But the logic of words does not correspond to the logic of facts.  Words are for the most part simple, downright, and absolute.  The facts of history are very rarely so.  Their importance is very often relative, and is conditioned by changing circumstances.  It was so with the events that led up to the second Afghan War.  They were very complex, and could not be summed up, or disposed of, by reference to a single formula.  Undoubtedly the question of the frontier was important; but it did not become of supreme importance until, firstly, Shere Ali became our enemy, and, secondly, showed unmistakable signs of having a close understanding with Russia.  Thenceforth it became a matter of vital import for India to have a frontier readibly defensible against so strong a combination as that of Russia and Afghanistan.

It would be interesting to know what Mr. Gladstone and his supporters would have done if they had come into power in the summer of 1878.  That they blamed their opponents on many points of detail does not prove that they would not have taken drastic means to get rid of Shere Ali.  In the unfortunate state into which affairs had drifted in 1878, how was that to be effected without war?  The situation then existing may perhaps best be summed up in the words which General Roberts penned at Cabul on November 22, 1879, after a long and illuminating conversation with the new Ameer concerning his father’s leanings towards Russia:  “Our recent rupture with Shere Ali has, in fact, been the means of unmasking and checking a very serious conspiracy against the peace and security of our Indian Empire[310].”

[Footnote 310:  Parl.  Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1880), p. 171.]

Given the situation actually existing in 1878, the action of the British Government is justifiable as regards details.  The weak point of the Beaconsfield policy was this:  that the situation need not have existed.  As far as can be judged from the evidence hitherto published (if we except some wild talk on the part of Muscovite Chauvinists), Russia would not have interfered in Afghanistan except in order to paralyse England’s action in Turkish affairs.  As has been pointed out above, the Afghan trouble was a natural sequel to the opposition offered by Disraeli to Russia from the time of the re-opening of the Balkan problem in 1875-76; and the consideration of the events to be described in the following chapter will add one more to the many proofs already existing as to the fatefulness of the blunder committed by him when he wrecked the Berlin Memorandum, dissolved the Concert of the Powers, and rendered hopeless a peaceful solution of the Eastern Question.

CHAPTER XIV

THE AFGHAN AND TURKOMAN CAMPAIGNS