A change, however, was coming over the scene, and our policy reverted
from conciliation to compulsion. It was a critical period in the history
of frontier policy, and demands careful consideration.

It must not be forgotten that although amongst those best qualified to
judge the majority had long been opposed to advance and conquest in
territories beyond our North-West frontier, and entertained but little
fear of Russian aggressive power, still there were others--men of long
experience, who had filled high positions in India--who held different
views; and it is probable that not only successive British Governments,
but the public generally, who have no time for carefully weighing the
diverse aspects of the subject, were influenced sometimes one way,
sometimes another. In the many difficulties connected with our world-wide
Empire this must always be more or less the case. For instance, the
late Sir H. Rawlinson, a few years before the second Afghan war, took a
very alarmist view of the progress of Russia, not only in Central Asia
but also in Asia Minor. He considered that her advance from Orenburg was
only part of one great scheme of invasion; and he averred that the
conquest of the Caucasus had given her such a strong position that there
was no military or physical obstacle to the continuous march of Russia
from the Araxes to the Indus. [Footnote: Parliamentary Papers,
_Afghanistan_, 1878.] He described it as the unerring certainty of
a law of nature. But, throughout, he ignores distances, blots out the
mountains, deserts, and arid plains of Persia and Afghanistan, and takes
no account of the warlike races who would bar the path. It requires a
very large map to embrace all the details of this widespread strategy.

Some account has already been given of the weakness, in a military
point of view, of Russia in Central Asia, and of the distance of her
scattered troops from the main resources of the Empire. But, in