The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1880.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3617, 30 July 1880, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1880.

Again anxiety is felt for oar brave soldiery in Afghanistan. From oar cable despatches we learn that a second Indian rgajsjicre has occurred in the Ameer's territory. It will be remembered that in the year 1842, at the close of the Gover-nor-Generalship of the Earl of Auckland, the terrible slaughter of the British in the Kyber Pass was the result of his unjustiable Afghan policy which has ever been a subject of condemnation. The wily mountaineers at home amid the rugged passes and precipitous defiles of the Hindoo Koosh, and with perfect knowledge' of the available passes hare long defied the power of the British, and on the occasion referred to, the treachery of the then Ameer disclosed the wholly unscrupulous character of the Afghans* Naturally deceitful, and having Russia for a supporter, is it difficult to see the antagonism the Ameer and his subjects feel for the British Government ? The great mistake has ever been sending so few soldiers to engage with hordes of semi-civilized barbarians, whose only recommendation is murder, pillage, and rapine. A British tar (as we were told last evening) is a soaring soul, and we presume the words equally apply to soldiers, but when the odds are something like twenty to one the soaring soul is not equal to the emergency, and it is unreasonable to expect that it should be. Thepplicy of Gladstone, always peaceable, has several times resulted most disastrously to the nation's arms, and we can only account for the recent massacre, by attributing it to the same causes which resulted in the loss of so much life and money in the Crimean war—the gross mismanagement of the Government. If all accounts be true that have appeared in the London Dailies from officers and others engaged in the. Afghan campaign, the men are badly provided in food and ammunition, and are but scantily clothed. There has evidently been a -repetition of the last performance. ■ The British general has been outreached by the Ameer; who, while professing a friendly feeling, has been' secretly working, I and has sueweded in the destruction

of 3,000 of the flower of the British army. Like poor Major Cavagnari the Englishmen placed confidence in a savage whose humanity is as absent as bis murderous outrages are glaring, and they have paid for this rash confidence with their lives. We trust that the number is mis-stated, and that the catastrophe is not so bad as appearances lead us to suppose it is.