As has been stated above, General Stolieteff’s Mission entered Cabul on July 22.  The chief himself returned on August 24; but other members of his Mission remained several weeks longer.  There seem to be good grounds for believing that the Ameer, Shere Ali, signed a treaty with Stolieteff; but as to its purport we have no other clue than the draft which purports to be written out from memory by a secret agent of the Indian Government.  Other Russian documents, some of which Lord Granville afterwards described as containing “some very disagreeable passages . . . written subsequently to the Treaty of Berlin,” were found by Lord Roberts; and the Russian Government found it difficult to give a satisfactory explanation of them[307].

[Footnote 307:  The alleged treaty is printed, along with the other documents, in Parl.  Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1881), pp. 17-30.  See also Lord Roberts’ Forty-one Years in India, vol. ii. p.477.]

In any case the Government of India could not stand by and witness the intrusion of Muscovite influence into Afghanistan.  Action, however, was very difficult owing to the alienation of the Ameer.  His resentment had now settled into lasting hatred.  As a test question Lord Lytton sought to impose on him the reception of a British Mission.  On August 8 he received telegraphic permission from London to make this demand.  The Ameer, however, refused to allow a single British officer to enter the country; and the death of his son and heir on August 17 enabled him to decline to attend to affairs of State for a whole month.

His conduct in this matter was condoned by the champions of “masterly inactivity” in this country, who proceeded to accuse the Viceroy of haste in sending forward the British Mission to the frontier before the full time of mourning was over[308].  We now know, however, that this sympathy was misplaced.  Shere Ali’s grief did not prevent him seeing officers of the Russian Mission after his bereavement, and (as it seems) signing an alliance with the emissaries of the Czar.  Lord Lytton was better informed as to the state of things at Cabul than were his very numerous critics, one of whom, under the shield of anonymity, confidently stated that the Russian Mission to Cabul was either an affair of etiquette or a means of warding off a prospective attack from India on Russian Turkestan; that the Ameer signed no treaty with the Mission, and was deeply embarrassed by its presence; while Lord Lytton’s treatment of the Ameer was discourteous[309].

[Footnote 308:  Duke of Argyll, The Eastern Question, vol. ii. pp. 504-507.]

[Footnote 309:  The Causes of the Afghan War, pp. 305 et seq.]