The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1887.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 8148, 20 April 1887, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1887.

Once more the news from Central Asia has become menacing. The first sensational item arrived some weeks ago, not very long after the announcement of an insurrection in Afghanistan against the Ameer. As long as the news was confined to the insurrection no notice was taken, because, in a state so loosely held together as Afghanistan, insurrection, somewhere or other, is chronic. But when the news was made public that the Governor of Turkestan had advanced upon Herat with instructions to capture that much talked of city, we had our first sensation. Of course there is no such person as a Governor of Turkestan. Unless the Russian Governor of one of the Russian Provinces may be meant by that title, it clearly must refer to some Native authority. As since this news the English and Russian Governments have agreed upon the Afghan line of demarcation, the paragraph could not have referred to a Russian. Besides an act of war requires a declaration of war, and there has been no declaration of war between Russia and Afghanistan. Clearly, then, the mysterious Governor of Turkestan must be the chief of the few Turcomans lying 'outside of Russian rule on the northern slopes of the Afghan mountains. It was the alleged necessity of protecting the interests of one of these tribes that led to the Penjdeh incident in 1885. But that these people can bring 10,000 men into the field, the force mentioned as following the mysterious Governor towards Herat, is more than doubtful. And as for the necessary material for siege operations against a city recently fortified by English engineers, their possession of such things was not to be thought of. The whole affair looked very much like a fabrication. Nevertheless, nothing that comes from the Central Asiatic steppes, clothed in the coat of mystery, is ever allowed to pass without the most alarming suggestions. Half the world was ready to believe that the mysterious Governor was a Russian Colonel in disguise, and to regard his Turcomans as largely composed of Cossacks. It was not long, therefore, before the name of Komaroff came to the front. Clearly, when a Russianised force was nearing Herat, the hero of the Penjdeh incident could not be far off. Nor was he. On one side came rumours of the spread of the Afghan insurrection ; on the other came stories of the increase of the Russian garrisons, and of the advance of the General Komaroff towards the Afghan frontier. To balance the latter we had the intelligence that the Indian Government had authorised the continuation of the Pisheen railway by the Khojack Pass to Kandahar. In all this the meaning of the alarmists is evident. It is that the rebellion in Afghanistan has been fomented by the Russians, who are drawing near to reap the fruit of their handiwork. In their eyes the great campaign, with its Armageddon well up in the middle distance, predicted by Professor Vambery, which is to decide between the two great rivals for the mastery of the East, has already begun. This is going rather far. There are, in fact, many people, good judges too, who decline to believe that the Russians ever had, have, or will have, any intention of attempting such a gigantic task as the invasion of Hindostan from Central Asia—a task which they hold to be physically impossible to the strongest Power conceivable. This is the other extreme of the subject. Between the two lies the fact that the obstacles in the way of the gigantic task are not by any means os great as they were. The Turcoman steppes are no longer impassable barriers to the march of Russian armies. They have been outflanked by the selection of the Caspian route and the construction of the Transcaspian Railway, on which trains are running at this moment as far as the Oxus, far beyond Merv.' In the ancient days when the vast area between Orenburg and the Khanates

was a howling wilderness of impassable steppe, impassable, that is, to regular armies with their encumbrances, the alarmists held their views firmly. It is not likely that they will hold them less firmly now that it is possible to detrain troops within some three hundred miles from Herat, and when the construction of a branch line from Dushalk (a short distance from Askabad) to Sarakhs is only a question of time. The construction of that branch is actually being recommended by the Russian authorities on the ground of completing the road for civilisation and commerce which the railway to Herat—now constructed only as far as Quettah, about 460 miles from Herat—has commenced. To Professor Vambery and many others this reasoning appears suspicious. To them it appears that the strategic reasons which have impelled tho- Russians to construct the Transcaspian line, incline them to have it connected with, if not carried to, the valley of the Indus. Time has effected a great change, by which the two great rivals in the East are on equal terms, or nearly so, as far as Afghanistan is concerned. It is therefore most natural to expect that when the ruler of Afghanistan, the friend of one of them, is disturbed by rebellion, there should be suspicions at the expense of the other. At present there does not seem to be anything more in the stories from Central Asia. Until something more definite comes from that country of uncertain news and inventive certainty, there need be no cause for alarm.