TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE FIRST FULL-DRESS DEBATE. THE great debate on the Indian Frontier was, to us at least, a most disappointing one. There were some striking speeches, Mr. Curzon's, for instance, in defence of the Forward policy which Lord George Hamilton has abandoned, was the best he has ever delivered, and there was true and broad statesmanship in the last half of Sir Henry Fowler's ; but the general effect of the whole was not creditable to the House of Commons. Its representa- tive men, for the most part, quibbled over an Imperial question. They talked of the " independence " of the tribes in the Western Himalaya as if both the parties had not settled by formal treaty with the Ameer that the tribes should be regarded as under our suzerainty, and therefore not in any true sense "independent," or as if we were not " interfering " in the general interest of India with tribes all round her border. Why is the moral claim of the Afridis so much better than that of the Beluchis, or those strange head-hunting tribes on the frontier of Bengal Proper whom we have to slaughter every four or five years just as a hint to keep a little quieter ? We hold as strongly as Mr. Asquith or Sir Henry Fowler that the tribes of the Western Himalaya should be let alone, but we hold it as matter of policy, not of moral right, and if our responsibility to the three hundred millions required it, would terminate the in- dependence of every one of the two hundred tribes or so who look down from their lairs on the secluded peninsula. If we are bound to respect the independence of such tribes without reference to other and higher obligations, what right have we to New Zealand or South Africa, or, for that matter, India itself, where a plebiscite would give in most divisions a heavy majority for our ex- pulsion? Then there was a deluge of words about Chitral, and who ordered the occupation of that State. What does that matter ? It was ordered by right of conquest, and if it was ordered by mistake, the Government is responsible for a mistake, and that is all. The mistake produced the war ? Nonsense. It helped to produce possibly the rising in the Malakand, but the single tie of the Himalayan clans to each other is their creed, and it was not till they had heard that the creed was prospering in the Sultan's battle with the infidel that the uprising became general. They rose in arms to open the road to heaven, not the road to Chitral. And lastly, there was a prodigious quantity of childish argument of the "you're another" sort. If we said this, you said that, and so it does not lie in your mouth to comment on our sayings.' We suppose such arguments tell with the House of Commons, or they would not always be presented by those who seek success in debate, but to the nation they are indifferent, or rather infinitely weari- some, mere logic-choppings, which neither explain nor facilitate great policies. Everybody knows the broad facts of the Chitral question. The Indian Government thought it best to keep the little State both as an old dependency of Cashmere and as a post of observation against Russia, and said so. The Liberal Government disagreed, and were about to say so when the Unionist Government came in, and finding that no final order had been issued, permitted Lord Elgin to follow his own judgment. We doubt if they were wise in so doing, but supposing they were not, the matter was one of detail, and the subject the House had to discuss was not the fate of Chitral, but the mismanagement of the Frontier War.
The truth is, the Opposition were unable to grasp this, the effective, division of their subject. They had a mag- nificent opportunity, for there is scarcely a man in England competent to form an opinion who does not see that immense means have been lavishly expended to produce an utterly inadequate result. The end of war, whether on mountain or plain, is to win ; and we have not won, but after getting out of the mountains, with little glory and no profit, have to go back into them again lest the mountain clansi , n the elation of what they, with fair reason, think a victory, should become unbearable. Criticism of a war like that is absolutely required, if only that our Generals ehould not feel themselves free to be defeated. The Opposi- tion, however, have no great Anglo-Indian in their ranks, and if they have a soldier, he is not inclined to oupport their Indian policy, and their usual chiefs did not know precisely what to say. Sir H. Fowler saw clearly enough where the root of error lay, namely, in the military group at Simla, but instead of censuring their administrative ways, the huge preparations with inadequate or unor- ganised transport, he wandered off into a sharp rebuke of Sir G. White's Jingo speech at the beginning of the war, a speech absolutely indefensible from a Commander-in-Chief,. and, indeed, defended by Mr. Balfour only with the technical argument, You appointed him.' Even Sir William Har- court, who retains many of the traditions of governing men, grew trivial when he approached the management of the war, and actually lamented "the numbers of the popula- tion of India diverted by the war from productive industry." He might as well have lamented the numbers of the population of London diverted from productive industry by carrying sandwich-boards. The productive industry of camp followers is an unknown quantity, and India would not miss a million of such men, or, indeed, of any men, if they all dropped at once into a pit. He- reminds us of a leading civilian at home who said to the writer when the Great Mutiny broke out," What a terrible disturbance to the labour market the disbanding of so many Sepoys will cause." He does not, in fact, realise, though he knows, that " India " is a continent, not a colony, and a continent inhabited by a population as large as that of all Europe, among whom labour is only too redundant, and whose overspill, if it filled kingdoms. like Madagascar or Uganda, would still be missed only by the official computers. We admit fully that Sir Henry Fowler rose to a higher level, and that his peroration, in spite of one strange deficiency, was worthy of the subject ; but why was not the peroration. made the substance of the speech ? "What I would impress on the House and on the military party outside is that India has three lines of defence, and only three. The first great line of defence is the fortifications which Nature has reared on the North-West Frontier ; the second is the great Indian Army, composed not only of Scotchmen, Englishmen, and Irishmen, but of Ghoorkas, Sikhs, and Afridis, and all the various tribes employed in the service of the Queen, especially the Imperial Service troops ; and the third line of defence is the wise, just, and impartial government of India, securing its peace and guarding its freedom, husbanding its revenues, and developing its resources. I am afraid that if this last line of defence is ever sapped or under- mined, our real hold of India is gone, and gone for ever, and it is because I am afraid of that last line of defence being endangered that I object to any sacrifice of any sort or kind to satisfy what I may call the insatiable claims of aggressive militarism, which I believe to be the greatest danger now menacing the North-West Frontier of India.' That is fine, but that is imperfect. India has four lines of defence, not three, and the fourth is incomparably the strongest, being the determination of the great English people to govern as well as defend her resolutely, wisely, and well. It is because a debate like this shows that the representatives of the English people cannot at present rise to the level of that great duty, but prefer mere fencing with words, and phrases, and extracts from books of despatches, that we regret its comparative poverty alike of thought and of earnestness. If the Opposition had but used their magnificent opportunity there would have been danger of defeat for the Government, its advocates would instantly have put themselves upon a. higher plane, and we should have had a memorable debate upon policy and administration. As it is, we cannot even see that the wise decision of the Cabinet recorded in Lord George Hamilton's despatch of January 28th—a decision which goes dead against the Forward policy—has been endorsed by Parliament. The decision has not been repudiated, it is true, and its author has been endorsed ; but that is not sufficient. If we win in the coming renewal of the campaign, as we probably shall, for Sir William Lockhart is roused, and will fight with smaller forces, better supplied and better handled, we shall see the Forward policy, or the military policy, as Sir H. Fowler described it, silently but irre- sistibly pushed until with a clang the frontiers of India and Afghanistan are finally made to touch. Then Afghanistan will be the sole barrier between us and Russia, the one " obstacle " which every man in India conscious of ability and sick of inertia will set himself to remove; and. that removed, the whole revenue of India, possibly the whole revenue of Britain, will be exhausted in preparations for a still greater struggle. That may be—nay, is—a grand adventure, but it is not doing our duty to the multitudes whom God in his wise though inscrutable purposes has placed in our hands to be ruled.
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