TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD NORTHBROOK'S LETTER T"present want of a strong directing brain in the Liberal party was never more clearly revealed than in the attitude of that party towards the Indian Frontier War. They had in their hands all the materials for an important and successful Parliamentary discussion, materials which they are eagerly seeking, and not finding, on every side. The Government has been sanctioning another incident in the Forward policy ; and its agents have collected an army which might suffice for the conquest of Persia, have ordered—or is it had ordered ?- the subjugation of the wild borderland between India and Afghanistan, and have in a year of financial disaster committed themselves to an expenditure which can only be met by raising another loan. These steps have been taken in the face of remonstrances from some of their ablest officers, in spite of murmurs, as we believe, from some of their own best friends and supporters—if not colleagues—and at a time when, with war on the Nile, war in West Africa, and possible war in South Africa, the resources of the Army in men are officially pronounced to be insufficient. There never was a better case for sharp argument, and it was greatly improved by some attendant circumstances. As a rule Parliament dislikes debating Indian questions, which it does not quite under- stand, and feels had better be left to local or official experts. In this case, however, the difference of opinion among Anglo-Indians is so marked, the loss of officers' lives will be so considerable, and, above all, the financial consequences will be so disastrous—between the war and the famine we shall be, by official admission, thirteen millions sterling to the bad—that all Members and all Peers would have been interested, and though the Government could not have been beaten, a profound impression might have been made upon Parliamentary, or possibly even upon public, opinion. The Liberals, however, as it would seem out of pure bitterness, threw away the great advantages in their hands, and irritated opinion by an attempt to charge their adversaries with a gross breach of faith which, if anybody committed, they themselves did. As a fact nobody did, for there never was any pledge given before Chitral -was relieved, only an announcement of intentions, which were not departed from. The Government hoped to be able to respect the independence of the tribes, and did respect it, all their arrangements as to a road to Chitral which furnish the ground for the charge of bad faith having been made by peaceful negotiation. The charge never caught hold of the public, which, ignorant as it is of Indian affairs, does not suspect Indian Viceroys of small trickeries, and a letter from Lord Northbrook published in the Times of Thursday finally disposes of it. Nobody can know the facts better than Lord North- brook ; he is not a Tory, he is an opponent of the Forward school, and he is a. man with the kind of character which regards a breach of faith as something very grave indeed. The British people will rightly believe that if he says, after inquiry, there has been no breach—and he says it—there has been none, and the weapon of the Liberal speakers breaks in their hands. We are sorry for their blunder, because we dread the For- ward policy, and the "bankruptcy "—that is, the Indian demand for aid from the British taxpayer—which it will bring in its train ; but it is the fault of the acrid temper of the Liberal chiefs, who ought to have seen that even when the clans were beseeching Abdurrahman Khan for aid they brought no charge of breach of faith against the British. They complained, it is evident from his answer, that the British meant to tax them, not that they had departed from any binding agreement. The Liberals have, in fact, been stupidly acrimonious, and, as usual when politicians grow savage, have spoiled their own exceedingly strong case.
We see hints, and shall be delighted to believe them, that the Forward party is not going to win much this time. They have spent too much, they have not been quick enough, the difficulties of transport have been too fully revealed, and either in Simla or in London there is clearly hesitation, if not positive refusal, to annex. That is well, for we are totally unable to believe that, the battle once won, annexation will be the only course open to us. That the battle must be won we hold as strongly as any leader of the For- ward school, and unlike many critics, we do not doubt that won it will be. Sir William Lockhart is thoroughly competent, and the means at his disposal are too great rather than too small. That some fight is going on amongst the advisers at Simla which causes vacillation is patent on the face of the facts, and is angrily commented on in letters we have seen ; but Sir William will not vacillate, and his delays, which excite here so much surprise, are clearly dictated by a determination not to advance till he is completely ready. The practical fact is that the transport arrangements, which were not designed to meet the demands of so immense a force so suddenly brought together, have broken down. The railway is over- burdened ; the animals, rendered scarce by the famine, are insufficient in number and poor in quality ; and the camp followers, that unhappy necessity of Indian cam- paigning, detest going up into a roadless and waterless country where they may be " sniped " in dozens, and where they are always the first objects of attack, the- clansmen being attracted by baggage as flies by honey. Sir William Lockhart is not going to try to rush those wild passes with a helter-skelter mob behind him, but to reduce that mob into order first, and then, with his munitions, provisions, and water not only " ready " but on the spot, to teach the Afridis on their own ground that they cannot contend with an army scientifically organised. The Afridis will do their best, will fight at every gorge and from every hilltop, will kill or wound an astounding proportion of British officers—a bad sign visible through the entire business—and may even at some one point inflict a " check ; " but they will be beaten, and then, encamped in Tirah, which is a small territory, not a village, Sir William will dictate his terms.
How to arrange those terms is the next difficulty. It is very easy to say "Disarm the clans," but how are you to do it ? Agreements or no agreements, they will not send in arms which they need to preserve their own throats from being cut. You might as well ask English rioters in Manchester to give up their clothes and go- about for the future without a rag on. They will not do it, and no conquerors can search all the ravines, caves, hilltops, and hill-folds which they will use as hiding-places, and which, even if they were empty, they would replenish from Persia, from Afghanistan, from Russia, from China, and, more than all, from Agra and Calcutta. Arms are not difficult things to hide or to carry in a country as wild as the moon, and with 300 per cent. to be made by smuggling you can trust nobody except the gentlemen. Fining is more efficacious, because the clansmen love their few rupees, but it is difficult to carry out without threats of military execution, which- are both cruel and foreign to our ways ; and de- stroying villages only ruins that minority which, even- in the clans, would rather not fight. Hostages are of no value outside Beloochistan, for except there the clans have no hereditary chiefs, and we could not shoot the hostages if they had. The hostage system is only good for men who, when tricked, can murder, like Parisian Reds, Afghan fanatics, or Chinese in a rout, not for English Generals. There remains the cutting of good roads by forced labour, and it is on this, and on the erection of forts in the passes, that, like General Wade, we shall ultimately have to rely. Make the Afridi country acces- sible, and Afridis will be slow to attack,—that, and not direct government, which would be too costly, too burden- some on the Army, and too irritating to the tribes, is, we believe, the best working method of control. If that secures peace, even for ten years, we shall have got the Treasury right again, we shall have railway transport sufficient for an emergency, we shall have invented an aluminium gun that a mule can carry, and we shall have accustomed thousands of Afridis to look upon the British service as their proper way of getting something to save before they set up housekeeping. Time is our ally, not theirs.
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