anti-Russian campaign, our soldiers would expect to be asked to support them in the field. They would not commit suicide like the Japanese because they were not allowed to go to the front They would do worse: they would become actively, and perhaps mischievously, discontented.
And what would the end be? If we did not succeed in forcing Russia back to the Oxus, there would be nothing left for our military politicians but the partition of Afghanistan with the Hindu Kush as the buffer land—the long-contemplated conclusion to the Frontier Question in Asia. As to our remaining on our own borders, quietly awaiting the time when Russia, having conquered Afghanistan and absorbed its fighting races, should attempt the invasion of India from the Indus Hills, it is not to be contemplated by any sane politician who has the smallest acquaintance with the geographical configuration of the Indian trans-frontier and the temper of its fighting races.
If Japan has not, however, settled the Frontier Question for us, she has, at least, deferred its practical solution by force of arms sine die. Russia has not gone completely mad. With her huge army badly beaten in defensive tactics, it is beyond belief that she should contemplate aggressive action against another host which, we may confidently predict, would be her equal in numbers, and her superior in national cohesion, if not in scientific resource. Who can tell what may occur in the next quarter of a century? Japan and China may create an absolutely new phase in Asiatic politics, and we may find the means at last of effecting an agreement with Russia on such a basis of mutual advantage that it will no longer be worth her while to break the peace. Such an agreement, we are told, is outside the pale of practical politics. It is difficult to understand why this is so—but that is another question. It may be answered sooner than we expect by a reconstituted and reorganized Russian Government.
