‘The strategic importance of the Euphrates valley railway’ [‎43] (54/204)

43
and Herat; and if Balkh and Herat were taken in the autumn,
it would be six months before we could move against them
from the Indus, and in six months they would have ample
time to consolidate themselves in the country. The main
advance could be made, or reinforcements be sent, by the
Asterabad and Meshed Herat routes, or the Attrek Valley and
Merve route, more easily than from the north. It seems to
me that it must be well worth the while of the English Govern
ment to guarantee 2 per cent, of the Turkish guarantee for the
formation of a railway to India, which would so much strengthen
our position in India; where the Government has already
guaranteed 2,000,000/. per annum on railway capital alone; it
seems to me merely a sort of insurance. Surely, it must be
worth the while of an-Empire such as this to render a portion
of it as secure as possible, when the exports and imports of
that portion alone have risen in thirty years from 24,000,000/.
to nearly 100,000,000/. Total value of all imports in 1871
was nearly 39,000,000/.; total value of exports in 18/1 was
nigh 58,000,000/. Surely a country into the ports of which
13,843 vessels entered, freighted with 2,981,854 tons in one
year (1871) is worth securing by every means in our power—
is worth giving a 2 per cent, guarantee on less than 10,000,000/.
for a country whose revenue amounted to 51,500,000/., and
whose expenditure amounted in 1870 to 50,000,000/.—can
surely give a paltry guarantee which she may not even be
ever called upon to pay. While we are haggling over a
misery of this kind, we are lending millions to Russia to
make her railways, which will enable her to sorely puzzle us
when the time for action arrives. Besides this, you help your
ally, Turkey, to strengthen herself on her eastern frontier
against Russia, and we should enable ourselves to assist
Persia, if, in the future, Russia should contemplate still
further encroachments on her territory. You may not have
heard that Mr. Renter has just had the grant of all the rail
ways and telegraphs in that country, and that engineers have
been sent out to survey the line, &c. The line is proposed to
be in communication with the Russian Poti-Tiflis line, and will
go from Resht to Teheran, and thence south to Bunder Abass,
which brings steam communication near the Belochistan