THE INDIAN FRONTIER POLICY.
THE trouble of the graver Anglo-Indians about this frontier war differs a good deal from the anxiety of the purely English politicians. The former have no real distrust as to the issue of the war. They know the weak places and the strong places of their military Monarchy, they see that the Government of Simla has rather overdone than underdone preparations and precautions, and they are convinced that after the loss of a certain number of valuable lives, and of a sum of money appreciable even in the Budget of an Empire, the clansmen of the mountain glacis will sink back into their usual innocuous unrest. A good many British homes will be unhappy, a good many others will be exultant because of decorations, and in a good many villages of the mountain-land there will be a wailing of women for ruined villages ; but the great Empire will not suffer, will hardly, except in the Treasury, feel that it has been assailed. The clansmen, brave as they are, cannot fight the new shells and the new Maxims, and feel already that their rough fortifications— stone stockades they really are—might as well be made of paper. There will remain, nevertheless, a great question —the permanent policy to be pursued—and it is about this that Anglo-Indian statesmen are seriously divided. We think, therefore, we shall best help to clarify our readers' minds by trying to state, as impartially as we can, the ideas of the two parties, who may be called the Forward and the Standfast schools.
The former are at the present moment ruling, and as they include perhaps half of the leading civil authorities, a majority of the higher officers of the Army, and nearly all Europeans in India who are irresponsible and who will not be shot, the balance of " opinion " may be said to be upon their side. The belief of their saner spokesmen, who include many men of the first ability, is that the Indian Government has really not the power to stop until the frontier of its dominions either marches with that of Russia, or if Cabul will remain quiescent, with that of Afghanistan. The clans, they say, which occupy the debateable land will never remain quiet till they are subjugated, and as they can put a hundred and fifty thousand men, all good fighters, into the field, no civilised Empire on their border can tolerate their bloodthirsty unrest. They form a permanent danger, the extent of which may be judged from the present movement, and the danger tends rapidly to increase. The clans show a disposition to unite, they are becoming more, and not less, fanatical, they are accumulating much better weapons, and should they ever develop a great leader—and a Schamyl is just as possible in the Himalaya as in the Caucasus—or should India ever be the scene of another Mutiny, they may paralyse our action in the North-West as they might have done in 1857. They think of India from tradition as a field of profitable action, and if any foe, Russian or other, broke through the British guard on the north they would swarm after him as they did after Baber and Nadir Shah. Bribes will not keep them steady if a rush of emotion, religious or other, comes over them, and they, like the Ameer, believe in their hearts that a little unrest, a glance, as it were, now and then at the sabre, keeps up the importance which alone makes them worth the bribing. Watching them costs much already, both in men and treasure, and it will cost more as they learn, what it is evident they are learning now, that they have common interests, and that even if they do not unite, they should always when inclined for action rise together. The Forward men would therefore subjugate them once for all, and hold that this could be done as effectually as in our own Highlands by building good roads, by planting strong forts in places like the Tirah plateau, and by making their subjection one of the first cares of the Indian Government. There will, it is admitted, be no advantage gained in money ; but the tribes, once subdued, must earn a living somehow, and while some will cultivate and some will trade, the most adventurous, and therefore most unruly, section will furnish us with recruits, much better, because much braver, than the Hindostanees. It adds, of course, to the strength of these opinions among those who hold them, that they doubt the possibility of a working arrangement with Russia, that they love martial excitement and opportunities of distinction, and that they sincerely believe in danger to any Indian army which is allowed to rust for a generation in the depressing and enervating tranquillity of tropical cantonments. And the soldiers among them are not the less ready to be con- vinced, because if we are to hold down the clansmen of the Himalaya permanently, military experience and capacity will always retain a high value in Indian ad- ministration.
The Standfast school, on the other hand, maintain that we ought never to have gone beyond the Indus, which if defended by a few forts and a fleet of rapid ironclad flats would prove as strong a barrier as the Danube or the Rhine ever did, and that as we have gone beyond it we should hold the gates of the mighty mountain wall, and leave all clans beyond it to simmer or boil over as they will. Their spray will not affect the vast peninsula beyond them. For a hundred years the clansmen, uncon- trolled, have been able to do India no harm, and unless by compression we solidify them, they will in the future be able to do none. They may become better armed ; but their improvement is trifling, as the present operations prove, compared with our own ; and they cannot form themselves into a nation without at the same time com- pelling themselves to fight, as the Sikhs fought, in pitched battles, which they are nearly certain not to win. If they descend into India without artillery they are certain to be crushed, and if they descend with it they must come through the gates of the Himalaya, which will be always in our hands. Why not, therefore, leave them to work out their own destiny ? As to their aiding Russia in an invasion, they like that infidel Power no better than they like us, and if they joined it, would only develop the difficulty of supplies to gigantic proportions. More- over, it will take thirty thousand men to bridle them completely, and as these men must be cantoned on ridges and in the mouths of valleys far out- side the true " India," they will be "locked up," and as useless for work within the continent itself as if they were stationed in the islands of the Pacific. As for the clansmen becoming recruits, they become recruits now in any numbers they like, while we have no proof that their loyalty would be developed by subjugation. The Ghoorkas, who have never been subjugated, though dependant territories were taken away from them in 1816, are among the very best troops in our service, while the Hindostanee sepoys who had been our subjects, and petted subjects too, for a hundred years, sprang in 1857 at our throats. As to Russia, if she comes, which is doubtful, we can fight her best in the plains, where our camps can be supplied without stint, and where every fresh railway diminishes the difficulties of transport now impeding Sir William Lockhart. The military reasons for conquering the clans are therefore insufficient, while the reasons against that great adventure lie upon the surface. We have not too many men to waste, nor, with reference to our permanent work in garrisoning India, is it expedient that our beat officers and our picked regiments, the section of the Army, in fact, which is always ready and, so to speak, automobile, should be confined to the task of holding down the Western Himalayas. We want the healthy ambitions of India to direct themselves to India, and not to what is, after all, a bit cut out of Central Asia, and no more Indian than Switzerland is Italian. Our work is to govern the vast peninsula, with its endless millions, well, and already the task is almost too great for Indian resources. It will be terribly difficult to meet the additional expenditure required, even if we are to starve, as we are now starving, great works of civil improvement like education, irrigation, and civil justice, and though further taxation is not so impossible as many believe it to be, it would be attended with the most serious risks. The Forward school speak lightly of this branch of the question, relying, we fancy, in the last resort on aid from England ; but even from their own point of view they fail to perceive many of the consequences of waste. It is the opinion of the best experts that the Forward policy cannot be carried out, even if we leave Afghanistan untouched, at less expendi- ture than four millions a year, and that sum would enable us to add at least thirty-five thousand men to the Indian-European Army. Is it possible to maintain that the subjugation of the Himalayan clans would add to our fighting strength what a new corps d'arm6e of Europeans would ? We avoid saying anything of the additional security which improved administration would give us, though this is a leading argument with the great civilians who still disbelieve in the Forward policy, and only quote the evidence that even in the strictly military sense we might be stronger if we remained behind the Himalayan gates. As to the advantage of using the clansmen's territory as a training-school for the Army, it is opposed to all modern experience, which shows that an army like the Prussian can be formed without ever firing a, shot.
For ourselves we believe that the policy of the Standfast party is by far the wiser, though we are bound in honesty to add a rider which takes out of that conclusion much of its force. We confess we do not see the way to retire now we have gone so far. The effect of a retreat, as is proved by many minor incidents, would be to inflate the vanity of the clansmen until they might, under its influence, compel us to recommence campaigning, while it would certainly diminish both the energy and the confidence of our own Army. The moral strength of an army is terribly impaired by failure. We should be held to have shrunk from an achievement desired by the military experts, because it was too difficult or too expensive, and the spirit of self-reliance which makes armies great would be seriously diminished. It is diminishing, be it observed, already, or the Indian Government would not be employing such great forces on operations which forty years ago would have been carried through by, at the outside, twenty thousand 'nen. We have never, in fact, in India collected an army equal to the one now at the orders of Sir William Lock- hart. We fear that as a measure of practical policy we must go forward, and bridle a clan like the Afridis with the strong hand ; and that once done, the Forward men will have so much to say that the counsels which we think wise will with the majority pass unheeded. It is still, however, open to Parliament to insist that the Govern- ment shall once more accept the submission of the clans as a reason for leniency, and shall avoid any new and extensive pledging of the revenues of India to an occupa- tion which may be unsuccessful, and must, as far as civil results are concerned, be absolutely sterile. We can hold a fort on the Tirah plateau, and construct a road to it, without taking upon ourselves the control, that is, in fact, in the end the direct government, of some forty warlike and fanatical Mussulman clans.
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