Page:England & Russia in Central Asia,Vol-I.djvu/128

108 ENGLAND AND EUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA. Others say that double that number would be required for the main army, and that it should be supported by another column of twenty or thirty thousand men operating from another quarter. Between these it would be rash for a theoretical observer to decide ; but it appears to be a safe assumption to say that whatever the strength of the army, it should be sufficiently numerous to deal with the Anglo-Indian army that would defend the Indian Empire from attack. In a later chapter we shall consider what the strength of that army would be ; but here it may be said that it would be absurd to think of a smaller army than one hundred thousand Eussian troops and auxiliaries beating it, under anything like present conditions. Unless we remained as indifferent to a Russian ad- vance south of the Oxus, to Herat as well as to Bamian, as we did to the progress of her arms from the Jaxartes to Samarcand and the Pamir, it would be impossible for Russia to take us off our guard ; and unless we are taken off our guard, or sink into some state of political idiocy, we shall never permit Russia to acquire those strategical points which might supply her military deficiencies. But as things are at present — whether the Afghan crisis result only in a partial rectification of our frontier, or in a complete solution of the north-west danger by the annexation of Eastern Afghanistan, the only real remedy, and one which the present generation shall certainly yet witness — Russia cannot hope to secure any of those points save at the expense of a war, in which all the chances would be on our side, and none on hers.