THE RUSSO-AFGHAN QUESTION AND THE INVASION OF INDIA BY COLONEL G. B. MALLESON, C.S.I. AUTHOR OF HERAT, THE GRANARY AND GARDEN OF CENTRAL ASIA," PREFACE. RUSSIA has at last spoken! After years patiently spent in absorbing the desert, she reached in 1884 the borders of the promised land. Her first act on arriving there was to object to the frontier which Lord Granville had proposed in October, 1872, which she, by the despatches of her Chancellor, dated respectively in December, 1872, and January, 1873, had accepted, and which in Russian and English maps alike has, ever since, been marked as the frontier. Yielding, in a weak moment, to an objection posed solely for the purpose of deriving some practical advantage from the re-opening of a settled question, Lord Granville arranged with Russia that Commissioners should be sent from both countries to the spot, to fix there the exact line of demarcation which was to be the limit of Russia's advance towards India. In consequence of this agreement an English Commissioner, of distinguished service in India, proceeded without delay to the point agreed upon. He found there the valleys, the rivers, the mountains, the people, but no Russian Commissioner ! The Russian Commissioner was, indeed, conspicuous by his absence, but, to counterbalance that absence, parties of Russian soldiers crossed the line which since 1872-73 had been accepted as the boundary of the country, and seized positions, useless for commercial, most important for strategical, purposes—positions which, since the year 1863, and even before that year, had paid tribute to Herát-the north-western province of the dominions of England's ally, the Amír of Afghánistán! To show the necessity, if we wish still to hold India, of the retention, by an ally of England, of the positions Russia has seized; to demonstrate the absolute right of the Amír to those positions, and the lawlessness of the act of Russia in seizing them; to set clearly before the public the cherished ultimate |