"مسألة الشرق الأوسط أو بعض المشكلات السياسية المتعلقة بدفاع الهند" [و‎‎١‎٩‎٢] (٦١٦/٣٨٨)

THE LIMITS OF OUR ZONE 307
nised by our Indian military authorities, has been
added the commercial importance of a new trade route
which promises results of increasing value.
1 hese are some of the most obvious considerations
which should serve to determine the zone within which
our influence might be made a living force, by a
systematic co-ordination and concentration of its con
stituent elements. It should certainly not be unduly
expanded. From the strategetical point of view, as
far as the defence of India itself is concerned, would
a line drawn from Seistan to the Persian Gulf so as
to include Kerman and Bunder Abbas constitute the
irreducible minimum ? Or would it be necessary, for
the effective protection of our commercial and political
interests and of our supremacy throughout the Gulf,
that a broader line should be drawn, for instance, from
Seistan across to the valley of the Karun river, to the
north of Yezd and Isfahan and over the Bakhtiari
mountains? It would be rash to attempt to prejudge
these points. I hey require the careful study of military
and naval experts, and we must be mindful to cut our
coat according to our cloth. At the same time we must
not allow the difficulties and risks which clearly attach
to any active policy to blind us to the still greater
difficulties and risks which mere inaction must ultimately
involve. Within the regions where we have no very
important material interests to guard, and where the
ascendency of a great military power need not im
mediately or appreciably react upon the safety of India,
we are certainly not called upon to be more Persian
than the Persians, or to adopt an attitude of gratuitous
opposition to Russia. But in the East and the South
of Persia there are regions in which the presence of
Russia, or, for the matter of that, if it were conceivable,