Fortunately, this was not the light in which Abdur Rahman viewed the incident.  He was not the man to yield to intimidation.  That “strange, strong creature,” as Lord Dufferin called him, “showed less emotion than might have been expected,” but his resentment against Russia was none the less keen[345].  Her pressure only served to drive him to closer union with Great Britain.  Clearly the Russians misunderstood Abdur Rahman.  Their miscalculation was equally great as regards the character of the Afghans and the conditions of life among those mountain clans.  Russian officers and administrators, after pushing their way easily through the loose rubble of tribes that make up Turkestan, did not realise that they had to deal with very different men in Afghanistan.  To ride roughshod over tribes who live in the desert and have no natural rallying-point may be very effective; but that policy is risky when applied to tribes who cling to their mountains.

[Footnote 345:  In his Life (vol. i, pp. 244-246) he also greatly blames British policy.]

The analogy of Afghanistan to Switzerland may again serve to illustrate the difference between mountaineers and plain-dwellers.  It was only when the Hapsburgs or the French threatened the Swiss that they formed any effective union for the defence of the Fatherland.  Always at variance in time of peace, the cantons never united save under the stress of a common danger.  The greater the pressure from without, the closer was the union.  That truth has been illustrated several times from the age of the legendary Tell down to the glorious efforts of 1798.  In a word, the selfsame mountaineers who live disunited in time of peace, come together and act closely together in war, or under threat of war.

Accordingly, the action of England in retiring from Candahar, contrasting as it did with Russia’s action at Panjdeh, marked out the line of true policy for Abdur Rahman.  Thenceforth he and his tribesmen saw more clearly than ever that Russia was the foe; and it is noteworthy that under the shadow of the northern peril there has grown up among those turbulent clans a sense of unity never known before.  Unconsciously Russia has been playing the part of a Napoleon I.; she has ground together some at least of the peoples of Central Asia with a thoroughness which may lead to unexpected results if ever events favour a general rising against the conqueror.

Amidst all his seeming vacillations of policy, Abdur Rahman was governed by the thought of keeping England, and still more Russia, from his land.  He absolutely refused to allow railways and telegraphs to enter his territories; for, as he said:  “Where Europeans build railways, their armies quickly follow.  My neighbours have all been swallowed up in this manner.  I have no wish to suffer their fate.”