'Seistan' [‎373r] (747/782)

great value to any Power contemplating either a move against that country, or
an advance upon Kandahar. Nor will it he denied that the Kandahar-Herat
line could not he held with safety by India, nor the valley of the Helmand
defended, were a hostile Power in possession of Seistan. Furthermore, the grain-
producing capabilities of the district, to the bygone richness of which eloquent
testimony is borne by the immense number of ruined cities encumbering the
soil, and which could without serious difficulty he revived by a scientific employ
ment of the waters of the Helmand, render Seistan of much value, as a possible
granary, either to a Power engaged upon a forward advance, or to a Power
interested in commercial and industrial expansion.
13. The force of these circumstances has, it will have been observed, com
pelled the Government of India to display a concern in Seistan, which, at the start,
they were most reluctant to acknowledge, and which, at varying intervals since,
they have, with unconscious inconsistency, affected to repudiate. I have already
cited the reply returned to Colonel Yate in 1894. Between 1894 and 1898
the Nushki-Seistan trade route was, with the sanction and upon the encourage
ment of the Secretary of State, deliberately opened by the Government of
India; a Political Officer was appointed to administer the district between
Nushki and the Persian border; officers were repeatedly despatched to report
upon the country and to evince an interest in its fortunes. And yet as recently
as August 10th, 1898, the Government of India in writing to the Secretary of
State referred to the apprehensions of Lord Hufferin’s Government in 1887 that
“ activity in the direction of Seistan might lead to a forward move on the part of
Russia”; and gave it as their opinion that c< premature activity w T as likely to
prevent or postpone the future success of the new route from Quetta to Seistan”.
14. I am quite unable to understand either the force of this logic or the
consistency of this conduct. The cautious and, in its motive, praiseworthy
abstention of the Government of India from displaying any interest in Seistan,
did not for one moment affect the designs, or retard the advance of Russia in
that direction. Russian news-writers were firmly established in the district
before anything more than a casual visit had been paid by a British officer.
While members of the Government of India were writing notes to show that, if
even a caravan route were opened from Quetta in the direction of Seistan,
the Russians would extend their trans-Caspian Railway southwards, the
latter were already at work, laying their rails from Merv to the Kushk post,
and preparing the plant for an ultimate extension to Herat. Sir M. Durand,
in a paragraph of his recent despatch, has exposed the hollowness of this
plea; and I venture to hope that it may not figure again in our reasoning.
15. Similarly, I am unable to comprehend how—the trade route having
been deliberately opened—any activity in developing it can either be premature,
or can possibly prevent or postpone hopes which the trade route itself has
been called into existence to realise, and which, without it, would have had no
being. Either the Nushki-Seistan trade route is a bona-fide enterprise, upon
which we have designedly embarked, in the main, because of its commercial
possibilities, but also not without an eye to the extreme political importance
of Seistan; or it is a fortuitous and foolish experiment, not likely or intended
to succeed. In the latter case let us be wise and drop it. In the former let us
be honest, and make the best job of it that we can.
16. I have no hesitation in recommending the last named course: and I
do so, not because I am carried away by the gratifying, though modest, achieve
ments of the new trade route up to date, nor because I contemplate for it an
early and brilliant success. On the contrary I regard the obstacles and difficul
ties as considerable; and, knowing the traditional conservatism of the East, I
recognise that commerce wdll not readily be diverted into a new, and, at first
sight, somewhat unattractive channel. But I urge a strenuous continuation of
the venture, with an eye to a twofold contingency, political and commercial,
in the future.
17. In the first place if we do not continue to show an active interest in
Seistan, Russia will. If we do not give the impression there of preponderant