RUSSIA AND HERAT.

Kumara Times, Issue 2673, 16 April 1885, Page 2

RUSSIA AND HERAT.

The Times aays :—“ Russia has possessed herself of Khiva and Merv. Russia must not suppose that if we hesitate to occupy Herat she acquires thereby carte blanche to advance herself upon that position and so to place herself with a drawn sword at the gateway of our Indian dominions. She can understand plain language as well as refined ethnological and geographical aiguments, and she has been plainly told by every English statesman entitled to speak on this matter that her advance to Herat would be a casus belli. Upon that position this country will take its stand, and Russia will act unwisely if, reckoning on the intervention of “peace at any price” politicians, or imagining that the power of England is paralysed by the task we have undertaken in Egypt, she proceeds to disregard her own pledges and our warnings. It is possible, however, that M. Lessar may be only proceeding tentatively, and that the process of ‘ squeezing’ the British Government, to which Mr Goschen alluded the other day, will be abandoned when it is found that Mr Gladstone’s Cabinet is not at present ‘ squeezable.’ If this be so, we shall be well pleased to renew the negotiations on the original basis, and to carry out the delimitation of the Russo-Afghau frontier by settling a line of positions towns or fortified places— to be held by the Ameer along the border-line. If on the other hand, the Russian demands are pressed and the English Commissioners are left alone to do the work, it will clearly be necessary to provide against the possibility—we hope it is no more—of a Russian advance on Herat. It can hardly be needful to explain to the Russian Government that India is noi quite denuded of troops, because two or three thousand

men have been drafted off for service in the Soudan. Nor, though the reasons for strengthening the navy have certainly not been diminished by recent events, is it the fact that any foreign nation can yet afford to despise the power of England on the seas. When Englishmen, at home and abroad, are united and resolute in support of a policy, there are still vast resources to be drawn upon for the defence of the Empire.”