Letters and Papers Concerning the Trans-Persian Railway and Other Railways in Persia [‎196r] (391/442)

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The Trans-Persian Railway. [15 July 19121 The Trans-Persian Railway. 464
up to the walls of the fort except by great
expenditure to themselves and at the risk
of open hostilities with the British Govern
ment.
I do not know whether anybody will
dispute my summary of Indian frontier-
policy. Rightly or wrongly, I believe
that has been the accepted policy of British
Governments and Governments of India
for the best part of 100 years. To support
that policy we have fought wars, we have
indulged in great expenditure of men and
money, and on one occasion in 1885 Mr. Glad
stone almost went to war with Russia.
This has hitherto been the accepted policy
of both political Parties in this country.
There has been very little difference on
broad ground of principle between us.
I do not say that this policy has saved
India from scares or from great expenditure.
It has not. But it has saved India from
attack, for during that time no single
enemy has marched across the glacis of
which I have been speaking or has crossed
the protective zone. Now if this railway is
built, if the theories upon which it is to be
constructed are accepted, all these views
are wrong. They are to be relegated to
the limbo of obsolete and mistaken ideas,
and we have now to acclaim and to
accept the opposite theory—that the right
frontier policy for India is not to close
but to open her frontiers upon the west.
We are, if assent be given to this railway,
to assist in a proposal which will directly
connect India on its most vulnerable side—
that is, on the west—with the outside
world; which will destroy the value of
Afghanistan as a buffer State—and His
Majesty’s Government should consider the
effect which will be produced on the Ameer
by this proposal; which will span the
desert upon which we have hitherto relied ;
which will turn the flank of Quetta, and
will provide a route direct from the Russian
military base to the borders of India. It
is the fact that if this railway be made the
Russian troops will be brought 1,000 miles
nearer to India than they are at the present
moment, and that the Russian War Depart
ment at St. Petersburg, should the un-
happy circumstances ever occur that we
should be again at disagreement or at war
with that country, will be able to put their
troops on the India frontier before reinforce
ments sent from England could get to
Bombay round the Cape. I see that
Colonel Repington, in his letter in The
Times this morning, sums up the situation
as regards Russia in these words. Assuming
the construction of the railway, he says—
“ Russia could, in my opinion, deploy within
three months such a powerful military force on or
near our frontiers that the Army in India would be
unable to resist it even provided that all our Field
Divisions were available, which I do not think is
likely to be the case.”
The only ground on which we are invited
to run this very considerable risk is that
of our present friendly relations with Russia.
I rejoice at those relations. There is not
a man in this House who does not regard
our Entente with Russia as of extreme
value, and supposing by any accident
the Front Bench opposite were suddenly
denuded of its present occupants and we
were to step over and take their place
we should be as loyal to our engagements
with Russia as the Government are at
the present time. About that let there be
no doubt at all. But, my Lords, history
shows too often that international
understandings are not eternal. National
sentiment, after all, is largely determined
by national interests, and national interests
are things that vary from year to year and
from decade to decade according to the
conditions of the hour. Therefore what
ever may be our hopes or desires, it by
no means follows that because we are on
friendly terms with Russia now we always
shall be, or that what we used to call the
Russian bogey may not again show its
features in the East. Let me put it in a
rather more general way. There are two
approaches to India—by land and by sea.
Hitherto we have had command of both.
We have had command of the sea route
because we were supreme upon the sea ;
we have had command of the land route
partly because of our treaties but still
more because without a railway it was
impracticable to any inyader. But now
it is doubtful whether, under your new
naval arrangements, you are going to keep
command of the sea, and at the moment
when that command trembles in the balance
you propose, if you agree to this railway,
gratuitously to surrender your control
of the route by land. There are many
instances in history in which nations have
been compelled by war or defeat to surrender
or modify their frontiers, but I honestly
do not know of any case in which a
great Power, for no reason at all except
surrender to what is called the inevitable,
has abandoned a frontier so unique as
that which is presented to us by nature in
those parts.