223 CHAPTER XI. ATTACK AND DEFENCE. THE INDO-RUSSIAN QUESTION-OUR COSTLY POLICY A FAILURE HITHERTO HINDU KUSH INEVITABLE-A "STRONG, FRIENDLY, AND UNITED 66 In so Russian since 1800. As it is important to have clear ideas on the The IndoIndo-Russian question, some facts and opinions on question the subject will be here brought together. doing, a little recapitulation will be unavoidable. The question dates back from 1800, in which year, as already stated, Paul, Emperor of Russia, and Napoleon, First Consul of France, elaborated a scheme for a joint expedition against India, by the route followed by every invader from Alexander to Nadir Shah. Our costly policy a failure hitherto. Our two wars, Since that year Russian diplomacy and action in Central Asia, and English counter - movements in Persia and Afghanistan, have cost India upwards of seventy millions sterling. Most of that expenditure has been useless. Its objects were to retard the advance of Russia towards Afghanistan, to make that country "strong, friendly, and united,” and latterly to give us a defensible North-Western frontier. Not one of these objects has yet been attained. Our wars with Persia and Afghanistan, our missions and diplomatic manoeuvring in Central Asia, have failed to retard the approach of Russia by a single year. The Amir is to-day our good friend and handsomely subsidised ally, and long may he remain so; but his unruly subjects are probably still as distrustful of our intentions, as uncertain in their attitude, as unreliable, and as anxious for independence from all external interference, as they have been at any time since we first invaded their country. The best line for a "scientific" frontier that indeterminate ideal of Lord Lytton is as undecided to-day as it was fifteen years ago. Of the seventy millions sterling poured out amongst the rocks and deserts of the regions beyond the Indus, the two Afghan wars of 1838-42 and 1878-80 swallowed up two-thirds. The former war has been always condemned by Englishmen of every shade of political opinion as a foolish and wicked aggression; the latter has still some apologists. The disasters of the first invasion, the Sikh and Crimean wars, the annexations of Sindh and Afghanistan. given a in Central Asia, 1860 68. By 1860 both Russia and England in India had Russia politically recovered from the disorganisation and free hand exhaustion which their respective calamities of 1854-56 and 1857-58 had brought upon them. Each employed her renewed vigour in action characteristic of her ruling principles, -Russia by energetically resuming her suspended advance towards the Oxus, England by labouring to give the peoples and chiefs of her Indian dependency good government. For eight years (1860 to 1868) Russia had a free hand in Central Asia. In that period she conquered, with insignificant loss to herself, the vast territory now known as Russian Turkestan, and thus pushed her frontier southward to the Oxus, immediately beyond which lay Afghanistan. As that distracted country had been for the preceding five years without a government, owing to a war of succession amongst the sons of the late Amir, Afghan Turkestan was consequently now open to easy occupation by Russia. ference Thus, then, in 1868 the Indo-Russian position Non-interwas continued abstention from interference beyond policy. her borders on the part of India, and successful advance on that of Russia to the very frontiers of Afghanistan, which now alone intervened between the Asiatic dominions of Queen and Tzar. Instead Р "Masterly inactivity" versus "mischiev ous ac tivity." of being "strong, friendly, and united," which had long been the declared object of all our interference in her affairs, that land of perpetual strife was weak, hostile, and divided. The policy which had reduced Afghanistan to impotence from the position of a powerful and independent buffer-State-such as she had been for some years previous to the death of her great Amir, Dost Muhammad, in 1863-had at the time warm defenders and able opponents. The controversy between the advocates of "masterly inactivity" and "mischievous activity," as each side derisively dubbed the other's policy, was hottest and most voluminous during the Viceroyalty of Lord Lawrence (1864-68), the determined upholder of non-intervention. Amongst the champions of the two schools who published their views in the leading Reviews of the day, were Sir Henry Rawlinson, the greatest authority in Central Asian matters, and the late Mr J. Wyllie of the Indian Foreign Office. In forecasting the future, the former wrote with the experience of the old man of action, the latter with the ignorant self-confidence of the young secretariat lion. Had Mr Wyllie lived he would presumably have retracted many of his prognostications. In a series of exhaustive essays written between 1867 and 1870 he examined, with strict impartiality, the arguments advanced by both quietists and alarmists, and gave his own reasons for preferring the policy advocated by the former. These arguments, though mostly written twenty-five years ago, before the |