Less than a year before we had been on the point of declaring war with Russia because of her active interference with ’the authority of a sovereign—­our protected ally—­who had committed no offence[6];’ and even now it was not certain that peace could be preserved, by reason of the outrageous demands made by the Russian members of the Boundary Commission as to the direction which the line of delimitation between Russian and Afghan territory should take.

It was this widening of our responsibilities which prevented me from agreeing with the recommendations of the Defence Committee, for the majority of the members laid greater stress on the necessity for constructing numerous fortifications, than upon lines of communication, which I conceived to be of infinitely greater importance, as affording the means of bringing all the strategical points on the frontier into direct communication with the railway system of India, and enabling us to mass our troops rapidly, should we be called upon to aid Afghanistan in repelling attack from a foreign Power.

Fortifications, of the nature of entrenched positions, were no doubt, to some extent, necessary, not to guard against our immediate neighbours, for experience had taught us that without outside assistance they are incapable of a combined movement, but for the protection of such depots and storehouses as would have to be constructed, and as a support to the army in the field.

The line chosen at that time for an advance was by Quetta and Kandahar.  In the first instance, therefore, I wended my way to Baluchistan, where I met and consulted with the Governor-General’s Agent, Sir Robert Sandeman, and the Chief Engineer of the Sind-Pishin Railway, Brigadier-General Browne.[7]

We together inspected the Kwaja-Amran range, through which the Kohjak tunnel now runs, and I decided that the best position for an entrenched camp was to the rear of that range, in the space between the Takatu and Mashalik mountains.  This open ground was less than four miles broad; nature had made its flanks perfectly secure, and in front was a network of ravines capable of being made quite impassable by simply flooding them.  It was unfortunate that the railway had been marked out in front instead of in rear of the Takatu range, and that its construction was too far advanced before the question of defence came to be considered to admit of its being altered, otherwise this position would have been a complete protection for the line of rail also.

Having come to a definite conclusion as to the measures to be taken for meeting the offensive and defensive requirements of Quetta and the Bolan Pass, I turned my attention to Peshawar and the Khyber Pass, which were infinitely more difficult to deal with, because of the political considerations involved.