THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT AND SHE= ALI.
T11E intelligence from the Indian frontier published in the Times of Friday, is of some importance not because the facts related are menacing to the peace of India, but because they may give Lord Lytton an excuse for pressing his" active policy." Statements made about occurrences beyond the frontier, we must premise, even when made as cautiously as they are in the Times, should be received with much distrust. British India is at all times a tiresome place to live in for people in- terested in politics, and just at present there is literally nothing except the famine to discuss ; and frontier rumours become for some minds, and especially the minds of journalists, of fas- cinating interest. Russian accounts, again, of affairs on the frontier are written by men who know ofteri very accurately what has occurred, but know it months after its occurrence, and are very anxious to over-estimate any danger to British security. The long narrative, for example, in the Turkestan Gazette of the 18th September, published in the Times of the 19th inst., is not a rigmarole, but a highly-coloured picture of a situation which existed more or less a few months ago, but has disap- peared. That Shore Ali, the Ameer of Cabool, was vexed and fretted by the appointment of a Resident at Khelat, and the request to admit a Resident at Cabool—a most unwise re- quest, prompted by Lord Lytton's fidgetty anxiety to do some- thing considerable in "foreign politics "—is true, and it may even be true that he gathered an army to defend himself against British intrigues. That he ever contemplated an in- vasion of British India we utterly disbelieve. He could, per- haps, under certain circumstances, get together sixty thousand fighting-men, of sorts, for the plunder of India, but he could not get together materiel or food to support them for a fortnight in the plains, could, not arm them with breech-loaders, and could not make or buy the cartridges, if he procured the breech-loaders. His " army " of ten thousand good troops and fifty thousand brave ragamuffins would be scattered to the winds before it crossed the Indus, and his dynasty over- thrown by a movement as rapid, as decisive, and as little dangerous as that which left Afghanistan prostrate at the feet of General Pollock. He is an able man, even if not quite sane ; he knows the limits of his own strength ; and he is about as likely to make the attempt as Prince Milan—who is a much more formidable potentate—is to march upon Vienna. As to his alliances in Beloochistan, what aid are the very brave savages called " chiefs " there going to bring him He has plenty of men already, more than he can feed or move, and the Beloochees can give him nothing else except a few rusty guns, and some of the most intractable and perverse chiefs of clans existing even in Asia. The whole project is a dream, and if it ever existed in any body's brain has, as the Government of India has just formally assured the world, entirely passed away. Our relations with everybody upon the frontier were never better. There is probably irritation at Cabool, and certainly irritation in Beloochistan, as there has been irritation ever since the first Afghan Expedition, but there is no new probability of war, except in one way. We have chosen to send a Resi- dent and a guard to Khelat, and Beloochees who object to that arrangement may attack or kill them, and force us to inflict a condign punishment, but even that is but a slight danger, brought on us by our own folly in stepping over our own natural border-line.
The real danger is lest the party in India which is for an "active frontier policy," and which is headed more or less openly by the Viceroy, who was trained as a diplomatist, should think Afghan growlings and Beloochee braggings important enough to demand a "demonstration," and insist on establishing British influence by force. In the event of the Resident at Khelat being killed, or still worse, imprisoned, all India would cry aloud for that "vigorous policy ;" they would be supported here in many quarters, and we should in a week or two be in for a war of conquest and prestige beyond the Himalayas, in regions which have no frontiers but Persia and the Russian Empire. Nothing more silly than such an invasion could be imagined, but it may be represented in England as necessary to our prestige, and held in India to be simply unavoidable. The Secretary of State himself could hardly hold in the Indian Army, which is boiling for something to do, and restless from being kept—perhaps wisely, we are not objecting to that—in a state of unusual preparedness. There would be a positive spring to war, not only to punish the guilty—that would be unavoidable— but to settle once for all "who was master" beyond the Himalayas. As we do not want to be masters there, or to station ten thousand Englishmen with the Himalayas between them and their base, or to be responsible for the good order of countless Mussulman tribes, all armed and all with too little to eat, our policy is to avoid fldgetty interference, tell the Resident at Khelat to be as quiescent as possible, and wait till
everybody has become accustomed to his presence. That will happen in a year or two, and then the best course will be silently and quietly to leave the appointment vacant. Nothing is gained by it except an increased risk, and nothing will be lost by letting it drop. What should we think of a governor of Clerkenwell Prison who, perfectly safe and unassailable within his cloisters, insisted on posting an unsup- ported warder outside to tell him from time to time what a riotous crowd were doing, the crowd being all the while equally visible from his own walls I If we wanted to rule Afghanistan or Beloochistan, interference might be sensible enough, but the very men who interfere, angrily repudiate any suggestion of the kind.
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