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RUSSIA'S ADVANCE UPON INDIA.

IN the Eastern Question, history repeats itself with direful iteration. Once more the colossal power of Russia has achieved a great step, and, as usual, prepares for a further advance. She has extended her power up to, and all along, the northern frontier of Affghanistan, within striking distances of India, and has gained a military position prerequisite for a safe or successful advance into south-western Asia. Her new position on our Indian frontier will cover her left flank in such an invasion, while it is meant to deter England from opposition in Asia Minor and Syria by intrigues, skirmishing, and preliminary attacks upon our Indian empire. Russia has now made peace with her neighbours in Europe, and, abandoning her old line of advance upon Constantinople, she is able to direct the whole of her ever-aggressive power eastward into Asia, where the Shah of Persia is already her servant. Except the Sultan and the Turks, all other Powers are now out of the field; and Russia and England are left, like rival champions, each heading a large section of the Asiatic peoples, in a contest which will decide the dominion of southern Asia, and with it the destinies of the British empire.

Just a year ago, war-clouds appeared to be gathering on the northern frontier of Asia Minor. Russian intrigues were active among the Armenians; and in a short discussion in the House of Commons (May 25, 1883), the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that "the moment is a solemn and serious one in the annals of the Turkish empire." France, too, not con

tent with her enterprises in Madagascar and Tonquin, was reported to be intriguing in Syria chiefly through the Maronites or Christian population of the Lebanon. In the meanwhile Russia-having firmly established a base of military operations in the Caucasus (with headquarters at Tiflis) and on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, where she holds Batoum alike as a fortress and as an excellent seaport had been successfully pushing her advance eastward through the country of the Tekke Turcomans, to the neighbourhood of Sarakhs, while a railway from the Caspian was fast following the advance of her troops. As was to be expected, the Ameer of Cabool took alarm at this approach of the Muscovite battalions. The crisis was at hand when he must make a choice between his two formidable neighbours England and Russia. "Russian intrigue," said a telegram from Simla, "is at present as unceasing and audacious in Affghanistan as it was in the days of Shere Ali." The Ameer cares not a jot for either Power-rather, he hates both of them; but he must find out which is likely to prove the stronger. He has felt the power of England, and will side with her (as the lesser of two evils!) if he feels thoroughly assured of her support; but her vacillating policy, with the Gladstonian "skedaddle" out of Candahar, has made England appear but a broken reed to lean upon, compared with the persistent unswerving course of Russia. Accordingly a year ago tidings came from India that the Ameer had claimed an interview with the Governor-General to ascertain whether England was ready to

give him effectual support. But, under instructions from Downing Street, the Viceroy evaded a decision; he put off the interview to "a more convenient season;" and in the House of Commons the Ministry, through Mr Courtney, refused to state the purpose of the Ameer's proposed visit to the Viceroy, or the character of the negotiations which had taken place on the subject.

In truth, Mr Gladstone and his colleagues were beginning to see, yet dared not confess, that their abandonment of "the scientific frontier" and of the Beaconsfield policy was a serious blunder, and that Russia had been befooling them ever since. No sooner did the Gladstone party succeed to office upon the ever-to-be-lamented overthrow of Lord Beaconsfield, than Russia commenced an energetic attack upon the territory of the Tekke Turcomans; Geok Tepe, their stronghold, was taken by storm, and still the Muscovites under Skobeloff pressed on eastwards towards Sarakhs and the Affghan frontier. At length our Government could no longer keep its eyes shut; and that mildest of British Foreign Secretaries, Lord Granville (in February 1882), began the old game of conferences with the Russian Ambassador in London, Prince Lobanow. Lord Beaconsfield had acted on the wise principle that it is of no use asking for or trusting to Muscovite pledges, and that, both for safety and for self-respect, the right course for England is to act for herself in providing for the peace and security of her Indian empire. 'Gladstonism," on the contrary, is all talk and no action; and so the old and futile game of conference and despatches was resorted to anew. Paper pellets were to prevail against cannon-balls, and

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a flow of fine words was to stop the march of armies!

Let us see, then, what ensued, as set forth in the Ministerial record of these conferences contained in a recently issued blue-book. It opens with several conferences which Lord Granville in February 1882, held with Prince Lobanow, and in which the British Minister urgently suggested whether" some agreement might not be come to as regards the policy and position of the two Powers in Asia, which should remove the jealousy with which public opinion in this country was inclined to view the success and progress of the Russian arms in those regions." A month afterwards (14th March), Lord Granville had another conference with the Russian Ambassador on the same subject, in the course of which Lord Granville put on record the following statement :

"It was acknowledged, not only by her Majesty's Government, but by that of Russia also, that it was desirclose contiguity between the frontiers able to avoid any contact or very of the British and Russian possessions in Central Asia, or of the native States under their immediate and direct influence. Russia, on her part, in this respect in regard to the poshad shown considerable susceptibility pation of Herat; while on our side sible eventuality of an English occuLord Derby, when Foreign Secretary, had equally expressed the objections that would be felt here and in British India to an advance of the Russian Affghan frontier. During the last arms to the immediate vicinity of the two years our movements had been in a retrograde direction. The Russian Government, on the contrary, had advanced far beyond what we had been led to expect from the assurances previously given to us. We now heard of a surveying party havadvance positions as far as Sarakhs, ing proceeded beyond the Russian and that point was mentioned by the Russian Government as the termina

tion of a proposed delimitation of the Affghan frontier. It appeared to us that if the possession of Sarakhs were at any time to be arrived at by the Russian Government, it could not be necessary for the purposes which have hitherto been stated by them as their object. Our desire was to make an arrangement which should prevent any occasion or opportunity for a further advance of Russia towards Affghanistan. We believed that her present acquisitions were all that she could require for of security." purposes

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To this, Prince Lobanow replied that "there had at one time been an attempt to agree upon a neutral zone between the possessions and dependencies of the two countries, and that this arrangement had been found to be impracticable," the truth being that Russia refused to be bound by any "neutral zone that our Government could propose. Prince Lobanow (as recorded by Lord Granville) then stated that "the Russian Government considered that Affghanistan should be an independent or semi-independent State, subject to English influence; and the country to the north of it, now under discussion, should remain a neutral territory, placed in a somewhat similar position with regard to Russia." To this Lord Granville replied:

"It might be inferred from his Excellency's words that Russia considered herself free to advance to

Sarakhs. This, however, was exactly the kind of approach which the Russian and English Governments had always joined in deprecating. The Russian Government had, especially in 1875, dwelt upon the more than inconvenient results that would attend an English movement upon Herat. Lord Derby used the same language as to advances on the part of Russia. As it happened, [!] we had withdrawn from Affghanistan, while the Russians had advanced beyond the lines they occupied at that

time."

"As it happened!" It is a curious phrase to apply to the deliberate reversal of the previous policy of the British Government in this matter to the abandonment of Candahar and the scientific frontier-the most distinctive act of Mr Gladstone's new Administration, and in which the mild Lord Granville had his share! But to proceed. In the following month (April 1882), our Ambassador at St Petersburg (Sir E. Thornton) had an interview with M. de Giers with reference to the continued advance of Russia towards the Affghan frontier. Reporting the substance of this interview to Lord Granville, Sir E. Thornton wrote: "His Excellency answered me not once, but several times during the conversation, that Russia had no intention whatever at present of advancing towards Sarakhs or Merv, or of occupying with her forces any territory in that region beyond what was already in her possession." The concluding despatch in the blue-book is the best comment upon the whole affair, - showing the utter worthlessness of Muscovite pledges and intentions, and the calamitous imbecility of the Gladstone Cabinet. In this despatch from St Petersburg, Sir E. Thornton announced officially that the Russian Government had occupied Merv and annexed that important district to the empire of the Czar. Since then, the Russians have been extending their protectorate over all the tribes to the south of Merv, along the north side of the Hindoo Khoosh, from the Bameean Pass (to the north of Cabool) westward to Herat, and also have occupied Sarakhs, the nearest position to their Affghan goal, Herat. When recently questioned in Parliament (May 8) as to these new Russian aggressions, Lord Granville, on

behalf of the Ministry, replied: "There is no confirmation of this report, and if there were, I could hardly believe it. Sarakhs is garrisoned by Persian soldiers, and as lately as last September our chargé d'affaires at St Petersburg assured us that Sarakhs would always be outside the Russian line." In the House of Commons Lord G. Fitzmaurice made a reply in similar words; but on being pressed, he said it was possible that Russia might have occupied one half of the town, or Old Sarakhs. "The one is on the one bank of the river, the other is not," stammered his lordship, amidst much laughter; "the other is on the other bank." The said river (the Heri Rud) can be waded by boys for half the year; and Sarakhs and Old Sarakhs are not less one place than Edinburgh was when the "Nor' Loch" lay undrained between the Old town and the New. Once more the British public has become alarmed; and the Ministry find it necessary to do something to appease the national discontent at home, as well as to avert a panic in India. So the "Candahar Railway "-which had been commenced under Lord Beaconsfield, and constructed from the Indus across the flat desert to Sibi, at the foot of the Bolan Pass, before it could be stopped by the present Ministry is ordered to be continued to Quetta; while Lord Granville is doubtless mildly expostulating with M. de Giers, and the Russian newspapers are openly boasting that the Czar has now got England by the throat in the East, and can tighten the grip as occasion may require.

Russia has so often played her part in this game that she is now perfect in it. But the interest becomes absorbing as the crisis approaches. She has at length driven

or carried the ball into our ground, and the supreme tussle is about to commence around the British goal. From Sarakhs and Merv, Russia

can

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now place her hand upon Herat, with its fine and fertile plain,-fit halting-quarters for an army, and through which every conqueror of India has marched, from Alexander the Great Nadir Shah. Likewise, through the Merv oasis the "army of Tashkend" can advance upon all the passes of the Hindoo Khoosh, at the same time joining hands with the army from the Caspian and the Caucasus. Masters of Upper Asia, and possessed of a paramount influence in Persia, the Russians can now bring along with their solid battalions the combined hosts of a Genghiz and a Nadir, flooding Affghanistan with invaders, and bringing the Cossack within sight of India, the "garden of the East," and the cynosure of Russia's unwavering policy for a hundred and fifty years. the winter of 1878 the Muscovite army for the first time encamped as a foe within sight of Constantinople: how long will it be before the Russian vedettes, from the summits of the Khyber and Bolan Passes, look down upon their other great goal, India?

In

Nearly half a century ago Russia had begun her tactics for paralysing England's opposition in eastern Europe by creating troubles upon our Indian frontier. It was the time of "the Vixen " dispute, and of Vicovitch's mission to Cabool. "If we go on at this rate," said Sir John Hobhouse to the Russian Minister in London, "the Cossack and the Sepoy will soon meet upon the Oxus.' Now, that meetingplace of conflict would be a thousand miles to the south-east-on the Indus, or, at least, on the Helmund. Twenty years later

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came the Persian attack upon Herat the tardy explosion of Russia's counter-stroke at India in case of a prolongation of the Crimean war; a counter-stroke, too, with which the Indian Mutinies were not unconnected. Then came the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. The incidents of the Crimean war had shown by how precarious a tenure Russia held her Trans-Caucasian provinces, or indeed her entire south-eastern frontier beyond the Terek and Kouban rivers; and so it was resolved not only thoroughly to subjugate the Caucasus but to deport its martial inhabitants, replacing them by Cossack settlements. This was Russia's first work after the Crimean war. Schamyl was finally overcome; the Circassian tribes were persecuted and expelledliterally deported in starving boatloads to beg new homes in Turkey; and their mountain-valleys were repeopled by the Stanitzas, or Cossack military settlements: in much the same way as the Turkish population have since been treated in the Kars and Batoum districts (annexed from Turkey in the late war), where the native population is being replaced by Slavonians from Fropean Russia. Kars, Olti, and the other strong places captured from Turkey in the last war, have been fortified anew; the recently opened railway from the Caspian to Tiflis and thence to Batoum, permits a rapid concentration of all the Muscovite forces in that region (the army of the Caucasus alone numbering fully 160,000 men), as well as in Southern Russia, from Odessa; and Russia now stands ready and full-armed at this her south-eastern gate, where the whole military forces of her empire can now be speedily concentrated by steam-conveyanceprepared for an effective advance

VOL. CXXXVI.-NO. DCCCXXV.

either into Persia or Asia Minor, when a suitable occasion presents itself.

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A year has elapsed since the English Press began to scent coming troubles in that quarter; and the able correspondent of the 'Daily News,' on his arrival there in the beginning of May 1883, after describing the "Russification of Trans-Caucasia, reported that although he found no special concentration of troops, the Russians were quite prepared for an invasion of Turkish Armenia. "The momentous step," he added, "may be forced upon the Russians by the fatuity of the Turkish Government in Erzeroum and the feelings of bitter irreconcilable enmity between the Christians and Mussulmans of that province. When this takes place, it will be easy enough for Russia to push forward without a day's delay a third of her large army in the Caucasus, which at present numbers 162,000 men." And this, if we mistake not, was before the opening of the railway from Baku, which now renders rapidly available the Trans-Caspian troops which conquered at Geok Tepe, and which occupy the territory of the Tekke Turcomans, from the Caspian to Sarakhs.

That Russia's next attack upon the Ottoman empire will be directed against and through Armenia is already manifest. There, and there alone, Russia can extend herself without coming into conflict with the German Powers. The valley of the Danube is an indispensable outlet for the commerce, if not also for the increasing population, of the Germanic States; and there Austria, backed by Germany, stands on guard as Warden of the Balkhans. But in Asia, on the further side of the Black Sea, the Russian empire may push its advance freely. The German

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