RUSSIA AND AFGHANISTAN 485

boundary-line and the border of India proper the terri- tory is ruled by the Afghan Amir, went for nothing; the Anglo-Indian frontier is always commensurate with its responsibilities for protection. Taking, therefore, this view of the operation of the British system of protectorates, it is worth while to survey the immense sweep of the radius which describes the outer circumference of England's Asiatic frontier. For those who may apprehend that it has been pushed too far and too fast, there is, at any rate, the reassur- ing condition that it can hardly go farther; after more than a century's continuous expansion it must now come to a standstill, because it has at last struck west- ward and eastward against hard ground; that is, it has met in both directions the solid resistance of an- other well-organized state. When this point is reached, the moving and fluctuating border-lines at once begin to fix and harden; the protectorates settle down into orderly dependencies; disputes fall under the cogni- zance of regular diplomacy; and questions of war or peace become the concern of civilized governments. The Indian Empire and its allies or feudatories now occupy virtually the whole area of southern Asia that lies between Russia and China, on a line drawn from the Oxus in the northwest down to the Mekong River in the southeast. On the northwest, where the prox- imity of Russia inevitably suggests special precautions, the line of advance from Central Asia into India is barricaded by protectorates, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and the petty states beyond Kashmir up to