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Wm. H. Allen & Co., Printers, 13, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, S.W.

PREFACE.

ALL eyes in the East, as in the West, have long expected the struggle for supremacy between England and Russia. That struggle, if for a season deferred, still appears to be inevitable.

Every act in the great drama of war between Russia and Turkey has most powerfully affected the nations of Central Asia and agitated our north-west frontier in India. While in our peaceable and well-ordered possessions the call to arms against the Czar has excited the utmost enthusiasm.

The Seikh and the Gourka, the fiercest soldiers in Asia, to whom the din of battle is as the breath of their nostrils, vie in ardour with the Mussulman, who burns to avenge the wrongs of the Head of his faith. Even the Hindostanee, forgetting his caste restraints and prejudices, longs to strike a blow for those whose salt he

and his fathers have eaten in contentment and

peace.

In Northern India, the Punjaub and the border lands beyond, we have an inexhaustible field for recruiting men of fine physique whose trade is war, and accustomed to arms from childhood.

"There never was put forward a greater fallacy or an error more likely to be mischievous, than, that the Turkish question was of no importance in an Indian point of view." The grand problem now in course of solution in Turkey must affect in its results, whatever they may be, in the most immediate and powerful manner, our prestige and prosperity in India. Even during the Crimean campaign, the varying fortunes of the field elicited either the apprehension or the applause of the nations of the East, from the shepherd in his solitude to the warrior chief in his stronghold, while thousands of Moolahs prayed Allah to bless the arms of the "Sooltan of Room.”

When the fall of Sebastopol was announced at Dera Ismael Khan, on the Upper Indus, the news was received with the greatest enthusiasm by all classes. The bazaars of the city were brilliantly illuminated, every wealthy shopkeeper displaying from 1,000 to 1,200 lamps.

The native soldiers of India have not only fought the battles of the Empire in Persia, China

and Abyssinia, but the Sepoy of Bengal and Madras crossed bayonets with honour with the French in the Mauritius, while their brethren of Bombay were sent under Sir David Baird to encounter the same gallant enemy in Egypt, by Lord Wellesley, a Governor-General of India whose eagle-eyed and bold conceptions were at the time as much decried and cavilled at by lesser men as now we see decried and maligned the manly and good old English policy of the present Government in upholding the honour of the country and in protecting the rights of nations confirmed by treaties.

The policy of the Empire at this moment is resisted even by those whose experience and knowledge might have taught them that in the gravest crises of our time loyalty to the throne and love of country would be best evinced by a noble forbearance, if not a generous support, to Her Majesty's servants under such momentous circum

stances.

It is in vain to say India is not threatened, that the Suez Canal is safe. The canal-glorious work as it is can be easily injured, or even for a time destroyed. We want an alternative route to India, and, after having ignored for years the warnings of our leading statesmen and soldiers, are we to be told from Vienna that the best

alternative route is not only threatened but that if Russia gets possession of. "Batoum, which, in relation to the Upper Euphrates valley forms the first stage from a political, military and commercial point of view down to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf," the command of the best route to our Indian possessions would be in the hands of our rival for empire in the East?

It is certain if we decline to connect the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf, Russia will connect the Black Sea with the Persian Gulf. The nation desires peace, but the strong man must be armed to hold his goods in peace!

Is it too much to say that had the Persian Gulf been united with a port on the Mediterranean by the Euphrates Railway the Russo-Turkish war would not have occurred? When peace is

restored, it is to be hoped that our Government will come to an agreement with the Porte as to the Euphrates Railway on the basis recommended by the Select Committee of the House of Commons, presided over by Sir Stafford Northcote in 1872, and for the Euphrates telegraph, terms for which were arranged with Her Majesty's Government in 1857. The Porte however preferred a line through Asia Minor.

I cannot refrain from again calling attention

Vienna Correspondent of Times, 8th May, 1878.

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