It is safer to marry an Englishman than to go with him into conference. As husbands the Englishmen seem to me charming, affectionate, afraid of their wives, ready “to do anything to avoid a scene”—often the very thing wanted! But as members of a Conference they are—well, not altogether so trustworthy and agreeable. The reason, I suppose, is that English people marry for love and for life, whereas a Congress or a Conference is but a union de convenance, in which their only thought is to do as much mischief to the other as they possibly can, and to separate. In their eyes mischief-making and patriotism are identical. Everybody who is not English is actually considered as an enemy, and the generous Christian doctrine of loving one’s enemy has not penetrated yet the heathen mind of a Great Briton. The result of it is, Englishmen at home are lovable, straightforward, true, while abroad they change their skin with all the tricks of the market. Perhaps, when England’s alliance with Russia is recognized as permanent and necessary, instead of being an occasional intercourse embittered with hostility hardly veiled and disguised, things may improve at once, and undoubtedly to the real advantage of both. Wise people, seeing that they have been misled and were following a mistaken line, ought not to be afraid of drastic alteration in their system and methods.

The part played by English agents—for Captain Jones has several worthy auxiliaries in the Balkan, such as Mr. Condie Stephen—is admitted, no, even claimed as something to boast of, in the Blue-books. I am afraid your latest official apologia will not be taken in Russia for an olive-branch. However, turn to another field where British agents have been busy—not exactly in promoting love and peace among men. India, they say, is “Russophobe.” I wonder why? Russians who have kind friends in that mysterious part of the world ought to try to find out for themselves the cause of that hostility, and see everything with their own eyes: a trip of sixteen days is not such a very terrible enterprise after all. It is quite another thing with Afghanistan, The Afghan frontier seems to be a dangerous spot. Its effect, at least, upon the heads of English people is serious indeed. I presume it was a kind of enchantment of the place that converted Sir Peter Lumsden and his staff, who left India on a mission of peace, to work in concert and harmony with the Russian Commission, into a warlike vanguard of the Indian army, actually inciting our own subjects to fight against us. It is the most charitable excuse I can find. Otherwise they are quite inexcusable.

What are the facts? They are now surely beyond dispute. The northern boundary of Afghanistan—now fixed and settled by Sir Peter Lumsden himself, and of course he must know how much territory actually belongs to the Ameer—runs from Zulfhikar to Maruchak, and thence to the Oxus. The oasis of Penj-deh lies in the Russian territory, together with the valley of the Murghab down to Maruchak. This was disputed once; it is settled now, for Sir Peter Lumsden himself has drawn the frontier south of Penj-deh, which is now admitted to be as Russian as Moscow. What, then, possessed the English agents in Central Asia, first to urge the Ameer to seize the disputed territory now decided to have belonged properly to Russia before our Commissioner arrived, then to encourage the natives to fight our troops, and lastly, to do their utmost to stir up our subjects to rebellion? For your agents did all these things, compelling our General Komaroff to fight a battle and disperse the Afghan invaders, all the bloodshed of which operation lies entirely at the doors of your agents-provocateurs.

Of course I shall be told this is a Russian calumny. British method of controversy is not always particularly courteous and polite. But I take good care of showing my English testimonies in this case, having in favour of my assertion the support of one of those agents-provocateurs who was on the spot. Lieutenant Yate has written a book which is not without value to those who wish to know how it is that troubles arise in Central Asia which impede the peace of the world. Lieutenant Yate’s “Travels with the Afghan Boundary Commission” may not be, as I am told by “high authorities,” the best book that could be written on the subject; but it is fresh; it is the work of an eye-witness who cannot be accused of any undue love or partiality for Russia. Permit me to quote his book, as I quoted Mr. Minchin’s, to show you the role played by English agents even under Mr. Gladstone’s Government.

First of all, Lieutenant Yate shows how right M. Lessar was when he said that but for English agents there never would have been any trouble about Penj-deh. All the trouble was of your brewing. We did not claim any of the Ameer’s territory. It was your Captain Stewart who urged the Afghans to invade territory now admitted even by you to be Russian, and to which the Ameer laid no claim. “At the Rawul Pindi conference, the Ameer,” says Lieutenant Yate, “had united his claim to Zulfikar, Gulran, and Maruchak” (p. 340). How was it then that before our Commissioner came to mark out the boundary we found an Afghan garrison encamped north of Maruchak, in the midst of a Turkoman population, at Penj-deh? It was this Afghan invasion of Turkomania, this seizure of territory in dispute before even the adjudicators were able to reach the frontier, which caused all the trouble and risk of war. To whom do we owe it that the two empires were so nearly embroiled in war, and that a battle actually took place in which many brave men lost their lives? Lieutenant Yate’s book shows it was directly due to English agents, who thought by inciting the Afghans to seize territory belonging to the Turkomans lying on the north of Maruchak, which the Ameer claimed as the limit of his kingdom, as a retort to the steady, irresistible sweep of the onward tide of Russian civilization. Here is one passage:—

“The occupation of Penj-deh, the headquarters of the Saruk Turkomans, and of Bala Murghab by Afghan troops is undoubtedly a counterstroke to the aggressive movements of Russia, and not improbably the outcome of suggestions made by the Government, which is pledged to exclude Russian influence from Afghanistan. The Saruk Turkomans, alarmed by the annexation of Merv, sent envoys more than a year ago to Herat imploring Afghan protection. The despatch of Yalantush Khan was the response.”

“Not improbably,” indeed! A probability which also accounts for the alleged alarm of the Saruks, which was the pretext for the Afghan invasion. It is positively asserted in the Appendix (p. 459). It would seem that the mischief-making suggestions of British agents were not limited to the seizure of Penj-deh. You originally suggested much more daring schemes. Lieutenant Yate laments that the Ameer refused to obey your aggressive counsels. “It is difficult to conceive by what error or oversight Afghan outposts were not placed months ago all along the frontier claimed by the Ameer. Colonel Stewart, I hear, warned the Afghan Government fully a year ago to do this. The Ameer, however, or the Governor of Herat, neglected to follow his advice” (pp. 299 and 300).

“The frontier claimed by the Ameer!” Have we not Lieutenant Yate’s word for it that at Rawul Pindi the Ameer claimed no territory north of Zulfikar, Gulran, and Maruchak? To these places he might send Afghan outposts, but to the far north—no. That territory he did not really claim. He knew it was not his, and he wisely resisted the tempting counsels of Captain Stewart to seize it. It would have saved him many good soldiers if he had been equally deaf to the English suggestion to seize Penj-deh.

But some will say, “These Saruk Turkomans were anxious to be protected by the Afghans against the terrible Russians.” What does Lieutenant Yate say? He repeats the hearsay story about the Saruks sending for the Afghans, but he says the relations between Penj-deh Saruks and our Yalatains were so close that if the Afghans had attacked the latter the Saruks would have risen against the Afghans. Even as it was they submitted reluctantly to the Afghans, and were only kept from making short work of the invaders from the south by the efforts of your agents.

“It is now no longer a secret that about the 20th February the Saruks had actually fixed a night on which to surround and open fire on the Afghans, who were then very weak in numbers, and actually had no ammunition but what they carried in their pouches. The Saruks can turn out 5,000 fighting men, many of whom are armed with breechloaders. . . . It is not too much to say that to Colonel Ridgeway is due the credit of having kept the Saruks quiet, and for five weeks delayed the appearance of the Russians in front of Penj-deh. It must be encouraging to him, as well as to all of us, to see how those five weeks have been utilized by the Government.” (p. 318).

Thus it was British agents who pushed the Afghans to Penj-deh, and British agents who kept the Saruks from rising in revolt against the Afghan invaders. But you did worse than this: Sir Peter Lumsden himself counselled the Afghans thus encamped in the midst of a hostile population and in territory which their own Ameer did not claim to fight our Russian troops. Lieutenant Yate admits this again and again. “General Lumsden,” he says, “who had at first advised the Afghans to avoid hostilities, was obliged (?) to counsel them to resist any further attempt to advance by armed force.” The Afghans had been strongly reinforced between the counsel of peace and the counsel of war. That, perhaps, accounted for the change of tone. But this was only part of a great scheme which Lieutenant Yate alludes to on the part of your agents to provoke an insurrection in Russian territory. “What an opportunity,” says Lieutenant Yate (p.319) is “this for breaking the power of Russia—for annihilating at one blow the fruit of forty or fifty years of conquest and annexation.” Again ha writes (p.302):—

“Ever since we arrived here, rumours of disaffection among the Turkomans and Uzbeks enthralled by Russia have been rife, and of late these rumours appear to have taken a tangible shape. On ground thus ripe for the seed of rebellion it only remains to set at work the revolutionary plough and harrow. The Tekkes and Salors cannot have learned to love the Muscovite in a year. Indeed, it does not appear that the latter lays himself out to find favour in their sight. It is true that but a month ago it was anticipated that the Saruks might rise in revolt any day against their Afghan rulers. They are now said to be quiet and contented. Their hatred for the Tekkes is known. . . . Russia . . . has stopped raiding and abolished slavery, thereby robbing the Turkoman of a source of wealth, and the Uzbek of an aid to domestic comfort and vice. No wonder they are both ripe for revolution. Woe to the Muscovite if he sustain defeat before Herat! . . . We know now that we have another weapon at our command, and that is the seditious spirit prevalent throughout the Russian possessions in Central Asia. It would be easy enough to utilize such an arm, nor need we scruple to use it.”

That is pretty plain speaking from the agents of a “friendly” nation about Russia!

The Afghans did as you told them. They fought and were defeated, while you, who, as the Afghans said, “egged them on to fight” did not strike a blow on their behalf. Here is a pathetic passage in Lieutenant Yate’s book (p. 322): “If they [the Afghans] only knew how every man, at least every military man, of the Commission, has longed to be allowed to fight side by side with them, and has pitied them when they were left to fight alone, with the Russians assailing them in front and the Saruks threatening their rear.” Lieutenant Yate then goes on describing the English force which might be so nicely used against the Russians, and in rather a comic way ejaculates—“But what is the use of crying over spilt milk? All these advantages have been thrown away.”

Is that the way in which England wishes her agents to act and to speak on the most dangerous region in all Asia? If so, then you mean war, and we must take measures accordingly. But I hope that you have seen the folly of such wicked work. Surely it is enough for you, without repeating that crime again, to have to admit once that the Afghan blood shed at Penj-deh was shed at the instigation of England. I rejoice to see Lieutenant Yate’s loyal tribute to good faith in the famous agreement not to advance. We were much abused at the time, but, as Lieutenant Yate says, “the truth is that blame solely attaches ‘to your Government’ for its tortuous and unstraightforward policy.” You have only done harm to your cause, and you have done no good by all this mischief-making. As the Naib Salar, who commanded at Penj-deh, said to the Governor of Herat, “I am glad that we fought the Russians at Penj-deh, for now we know who are our friends and who our foes. Those, at least, who bade us fight and left us to be annihilated; who gave us advice and not arms, are not our real friends.” And again, Lieutenant Yate says: “We have lost the confidence of the Afghans. They are angry with us and suspicious. Kazi Saad-ud-din is said to have openly declared that we had no right to egg them on to fight the Russians, and then neither join in the fight nor give the Afghan troops good rifles to fight with. Even the Herati troops look askance at us, and ask why we are making tracks the wrong way. All that you have brought upon yourselves by allowing firebrands to take the place of peacemakers. Your agents all over the world seem to imagine that true patriotism is to egg everybody else on—what a curious phrase that is, egging them on, but it is so true—to fight Russia; and what good has it done you? Very little that I can see. Why not try another policy, and be friends instead of foes?

But enough! Making extracts of this kind is not a particularly pleasant work to a Russian, mad enough to dream of a true, honest, solid alliance between the two great Asiatic Powers whose work in the East, if united,would be a boon to humanity. But all lovers of peace ought to protest when things are done which are too unfair, too un-English, and… “Honi soit qui mal у pense!”

O.K.

48, Dover-street, Piccadilly, February 13.