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existed on this point we believe that, with the passes strongly fortified, heavily armed, and efficiently garrisoned, our best plan would be to mass our main army on the open ground on our side of the passes, ready to fall on the heads of attacking columns. But to ensure this, our lateral communications require perfecting. We want bridge-heads on the Indus, not only at Attock, but at Kushalgurh and various other points down to Dera Ghazi; a line of rail through the Kohat Pass, joining our Khyber and Kuram lines; and light railways to the points of possible concentration.

We do not believe in the policy of staking our hold on India on the issue of one or two great battles on the Helmund. It is admitted by the advocates of this course that disaster there would shake our rule in India to its foundations; why, then, run the risk? It has been held that to fight further back would have a disastrous effect in India on the people and on the native chiefs. We doubt this. We doubt this. There is no 'people of India': there is a huge inert mass, accustomed to be ruled, to the larger proportion of whom war does not come home at all; and the mass will remain quiet so long as we do not show alarm and have plenty of British troops in the country. As for the chiefs of India, the great majority of whom, and the most important, are Hindu, we believe that they are loyal to the Empire. They have shown this in no small degree in our present difficulties; we can surely trust them to aid us with equal and greater enthusiasm to repel an invasion, which would be, according to supposition, backed by their hereditary enemies the Mohammedans. They know that they are safe and free under us: why should they wish to throw themselves into the arms of an unknown conqueror, unless we show that we are afraid? We admit that if our armies were driven in rout over the Indus, and our troops were called on to hold those fortifications which Lord Roberts erected at Rawal Pindi-to the amazement of our best Indian friends and of our late enemy Yakub Khan, who, when asked what he thought of them, replied, 'I always knew you did not mean to fight beyond your own frontier we admit that then our power in India would be shaken, that many of the native chiefs would side with the stronger Power, and that the people would fail us; but we believe that no force which could be collected for the invasion of India could accomplish such a task. We have learnt something lately of the possibilities open to the defence in a hilly country.

The conditions in Afghanistan and India are at this moment curiously like those which Lord Lytton had to face, but the outlook is more serious. Again we have an Amir bigoted, ignorant,

conceited, and rightly jealous of his independence, threatened by Russian intrigue and force, the latter now hanging in a storm-cloud at his gates. We are responsible in him to the Russians for a ruler we cannot control, whom we have enormously strengthened by lavish gifts of money and arms. It is for us not to repeat Lord Lytton's mistakes. These, to our mind, may be summed up as follows. Lord Lytton did not frankly recognise that, the Amir being alienated, the one essential thing was not to frighten him, but to lure him away from Russia by offering him as much or more than Russia could give. The offer made was hampered by conditions which no self-respecting Amir, knowing that his alliance was of the utmost importance to us, and believing that we were bound in our own interests to defend him, would accept. By insisting on posting a British envoy at Herat, Lord Lytton threw the Amir into the arms of Russia. Even had the Amir agreed, his consent would have been useless unless freely given. Our Our envoy would have been practically a prisoner, as was Lumsden in 1857, unable to obtain information except at the Amir's pleasure; and he would not for a moment have prevented Russian communications with the Amir. Lord Lytton first tried to cajole the Amir and then to frighten him; and he strove to convince him that we were more important to him than he to us, which, considering the overtures the Amir was receiving from both sides, he was not likely to believe. The incident was treated throughout in a curiously local spirit, considering Lord Lytton's diplomatic training. The question was an Imperial one, to be decided between our Government and that of Russia, rather than between India and Afghanistan. It is so at the present day; and an attack on Afghanistan must be met not only there, but in China and elsewhere.

Our position in India now is in a sense stronger than it was twenty years ago, but that of Russia is much more threatening. Her railways enable her now to mass tens of thousands of men at Kushk within striking distance of Herat. We were warned in time, and have had twenty years to put our house in order. In a great measure we have failed to take advantage of the time given us. We have, it is true, in Quetta and Pishin -or ought to have a position of great strength, against which invading armies should beat themselves to pieces. We have command of the main passes, and our communications are better, though by no means perfect. But our force is dangerously small; and in India, as elsewhere, we have played a gambler's game of bluff. At the present moment we are eight thousand British troops short in India; and no steps have been

taken to replace those withdrawn to South Africa. In case of a war with Russia in Afghanistan we should want an addition of fifty thousand British troops to the army in India; but no preparations have been made to supply them. A portion of our Indian army is of splendid material, and can be thoroughly trusted; but that portion is overworked, and signs of exhaustion showed themselves in it after the late frontier risings. It could not stand the strain of a prolonged campaign. As a whole the native Indian army is not in a satisfactory condition. The Madras army is useless-it would not even face the Burmese; the Bombay army is, in the opinion of many competent judges, not much better; fully one-half of the Bengal army is of doubtful value. None of these troops could with safety be placed in line of battle. We rely on the Punjab army, and there is not enough of that. Fighting races exist by the hundred thousand in Northern India, from which we could fill our regiments; but this would involve the abolition of the water-tight compartment system of the Madras, Bombay, and Bengal armies, adopted after the Mutiny. That this abolition must come we believe; otherwise with the strain of actual war our army will go to pieces. An aggressive war in Afghanistan is out of the question; we cannot in safety advance beyond the Khojak range or the Kuram Khyber hills; but a defensive war would be all in our favour. Even if the Russians were welcomed into Afghanistan, a few months would sicken the people of their presence; the country would rise against the Infidel; and if we were victorious, the Russians would have to retreat behind their present frontier, pursued by our troops and the Afghans throughout the length of Afghanistan, with losses which would for ever put aside any fear of the invasion of India. If we failed to defeat Russia all along the line, and if she established herself firmly at Kabul, then the English people would have to face the problem and to be prepared to keep two hundred and fifty thousand British troops in India.

To meet the contingency of a determined Russian advance on India we must entirely re-organise the native army, and reduce the useless southern troops, thus obtaining money for the up-keep of better troops. We must improve the frontier communications, fortify the passes, and largely increase and modernise our artillery. The number of British officers with native regiments should be doubled-there are now nominally eight; practically regiments often go into action with four or five, enough to last, with luck, through one battle-and we must organise large bodies of mounted infantry. Finally, we must be prepared, the moment danger threatens, to

throw a mass of Imperial troops-they need not be regularsinto India. Thirty or forty thousand men landed partly in Bombay, partly in Calcutta, would keep the country steady; and if the country is reassured, we have nothing to fear. This means money, and plenty of it, and India cannot find it all; but the existence of the Empire is at stake, and England must be prepared to help.

As for Afghanistan, we would adhere to the old policy: keep on good terms, if possible, with the existing ruler; strengthen him if necessary, but never trust him too much; and on no account, unless at the Amir's invitation, contemplate placing British officers in the country. It is an unsatisfactory plan at best; but any dealings with a savage Mohammedan State, short of complete subjugation, must always be so, owing to the genius of the religion and its influence on the character of the people. Our policy towards the border tribes not directly under our rule should be, we believe, unaggressive, but firm. Its direction should be in the hands of one officer, working directly under the Government of India, as proposed by Lord Lytton. Where roads have to be kept open, as in the case of the Khyber, or the road by Swat and Dir to Chitral, this should be done by the use of local levies. No annexation should be attempted, and no native middlemen relied on: selected British officers with a love for frontier life should alone be employed to deal with the tribes. If the British Empire is to remain in existence and to keep India, the tribesmen are bound, in the end, to come under our rule.

In short we believe that the lesson to be learnt from the history of our Indian frontier policy during the past thirty years is to keep our powder dry, to strain every nerve to perfect our defences on the border of the Indian Empire, to extend quietly and gradually our influence over the tribes on our frontier, and not to be drawn into a policy of adventure in Afghanistan. The fate of the Empire is in the lap of the gods; there may be dark times before us; but we cannot believe that if we are true to ourselves there is any reason to fear disaster. But there must be none of that deplorable lack of common-sense preparation on the part of our statesmen, none of that dilettante treatment of vital questions, of which they have so recently been guilty. From a defeat at Magersfontein or Colenso the nation can recover, but a crash at Quetta or at the mouth of the Khyber might bring down the Empire in India.

ART. XI. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

1. The Life of Wellington: the Restoration of the Martial Power of Great Britain. By the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P. Two vols. Third edition. London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1900.

2. Waterloo. Par Henry Houssaye. Paris: Perrin et Cie., 1899. 3. Vie Militaire du Général Foy. Par Maurice Girod de L'Ain. Paris: Plon, Nourrit, et Cie., 1900.

4. A Boy in the Peninsular War: the Services, Adventures, and Experiences of Robert Blakeney. Edited by Julian Sturgis.

London: John Murray, 1899.

5. La Campagne dans les Pyrénées, 1813-1814. Commandant Clerc. Paris: L. Baudoin, 1896.

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Par Le

T is now many years since an English author attempted to write the Life of the Duke of Wellington, although an enormous mass of new evidence has been produced since Gleig and Brialmont and their contemporaries essayed the task. In addition to material that has hitherto been purposely held back, much more that seems to have been merely overlooked has now come to light. Almost every year some new diary of a Peninsular officer is exhumed from a long-unopened desk. Few of these are so lively as that of Robert Blakeney, which appeared last year. The cheerful and reckless young Irishman's account of what befel him at Corunna, Barrosa, and the Nive, is quite as interesting as anything in the narratives of his countrymen Grattan, Bell, and Lestrange, which we have long known. It contains, moreover, several new points of considerable military importance.

The time is therefore ripe for the appearance of a new biography of the Duke. Sir Herbert Maxwell has undertaken the task, and has produced a solid work, which will in many ways supersede all that has gone before. A great part of its value comes from the fact that the cabinets of Apsley House were opened to the author, so that he has been able to illustrate the Duke's private life and personal views with greater freedom and certainty than any of his predecessors. We rise from reading his book with a clearer view of Wellington as a man than we ever had before. On Wellington as strategist or politician we do not think that much new light is thrown; and, to our notion, Sir Herbert is prone to be unduly severe in his judgment on the Duke's military operations. He has evidently been impressed with French criticism, which (as we hope to show) is not much fairer now than it was eighty years ago, in

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