Thus ended an enterprise which, but for the exercise of the highest qualities on the part of General Roberts, his Staff, the officers, and rank and file, might easily have ended in irretrievable disaster.  This will appear from the following considerations.  The question of food and water during a prolonged march in that parched season of the year might have caused the gravest difficulties; but they were solved by a wise choice of route along or near water-courses where water could generally be procured.  The few days when little or no water could be had showed what might have happened.  Further, the help assured by the action of the Ameer’s emissaries among the tribesmen was of little avail after the valley of the Logar was left behind.  Many of the tribes were actively hostile, and cut off stragglers and baggage-animals.

Above and beyond these daily difficulties, there was the problem as to the line of retreat to be taken in case of a reverse inflicted by the tribes en route. The army had given up its base of operations; for at the same time the remaining British and Indian regiments at Cabul were withdrawn to the Khyber Pass.  True, there was General Phayre’s force holding Quetta, and endeavouring to stretch out a hand towards Candahar; but the natural obstacles and lack of transport prevented the arrival of help from that quarter.  It is, however, scarcely correct to say that Roberts had no line of retreat assured in case of defeat[327].  No serious fighting was to be expected before Candahar; for the Afghan plundering instinct was likely to keep Ayub near to that city, where the garrison was hard pressed.  After leaving Ghazni, the Quetta route became the natural way of retirement.

[Footnote 327:  Shadbolt, op. cit. p. 107.]

As it happened, the difficulties were mainly those inflicted by the stern hand of Nature herself; and their severity may be gauged by the fact that out of a well-seasoned force of less than 10,000 fighting men as many as 940 sick had at once to go into hospital at Candahar.  The burning days and frosty nights of the Afghan uplands were more fatal than the rifles of Ayub and the knives of the ghazis.  As Lord Roberts has modestly admitted, the long march gained in dramatic effect because for three weeks he and his army were lost to the world, and, suddenly emerging from the unknown, gained a decisive triumph.  But, allowing for this element of picturesqueness, so unusual in an age when the daily din of telegrams dulls the perception of readers, we may still maintain that the march from Cabul to Candahar will bear comparison with any similar achievement in modern history.

The story of British relations with Afghanistan is one which illustrates the infinite capacity of our race to “muddle through” to some more or less satisfactory settlement.  This was especially the case in the spring and summer of 1880, when the accession of Mr. Gladstone to power and the disaster of Maiwand changed the diplomatic and military situation.  In one sense, and that not a cryptic one, these events served to supplement one another.  They rendered inevitable the entire evacuation of Afghanistan.  That, it need hardly be said, was the policy of Mr. Gladstone, of the Secretary for India, Lord Hartington (now Duke of Devonshire), and of Lord Ripon.