- peror of India, but its conception was hopelessly
tardy. It had been broken a century ago when the East India Company was fretting about France, and Russia was bursting the barrier of the Caucasus Range to occupy the Trans-Caucasian bridge; for in any Constantinople-Kabul line, the Caucasus Range is a frontier as indispensable to the Government of India as the Hindu Kush itself.
Even at Constantinople, the accustomed rule of the British Embassy had been supplanted by the rising influence of the German Embassy. A formidable new German enemy was already moving in force along the roads to British India. Great Britian was losing ground both in Constantinople and in Persia, which had now become the most vulnerable spots in its very vulnerable Indian Empire. The Czar was on his way to become the ruler of the world, and the British Government surrendered. At the price of a heavy retreat in Persia, it purchased a truce with its Russian enemy and faced about to meet its new German enemy.
That truce with Russia was the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 which enabled King Edward to meet the Czar at Reval in 1908 to conclude the Anglo-Russian entente against Germany. Under the terms of this historic Treaty, Russia abandoned Afghanistan to the Government of India, and Persia was divided into three "zones of influence," the northern half of the country to Russia, most of the arid southern half a neutral zone, and a small triangle in south-east Persia to the Government of India, a triangle which was drawn to include all of Persia's open seaboard from Bunder Abbas to Baluchistan, including Chahbar, Gwatter Bay and any
