Overview

This book covers the geopolitics of the British Empire, particularly its colonization of India and the threat of Russia. From the preface: RUSSIA has at last spoken! After years patiently spent in absorbing the desert, she reached in 1884 the borders of the promised land. Her first act on arriving there was to object to the frontier which Lord Granville had proposed in October, 1872, which she, by the despatches of her Chancellor, dated respectively in December, 1872, and January, 1873, had accepted, and which in Russian and English maps alike has, ever since, been marked as the frontier. Yielding, in a weak moment, to an objection posed solely for the purpose of deriving some practical advantage from the re-opening of a settled question, Lord Granville arranged with Russia that Commissioners should be sent from both countries to the spot, to fix there the exact line of demarcation which was to be the limit of Russia's advance towards India. In consequence of this agreement an English Commissioner, of distinguished service in India, proceeded without delay to the point agreed upon. He found there the valleys, the rivers, the mountains, the people, but no Russian Commissioner! The Russian Commissioner was, indeed, conspicuous by his absence, but, to counterbalance that absence, parties of Russian soldiers crossed the line which since 1872-73 had been accepted as the boundary of the country, and seized positions, useless for commercial, most important for strategical, purposes-positions which, since the year 1863, and even before that year, had paid tribute to Herat-the north-western province of the dominions of England's ally, the Amir of Afghanistan! To show the necessity, if we wish still to hold India, of the retention, by an ally of England, of the positions Russia has seized; to demonstrate the absolute right of the Amir to those positions, and the lawlessness of the act of Russia in seizing them; to set clearly before the public the cherished ultimate aim which prompted Russia to the conquest of the desert; and to point out how the display of an iron resolution alone can avert from Herat and India the threatened danger, I have written the pages that follow. I have written them, not as a party man, but as an Englishman. Not as a party man, first, because, believing that the two great parties in the State have alike blundered, I have pointed out with impartiality the mistakes of both. Not as a party man, secondly and specially, because in a matter affecting the maintenance of an Empire the voice of patriotism should silence the selfish contentions of party. For, in very deed, it is an Empire which is now at stake, and it is by patriotic efforts alone that the splendid creation of our fathers and our fathers' fathers can be maintained. The form in which this little book is published will make it accessible to all classes. It will tell those classes the truth, and, telling them the truth, will impose upon them a sacred duty. That duty is, above all things, to insist that the Ministers of England shall maintain, with respect to our Indian Empire, the old historical policy of England; that the Ministers of England shall compel Russia to withdraw her unjust pretensions, to retire behind the frontier which she has violated. If the people of Great Britain fail to perform this duty, they will become partners in a policy, born of infirmity of purpose and cowardice, which will lose for us our Indian Empire!

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9781502399878

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