INDIA TINDER QUEEN VICTORIA.* THE period which this history covers
extends, as the author remarks, from the beginning of the first to the end of the second Afghan War, and it consequently includes the Mutiny. The histories of the first Afghan War and of the Mutiny have been so well written by Mr. Kaye, that it was scarcely needful to write them again, especially as Captain Trotter does not excel as a narrator of campaigns ; and we think his book would have been a much better one if he had omitted the entire first volume and the first five chapters of the second, and called the rest "A History of India since the Mutiny." The book has all the appearance of being the work of a sensible, accurate, pains- taking, and impartial writer, and the greater part of the second volume is occupied with such a record of peaceful progress as was well worth writing in the form now before us.
With every Government, the first two concerns are the military and the financial,—defence against external and internal enemies, and provision for the needs of the public service. But these requirements are forced upon our attention by the history and politics of our Indian Empire, more perhaps than by any other. Its very existence depends on its army,
• History of India under Queen Victoria, from 1836 to 1880. By Captabi Lionel J. Trotter. 2 vols. London W. H. Allen and Co. 1886.
without which it would break up from the action of destructive forces within, even if there were no enemies without. We do not think there is any sensible man who doubts that it is the duty of the Indian Government to make its army as efficient as it can be made, so long as the cost is not overwhelming. But as to the way in which its policy ought to be influenced by military considerations, there has been, and still is, the greatest difference of opinion. Our whole Afghan policy has been avowedly determined by the fear of Russia as a possible neigh- bour and rival, and by the desire to build up a barrier between the Russian Empire and our own. This fear has led us into our two costly and disastrous Afghan wars, out of which we have come victorious indeed, but with no results achieved except the loss of able officers and brave soldiers, the addition of at least thirty-five millions sterling to the debt of India, and the enmity of the entire Afghan people. We shall be reminded that the present Ameer Abdorrahman is our ally, and has so far shown himself trustworthy. We do not by any means deny this ; and if there were any certainty that his successors would be like him, it might be reasonably enough argued that our Afghan policy was a success, though purchased at an enormous cost. But such is not the case ; in a State like Afghanistan, all policy is personal; and it is as likely as not that the successor of Abdurrahman may be more decidedly Russian in his leanings than he is himself British.
We have last now spoken of the fear of Russia. We do not speak of fear in any unworthy sense. The most foolish fear is the fear of being thought afraid, and the highest courage is con- sistent with sensitiveness to danger. Our soldiers and civilians in India are brave men; were they not brave, there would be no Indian Empire for them to guard and govern ; and the effect of danger on brave men is not only different but opposite to its effect on timid men. The natural impulse of a timid man is to ran away from danger ; that of a brave man, to press forward to meet it. Bat there are cases where pressing forward is only one degree less ruinous than running away ; it is well known that higher courage and discipline are needed to get soldiers to stand still under fire than to charge under it; and the highest political courage may be shown by keeping a cool head and doing nothing. In the case of our Afghan policy, the danger was that we might have Russia as a neighbour. It was not altogether in our power to avert this, for we could not hinder the extension of Russian power in the regions east of the Caspian, nor take the robber. chiefs of Central Asia under our protection ; but we did our utmost to turn a remote danger into a near one by pressing for. ward to meet it, and endeavouring to make Afghanistan, in fact though not in name, a British outpost. "Unwise as is such a policy now, it was nothing short of insane forty-five years ago, when the Russians had scarcely advanced south-east of the Caspian, and the Punjab was an independent State between the Afghan frontier and our own. The conditions of the problem have no doubt been changed since then, but only in degree. The Russian frontier now touches Afghanistan on the north- west, and ours touches it on the south-east; but the two Empires are still separated by the entire breadth of Afghanistan,—that is to say, by eight hundred miles of roadless and barren country, inhabited by a warlike, untameable, and treacherous race; and every forward step that we take diminishes the width of this barrier. We regard the entire "forward policy" as a gigantic blander,—the occupation of Quetta (though Quetta is not politically in Afghanistan) seems to us only a few degrees less impolitic than would be the occupation of Candahar, or Cabal, or Herat itself. The "forward policy" means to advance nearer to a possible enemy whom we have every reason to keep at a distance; moving our advanced columns away from their base of operations, and nearer to that of the enemy ; and probably enabling the enemy to choose his own ground and his own time for battle. On this subject we quote from a despatch written by Lord Lawrence in 1869, when Governor-General of India :—" We think it impolitic and unwise to decrease any of the difficulties which would be entailed on Russia if that Power seriously thought of invading India, as we should certainly decrease them if we left our own frontier and met her half-way in a difficult country, and possibly in the midst of a hostile or exasperated population."
All these dangers were near being incurred at the time of the Penjdeh affair, two years ago, when Mr. Gladstone was in power. Abdurrahman was "our protected ally "—these were Mr. Glad- stone's words in the House of Commons—when the Russian General commanding on the Afghan frontier, being well beyond any telegraphic communication with his own Government, at- tacked and dispersed the Afghan force confronting him without a declaration of war, and without any provocation that people at u distance could understand. Had Abdarrahman felt the elaughter of his soldiers and the dispersion of his army as a European sovereign would have felt it, he would have held our Government to Mr. Gladstone's declaration that he was our pro- tected ally ; and peace between England and Russia could have been preserved only by the Russian Government disavowing, apologising for, and punishing the act of its General,—a condition which the Russian army would have never allowed its Emperor to fulfiL So far as those can judge who have no access to secret information, war was averted only because Abdurraliman thought he had more to fear than to hope from it. And what are we to say of the wisdom of our Government, whose Afghan policy at a critical moment let the peace of the world depend on the con- venience or the temper of an Afghan chief ?
It is at least possible that the statement of the circumstances leading to the conflict of Penjdeh, which the Russian Embassy in London published through the Pall Mall Gazette, was in all re- spects literally true; that General Komaroff and his staff kept themselves throughout technically in the right ; and that the Afghan commanders violated an understanding as to the limits within which their forces were to remain, pending the delimitation of the frontier. But the fact lies on the surface, that even if the Afghans put themselves in the wrong, General Komaroff took advantage of their wrong to force a quarrel on his Afghan victims. His motives have not been revealed, and perhaps may never be ; but we can guess at them. By striking such a blow at our Afghan ally, he did his utmost to force on a war between Russia and England; and it seems in the highest degree probable that this actually was his purpose. He saw the prospect of waging such a war under more favourable circumstances to Russia than he could hope ever to see again, with the field of the struggle in Central Asia, where the Russians would be comparatively at home, while we should have to move our men and supplies over eight hundred miles of roadless wastes. And in such a war we should have no possibility of obtaining any European ally ; on the contrary, he may have calculated with some proba- bility that the Black Sea would be closed to our fleet by Russian bribery at Constantinople, and the Baltic by German pressure at Copenhagen. The war, he may have reasoned, would be concentrated at Herat ; and the con- ditions of the Crimean Campaign, where the Russians were weighted by the vast distances and the difficulty of trans- port, would be reversed to our disadvantage, while we should not have the single advantage that Russia enjoyed in the Crimean War, of an almost unlimited supply of trustworthy soldiers. Who can say that this calculation would have proved wrong ? Who can say that we could have saved Herat ? The Russian Government, however, refused to let General Komaroff force its hand, the Ameer of Afghanistan did not want a war, and peace was preserved; but unless our Afghan policy is changed, the danger is not passed. If Afghanistan is a British protectorate, Russia may at any moment, by threatening Herat, force us into a war to be fought out by us on the Russian side of Afghanistan, and without a European ally.
After all, we do not believe that the Russians are planning the conquest of India. India is separated from Russia by vast distances of mountainous and inhospitable country. The Rus- sians can reach India only through Afghanistan, and cannot conquer India without first conquering Afghanistan and per- manently holding it. Afghanistan would be a more costly and difficult conqnest than Circassia proved to be in the last genera- tion, being not only farther from the centres of Russian power, but mach more extensive, and when conquered, the character of the country and the people would make it a costly, profitless, and dangerous possession. In our opinion, the Russian aim is not the conquest of India, which is impracticable, but that of Persia, which is perfectly practicable ; and we see no reason why England should intervene. With the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Beloochistan between, a Russian occupation of Persia need not be dangerous to India ; and the possession by Russia of ports on the Persian Gulf would be of this advantage to us, that it would make Russia more assailable by onr fleets.
We do not write as advocates of peace at any price. On the contrary, we believe that the progress of the Russian power southwards is once more becoming a danger to the liberties of Europe ; and it would give us the greatest pleasure to hear that our Government had come to an understanding with that of Austria for the purpose of keeping the Russians out of the Mediterranean, and securing the independence of the rising nations of the Balkan Peninsula. But in Asia, we see no reason why our Empire and that of Russia should not expand and flourish together. And it may be that we have been guarding against danger on the opposite side to that from which it is after all to come. It may be that while we have been endeavouring, without much success, to build up a barrier on the Western side of India against Russia, the real danger will prove to be on the Eastern side, from China. And as the necessity of resisting Russia forced us in 1853 into an alliance with our old enemy. France, so in another half-century, the necessity of restraining the growing power of China may force us into an alliance with our present rival, Russia.
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