ation of tribal territory by force is a much more
formidable undertaking than it sounds. We have at this moment before us
a striking proof of the immense difficulty and expense of attempting to
tame and occupy even a comparatively small tract of tribal territory in
the Waziristan operations. Those operations have been going on for two
and a half years. At the start there were ample troops, ample equipment,
and no financial stringency. The operations were conducted, if a layman
may say so, with skill and determination, and our troops fought
gallantly. But what is the upshot? We managed to advance into the heart
of the Mahsud country on a single line, subjected and still subject to
incessant attacks by the enemy; but we are very little nearer effective
occupation than when we started; and now financial stringency has
necessitated a material alteration in the whole programme, and we are
reverting more or less to the methods whereby we have always controlled
the tribes, namely, tribal levies or _khassadars_ belonging to the
tribe itself, frontier militia or other armed civil force, backed by
troops behind.

FRONTIER POLICY

And for my own part I believe this is the best solution. We must not
expect a millennium on the North-West Frontier. The tribal lion will not
lie down beside the district lamb in our time, and we must deal with the
problem as best we can in accordance with our means, and to this end my
views are briefly as follows:--

(1) We should do everything possible to provide the younger trans-border
tribesmen with all honourable employment for which they are suited:
service in the army, in the frontier civil forces, and in the Indian
police or similar forces overseas, and we should give labour and
contracts as far as possible to tribesmen for public works in their
vicinity. For the problem is largely economic. Unless the lion gets
other food he is bound to cast hungry eyes on the lamb.

(2) We should do all that is possible to establish friendly relations
with the tribal elders through selected and sympathetic political
officers, to give them, by means of subsidies for service, an interest
in controlling the hot-bloods of their tribe, and, where possible, to
give them assistance in education and enlightenment. We must remember
that we have duties to the tribes as well as rights against them.

(3) We should extend the _khassadar_ or levy system; that is, we should
pay for tribal corps to police their own bor