Baluchistan.  The year 1891 saw an important work undertaken in advance of Quetta, the Khojak tunnel being then driven through a range close by the Afghan frontier, while an entrenched camp was constructed near by for the storage of arms and supplies.  These positions, and the general hold which Britain keeps over the Baluchee clans, enable the defenders of India to threaten on the flank any advance by the otherwise practicable route from Candahar to the Indus.

Certainly there is every need for careful preparations against any such enterprise.  Lord Curzon, writing before Russia’s strategic railways were complete, thought it feasible for Russia speedily to throw 150,000 men into Afghanistan, feed them there, and send on 90,000 of them against the Indus[348].  After the optimistic account of the problem of Indian defence given by Mr. Balfour in the speech above referred to, it is well to remember that, though Russia cannot invade India until she has conquered Afghanistan, yet for that preliminary undertaking she has the advantages of time and position nearly entirely on her side.  Further, the completion of her railways almost up to the Afghan frontier (the Tashkend railway is about to be pushed on to the north bank of the Oxus, near Balkh) minimises the difficulties of food supply and transport in Afghanistan, on which the Prime Minister laid so much stress.

[Footnote 348:  Op. cit. p. 307.  Other authorities differ as to the practicability of feeding so large a force even in the comparatively fertile districts of Herat and Candahar.]

It is, however, indisputable that the security of India has been greatly enhanced by the steady pushing on of that “Forward Policy,” which all friends of peace used to decry.  The Ameer, Abdur Rahman, irritated by the making of the Khojak tunnel, was soothed by Sir Mortimer Durand’s Mission in 1893; and in return for an increase of subsidy and other advantages, he agreed that the tribes of the debatable borderland—­the Waziris, Afridis, and those of the Swat and Chitral valleys—­should be under the control of the Viceroy.  Russia showed her annoyance at this Mission by seeking to seize an Afghan town, Murghab; but the Ameer’s troops beat them off[349].  Lord Lansdowne claimed that this right of permanently controlling very troublesome tribes would end the days of futile “punitive expeditions.”  In the main he was right.  The peace and security of the frontier depend on the tact with which some few scores of officers carry on difficult work of which no one ever hears[350].

[Footnote 349:  Life of Abdur Rahman, vol. i. p. 287.]

[Footnote 350:  For this work see The Life of Sir R. Sandeman; Sir R. Warburton, Eighteen Years in the Khyber; Durand, op. cit.; Bruce, The Forward Policy and its Results; Sir James Willcock’s From Cabul to Kumassi; S.S.  Thorburn, The Punjab in Peace and War.]