THE FORTIFICATIONS OF HERAT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2037, 28 July 1885, Page 4

THE FORTIFICATIONS OF HERAT.

Ov sudi ground as that on which Herat stands impregnability is a figure of speech. And to make it a Hut 01 even second class foi tress would cost more poundi than the Amir with all our help Mill be able to give mpees. What can, and pre•nmably will be done, is to repair the crumbling walls of the enceinte, and throw up a few advanced earthworks, to be armed with obsolete smoothbores, in the expectation that they will provo no many Plevnas or B.itoums. This ia a vain hope. The fortresses and improvised strong places defended by the Turks in the last war were without exception strong by nature. Putting aside the unquestioned superiority of the Turkover the Afghan as a regular soldier, the Sultan's forces have for half a century contained many European officers, mostly Poles and Hungarian*, of high scientific attainments, and the Tiukish at my has thu-j attained an aveiagc of skill in the details of the military art, wholly uu appioachable by that of the Amir. In one point the two aie alike. Ottoman pasha and Afghan sirdar are equally susceptible to the influence of the golden key, a system of attack in w Inch the Russians are notoriously pioficient, ami which ia particulaily useful against the detached works w Inch modern artillery has made indispensable. Taking these premises into consideration, can anyone believe that Herat could hold out against a Russian torps d'armte of twenty-five thousand men with a rifled siege train for the thirty five days it would take an English army of equal strength to march from Kandahar to its relief, even should an English army be moved at all. Under the most fay ourable conditions, with a railway to the northern base of the Khwaja Annan or even to Kandahar itself, it would not be practic able to concentrate 23,000 men at that city and have them ready to move a day earlier than tho appeaiance of a Russian army bcfoie the walls of Hciat. Left in its present condition that place would probably fall in a week. With a hundred thousand pounds or so spent on its foitirieations and a few score of mounted guns on Hiem it might hold out for tlnee, only to fall with a greater ciash Every rupee spent on Herat, every English gun or iifle captuicd in it, as cipturcd they would assuredly be, would bo a stone taken away from the tower of British prestige, a link weakened in the chain which binds India to England. In addition to this politico sentimuital objection it is obvious that the foi tification and armament of Hciat would he of immense aid to the Russians in subsequent operations. If they did not find a foi tress leady to their hand they would have to stop and make one to serve as a base for further advance. In fact, paradoxical a3 it may seem, it is quite possible that a fortilied Herat would rather accelerate than impede the march of a Russian army from Sarakhs to the Helmund. The object of foi tifications is defined to be the protection of some adequate object, such as a great capital or aisrnal, or to enable a small body of men to hold a position against supeiior numbeis as long «s possible. The walls of Heiat protect nothing but a name ; their defenders do not wibh to be relieved even if it were practicable to relieve them, and they would be of such value to the invaders as quicken lather than delay their march. Wei e the Union Jack still floating over Kandahar (alas ! for the day it was hauled down), and Bntish outposts on the Helround, the question would wear a very different spect ; but in abandoned Herat, and the only wise couise now is to minimise its importance. Let us not blame Abdui Rahman for keeping at Kabul the money and the arms given him for the defence of the country instead of sending them to Hciat. On the eontiaiy let us urge him to go a step further in the same direction, and following the example of that gieat soldier Nadir Shah at Kandahar, raze the walls and fill in the ditch of Herat, building a new capital for his western l'vo\ moe in the vicinity and calling it by his own name. So should we hear no moie of the key of India. If fortifications there must be let them be made to guard the passes of the Hindoo Kush, where a week's delay might save Kabul.

The lines of Put is journalists seem to be cast in plermnt places. Fuw of them earn less than £1000 a-ye.ir for a weekly article of two columns, such, for example, as Jules Claretie's La Vic .1 Pans, or Francisquc Sarccy's Clironi(|iie Theatrale, in Le Temps. The former writer receives £1,400 per annum for about four hours' work a week, besides the large income he derives from purely literary and dramatic compositions. Albeit Wolff draws a similar salary from Fig.uo, the propnetors of which g,i\c him £800 on one occasion for a single day's work. He entered the Palais d Industrie, disguised as a workman, and curbing a pictuie, strolled deliberately thiough the building, and was enabled to give a full account ot the Salon four-and-twenty hours in ad- \ anco of all the otbc r journal". No doubt he had previously vi->ited tlie studios of all the principal artists in Pans, and had got a nM«ss of notes prepared in advance. Second-rate writers on the Piess do not earn more than from £400 to £GOO per annum, and the reporters are very inadequately reniuneiated, their pay ranging from £100 to £140 per annum ; and it i-, no wonder, therefore, that a good many of them are venial, and supplement their legitimate earnings by taking " tips " for " puffs."

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