We shall have occasion later to consider some of the details of the protracted operations which followed. They embraced several admirably conducted marches, exposure to excessively severe winter weather, the successful surmounting of great natural obstacles, the development of the usual weakness in the department of transport, with unnecessary losses in animals, a considerable sick-list, and an inconsiderable proportion of killed and wounded in action. The military benefits were those resulting from a long and arduous field experience in a rough country. The interruption to these actual "field manoeuvres," this "fire-drill," by the enemy, was comparatively feeble,--as a rule, stimulating the Anglo-Indian force to put its best foot foremost. Under this system, at the end of the two years' campaign, all departments of the army had become moulded into the efficient machines essential to success in any military venture. Politically, the campaign had been a failure. The fate of the gallant Major Cavagnari and his mission, murdered at Kabul, September 3, 1879, made a deeper impression on the Afghan mind than the British occupation of Afghan cities or the Afghan losses in battle. In the same year the British Secretary for India, in London, wrote to the Governor-General that: "It appears that as the result of two successful campaigns, of the employment of an immense force, and of the expenditure of large sums of money, all that has yet been accomplished has been the disintegration of the State which it was desired to see strong, friendly, and independent, the assumption of fresh and unwelcome liabilities in regard to one of its provinces, and a condition of anarchy throughout the remainder of the country."