The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-03-14
The Debatable Land.

Pail Mall Gazette.
In the debatable land in which Sir Peter
Lumsdsn has been spending the winter in MAX
iEg preliminary surveys and in establishing the
influence of England among the Afghan tribes,
we are face to face with more or less barbarous
tribes behind whom stands the empire of Rus
STA. The position in which we find ourselves is
indeed alarming. 1t is essentially false. Neither
Russia nor England want war. But single
frontier brawl may commit them to hostilities.
That matters should ever have got into 30
serious position is due, like all our other
troubles, to the one overmastering determination
of the government to avoid responsibility. When
it was proposed to delmit the usso-Afghan
frontier from Khojeh- Saleh, on the Oxus, to
some point about Sarakhs, on the Herr
Rud, Russia suggested that the principles
upon which the frontier should be drawn should
be defined, and that then joint commission
should be dispatched to effect precise delimita-
be drawn on purely photographic or economic.
or strategic principles or was it to be based ex-
cluslvely upon the maintenance of the status
quo! These we're broad general principles which
ought unquestionably to have been settled by
the governments before their agents were
deputed to define the boundary on the spot
The English government objected to decide
anything, proposing to leave everything to the
joint boundary commission. That objection
was mistake and Russia was quite right in
pressing for it's reconsideration. We refused,
and Russia foolshly gave in. That was a
blunder which she committed, with which,
OF course, we cannot reproach her,
seeing that she did it to oblige US. 1t
was agreed that the frontier should be settled
entirely out of the heads of the commissioners
on the spot, and Sir Peter Lumsden started for
the trysting place. Unfortunately the Russian
commissioner. who was said to have been
a1I coInn fn6 1~I.
sympathies, was SO unpatriotic to fall i'll, and
In the delay thus caused everything went wrong.
The Afghans, feeling no doubt inspirited by the
presence of the British commissioner with his
escort, and anxious to make their position as
strong AS possible pending deliberations, threw
some troops into the Turkoman village of Penj-
deb. From Penjden the Russians declared the
Afghans could threaten the Russian advance
post at Sarakhs, and as reply to the Afghan
advance they threw their troops forward to
Pul-ikhatun There were great protests on
both sides, and Sir Peter Lumsden waxed very
wrotn. AS the situation was becoming more
and more strained every day, the Russian
government dispatched NJ Lessar to London to
try to arrange the principles on which the new
frontier should be drawn. The line suggested by
Russia is based, not on strategic considerations,
for the only strategic frontier that of the mount
alns-falls much nearer Herat, but upon the
simple necessity of including the pastures and
salt beds of the Russian Turkomans within the
Russian frontier With M. Lessars frontier
or, rather, with the principles on which it is
founded, we have no quarrel If all the strategic
advantages of defensive frontier are LETT in the
hands OF the Afghans-for that is what NJ Les
sar declares the Russian government is willing
to accept as the first principle of the new bound
ary-we see no disadvantage to England but
quite the reverse, in agreeing to the Russian
proposal to draw the new frontier as far to the
north of Herat as is consistent with allowing the
Sailor Turkomans of Sarakhs the territory essen
tial to their existence