GREAT BRITAIN AND TIBET.
[To THE EDITOR Of THE " SPECTATOR." j SIR,—As one who bad occasion to witness the arrival of the Dalai Lama two years ago at the Indian frontier after his forcible eviction from the Potala Palace by Chinese coercion, and to follow with a particular interest the antecedent and subsequent course of Tibetan affairs, I ask your hospitality to emphasize a national responsi- bility. I refer to the immediate necessity of revising British policy with regard to Tibet in the light of recent events. Facts suffice without didactics to reveal the change in the face of things northwards of Everest. Since the precipitate flight of the Dalai Lama and his Ministers in the spring of 1910 the country has passed through the throes of long-sustained internal warfare. The story begins with the mutiny of the Chinese garrison in Lhasa ten months ago, which suddenly broke out in sympathy with the Revolution in China, and surprised the Amban Len, left, since his junior's dismissal, as sole representative of his country's suzerainty over Tibet. The deposition of this official and his replacement by the army's nominee, Tung Tungling, was the beginning of the Chinese clacicle. Unable to satisfy the imperious demands of the troops for prompt and substantial pay, the new administrator became a mere puppet, while the garrison took matters into its own hands and killed and looted at its will The Lamas of the central monasteries, however, were not slow to perceive that the Chinese troops in Lhasa, in spite of re- inforcements and up-to-date equipment, were inadequate to withstand collective action on their own part. By degrees the political dissensions prevailing in such great religious houses as those of Depung and Tengaling composed themselves, and the monks by combined guerrilla methods succeeded in coop. ing up their Chinese adversaries in two quarters of Lhasa. Heavy casualties, plentiful desertions, and the seizure of guns, rifles, and ammunition by the Tibetans in time reduced the garrison to a state of demoralization which the news of a strong relief force approaching from Szechuan was alone able to counteract. When it became evident that unexpected and determined opposition on the part of the Eastern Tibetan tribes had broken that last hope, the end was not far distant. It was decisively shaped by the long-delayed return of the Dalai Lama from India during July and by the fresh impetus given to Tibetan arms and enthusiasms by his arrival in his capital. A few days ago it was known in London that the Amban had capitulated; that the Chinese troops, with the exception of a hundred or so, were to return to their own country rid, India, leaving their arms behind them; and that Tibetan diplomacy, following on Tibetan prowess, had triumphed all along the line.
The momentary independence of Tibet is therefore both the fact and the problem freshly confronting British policy. Till the outcome of the Chinese Revolution be known, and the precise extent of China's recuperative power, one cannot, with all the goodwill in the world, withhold the qualifying term. By virtue of no fewer than three distinct agreements, we have bound ourselves to countenance Chinese suzerainty
over Tibet. The misfortune is that in matters Oriental the nice distinction between suzerainty and despotic sovereignty is apt to become confused. What Chinese " suzerainty " has meant in the past was established to my satisfaction by statements made to me both at Darjeeling in 1910 by responsible eye-witnesses of the outrages which marked the progress of the Chinese army of occupation and subsequently by wholly impartial observers of events. Allowing for all possible exaggerations prompted by tem- porary heat, there is ample evidence for the almost identical narratives resumed in the official Blue-books of recent data relating to Tibet. Incendiarism, looting, sacrilege, and shooting of non-combatants at sight have all entered into the Chinese conception of suzerainty, alike before the Revolution and manifestly since its outbreak. History is apt to move in rapid cycles in the East, and we have no sufficient guarantee that once China has pulled herself together she may not be minded to attempt once more to reduce Tibet to the status of an outlying province in her own way, and that her attempt may not be successful.
In our relations with Tibet we have resembled a dramatic actor who should raise his arm to make a grand geste, and drop it suddenly and ungracefully through stage- fright. A justifiable feeling of being trifled with prompted us to send, at a cost of nearly two millions, the Young. husband expedition into the heart of the country in 1904, and to stand out at Lhasa for an indemnity of half a million sterling for our occupation of the Chumbi Valley by way of security, and for specific privileges to be accorded to our Agent at Gyantse. An unaccountable scruple after the event caused us to reduce the indemnity by two-thirds, to withdraw from the Chumbi Valley, and to cripple the effective authority of our Agent. For reasons which will effectively baffle the historian (they have long baffled the Tibetans), we suffered China to pay the reduced Tibetan indemnity, to put the forceful reactionary, Chao Erh-feng, in charge of the country, to make that country over to his ravening soldiery, to subject, eject, and finally depose the Dalai Lama. Our patriotism was keenly alive to the necessity of standing on our dignity at the start; it drew the line at sheltering the generous people we had roughly handled from abuses which our milk-and-water attitude had invited from another Power. For the mutual jealousies of Great Britain and Russia and their stagnating influence China has long had cause for gratitude and Tibet has paid a heavy price. Now that the causes of these jealousies have largely been composed by lapse of time and clearer understanding, now that the Tibetans have asserted themselves unaided and are setting their house in order, surely the moment is ripe for a reconsideration of the effete clauses of out-of-date diplomacy. Cannot Great Britain and Russia now agree to give effect to the decisive assurance of Sir Edward Grey to the Tibetans ? In the days of the Triple Entente cannot some steps be taken, however late, to maintain a Tibetan Government empowered to treat on its own behalf, and accessible to negotiations ? Is it extravagant to hope that British and Russian Consular Agents may before long be collaborating in Lhasa on Good terms with a Chinese Amban invested with a sense of the fit- ness of things ? If these questions be still shirked at the moment when responsibility is clear, British policy in relation to Tibet remains a headless torso, a monument of culpable irresolution.—I am, Sir, &c., AYLMER, STRONG, Castle Tower, Wimbledon Common.
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