The news staggered the Gladstonians, but did not convince their leader of Russia's bad faith. Explanations were awaited, but were, of course, delayed until a crowning stroke- the seizure of Sarakhs was accomplished. cals con to change policy. Russia was now within easy striking distance of The Radi Herat, and dominated Mashhad. A little compla- strained cence now on her part might keep the Gladstonian their party in power for use on a future occasion. She consequently graciously agreed to the appointment of an Anglo-Russian Frontier Delimitation Commission to fix the common boundary of Russia and Afghanistan from Sarakhs to the Oxus at Khwaja Salar. She, however, had no intention of permitting the Commission to begin work until she had taken possession of Panjdeh, after which, having all she wanted, the boundary might be laid on the principle of beati possidentes. Accordingly she kept our Commission waiting on the boundary line for months, whilst she exchanged diplomatic conundrums with the English Cabinet and collected forces to turn the Afghans out of Panjdeh. The effrontery of the seizure of Sarakhs had roused public indignation in England. Some members of Mr Gladstone's Cabinet began to be uneasy that, after all, Russia had played with their credulity. The electorate were already sure of it. To allay the popular outcry, permission was now hastily given to the Government of India to recommence work on the Quetta-Peshin railway. Permission conceded from fear of the electorate might be with The drawn from fear of Russia. The Indian Government, therefore, rushed the work, and consequently did it badly and wastefully. Meanwhile, all being in train on the Afghan "Panjdeh affair" and frontier, Russia effected her final coup on March Boundary 30, 1885, by turning the Afghans out of Panjdeh, sion. and shooting down some six hundred of them in the Afghan Commis Radical and Con policy contrasted. unequal fight. The bloody treachery of the act roused all England, and even Mr Gladstone himself became tardily warlike. However, as Russia had calculated, the matter was easily arranged. She retained Sarakhs and Panjdeh and a uti possidetis boundary. Her new frontier, as delimited in 1885-87, enables her to seize Herat or Maimana by a coup de main whenever she may think a suitable conjuncture for another advance towards India has presented itself. The "Panjdeh affair" or "incident," as it has been variously called, cost the taxpayers of India about two millions sterling; for whilst England blustered and did nothing, India prepared energetically for war. The Gladstonian Ministry fell in the following year, giving place, after two temporary changes, for the next six years to that of Lord Salisbury. The news of the decisive victory of the Conservaservative tives was a relief to all well-wishers of English rule in India. It meant that Russia would cease from troubling, and that India would have a rest from the drain and uncertainty of a vacillating Home Government, whose foreign policy was a mixture of concessions and bluster. In home politics a Gladstonian Ministry is avowedly the servant of the masses, whereas a Conservative Ministry would lead them. The former holds that the duty of Government is to be governed, the latter that it is to govern. Thus in effecting changes the former acts impulsively, uncertainly, sweepingly; the latter, when strong, with the constructive slowness of evolution observable in the natural world. In the management of foreign and colonial affairs, the difference between the two great rival parties was until lately still more marked. The Gladstonian aims were parochial, the be-littlement of England, the contraction of responsibility outside the parish; but the Conservatives were Imperialists, promoters of a Great Britain at home and a Greater Britain abroad wherever English is the mother-tongue. It follows, then, that Anglo-Indians, by nature pugnacious, by self-interest lovers of an active policy, and from foreign travel Imperialists, proud of their country's world-wide possessions, prefer the foreign and colonial policy of a Conservative to that of a Gladstonian Ministry. When in July 1886 the decisive defeat of the Gladstonians gave the promise of a long lease of power to their Conservative rivals, the feeling of relief in India was genuine and universal both amongst Anglo-Indians and the best-informed natives. As a fact, for the next six years Russia ceased from further aggression or interference in Afghanistan, raised no new frontier disputes, and observed a strict neutrality during Ishak Khan's rebellion in Afghan Turkestan. She L employed that period of compulsory inactivity in consolidating her position on the Afghan frontier, and preparing for new adventures when the return swing of the political pendulum in England should restore the Gladstonians to power. That event was foreseen before the close of 1891, but did not actually take place until July 1892. Whether in anticipation of the fall of the Salisbury Ministry, or as a set-off for our annexation of Hunza and Nagar, Russia, in the summer of 1891, seized territory in the Pamir region with a view to the future acquisition of Roshan and Shignan, and in the following summer repeated her Panjdeh tactics at Somatash by massacring the small Afghan garrison of that outpost. The Pamir question is still (September 1894) undecided. 163 CHAPTER IX. ADMINISTRATION OF OUR NORTH-WESTERN FRONTIER. 66 STATES IN THE EAST-RISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY-OUR DOMINION COMMISSIONERSHIP-COST OF THE AFGHAN WAR, 1878-80-REFORMS the East. Now, leaving Russia and Afghanistan for a time, States in let us pass lightly over our own raison d'être in India, but consider in some detail our position on our North-Western frontier. Like Russia, we are a great expanding Power, but, unlike her, we now wish to advance no farther westwards, because we have already seized and assimilated whatever was worth having, and find that it is to our advantage to keep a large area of sterile country as a buffer State between our rich and valuable Indian |