'On April 20th, 1883, there was a meeting at the Foreign Office as to Central Asia between Lord Granville, Hartington, Kimberley, Northbrook, Edmond Fitzmaurice, and myself. The Amir was in a friendly humour, and I felt that the evacuation of Kandahar had been better than a dozen victories.'

The evacuation of Kandahar had been Lord Ripon's work, but Lord Ripon was now inclining to compromise the unity of the Native State which he had then laboured to establish. He was disposed to keep the Amir at arm's length, and wished to decline a visit of ceremony which Abdurrahman proposed. All the Committee at the Foreign Office were against this, except Lord Northbrook, who 'did not believe in Abdurrahman's strength, and believed that he would soon be turned out of Herat by his own Governor.'

'On June 7th it was settled that the Amir should have twelve lakhs of rupees a year.' But Sir Charles had not yet carried his point as to preventing a treaty with Russia, and

'Philip Currie and Fitzmaurice both wrote to me in favour of the India Office view, while Condie Stephen [Footnote: Sir Alexander Condie Stephen, K.C.M.G., was in 1882-83 despatched from the Legation at Teheran on a mission to Khorassan, the north-east province of Persia] returned from Central Asia with the same view in favour of a treaty…. But Currie put a postscript to his long letter, in which he departed altogether from the treaty position, and took up my own view as to delimitation: "In view of our engagement to defend Afghanistan from foreign aggression, we ought surely to know the limits of the territory we have guaranteed."

'I finally said that I had no objection to a treaty which would merely recapitulate facts and set out the Afghan frontier. This was my last word, and, Lord Granville agreeing with me, we went on with delimitation as against treaty…. It was not until June 8th, 1888, that the Emperor of Russia recognized the arrangement and the frontier marked by the boundary pillars.'

For Sir Charles's policy it was necessary to propitiate the ruler of Afghanistan, and in July, 1883, it was reported that the Amir had applied to the British Government for a new set of teeth. The application had really been for a European dentist. When Lord Ripon persisted in refusing Abdurrahman's proffered visit, Sir Charles tried to get civil expressions of regret from the Government, and, failing in this, wrote in despair to Lord Kimberley: "I hope to goodness he has got his teeth."

It was not, however, till 1885 that the tension with Russia became really acute.

In France, Gambetta's death had been followed by a Ministerial crisis, and in the disturbances which resulted M. Duclerc fell in February, 1883, and after a time of confusion M. Ferry became, for a second time, Prime Minister, having M. Challemel-Lacour, no lover of England, for his Foreign Secretary.

"In order to distract the country's attention from internal dissensions and the Eastern frontier," [Footnote: Life of Lord Granville, vol. ii., p. 313.] M. Ferry developed that "Colonial policy" of which Sir Charles said, in 1887, that

"it greatly weakens the military position of France in Europe, and disorganizes her finances, while it compromises the efficiency of the only thing which really counts in modern European war, the rapidity of mobilization of the reserves." [Footnote: Present Position of European Politics, p. 101.]