RAILWAYS BUILT FOR WAR.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 48, 20 July 1908, Page 2

RAILWAYS BUILT FOR WAR.

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There is something very sinister In tho nows, telegraphed from India the other day, that the Russians have at length completed the great steel and concrete bridge across tho Oxua at Karki, on which they havo been busy ever since the autumn of 1905.

For this bridge is the last and principal link, in the new strategical railway, which is being built between the great city of Samarkand, in Russian Turkestan, and the little village of Bosuga, on the African frontier ; and as soon as the rails are laid, which will be in a few months’ time, the Tsar will be able, should he sq wish, to easily mass a mi’lion of men upon the borders of thij debatable territory. Nor is this all. Another of these strategic railways has also been recently completed from the Caspian to Fenjdeh, by way of Merv. ‘this means that Herat, the traditional

“Key of India,” is now within easy striking distance of St. Petersburg. Silently have these great trunk lines been constructed, and secretly, They have never been opened for traffic, except locally on certain sections, else would it be possible tq book from Charing Cross to PenjJeh, and to travel thither in the course of a few days.

They are, in fact, railways built for war, and for war only. l'he sterile regiqns through which they run can, for the most part, never support any permanent population, and they lead nowhere—at present. They stop short on the frontier of Afghanistan, amid a jumble of mountains and morasses and uninhabited salt deserts. Who can doubt, however, that the intention is to some day complete them ? To carry them south through the Afghan passes to the fertile plains of India ? And this, of course, can only be accomplished by force of arms. Let Britain look to it.