His judgment was sound.  Skobeleff conquered the Tekkes by his railway; and the acquisition of Merv and Panjdeh was really the outcome of the new trans-Caspian line, which, as Lord Curzon has pointed out, completely changed the problem of the defence of India.  Formerly the natural line of advance for Russia was from Orenburg to Tashkend and the upper Oxus; and even now that railway would enable her to make a powerful diversion against Northern Afghanistan[346].  But the route from Krasnovodsk on the Caspian to Merv and Kushk presents a shorter and far easier route, leading, moreover, to the open side of Afghanistan, Herat, and Candahar.  Recent experiments have shown that a division of troops can be sent in eight days from Moscow to Kushk within a short distance of the Afghan frontier.  In a word, Russia can operate against Afghanistan by a line (or rather by two lines) far shorter and easier than any which Great Britain can use for its defence[347].

[Footnote 346:  See Col.  A. Durand’s The Making of a Frontier (1899), pp. 41-43.]

[Footnote 347:  Colquhoun, Russia against India, p. 170.  Lord Curzon in 1894 went over much of the ground between Sarrakhs and Candahar and found it quite easy for an army (except in food supply).]

It is therefore of the utmost importance to prevent her pushing on her railways into that country.  This is the consideration which inspired Mr. Balfour’s noteworthy declaration of May 11, 1905, in the House of Commons:—­

As transport is the great difficulty of an invading army, we must not allow anything to be done which would facilitate transport.  It ought in my opinion to be considered as an act of direct aggression upon this country that any attempt should be made to build a railway, in connection with the Russian strategic railways, within the territory of Afghanistan.

It is fairly certain that the present Ameer, Habibulla, who succeeded his father in 1901, holds those views.  This doubtless was the reason why, early in 1905, he took the unprecedented step of inviting the Indian Government to send a Mission to Cabul.  In view of the increase of Russia’s railways in Central Asia there was more need than ever of coming to a secret understanding with a view to defence against that Power.

Finally, we may note that Great Britain has done very much to make up for her natural defects of position.  The Panjdeh affair having relegated the policy of “masterly inactivity” to the limbo of benevolent futilities, the materials for the Quetta railway, which had been in large part sent back to Bombay in the year 1881, were now brought back again; and an alternative route was made to Quetta.  The urgent need of checkmating French intrigues in Burmah led to the annexation of that land (November 1885); and the Kurram Valley, commanding Cabul, which the Gladstone Government had abandoned, was reoccupied.  The Quetta district was annexed to India in 1887 under the title of British