England insisted as a preliminary to all discussion of peace proposals that the Russians should vacate absolutely all the territory of Afghanistan, and retire to the previously deliminated frontier. The services which England had rendered to the Alliance, even as they appear on the surface of the story, were sufficiently considerable. The original purpose of Russia had been to attack Bulgaria. Thanks to the facility with which her fleet had cut the communications of the Russian Army that landed there, and had limited the force which Russia was able to employ, it had fallen to the lot of the English to do what no other army could have done with equal facility, that is, render the necessary assistance to the Bulgarians, occupied as they had been by the Macedonian troubles. The facilities for striking right and left presented by the command of the sea has enabled her to deliver the second deadly blow in combination with the Turkish army in Asia Minor.

But, apart from the enormous general value which England’s command of the sea conferred upon the Central Alliance, these were by no means the only or the most important services which England had directly rendered towards strengthening the land forces of the Continental powers. Up to the time of the battle of Sardinia it would have been impossible for the Italian army to advance against France at all. Her whole coast line, without the defence of the English fleet, would have been at the mercy, not only of the French Fleet, but of an expeditionary force of the French Army; and the Italian Army, in order to be able to meet such an attack wherever it might be made, must be all kept at home. Now, at the critical moment, when Germany was hurrying up every man that she could to the frontier to check the advance of the victorious French, it was precisely the fact that the whole Italian Army was available to join her in moving against France, which created that excess of force that France was not able to resist.

Moreover, it gradually came to be known that, without being aware of it at the time, the English Fleet in the Baltic had conferred another all-important service upon Germany on land as much as at sea. It appeared that the object with which the French and Russian fleets were endeavouring to clear the Baltic of all German men-of-war was twofold. In the first place, if they had succeeded, the Russian Fleet was intended to co-operate with the Russian Army advancing from Kovno in an attack upon the German defences on the Baltic—Memel, KÖnigsberg, and Dantzig. But this was not all. There was a considerable Russian force available at the beginning of the war for which it was impossible to provide transport and supplies towards the German frontier. This had been gathered along the Baltic ports of Russia, with a view to its being transported into Denmark. The Danish Army had been gathered along the fortified frontier of the kingdom, Denmark having declared herself neutral in the struggle. As soon as the Russian force had landed and advanced towards the frontier, the Danish Army would have joined the Russian. At an opportune moment a declaration would have been issued simultaneously by France and Russia, setting forth the wrongs which Germany had inflicted upon Denmark, and declaring that Russia and France were resolved to see justice done her. A French expeditionary force formed of troops which could not, in the blocked condition or the railways (already filled with ample numbers of troops and stores), be transported from west to east of France, had gathered in the western ports. This was to be transported as rapidly as possible to reinforce the Russo-Danish Army. Thus, a large army would have been collected within the frontiers of Denmark, where it would be completely in rear of the general line of German defence along the frontier. It might even threaten, at a time when the German forces were pushed out east and west, to move upon the unguarded capital of Berlin; or at least to break up and destroy railways and telegraphs essential to the forces gathered on the French frontier. All these dangers had been removed by the action of the English Fleet, which, when joining the German in the Baltic, had given command to the Central Allies of the sea communications.

Under these circumstances it was not difficult for the English Government to insist that, as a preliminary to all discussion of peace negotiations, every Russian soldier should evacuate the territories of Afghanistan. If the Indian bazaars had been fluttered by the temporary advance of the Russian Army to Herat, the compensation was ample. The ignominious withdrawal of the Russian Army was not the less effective because it was in exact accordance with the proclamation which had been made at home and in India, at the beginning of the war. Nor did it tell less on the native mind, because two English officers had alone appeared to be directly opposed to the might of Russia; while the whole English Army along the frontier had remained intact, and had not had occasion to put forth its strength.