p. 23 | THE ANGLO-AFGHAN WAR

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 16, 1879

THE ANGLO-AFGHAN WAR.

Is there any justification in morals for this Afghanistan war? In the current number of the “Nineteenth Century,” Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, who very justly characterizes himself as an “old so-called Russo-phobist,” has an article on the war, which, next to Lord Beaconsfield’s frankly cynical speech in Parliament, affords the best defense which its advocates can furnish. The story is briefly that the Ameer of Afghanistan for years endeavored to cement a friendly alliance with Great Britain; his overtures were treated sometimes with decorous refusal, more often with contemptuous neglect, which finally succeeded in convincing him that Great Britain was fully capable of making use of him for a time, to further her own interests, only at the last to leave him in the lurch. When this state of mind had been sedulously cultivated and carefully made chronic, Great Britain changed her rules and therewith her methods, abandoned the laissez-faire policy, and coolly requested Shere Ali to give her absolute control of his foreign policy. He declined. Russia, or to speak more accurately, some Russians, were considering a scheme for threatening England’s Indian border, at the time when war between Russia and England was imminent; a scheme the execution of which was certainly never attempted, and which was probably “found to be altogether beyond Russia’s resources.” Whereupon, by way of quieting Shere Ali’s extraordinary suspicions, and convincing other Indian princes of the general justice and equity of her rule, Great Britain commenced this invasion, which even Gen. Rawlinson concedes was without justification “according to the international law of the West.” Not even Mr. Gladstone’s eloquent but fruitless appeal presents so strong an indictment against Great Britain’s treatment of the neighbor whose only crime was her unfortunate proximity to a Christian empire as this extraordinary defense. Ahab has taken Naboth’s vineyard because he imagined that Jehoshaphat across the border had an evil eye on it.—Christian Union, Jan. 1.