CAN RUSSIA GET INDIA?

Otago Witness, Issue 2288, 6 January 1898, Page 49

CAN RUSSIA GET INDIA?

(By G. W. Stebvbns, the War Correspondent.) Many people believe that Russia does not want to get India, even if ehe could. Rassia has quite enough, they say, to manage what she has already. Oar grandfathers' ideas of the riches of India are out of date now. They were founded on the wealth of the Indian princes, but we now know India to be a very poor country — hardly able, in fact,

as the crow flies, and there is no railway at all — hardly a road. 1 Then there is the question of food. If the Russians attempted to invade India from the Caucasus or the Caspian, every tin of meat and bag of biscuit would have to be brought by rail with them. Russian Central Asia is almost a desert ; the land is susceptible, indeed, of cultivation, but it lacks water — and it always will. The country can hardly feed its present garrison, let alone a huge addition to it. Add THE DIFFICULTY OF CABBYING FOOD FOB 100,000 MEN across the Caspian, over some 500 miles of Biogle railway, and more than 600 miles of barren and hostile country — that warlike Afghan always on the look-out to elude the j fighting- man and cut up the transport trains — and the difficulties in the way of invading India become virtually insuperable.

We may almost say, in fact, that a Russian invasion — not to speak of a conquest — of India is impossible as things stand at present. Whether it will remain so in the near future, however, ia another question. If Russia can establish herself in some position nearer to the Indian frontier than Tiflis — a base of operations whence she can draw men and supplies — the task becomes vastly easier. Let us suppose Russia established at Herat acd Balkb, within the present borders of Afghanistan, with a strong army, accumulated stores, acd sufficient transport to carry them. Afghanistan is a barren and mountainous country, and it would probably be a hostile one; but that it is quite possible to march larger armies through it our own experience has repeatedly shown. Alexander the Great marched right through it into India over 2000 years ago. Rassia could do the same. The difficulties, it is true, would still be