Last of the Frontier Officers.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 6710, 31 May 1900, Page 4

Last of the Frontier Officers.

Qojjrriel Warburton, whose postjiut^&s book, entitled 'Eightepn Years in ti p.Khyber,' has just been published, m^A be regarded in one sense as the :ast| )f the frontier officers on onr disturt) *d border line in the north-west of lndi! i. He was the last, and in some ways\the most pronounced, specimen of th^ type to which Mackeson, Herbert Edwa&ds, and John .Nicholson belonged^ These were men who spent their Tpfes among the wild tribesmen whom'ithey controlled, knew their language, habits, and customs like one of themselves, and regarded them as , their children. Like a father, too, they sometimes controlled their unruly subjects With blows instead of "more orthodox methods. But this type of officer has now been succeeded s *y the frontier official. Nowadays the • young magistrate cannot spend his "ttays out of doors mixing with his people and studying their character ; , his time is taken up with the cares <pf V.his district ; he has large masses of correspondence to transact in his officev Khe has revenue settlements, law cases\ and land disputes to decide. He m little known among his people. 1AMead of a personality, he has become a Here abstraction, the representative of I M!& mighty Sirkar. The officer has ! Bierged in the official. This defect has '■ si££^li^?.gght ou? by Mr «• S. Thor- ! burn^^Bß[^WWWvW3' 'U4_Lhe AfghaiK frontier^wa.vid Leslie/ ', and ' Transgression,' published in 1879 and 1899. The evil of exacting too many reports has increased very much of late, but it was bad enough in 1879. [ COLONEL WARBURTON'S HISTORY. But Colonel Warburton belonged to the transition period. Though the change was going on around him, it did v not touch him personally. He mixed aaiongst the wild Afridi tribesmen, lived with them, and knew their moods perhaps more intimately than any of our frontier officers has ever done before or ever will again. This was due to ty^o causes. In the first plage heaftOeit for eighteen years— fr<jmNrß?D-1898—in sole and undisturbed charge of thai historic highway, the Khyber Pass ; and the Afridi, like men, take a lifetime to know one thoroughly. In the"' second place, he was himself half an Afghan. His father was a British officer, who was left in 1840 in Afghanistan in charge of the artillery of Shah^Shujah. There he fell in love wittr-ahd married, as this book informs us, a noble Afghan lady, a niece of the Amir Dost Muhammad. Captain Warburton duly married his bride, Sir Alexander Burnes being one of the witnesses. Colonel Warburton, the Warden of the Khyber, was the only child of this mixed marriage. Belonging as he did upon one side to the race he was called upon to control, his success is the more easily undeistood. The European, can never thoroughly enter into the heart of the Asiatic, or vice versa; but Colonel Warburton belonged to both and under stood both.

THE bTORY OF THE KHIBJfiR

UnderUiis sympathetic management I 1!? 6 lvhJ Der Pass became, in place of the moat dangerous strip of ground in ah Asiafas safe a highway as exists in fu * S L)urin S the eighteen years kthat he geld watch and ward oyer the Kass, tlxree successive Viceroys, as he Iprotfcily boasts, passed through it with- ! wut, any unpleasant incident occurring | •fily once during his guardianship was safety seriously threatened, la ]|592 Amin Khan, the Malik of the Ksfci Khel section of the Afriais, came down, with 6000 to 8000 men to attack; the vhyberaforts. But Colonel Warburton had received due warning of the raid, and took precautions in advance to meet it. He threw a garrison intone forts, and, with the assistance of Sir H. Collett, who was in command of '.he Punjab army at the time, he made a demonstration with British infantry on the flank of the Khyber, and the tribal gathering melted harmlessly away. During the last few years of his tenure of office Colonel Warburton ceaselessly importuned the Punjab Government for a European assistant to train in his methods, that he might leaye as bis successor one already well known to the Afridis and trusted by them. But at the date when he retired under the fifty-five years' rule in May, 1897, the appointment was still unmade. In August, 1897, the Afridis broke out and sacked and took the Khyber. Within three months of his ] departure the work of Colonel Warburr ton's eighteen years was brought to - naught. After him came the deluge THE WARRING IDEALS. But the very fact of his work lasting " such a short time after his personal ; influence was withdrawn shows that there was some radical fault in the system itself. In the first place, one personalty needs to be succeeded by another, and when there is a gap in the succession lawlessness steps in. In the second place, it is an undignified attitude that the peace of a great t Empire should be dependent on the ! moods of a few thousand barbarians. In any ease, as we have seen, the change is inevitable. The Afridis j must sooner or later be content to come under the ordinary machinery of the Indian Government, and it was time that they learnt their lesson. This point was perceived by the Commissioner of the Peshawar division, i who, in a famous telesraca at the time the Khyber was threatened by the Afridis, said that " the tribesmen must be required to act ud to their engagements." The principle was sound enough, no doubt; but, unfortunately, the transition from one system to another was too violent. A sava»e people cannot be humored like chfldren on one day and expected to act like reasonable grown up people the next. The consequence was that the Afndis, finding our forts unguarded mistook policy for fear, and burnt them. The immediate result was the Tirah expedition, which cost three and a-half millions sterling and many valuable lives. The lesson was a necessary one ; the Afridis had to be taught the strength of the Sirkar, that the reign of blackmail was over, and the reign of law and order had begun, but the lesson might have been taught at a much small cost than this ; and it was a bad time to choose for teaching it when India was already suffering from a famine and groaning under a financial deficit.-.Dunedin. Star.