In spite of these persistent endeavours to establish friendly relations with Kabul there is little reason to believe that Habib Ullah offered any encouragement to the Russian frontier officers. Inveterate suspicion of foreign influence characterises every aspect of his external policy and Russia and Great Britain are made to feel impartially the effect of this attitude. Abdur Rahman accepted the good faith of the Indian Government unquestioningly and understood his northern neighbour sufficiently to realise that it was less a wish for the friendship of Afghanistan than a desire to pin-prick India which prompted her overtures. Habib Ullah has yet to learn how to stand where his father strode with perfect confidence, a foolish mistrust sapping the strength of the son. Under a less skilful statesman than Lord Curzon it is conceivable that the patience of the Government of India would long since have been exhausted. That exceptional familiarity with the affairs of Asia, which preeminently distinguishes the late Viceroy, enabling him to tread Oriental labyrinths with wise discrimination, permitted him upon this occasion to bridge once more a crisis between Afghanistan and India. Almost in defiance of Kabul obstruction, he proceeded to the solution of difficulties which did not require any personal discussion with a refractory potentate. Early in the winter of 1903-04, the Government of India took up for consideration those sections of the Afghan boundary which, ever since the withdrawal of the Udny Mission eight years previously, had required demarcation. Surprised into ruffled acquiescence, the Amir in January 1904 began to make extensive preparations for a meeting between Major Roos-Keppel, the chief of the British Commission, and his own representative. Through the brief absence of Lord Curzon from the helm of state, the vacillation of the Amir precipitated a collapse of these plans at the last moment. Wilfully stupid, too, only a little later—in July 1904—was Habib Ullah’s order to Nasr Ullah Khan to select twenty-four officers who were to be detailed as envoys to England, France, Germany, Russia, Persia, China, Japan, Turkey and Egypt in the Old World, and America in the New World.

If the break-down in the negotiations anent the Mohmand boundary had increased the tension between Kabul and Calcutta, it was certainly impossible to tolerate this more direct perversion of the principles out of which the fabric of our relations with Afghanistan had been woven. Concerned at the rupture which was threatening between India and Afghanistan at a moment when Lord Curzon was absent from India and too timid to insist upon the Amir’s acceptance of the Viceroy’s invitation to a conference, the Imperial Government, as the only means of renewing the Agreements upon which they were set which remained to them, decided to despatch a Mission to Kabul. At the instance of the Secretary of State for India, Mr. St. John Brodrick, the acting Viceroy of India, Lord Ampthill, acquainted Habib Ullah with the wishes of His Majesty’s Government. In reply His Highness, with the hope of improving his position when the time came for diplomatic discussion and as an act of conciliation towards the Viceroy, intimated his willingness to send his son Inayat Ullah Khan—a charming, intelligent boy of sixteen and a remarkable instance of that youthful precocity which attains so abnormal a development in the Oriental—to meet Lord Curzon upon his return to India. However pressing may have been the questions outstanding between the Government of India and the Amir of Afghanistan, the visit of a British Mission to Kabul—no doubt desirable and in that sense opportune—was derogatory in a Government whose invitations to the head of the country, which it was proposed to honour in such an emphatic fashion, had been treated with contumacy. Lord Curzon’s opposition to the project is well-known; but with the exception of this distinguished statesman few were prepared for the unfortunate set back which the mission received. A grievous miscalculation undoubtedly was made. But the blunder, which determined its existence and brought about a complete miscarriage of Anglo-Indian policy, lay not so much in sending the mission as in His Majesty’s Government not having decided, if the Amir proved recalcitrant, how far and upon what ground the Cabinet should stand firm.

As constituted, the Mission comprised Mr., now Sir, Louis Dane, Foreign Secretary at Simla, Mr. H. R. Dobbs—who, together with Major Wanliss, had recently returned from replacing the boundary pillars on the Perso-Afghan border—Major W. Malleson, R.A., Captain Victor Brooke, 9th Lancers, and a British doctor. Leaving Peshawar on November 27, the mission reached Dakka on November 29, and was met at Lundi Khana by 200 Afghan cavalry under the Sipah Salar Ghulam Hussein, the Sarhang of Dakka, and Mahommed Hasan Khan. Major Roos-Keppel, political agent for the Khyber, accompanied the party for a few miles beyond Lundi Khana to Torkhana, where a guard of honour of the Khyber Rifles was drawn up, the mission ultimately arriving at Kabul on December 10. Elaborate gifts were conveyed by Mr. Dane for presentation to the Amir, among many others a £700 motor-car and several cases of sporting equipment. As a compliment to the ladies of the harem the Government of India thoughtfully included a cinematograph, providing at the same time the necessary operator. Among the presents to the Mission from his Highness were a gold watch and a set of gold cuff links which Habib Ullah had offered to Mr. Dane. The note struck by the negotiations was scarcely in the same pitch as the festivities by which the withdrawal of the Mission was celebrated, when seven gramophones simultaneously discharged bursts of discordant revelry. Nevertheless, the din of these instruments fell on the ears of those who had every cause to be relieved at the peaceful termination of their labours, since the clouds had hung low over Kabul throughout the Anglo-Afghan conferences of 1904-05.

This treaty comprised three clauses, but Habib Ullah, simulating annoyance at the terms of the clause which attempted to restrict the importation of arms, would not enter into any discussion over it. After the Mission had passed four months in the Afghan capital, the limit, to which the Amir of Afghanistan would permit himself to go, reproduced simply the formal renewal on both sides of the engagements entered into between Abdur Rahman, the late Amir of Afghanistan, and the Government of India.

It must not be supposed that the mere ratification of the engagements was sufficient for the purposes of British policy in Central Asia. Much more was needed; and, since facilities were deliberately withheld and the Amir rejected consideration of our pledged responsibility, it is evident that the subjugation of Afghanistan to the interests of India is incomplete. It is of value perhaps to have ascertained that the Amir is disaffected and untrustworthy. There was always a doubt but it was hoped that the affront, which he offered so sedulously to the British Government, was due to his own conspicuous vanity rather than the manifestation of actual ill-will. The Kabul conference made that point clear; but, as the Imperial Government have elected to observe an impressive reticence upon the circumstances of this unfortunate episode, it is no less incumbent upon others to do likewise. Nothing can be gained by revealing to the world the details of a rebuff without parallel in the history of Indian politics, unless such acknowledgment were made to assist public opinion in appreciating the issues involved in the absence of any satisfactory understanding between Kabul and Calcutta. That this course formed no part of the late Government’s policy was disclosed on June 21, 1905, by the debate in Parliament upon the Indian budget and, at a later date, upon Mr. Balfour’s speech on Imperial Defence. The Ministers, who spoke on these occasions, concealed the truth rather than stated it, and their utterances cannot be accepted as either correct or adequate. Mr. Balfour’s statement that the construction “of strategic railways by Russia in Afghanistan” would provoke Great Britain to war does not render the character of Anglo-Afghan policy more intelligible, nor remove the disadvantages from our position. On the contrary, the utterance was most misleading since no such contingency, as the construction of Russian railways in Afghanistan itself, is likely to occur until Russia is prepared to strike with all her strength in Persia and Afghanistan. The question of Anglo-Afghan relations, therefore, remains for solution, having given rise to a situation which was regarded by the late Viceroy and every member of his Council with the gravest apprehension.

[44] Funeral service.