Russia would have absorbed India; we have only conquered it. Every native officer is subordinate to the white soldier of the British “Raj.” Russia would have made them her equals. We have won the Empire by the sword, and must govern it thereby. We have colonised elsewhere, and even intermarried. In India we do neither. All the professions of native chieftains in India must be taken just for what every sensible man takes them. To love conquerors? Never! We English would never do so, however righteous the government of the alien power that held the reins might be. Given the best foreign government that could be devised over England, and there is not one man with the spirit of his forefathers in him that would not rise, when the time came, in open and avowed insurrection. These points are worth considering before we deal at all with the wars that have led to the extension of the Empire, preceded the Mutiny, of which more hereafter, and have culminated in superficial peace. Bokhara and Samarcand, other Central Asian khanates, are part and parcel of the army and strength of the legions of the White Czar. Certainly; they are, after all, as before remarked, of the same racial stock. Indian rajahs and princelets, potentates and ryots, are still the subject beings of the white who rules them, but does not mix with them. Instinctively, it would seem, England recognised a danger from Russia, but did not see what was at the bottom of it, nor her own helplessness to prevent it. When the first Afghan war broke out, Russia proper and India were _very_ far apart. Foolish politicians laughed when soldiers, wiser men than they, men who are part of the story of the army, looked and talked gravely. Unwise civilians jeered in the House of Commons at the idea of the Russian frontier and ours ever being conterminous. Soldiers can jeer now at these very stupid people. The frontiers that never were to be, never could be, touching, _are_ touching, and between the Russian Empire and our own Indian possessions is the buffer state of Afghanistan, the prize of the highest bidder or of the strongest power when the time comes. The whole Eastern Question is grave, so long as we forget that we are not liked and can only keep what our forefathers won by bravery, and their grandchildren cannot hold by talk and whining; so long as we forget that all the tall talk and all the missionary talk is only so much wasted breath, so long must it be worth while, in studying the story of the army, to view gravely the one most dangerous frontier in all our vast possessions,--the strip of land which lies between Russia the earnest and England the supine; to that one bit of _terra firma_ that, not careless politicians, but their guards and national police, the soldiers, look on gravely and seriously. In Afghan territory the ultimate danger lies.