When at last, in the face of former engagements, she could no longer refuse to consent to a delimitation of the Afghan frontier, she took care to anticipate the decision of the Commission by seizing upon those positions inside the Ameer's territory which were best calculated to enable her to carry on the game which she has so long and so successfully played.
We have already seen enough of the spirit and fashion in which the negotiations are being conducted to appreciate the situation which we are now called upon to face. Russia has now definitely planted herself inside the Afghan frontier, with one foot on Penjdeh and the other on Zulfikar, and with Herat lying under her shadow. This is apparently the result the negotiations have brought about. Had we stood firm for the integrity of the Ameer's territories, had we taken the field as we threatened to do, we should have been able to force her to accept a frontier which would have admitted of Afghanistan remaining independent, – we might, perchance, have been able to force her back upon Merv as the limit beyond which she was not to advance. But Mr Gladstone and M. de Giers have made an independent Afghanistan an impossibility. With Penjdeh in her possession, Russia can interrupt all communication between Cabul and Balkh during the four or five months in which the passes of the Hindoo Koosh are blocked with snow. She will hold the Ameer responsible for the good behaviour of his Balkh subjects, when his power over them, which at the best is but limited, will be rendered altogether impossible. She may accept the line of the Oxus as a boundary; but will she be able to keep that line, any more than she has been able to hold to others? The same procedure which she has followed in other cases,[1] will
- ↑ Six years ago, in an article in this Magazine, in which we pointed out that Russian aggression, unless firmly checked, must culminate speedily in some such crisis as the present, we thus described the policy by which Russia was adding area by area, and khanate by khanate, to her Central Asian acquisitions, as well as the assistance which the Liberals were rendering to her advance: "So long as the Turkestan commanders conducted their operations with secrecy and despatch, the Russian Chancellor was well content to let them play their own game. If they were successful, the St Petersburg Government would undertake their justification; if they failed, it would apologise for the 'mal entendu,' as M. de Westmann, the acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, called General Llamakin's ambitious attempt to annex the Attrek and Goorgan valleys to Russia. The only mistake they could commit was being found out too soon. This gave rise to awkward questions, which could not always safely be met by a denial, and might compel the Government for its own credit to stop the undertaking. We hear much of Russian autocracy and military despotism, but really the despatches in the Central Asian Blue-book would almost tempt us to suppose that no administrators and commandants have, in modern times, enjoyed half the freedom and latitude that have been extended to the Russian officers in Central Asia. There is, withal, a deal of ingenuous modesty manifested in the way in which they describe their own proceedings. A military expedition is playfully designated as a reconnaissance; an annexation proclamation, commanding obedience to the 'Sovereign of the world,' and telling the Turkomans 'to look to themselves for good or evil,' is a 'mere friendly letter' (Correspondence respecting Central Asia, p. 17); scouting expeditions are simply scientific explorations, – and so on. Another very surprising fact revealed by the correspondence is, that the St Petersburg Government knew next to nothing of the proceedings of its officers in Central Asia, for it is almost invariably by the circuitous route, via the Government of
