t three nights each week.
Civil officers should discharge diplomatic duties, and military officers
the conduct of war. And the collection of information is one of the
most important of military duties. Our Pathan Sepoys, the Intelligence
Branch, and an enterprising cavalry, should obtain all the facts that
a general requires to use in his plans. At least the responsibility can
thus be definitely assigned.

On one point, however, I have no doubts. The political officers must be
under the control of the General directing the operations. There must be
no "Imperium in imperio." In a Field Force one man only can command--and
all in it must be under his authority. Differences, creating
difficulties and leading to disasters, will arise whenever the political
officers are empowered to make arrangements with the tribesmen, without
consulting and sometimes without even informing the man on whose
decisions the success of the war and the lives of the soldiers directly
depend.

The subject is a difficult one to discuss, without wounding the feelings
of those gallant men, who take all the risks of war, while the campaign
lasts, and, when it is over, live in equal peril of their lives among
the savage populations, whose dispositions they study, and whose tempers
they watch. I am glad to have done with it.

During the stay of the brigades in Bajaur, there had been several cases
of desertion among the Afridi Sepoys. On one occasion five men of the
24th Punjaub Infantry, who were out on picket, departed in a body, and
taking their arms with them set off towards Tirah and the Khyber Pass.
As I have recorded several instances of gallantry and conduct among the
Afridis and Pathans in our ranks, it is only fitting that the reverse
of the medal should be shown. The reader, who may be interested in
the characters of the subject races of the Empire, and of the native
soldiers, on whom so much depends, will perhaps pardon a somewhat long
digression on the subject of Pathans and Sikhs.

It should not be forgotten by those who make wholesale assertions of
treachery and untrustworthiness against the Afridi and Pathan soldiers,
that these men are placed in a very strange and false position. They are
asked to fight against their countrymen and co-religionists. On the
one side are accumulated all the forces of fanaticism, patriotism and
natural ties. On the other military associations stand alone. It is no
doubt a grievous thing to be false to an