Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/82

 oned out. While Beaconsfield had opposed the first Afghan war, he readily changed his views when he came into power and began the second war in 1878 on the avowed ground that the Ameer had refused to receive a British mission. But with a sudden change of tactics, at a dinner at the Man- sion House on November 9, Lord Beaconsfield sol- emnly announced that the war had been made be- cause the frontier of India was ' ' a haphazard and not a scientific one." Yet a little before, when condemning the first Afghan war, he had de- scribed the frontiers of India as "a perfect bar- rier." He did not give to any organization of public opinion a chance to influence him in this matter, or even to be heard. On December 9, Lord Derby said in the House of Lords: "We are discussing, and we know we are discussing, an issue upon which we have no real or practical in- fluence. ' '