the subject appears not only
wider but deeper. When I reflect on the great number of diverse
and often conflicting facts which may be assembled under every
head--military, economic, political or moral--and consider the
accumulations of specialised and technical knowledge necessary for their
proper appreciation, I am convinced that to compass the whole is beyond
the mind and memory of man. Of such a question it is difficult to take
broad views, and dangerous to generalise. Still less is it possible, as
many people appear to imagine, to settle it with a phrase or an epigram.
A point is reached where all relation between detail and proportion
is lost. It is a picture of such great size that to see it all, it
is necessary to stand so far off that neither colours nor figures are
distinguishable. By constantly changing the point of view, some true
perspective is possible, and even then the conception must be twisted
and distorted, by the imperfections of the mental mirror.

Sensible of the magnitude of the task, and conscious of my own weakness,
I propose to examine in a spirit of cautious inquiry and of tolerance
the present "Forward Policy," and thence to approach the main question,
to the answer of which that policy is only a guess.

I must revert to a period when the British power, having conquered the
plains of India and subdued its sovereigns, paused at the foot of
the Himalayas and turned its tireless energy to internal progress and
development. The "line of the mountains" formed a frontier as plain and
intelligible as that which defines the limits of the sea. To the south
lay the British Empire in India; to the north were warlike tribes,
barbarous, unapproachable, irreclaimable; and far beyond these, lay the
other great Power of Asia.

It was long the wisdom of Anglo-Indian statesmen to preserve a situation
which contained so many elements of finality, and so many guarantees of
peace. When the northern savages, impelled by fanaticism or allured by
plunder, descended from the mountains and invaded the plains, they were
met by equal courage and superior discipline, and driven in disorder to
their confines. But this was found to be an inadequate deterrent, and
the purely defensive principle had to be modified in favor of that
system of punitive expeditions which has been derided as the policy of
"Butcher and Bolt."

Gradually, as the circumstances altered, the methods of dealing with
them changed. The punitive expedi