INTRODUCTION. THE Afghan war, which commenced on the 20th of October, 1878, may be divided into three distinct periods: namely, 1, From the expiration of Lord Lytton's Ultimatum on the above date, and the advance of our troops, up to the signing of peace at Gundamuck on May 27th, 1879; 2, From the outbreak at Cabul and the massacre of Sir Louis Cavagnari on Sept. 3rd, 1879, to the entrance into the Afghan capital. by Sir Frederick Roberts on October 12th following; and, 3, From Ayub's advance from Herat to the Helmund on June 7th, to his defeat by our troops at Kandahar on Sept. 1st, 1880. These Records' deal only with the latter episode. That we must be prepared for a fourth period and further episode of this war I believe to be inevitable, and I can scarcely doubt that Ayub will neglect the opportunities our present Government have given him, and the temptations we have offered by the ridiculous haste with which Cabul and our garrisons were evacuated, and the country denuded of troops, before Abdurrahman was well seated on the throne. The extraordinary policy which dictated what may, without exaggeration, be termed an ignominious flight from all those coigns of vantage won with our blood and treasure, and by the heroic self-sacrifice of our troops under Generals Roberts, Stewart, and Browne, must, in the eyes of impartial England, be alone held responsible for whatever further bloodshed may result. The same fatuity which hurried our victorious soldiers from the plains of Ulundi to those of Aldershot, leaving Zululand, Basutoland, and the Transvaal, in a fermenting and feverish unrest; the same inaction and want of purpose which has encouraged rebellion in Ireland, and which has, as it were, offered a premium to violence and murder; now impose a tax upon the energy and purse of all our public departments of this Empire, in a manner and to an extent never before paralleled. Who can possibly deny that the blood of our soldiers shed at Kushk-i-Nakhud and Deh Kwaja, and our terrible loss of prestige at those affairs, were not the immediate and swift retributions of the quieta non movere policy, which left our most important conquest, Kandahar, with a garrison one half its proper strength, and which compelled General Primrose to still further deplete the same, by detaching General Burrows to the Helmund, to be cut up in detail by Ayub Khan? Fortunately for us, the Afghan Prince was precipitate and rash in his advance from Herat, for if he had waited another month, the splendid force collected by Sir Frederick Roberts at Cabul would, in accordance with the behests of the Home Government, have been on its way to England, and Kandahar, unhelped and unrelieved from Cabul, must have fallen. What has been the course pursued by the Government since? Having, by the outlay of a vast sum, and by the splendid march achieved by our most successful General, saved Kandahar from massacre, anarchy, and the hireling swords of Ayub's soldiers, it is gravely announced in Parliament that England will, in a short time, renounce the bulwark and the defence we have won, and restore to an uncertain dynasty the prize which forms the natural key to the most important portion of our Indian frontier, and which can, at any future time, be readily unlocked by Russian gold, if not by Russian steel and lead. When the people of England learned, from a passage in the Queen's speech at the opening of the present Parliament, that it was the intention of our Government to withdraw our forces from Kandahar, they naturally were led to believe that such a course must have been advised and dictated by the judgment and opinions of the most competent authorities, namely, our best and most experienced Indian administrators, and our military advisers on this particular subject. Of course, to the great mass of the British public, the vast magnitude of the issues involved by the retention or evacuation of the Durani capital would scarcely be realised, and they naturally felt assured that the measure contemplated would not have been thought of, unless the opinions of the most competent authorities in India and England had been taken. But gradually it has been found that such has by no means been the case, for neither the Government of India, which, it may be allowed, is the authority most responsible for the integrity of our Eastern Empire, and its immunity from invasion and conquest, nor our best Indian military authorities, have been at all consulted in the matter. If we may allow that the subject must be looked upon and discussed purely upon political and military reasons, let us by all means obtain and be guided by those political and military authorities whose honour is known to be above party feeling, and whose expe b rience and knowledge of Indian history are worthy of reliance. That having been compelled and forced, most unwillingly, into this Afghan war of 1878, and having won such a position of advantage as Kandahar, we should be acting with deliberate and suicidal policy were we to abandon it, I venture to maintain, knowing that I am merely asserting the opinions and convictions of ninety-nine men out of a hundred who, like myself, have served in India, and look with utter astonishment at the present attitude of the Government. If we are to look upon history as a guide in matters of this kind, we have only to remember that nearly every invasion of India from the north-west, in ancient or modern times, has been preceded by an advance. upon, or towards, Kandahar. From 536 B.C., when Afghanistan formed the eastern portion of the MedoPersian empire founded by Cyrus, down to 1878, when Chamberlain's mission was rejected by Shere Ali, the western capital has been the point de mir, and one of, if not the most coveted coigns of vantage. Alexander, Salukas Nikator, the Parthians, the Sassanides, the Saracens and Arabs, the Tartars, Mahmood, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Baber, Nadir Shah, Ahmed Khan, and the numerous other rulers who have attempted to gain a footing in Hindostan, have nearly always made the district of the Helmund their principal attack. The experiences of the late as of the former wars we have had with Afghanistan show plainly how difficult is the march from Quetta to Kandahar, and how useless would the former be as an outpost were the latter held by an enemy. General Roberts marched more quickly from Cabul to Kandahar than did General Phayre to the latter place from Quetta. |