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 When we conquered India it was practically an island. Even now it is still separated by an enormous gap from the effective centre of Russian power. At the same time, Russia—the real Russia, not the boundary on the map—is steadily advancing towards the Indian frontier. That advance will only be delayed, but not stopped, by defeat in the Far East, or a revolution at home. The completion of strategical railways towards Afghanistan has been going on steadily, in spite of the war in Manchuria. Russia believes, and correctly believes, that she can concentrate even larger armies in Afghanistan than in Manchuria, and she also believes—and again, unfortunately, with reason—that we cannot bring against her as large or as well-trained forces as Japan has done. Whatever may be the situation at the present moment, the general trend of events is certain. Europe, with its economic and industrial development, its railways, and its military power, is slowly advancing across Asia, and will bring the whole weight of the European state, organized on modern military lines, against an Asiatic empire, based on primitive agriculture, and defended by a small standing army, partly native and partly European, with no adequate reserve behind it. This state of affairs is supremely unsatisfactory, and must be altered while Russia's present exhaustion gives us the time to do so. In the first place, we must create in this country a really adequate reserve for a great war in Asia. That reserve is not to be found in our existing military system, nor will Mr. Arnold-Forster's scheme, whatever its merits in some respects, provide it. The defence of India will require something much more powerful than Mr. Arnold-Forster's short-service reserve army. We require something in the nature of an Imperial militia, an organization that will enable us to put a really large and effective force, reckoned not in tens, but in hundreds of thousands, into the field in front of India, and to maintain and increase that force during a long war. How that force is to be raised and trained, and now it is to be paid for, is a problem that presents the very