Afghanistan; Asia, Central -- Description and travel; Eastern question (Central Asia)
With the disappearance of M. Miller from the scene in Seistan, the
emissaries of the Russian authorities went further afield. Articles,
breathing the engaging candour of a regular crusade, appeared in the
Press of St. Petersburg and Berlin, lengthy extracts being received in
Teheran itself through the kindly offices of the Official Telegraph
Agency in St. Petersburg. The organ of the Russian authorities in
Central Asia--_The Russian Trans-Caspian Gazette_, published at
Askhabad--was perhaps the most industrious agent in circulating
grotesque details of the wrongs inflicted upon the poor Seistanis
by the brutal decisions of the British Mission. In respect of these
statements it happens that the share in the Hamun lake, allotted
originally by the Goldsmid Convention, remains absolutely unaltered.
The remark that Persian Seistan was in danger of becoming a desert
because Persia had been mulcted in two-thirds of its water supply is
a lying absurdity, divulged by M. Miller or the Russian Minister in
Teheran for no other purpose than to sow distrust of Great Britain
in the Persian mind and throughout Europe. Again, the touching
descriptions of the homeless Seistanis dispossessed of their lands
through the heartless insistence of the British Commissioner, which
only needed to appear in the _Russian Trans-Caspian Gazette_ to be
commented upon by German newsmongers with characteristic insolence, are
conspicuously false insomuch that neither Persian nor Afghan villages
were removed, nor any single individual evicted. The statement, too,
that the McMahon Mission had laid out upon Persian soil an extensive
fortified camp, within battlemented mud walls is equally untrue. This
“extensive fortified camp” consisted of the mud-huts used by the
Mission; the walls were the mud-walls of the tennis-court, while “the
armed guard,” left in charge of these “fortifications,” resolved itself
into one of three watchmen, who had been given the custody of certain
property pending orders as to its removal. In this direction it is
of interest to know that upon the day following the departure of the
Mission an attempt by the Russians to occupy the camp was prevented
only by the presence of these men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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