What we have to consider is the effect on our position in India. Perhaps the most striking feature is the vast extent of country absorbed by Russia. From Orenburg in the north to Samarcand in the south is more than 1,000 miles in a straight line, and from the Caspian to Kuldja, west to east, about 1,500 miles. Increased military power is not, however, a necessary result of extended dominion. The annexation of a country well peopled, fertile, rich, and civilised, and whose inhabitants are in accord with their new rulers, may give a great accession of strength, but when none of these conditions are fulfilled, conquest may lead to military weakness. The population of Central Asia is not only extremely sparse, but, owing to extensive deserts and to the vicissitudes of climate, many of the tribes are nomadic in their habits. The whole population is estimated not to exceed four millions and a half. When we consider that our empire of India, which approximately is of about the same geographical area as Russian Central Asia, contains a population of over 250 millions, we have at once a striking example presented to us of the difference of the two regions. The power of conducting military operations on a great scale depends not only on the resources of the country to be traversed as regards supplies of food, pasture, fuel, and water, but also on facilities of communication and transport. In discussing, therefore, the possible future danger to our Eastern possessions from a further advance of Russia, the sterility and general characteristics of the country in which she has established herself, and also the great distance of her troops from the main resources of the empire, become important elements for consideration. War is a science which depends for its success not only on the courage of well armed, disciplined hosts, and of skilled generals as leaders, but also on the means of rapid concentration and of bringing up reserves of munitions and _matériel_. Modern armies are specially tied by such considerations. Now Central Asia is exceptionally deficient in all these essential requirements, and these conditions are abiding. It therefore forms a very weak base of operations against a great empire like India, whose general characteristics are of an exactly contrary character; and although the construction in recent years of a railway from the Caspian to Samarcand will to a certain extent give facility for transport, still it will not in itself alter the general features of the pathless deserts of which the greater part of the country consists.