TOPICS OF TIIE DAY.
THE WAR.
IT is with deep regret that we record the correctness of our anticipations of last week. Lord Beaconsfield's plan has succeeded, and England is at war. Lord Lytton, who went out two years ago, with instructions to obtain control over Afghanistan, and to merge the policy of his Government as regards the frontier in that of the Foreign Office, after seeking in vain to gain his end by menaces and by mis- sions, has at last declared war. He wished to declaie it a month ago, on receipt of the Ameer's letter—a letter which the Cabinet has not ventured to publish—and actually issued orders for the storming of Ali Musjid, which, but for the opposition of his military advisers, and peremptory instructions from home, would have been carried out. The delay was most fortunate, for the armies were not ready, and the Commissariat could not have fed the troops, when once beyond the frontier. The orders from home, how- ever, secured three weeks' delay, carte blanche was given for expenditure, camels—we fear, in insufficient numbers— were collected, and the great military machine of India, so wonderfully powerful and so wonderfully cumbrous, got into its swing. By sunset of the 20th, the time appointed for the Ameer's reply, everything was ready for the invasion ; three armies, collectively larger than the army which landed in the Crimea, and with four times as many guns, threatening the three Passes,—the Khyber, the Koorum, and the Bolan. Up to the latest moment, the unfounded impression that the Ameer would throw away his throne by yielding at discretion still prevailed, but the 20th passed, there was no letter, and before dawn of the 21st, under a splendid star-lit sky, writes one correspondent, the three corps d'arnde were in motion. The date will yet be a memorable one in Indian history, for whatever be the result of this campaign, it must be most momentous. If we win, we quit India, Northwards, to com- mence a history in Central Asia ; if we lose, we have India once more to reconquer from its people, at a cost of a hundred millions.
The military Staff are taking pains to instruct the Corre- spondents, especially Mr. Forbes, whose record makes him acceptable to any army, and it is easy to see the imme- diate plan of the campaign. The Army of the Khyber, after carrying Ali Musjid—an operation carried out on Friday with great skill, the Afghans, after a stubborn fire, evacuating the fort when surrounded—is to push on through the Pass to the Dhakka Valley, thus fairly emerging from the Suleiman, and threatening Jellalabad. It is hinted, however, that Jellalabad will not be attacked, but that the Army will stay in the Dhakka Valley for the winter, but there is an obvious intention at Head-quarters to minimise the scope of the mili- tary plans,—which, for reasons stated below, we greatly distrust. Up to Dhakka the plan for the Khyber Army, however, is clear ; and so is that for the Southern corps, or Army of the Bolan, which, under General Stuart, is marching to Quetta, thence to advance to Pisheen, on the road to Candahar, where again, it is hinted, it will stop. General Biddulph, command- ing the reinforced brigade at Quetta, has already, indeed, gone forward, and is face to face with his first enemy, the cold, which, according to the telegrams, is killing camels, spreading sickness among the Sepoys, and creating anxiety about "supplies,"—as we interpret them, of water. That will be the trouble of this expedition ; while General Roberts, in the Koorum, encounters a different one. He is already master of the Koorum Valley, meeting no resistance, and will reach the Peiwar, we trust, without any more of the fanfaronnade in which the Correspondents with his column are disposed to indulge ; but his object is unattained until he has seized the Shaturgardan, an enterprise which, if that Pass is defended, may be of the most perilous kind. Where Afghans can fight, Englishmen can fight, and General Roberts is a good soldier ; but if Shere Ali had 100 English. men to station there, the corps would never cross. The pass- age of Mont Cenis is a joke, to the work that would have to be done. The Army must ascend, and ascend, and ascend, camels and all, until, far above the level of the perpetual snow, they pass along a narrow Ldge, 13,000 feet above the sea, only 2,000 feet lower than the summit of Mont Blanc. It would be an awful business, one of the most perilous and splendid feats on record, but that fortunately the Afghans trust to the natural difficulties of the Pass, and that by all accounts— accounts not, however, to be received with implicit faith—the, Pass is undefended. The actual work to be done by all three armies will depend on Shere Ali's energy and force, but up to the limits of the programme as yet announced, failure is most improbable, indeed is, humanly speaking, only possible if some gust of feeling or some pledge from the Ameer should' induce the fighting mountaineers to throw prudence to the winds, and attack us, as they would attack us if we received a check.
We deprecate strongly, nevertheless, the minimising tend- ency displayed alike by the Staff and the politicians. It is possible, of course, that Lord Lytton, who is still obviously unable to believe that an Afghan Ameer will fight till he dies,. or fly to the mountains before making a concession, and who apparently has read nothing of his " morose barbarian's " history—a history of which the note is dogged persever- ance—may intend to halt for the winter just beyond the Passes, The situation will be a terrible one for the Europeans when the snow falls, and a deadly one for the Sepoys, who shrivel up in snow like palms in England when the conservatory fire goes out, but Lord Lytton may be inclined to disregard all such complaints.. The expense will be fearful, for every ton-weight of forage and every pound of biscuit must be carried through the Passes, on beasts which are hard to procure, which will not be over- driven, and which split up and die whenever they slip ; but ex- pense Lord Lytton can disregard, for it is the British, not the Indian, taxpayer who this time stands behind him. The Generals. will be wild to reach Jellalabad and Candahar, where they can but their men and obtain supplies ; but they are English officers, and the orders once issued, will submit as good-tern- peredly as they can. But then Lord Lytton has not the sole control of the situation. War is a duel, and the other duellist in this case is a man of energy, ruling the proudest of mankind, who will depose him if he does not act, and raise• his soldier-son, Yakoob, to the throne. The Afghan tradition from the old war is that the winter is the time for them, and they will attack and attack, with never-ending confidence, new troops continually coming up from the west, until they see the British in possession of some great and defensible position.. They will not be frightened by British troops lingering on the threshold, but will hold them inert or timid, and gather fresh courage from the delay. We believe it will be found, when the Passes are taken, that Jellalabad and Candahar must be occupied, and that the British are in for a winter campaign in Afghanistan, with 20,000 Sepoys from the hot plains in their ranks, an enterprise which no amount of Chau- vinist writing can render otherwise than formidable. It is- not beyond our strength, for nothing of the kind is beyond it, if fairly exerted ; but to talk of the invasion as a trifle, or as a second Abyssinian expedition, is at once boastful and misleading.. We have embarked, we trust and believe without light hearts,. on a most difficult and, as we hold, entirely unnecessary task,. and should watch its progress with a sense that any moment may bring a necessity for a grand national effort. If we do. not, if we go on talking about a military promenade, or con- founding mud-walled villages with fortresses, we shall wake up. some day speedily to find the British Army once more afloat to retrieve a huge disaster. Fortunately, we see evidence that Sir F. P. Haines belongs to the school of Lord Napier of Magdala, and has no notion of allowing a disaster out of vain- glorious self-confidence. The preparations are not minimised. The Army is large enough for any Asiatic work, European re- serves are tending northwards, and the proportion of artillery employed is most unusual and most wise. Civilisation is strongest when it uses the resources civilisation has produced. If the Commissariat does not break down, we see no military reason for alarm, and our only fear for the commissariat arises, first, from its inability to provide water and fuel amid snow- covered, treeless hills; and secondly, from the difficulty ex- perienced with regard to camels. The number of those animals procurable is limited, no substitute for them can be obtained, and they die, when they do die, like flies in frost•. Sir Staf- ford Northcote at least is not forgetting that in 1837 one Commissariat chief alone lost 20,000 camels.
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