WHEN WILL RUSSIA INVADE INDIA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11647, 26 August 1905, Page 4

WHEN WILL RUSSIA INVADE INDIA.

The invasion of India by the legions of the Great White Tsar may not seem to many people a very likely danger just at present, when the hosts of that same Tsar have been defeated both on land and sea, says a writer in T.A.T. But the chiefs of our Indian Intelligence Department know better. And Lord Kitchener knows better. Wherefore his note 'of alarm and inistence the other day. The truth is that never Bince the dawn of history has India been in greater danger, because she has never been. so vulnerable. Only a short ten years ago things were different. Then the nearest Russian outposts in Central Asia , Were' -separated from the buffer state of itfJhShiktan by many hundreds of miles 6£deßertsAjTo-day these deserts have been bridg-dd^ibyutwo great military railways, running flnesouth* from the trans-Siberian

system, and in connection, consequently, with the trunk lines of European Russia. Think what this means. With only one line, and that one interrupted (until the other day) at Lake Baikal, Russia has found little difficulty in transporting an army o£ half a million. m«n -to Manchuria and maintaining them there. Sue could, with the aid of the two lines now completed to the frontiers of Afghanistan, mass a million of men within striking distance of Herat, the traditional^'Tfcey of India," within a few weeks ■of a declaration of war. And' for this reJjj^^Eo^d Kitchener has determined that tHe>Luafon Army must be thoroughly reorganised, so as to be ready at. a moment's, notice to strike in its turn, and to strike hard. For there is, to his mind, as to that of every other thinking Britisher, something, ominously threatening in these twin railways that for years, past have been creeping nearer and ever nearer to the r northern frontiers of Afghanistan^,, Silentl^ithey have been constructed^ a^nd secieJtly.'^No aliens, and but very, few Russians outside the military and official classes, have traversed them. Indeed, they ihave never been opened for ordinary traffic at all, else would it be possible to book from, say, Charing Crosi to the confines of Afghanistan, via Moscow and Meuv. They are, in Short, strategic railways,; built and maintained for one purpose 'only, and that a sinister; one. ■ As Lord Kitchener and Mr Balfour have both openly averred, they place the whole military situation in the East on a totally different footing. This means, to put it in plain language, that their completion constitutes the, very gravest menace to our Indian Empire. That it will have to face invasion some day tor other admits of no manner^ of doubt, for such has been the settled policy of Russia ever since the days of Peter the Great. The only question ,is — whten? And to that question there will-.be 11191 119 "verbal answer — only the clash of arms herald^ ing a conflict the end of which no man can foresee. <