Lytton's telegram announcing his intentions reached the India Office on 9 September :sx Cranbrook was not at this time in London :sx he was at Braemore in the north of Scotland .sx He received his copy of the telegram on the 12th .sx Meanwhile Horace Walpole , his private secretary , a permanent civil servant , who was suspicious of Lytton's policies , had read Lytton's telegram , noticed that it proposed to send the mission off from Peshawar in less than a week , and decided that the telegram ought to be answered .sx He , therefore , at the same time as he sent Cranbrook his copy of the telegram , sent also a copy to Beaconsfield at Hughenden and one to Salisbury at the Foreign Office .sx The effect on both of them , and on Cranbrook when he read it , was immediate .sx To all of them it seemed that the proposal to insist on the expulsion of the Russian mission before the beginning of Anglo-Afghan negotiations would be 'an affront which a great power could not endure' .sx It would intensify Russian activity in Afghanistan ; it would bring the Russian government into direct conflict with the government of India ; it would endanger peace in Europe and it must , therefore , before it was attempted , be considered very fully by the Cabinet .sx The Cabinet , however , could not meet .sx Its members were scattered over the country houses of England and Scotland .sx It was clear , from Lytton's telegram , that he did not know of the diplomatic protest to St. Petersburg and did not intend to wait for a Russian answer .sx The impression made by the telegram , as Horace Walpole found when he visited Salisbury on the morning of the 11th , was the thought that ~'Lord Lytton [was] going a little too fast and plunging us into an Afghan war' .sx The effects of such a war would be felt not only in Europe , but also in the constituencies .sx Less than a week later the prime minister was noticing 'symptoms .sx . by no means confined to one party' of a 'strong and rising feeling respecting this Afghan business' .sx 'So long' , he told Salisbury , 'as the country thought they had obtained " Peace with " , the conduct of H.M. Government was popular , but if the country finds there is no peace , they will be apt also to conclude there is no honour' .sx And his conclusion was not that Lytton should make the pace but that Salisbury himself , in Cranbrook's absence , should make sure that Lytton was properly informed of the views of a Government that would need to act 'with decision and firmness' .sx It is , as we have seen , by no means clear that the decision to send the diplomatic protest to Russia on 19 August had been accompanied by a decision to delay Chamberlain's mission until a reply had arrived from St. Petersburg .sx So long as it was imagined that Lytton knew his limitations , Salisbury seems to have attached little importance to the protest .sx But as soon as it seemed that Lytton might be steering towards war , it comes forward from the back of Salisbury's mind as an occasion , or excuse , for delaying Lytton's action in India :sx and as a move in the parliamentary game which would , when the time comes , show that the British government had done its best to avoid war and accomplish by peaceful diplomacy what Afghan or Russian obstinacy had made impossible .sx Beaconsfield , as soon as he saw the telegram of 8 September and had talked to Salisbury , wrote tartly to Cranbrook regretting that Lytton seemed not to know of the protest .sx Salisbury , on the 11th , after correspondence with Beaconsfield , telegraphed Horace Walpole to ask Cranbrook urgently for authority to stop Lytton sending the mission until the Russian reply had arrived .sx Cranbrook , meanwhile , feeling the same way in Scotland , had sent a telegram to Walpole forbidding the departure of the mission until further orders .sx On the 14th , two days before Chamberlain was supposed to start , this message was in Lytton's hands .sx When Lytton received the telegram , however , he was in no mood to delay .sx The events he had set on foot in August could not now be controlled .sx Chamberlain was already in Peshawar ; Cavagnari had committed himself in the Khyber :sx the native ambassador had left for Kabul and the wide publicity Lytton had given to the mission through his private press officer in India , made it difficult to give the slightest sign of turning back .sx His information about the state of opinion in England came mainly through Burne in the India Office .sx Burne had been Lytton's private secretary in India until he returned to England with a sick wife in the spring of 1878 .sx When his wife died and he returned to work at the India Office , he spent much time and money providing Lytton with telegraphic reports of the state of feeling in England and of conditions in the India Office .sx By the middle of August he had spent , out of Lytton's pocket , +197 on private telegrams .sx Burne was not altogether a reliable guide .sx From his telegrams Lytton gathered , what was only half true , that there was much support for him in Afghan matters .sx He learnt from Burne's letters , also , what he thought he knew himself , that Cranbrook was too much under Salisbury's thumb , was lazy , well-meaning , and 'timid' .sx Nor did he believe , or imagine anyone else seriously to believe , that the protest to St. Petersburg would achieve any result .sx Finally , perhaps most important of all , he knew that Cranbrook was not in London when the restraining telegrams were sent and he saw in them the influence , not altogether friendly and certainly not at all sensible , of Lord Salisbury .sx These things encouraged him to disobey .sx On the 13th , together with the telegram in which he was first told about the protest to St. Petersburg , Lytton also received one to say that Cranbrook would not send detailed approval and modification of Chamberlain's instructions until the Russian reply arrived in London .sx On the 17th , Lytton heard that an abstract of this reply had been received from Plunkett , the 6charge@2 d'affaires in St. Petersburg :sx he heard also that it was not satisfactory .sx But he was given no authority to send the mission off and no authority had arrived on the morning of the 21st .sx On the 16th he had , in accordance with Cranbrook's telegram of the 13th , postponed Chamberlain's departure from Peshawar for five days .sx On the 20th , he ordered Chamberlain to move forward to Jamrud :sx on the 21st , these five days having passed , he told him to enter Afghanistan .sx In sending Chamberlain forward in this way , Lytton did not wish to provoke war .sx He had written a friendly , though overbearing , letter to Sher Ali on the 14th asking again for his cooperation .sx He did not suppose that Sher Ali would refuse to admit the mission ; and he hoped that Chamberlain would , within a week , be established in Kabul .sx His purpose in forcing the pace was therefore not so much to commit the cabinet to a policy of which it did not approve , as to achieve , by rapid action on the spot , a success which he supposed the Cabinet to desire but which , because it was hampered by all the stupidities of 'democratic' England , and wrestling in the clutches of 'that deformed and abortive offspring of perennial political fornication , the present British constitution' , it could not easily authorize or agree upon .sx At the same time , the publicity with which the mission was sent to Jamrud , gave to its conduct an appearance of deliberate finality which was no accident .sx Chamberlain had not wanted to go forward to Jamrud to ask for entry into Afghanistan .sx He , a great frontier officer with the great frontier officer's personal prestige , did not want to risk a snubbing at the Afghan frontier which would affect that prestige whatever might be done afterwards to avenge it .sx He would have preferred to find out from Peshawar whether his mission would be admitted ; and , if it were refused , to take whatever action might be necessary from there .sx But for Lytton this was not enough .sx This was a spectacular moment .sx This was Sher Ali's last chance .sx A great public affront , one of India's greatest frontier officers , waiting on the Afghan border and turned away by the commander of an outlying Afghan post- this , if Sher Ali were really hostile , must certainly convince the Cabinet , and might even impress the Opposition .sx Chamberlain was chosen because he was , of active Indian frontier statesmen , the greatest pupil of Lord Lawrence .sx Lawrence , the greatest name amongst Lytton's critics , had attacked Lytton's frontier policy with mounting hostility ever since he arrived in India .sx If a lawrentian of Chamberlain's importance were snubbed by the Afghans , Lawrence would have an important weapon removed from his critical armoury .sx So Lytton in India , like Beaconsfield and Salisbury in London , continued his political posturings .sx Chamberlain moved from Peshawar to Jamrud on 20 September .sx On the following morning he sent Cavagnari and Colonel Jenkins , the commander of the mission's escort , together with a small section of the escort , on to Ali Musjid to ask for admission to Afghanistan .sx They were halted by Afghan troops a mile from the fort and forbidden to come closer .sx Faiz Mohamed , the commander of the garrison ( whom Cavagnari knew well ) , asked Cavagnari to give him time to refer the request to Kabul .sx Cavagnari refused .sx He said that unless Faiz Mohamed specifically forbade the mission to advance , it would advance on the following morning .sx Faiz Mohamed replied that he would attack the mission if it attempted to pass Ali Musjid .sx Cavagnari and Jenkins thereupon returned to Jamrud and reported their failure to Chamberlain .sx Chamberlain reported the failure to Lytton :sx and Lytton , from Simla , ordered Chamberlain to return to Peshawar .sx So ended , he thought , the 'first round of the rubber' .sx He could now prepare to coerce Sher Ali .sx With the repulse of the mission , Lytton's actions on the frontier became clear and vigorous :sx Sher Ali had shown himself to be hostile :sx of that in Lytton's mind there could be no doubt .sx He must be upset :sx his treachery demanded his downfall .sx To that end all the forces of the government of India must be turned .sx The problem , in this respect , was a problem in political warfare , how may one best upset an inconvenient neighbour ?sx Also , how may one with the smallest expenditure of energy establish a new re@2gime in Kabul ?sx Lytton was not a soldier ; he was a diplomat who had spent the better part of his professional life in comparatively junior positions in civilized capitals .sx He had an almost vicious contempt for military 'bumpkins' when they could not understand that large political objects may often best be accomplished by employing a small military force .sx If he could arrange the deposition of Sher Ali without fighting a battle , could see an anglophile emir settled on the throne and could make a treaty with him , then it would be the merest professional obstinacy , an aspect of the 'K .sx C.B. mania' , to collect a large force on the Indian frontier .sx Having manufactured the situation , Lytton would manage with the smallest force possible .sx After 23 September , therefore , he pushed forward his preparations , stationed troops in the cantonments of Thal , Sukkur and Peshawar and watched for the flight and departure of the emir .sx He prepared , in the last week of September , to issue a proclamation calling on the Afghan people to rise against the enemy of the Indian government :sx but was restrained because the Cabinet regarded this as tantamount to a declaration of war .sx He felt that he should send a force to the assistance of the Khyber tribesmen who helped to escort Chamberlain's mission .sx The Cabinet made it clear that he must not advance beyond Ali Musjid because that too would seem to imply war .sx But he did not , at any time during September or October , cease to hope that Sher Ali might fall spontaneously by the mere expression of Lytton's disfavour .sx From Kabul , however , there was no sign of weakness :sx the emir remained firm and unpoisoned ; and he replied unhelpfully and ( it seemed to Lytton's orientalists ) insolently to Lytton's letter of 14 September .sx