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 system to the borderland of Afghanistan, she could really peril our security in India by an advance in force from the Oxus. We will for the moment set aside the fact that she has been disastrously beaten by a comparatively small Asiatic power, and is in no position to risk another failure in the Asiatic field, and confine our attention to that which she might accomplish on the borderland of Afghanistan on the supposition that she has recovered from the war with Japan; and then consider what should be our military policy as her action gradually develops. It is usual to take for granted the statements of military experts that Russia's capabilities as a military Power are vastly in excess of our own, and that she could, if it pleased her, distribute a force of 500,000 men at the termini of her Central Asian railway system on the Herat frontier and on the banks of the Oxus facing Afghan Turkestan without much difficulty. There is no reason to doubt this possibility. She has done even more than this in Manchuria at the end of the long single line traversing Siberia. On the other hand, we have no reason to suppose that the quality of the troops destined to take the field against Afghanistan and India would differ greatly from the quality of the army (drawn chiefly from Asiatic sources) which has over and over again proved itself incapable of holding strong defensive works against direct attack on the part of the Japanese; although we have often heard of late years from the lips of those who make a special study of such subjects, that direct attack against scientific defensive appliances must prove to be in future an impossible factor in modern tactics. There is no doubt, indeed, that military developments have tended to increase the power of defence out of all proportion to the power of offence in the field of action, and that there was ample justification for such a forecast. What are we to suppose, then? That the Japanese are a superhuman development as a fighting power in the world's arena—a race of natural soldiers such as the world has never seen; or that they are but ordinary