"The Indian Government are most anxious to avoid adopting any policy which would bear even the semblance of hostility towards Russia, but the extreme probability of a collision sooner or later cannot be overlooked. It is necessary, therefore, to provide for a strong defensive position to guard against eventualities. From this point of view it is indispensable that we should possess a commanding influence over the triangle of territory formed on the map by Kabul, Ghuznee, and Jellalabad, together with power over the Hindoo Khosh.... This triangle we may hope to command with Afghan concurrence if the Ameer is friendly. The strongest frontier line which could be adopted would be along the Hindoo Khosh, from Pamir to Bamian, thence to the south by the Helmund, Girishk, and Kandahar, to the Arabian Sea. It is possible, therefore, that by friendly negotiations some such defensive boundary may be adopted." Such were the moderate designs entertained by the Indian Government when they dispatched what they called a "friendly mission" to the Court of the Ameer. If Lord Lytton imagined that "friendly negotiations" would obtain these tremendous concessions from the Ameer, it would show that a training in "the highest order of statecraft" does not preserve even a "specially gifted" Viceroy from the credulousness of an infant. But his acts show that he entertained no such belief. He felt, as every one must feel who reads the extract I have made, that demands such as these must be preceded by a war. Hence the menacing letters addressed to the Ameer; hence the rude and insulting manner in which Sir Neville Chamberlain was ordered to attempt an entrance into Afghanistan without awaiting the permission of the Ameer; and hence, finally, the monstrous fiction of a deliberate "insult" inflicted upon us, when, in point of fact, we had been the "insulters" all along. The obvious intention throughout was to obtain a pretext for declaring war, because without a war the "Scientific Frontier" was manifestly unattainable. Lastly, when war had been determined upon, the same "official" correspondent came forward in the _Times_ to make known the objects of the impending campaign. "We have," he wrote, "been driven into what will probably be a costly war entirely against our will, and all our endeavours to avoid it. The occasion, therefore, will now be seized to secure for ourselves the various passes piercing the mountain ranges along the whole frontier from the Khyber to the Bolan; and further _strategic measures will be adopted to dominate entirely the Suleiman range and the Hindoo Khosh_."