LAST OF THE FRONTIER OFFICERS.

Evening Star, Issue 11251, 26 May 1900, Page 4

LAST OF THE FRONTIER OFFICERS.

Colonel Wnrburton, whose posthumotti book, entitled ‘ Eighteen Years in the Khy- ■ > Las just been published, may be regarded in one sense as tho last of the frontier officers on our disturbed border line in the north-west of India. He was the last, and ■ in some ways the most pronounced, specimen of the type to which Mackeson, Herbert Edwards, and John Nicholson belonged. These were men who spent their lives among the wild tribesmen whom they controlled, knen their language, habits, and customs like one of themselves, and'regarded them as their children. Like a father, too, they sometimes controlled their unruly subjects with blows instead of more orthodox methods But this type of frontier officer has now been sucoeeded by the frontier official. Nowadays the j oung magistrate cannot spend his days out of doors mixing with his people and studying their character; his lime is taken up with the cares of his district; he has large masses of correspondence to transact m his office; he has revenue settlements, law cases, and land disputes to decide. He is little known' among his people. Instead of a personality, he has become a mere abstraction, the representative of the migthy birkar. The officer has merged in the official, ilus defect has been well brought out by Mr S. S. Tlwrburn in his two novels on the, Afghan frontier, ‘David Leslie’ ami Transgression,’ published in 1879 and 1899. The evil of exacting too many reports and aiei.iges from Indian officials has iiicrea v 'ed iii 1879 UCh ° f late ’ bUt "' VaS bad CnOURh COLONEL WARBURTOX'S HISTORY. But Colonel Wnrburton belonged to the transition period. Though the change was going on around him, it did not touch him personally. He mixed amongst the wild Aindi tribesmen, lived with them, and knew’ their, moods perhaps more intimately than any of our-frontier officers has ever done before or ever will again. This Was due to two causes. In the first place he was left for eighteen years—from 1879-1898—in sole and undisturbed charge of that histone highway, the Khyber Pass ; and the Afridi. like most men, takes a lifetime to know then 4 - oughly. In the second place, he was himself half an Afghan. His father was a British officer, who was left in 1840 in Afghanistan in charge of the artillery of Shah Sliujah. There he fell in love with and married, as this book informs us, a noble Afghan lady, a niece of the Amir Dost Muhammad. Captain Warburton duly married hi* bride, Sir Alexander Burncs being one of the witnesses. Colonel Warburton, the' Warden of the Khyber, was the only child of this mixed marriage. Belonging as ho did upon one side to the race be was called upon to con-;-trol, his success is the more easily understood. The European can never thoroughly enter into the heart of the Asiatic, or vice versa: but Colonel Warburton belonged to both, and understood both. THE STORY OF THE KHYBER. Under his sympathetic management the Khyber Pass became, in place of the most dangerous strip of ground in all Asia, as safe a highway ns exists in India. During the eighteen years that he held watch and ward over the Pass, three successive Vice- ■ roys. as lie proudly boasts, passed through it without any unpleasant incident occurring. Only once during his guardianship was its safety seriously threatened. In 1892 Amin Khan, tho Malik of the Kuki Khcl section of the Afridis, came, down with 6,000 to 8,000 men to attack the Khyber forts.. But Colonel Wnrburton had received due warning of the raid, and took precautions in advance to meet it. lie threw a garrison into forts, and, with the assistance of .Sir H. Collett, who was in command of the Punjab army at the time, he made a demonstration with British infantry on the flank of the Khyber, and the tribal gathering melted harmlessly away. During the lart few years of his tenure of office Colonel \Varhurton ceaselessly importuned the Punjab Government for a European assistant to train in his methods, that he might leave as his surcesaor one already well known to the Afridis and trusted by ‘them. But at the date when he retired' under the fifty-five years’ rule in May, 1897, the appointment was still unmade. In August, 1897, the Afridis broke out and sacked and took the Khyber. Within three months of his departure the work of Colonel Warburton’s eighteen years was brought to naught. After him came the deluge.

THE WARRING IDEALS. But the very fact of his work lasting such a short time after his personal influence was withdrawn shows that there was some radical fault in the system itself. In the first place, one personalty needs to be succeeded by another, and when there is a gap in the succession lawlessness steps in. In the second place, it is an undignified attitude that the peace of a groat Empire should be dependent on the moods of a few thousand barbarians. In any case, as we have seen, the change is inevitable. The Afridis must sooner or later be content to come under the ordinary machinery of the Indian Government, and it was time that, they learnt their lesson. This point was perceived by the Commissioner of the Peshawar division, who, in a famous telegram at the time the Khyber was threatened hy the Afridis, said that “Die tribesmen mast be required to act up to their engagements.” The principle was sound enough, no doubt; but, unfortunately, the transition from one system to the other was too violent. A savage people cannot be humored like children on one day and expected to act like reasonable grown-ilp people on the next. 1 lie consequence was that the Afridis, finding our forts unguarded, mistook policy for fear, and burnt them. The immediate result was the Tirah expedition, which cost three rind a-half millions sterling and many valuable lives. Tho lesson was a necessary one; the Afridis had to be taught the strength of the Sirkar, that the reign of blackmail whs over, and the reign of law and order had begun. But the lesson might have been taught at a much smaller cost than this; and it was .a bad time to choose for teaching it when India was already suffering from a famine and groaning under a financial deficit.