the
communications between the Russian base in Georgia and the Russian
garrisons in Turkestan were firmly established. Thereafter the flood
of Russian conquest overflowed irresistibly the plains of Central
Asia, until it was arrested by another breakwater, the kingdom of
Afghanistan. It is true that the North-western Afghan borderlands were
comparatively open and easily penetrable by an invading force; but
beyond them lie lofty ranges with passes at high altitudes, guarded by
a hard-fighting and intractable people, and on the farther side of
these mountains stands the rival European Power whose policy it had
been always to retard and obstruct the Russian advance across the
Asiatic Continent. We may conjecture that if Afghanistan had been
left, as the Caucasus was left after the Crimean War, isolated and
obliged to rely on its own resources for defence, the drama of the
Caucasian wars would have been repeated. The Russians would have
besieged and reduced without great difficulty this second mountain
fortress; and after another similar though less protracted struggle
the Afghans would have undergone the same fate as the Daghestanis. The
Czar's rulership, solidly established in the two natural strongholds
that stand on either side of the great central plains, and command,
east and west, the exits and entrances, would have been supreme
throughout Mohammedan Asia.

That the Russian armies were forced to halt on the edge of Afghanistan
is thus a point of cardinal importance, and it marks a turning-point
in the career of her expansion. It also produced a situation that is
the outcome of the different strategy adopted by England and Russia
respectively, in circumstances not otherwise very dissimilar. For
whereas the Russians had been compelled by imperative political and
military exigencies to conquer and occupy the Caucasian highlands, the
policy of the British Government has always been not to subjugate
Afghanistan, but to preserve its independence and to fortify it as an
outwork for the protection of the gates of India. It is due to this
fundamental distinction of aim and object that the history of the
relations of the British with Afghanistan during the nineteenth
century, and of their management of the tribes on the Afghan border,
differs widely from Mr. Baddeley's narrative of events and
transactions in the Caucasus. Nevertheless in both instances the
general situation presented a strong resemblance. The Russians,
pushi