Our relations with the Amir are on a very different footing, though it would puzzle a Russian diplomatist to say what is the basis of our policy. It is a mixture of suspicion, forbearance, and contempt. Once Yakub Khan had thrown himself upon our protection and disowned the acts of the mutineers, his personal safety was assured, and this, no doubt, was his first aim. But how much further did he mean to go? That he heartily desired his turbulent regiments to be punished one can well believe, and that he schemed to save Cabul from the fate it had courted is quite possible; but unless an accomplice in their acts, he could not have expected that his most trusted ministers and kinsmen would be arrested and himself confined to our camp. Here he must see our suspicion peeping out: but, then, mark our forbearance. In our proclamations rebellion against the Amir has been cited as worthy of death; we are living upon tribute grain collected as due to him; the citizens of Cabul have been declared “rebels against His Highness,” and our Military Governor of the city is “administering justice and punishing with a strong hand all evil-doers” with his “consent.” This is one side of the picture, and these acts are the direct outcome of our efforts to re-establish something like order after the anarchy which prevailed when we began our march upon the capital. There is nothing of contempt in them; it is merely laying the foundation for replacing the Amir on his throne more securely for the future. Our forbearance is further shown by the consideration displayed towards his subjects: nothing is taken that is not paid for—and, in most instances, exorbitantly paid for—and there is not the slightest affectation of treating the country through which we pass as conquered territory. But there is another side of the picture where new aspects appear and some anomalies crop up. The Amir’s authority is proclaimed as justification for many of our acts; and yet at the same time we loot his citadel, and seize upon, as spoils of war, all guns and munitions of war which for a few weeks only had passed out of his hands into those of the rebels. Did he, by abandoning his capital and its defences, lose all right and interest in the cannon which guarded them, in the ammunition collected for years past in the Bala Hissar, and in the very clothing prepared for his regiments? Apparently he did, for the two hundred and fourteen guns now in our camp are looked upon as captured from an enemy who used many of them against us; the untold quantity of gunpowder which the explosion of the 16th untouched is to be destroyed; and our camp-followers are masquerading in the warm uniforms of Afghan Highlanders. This is the feature of contempt in our policy. Our war, unlike that of last year, is against the subjects of the Amir, and not against the Amir himself; and, so far as we have gone, we have assumed the functions of the sovereign