TIBET AND THE EUROPEAN BACILLUS
No other country in the world has so doggedly resisted Europeanizing influences as Tibet, and even to-day the European is scarcely admitted within its borders. Sir Charles Bell in his clear and most suggestive volume makes it plain that British diplomacy desires to keep Tibet for the Tibetans as completely as is possible. It desires to see Tibet able to protect its independence, because Tibet inde- pendent is an ideal buffer State. Yet the whole tenor of his narrative shows how within the past forty years Europe's characteristic, bacillus has lodged itself there. In the world to which Tibet still belongs life is regulated by custom : the aim is to maintain what has been. The European bacillus carries with it the disturbing idea of progress—that is, a belief in continual innovation. The irony is that, to maintain what is old, even Tibet must innovate.
There was, no doubt, progress in the past : Tibet learnt much from China, as its great buildings prove ; and at the height of the Manchu power it came in great measure under Chinese rule. But that did not trouble the Tibetans. They were neither European enough nor modern enough to know the idea of nationality. Their religion was their nationality, and while the Emperor of China was ready to greet the Dalai Lama as "the Great Good Self-existent Buddha of Heaven," Chinese rule was not alien. Neither was Chinese rule in so remote a region menacing to British India. But Russia was considered a menace, and in 1904 an armed expedition found its way from India to Lhasa. The Dalai Lama fell back on China. Yet China was changing, deeply infected by the European bacillus. The Manchu dynasty fell ; democratic Chinese who did not recognize Buddhist sanctities came into power ; and by 1910 Chinese troops- occupying Tibet were soleirg their boots with Buddhist scriptures from the Lamaseries. The Dalai Lama sought and found shelter among his former enemies, and Sir Charles Bell knew him at Darjeeling. There from adjoining rooms "the low tones of His Holiness's voice would continually be heard railing down blessings on suffering
humanity, and not on humanity only but on birds and beasts and the whole animal creation." Yet this so non-European ruler returned to Tibet and gradually drove out the Chinese —by the use of European weapons and European drill. A new army was formed ; and an army is costly. Half the public revenue is spent on religion, which is not what the European bacillus demands. But once a ruler has an army with machine-guns, he can tax monasteries even when they contain ten thousand fighting monks, as some do in Tibet. Dr. McGovern's recent book, which adds to the light thrown by Sir Charles Bell, makes it clear that the head of the army is the head of the Europeanizing influence.
From Sir Charles Bell we learn that Tibet and Mongolia are always likely to make common cause, because they have the same religion. Nepal is not liked in Tibet, and the whole Mohammedan world is regarded with suspicion. Only Great Britain has shown so far to Tibet "the value of tolerance as an art of government " ; it has scrupulously avoided hurting the religious susceptibilities of Tibetans, who to-day prefer British to Chinese because they are "a rel:gious people " : though perhaps it would be truer to attribute this delicacy to notions of how a gentleman should behave.
A strong race, holding a strategic position on the map of the world, the Tibetans can probably defy invasion from China ; but according to Sir Charles Bell, unless Britain stays in India, they will join China, and possibly Japan, for their own protection, reckoning that India will certainly break up. At present, their feeling to Britain is evidenced by the fact that in 1914, when the Great War broke out, they offered a thousand men, and, what they counted more important, organized prayer :—
" We have held services for the British from time to time in the leading monasteries. And we have transferred privately to the credit of the British Government a number of the services held for the Tibetan Government. Had we held them all for the British, the people would have suffered needless alarm."
That was the Dalai Lama's message to Sir Charles Bell in 1916. The reason why Sir Charles Bell succeeded in Tibet is that he could sec the value of such an offering.
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