coat-trailing

The Peshawar agent will often be an ambitious man "in a hurry," in which case he will push the forward policy, and amongst future Viceroys Aucklands, Lyttons, Lansdownes, and Elgins will be more frequent than Lawrences and Curzons, and then we shall have complications, coat-trailings, warlike movements, perhaps even wars, and they mean, as was the case through the 'nineties, extravagance trans-Indus, and crippling retrenchments or tax enhancements cis-Indus.