Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

“ He did not merely ask questions in a perfunctory way, but took a genuinely keen interest in our proceedings. He warmly praised the conduct of the troops. He was well aware of the deeds, and even character, of individual officers, and he spoke most feelingly of the loss of Major Bretherton, of whose splendid work he was fully cognizant. It appeared to me that it was men, and not policies, which chiefly interested him: human personalities rather than abstract principles. He was himself, as all the world now knows, a generous personality; and not merely a great Sovereign, but a great man. ”

“ By working together we could keep the Tibetans in order. They are exceedingly childish and foolish, besides being excessively obstinate in practical affairs. And if we and the Chinese worked together, as the Amban and I had done at Lhasa in 1904, we should, I thought, be able to preserve harmonious relations between all three of us—Tibetans, Chinese, and British alike.
But when Chinese action is such as to create unrest instead of preserving order, when it upsets all the border people and necessitates our assembling troops to keep the frontier steady, then we have a need to intervene. ”

“ Warren Hastings, Bogle, Turner, Lord Curzon, and we in 1904, all trying to induce the Tibetans to be ordinarily civil! And now the Grand Lama and his entire Government come to us, come to beg us to uphold their right of communicating direct with us, and to send British officers—and not merely officers, but soldiers—to Lhasa, and to form an alliance. In all history there can hardly be a case of a more dramatic turning of the tables. ”

“ Politicians who aspire to control the affairs of our most complex Empire might, like our Royal Family, make an effort at some periods of their lives to become personally acquainted with the local conditions of the more important parts of the Empire. Communication is rapid and easy nowadays, and a week in a railway-train through India would be better than not seeing India at all. If you have seen a man for a couple of minutes you understand him, and, above all, take an interest in his actions, more than if you had never even seen him. ”

“ I was quite prepared on arrival at Lhasa to live on as friendly and peaceable terms with the people as I had at Khamba Jong, and as I had when I first arrived at Gyantse; to pay for everything, and to respect their religious buildings. It rested with them now to decide whether our stay at Lhasa should be of this peaceable nature and of short duration, and whether the settlement should be of the mild nature we at present contemplated, or whether we should have to resort to force, as we had been compelled to do at Gyantse, to impose severer terms, and to prolong our stay. ”

“ Yet just as many troops as accompanied the Mission at the start were moved to the frontier ready to advance into Tibet at any time. If men like Lord Morley and Sir Edward Grey so act, may it not be inferred that bureaucrats also are carried along against their will by some strange force?
To attribute these forward movements merely to the designs of bureaucrats is, then, to take but a shallow view. Single men of great force and ability and little knots of men can do a great deal, but to accomplish anything big they must have a solid backing of some kind behind them. ”

“ I agree with my old chief and first master in Central Asian politics, Sir Charles Macgregor, that if our agent A was murdered we should have sent up B, and if B was murdered we should have sent up C. Our whole Afghan policy for thirty years past has been frightfully ignominious, and the day will come where we shall bitterly regret not having had an agent at the capital of a country for whose foreign policy we are responsible. At any rate, the fact of barbarian Afghans murdering our representative at Kabul in 1879 was no adequate reason for not sending a representative to Lhasa in 1903. ”

“ But, after all, the peers do live in Great Britain, they do know the country and the people and the conditions to a very great extent; and if, knowing all this, they do not yet possess the confidence of the people, how much less can it be expected that Englishmen in India could have any real confidence in the present method of governing India from England? If the composition and methods of the House of Lords need revision, how much more do the composition and methods of the Imperial Cabinet need reform? ”

“ There was no more unconscious effort in breathing; no more conscious fighting against the cold. Existence was once again a pleasure, and in the best season of the year, amid the most splendid scenery in the world, with snowy peaks rising sheer out of tropical forests into a cloudless sky, there was little more a man could wish.
But in the midst of this dream of ease, and just the very day before I reached Darjiling, came the rude shock that the best points I had obtained at Lhasa were to be given up. ”

“ BOGLE’S MISSION, 1774 It is an interesting reflection for those to make who think that we must necessarily have been the aggressive party, that the far-distant primary cause of all our attempts at intercourse with the Tibetans was an act of aggression, not on our part, not on the part of an ambitious Pro-consul, or some headstrong frontier officer, but of the Bhutanese, neighbours, and then vassals, of the Tibetans, who nearly a century and a half ago committed the first act—an act of aggression—which brought us into relationship with the Tibetans. ”

“ Practical statesmen find nothing so disturbing to their wishes and intentions as contact with a weak, unorderly people. They try for years to disregard their existence, but in the end, from one cause or another, they find they have to intervene to establish order and set up regular relations—they are, in fact, driven to establish eventual harmony, even if it may be by the use of force at the moment. ”

“ If the Tibetans had been Mohammedans, we should not have reached Lhasa as easily as we did. And the Mongols also have lost their old warlike tendencies. The numerous figures of the placid Buddha sitting in calm repose have had their influence. Cut in rocks, erected in imposing statues, or modelled in bronze and brass, and set up in their temples and household altars, they have hypnotized the people to a sense of peace and rest. The Tibetans, who once carried their arms to Peking itself, are now one of the most peaceful of people. ”

“ When I arrived at Lhasa it was very doubtful if I should be able to get a treaty at all, and still more doubtful if I could get it with the good-will of the people, without which any paper treaty would be useless. To negotiate a treaty with a people acknowledged by those who knew them best—the Chinese, the Nepalese, and the Bhutanese—to be most obstinate and obstructive, time was required. To break through the reserve of so exclusive a people, to make friends of men with whom we had just been fighting, still more time was essential. ”

“ Captain Rawling, who had explored in Western Tibet in the previous year, and was well acquainted with the Tibetans, and who was now stationed at Phari in charge of a transport corps, specially remarked this. What the people were now afraid of was not our stopping, but our withdrawing, and leaving them to the vengeance of the Lamas.
This is a dilemma in which we are constantly being placed on the Indian frontier. The people of a country into which we advance are often ready to be friendly with us if they could be certain we would stay and be able to support them afterwards. ”

“ Long years of slackness, indifference, and supercilious disdain of the people, for whom no attempt is made to do anything, are every now and then broken by some sudden and violent effort. Chao Erh-feng’s methods have formed the subject of an impeachment by his own countrymen, and apart from the question whether he used treachery or beheaded prisoners, his regulations to the Tibetans of Batang to adopt the queue and to wear trousers, the measures he ordered for the breaking down of Lamaism, and his annexation of Derge, were all calculated to rouse the whole Lamaist world. ”

“ The Tibetans, though they have their reputation for seclusiveness, are not by nature unsociable. We found them quite the reverse, and Kawaguchi says that they were “originally a people highly hospitable to strangers.” This more natural sentiment was, he says, superseded by one of fear and even of antipathy, as the result of an insidious piece of advice which, probably prompted by some policy of its own, the Government of China gave to Tibet, and which was to the effect that if the Tibetans allowed the free entrance of foreigners Buddhism would be destroyed and replaced by Christianity. ”

“ He does not trouble about others so long as he can save himself. Indeed, he thinks it will require all his energies to do even that much, for at heart he is still full of his original religion of demonology. He looks upon the spiritual world as filled with demons, ready to prey upon him if he makes the slightest slip. Every temple, almost every house, is full of fantastic pictures of the most terrible and blood-curdling devils, with glaring eyes, open fang-studded mouth, extended neck and outstretched arm, ready to pounce upon some miserable victim. ”

“ At the commencement of the Mission our prestige all along our frontier with Tibet had been at zero-point. Everywhere it was thought that the Tibetans could defy us with impunity. Our prestige had no value, and prestige in Asiatic countries is a high practical asset. Through prestige a few Englishmen, without a single British soldier, are able to control a district or State in India containing as many inhabitants as Tibet. Because they had allowed their prestige to wane, the Chinese, even with soldiers, were unable to control Tibet. ”

“ Meredith Townsend, then its co-editor and author of “Asia and Europe,” a man who had lived in India, who had made a life-long study of Asiatic politics, and who honestly did not like the idea of advancing to Lhasa. When such a man wrote of the action of a strange force the matter is worth close examination.
Intrinsically, there is nothing improbable or unnatural in the idea. Individually, we all feel ourselves at times in the possession of some unknown power. We are often carried along by an irresistible impulse in spite of ourselves. ”

“ The news of our signing a treaty in the Potala at Lhasa, and of the Dalai Lama having to flee, did produce a profound impression. But if the subject-matter of our dispute was small, there was small reason why the Russians should trouble us about it. The matter grew in dimension because the Tibetans, whom the Chinese suzerains themselves had characterized as obstinate and difficult to influence, had grown still more obstinate and still more difficult to influence, through their having led themselves to believe that they could count on Russian support. ”

“ For a century we let the principle of heads they win, tails we lose, continue. Even when we at last stirred, and thought of sending Macaulay to Lhasa to make some less one-sided arrangement, we gave up the idea when we saw that the Tibetans raised objection. And even, again, when the Chinese asked us to make a definite treaty with them on behalf of the Tibetans, and guaranteed its observance by them, and when the Tibetans broke it, and repudiated it, and refused to meet our officers, we continued for ten years showing them forbearance and patience. ”

“ All we desired was to be on friendly and neighbourly terms with States like Bhutan and Tibet lying on our frontier. War, though it could have but one result, gave us much trouble, which we had no wish unnecessarily to incur. We, therefore, much preferred peace. I sent my respects to the Dharm Raja, and asked the Tongsa Penlop to write to me often and give me advice regarding the settlement with Tibet, and he fervently assured me of the good-will of the Bhutanese, and said that they would never depart from their friendship with the British Government. ”

“ The main remedy I would, with all deference, suggest is that the Parliamentary control, which must always exist, should be exercised, less by means of meddlesome and mischievous questions, and more by means of full debates, in which, on Indian affairs, both Houses always show great sense and dignity and restraint. Such debates, critical though they may be of the work of British administrators, assist, encourage, and educate rather than hamper them, and do not tend to impair that responsibility which should be theirs if India is to be well governed. ”

“ Especially at the present time, too, men who are actually holding high positions in India should be taken notice of and brought forward when they come to England. The old East India Company used to take great pains in this respect, realizing the importance of their agents being known among the best men in England, and having the opportunity of gaining their confidence, and realizing, too, that for the efficient discharge of their duties in India they should be armed with the prestige which high public recognition in England gives. ”

“ But when the Chinese go beyond merely keeping order, when they drive the Dalai Lama from his capital, depose him, seize his Government, garrison the whole country, and direct the administration themselves, then they simply cause a general discontent and uneasiness upon our frontier, and, from the point of view of expediency alone, we are then justified in intervening, as we intervened in Egypt when the Turks tried to increase their degree of suzerainty beyond its normal limits. ”

“ Practically, then, the religion of the Tibetans is but of a degraded form. Yet one does see gleams of real good radiating through. The Tashi Lama whom Bogle met was a man of real worth. His successor of the present day produced a most favourable impression in India, and excited the enthusiasm of Sven Hedin. Deep down under the dirty crust there must be some hidden source of strength in these Lamas, or they would not exert the influence they do. Millions of men over hundreds of years are not influenced entirely by chicanery and fraud. ”

“ Tibet was a poor country, and the Tibetans had already suffered heavily during the war; many had been killed, their houses had been burnt, jongs and monasteries had been destroyed; and, in addition to all this evil, it was impossible for them to pay an indemnity as well. The little money they had was spent in religious services in support of the monasteries, in buying vessels for the temples and butter to burn before the gods. The peasants had to supply transport for officials, in addition, and there were no means whatever for paying the heavy indemnity we were demanding. ”

“ British officers are employed, but not a single British or British-Indian soldier or policeman. Yet it is unthinkable that Kashmir troops should, against the wishes and orders of the British Government, invade the territory of a neighbouring State, as Tibetan troops, against the wishes and orders of the Chinese Government, invaded Sikkim in 1886. And it is inconceivable that the Kashmir State should repudiate and refuse to fulfil a Treaty concluded on their behalf by the British Government, as the Tibetans repudiated and refused to fulfil the Treaty made on their behalf by the Chinese in 1890. ”

“ And, apart from questions of trade, we want to feel sure that there is no inimical influence growing up in Tibet which might cause disturbance on our frontier. That is the sum total of our wants. The trade is not of much value in itself, but, such as it is, is worth having. We have no interest in annexing Tibet, and we have definitely declared against either annexation or protectorate; but we most certainly do want quiet there and the removal of any influence which would cause disquiet. Disorder begets disorder. When Lhasa is unsteady Nepal and Bhutan are restless. ”

“ It was a sad ending to what had begun so promisingly, and one is tempted to reflect what Warren Hastings would have done if he had still held the reins of government in Bengal, and whether he would have been able to restrain the Gurkhas, to assist the Lamas, and to reassure the Chinese. Certainly it is a most unfortunate circumstance that we so often are unable to help our friends just when they most need our help, and press our friendship upon them just when they least want it. ”

“ The Chinese, then, undoubtedly impress the Tibetans, but I am bigoted enough to think that their methods are not practically so successful as our own. Tibet is a protected Chinese State; Kashmir is a protected Indian State. In Tibet the Chinese Resident has, to support him, several hundreds of Chinese soldiers, and in the present year 2,000. In Kashmir the British Resident has not even a personal guard of British soldiers or even of British-Indian soldiers. In Tibet the Chinese are replacing the Tibetan by Chinese police; in Kashmir all the police are of the Kashmir State. ”

“ This balancing of order and freedom, of association and individualization, is always the difficult task. It is our trouble now in India, though it may be parenthetically noted that in isolated and secluded Tibet there is far less freedom for the individual than in Bengal under our alien rule, and that there is less freedom in a native State than in a British province in India, for we try in India as in Egypt to give the individual all the play we can within the limits of order. ”

“ For a century they were content to let things take their course, in spite of their informality, and in spite of the fact that Indian subjects were having all the worst of the intercourse, for while Tibetans were allowed to come to India when and where and how they liked, to trade there without duty and without hindrance, to travel and to reside wherever they wished, on the other side, obstructions of every kind were placed in the way of Indians, and still more of British, trading, travelling, or residing in Tibet. ”

“ But these observations of the Japanese form a remarkable corroboration of the reports we had heard as to the mischief done by Dorjieff’s proceedings.
Summarizing the characteristics of the Tibetans, we may say, then, that while they are affable outwardly and crafty within, as most dependent people have to be; while they are dirty and lazy; and while their religion is degraded, and they show no signs of either intellectual or spiritual progress, yet at heart they are not an unkindly or unsociable people, and they have undoubtedly strong religious feelings. Immorality is not entirely unchecked. ”