The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1879-12-20
Enslana'. Trouble in A1xn.ni.t.n.


mated as low as five millions and as high
as nine. But these people are not of the
peaceful, industrious, tranquil races OF
men, so far removed from the concerns OF
State as to be absolutely Indifferent to such
a circumstance as a change in the supreme
dominion of the country; on the contrary,
they are warlike, hardy and possessed with
the spirit of Independence. Loosely gov
erned, scarcely governed at all, as to most
OF the facts with which governments
deal in civilized countries, and OF dill
ferent races, they are never made subject
to any single ruler except as a consequence
of civil war. Civil war is the savage proc
ess of election by which the possession of
sovereignty is determined in the ruder
homes of humanity, but the stronger party
is presumptively majority, and great
merit of the method is that no count is nec-
essary and no Returning Board has to be
bought up. Such system of government,
however, does not afford facilities for con-
sulting the national will on other points
than the presidency Of this or that tribe.
and. consequently, makes foreign invasion
easy for the invader in its first stages. But
when the foreign invasion is felt as o fact
by all the tribes, and is fact Of conse-
quence enough to dominate and silence the
race jealousies and hostilities. then the
common passion for independence. plum
der, carnage and war unites the whole
nation against the common enemy.
England's invasion of Afghanistan has
reached that stage, and that is the sort Of
hornets nest her exploration in search of a
scientific frontier has stirred up. Prece-
dency in Afghanistan was determined when
England went there and the country was at
peace in its own borders and with England
as with all other countries. Her Majesty.s
Viceroy in India was required, by explicit
orders from London, to find o pretext for
the invasion of the country and to invade
it. He did both with supple fidelity, and
with very little difficulty Cabul was reached
and taken, and the Afghans seemed to feel
no interest in the event. Poor old Shere Ali,
feeble man, incapable of gathering up the
warlike forces of the nation and using them,
ran off to the Russians and died suddenly,
and his death even seemed to simplify the
problem. England made an arrangement
with his heir, whom she agreed to sustain
on the throne in consideration of his selling
out to her at fixed price the sovereignty
force to sustain him and he could not de-
liver the sovereignty he had pretended to
sell. 1t then began to appear that the
Afghan nation was concerned in the case.
1t required some time to stir them up on a
common idea of nationality, and now they
are apparently fully stirred up and swarm
ing down from all their wild mountain re-
gions around the little beleaguered force at
Sharpur which stands for foreign conquest.
An apparently remarkable want of pro-
portion between the means employed and
the difficulties to be overcome is character
istic Of all England's wars of foreign con-
quest She conquered the millions Of Hin
dostan with about thirty thousand, and
at the most critical stage of the Zulu
troubles she could not have put ten thou
sand men in any one battle. Her standing
before the world as military nation seems to
rest upon her capacity to keep the attention
of mankind constantly fixed upon the spec
tacle Of one division Of we'll trained troops
making head against host of barbarians, who
are either actually apparent or are sketched
in by the imagination as peopling the illim-
table wilderness on all sides OF that one
division. At one time it is in Abyssinia,
at another in Ashantee, again in Zululand,
and last in the country of the Aghans. 1t
would appear as II making war with one
division against illimitable odds had grown
into the British brain as hereditary trait and
was the spontaneous and instructive military
act of all British governments, the ridiculous
absurdity of which on some occasions an
Englishman has not the power to perceive.
To what else than such an instructive habit
Beaconsfeld administration when it
brought one division of Hindoos all the
way around to the Mediterranean as
demonstration against Russia, which had
in the field at that time o million splendid
troops.
Sometimes this spectacle of one division
at bay in the presence of an uncounted
enemy is pitiful, and so it became on q
memorable occasion in the very region now
the scene of conflict, when Ave thousand
soldiers and twelve thousand camp followers
surrendered to the Aighans and were
butchered on their way out OF the country.
But the picture is very apt to range through
all the moods of the pitiful and absurd,
and rise at last into the heroic, tor the little
band is oftener victorious than vanquished,
and the glory Of its success is rated in
proportion to the numbers that were
against it. It is never safe for either
prophets or critics to declare that
the one division which always stands for
England is in a hopeless case. So much is
accomplished in wars of this nature by un-
conquerable tenacity victory is apt to be
4. - IA