TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE THIRD AFGHAN WAR.
THIS Afghan business is a very bad business. Lord Lytton, in the foolish feverishness of his desire for action, and Lord Beaconsfield, in his eagerness for a showy policy, have almost deprived her Majesty's Government of their freedom of action in Afghanistan. The Viceroy of India has placed himself in such a position that his face has been slapped by a semi- barbarous potentate in full sight of all Asia, and the Govern- ment must either avenge the insult by a great war and a burdensome annexation, or recall him, and submit to a serious loss of dignity and prestige. There was no necessity whatever, even on the Jingo theory, for hurrying the Mission forward to Afghanistan before the Native Agent just received by Shere Ali had returned from Cabul, still less for acting without the secret but trustworthy intelligence from that city which every Viceroy has hitherto obtained. Lord Lawrence or Lord North- brook would have known Shere Ali's decision to a word. Lord Lytton, however, either acting on instructions intended to provoke a war, or full of confidence in the inability of the Ameer to resist the impression of his showy preparations, ordered the Mission, a huge cavalcade of 1,000 men- " too large," as Lord Carnarvon has said, "for a Mis- sion, and too small for an army," to enter the Khyber Pass. It had no sooner crossed the frontier at Juinrood, than Sir Neville Chamberlain, the chief Envoy, was informed by a trusted officer of the Ameer, who, it is ascertained, had just received special instructions from his master, that its advance would be resisted by force, and the force was displayed on the hills commanding the defile. Sir Neville's agent, Major Cavagnari, conferred with the officer for three hours, and pointed out the direct and terrible responsibility of the Ameer, but without effect, and as a further advance would have caused a useless loss of valu- able lives, and perhaps have ended in a massacre which would have sent an electric shock throughout India, the Envoy took his cavalcade back quietly to Peshawur, there to await orders from the Governments of India and Great Britain. That in this retreat he as in the right there can be no question. Sir Neville Chamberlain is not only an officer of the highest class, a man carefully selected for the command of a separate army, but he is an experienced Political, he understands the men of this region, and he could tell at a glance if those who threatened him were bragging or if they were acting under orders, and finding the latter to be the case, he only receded before a visible impossibility. Only an organised European division, properly supported, could force the Khyber Pass in the teeth of the mountaineers and Afghans together, or emerge with baggage on the Afghan side of the continuous thirty-three miles of gorges, commanded by hills on both sides, occupied by matchlock-men, of which the Pass consists. There has been no error of management on Sir Neville's part., and there can be no mistake as to his adversary's meaning. Afghan officers do not exceed their Ameer's in- structions, nor would the Hillmen insult Great Britain with- out the fullest certainty that they would be supported. It is certain that Shere All issued the orders to stop the Mission, and his motive is the one we indicated last week. He thinks his independence worth retaining ; he has resolved to fight, rather than yield one jot of the Indian Government's demands; and having resolved, has bidden us defiance, with the rude fury which the polished Asiatic, once resolved on resistance, invariably displays. Nor can there be any question of the seriousness of the in- sult, for Lord Lytton has done everything that in him lay to give it point and meaning. Instead of sending a quiet Em- bassy, he has sent a pompous Mission, with a Commander-in- Chief at its head, two Indian Princes in its train, and 1,000 followers, cavalry and infantry together, to increase its splendour. Instead of keeping the whole matter in the Secret Department, and so leaving himself free up to the last moment, he has paraded his designs throughout India and Europe, has encouraged official news- papers in India to urge action, and has described, in communicated telegrams addressed through the Times to all Europe, the great deeds he intended to perform. The attention of two contin- ents has been fixed upon his "policy," and the sound of its failure is already reverberating through every bazaar of India and every capital of Europe. There is not a Mussulman in India whose head is not the higher because of Shere All's bold defiance, or a statesman in Europe who is not dreaming of what may happen, if England is preoccu- pied. The insult is as visible as it is possible for tha modern habits of publicity to make it, and if it is unavengel, or unavenged in a great way, there will be for years a grand loss to Lord Lytton and to Britain of consideration and respect. Already the Anglo-Indians are burning like French officers who have been pelted, and if their emotion, their- justifiable emotion, has no vent, Lord Lytton's moral ascend- ancy in his Viceroyalty, and with it his power to do any sort of good, will be at an end for ever.
It is a thoroughly bad business, and allows, we believe, of only two alternatives. So great and so separate is still the position of the Indian Viceroy, so completely does he rank in- Asia as one of the great Princes of the world, that the British Government can, by recalling him, undo much, perhaps all, of the effect of his great blunder. The natives will understand, that he acted for himself, and will not expect from his suc- cessor a continuance of his policy. Shere All will be elate, and perhaps lose his head, but his defiance will lose its: effect, and he himself be considered only a daring poli- tician, who discovered that he was dealing with an individual, instead of with the irresistible Government of Great Britain. Shere All in that event will pass un- punished, but will be no stronger than before ; and the insult, like most insults treated by the strong with calm disdain,. will rapidly be forgotten. This is the course, we think, that a calm and long-headed Administration would adopt, more especially at a juncture when it can explain to Europe that its- strength is still required to watch the proceedings of Russia in European Turkey. But then this course will admit of no fanfaronnade, of no speeches full of resolution, of no waving of the banner, of no allusions to the lightning effects of the wrath of the Empress-Queen. It will not, therefore, be followed, and the alternative is war,—a great war, a war for the annexation of a greater Bosnia, at the back of the world. There should be no mistake about this. There is no third course possible. Without war, we can inflict no punishment whatever on Shere All in the least degree com- mensurate with the reputation he has acquired by bearding- us, can indeed inflict no punishment at all. He receives no subsidy from us that we could stop. He has no outlying territory on our side that we could seize. He has no trade that he cares about with our people that we could suspend. If we persuade Russia to withdraw her Mission, it will make no difference, for we have been defied, not by Russia, but by the Ameer of Afghanistan, whose name is therefore already- ringing through the world. He must either be let alone, as a bargee is sometimes let alone by a gentleman ; or he must be- crushed completely, and crashing him involves a most embar- rassing and a most senseless war.
That war, it is true, we can win. The popular idea of our great disaster in Afghanistan is, we are quite aware, a popular error. That disaster, the result of mismanagement, was easily avenged by General Pollock, with a much smaller force than the one we can easily put in motion ; and we might, had we pleased, and had not European troops been so scarce, have re- mained in Afghanistan to this hour. But it is quite as futile to draw deductions from the victory of General Pollock,.
as to draw them from the disaster of General Elphin- stone. Shere All is far stronger than his father, has far more control over his nobles, has organised his administration far better, and has far more control over the fierce mountain tribes upon whom our communications will depend. The Mutiny, too, has occurred, and has altered all Indian ideas of the necessity of being strong. It will not be safe to enter Cabul, even if Russia is not behind Shere Ali, without two corps crarmie of 15,000 men each, 10,000 of them Europeans, one corps to enter Candahar by the Bolan, and the other Cabul by the Koorum or Khyber. We shall have in Candahar to fight men better armed, better disciplined, and less impressed by British power than before ; while in Afghanistan we shall have to take the capital, and Ghuznee, and Jellalabad, and the long stretches of hilly and difficult country reaching away to Herat. We can do it all, no doubt, for civilisation is armed at last, and against the new shells, and rocket batteries, and arms of precision individual valour and fanaticism can make no stand. But we can now less than ever afford to receive a check, or find ourselves brought to a stand by some improvised Plevna in the Hills. If we lose a battle, India will be in flame behind us from end to end. Evidence obtained during the Mutiny showed clearly that the Sepoys had gravely considered the propriety of joining Dost Mahommed and conquering India, and this time we have roused the dearlly suspicions of the Princes. This Government is like an inferior musician, who values a composition not for its thought or for its melody, bat for the rubbishy fioriture, the pretty ornaments he can contrive to introduce. Instead of quietly limiting the force of each noble, or if possible, coercing them in detail, the Government has flourished magnificently about "our policy," has warned all the world through the Times that the feudatory armies are doomed, and has even specified Those which it thinks most dangerous. If there is a disaster, the Princes will try whether their honour and their armies cannot alike be saved. The evidence taken after the Mutiny also revealed the strength of the sympathy which exists between the Mahom- rnedans of Bengal Proper, shown by Sir G. Campbell to number twenty millions, and the rulers of Afghanistan, or the pious brigands of the Hills, and they hear now of every event day by day. We must advance, therefore, with every Prince listening in full armour, with the Mahratta people boiling with excitement, and with every Mussulman in Bengal craning to catch the signal. All that is no matter, for we have faced it all before ; but all that makes it indispens- able that we should win, and a war in which we must win will be a great and expensive war. The numbers must be ample, the reserves profuse. There must be no defi- ciency of commissariat or cartage, no risk run of a break in communications for ten days, no hesitation in guarding rail- ways, no forgetting that along the Nerbudda and on the Deccan plateau we must be ready to strike, and strike hard. It must be remembered that the army, when its work is done, will not return, but must garrison the " Douranee Empire" against a disaffected people, and against possible assault from the petty empire, Persia, which will then be feverish with suspicion, and from the great empire, Russia, which will be then feverish with delight that Great Britain has voluntarily ceased to be impregnable and inaccessible. Russia thenceforward can strike home at will, can drag our armies, when she chooses, 8,000 miles, to fight amid roadless hills, with two hundred millions of possible rebels watching them behind. It is useless to warn, for this Govern- ment is "fey," and ridiculous to croak, for England can survive all things—even Lord Beaconsfield—but was ever such folly known Fifteen millions to be spent, and all policy dis- organised, because Lord Lytton, like the Premier, must show that he is great.
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