12 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE

expeditions into the tribal territory providing the necessary
exercise. The young, ambitious Army Officer regarded it
as an ideal " shooting preserve ", where untrammelled by
international conventions he could engage in a little fili-
bustering on his own to gain some military experience.
In fact a young army officer's training was not supposed
to be complete unless he had served a term of active duty
on the North-West Frontier. The Frontier Province was
the Political Department's Eldorado, its close preserve,
where everybody who was not of its freemasonry was a
trespasser and which " in the interval of peace offered to-
British officers a field of distinction when that of war is
(was) closed ".f

Thanks to the official secrecy with which this " veiled-
sanctuary of the Political and Military Officers " has been,
surrounded, till recently the average person even in India
had little knowledge of this fascinating region or its people,
their traditions and usages, hopes and aspirations and the
forces that made them what they were. To the average
Westerner, the Frontier Province was just the land with
the " highest murder rate in the world ", the witches'
cauldron where trouble was always brewing and its inha-
bitant, the Pathan, a predatory freebooter with " the law-
lessness of centuries in his blood ",* who had blood-feuds1
for his favourite pastime and raiding, kidnapping and
holding to ransom his victims as his main occupation
and means of livelihood. " Villain of the deepest dye,
treacherous, pitiless, vindictive, blood-thirsty " — these
are some of the epithets that have been applied to
him. Nobody seems to have paused to consider how, for
nearly a century he has been bullied and coerced and
deceived and used as a pawn in the game (of international
power politics). "His proud bearing and resolute step,
his martial instincts and independent spirit, his frank,
open manners and festive temperament, his hatred of

f Cited by Dewan Chand Obhrai in The Evolution of North-West
Frontier Province.
* Collin Davies: The Problem of the North-West Frontier, p, 80.