Annexation.
Nobody, so far as I know, desires to annex Afghanistan. But there are, I apprehend, but few who are aware of what is involved in “the annexation of Afghanistan,” and the danger is that we may drift almost unwillingly into annexation, to discover the full consequences only when too late. Everybody is agreed that India cannot defray the costs. This is set down by the supporters of Government at a sum of five millions annually. I believe it would be much larger; but we will assume that five millions is a correct estimate. By no possibility could we screw this additional sum from the people of India. Already the expenses of the administration increase at a far quicker rate than the revenues which have to meet them. The costs of governing Afghanistan, therefore, would have to be defrayed from the English Exchequer. But assuming this to be arranged, the pecuniary difficulty is the smallest which has to be encountered. To garrison the interior and frontier of Afghanistan we should require not less than forty thousand men—one-half of whom would have to be English soldiers. For, until the interior of Afghanistan is completely opened out by roads which can be traversed throughout the year, the garrisons holding the country would have to be sufficiently strong to be independent of reserves and supports during the winter. And if we attempted to hold Balkh and Herat, twenty thousand English soldiers would not suffice. Now where are these English soldiers to come from? An addition of at least forty thousand men to our regular army would be required in order to supply them. But the English part of our Afghanistan garrison does not present so insuperable a difficulty as the native. It would not be safe, at least for many years, to organize our native garrison from the Afghans themselves. The regiments would have to be recruited in India specially for this service—but out of what races? The natives of the Southern parts of India have not the physique capable of enduring the severities of an Afghanistan winter. The Sikhs or Hindoos of Upper India would certainly not enlist in a service which carried them so far from their homes into the midst of an alien people and an alien faith. The only recruits we should obtain in large numbers would be Muhammadans. The danger, then, is obvious. In India the fierce fanaticism of the Moslem creed is mitigated by its contact with the milder tenets of Hindooism; but remove an Indian Moslem to Afghanistan, and he would very soon become inspired by the religious zeal of his co-religionists around him. We should be exposed to the risk, perpetually, of our native garrison combining with the people of the country to expel the infidel intruders from the land, and restore the supremacy of the Prophet. But even these dangers dwindle into insignificance when we contemplate the main result of an annexation of Afghanistan. That result would be that the hills and deserts of Afghanistan would no longer extend between the Russian Power and our own. We should have given to Russia the power to interfere directly in the internal concerns of India.
I have never supposed Russia to have any sinister designs upon India. After much reading I have failed to discover any proof of such designs. Those who suspect Russia obtain their evidence by a very simple process. They reject as incredible the objects assigned by the Russian Government as guiding its policy, and substitute their own fixed preconception in place of them. I believe that neither Russia nor any other Power would accept of India as a free gift. I cannot imagine a rational statesman coveting for his country so burdensome and unprofitable a responsibility. But that a Russian Government should ever attempt the invasion and conquest of India is to me beyond the power of belief. What Mr. Cobden wrote in 1835 appears to me as convincing at this day as it was then.
“China,” he wrote, “affords the best answer to those who argue that Russia meditates hostile views towards our Indian possessions. China is separated from Russia by an imaginary boundary only; and that country is universally supposed to contain a vast deposit of riches well worthy of the spoiler’s notice. Besides, it has not enjoyed the ‘benefit’ of being civilized by English or other Christian conquerors—an additional reason for expecting to find a wealthy Pagan community, waiting, like unwrought mines, the labours of some Russian Warren Hastings. Why, then, does not the Czar invade the Chinese Empire, which is his next neighbour, and contains an unravaged soil, rather than contemplate, as the alarmist writers and speakers predict he does, marching three thousand miles over regions of burning deserts and ranges of snowy mountains to Hindostan, where he would find that Clive and Wellesley had preceded him?”
Apart, however, from the question of motives, it is not possible to march an army from Herat to the Indus. And we must always bear in mind that even if the Russian army reached the Indus, their real work, instead of being over, would only then commence. With that vast extent of hill and desert behind them they would have before them some sixty thousand British troops in an entrenched position. Even a victory would leave the invader begirt about with dangers and difficulty; a defeat would be his utter annihilation. Not a soldier of the army of invasion would return to tell the tale. It is impossible to divine where or how Russia could raise the money for so gigantic an enterprise; and if the money was forthcoming it is not credible that any Government should fling it away on such a hopeless undertaking. In assuming that Russia will refrain from an attack upon India, there is no need to credit either the Government or the people with more than that ordinary common sense which hinders men and nations from attempting to achieve the impossible.
The danger to India arises not from the existence of any Russian designs against our Empire, but from the belief that such exist. This belief will, so to speak, hybernate for a season; then all at once we find it in full activity, and creating a panic in every heart of which it takes possession. These are the critical moments for the well-being and security of our Indian Empire. In such a period of panic we rushed into the disastrous war in Afghanistan in 1838. Under the influence of like feelings we involved ourselves in the inglorious raid the first act of which has just terminated. On both occasions we have been guilty of assailing a Prince whose only desire was to form an intimate alliance with us. On both occasions we have carried fire and sword among a people with whom we frankly avowed that we had no assignable cause of quarrel. But so long as Afghanistan extended between us and the Russian dominions in Asia it was physically impossible to declare war against Russia. In our unreasoning panic we fell upon the Ameer and his people, because there was no one else to attack. But if we make the Hindoo Khosh our military frontier, then Russia, by assembling a few thousand men upon the Oxus, can, whenever she pleases, agitate India from one end to the other. She will not need to attack. The menace will be sufficient. For we must remember that the undisputed supremacy of British rule in India depends, in the main, upon two conditions, both of which are destroyed if we annex Afghanistan. The one is, that no heavier burden be laid upon the people than they are willing to bear; and the other, the absence of any hope of deliverance. The cost of maintaining our supremacy in Afghanistan will make the burden of our rule utterly intolerable alike to our native soldiers and our civil population; the assembling of a Russian army on the frontiers of Afghanistan will provide the hope of deliverance. The hazards and uncertainties of the situation would keep the natives in a state of perpetual unrest. The ambitious and the disaffected would engage in intrigue and conspiracy; trade would languish; the internal development of the country be abruptly arrested; and the Empire would assuredly be wrested from our hands on the occasion of the first European war in which we became involved.