File 4345/1912 'Trans-Persian Railway' [‎83r] (170/330)

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V.
Chief of the General Staff, India (Lieutenant-General Sir Douglas
Haig, K.C.I.E., &c.), 3rd January 1911.
“ . _ . The previous military policy of India has been based upon
maintaining its strategic isolation, so that attack becomes, if not impossible,
at all events so difficult and lengthy an operation as to involve great financial
strain on the attacking power, and to ensure that before decisive issue
is joined, the whole military strength of the British Empire will be
available ....
“ . . . . The advocates of the scheme .... evidently ....
anticipate difficulties on our part, and, assuming that a line will ultimately
be constructed, the problem becomes one of rendering it as strategically
innocuous to India as possible, by finding some artificial obstacle which will
in some measure take the place of the natural barrier which it is proposed
to pierce, so that the strain thrown upon the military resources of the
Empire in the event of foreign aggression may be neither too sudden nor too
severe for them to bear. In the opinion of the General Staff such a substitute
can only be found in making use of our preponderating sea power, as a
means of control of the proposed line, and in adequate fortification, at some
distance from the frontier of India, of a naval base through which the
proposed line must run .
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VI.
President of the Railway Board, India (Sir T. R. Wynne, K.C.S.I., &c.),
6 th January 1911.
“ . . . . As a through line connecting India and Europe, the proposal
has no claim to any merit from the Indian commercial point of view. The
possibility of goods traffic being carried by the line between England and
India is quite out of the question.
“ The difference in length between the rail and sea route to India, taking
Karachi as a centre, will be very small, and the sea route will always be by
far the cheaper in cost of transport of goods, besides being more convenient
and also shorter to places in the south of India ....
“ In regard to passenger traffic between England and India, the practical
effect of the building of the railway will probably be that steamer fares will
be reduced and they will still retain the traffic. Further, passenger traffic
between Europe generally and India must be small ....
“ . . . . As a railway proposition .... it is not a scheme
which one could recommend the Government of India to have anything to
do with from the financial point of view ; but the line is one of quite an
unusual character, and it has to be considered from other points than those
affecting railway finance ....
“ That North Persia will be opened out by a railway which will either
be international or Russian seems certain, and what India has now to do is
to take advantage of the present position to consolidate itself in Southern
Persia. The course indicated seems clear, and it is to welcome cordially the
proposed through line as an international railway and to agree at once to
make as part of the Indian Railway system a line from Nushki to some point
in Seistan which is suitable for a junction with the international railway.
“ The ready acceptance by India of the international scheme would be
a useful card in the direction of counteracting the negotiations now in
progress between Russia and Germany, which may lead to Northern Persia
being opened out by a Russian railway with the same objects as were in
mind when the Manchurian line was constructed to Port Arthur . . . .”
S. 192.
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