TOPICS OF THE DAY. •
GENERAL ROBERTS'S • ADVANCE UPON CABUL.
BETWEEN Lord Lytton's childish impatience of criticism and the wrath of the Ghilzai clansmen at our invasion, Englishmen at home as yet know little of the position of their army now invading Afghanistan. No independent telegrams can be sent, so that we know only as much as the General Chooses ; and even official telegrams have now stopped, the clansmen having got behind Colonel Gordon on the Shutur- gardan, and cut the communication. When last visible—that is, on Monday, the Gth inst.—General Roberts was seen strug- gling, with much gallantry and some success, amidst very serious difficulties, along the last section of the road to Cabul. Descending the Shuturgardan and reaching Kushi on Sep- tember 30th, he had crept along across the plain for some twenty miles by the 5th inst., a rate of progress which is officially accounted for by the " deficiency of transport." It may also have been due, however, to the representations of the Ameer, who joined him at Kushi and urged delay, lest his own authority should be overthrown, and when refused, requested permission to return to Cabul and hold the Bala Hissar. In accordance, however, with the prevalent doctrine that the moral law has, as against "British interests," no meaning, the request was refused ; and the Ameer, though still recognised by us as an ally, and the Sove- reign of the country which we are traversing, has virtually been detained a prisoner, and this after we had allowed him to enter the camp as a distressed guest. No such incident has occurred in European warfare since Napoleon seized the Spanish Royal family. With the Ameer in his train, but still without his baggage, General Roberts on the Gth reached Charasiab, and there his hopes of an unimpeded entry into the capi- tal, still ten miles off, were roughly dispelled. The whole population showed itself against us. The Afghan soldiery, believed to include eleven regiments, and the fighting men of the capital had occupied the hills in front of the British ; while the Ghilzais, supposed to be our friends, were swarming in " masses " on the hills along both flanks of the camp, hovering there in order, on the slightest reverse, to descend into the plain, and out off General M'Pherson and the lingering baggage-trains. General Roberts, whose mis- takes are made in the tent, not in the field, after warning and reinforcing General M'Pherson and the baggage escort, deter- mined to clear the hills in front,—that is, the hills occupied by the soldiery, not those covered with the clansmen, and entrusted the work to his second-in-command, General Baker. It was splendidly performed. Height after height was carried, with a loss of only eighty-six men, killed and wounded, and the enemy, who were alarmed, as Afghans usually are by any display of generalship, which they are just soldiers enough to perceive, but not to meet, retreated from the road between the hills in disorder, leaving twelve guns and two standards behind them, and fell back, it is supposed upon Cabul. The conflict had, however, taken twelve hours, and General Roberts found himself by evening of the Gth still ten miles from the city, with the Bala Hisser, as he was informed by the Ameer, in the enemy's hands, that is, with a great city to capture, commanded by a citadel with heavy guns in position, with the Ghilzais swarming round him, and with every prospect—prospects which, it seems clear, were realised— of his communications being cut. Like the gallant soldier he is, he expresses his intention to go forward at once, and like the Irishman he is, ho declares that he has no doubt everything will settle down ; but that he realised the gravity of the position is clear, for he himself and the Staff officers, who telegraph what he pleases, all mention that the whole country is " seething" with excitement, that the people are only watching for a reverse, and that strong picquets were set round the camp to guard against the Ghilzais.
There the veil drops. The telegraph through the Peiwar has been cut; General Roberts has no second line of communica- tion, no relation having been established between him and the Khyber Army, and he may have carried the Bala Hisser, or be stopped for want of reinforcements, or be halting in front of a blazing city, as a most curious rumour, which must have had
some foundation, suggests, unable to advance over the burning de'bris. Remembering the indisposition of Asiatics to renew a con-
test under the same conditions, and the inability of the Afghans to face the troops on the heights, we should hope that he had reached Cabul without serious loss ; but at present all is dark, except this one fact. The country is against us. We have had in telegram after telegram rubbishy details about the
Ameer's orders, and Badshah Khan's assistance, and the easy purchase of supplies, and we have even now another bit of nonsense about the submission of the "headmen," not chief men, of the suburbs of Cabul at which the General who penned it must himself have smiled. Sir F. Roberts is not the kind of man to feel respect for a pack of village mayors who do not want to be plundered, and would obey anybody, in consideration of being left alone. But when it comes to fighting all in the country who dare fight, the soldiery of the kingdom, the armed classes of the capital, the great Ohilzai tribe—the clan Campbell of these highlands—are. all against us, doing their best to slay us, and resolute to yield only to force skilfully and strongly exerted. The slightest reverse' anywhere, any check to General Roberts or to Genera} Hughes, who is walking up to Ghuznee, of all cities. in the world, with a force that would be small if he were putting down a riot in Bengal—and all these people, soldiers,. clansmen, and ruffians all alike would abandon tactics, and fight. like madmen against the British. It is a people we have to subdue, and when we have subdued them, we shall rule just as far as our cannon range, and no further,—a fact which always makes military occupation, oven in a flat country with roads in it, dangerous, costly, and unprofitable. It is, how- ever, waste of time to discuss that just now. The broad fact is that General Roberts, with a force originally small, and hampered with convoys which creep on at five miles a day,. but which he dare not abandon lest the hill-men should seize them, has to march ten miles along a wide road, commanded. by hills, then occupy a capital garrisoned and populated with enemies, and then seize a high citadel with guns in position. He will do it all, for he has the true Anglo-Indian energy, which hardly considers obstacles; but to talk. of the decisive victory accomplished in clearing a couple of miles of his road, is to invite disappointment. That there will be a victory is pretty certain, but why the Khyber force. is not ready to place it beyond all question, and give General. Roberts a second line of communication, remains utterly in- explicable. What has become of the old mobility of the. Indian Army ?
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