Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/874

868 doubtless hold good here, until, at some early date, we find Russia bewailing the "imperious necessity" which has compelled her, much against her will, to annex all the Ameer's territories north of the Paropamisus. Does Mr Gladstone intend to present Russia with Balkh at this juncture, or does he propose to reserve it for the Ameer? In the latter case, it is obvious that we shall have to charge ourselves with providing some means of securing order among the Balkh tribes, as well as of preventing Russia exacting those conditions which would give her a colourable pretext for interfering with them. Thus we may safely anticipate that before long time elapses the Ameer of Cabul must, consequent upon the present position of Russia, find himself shorn of his Balkh dominions. And what shall we say of Southern Afghanistan? We suppose no British statesman – not even Mr Gladstone, far less any military authority – will now recommend that our Indian defensive frontier is to remain the Suleiman range and the line of the Indus. With Russia overlooking Herat, we shall be compelled, if not in self-defence, at least to reassure the tranquillity of our Indian subjects, to advance our strategical frontier to Candahar and the Helmund. When the question of a scientific frontier was examined in 1877-78 by the chief civil and military authorities in India, there were still many of them who refused to recognise the possibility of Russia arriving within a distance from which she would be able to menace Herat; but even then there were many authoritative opinions expressed against the disadvantages of our existing frontier.

"'It has been frequently asserted,' said Lord Napier of Magdala, 'that we shall be secure if we remain within our mountain-boundary. But this is at variance with all history. A mountain-chain that can be pierced in many places is no security if you hide behind it. India has been often entered through her mountain-barrier, which was never defended. India waited to fight the battle in her own plains, and invariably lost it. How much Austria lost in not defending the Bohemian mountains! What might have been the position of the Turks had they not properly closed the passage of the Balkans?'"

We have also the authority of Sir Edward Hamley, the ablest strategist of our time, in favour of the advantages which the occupation of Candahar would afford us in repelling an invasion of India from the north-west. In a lecture delivered at the United Service Institute on the 13th December 1878, General Hamley, viewing his subject entirely in a military