So I hastened home, and at Port Said stopped to meet him on his way out to India again. In one moment he set me right. I dined with him on the P. & O. steamer, and for hours afterwards on deck we talked over all the stirring events which had happened since we had parted in his camp at Patiala. Of all he was warmly appreciative. There is no man more staunch in friendship, and no keener patriot in England, than Lord Curzon; and what he did for the Indian Empire, and still more what he would have done if he had been more amply supported from England, will perhaps some day be more fully recognized than it is at present. If this Mission had been a failure, on him would have fallen the blame. How much its success was due to him no one knew better than I did.

On my arrival in England I had the honour of an audience of His late Majesty, and the reward I most appreciated for my services in Tibet was this opportunity of personally knowing my Sovereign. I saw him quite alone. He placed me in a chair by his desk, and then in some indefinable way made it possible for me to speak to him as I would have to my own father. He was himself most outspoken. 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. No one I have ever met has given me such an impression of abounding vitality and warm-blooded humanity, full and overflowing. And I left his august presence not only rewarded, but re-inspired.

Through the kindness of H.R.H. Princess Christian, who informed His Majesty of my wish, the flag[[41]] which I had with me throughout the Mission, which was carried before me on every march, which was planted before my tent in camp, which was flown over the Mission quarters at Gyantse, and which was placed on the table on which the Treaty was signed at Lhasa, was deposited in Windsor Castle, and by His Majesty’s express commands was hung in the Central Hall over the statue of Queen Victoria.

CHAPTER XXI
THE RESULTS OF THE MISSION

Even in the present year I was asked by a Cabinet Minister what good we did in going to Lhasa. Since that question was asked one striking result of our Mission has come to light, in the fact of the Dalai Lama, who before we went to Lhasa would not even receive a communication from the Viceroy, now in person, at Calcutta itself, appealing to the Viceroy to preserve his right of direct communication with us. The suspicious and hostile attitude of the Tibetans has so far changed that they have now asked us to form an alliance, and to send a British officer to their sacred city. To attribute this change entirely to the effects of the Mission may not be justifiable. Much is due to the tactlessness of the Chinese treatment of the Tibetans. But the change in direction of Tibetan feeling was visible before we left Lhasa, and there is good cause for assuming that if Lord Curzon had never despatched the Mission to break through the Tibetan reserve, they would have still been as inimical to us and as inclined towards Russia as they were six years ago. The conversion of our north-eastern neighbours from potential enemies into applicant allies may be taken as one result of the Mission.

When the Mission was despatched into Tibet, we had for thirty years been trying to regulate our intercourse with our Tibetan neighbours, but had obtained no success whatever. The Treaty which their suzerain had made with us was repudiated. Boundary pillars were thrown down, trade was boycotted, our communications were returned. And the Dalai Lama showed a decided leaning towards the Russians. As a result of Lord Curzon’s policy in sending a Mission to Tibet, there had been signed by the Tibetan Government in the audience-room of the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa itself, in the presence of the Chinese Amban and of all the chief men of Tibet, a Treaty which defined our boundaries, placed our trade relations upon a satisfactory footing, and gave us the right to exclude any foreign influence if we should so wish. And in spite of the military operations which we were forced to undertake, and in spite of the Tibetans being compelled to pay an indemnity, the position of the Tibetans towards us was distinctly more favourable when we left Tibet than when we entered it.

In making my final report to Government, I said that I had always regarded the conclusion of a treaty on paper as of minor importance, and the establishment of our relations with the Tibetans on a footing of mutual good-will as of fundamental importance. There was little advantage in bringing back a Treaty which was not framed or negotiated in such a manner as to carry with it a considerable degree of spontaneous assent. And it was especially necessary to secure the good-will of the people in general.

The result of our Mission to Kabul in 1840 was to estrange the Afghans from us from that time to this, and an intense race hatred was engendered. It would be unwise to predict that we shall never have any difficulty in seeing that the present Treaty is properly carried out. But I can safely say that no feeling of race hatred was left behind by the Mission, and that after the Treaty was signed the Tibetans were better disposed towards us than they had ever been before. And this I consider to be incomparably the most important result of the policy which the Government of India had so unswervingly pursued.

A further result was the friendship of Bhutan. When the Mission started, the Bhutanese were practically strangers, and their attitude was uncertain. When the Mission returned they were our firm friends. The chief visited Calcutta. Mr. White has twice been most cordially received in Bhutan. And the former Tongsa Penlop, now the Maharaja of Bhutan, has formally placed himself under our protectorate.