ders, arming themselves and
providing their own ammunition and equipment. In this way we give
honourable employment and secure an effective safeguard against raiders
without pouring more arms into tribal territory.

(4) We must have efficient irregular civil forces, militia, frontier
constabulary, and police, well paid and contented.

(5) We should revert to the old system of a separate frontier force in
the army, specially trained in the work of guarding the marches. Those
who remember the magnificent old Punjab frontier force will agree with
me in deploring its abolition in pursuance of a scheme of army
reorganisation.

(6) We should improve communications, telephones, telegraphs, and
lateral M.T. roads.

(7) We should give liberal rewards for the interception and destruction
of raiding gangs, and the rounding up of villages from which raids
emanate.

(8) We should admit that the Amir of Afghanistani for religious reasons
exercises a paramount influence over our tribes, and we should get him
to use that influence for the maintenance of peace on our common border.
It has been the practise of our statesmen to adopt the attitude that
because the Amir was by treaty precluded from interfering with our
tribes, therefore he must have nothing to do with them. This is a
short-sighted view. We found during the Great War the late Amir's
influence, particularly over the Mahsuds, of the greatest value, when he
agreed to use it on our behalf.

(9) Finally, there is a suggestion afoot that the settled districts of
the North-West Frontier Province should be re-amalgamated with the
Punjab. I have shown, I think, clearly, how inseparable are the problems
of the districts, the tribal area, and of Afghanistan; and any attempt
to place the districts under a separate control could only mean
friction, inefficiency, and disaster. The proposal is, indeed, little
short of administrative lunacy. There is, however, an underlying method
in the madness that has formulated it, namely, the self-interest of a
clever minority, which I need not now dissect. I trust that if this
proposal should go further it will be stoutly resisted.

AFGHANISTAN

Let me now turn to Afghanistan. Generally speaking, the story of our
dealings with that country has been a record of stupid, arrogant muddle.
From the days of the first Afghan war, when an ill-fated army was
despatched on its crazy mission to place a puppet king, Shah Shuja, on
the throne of Afgha