TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MINISTRY AND THE WAR.
WE are not prepared at this moment to agree with those of our contemporaries, and especially the Liberal journals in the provinces, who are censuring the Ministry for its silence. The Government was wrong—wickedly wrong, as we think—in its invasion of Afghanistan, and will be foolishly wrong if by-and-by it stubbornly adheres to the Treaty of Gundamuck, but we are not sure that it is wrong in its imme- diate action. It is probably quite powerless to take any other course. Priniti 'hole, of course, our Liberal friends have every reason for their indignation, which, if the facts were as they suppose them, might justifiably be hotter than it is. They believe evidently that the Government are pursuing a policy in- volving a considerable war, without summoning Parliament, with- out calling a Cabinet Council, without consulting the people, without even informing the country of whatthey propose, or pur- pose, or expect to be compelled to do. Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Cranbrook, and Lord Lytton have settled matters between them, and are using an army of 30,000 men to carry out their own views as if that army were their own property, and they irresponsible either to Parliament or the country. All that is true, and may hereafter furnish ground for one of the most serious inquiries ever made into the conduct of a Ministry ; but pending the publication of secret despatches, we suspect the Ministry have, for every part of their conduct, except the failure to call a Cabinet Council together, a plausible excuse. They have no idea what is happening, or what they have to do, and can make no statement of their opinion, because they have no materials for forming one. Lord Lytton may be send- ing them complete information, but he may not.; and if he is sending them an extended and annotated version of the information he sends the public, the Ministry has much to say in its own defence. People insist on imagining that the Ministers are much abler than they are, but in reality, as events have proved, they are not far-sighted men, but men who grope about for policies and do not find them, and just now they are completely lost in the fog. There is absolutely nothing in the facts to tell them what they have to do. They do not know whether they have Afghanistan to subdue at once, or whether a trembling ally holds Afghani- stan for them ; whether they must fight their way to CAA or whether they can get there without fighting; whether they have bribed the Hill-tribes sufficiently, or whether the Hill- tribes intend to take their money and their soldiers' lives too ; whether they have to defeat an army and a people, or an army without a people, or a people without an army, or an irritated section of either, or of both. For aught they can guess, they may be delaying unreasonably
when friends are calling for aid, or they may be avoiding a trap in which those friends propose to involve the hated In- fidels in a grand massacre, sufficient to keep them out of Afghanistan for evermore. The " facts " reported from Afghanistan will justify any theory, and almost any apprehen- sion. The Hill-tribes take our bribes, paid in profusion, and bring in animals, and cut up our sepoys, and fire on our Euro- peans, and are as " friendly " and as murderous as it is possible for them to be. The Afghan soldiery revolt and submit, and kill anybody they like, and march about where they please, and do everything except meet us where they are expected. And Yitkoob Khan writes letters of submission, and bribes his army, and sends his principal officers to our camp, and prepares for resist- ance, all at once, as if he either had not a mind, or, which is much more possible, had fallen into that resolution to find his mind the day after to-morrow which, with an Asiatic, always ends in some action either unaccountably desperate or un- accountably abject. Under these circumstances, her Majesty's Ministers and Lord Lytton can expound no policy, because they can have no policy, and must do like other half-blinded men, grope along in silence and trepida- tion, and wait till the fog shall lift. To expect them to see through the fog is to expect of them an excep- tional ability, which, being really weak men, with a gift for political theatricals, they do not possess. Meanwhile, let us do them the justice to say that they are doing, or trying to do, the safest thing such men can attempt. They are pre- paring, and beginning to urge forward, an army strong enough to reach Cabul, and when there to enable the Political Agent— this time Dr. Bellew, a man of extraordinary experience and knowledge, and much original ability—to master the situation. In our belief, they are trusting too much to native troops, are
making a foolish parade of their possession of the Koorum route to Cabul, which is not a good point d'appiti, being too far from India, and bisected by that dangerous bridge, the high pass of the Shuturgardan ; but these are matters for the soldiers„ and there can be no doubt that the group of expe- rienced officers at Simla wish to succeed. The Govern- ment, therefore, is sensible, though feeble, in waiting before it talks, or even attempts to come to any definite resolution. A great deal depends on the decision of an Afghan- Prince evidently of the most vacillating, or—which we do not think, though we admit the possibility—of the most subtly treacherous character, and a European might as well endeavour to forecast the next spring of a monkey on a tree. Lord Beaconsfield might have done it thirty years ago, but Lord Beaconsfield to-day understands nothing but the temper of the landholding section of his own majority.
For ourselves, we cannot attempt as yet to penetrate the deep fog that has settled down on Cabul, and can only point to the few straggling lights never quite extinguished or invisible. It is certain that all Afghans, and especially all. Afghan soldiers, hate the English, and will do us any deep injury for which they see what they consider opportunity. It is certain that, if they can, they will do this injury by as. much treachery and as little fighting as possible. It is certain that the Hill-men will pocket as many British rnpees, steal as many British pack-animals, and cut as many Biitish, throats, as Providence may enable them to do. And it is certain, therefore, that do what we may, we shall never be secure in Cabul, never exempt from the necessity of watch- fulness, never able to trust to anything but force in holding what we may acquire. It is next to certain, there- fore, that we shall meet a catastrophe of some kind, great or small, involving either a national suffering or some valuable lives ; and that any policy we adopt short of retiring within our old dominions will be at once futile and exhausting. But beyond that, as to the time, place, or method of the next event, all is for the moment as dark as Yakoob Khan's real. purpose, or his mutinous soldiery's plan of resistance to our advance.
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