[Sidenote: 2. Map of Lower Asia.] To understand the significance of the Northwest Frontier of India we must look far beyond the immediate boundaries of the Empire. We have here a map of Lower Asia. Upon it we see a broad tract of upland which, commencing in Asia Minor, extends through Armenia and Persia to include Baluchistan and Afghanistan. There is thus one continuous belt of plateau stretching from Europe to the boundary of India. The eastern end of this belt, that is to say, Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan, is known as Iran. On all sides save the northwest and the northeast, the Iranian plateau descends abruptly to lowlands or to the sea. Southward and southwestward lie the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, and the long lowland which is traversed by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Northward, to the east of the Caspian Sea, is the broad lowland of Turkestan, traversed by the Rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, draining into the Sea of Aral. Eastward is the plain of the Indus. The defence of India from invasion depends in the first place on the maintenance of British sea power in the Persian Gulf and along the south coast of Baluchistan, and in the second place on our refusal to allow the establishment of alien bases of power on the Iranian plateau, especially on those parts of it which lie towards the south and east. [Sidenote: 3. Map of the Northwest Frontier.] In the next map we have on a larger scale the detail of that part of Iran which lies nearest to India. Here we see, west of the Punjab, a great triangular mass of mountain ridges which splay out westward and southward from the northeast. These ridges and the intervening valleys constitute Afghanistan. Flowing from the Afghan valleys we have on the one hand the Kabul river, which descends eastward to the Indus, and, on the other hand, the greater river Helmund, which flows southwestward into the depressed basin of Seistan, where it divides into many channels, forming as it were an inland delta from which the waters are evaporated by the hot air, for there is no opening to the sea. The valley of the Kabul river on the one hand, and the oasis of Seistan on the other, might in the hands of an enemy become bases wherein to prepare the invasion of India. Therefore, without annexing this intricate and difficult upland, we have declared it to be the policy of Britain to exclude from Afghanistan and from Seistan all foreign power.