
lines of conduct which lie open to us, when we have occupied Kabul, in
order to determine which is best fitted to ensure the stability of our
Indian Empire and the contentment of its inhabitants.
The Scientific Frontier.
In all the discussions on this Frontier question, a very obvious, but
all-important, fact has been persistently forgotten. It is that British
rule in India is a rule based upon military supremacy; and that,
therefore, our Indian army--English as well as native--is primarily a
garrison, having its duties upon the places where it is quartered. We
could not withdraw our troops from any part of India without incurring
the risk of an outbreak in the districts thus denuded. The "Punjab
Frontier Force" has always been a force distinct from the "Army of
India," and recognized as having special duties of its own. So far as I
know, in the discussions on a "Scientific Frontier" no reference has
been made to the above circumstance. The Indian army has been spoken of
as if it were so much fighting power, which we were free to concentrate
at any point we pleased. And to this oversight is due the hallucination
that an improved frontier would enable us to diminish the strength of
the Indian garrison (properly so called). The fact is, that before this
last war we had almost the very frontier which our situation in India
required. If the authority of the Ameer had extended up to the
boundaries of our Empire, troubles between the two States must have
occurred, resulting inevitably in the extinction of the weaker. The evil
of such an extension of territory no one denies; we should not only have
had to hold Afghanistan with a strong garrison--certainly not less than
twenty thousand men--but we should have been compelled to maintain a
frontier force, to guard against aggression from without, either from
Russia or Persia. Forty thousand men would have been needed for this
double duty, in addition to the pre-existing garrison of India. But by a
piece of supreme good fortune the authority of the Ameer did not begin
where ours left off. Between us and him were interposed the tribes which
dwell in the hills along our North-Western frontier. These tribes
acknowledged allegiance neither to him nor to us. Broken up and divided
amongst themselves, the worst they could inflict upon us was an
occasional raid into our territories; and these we could repress without
having to call the Ameer to an account for the lawlessness of his
subjects. A few regiments of horse and foot were all that we needed for
the defence of our frontier; while as against foreign invasion we
possessed a frontier that needed no defence at all. That frontier
consisted of the foodless deserts and inaccessible hills of Afghanistan.
These were impenetrable to an invader, so long as we retained the
friendship and the confidence of the people who dwell among them.
Consequently, to quote the language of Sir Henry Rawlinson, "our main
object has ever been, since the date of Lord Auckland's famous Simla
Manifesto of 1838, to obtain the establishment of a strong, friendly,
and independent Power on the North-Western frontier of India, without,
however, accepting any crushing liabilities in return." We all know the
manner in which Lord Auckland set about obtaining the "strong, friendly,
and independent Power," and the "crushing liabilities" we had to accept
in consequence. Tutored by experience, we adopted a wiser and more
righteous policy, which was producing admirable results.
The difficulty of establishing a stable friendship with Afghanistan
arises from the character of the people. It is the habitation, not of a
nation, but of a collection of tribes, and the nominal ruler of
Afghanistan is never more than the ruler of a party which, for the time,
chances to be strongest. Consequently there never existed an authority,
recognized as legitimate throughout the country, with which we could
enter into diplomatic relations. At the same time, their divided
condition crippled the Afghans for all offensive purposes. We had,
therefore, nothing to fear in the way of unprovoked aggression, and our
obvious policy was to win the confidence of these wild tribes and their
chiefs, by carefully abstaining from encroachments on their
independence. Such, in fact, has been the policy which every
Governor-General has pursued in the interval which divides the
"plundering and blundering" of Lord Auckland from the like achievements
of Lord Lytton. And it had been attended with the greater success,
because under the firm guidance of two remarkable men, Afghanistan had
progressed considerably towards the status of an organized kingdom.
Shere Ali had diligently trod in the footsteps of his father, the Dost,
and it is in these terms that the Government of India describes the rule
and policy of the Ameer in the year 1876:
"Those officers of our Government who are best acquainted with the
affairs of Afghanistan, and the character of the Ameer and his
people, consider that the hypothesis that the Ameer may be
intimidated or corrupted by Russia (even supposing there was any
probability of such an attempt being made) is opposed to his
personal character and to the feelings and traditions of his race,
and that any attempt to intrigue with factions in Afghanistan,
opposed to the Ameer, would defeat itself, and afford the Ameer the
strongest motive for at once disclosing to us such proceedings.
Whatever may be the discontent created in Afghanistan by taxation,
conscription, and other unpopular measures, _there can be no
question that the power of the Ameer Shere Ali Khan has been
consolidated throughout Afghanistan in a manner unknown since the
days of Dost Mahomed, and that the officers entrusted with the
administration have shown extraordinary loyalty and devotion to the
Ameer's cause_. It was probably the knowledge of the Ameer's
strength that kept the people aloof from Yakoub Khan, in spite of
his popularity. At all events, Herat fell to the Ameer without a
blow. The rebellion in Salpoora in the extreme West was soon
extinguished. The disturbances in Budukshan in the North were
speedily suppressed. _Nowhere has intrigue or rebellion been able to
make head in the Ameer's dominions._ Even the Char Eimak and the
Hazara tribes are learning to appreciate the advantages of a firm
rule.... But what we wish specially to repeat is that, from the date
of the Umballa Durbar to the present time, _the Ameer has
unreservedly accepted and acted upon our advice to maintain a
peaceful attitude towards his neighbours_. We have no reason to
believe that his views are changed."
This "strong, friendly, and independent Power"--this edifice of order
and increasing stability--the British Government deliberately destroyed
in the insane expectation of finding a "Scientific Frontier" hidden
somewhere in the ruins. It is difficult to conceive of an action more
impolitic or more cruel. In a month the labours of forty years were
obliterated, old hatreds rekindled, and the wounds of 1838, which the
wise and gentle treatment of former Viceroys had almost healed, were
opened afresh.
We come next to the inquiry as to what this "Scientific Frontier" is, in
order to obtain which this act of vandalism was perpetrated. This is a
question involved in some obscurity. The _Times_ is the great champion
of the "Scientific Frontier," but in its columns, as also in Ministerial
speeches, it changes colour like a chameleon. Sometimes it is called the
"possession of the three highways leading to India," thereby rendering
the Empire "invulnerable." At other times it is recommended to us
because it protects the trade through the Bolan Pass, and enables us to
threaten Kabul. The fact is that the (so-called) "Scientific
Frontier"--meaning thereby the frontier we acquired by the Treaty of
Gundamuck--is a make-believe, an imposture. It is not the "Scientific
Frontier" in pursuit of which we "hunted the Ameer to death" and reduced
his territories to a condition of anarchy.
Those who have followed the history of the war with attention will
remember that in September of last year the Calcutta correspondent of
the _Times_ was smitten with a really marvellous admiration for Lord
Lytton. "India," he wrote, "is fortunate in the possession at the
present time of a Viceroy specially gifted with broad statesmanlike
views, the result partly of most vigilant and profound study, partly of
the application of great natural intellectual capacity to the close
cultivation of political science and the highest order of statecraft."
Here we have the portrait of the lion painted by himself; and it is not
surprising that this superb creature should have regarded with
considerable scorn the policy of his predecessors who never claimed to
be "specially gifted" for the exercise of "the highest order of
statecraft." "The present measure," the correspondent went on to say,
"for the despatch of a mission to Kabul forms but a single move in an
extensive concerted scheme for the protection of India, which is the
outcome of a long-devised and elaborately worked-out system of defensive
policy." Here we have a fine example of the "puff preliminary." In the
issue of the _Times_ for the 10th September this "extensive concerted
scheme for the protection of India" is detailed at length, and is there
plainly set forth as intended for a barrier against Russia:--
"The Indian Government are most anxious to avoid adopting any policy
which would bear even the semblance of hostility towards Russia, but
the extreme probability of a collision sooner or later cannot be
overlooked. It is necessary, therefore, to provide for a strong
defensive position to guard against eventualities. From this point
of view it is indispensable that we should possess a commanding
influence over the triangle of territory formed on the map by Kabul,
Ghuznee, and Jellalabad, together with power over the Hindoo
Khosh.... This triangle we may hope to command with Afghan
concurrence if the Ameer is friendly. The strongest frontier line
which could be adopted would be along the Hindoo Khosh, from Pamir
to Bamian, thence to the south by the Helmund, Girishk, and
Kandahar, to the Arabian Sea. It is possible, therefore, that by
friendly negotiations some such defensive boundary may be adopted."
Such were the moderate designs entertained by the Indian Government when
they dispatched what they called a "friendly mission" to the Court of
the Ameer. If Lord Lytton imagined that "friendly negotiations" would
obtain these tremendous concessions from the Ameer, it would show that a
training in "the highest order of statecraft" does not preserve even a
"specially gifted" Viceroy from the credulousness of an infant. But his
acts show that he entertained no such belief. He felt, as every one must
feel who reads the extract I have made, that demands such as these must
be preceded by a war. Hence the menacing letters addressed to the Ameer;
hence the rude and insulting manner in which Sir Neville Chamberlain was
ordered to attempt an entrance into Afghanistan without awaiting the
permission of the Ameer; and hence, finally, the monstrous fiction of a
deliberate "insult" inflicted upon us, when, in point of fact, we had
been the "insulters" all along. The obvious intention throughout was to
obtain a pretext for declaring war, because without a war the
"Scientific Frontier" was manifestly unattainable. Lastly, when war had
been determined upon, the same "official" correspondent came forward in
the _Times_ to make known the objects of the impending campaign. "We
have," he wrote, "been driven into what will probably be a costly war
entirely against our will, and all our endeavours to avoid it. The
occasion, therefore, will now be seized to secure for ourselves the
various passes piercing the mountain ranges along the whole frontier
from the Khyber to the Bolan; and further _strategic measures will be
adopted to dominate entirely the Suleiman range and the Hindoo Khosh_."
It is impossible not to admire the hardihood of this remarkable
correspondent when he alleges that the war was "entirely against our
will, and all our endeavours to avoid it." But this is not the matter
with which I am at present concerned. The official character of these
communications will be denied by no one, and they make it clear that the
"Scientific Frontier" was intended as a barrier against Russia, and
would have made the Hindoo Khosh the external boundary of the Indian
Empire. Such a frontier is manifestly the dream of a military
specialist, to whose mental vision the Indian Empire, with all its
diverse interests, has no existence except as a frontier to be defended
against the Russians. And it illustrates the ignorance and precipitate
folly which has plunged us in our present difficulties that a project so
wild should have been seriously entertained. To have carried it out the
subjugation of Afghanistan would have been an indispensable preliminary,
and then the civilizing of it, by means of a system of roads and strong
garrisons throughout the country; the entire cost of these vast
operations being defrayed by a country already taxed to the last point
of endurance, heavily burdened with an increasing debt, and ravaged by
periodical famines. Such, however, was the "Scientific Frontier" for
which a "specially gifted Viceroy," trained in "the highest order of
political statecraft," declared war against the Ameer. But the frontier
which we obtained at the close of the war, and which Ministers and
Ministerial journals would have us believe is the genuine article which
they wanted from the beginning, is not only not this frontier, but it
has not the smallest resemblance to it.
The new frontier does not differ from the old except in three
particulars. We hold the Khyber Pass as far as Lundi Kotal, and we have
acquired the right to quarter troops in the Kurram Valley and the Valley
of Peshin. Of these the Kurram Valley is a mere _cul-de-sac_, leading
nowhere. But I will not ask of my readers to accept of my judgment on
this matter. Among the best known advocates for a forward and aggressive
policy in Afghanistan is Dr. Bellew. An accomplished linguist and an
experienced traveller, he accompanied Colonel Lumsden's mission to
Kandahar in 1857; he was also a member of the mission entrusted with the
settlement of the Seistan boundary question, and no man living is better
acquainted with the geography and people of Afghanistan. I believe it
will not be denied that Lord Lytton, during the recent war, trusted
largely in his knowledge and suggestions. He has thus expressed himself
on the policy of occupying the Kurram Valley:--
"The Kurram Valley would involve the addition of about one hundred
and fifty miles of hill frontage to our border, and would bring us
into contact with the independent Orakzais, Zaimukhts, Toris,
Cabul-Khel, Waziris, and others, against whose hostility and inroads
here, as in other parts of the border, we should have to protect our
territory. By its possession, as we are now situated, we should be
committed to the defence of a long narrow strip of land, a perfect
_cul-de-sac_ in the hills, hemmed in by a number of turbulent
robber-tribes, who are under no control, and acknowledge no
authority. In ordinary times its acquisition would add to the
serious difficulties of our position. In times of trouble or
disturbance on the border, its possession would prove a positive
source of weakness, a dead weight upon our free action. In it we
should run the risk of being hemmed in by our foes in the
overhanging hills around, of being cut off from our communications
with the garrison of Kohat, by the Orakzais on the one side, by the
Waziris on the other. These are the disadvantages of the step. In
return what advantages should we derive? Not one. With Kurram in our
possession we certainly could not flank either the Khyber or the
Goleri Pass, because between it and the one, intervenes the
impassable snowy range of Sufed Koh; and between it and the other,
intervenes the vast routeless hilly tract of the Waziris. From
Kurram we could neither command Kabul nor Ghazni, because the route
to either is by a several days' march, over stupendous hills and
tortuous defiles, in comparison with which the historical Khyber and
Bolan Passes, or even the less widely-known Goleri Pass, are as
king's highways."
This, I think, is sufficient to dispose of the Kurram Valley. If the old
frontier has been rendered "invulnerable," it is not the acquisition of
the Kurram Valley which has made it so. There remains the Peshin Valley.
This valley is an open tract of country lying almost midway on the line
of march between Quetta and Kandahar, but nearer to the former than the
latter. Three easy marches from Quetta suffice to place a traveller in
the centre of it. It cannot accurately be described as an extension of
our frontier, because it is dissevered from it by more than two hundred
miles of difficult country. Between the valley and British territory,
the lands of the Khan of Khelat are interposed in one direction, and
numerous robber-tribes--Kakers, Murrees, Bhoogtees--in another. Until
the valley is securely linked to the Indus by a railway from Sukkur to
the Bolan Pass--a costly work, which could not be executed in less than
seven years--it will be impossible to quarter more than a few thousand
men in it--and these for six months of the year will be as completely
detached from their base of supply and reinforcement in India, as if a
tract of empty space ran between them. So far from ensuring any
increased security to India by our premature occupation of this valley,
we have only enhanced the chances of a hostile collision with the rulers
and people of Afghanistan. We were already in military occupation of
Quetta, and until easy and rapid communication had been established
between Quetta and the Indus, nothing was to be gained by a yet further
advance from our base. As a barrier against Russia this frontier is
without meaning, and no better proof of this fact could be adduced than
Sir Henry Rawlinson's commentary upon its merits in the Article on the
"Results of the Afghan War" which recently appeared in the _Nineteenth
Century_:--
"The Afghan settlement is a very good settlement as far as it goes,
but it is not immaculate--_it is not complete_. To yield us its full
measure of defence, the Treaty must be supplemented by all
legitimate precautions and supports. _Persia must be detached from
Russia coûte que coûte._ Russia herself must not be left in any
uncertainty as to our intentions. She must be made to understand ...
_that she will not be permitted unopposed to establish herself in
strength ... even at Abiverd_, nor to commence intrigues against the
British power in India. She might indeed be warned that, if
necessary, we were prepared in self-defence to support the
Turcomans--with whom she has no legitimate quarrel--with arms or
money, or even to turn the tables on her by encouraging the efforts
of the Uzbegs to recover their liberty.... _It would be almost
fatuity at such a moment to withdraw our garrison from Candahar...._
Yacub Khan must be made to see that it is as much for his interest
as our own to hold an efficient body of troops in such a position
that, on the approach of danger ... _they might, with military
alacrity, occupy Herat as an auxiliary garrison_."
And what is implied in detaching Persia from Russia he explains in
another part of his Essay.
"If Russia, as there is strong reason to believe, is now pushing on
to Merv or Sarakhs ... with the ultimate hope of occupying Herat,
then it might very possibly be a sound policy to extend to Persia
the provisions of the Asia Minor Protectorate, or even to support
her actively in vindicating her rights upon the frontier of
Khorassán."
From all which it would appear that our "Scientific Frontier" is simply
good for nothing until it has been supplemented by an offensive and
defensive alliance with the barbarian enemies of Russia all over the
world. In order to ensure the safety of India, we must protect not only
our own "Scientific Frontier," but we must guarantee the Sultan all his
Asiatic possessions; we must be ready at any moment to fight for the
"integrity and independence" of Persia; we must be prepared to march our
troops to Herat, and to show a front against the Russians on the Oxus;
we must provide the Tekeh-Turcomans with arms and money, and assist the
Uzbegs in their attempts to recover their liberty. Such are the
"legitimate precautions and supports" which are requisite to render the
new frontier immaculate and complete. But if with a "Scientific
Frontier" we remain liable to such tremendous demands as these, it
passes imagination to conjecture in what respect we could have been
worse off when our frontier was "haphazard."
The Circumstances of the Peace.
I shall next endeavour to show the circumstances which compelled the
Indian Government to acquiesce in a peace which thus left the avowed
object of the war unfulfilled. The preparations for the invasion of
Afghanistan were on a scale corresponding to the magnitude of the
enterprise as explained by the "official" correspondent of the _Times_.
Troops were set in motion for the North-West frontier from garrisons in
the extreme south of India. Men were sent from England to man heavy gun
batteries. In addition to the troops under General Roberts, no less than
three columns were formed to invade Afghanistan viâ Sukkur and the
Bolan, and the same number to advance through the Khyber. The force
which marched to Kandahar was supplied with four heavy gun batteries,
and a fifth was sent up subsequently, although, except upon the
supposition that permanent entrenched camps were to be formed in
Afghanistan, these heavy guns were simply an encumbrance and a source of
danger. But the campaign had barely commenced before the Government
became aware that it had utterly miscalculated its cost and difficulty.
It is easy enough for an army to enter Afghanistan; it is next to
impossible for it to subsist when it has got there. It is easy enough to
scatter the Afghans when collected in battle array; it is next to
impossible to subjugate them because they never are _so_ collected. From
these causes our raid into Afghanistan was but little removed from an
ignominious failure. If we had not made peace we should have been
compelled to evacuate the country from the enormous costliness of
retaining troops in it. Under such circumstances, a peace was needed too
urgently to allow the Government to stand out for any extraordinary
concessions. They took what they could get, which proved to be, as we
have seen, the right to place garrisons in the two valleys of Kurram and
Peshin. But having gone to war in search of a "Scientific Frontier," no
alternative was left to them except to frankly confess that they had not
found it; or to affirm that these two valleys constituted it.
We come now to the causes of our failure. These are all-important, and
ought to dissipate for ever the fear of an invasion of India by Russia
or any other Power. The plan of the campaign required that Afghanistan
should be invaded from three points; but the most important operation
was understood to be the advance of General Stewart upon Kandahar. As
soon as hostilities appeared inevitable, a small force under General
Biddulph had been sent forward to secure Quetta against a sudden attack.
General Stewart followed later on, and the two columns numbered upon
paper about 20,000 men, with 60 guns. Meanwhile, a third column was
ordered to assemble at Sukkur in support, and placed under the command
of General Primrose. These extensive preparations were supposed to
indicate the determination of the Indian Government to push on as far as
Herat. The distance which had to be traversed between Sukkur and
Kandahar is, roughly speaking, about four hundred miles, but the country
presents extraordinary difficulties. From Sukkur to Jacobabad extends a
level tract which, during the rains, is flooded to a depth of seven
feet. Between Jacobabad and Dadur--a town situated at the entrance of
the Bolan Pass--extends the Sinde desert. Any large force marching
across this desert would have to take with them, not only food and
forage, but water, for only at intervals of fifteen or twenty miles is
the parched and barren soil pierced by a few brackish springs, which
just suffice for the needs of the hamlets which have sprung up around
them. For six months of the year this desert is literally impassable. A
hot wind sweeps across it, which is fatal to man and beast. Only once
did the Indian Government venture to send troops across it after this
"blast of death" (as the natives call it) had begun to blow. This was in
the last Afghan war. Some hundreds of native troops were sent as an
escort in charge of supplies, and in four days one hundred Sepoys
perished, three hundred camp followers, and (I think) nine officers out
of fourteen. Beyond Dadur is the Bolan Pass. This Pass is about eighty
miles in length; regular road there is none; what purports to be a road
is merely the bed of a stream, which, during the rainy weather, is
filled from bank to bank with a volume of rushing water. Neither food
nor forage is obtainable in the Pass, and even the camels, when starting
from Dadur, had to carry a seven days' supply of food for themselves.
Between Quetta and Kandahar the country is open, but neither is food
procurable for a large force, nor forage for the horses and camels. From
first to last General Stewart's troops were almost wholly fed from
India. The winter, luckily, was one of unprecedented mildness. But for
this, in place of a march upon Kandahar, a terrible catastrophe could
hardly have been averted. In ordinary seasons the snows fall heavily in
and around Quetta early in November, and the cold is intense. The Bolan
Pass is swept from end to end by hurricanes of wind and rain and snow.
At the very time when these storms usually occur we had a dozen
regiments and batteries straggling along the whole length of the Bolan
Pass. Last year, however, there was neither snow nor hurricane, and our
troops got through the Pass in safety. There was no opposition offered
to our advance on Kandahar, but, from the want of food and the hardships
which had to be endured, no less than twenty thousand camels perished
upon the march. This mortality decided the campaign. When General
Stewart reached Kandahar the situation was as follows:--The magazines at
Quetta were nearly empty. Four months' food was collected at Sukkur, but
awaited carriage for its transport to Quetta. The third column under
General Primrose was assembling on the Indus, and needed ten thousand
camels to enable it to advance. To supply all these wants there were at
Sukkur about 1600 camels. In order to lessen the pressure on the
Commissariat, General Stewart divided his forces, despatching one column
to hunt for supplies in the direction of Giriskh, and sending another
with the same object to Khelat-i-Ghilzie. These movements caused the
death from cold and hunger of a large additional number of camels, and
demonstrated that there was not food in that part of Afghanistan
sufficient for a force so large as that collected at Kandahar. Sinde,
meanwhile, had been swept so bare of camels that it was impossible to
collect a sufficient number for the carriage of food to Quetta before
the hot weather had set in, and the march across the desert was barred
by "the blast of death." Immediate action was necessary if General
Stewart's troops were not to starve; and eight thousand men returned to
India, reducing the garrison left at Kandahar to four thousand. This
number, it was trusted, the Commissariat would be able to feed during
the hot weather. But even this small force was so scantily supplied with
carriage that it could not have moved, in a body, for fifty miles in any
direction. It was, so to speak, nailed to the spot on which it was
encamped. This want of food, far more than the physical difficulties of
the country, is and always will be the insuperable obstacle to carrying
on extensive military operations in Afghanistan. The people obtain no
more from the soil than just suffices for their own wants; and for days
together an invading army has to pass over huge wastes with hardly a
trace of human habitation, and consequently destitute of food.
Not a little amusing was the revulsion of feeling caused throughout
India by the lame and impotent conclusion of the advance on Kandahar. It
was a demonstration of the impossibility of an invasion which convinced
those who were most reluctant to be convinced. If when we had all India
from which to draw our supplies, and with no enemy to oppose us, our
utmost efforts had merely sufficed to place four thousand men in
Kandahar, and leave them there, isolated and defenceless, it was
chimerical to suppose that the Russians could march for double that
distance an army capable of attempting the conquest of India.
"Kandahar," writes a military correspondent to the _Pioneer_--the
official journal of India--"is acknowledged to be a mistake, and it is
hoped that a British army will never again be dispatched in that
direction; it is a mere waste of men, money, and means, and an
unsuitable line for either attack or defence."
And the _Pioneer_, the very purpose of whose existence is to preach the
infallibility of the Indian Government, thus endorses the remarks of its
correspondent: "The theories about Kandahar are by this time exploded;
indeed, there are many critics who have refused to adopt them from the
very beginning; believing against General Hamley, that the main road
into Afghanistan, whether we march as defenders of the Kabul Ameer or as
avengers, must lie past Peshawur and Jelalabad."
The failure on the Kandahar side placed the Indian Government in an
extremely difficult position. An advance on Herat was plainly out of the
question; even one on Ghuznee was beyond the power of General Stewart
and his troops. Elsewhere the aspect of affairs was hardly less
cheering. The expedition in the Kurram Valley had resulted in the
somewhat ignominious retreat out of Khost. We had about 15,000 men
holding the line from the Khyber to Jelalabad; but in effecting this,
14,000 camels had perished, and several of the regiments had been more
than decimated from sickness and exposure. We had not subjugated a rood
of territory on which our troops were not actually encamped. The main
strength of the Ameer's army was untouched, while all along our
Trans-Indus frontier the hill tribes were in a state of dangerous
unrest. The hot weather was coming on apace, when cholera and typhoid
fever would be added to the number of our enemies. Thirty thousand
troops had been set in motion, the garrisons in the interior of India
dangerously weakened; three millions of money expended; and this was all
that had been achieved. If now Yakoub Khan refused to come to terms,
what was to be done? General Brown might be ordered to force his way
from Jelalabad to Kabul, but what was he to do when he got there? The
cost in money would be certainly heavy--the cost in men, not improbably,
heavy also. And if, on our arrival at his capital, Yakoub Khan retired
to either Balkh or Herat, we were powerless to follow him. Yakoub Khan,
in fact, had the game in his hands. We had shot our bolt and failed. He
had simply to decline to make peace, and keep out of our reach. We
should then have been compelled either to evacuate the country, or to
occupy it with the certainty that a little later on we should be
compelled to withdraw, when the drain on the finances of India became
too heavy to endure. Sir Henry Rawlinson rightly says, that a very small
force can march from one end of Afghanistan to another; but a very large
force is requisite permanently to hold it. The tribal divisions which
hinder unity of resistance hinder also the achievement of any decisive
victory. Each tribe is an independent centre of life, which requires a
separate operation for its extinction.
Such was the dilemma in which the Government found themselves involved.
It was almost equally disastrous either to withdraw or to advance. If
the troops were withdrawn, they would return burdened with the ignominy
of failure. If they advanced, it would be into a tangle of military and
political embarrassments, the issue of which it was impossible to
foresee. There was only one way of escape possible, and that was to
relinquish the ambitious projects from which the war originated, and
acquiesce in any settlement which the adversary would agree to. The
result was the Treaty with Yakoub Khan--a Treaty which I have no
hesitation in saying has placed in peril the existence of our Indian
Empire.
It is, indeed, impossible to account for the infatuation or the
obstinacy which caused the Indian Government to stipulate for the
reception of an undefended British Envoy at the Court of a prince in the
position of Yakoub Khan. It would have been so easy to have introduced a
clause in the Treaty, to the effect that as soon as Yakoub Khan's
authority was firmly established an English Envoy should be accredited
to Kabul. This would have saved the political consistency of the
Government without exposing the Indian Empire to the tremendous strain
and peril of a second Afghan expedition. There was absolutely nothing to
be gained, either in India or England, by immediately forcing an English
Envoy on the luckless Yakoub; while it enormously enhanced the
difficulties with which he had to cope. Nevertheless, in the face of
historic precedents, in defiance of multiplied warnings, Lord Lytton
deliberately resolved to reproduce, for the edification of Asia, the
tragedy of Shah Soojah and Sir William Nacnaghten, the only difference
being that on this occasion the principal parts were played by Yakoub
Khan and Major Cavagnari. The fact is that from first to last in this
bad business the chief agents were moving in a world of their own
imagining. They appear to have persuaded themselves that they had but to
refuse to _see_ facts, and the facts would vanish. They had but to
publish in the _Times_ that Lord Lytton was a "Viceroy specially
gifted," and forthwith he would become what he was described to be. They
had but to assert that the Afghans had no objection to the presence of a
British Envoy at Kabul, and immediately their objections would
disappear. The mischief is done now past recall. Hardly even in 1857 was
our Indian Empire in a position of greater peril than it is now. The
persistent opposition between official acts and official language which
has been the distinguishing characteristic of Lord Lytton's
administration has created an universal disbelief in the sincerity of
our speech and the equity of our intentions. In the circle which
surrounds the Viceroy, it seems, indeed, to have become an accepted
maxim that it is a matter of indifference whether or not the natives are
heartily loyal to our rule. And Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, in his Minute
on the Repeal of the Cotton Duties, notes the fact as "a grave political
danger." It is a maxim which could not have been formulated except by
the agents of a Government who felt that they had forfeited, past hope
of recovery, the confidence of those they were set to rule over. Of the
alienation itself there can be no question. The loyalty of the native
has, probably, never been at a lower ebb since 1857. And any reverse in
Afghanistan might kindle a flame that would spread from one end of India
to the other.
But there is nothing to be gained by anticipating greater difficulties
than already beset us. I will assume that no additional complications
occur--that General Roberts has succeeded without much difficulty in the
occupation of Kabul--that General Stewart has possession of Kandahar,
and that all we have to determine is what to do with Afghanistan now we
have got it. There are but three courses of conduct possible--withdrawal
from the country altogether, a return to the arrangements formulated in
the Treaty of Gundamuck, or annexation. I will consider the last first.
Annexation.
Nobody, so far as I know, desires to annex Afghanistan. But there are, I
apprehend, but few who are aware of what is involved in "the annexation
of Afghanistan," and the danger is that we may drift almost unwillingly
into annexation, to discover the full consequences only when too late.
Everybody is agreed that India cannot defray the costs. This is set down
by the supporters of Government at a sum of five millions annually. I
believe it would be much larger; but we will assume that five millions
is a correct estimate. By no possibility could we screw this additional
sum from the people of India. Already the expenses of the administration
increase at a far quicker rate than the revenues which have to meet
them. The costs of governing Afghanistan, therefore, would have to be
defrayed from the English Exchequer. But assuming this to be arranged,
the pecuniary difficulty is the smallest which has to be encountered. To
garrison the interior and frontier of Afghanistan we should require not
less than forty thousand men--one-half of whom would have to be English
soldiers. For, until the interior of Afghanistan is completely opened
out by roads which can be traversed throughout the year, the garrisons
holding the country would have to be sufficiently strong to be
independent of reserves and supports during the winter. And if we
attempted to hold Balkh and Herat, twenty thousand English soldiers
would not suffice. Now where are these English soldiers to come from? An
addition of at least forty thousand men to our regular army would be
required in order to supply them. But the English part of our
Afghanistan garrison does not present so insuperable a difficulty as the
native. It would not be safe, at least for many years, to organize our
native garrison from the Afghans themselves. The regiments would have to
be recruited in India specially for this service--but out of what races?
The natives of the Southern parts of India have not the physique capable
of enduring the severities of an Afghanistan winter. The Sikhs or
Hindoos of Upper India would certainly not enlist in a service which
carried them so far from their homes into the midst of an alien people
and an alien faith. The only recruits we should obtain in large numbers
would be Muhammadans. The danger, then, is obvious. In India the fierce
fanaticism of the Moslem creed is mitigated by its contact with the
milder tenets of Hindooism; but remove an Indian Moslem to Afghanistan,
and he would very soon become inspired by the religious zeal of his
co-religionists around him. We should be exposed to the risk,
perpetually, of our native garrison combining with the people of the
country to expel the infidel intruders from the land, and restore the
supremacy of the Prophet. But even these dangers dwindle into
insignificance when we contemplate the main result of an annexation of
Afghanistan. That result would be that the hills and deserts of
Afghanistan would no longer extend between the Russian Power and our
own. We should have given to Russia the power to interfere directly in
the internal concerns of India.
I have never supposed Russia to have any sinister designs upon India.
After much reading I have failed to discover any proof of such designs.
Those who suspect Russia obtain their evidence by a very simple process.
They reject as incredible the objects assigned by the Russian Government
as guiding its policy, and substitute their own fixed preconception in
place of them. I believe that neither Russia nor any other Power would
accept of India as a free gift. I cannot imagine a rational statesman
coveting for his country so burdensome and unprofitable a
responsibility. But that a Russian Government should ever attempt the
invasion and conquest of India is to me beyond the power of belief. What
Mr. Cobden wrote in 1835 appears to me as convincing at this day as it
was then.
"China," he wrote, "affords the best answer to those who argue that
Russia meditates hostile views towards our Indian possessions. China
is separated from Russia by an imaginary boundary only; and that
country is universally supposed to contain a vast deposit of riches
well worthy of the spoiler's notice. Besides, it has not enjoyed the
'_benefit_' of being civilized by English or other Christian
conquerors--an additional reason for expecting to find a wealthy
Pagan community, waiting, like unwrought mines, the labours of some
Russian Warren Hastings. Why, then, does not the Czar invade the
Chinese Empire, which is his next neighbour, and contains an
unravaged soil, rather than contemplate, as the alarmist writers and
speakers predict he does, marching three thousand miles over regions
of burning deserts and ranges of snowy mountains to Hindostan, where
he would find that Clive and Wellesley had preceded him?"
Apart, however, from the question of motives, it is not possible to
march an army from Herat to the Indus. And we must always bear in mind
that even if the Russian army reached the Indus, their real work,
instead of being over, would only then commence. With that vast extent
of hill and desert behind them they would have before them some sixty
thousand British troops in an entrenched position. Even a victory would
leave the invader begirt about with dangers and difficulty; a defeat
would be his utter annihilation. Not a soldier of the army of invasion
would return to tell the tale. It is impossible to divine where or how
Russia could raise the money for so gigantic an enterprise; and if the
money was forthcoming it is not credible that any Government should
fling it away on such a hopeless undertaking. In assuming that Russia
will refrain from an attack upon India, there is no need to credit
either the Government or the people with more than that ordinary common
sense which hinders men and nations from attempting to achieve the
impossible.
The danger to India arises not from the existence of any Russian designs
against our Empire, but from the belief that such exist. This belief
will, so to speak, hybernate for a season; then all at once we find it
in full activity, and creating a panic in every heart of which it takes
possession. These are the critical moments for the well-being and
security of our Indian Empire. In such a period of panic we rushed into
the disastrous war in Afghanistan in 1838. Under the influence of like
feelings we involved ourselves in the inglorious raid the first act of
which has just terminated. On both occasions we have been guilty of
assailing a Prince whose only desire was to form an intimate alliance
with us. On both occasions we have carried fire and sword among a people
with whom we frankly avowed that we had no assignable cause of quarrel.
But so long as Afghanistan extended between us and the Russian dominions
in Asia it was physically impossible to declare war against Russia. In
our unreasoning panic we fell upon the Ameer and his people, because
there was no one else to attack. But if we make the Hindoo Khosh our
military frontier, then Russia, by assembling a few thousand men upon
the Oxus, can, whenever she pleases, agitate India from one end to the
other. She will not need to attack. The menace will be sufficient. For
we must remember that the undisputed supremacy of British rule in India
depends, in the main, upon two conditions, both of which are destroyed
if we annex Afghanistan. The one is, that no heavier burden be laid upon
the people than they are willing to bear; and the other, the absence of
any hope of deliverance. The cost of maintaining our supremacy in
Afghanistan _will_ make the burden of our rule utterly intolerable alike
to our native soldiers and our civil population; the assembling of a
Russian army on the frontiers of Afghanistan will provide the hope of
deliverance. The hazards and uncertainties of the situation would keep
the natives in a state of perpetual unrest. The ambitious and the
disaffected would engage in intrigue and conspiracy; trade would
languish; the internal development of the country be abruptly arrested;
and the Empire would assuredly be wrested from our hands on the occasion
of the first European war in which we became involved.
The Treaty of Gundamuck.
Annexation being impossible, is it wise, or is it practicable, to return
to the provisions of the Treaty of Gundamuck? It is neither wise nor
possible, for the simple reason that this Treaty was based upon a
fiction. It was grounded upon the utterly false assumption that there
existed in Afghanistan a central authority, acknowledged as legitimate
by all the people of Afghanistan, with whom we could establish permanent
diplomatic relations. There is no such authority. Instances have been
adduced of attacks made upon European Embassies in other Oriental
countries, and the argument has been put forward, that as,
notwithstanding such outbreaks, diplomatic relations have been
maintained with Turkey and Persia, there is no reason to conclude from
the fate of Major Cavagnari that they are impossible in Afghanistan. The
cases are not parallel. The Ameer of Kabul has no such authority in his
capital or throughout his dominions as the Sultan or the Shah. It is
possible, though not very probable, that a British Envoy might reside in
Kabul without being murdered, but the measure of his utility would
depend upon the fluctuating fortunes of the Ameer to whom he was
accredited. The only way to obviate this would be to place a force at
the disposal of the Envoy, sufficient to put down all insurrectionary
movements against the Ameer. But if we undertook this duty, we should
become responsible for the character of the civil administration. We
could not punish the victims of a cruel or rapacious Ameer, without at
the same time cutting off at their source the cruelty and rapacity, by
the deposition of an unworthy ruler. And thus, in a very brief time, we
should find that virtually we had annexed the country. Facts are
stubborn things, and it is worse than useless to fight against them.
Those who contend that the murder of Major Cavagnari ought not to be
allowed to overturn what they term the "settled policy" of the Ministry,
are bound to show in what way this "settled policy" can be carried out.
How do they propose to obtain an Ameer towards whom all the sections of
the Afghans shall practise a loyal obedience? And if no such Ameer can
be obtained, with whom or with what are we to establish diplomatic
relations?
The Policy of Withdrawal.
There remains the policy of withdrawal. The surest barrier against
foreign aggression in India is to be obtained in the contentment and
prosperity of the people. A people thus situated are prompt to repel
invasion, and secret intrigue is deprived of the conditions essential to
its success. But in order that the people of India should be prosperous
and contented, it is absolutely necessary that the financial burdens
they have to carry--and especially the military charges--should not be
enhanced. It is not possible to advance our military frontier--even to
the extent of the (so-called) "Scientific Frontier"--without an enormous
enhancement of our military expenditure. And all military expenditure is
unprofitable, in the sense that it takes so much from the tax-payer and
brings him no material equivalent. Consequently, whatever else this
forward policy accomplishes, it cannot fail to impoverish the people and
stimulate their discontent. Moreover, the incidents of the war have
demonstrated that an invasion of India from Central Asia is physically
impossible. We started from the Indus, firmly resolved to march to
Herat, if necessary; but when we had reached Kandahar, we found it
impossible to advance further. It would be equally impossible for a
Russian army to march from Herat to the Indus. There is, therefore, no
such reason for a change of frontier as was alleged in justification of
the war.
In all probability there is not even a Tory in England who does not in
his heart approve of a policy of withdrawal; but there are, he would
say, difficulties in the way. There are. After all the glowing eulogies
they have pronounced upon themselves, it will not be pleasant or easy
for Ministers to transfer these eulogies to their opponents. It will be
extremely disagreeable for a "specially gifted Viceroy" to have to
confess that his chiefest gift was a gigantic capacity for blundering.
But if India is to be preserved to the nation, there is no escape from
this unpleasant alternative. Either Ministers must acknowledge an error
that is now patent to all the world, or India must be saddled with the
heavy costs and the incalculable risks of an annexation of Afghanistan.
These risks, it must be remembered, are not transitory, but enduring;
and if we accept them, we must be prepared for a doom of absolute
effacement in the politics of Europe. The argument which will be urged
against withdrawing from Afghanistan is, of course, the old familiar
one--the loss of prestige. This is an argument impossible to refute
because the exact worth of prestige is an unknown quantity, as to which
no two people are agreed. But whatever be its value, to rush upon ruin
and destruction in order to preserve our prestige is an act of insanity.
It is as if a man should commit suicide in order to preserve his
reputation for courage. When we retired from Afghanistan in 1842, we
frankly confessed the mistake we had committed, and I am not aware that
any evil resulted from the confession. The wrongs that we had done left
behind them a legacy of evil, but not the confession of those wrongs.
And so it is now. The frontier policy of Lord Lytton has ruined our
reputation for justice, truthfulness, and generosity, and the stain of
that policy must cling to us for ever. We shall not conceal or efface it
by laying a crushing burden upon our native subjects and upon future
generations of Englishmen, in order to evade the humiliation of a
confession. On the contrary, we make what reparation is still in our
power when, in the interests of both, we refuse to annex Afghanistan.
ROBERT D. OSBORN,
_Lieutenant-Colonel_.