ir opponents on many points of detail does not prove that
they would not have taken drastic means to get rid of Shere Ali. In the
unfortunate state into which affairs had drifted in 1878, how was that
to be effected without war? The situation then existing may perhaps best
be summed up in the words which General Roberts penned at Cabul on
November 22, 1879, after a long and illuminating conversation with the
new Ameer concerning his father's leanings towards Russia: "Our recent
rupture with Shere Ali has, in fact, been the means of unmasking and
checking a very serious conspiracy against the peace and security of our
Indian Empire[310]."

[Footnote 310: Parl. Papers, Afghanistan, No. 1 (1880), p. 171.]

Given the situation actually existing in 1878, the action of the British
Government is justifiable as regards details. The weak point of the
Beaconsfield policy was this: that the situation need not have existed.
As far as can be judged from the evidence hitherto published (if we
except some wild talk on the part of Muscovite Chauvinists), Russia
would not have interfered in Afghanistan except in order to paralyse
England's action in Turkish affairs. As has been pointed out above, the
Afghan trouble was a natural sequel to the opposition offered by
Disraeli to Russia from the time of the re-opening of the Balkan problem
in 1875-76; and the consideration of the events to be described in the
following chapter will add one more to the many proofs already existing
as to the fatefulness of the blunder committed by him when he wrecked
the Berlin Memorandum, dissolved the Concert of the Powers, and rendered
hopeless a peaceful solution of the Eastern Question.

CHAPTER XIV

THE AFGHAN AND TURKOMAN CAMPAIGNS

"The Forward Policy--in other words, the policy of
endeavouring to extend our influence over, and establish law
and order on, that part of the [Indian] Border, where
anarchy, murder, and robbery up to the present time have
reigned supreme, a policy which has been attended with the
happiest results in Baluchistan and on the Gilgit
frontier--is necessitated by the incontrovertible fact that a
great Military Power is now within striking distance of our
Indian possessions, and in immediate contact with a State for
the integrity of which we have made ourselves
responsible."--LORD ROBERTS: Speech in the House of Lords,
March 7, 1898.

The operations at th