'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎239] (274/714)

THE SEISTAX QUESTION
239
and the children's children of its present inhabitants may live to hear
the railway whistle echoing over their now desert wastes. 1
On the other hand, the children's children, who are probably by
now beginning to be born, may live and die too without hearing it
at all; and for this reason. A railway down the Helmnnd means
a railway in Afghanistan ; and as the Amir of that country has not
yet been persuaded to allow a yard of rails to be laid in his do
minions, and as, were such permission forthcoming, other and more
important schemes would probably be first undertaken, the grand
children in the Garmsel may perhaps after all not hear the whistle
in their time.
But there remains another line of advance, shorter because more
direct, and free from the above impediment, because it need not
Nushki- run t]irou & rh Afghanistan at all. It must be remembered
Seistan that the Pishin Railway system of Great Britain has now
been pushed forward to a point on the northern face of the
Khwajah Amran range, that that range has been pierced by a tunnel,
and that the present terminus, Chaman, is on the open plain, less
than seventy miles distant from I\andahar. Now a line drawn
from this frontier railway, whether at its termination or at some
point short of Chaman, to Seistan, will be found to pass through
Beluchi—i.e. allied territory solely, and according to the spot at
which it strikes the Helmund valley, so would its transit of the
desert be extended or abridged. The point of deviation usually
suggested is that of Nushki, from which to the Sind-Pishin Railway
at Chaman is less than one hundred miles, at Quetta less than
ninety, and at Darwaza less than eighty. Across the desert from
Xushki to the Helmund no physical obstacles are encountered,
i rom the engineer's point of view the difficulties to be confronted
would not be comparable with those so easily overcome by General
Annenkoff.
We can conceive, without anticipating, a condition of affairs
under which there need be no rivalry between the Afghan and the
Future Beluchi routes, but which would admit of the best line
rf Afghan- being followed, through whichever territory it ran; and
that would be the free acceptance by Afghanistan of a
British protectorate. By some this step has been recommended
as the only logical corollary, as assuredly it would be the most
1 From the Indus to the Tigris, pp. 205-206.