ps.

Military trains from the South passed without cessation through
Chanidigot, carrying horses and troops further north. Their immediate
goal was Peshawar, where Lieutenant-General Sir Bindon Blood,
Commander-in-Chief of the Punjab Army Corps, had concentrated a large
field-army. Heideck noticed with surprise that the regiments which were
being hurried up had been drafted from the most heterogeneous corps,
so that, therefore, the tactical union of these corps, as well as their
organisation, had been destroyed. No doubt the Government wished, at
any cost, to mass large bodies of troops as rapidly as possible on the
frontier, and to this end left all calculation of later events out of
consideration. Viscount Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief of India,
as well as the Viceroy and the Cabinet Ministers in London, seemed to
entertain no doubt that the English army would be victorious from
the very beginning, and could not possibly be forced to retire to the
fortresses of the North-west provinces. The contempt with which the
officers in Chanidigot talked about the Russian army and the Afghans
sufficiently confirmed this general belief.

At last it was clear that war had become a fait accompli. On the tenth
day after the announcement of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan
uncertainty was at an end.

The Cabinet in London had inquired in St. Petersburg as to the meaning
of that invasion, and it received the answer that Russia felt compelled
to come to the rescue of the Ameer at his request, for the Afghan ruler
was anxious for his independence, in view of the measures which were
taken by England. Nothing was further removed from the intention of the
Russian Government than to challenge England, but she felt it impossible
to look on at the embarrassment of the Ameer with equanimity, and so
determined to fight for the independence of Afghanistan.

Thereupon England declared war, and Lieutenant-General Blood received
the order immediately to advance through the Khyber Pass into
Afghanistan. Further, Lieutenant-General Hunter, the Commander-in-Chief
of the Bombay Army Corps, was ordered to march with an army from
Quetta towards Kandahar. At the same time an English fleet was to leave
Portsmouth.

Although the English papers published in India had evidently been
instructed to maintain silence about matters which might place England
in an unfavourable light, they furnished a good deal of news which gave
the intelligent reader