Page:The empire and the century.djvu/697

 discipline, which had been effected by fifteen years of peace amongst men of the same clan as those who had formed my escort in Herat in 1856, or who had acted as friendly guides in 1879. The métier of the Afghan is that of the irregular marksman. He is often a splendid shot, and no European troops could ever hope to compete with Ghilzai or Hazara mountaineers amongst their own hills in a defensive campaign. Ten thousand Afridis, it may be remembered (I had special opportunities for estimating their numbers), kept 40,000 British and Indian troops well employed in Tirah, and there is little to choose between the Afridi and his Afghan neighbour. The Amir of Afghanistan could certainly put 200,000 irregular riflemen (armed with modern weapons) into the field if he chose to do so, and he has at his command a very efficient force of mounted artillery to support them. In short, it would be a serious mistake for us to imagine that we could make our way to Kabul now with the same comparative ease that we did in 1878. Tirah has taught us differently. Why, then, should we say 'Yes' at all in answer to the question of whether the ordinary stamp of Russian frontier troops would be good enough for an invasion of the northern borders of Afghanistan? It is because we cannot contemplate the possibility of Afghanistan possessing a General of the Oyama type, or officers trained like the Japanese; and the first great move would be over the open Oxus plains, where strategic ability would a good deal more than counterbalance the irregular activity of Herati or Kateghani horsemen, and where the agility of the mountaineer would be useless. So far as Afghan Turkestan is concerned, we may take it for granted that, from the crossing of the Oxus, whether by bridge or by ferry, a Russian force moving across the wide plains of Turkestan (where there is little to break the monotony of the open view but the purple lines of waving grass which mark the course of canals, with a few widely-scattered blotches of village orchards, and those mounds of the now desiccated Balk plain, on