THE NEW AMEER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11787, 17 October 1901, Page 4

THE NEW AMEER.

Considering the looseness of the tenure by which the Ameership has been historically held and remembering that in the past the heir has usually had to fight for his throne against ambitious brothers and intriguing cousins and untrustworthy uncles, the comparatively quiet succession of Habibulla is a matter for congratulation. Some of the many brothers, whom Moslem polygamy entails upon Moslem kings and princes, seem to have made some kind of protest against his accession, and one or other of them will doubtless retire into Russian Asia and be kept there by the Tsar in readiness to be put forward should Russia ever be ready to enter Afghanistan. That is Russian diplomacy. She has a spare candidate or two for every throne and office in every barbaric country that forms part of her long southern frontier. But though there has been some slight activity on the Russian frontier of Afghanistan and an anti-sympa-thetic mobilising of field hospitals at Peshawur, the Russian posts are only being "inspected" and our Indian field hospitals are only "in training." Every effort has been made by the Indian Government to emphasise throughout the Peninsula that- Afghanistan is our ally and that the dead Ameer was our firm friend, the new Ameer has been

formally acknowledged by King Edward and the British Government and the news from Afghanistan itself is generally reassuring. The prospects of the firm establishment of Habibulla are distinctly good, none the less so that Russia, for the time being, does not seem inclined to stir up a hornet's nest in Central Asia having her hands full in Manchuria.