Afghanistan

by A. Hamilton

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OFFICERS OF THE MCMAHON MISSION

1. Colonel Sir A. H. McMahon, K.C.I.E., C.S.I.
2. Captain Ramsay, Personal Assistant to Colonel McMahon.
3. Captain Bell, C.I. Horse, Commanding Camel Corps.

It is perhaps to be regretted that the most prominent result revealed by the McMahon Mission was the pronounced antagonism of the Germans and Russians to British interests in Persia. From the very beginning and with deliberate intent, M. Miller wrongly described the intentions and aims of the Mission, his ingenious fabrications ultimately finding sympathetic shelter in the columns of the German Press. Germany’s share in the persecution with which the Mission was followed has passed unnoticed in this country. But at a moment when stupid people are encouraging others of greater foolishness to commit the British Government to very undesirable rapprochements with Berlin, it is as well to reflect upon the real character of the niceties which underlie German policy where Anglo-German interests are concerned. Unfortunately, it is not always realised in Great Britain how much weight a venal Press can give to the indefatigable inventions of scurrilous, political gossipers. It may be, therefore, necessary to say that not a particle of truth attaches to the many statements about the McMahon Mission which appeared abroad in print. Ingenuous as the mendacity and duplicity of M. Miller may be, it is incomprehensible that any diplomatic official would circulate, without specific orders, such lies and travesties of fact as were current in Seistan during the sojourn of the Mission there. Whatever may appear to have been the gist of M. Miller’s instructions from the Russian Minister in Teheran, it is to be admitted that he acted up to the fullest limit of his opportunities. Happily the malicious untruths and slanders, which became so prominent a feature of the Russo-German press campaign, have recoiled upon the Russian policy; and, while the arch purveyor of the trash has been removed, Russian prestige itself has temporarily fallen very low.

With the disappearance of M. Miller from the scene in Seistan, the emissaries of the Russian authorities went further afield. Articles, breathing the engaging candour of a regular crusade, appeared in the Press of St. Petersburg and Berlin, lengthy extracts being received in Teheran itself through the kindly offices of the Official Telegraph Agency in St. Petersburg. The organ of the Russian authorities in Central Asia—The Russian Trans-Caspian Gazette, published at Askhabad—was perhaps the most industrious agent in circulating grotesque details of the wrongs inflicted upon the poor Seistanis by the brutal decisions of the British Mission. In respect of these statements it happens that the share in the Hamun lake, allotted originally by the Goldsmid Convention, remains absolutely unaltered. The remark that Persian Seistan was in danger of becoming a desert because Persia had been mulcted in two-thirds of its water supply is a lying absurdity, divulged by M. Miller or the Russian Minister in Teheran for no other purpose than to sow distrust of Great Britain in the Persian mind and throughout Europe. Again, the touching descriptions of the homeless Seistanis dispossessed of their lands through the heartless insistence of the British Commissioner, which only needed to appear in the Russian Trans-Caspian Gazette to be commented upon by German newsmongers with characteristic insolence, are conspicuously false insomuch that neither Persian nor Afghan villages were removed, nor any single individual evicted. The statement, too, that the McMahon Mission had laid out upon Persian soil an extensive fortified camp, within battlemented mud walls is equally untrue. This “extensive fortified camp” consisted of the mud-huts used by the Mission; the walls were the mud-walls of the tennis-court, while “the armed guard,” left in charge of these “fortifications,” resolved itself into one of three watchmen, who had been given the custody of certain property pending orders as to its removal. In this direction it is of interest to know that upon the day following the departure of the Mission an attempt by the Russians to occupy the camp was prevented only by the presence of these men.

Full inquiries into the pernicious activity which distinguished the Russian officials of course should be made by the British Government. There is no doubt that M. Miller abused the privileges attaching to his diplomatic position in proclaiming that the British Mission would not be permitted by the Russians to enter Persia; and when, as the representative of Russia in Seistan, he went the length of arranging riots against the British Consul on his Majesty’s birthday, he committed a serious offence against a friendly country. At such an affront Sir Arthur Hardinge, our Minister in Teheran, might well have intervened; but, in spite of the mob demonstrating before the British Consulate and demanding the expulsion of the Consul and the withdrawal of the Mission, it was left to the Mission itself to secure its own protection. This was not impossible; eventually the ringleaders of the movement, which included the majority of the Russian agents in Seistan, were apprehended and summarily flogged. There could have been no objection if the stronger action, which the circumstances warranted, had been more directly applied.