‘Confidential. Persia’ [‎513v] (76/112)

73
breach of the peace. They had quite recently been
somewhat alarmed by hearing that a considerable
Afghan force bad been concentrated at a point not
far distant from the Persian frontier, and His
Excellency told me that he had been instructed to
say that the Russian Government ‘ ne saurait se
prdter a une modification do la ligne de frontiere
combinee avec TAngleterre en 1872/
“ I gathered from his answer to a question which
I put him, that the line to which he referred was
that laid down by General Goldsmid about the
time referred to.
“I told His Excellency that we too bad heard
of the alleged Afghan concentration, and that the
Government of India has taken steps to dis
courage it. I could not, howevei*, see that the
matter in any way concerned Russia. The delimita
tion of the frontier to which His Excellency had
referred was made under the provisions of the
Treaty of 1857 between Great Britain and Persia,
and, so far as I was aware, Russia was not in any
way a party to the arrangement.
“ Count Benckendorff asked me whether there
was not a despatch of Lord Granville's upon which
probably the Russian Government relied; but ho
was quite unable to supply me with particulars of
the despatch in question.
tl I said that I was quite unaware of such a
despatch, and I could not help remarking that
these manifestations of the desire of Russia to
intervene one day in Tibet and the next in Seistan
were of a nature to afford us serious food for
reflection. What, I asked, did they signify, were
we to assume that Russia claimed throughout the
Asiatic continent a kind of “ over-lorcMiip/' in
virtue of which she thought herself called upon to
raise these points in regions remote from her own
possessions and in which she had apparently no
concern ?
“Count Benckendorff ridiculed the idea that
Russia had any such pretensions, and told me that
be would make further enquiries as to the grounds
upon which the Russian Government conceived
that they had an interest in this particular question.
“ I said that, in my humble opinion, they had
no locus standi whatever, but that I would too
make it my business to ascertain whether there
was in the archives of the Foreign Office any
evidence which could be held to support His Ex
cellency’s contention. Later in the afternoon I
addressed to His Excellency a note running as
follows
“ I cannot find in our archives any documents
which can be regarded as giving the Russian Gov
ernment a right of intervention in the matter of
the arbitration now proceeding in Seistan as to the
claims of the Persians and Afghans to the use of
the waters of the River Helmand.
“ The British and Russian Governments have,
it is true, on more than one occasion agreed to
respect the integrity of Persia, and there is a
despatch from Lord Granville to Lord Augustus
Loftus of the 10th July 1873, in which he records
a conversation with Count Brunnow on this point.
“ It can, however, scarcely be contended that an
arbitration for the purpose of settling a local
dispute as to water rights can be regarded as affect
ing the general principle of the integrity of Persia,
or that such assurances as those given by Lord
Granville in any way derogate from the right of