When Lord Lytton reached India, the situation in Afghanistan was as follows:--The late Ameer Shere Ali had succeeded in establishing a degree of order throughout Afghanistan, to which the country had been a stranger for many years. His officers were loyal and devoted; intrigue and rebellion had everywhere failed to make headway; and he was on terms of sincere friendship with the Governor-General at Calcutta. There was, at this time, no fear that the Russians in Central Asia desired to exercise any unwarrantable influence in Afghanistan; on the contrary, in the despatch to Lord Northbrook's Government, in which Lord Salisbury propounded his new policy of establishing a permanent Embassy at Kabul, he said-- "I do not desire, by the observations which I have made, to convey to your Excellency the impression that, in the opinion of her Majesty's Government, the Russian Government have any intention of violating the frontier of Afghanistan.... It is undoubtedly true that the recent advances in Central Asia have been rather forced upon the Government of St. Petersburg than originated by them, and that _their efforts, at present, are sincerely directed to the prevention of any movement which may give just umbrage to the British Government_." The political horizon was, therefore, cloudless at the moment selected by Lord Salisbury for a radical change of policy in Afghanistan. This very fact would have sufficed to arouse the suspicions of the Ameer. Lord Salisbury has since expressed his conviction that if Lord Northbrook had made the proposal, the Ameer would have accepted the permanent Embassy, and both he and we should have been spared the calamities which resulted from delay. But at the time Lord Salisbury sent his instructions to the Government of India he thought otherwise. He had then no doubt that if the Ameer was asked in so many words to receive a permanent Mission in Afghanistan, the Ameer would refuse. But he thought it was possible to fasten a Mission on him by means of a deception. "The first step" Lord Salisbury wrote to the Government of India, "in establishing our relations with the Ameer on a more satisfactory footing will be to induce him to receive a temporary Embassy in his capital. It need not be publicly connected with the establishment of a permanent Mission within his dominions. There would be many advantages in ostensibly directing it to some object of smaller political interest, which it will not be difficult for your Excellency to find, or if need be, to create. I have, therefore, to instruct you ... without any delay that you can reasonably avoid, to find some occasion for sending a Mission to Kabul."