TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SITUATION ON THE AFGHAN FRONTIER.
THE news from India is in one respect, and only one respect, fairly good. Lord Lytton is still whistling to keep up the national courage, sending home bits of news intended to suggest to the public that the outbreak in Cabul was an acci- dent, and that his policy would have succeeded if it had not casually happened to fail ; but his great officers, and possibly he himself, see the truth quite clearly, and are making grave and solid preparation for a difficult and possibly protracted campaign. The notion of a " rush " on Cabul, which can hardly have been seriously entertained, or Lord Lytton would not have summoned Colonel Colley from the Cape to be his Military Secretary, has been formally given up, and the Departments are trying bard to cope with their two pressing difficulties,--the want of sufficient transport, and the drain of men entailed by the "scientific frontier." The transport trouble has been faced by directing Sir R. Temple to supply from Bombay all that is wanting for the Candahar force, which will be a great deal, if Sir D. Stewart is really, as reported, to threaten Ghuznee ; and by appointing Sir Michael Kennedy, a first-rate organiser, to a sort of dictatorship over both the Commissariat and Transport Departments, with power practically to requisition the needful animals. He will succeed in collecting them, though at the price of some injury to com- merce and cultivation ; but as he will want at least 25,000 camels and mules, and has to gather them over a country as large as France, he must be allowed time, and no forward movement can be made till October. The difficulty created by the scientific frontier is more serious. So far is that fron- tier from facilitating an invasion of Afghanistan, that it has already cost the Indian Government the services of four good brigades. Some 5,000 men must be locked up in Candahar and Pisheen, besides the active Division ; and 5,000 more in keep- ing the Koorum route. We have seized the Koorum and the Peiwar, but so long-drawn are those valleys, so distant from our base, and so commanded by unconquered hill-tribes, that General Roberts cannot move a step until his rear is thoroughly protected. No less than five thousand men will be wasted, made utterly useless for invasion, by the necessity of garrisoning our new possession and the line to Thull, which, if set free for a march through the Khyber Pass, might almost of themselves have advanced on Cabul. General Roberts himself demanded a reinforcement of four regiments, and his total force is to be raised to 12,000 men. And this waste is without any corresponding advantage, for the Koorum is not a second line of attack, as it will be stopped up when the first snow falls on the Shuturgardan. From November, General Roberts must rely entirely on the Khyber route, which thus becomes again what it always has been, the only available military road from India to Cabul. It is there that the supporting force must be collected, with its head at Jellalabad, which must again be occupied, and its base at Peshawur ; and we are happy to perceive that this force will be made reasonably powerful, though far weaker than the army sent to Zululand. The column of the Khyber will be 12,000 strong, Europeans and natives alike, not a man too many, even when General Roberts's force is considered, to invade a country which may be protected by double the power of the Zulu nation. We have, therefore, on the Candahar, Koorum, and Khyber routes a total army of 83,000 men, to be fed, and carried, and supplied with material; while the force actually fighting its way to Cabul will not reach 10,000, and will have only one line of retreat or communication. Whether Afghans will fight as they sometimes fought in 1841, when on one occasion 200 Ghilzais rode right upon the bayonets of the Europeans, and died to a man, or will run away as they did in 1878, no one can decide ; but the Staff must assume that the enemy will do his ordin- ary best. A check of the smallest kind—the defeat of a half- battalion, the massacre of a company—would turn all Afghans into heroes, bring down all the Hill clansmen, and make India restless from end to end ; and the governing group at Simla and Lahore are right in making their preparations full and scientific. If there is one thing certain about Afghan warfare, it is that British superiority is one of organisation, and we grudge no time spent in making that as perfect as is possible. -Better a victory in December, than a column brought to a dead halt in September for want of transport, as has happened twice recently,—once to General Browne in the Khyber, and once to General Crealock in Zulu- land.
Whether the resistance will be protracted and desperate or not, is not yet certain, the only certainty being that whatever its extent, our troubles will commence, as before, with our victory ; but the omens are not favourable. The telegrams about this man's and that man's adhesion, the submission of Badshah Khan's brother, and the devotion of Yakoob Khan's maternal second cousin, are hardly worth the reading. Every Afghan and Hill-man hates us, and whether they try to stop• our advance, or wait to rush in behind our troops at the first signal of a check, their hostility has equally to be provided for. The Divisions must be ready, even if they have not to fight. As we read the carelessly-reported incidents of the day, the popular Afghan decision is to resist at once, to compel Yakoob Khan to choose between hostility to the British and dethronement, and to call up the whole people, now set free for battle by the harvest. That decision is at least possible, and it is to meet some such resolve the Government must address its efforts. The balance of the latest evidence is in favour of the belief that the Momunds have shown hostility, thus compelling us to guard every foot of the Khyber, or risk the loss of communication with the advancing army ; that the revolted regiments intend to throw themselves across General Roberts's path ; and that the Ghilzai clan, with its formidable numbers and especial renown for personal bravery, either has declared or is about to declare for the national cause. Whatever an individual chief here and there may do, it is nearly impossible that the body of the clansmen should side with the British or stand aloof, and it is evidently on this decision that the Depart- ments in their preparations are quietly reckoning. Unless the Ghilzais secede, which, we repeat, is most impro- bable, we have first to capture Cabul, a city in the air occupied by a population of armed fanatics, and then to force Afghanistan at large, a country as large as Germany and with a most warlike though thin population, to accept a peace. If the Afghan leaders yield, we must either retire, or so garri- son the country as to be indifferent to treachery ; while if they fight, we have to conquer a Spain comparatively ill- cultivated, and with a population habituated to guerilla war. It is foolish to under-estimate such a task, or to judge of it by the experience of 1842. Then we retired, after per- forming the least part of our present task,—that is, "reading a lesson to the capital." This time we are to do something more, not yet defined, to secure permanent control of Afghan policy ; and it is in that something more that the serious work is involved. It is the conquest of Afghani- stan we have to attempt, and though Afghanistan is a weak State compared with India, still the conquest of a country with at least 300,000 fighting-men in it, and animated by a strong religious and social hatred of the invaders, is no mili- tary promenade, as the French Generals could tell us who beat down the far less developed power of the Arabs of Algeria. It is not an expedition we are beginning, but a war, and a war which may be as laborious, as exhausting, and as costly as any we have ever waged in India, while it has this patent difficulty of its own. Behind us, between us and the great seaports which are the bases of our power, lie four-fifths of the fighting races of India, few of them sympathising with us, all watching eagerly to see whether it is or is not true that the English good-fortune breaks at the Suleiman. We are never pessimists in Indian affairs, be- lieving always that we shall stay there until our work is done, —which is not yet ; but Afghanistan is not in India, and efforts to minimise any great undertaking, and especially this one, only diminish the necessary preparations. Unless we are wrong from beginning to end—and hitherto the Spectator has been right—the policy of the Government has compelled us to declare, and therefore to win, a war against the people of Afghanistan.
Previous page
