exercised in firing and bayonet drill. Horses were bought up and a
transport organised, which comprised an enormous number of camels. The
commissariat stores were replenished, and the officers eagerly studied
the maps of Afghanistan.

According to Heideck's ideas of mobilisation progress was much too slow,
and the Maharajah appeared still less in a hurry with the equipment of
his auxiliary troops.

Military trains from the South passed without cessation through
Chanidigot, carrying horses and troops further north. Their immediate
goal was Peshawar, where Lieutenant-General Sir Bindon Blood,
Commander-in-Chief of the Punjab Army Corps, had concentrated a large
field-army. Heideck noticed with surprise that the regiments which were
being hurried up had been drafted from the most heterogeneous corps,
so that, therefore, the tactical union of these corps, as well as their
organisation, had been destroyed. No doubt the Government wished, at
any cost, to mass large bodies of troops as rapidly as possible on the
frontier, and to this end left all calculation of later events out of
consideration. Viscount Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief of India,
as well as the Viceroy and the Cabinet Ministers in London, seemed to
entertain no doubt that the English army would be victorious from
the very beginning, and could not possibly be forced to retire to the
fortresses of the North-west provinces. The contempt with which the
officers in Chanidigot talked about the Russian army and the Afghans
sufficiently confirmed this general belief.

At last it was clear that war had become a fait accompli. On the tenth
day after the announcement of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan
uncertainty was at an end.