Lytton &apos;s telegram announcing his intentions reached the India office on 9 September : Cranbrook was not at this time in London : he was at Braemore in the north of Scotland . he received his copy of the telegram on the 12th . meanwhile Horace Walpole , his private secretary , a permanent civil servant , who was suspicious of Lytton &apos;s policies , had read Lytton &apos;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 . 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 . the effect on both of them , and on Cranbrook when he read it , was immediate . 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 . 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 . the cabinet , however , could not meet . its members were scattered over the country houses of England and Scotland . it was clear , from Lytton &apos;s telegram , that he did not know of the diplomatic protest to St Petersburg and did not intend to wait for a Russian answer . 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 . the effects of such a war would be felt not only in Europe , but also in the constituencies . less than a week later the prime minister was noticing symptoms &amp;hellip; by no means confined to one party of a strong and rising feeling respecting this Afghan business . so long , he told Salisbury , as the country thought they had obtained peace with honor , 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 . and his conclusion was not that Lytton should make the pace but that Salisbury himself , in Cranbrook &apos;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 . 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 &apos;s mission until a reply had arrived from St Petersburg . so long as it was imagined that Lytton knew his limitations , Salisbury seems to have attached little importance to the protest . but as soon as it seemed that Lytton might be steering towards war , it comes forward from the back of Salisbury &apos;s mind as an occasion , or excuse , for delaying Lytton &apos;s action in India : 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 . 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 . 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 . Cranbrook , meanwhile , feeling the same way in Scotland , had sent a telegram to Walpole forbidding the departure of the mission until further orders . on the 14th , two days before Chamberlain was supposed to start , this message was in Lytton &apos;s hands . when Lytton received the telegram , however , he was in no mood to delay . the events he had set on foot in August could not now be controlled . Chamberlain was already in Peshawar ; Cavagnari had committed himself in the Khyber : 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 . his information about the state of opinion in England came mainly through Burne in the India office . Burne had been Lytton &apos;s private secretary in India until he returned to England with a sick wife in the spring of 1878 . 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 . by the middle of August he had spent , out of Lytton &apos;s pocket , &amp;pound;197 on private telegrams . Burne was not altogether a reliable guide . from his telegrams Lytton gathered , what was only half true , that there was much support for him in Afghan matters . he learnt from Burne &apos;s letters , also , what he thought he knew himself , that Cranbrook was too much under Salisbury &apos;s thumb , was lazy , well-meaning , and timid . nor did he believe , or imagine anyone else seriously to believe , that the protest to St Petersburg would achieve any result . 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 . these things encouraged him to disobey . 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 &apos;s instructions until the Russian reply arrived in London . on the 17th , Lytton heard that an abstract of this reply had been received from Plunkett , the charg&amp;eacute; d&apos;affaires in St Petersburg : he heard also that it was not satisfactory . but he was given no authority to send the mission off and no authority had arrived on the morning of the 21st . on the 16th he had , in accordance with Cranbrook &apos;s telegram of the 13th , postponed Chamberlain &apos;s departure from Peshawar for five days . on the 20th , he ordered Chamberlain to move forward to Jamrud : on the 21st , these five days having passed , he told him to enter Afghanistan . in sending Chamberlain forward in this way , Lytton did not wish to provoke war . he had written a friendly , though overbearing , letter to Sher Ali on the 14th asking again for his cooperation . 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 . 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 . 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 . Chamberlain had not wanted to go forward to Jamrud to ask for entry into Afghanistan . he , a great frontier officer with the great frontier officer &apos;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 . 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 . but for Lytton this was not enough . this was a spectacular moment . this was Sher Ali &apos;s last chance . a great public affront , one of India &apos;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 . Chamberlain was chosen because he was , of active Indian frontier statesmen , the greatest pupil of Lord Lawrence . Lawrence , the greatest name amongst Lytton &apos;s critics , had attacked Lytton &apos;s frontier policy with mounting hostility ever since he arrived in India . if a Lawrentian of Chamberlain &apos;s importance were snubbed by the Afghans , Lawrence would have an important weapon removed from his critical armoury . so Lytton in India , like Beaconsfield and Salisbury in London , continued his political posturings . Chamberlain moved from Peshawar to Jamrud on 20 September . on the following morning he sent Cavagnari and Colonel Jenkins , the commander of the mission &apos;s escort , together with a small section of the escort , on to Ali Musjid to ask for admission to Afghanistan . they were halted by Afghan troops a mile from the fort and forbidden to come closer . Faiz Mohamed , the commander of the garrison ( whom Cavagnari knew well ) , asked Cavagnari to give him time to refer the request to Kabul . Cavagnari refused . he said that unless Faiz Mohamed specifically forbade the mission to advance , it would advance on the following morning . Faiz Mohamed replied that he would attack the mission if it attempted to pass Ali Musjid . Cavagnari and Jenkins thereupon returned to Jamrud and reported their failure to Chamberlain . Chamberlain reported the failure to Lytton : and Lytton , from Simla , ordered Chamberlain to return to Peshawar . so ended , he thought , the first round of the rubber . he could now prepare to coerce Sher Ali . with the repulse of the mission , Lytton &apos;s actions on the frontier became clear and vigorous : Sher Ali had shown himself to be hostile : of that in Lytton &apos;s mind there could be no doubt . he must be upset : his treachery demanded his downfall . to that end all the forces of the government of India must be turned . the problem , in this respect , was a problem in political warfare , how may one best upset an inconvenient neighbour ? also , how may one with the smallest expenditure of energy establish a new r&amp;eacute;gime in Kabul ? 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 . 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 . 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.C.B mania , to collect a large force on the Indian frontier . having manufactured the situation , Lytton would manage with the smallest force possible . 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 . 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 : but was restrained because the cabinet regarded this as tantamount to a declaration of war . he felt that he should send a force to the assistance of the Khyber tribesmen who helped to escort Chamberlain &apos;s mission . the cabinet made it clear that he must not advance beyond Ali Musjid because that too would seem to imply war . 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 &apos;s disfavour . from Kabul , however , there was no sign of weakness : the emir remained firm and unpoisoned ; and he replied unhelpfully and ( it seemed to Lytton &apos;s orientalists ) insolently to Lytton &apos;s letter of 14 September . 