Turn now to the military history of the time in which these men lived. During the period under review, from 1825 to 1858 and afterwards, there were hostilities in the Levant in 1840-41, at Beirouth, D’Jebaila, Ornagacuan, Sidon, and Acre, under Sir Charles Napier, but these were mainly naval operations, in which the Royal Marines only of the army shared; and a second war occurred in Burmah in 1852, which will be dealt with in a later chapter; as also will the wars with China beginning in 1839, which resulted in the cession of the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain. There were also disturbances at Aden, suppressed by the 5th Foot and the Bombay European Regiment in 1840. But before the Crimean War there were important campaigns fought in the Indian Peninsula which had important results. These were the first wars with the Afghans, that with the Ameers of Scinde, and the two Sikh campaigns. The first of these, that with Afghanistan, was induced by causes somewhat similar to those which caused a recrudescence of hostilities many years later. What were called Russian intrigues were at work, or supposed to be. At anyrate, a Russian agent appeared at Cabul, and a demand was made for his dismissal. The fear, which has not yet died out, that in Russia’s natural extension into Central Asia, if only as a counterpoise to our own antagonistic influence at Constantinople and in the Balkan Peninsula, where she wished her own influence to be supreme, there was a danger to our rule in India, was held then as now. It is clear, therefore, that in those days, as in these, we, at the bottom of us, are not at all satisfied that our rule has really linked these Eastern people to us. We rule only; we neither absorb nor are absorbed. The Russians do the former, and therein lies their strength. They are by origin Asiatics, and in going back to their birthplace, they retain the power England can _never_ have. As barbaric hordes they invaded Eastern Europe. Checked there by the higher civilisation of the West, they have learned to impose on their natural Asiatic savagery the Western veneer. “Scratch the Russian and you find the Tartar, the Central Asian, beneath.” They are new to Europe, these Russians. They, after the Turks, are the last of the invading Aryan waves. Stopped by the Western peoples, they have turned, like a river, backward to their source. Religious rancour is far less keen with them anywhere West or East, but especially East. Ali Khan, the rebel Samarcand nomad, settles down quite quietly with his fellows to become the decorated “Colonel Alikhanoff” of the Russian army, who helped, in some degree, to create the “Pendjeh incident.” Why not? They are both from the same stock, and separated by but a small interval of time.