Page images
PDF
EPUB

other possible way, is it not time that the odious Declaration, like some musty coat-armour preserved in a museum as a relic of antiquity, should now be cleared off the Statute-book, and a new Declaration, more dignified and more befitting the knowledge and progress of the twentieth century, should be substituted in its stead?

GEO. SHERSTON BAKER.

LORD CURZON IN INDIA

WITH their eyes fixed anxiously for a year and more on a long and eventful conflict in South Africa, it was perhaps not to be wondered at if Englishmen at home have paid even less heed than they are wont to what was going on in India. This is no doubt the explanation why so little has been heard of the work Lord Curzon is accomplishing there; and it may also account for the circumstance that when, on one or two occasions, his policy has been misrepresented, or his actions misunderstood, the necessary refutation has not been readily forthcoming. But, ignored though they may have been, Indian affairs were seldom more interesting than at the present juncture. There is, indeed, no crisis; no appeal is made to our attention by wars and tumults and the brave music of the distant drum. The reign of Queen Victoria witnessed, indeed, a succession of hard-fought campaigns in India and the countries adjacent, but at its close the land was hushed in peace. The significance of the situation to-day is to be sought for rather in the record of administrative work, in the measure of success which has attended the efforts of a young and energetic Viceroy to infuse his own vigour into every branch of the Government, and more especially in the details, just made public in a Blue Book, of a momentous and far-reaching scheme for reorganising the political control and defence of the North-West frontier.

It used to be said of Indian Viceroys, and not without justice, that they spend the first two years of their reign in computing the dimensions of the Indian problem, the third in considering where best to attack it, and the remainder of their term in deciding with more or less depression to leave it alone. Perhaps in most cases this may be a prudent, though it would scarcely be called a courageous resolution. No such hesitancy marked the advent of Lord Curzon. From the date of his first arrival in the City of Palaces on the Hugli, and of his replies to the various welcomes, not unmixed with flattering hopes and vain requests, that are showered upon a new ruler, he showed that he was no griffin in the land, but that he had already sown the seed of wisdom by studying its questions, and had a policy and a programme in his pocket. The buoyant

confidence of a ruler who was ready to walk by himself the first hour afforded a not displeasing contrast to the timid truisms and the guarded amenities with which most Indian Viceroys are apt to inaugurate, and many continue to punctuate, the annals of their placid reigns.

In his first Budget speech at Calcutta in March 1899, Lord Curzon announced that there were twelve important and greatly needed reforms to which he proposed to turn his attention. What they were he refrained with diplomatic obscurity from communicating to his audience. At the same time, it is open to any one, from the evidences of public action, to hazard a conjecture as to what some at least of the twelve labours of our Indian Herakles must be. One may also make a shrewd guess at a few undertakings which will not be included in the list. When Lord Curzon went out from England, Radical newspapers informed us that we were going to have a very Forward Policy on the Frontier-something, indeed, which might be described as all forwardness and no policy at all. The Tirah campaign of Lord Elgin's Administration would be child's play compared with the new embarrassments. Our friend and ally the Amir would be estranged; and we might presently find ourselves engaged in a mortal struggle with the Cossacks on the Oxus. The new Viceroy was to be a puppet in the hands of the military party, and was to display a sort of combination of the worst features of Lords Ellenborough and Auckland. Sensible and well-informed people were not, perhaps, unduly perturbed by these prophecies. Those who happened to have dipped into Lord Curzon's books and writings had long thought that they showed a surer grasp of the situation than any modern work on the subject. It seemed reasonable to hope that the man who had devoted years of his life to a patient examination of the frontier question on the spot, who had ridden through the Pamirs, and Persia, and Afghanistan, had visited the Russians in Central Asia and the Amir at Kabul, who had stayed with Sandeman at Quetta and with the Mehtar-ul-Mulk at Chitral, was more likely to know what he was about than the self-styled experts who, deriving their information as a rule from the Continental Press, expounded and explained the Indian frontier question till the real elements of the problem, so far as the general public was concerned, were altogether obscured. The confidence placed in Lord Curzon was not belied. With the exception of isolated raids and counter-moves, there has been absolute peace upon the frontier for two years. In Dir and Swat-the old centre of intrigue and rebellion -there has been quiet. The Mohmunds and Afridis abide in peace. The Orakzais are friendly. Only the Waziris, who never felt the full weight of the British hand, have been openly contumacious, owing, I am inclined to think, to certain laxities in the method of dealing with them, for which Lord Curzon's Administration is in no

way responsible. And even this little frontier trouble is likely to be settled, and the Waziris brought to their senses, without anything more serious than a blockade. This operation, by-the-by, is on such an unusual scale that a few particulars may not be out of place. The blockade was recommended and is being directed by Mr. Merk, the Commissioner of the Derajat-a frontier officer trained in Cavagnari's school who knows more of the borderland than most people. It extends 200 miles, from Wana by way of Tonk and Bannu to Datta Kheyl at the head of the Tochi Pass; and to the Waziri it means that, until he and his tribe have paid up the whole of the fine demanded as a penalty for their misdeeds, not a bullock-load of the goods they usually get from India will reach them. They cannot buy tobacco, or cloth, or ghur; the price of grain is rising steadily, and salt costs three times as much as it used to. Already the pressure thus exerted is beginning to have its effect; and according to the latest accounts the tribal maliks were paying instalments of the fine at the rate of 500 rupees a day.

To return, however, to the general lines on which Lord Curzon's frontier policy is being developed. One of his first steps was to remove from the minds of the tribesmen the suspicion aroused by the costly schemes for advanced fortifications, trans-frontier railways and garrisons which had been accepted by Lord Elgin's Government. First the British and afterwards the Native troops were withdrawn from Lundi Kotal; and the project of a Khyber railway, at which the Afridis were really alarmed, was abandoned in favour of a modest extension of the existing trunk line from Peshawar to Jumrud. The garrison in Chitral was reduced by one-half, and instead of building extensive fortifications at the capital, concentration was effected at Drosh, at the near or Indian end of the line. Meanwhile, though trans-frontier railways were shelved, a definite scheme of cis-frontier lines took their place. It was evidently the opinion of the Viceroy that, while isolated tentacles thrown out beyond the border are calculated to irritate and alarm, a network of supporting lines behind the advanced base is a necessary source of strength. Accordingly, a railroad has been built from Nowshera to Dargai in support of the Malakand position. The Jumrud extension similarly supports the Khyber. Kohat has been strengthened by the opening of the Kohat Pass Road, a means of direct communication of which the difficulties have frightened off our statesmen for half a century. The engineers have been making the final surveys for a railroad from Kushalgarh on the Indus to Kohat; and it is understood that this is to be prolonged in the direction of Thull on the Kurram River.

These railroads, however, as is pointed out in the Allahabad Pioneer, are only the secondary links in a chain of frontier policy. The primary link is even more important. This is nothing less

than the gradual substitution, for the regular garrisons maintained in scattered forts and posts beyond the administrative border of India, of bodies of Tribal Militia, raised from the tribes themselves for the military defence of their own hills and valleys. These Militia are not local levies in the old sense of the term. They do not provide their own horses or arms; they are not organised or commanded by their own petty chiefs. They are, on the contrary, semimilitary bodies, on the model of the well-known Khyber Rifles. Raised in fixed proportions from the trans-border and cis-border clans, they are drilled and commanded by British officers, earn approximately the same pay as the Sepoy, and are, in fact, irregular contingents of the Native Army. Bodies of these men have been or are still being raised along the entire length of the North-West frontier from Chitral to Beluchistan. When they have reached the requisite pitch of discipline, they will gradually take the place of the isolated British detachments, who will be withdrawn from the detestable duties of trans-frontier garrison life, and restored to the mobile strength of the Indian Army. Each section of the tribal area will then, under the new system, be garrisoned and defended, for the most part, by its own inhabitants.

The principle underlying these measures may be briefly summed up in a few words borrowed from the elaborate and statesmanlike Minute by Lord Curzon, dated the 27th of August, 1900, which is included in the Blue Book just presented to Parliament. They are intended to extricate from advanced positions the large number of regular troops stationed there for some years past; to consolidate instead of dispersing our military strength upon the border; and to set up, as it were, the sentiment of local co-operation by enlisting, for the defence of their own country but in the service of the British Government, the wild yet not wholly intractable inhabitants of the border. These measures are now, where not completely carried out, in a fair way to be. There is, however, another and, in some respects, a more momentous reform which has yet to be noticed--namely, the removal of frontier management from the hands of the Punjab Government, and the creation of a new administrative charge under a high official-assisted, of course, by a large staff of English and native subordinates-who will be responsible directly to the Government of India. The main purpose of the Minute just quoted is to indicate the lines on which the Viceroy proposes to carry out this reorganisation, and his reasons for regarding it as the only means of finally removing the complexities, the anomalies, and the ineradicable flaws of the existing system. He describes it, in fact, as the keystone of the frontier arch.' Lord Curzon's proposals have been approved, generally, by His Majesty's Government, and the Secretary of State has intimated that the details, when worked out, will receive his favourable

« PreviousContinue »