A SECRET LINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2456, 10 April 1901, Page 63

A SECRET LINE.

(Extract from "Russia of To-day." by Henhy Norman, M.P., in Scnbner's Magazine. ) . Merv — once the " Queen of the world,"' and a household word in England, thanks to O'Donovan and Marvin and Vambery, as the possible cause of war with Rassia, •whose absorption of Central Asia brought l^er here in 1884, just a year before Parliament, at Gladstone's behest, voted '£11,000,000 of war money at a sitting in jriew of Russia's next stejp south. Now the .TFhole oasis of Merv, one of the most fertile spots in the whole world, is as Russian as Riga, and when yon gay "Merv" in Central Asia you mean a long, low, neat stone rail-way station, lit 'by a score of bright lamps in a row, where the train «kian£.es engines^ while in a busy telegraph

office a dozen operators sit before their cocking instruments; and if \on arc a Russian officer or oftical you mean also a brand-new town wheie a pestilent malarial fever is sure to catch you sooner or later, and very likely to kiJl yen. But Merv has lonr ceased to be a Russian boundary, for in ■.!>& dark you can see a branch line" of raiLwa^ stealing southward acroas the plain. This is the famous Murghab Branch, the strategical line of one hundred and ninety miles along the river to the place the Russians call Kushkin^ki Post, on the very frontier of Afghanistan, a short distance from Kushk itselt, and only eighty miles from Herat. The Russians keep this line absolutely secret, no permission to travel by it having ever been granted to a foreigner. My own permission for Central Asia read, " With the exception of the Murghab Branch." A foreigner once went by train to Kushk Post, however, but tins was an accident and it is another story.

This line is purely strategic and military. Neither trade nor agriculture is served by it ; nor would anybody ever buy a ticket by it, if it were open to all the world. Moreover, it runs through such a fever-haunted district that Russian carpenters, who" can earn two roubles a day, throw up the job and go bock to ..earn 50 kopecks at home. 'Ihe line is smtpis a deliberate military menace to Great Britain. It serves, and can ever serve, only the purpose of facilitating the invasion of India, er of enabling Russia to squeeze England by pretending to prepare the first steps of an invasion of Ind i whenever such a pretence may '.ivii'tate her diplomacy in Europe. 'Jim Ja-.t should always be borne in mind. Nothing would embarrass Russia more than to " have her bluff called," in poker language — to be compelled to make her threat good. But it may safely be prophe&ied that nnny a time we shall hear of troops going fi om the Caucasus to the Afghan frontier, as she did for an " experiment " last December, and when this happens England must look, not at Afghanistan, but to China or Persia or the Balkans. Some day — and perhaps before long — she will collect a mixed force there without England's knowledge, and sieze Herat by a cou-p de main, in the confident belief that the British Government will do once more what it has so often done before, namely, accept tamely the accomplished fact. In simple truth, Herat is at her mercy. And the cat does not look at the cream for ever. The MervKushk line, I may add, is new completed, and tv. o regular trams a week run over it, at the rate of something le^s than 10 miles an hour, reaching the Afghan frontier terminus in 18 hours. But I do not fancy that Kushk Post itself has anything very wonderful to show yet in the way of military strength. It is interesting, how ever, ;s one stands here on the edge of the platform and looks down the few hundred yards of this mysterious line visible in the daik. to reflect that if the future brings war between England and Russia its roaring tide will flow over these very rails for the invasion of India, and that if it brings peace this will be a station on the through line between Calais «and Kandahar. Some day, surely, though it may be long, long hence, and only when tens of thousauds of Rus.sian and British soldier-ghosts are wandering through the shades of Walhalla, the traveller from London will hear on this very platform the cry, "Change here for Calcutta !"