TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FALL OF CABUL.
GENERAL ROBERTS has completed his task with great skill, energy, and success, and has made it evident, if any evidence were required, that the British can conquer Afghanistan. He understands his enemy, and the conditions of Asiatic warfare. On the morning of the 7th inst. he occupied what would have been, with a European foe before him, a terrible position. In front was an army outnumbering his own by fifty per cent., backed by an armed populace hold- ing a strongly built citadel, and both supplied with a numerous and, in part, an efficient artillery. Behind him' on his only line of communications, swarmed clansmen, who were even then attacking his depot at Ali Khel, while all around, on the hills, on both flanks, were the Ghilzais, the men of the most powerful clan in Afghanistan. He knew, however, that the Afghans dread being ontgeneralled ; that they are unable to face modern weapons ; and that if he could create a panic, all would be over. He advanced, therefore, resolutely, throw-
ing forward half his force to carry the hills which command the citadel: and the enemy, who could have extinguished his small array, were at once paralysed. The soldiery on the hills in front fled from their " strong position" and their guns, with such rapidity that the cavalry in a rush of twenty miles did not come up with them, the Ghilzais behind glided away in parties to their homes, the city did nothing, and on the 12th inst. the General was able to announce from a balcony in the citadel that the British Government spared Cabul, but that the inhabitants must pay a great fine, and consent, under penalty of death, to deliver up their arms. Nothing stranger or more picturesque than that scene must have been, is recorded in the history of Asia. General Roberts is in fact master of the capital, and has, within six weeks of the murder of our Envoy, avenged his fate, by showing to the city which assailed him that it is protected from destruction only by the mercy of the insulted Government. It could be destroyed by his cannon from the Baler Hisser in twelve hours, and must sub- mit to any orders the invader may choose or may deem it wise to issue.
So far the work has been well done, done with an audacity and daring which, although the enemy would not fight, recall the best times of Indian history ; and we do not doubt that, although snow has already fallen on the Peiwar, Ghuzni, to which the Afghans have fled, will be taken before the winter sets in. But, except so far as we have punished a crime, which it was necessary to punish, what is the good of it all ? We deny no credit either to General Roberts, who is clearly an Indian of the old and audacious kind, who can do great work with insufficient tools ; or to his officers, who carried out his orders with a vigour not the less creditable because it so daunted the enemy that they fled ; but what is the good of it all ? We shall, in a few more days, be in possession of five great fortresses in Afghanistan ; and five more burdensome possessions it is difficult to conceive. The Government will not give them up, and to keep them through the winter will involve the employment of fifteen thousand men in Afghanistan, and fifteen thousand more to support. them, to be fed and supplied with mat4riel and communicated with over two long lines of defiles, touched at every fresh mile by mountain spurs filled with disaffected and turbulent, armed clansmen. The troops, though shattered by cold, exposure, and possibly by disease, will defy any attack, but the safety of the places they hold is utterly valueless to Great Britain. Neither England nor India wants Jellalabad, or Cabul, or Ghuzni, or Khelat-i-Ghilzai, or even Can dahar, though that city, if Sir R. Temple is really driving on his railway at the speed the telegrams report—and it is possible, for he and his unhappy young engineer, Lieutenant Pye, did the same thing in I3ehar—may prove the most valuable of them all. The strong places do not help us to govern Afghanistan' for we are not going to do it ; nor to set up a native dynasty, for the Afghan King, in receiving our protection, forfeits the respect of his own people. Yakoob Khan has been only submerged, not carried forward by the British wave. He was "ill "when General Roberts made his speech, and the British standard was hoisted over all the gates of his capital. His treachery, as time goes on, appears more, instead of less, probable ; and even if he is faithful, it is simply impossible to work through such an in- strument. Yet why are we to trust his rival, Wali Mahommed Khan, any more than Yalcoob ? No leader has appeared in the war, and the nationalists put forward no name, and if we permit election by the Birders, in itself an excellent and fair-minded suggestion, they will select the man who they know, of all competitors, will most gleefully slaughter Englishmen. With great expense and endless trouble we may wait through the winter in the fortresses, looking very grand in the eyes of Central Asia, where prestige is as valueless to us as prestige in the Sahara, but what is to come of it all ?: Afghanistan will not be the more a State, but the less, and the anarchy that will reign there will not be to our advantage but to our discredit and injury, because we shall, with a huge, mountain-wall behind us, have to keep an army which we cannot spare, permanently on guard. The Knight has been victorious in the tournament, even splendidly victorious, if you will, and for reward has to stand sentinel in his armour amidst the snow for months on end, and without the consolation that chivalry requires that sacrifice at his hands.
There are, as we believe, but two sensible courses to pursue. One, and the best, is to proclaim either Yaltoob or Walt Mahommed, and return to our own possessions, satisfied that no Afghan will ever again dream that he can defy British power, and that no native of India will believe that British good-fortune or skill ends beyond the Suleiman. Nobody can accuse us of shrinking, and nobody allege that we have passed over insult, or left it unavenged. It is just the moment for retiring, when, by the consent of all men, we could not be driven out. The other course is to reduce our burdens to manageable weight, leave the Afghan Birders to do the best they can with their wretched cities. and their unmanageable troops, and concentrate our strength for the present on Candahar, forcing on the Railway as if the Empire depended on its completion. Then we shall at least reserve our strength unexhausted, until Parliament has decided finally how much of the national strength is to be wasted on a frontier, which, if the people of India are with us, cannot be assailed, and if they are against us, is only a prison-wall. At present, the only result of Sir Frederick Roberts's triumph is to efface the "scientific frontier' so lately boasted of, and give us in exchange a straggling line of fortresses, too far from each other to stop an advancing enemy, and too near the border to control the country we have invaded.
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