Page:Annie Besant - The Story of Afghanistan.pdf/13

 complaint was useless. An "ostensible pretext" had been created for war, and war was declared.

Public opinion at home had, meanwhile, been sedulously misled. The Gagging Act had silenced the Indian Press; the telegraphs were in the hands of the Government; news was sent home that the Afghans had fired on our Mission and had insulted our flag. The fiction set aflame the hot English pride, and the now admitted falsehood served its intended purpose. Our troops—prepared beforehand by Lord Lytton—advanced rapidly, the hill-tribes were bribed, and we marched triumphantly forward, overrunning Afghanistan.

It might have at least been supposed that a war begun avowedly to protect our interests would have been carried on with some regard to humanity. We loudly proclaimed that we had no quarrel with the Afghan nation; yet we burned their villages, destroyed their crops, stole their cattle, looted their homes, hanged their men as "rebels" if they resisted, while we drove out their women and children to perish in the snow. If thus we treat those with whom we have no quarrel, what distinction do we draw between our friends and our foes?

All the world knows how we hunted out Shere Ali to perish broken-hearted. How we raised a puppet Ameer in his stead. How against all warning, all prayer, we established our Mission. How our Envoy perished—as Shere Ali had predicted—and how Yakoob Khan was driven out as traitor to his own people. All the world has heard also of our revenge. How we marched into Afghanistan murdering as "rebels" all who loved their country and their freedom well enough to face us. How we hanged by the hundred the wicked "traitors" who defended their own homes. How we refused quarter to the flying, and "cut up" the stragglers who had been vile enough to resist the invaders. These horrors have been committed under the pretence that the Afghans were "rebels." Rebels to whom? Where there is no rightful claim to authority there can be no rebellion in resistance. Resistance to the invader is a duty that each man owes to his fatherland, and the war of self-defence, of defence of wife and child, of hearth and home, is a righteous—aye, the only righteous—war. In such war every soldier is a patriot; in such war every death is a martyrdom. The defence of the road to Cabul,