The interpretation, however, was not easy. Very different opinions obtained among the leading officers in the British camp respecting the amount of punishment which it now became the British General to inflict upon the Afghan capital. It was a moot question, involving many considerations, and not to be hastily solved; but there could have been no question whether, at that time, justice and expediency did not alike require that the inhabitants of Caubul and the neighbourhood should be protected against unauthorised acts of depredation and violence. Against the plunderings of soldiers and camp-followers Pollock had steadfastly set his face; but in the neighbourhood of Nott’s camp much was done to destroy the confidence which Pollock was anxious to re-establish, and to alarm and irritate the chiefs whom he desired to conciliate.[318] After a few days the new minister and Khan Shereen Khan, the chief of the Kuzzilbashes, determined to represent to Pollock, in a joint letter, the grievances of which they thought they were entitled to complain.[319] The minister had been anxious to pay his respects to the gallant commander of the Candahar division, and had waited upon him with a letter from Macgregor; but Nott had peremptorily refused to give him an audience. He believed it to be the desire of Lord Ellenborough that no Afghan Government should be recognised by the British authorities, and he was unwilling to favour any such recognition by receiving visits of ceremony from the functionaries appointed by the government which had been established at Caubul. As Pollock had not been equally nice upon this point, the refusal of his brother-general to extend his courtesies to the minister could only have embarrassed our supreme authorities at Caubul, and attached suspicion to the sincerity of our proceedings. But Nott, at this time, was in no mood of mind to extend his courtesies either to Afghan or to British authorities. It was his belief that even then the British army ought to have been on its way to Jellalabad. He had with him a sufficiency of supplies to carry him to the latter place; and was irritated at the thought that Pollock had come up to Caubul without provisions to carry him back.[320] If he had been in supreme authority at Caubul, he would have destroyed the Balla Hissar and the city, and would have marched on with the least possible delay to Jellalabad. He placed his sentiments on record regarding the impolicy of the halt at Caubul—declared that he would be compelled to make military requisitions to rescue his troops from starvation; and denounced Futteh Jung and the new ministers as the enemies of the British. Nothing, indeed, could dissuade Nott that every Afghan in the country was not our bitter foe.