As regards the Tibetans, our difficulty will always be to keep up direct relations with them without interfering with the legitimate and desirable authority which the Chinese should always possess. The Chinese forfeited their right to be the sole medium of communication with the Tibetans by their total inability to get them to withdraw from Sikkim in 1886, and to induce them to observe the Treaty which they asked us to make with them on behalf of the Tibetans in 1890; and we acquired the right to deal directly with the Tibetans by the expenditure we were put to in 1888 and in 1904.
These direct relations, within the assigned limits, we should studiously maintain. The touch and contact may be light, but it should never be allowed to drop, for we have many instances of bad blood and estrangement arising through dropping a people and letting them lapse back into isolation once we have been forced into relationship with them. The Tibetans want to preserve what they themselves call the right of direct relations with us, and it is to our interest to preserve it.
How far the Tibetans are entitled to our support is a more delicate question. We who fought against them would probably like to go farther in this direction than those who have had no personal contact with them. We had a square stand-up fight, and we made friends afterwards. We should always, therefore, like to see a guiding and protecting hand extended to them. And what especially rankles with us is that, when we had knocked them over, and while they were still down, the Chinese should have proceeded to kick them. While the Tibetans were strong the Chinese did nothing. Even after they were down the Chinese did not touch them while we were about; only after we had left Chumbi did the kicking commence. And I do not myself see why we should have regarded the process so placidly.
One thing, however, we can stand up for is that an effective Tibetan Government should Still be maintained—a Government with whom we could, when necessary, treat in the manner provided for in the Treaties with the Tibetans and Chinese. This, on Lord Morley’s suggestion, was what Sir Edward Grey pressed on the Chinese Government in February, 1910, reminding them, at the same time, that the Lhasa Treaty made with the Tibetans was confirmed by them, and that, in consequence, we had a right to expect that the Tibetan Government should be maintained. The Chinese Central Government have themselves assured us that they have no desire to interfere with local autonomy in Tibet, and for the preservation of order upon our frontier it is highly desirable that we should see that these intentions are carried out. As I have admitted, the Tibetans do require being kept in control up to a certain limit. They have been very recalcitrant, and must expect to be brought to book. 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.
As to the method of intervention, my own view is decidedly in favour of sending a British officer to Lhasa itself. The Tibetans have actually asked for this to be done, so there is no difficulty on that score, and it is within the Chinese Empire, so the Chinese, if they wish to be considered in any way a civilized Power, should have no objection on their side. It is at Lhasa that a British officer could most effectively explain to the Chinese the limits beyond which it is impossible for us to countenance their proceeding, and it is there also that he could best impress the Tibetans of the bounds within which alone we can have relationship with them, or render them support. If such an officer could find it feasible to visit Peking and London before proceeding to Lhasa, he ought to be able to put Tibetan affairs upon a footing adapted to all the interests concerned. And as to risk, if we keep an officer at Gyantse we might as well send one to Lhasa.
Whether this is done or no we ought, in my view, to alter our whole attitude to the Tibetan question. Instead of expecting to secure peace by shrinking from having anything to do with the people, we should rather put ourselves forward to acquire increased intimacy. We should seek to secure quiet by the more effective and certain method of deliberately making use of every means we have of keeping up and increasing contact with the Tibetans. We have given the one line three great trials, and it has failed. We have given the other line three trials, and on each occasion it has succeeded. All the forbearance and patience which we showed in countermanding the despatch of Macaulay’s Mission, and in trusting to the consideration of the Chinese and Tibetans, only led to the Sikkim campaign. Similar forbearance after 1888 merely led to the armed Mission of 1904. And the desire to have as little as possible to do with Tibet since 1904 has, after all, resulted in the reassembling of troops upon our frontier and protests to Peking. I am not contending that no forbearance, moderation, and patience should be shown. My own proceedings are good enough testimony of my belief in the efficacy of these qualities. My contention is that there must be moderation even in moderation, and forbearance even in forbearing, and that the obstinate determination to have nothing, or as little as possible, to do with Tibet has brought on exactly what we wanted to avoid. On the other hand, when we have gone forward and made efforts to get in touch with the Tibetans, to understand them and explain ourselves to them, a more settled state has always resulted. After Bogle’s and Turner’s Missions in the eighteenth century, and after the Mission of 1904, there was a perceptibly better feeling between us and the Tibetans, all tending to that orderliness on our frontier which is what we most desire. The closer contact and more intimate touch, besides being the more humane method, diminishes rather than increases the risk of trouble. As a case in point, I consider that if we had had a representative at Lhasa this year, or even if our agent at Gyantse had been able to proceed to Lhasa, the present trouble need not have arisen. Knowing what British officers are by their personal influence able to accomplish, I believe that if Major O’Connor, or Major Gurdon, or Major Dew, or one or other of a dozen similar officers who are to be found in India, had been at Lhasa last winter, he would have been able to nip this trouble in the bud. And this not by giving the Tibetans out-and-out support against their legitimate suzerain, but by telling them frankly what the limits were beyond which it was quite impossible for them to expect support from us, the Russians, or anyone else; and by similarly impressing upon the Chinese that there is a point at which we should be bound to protest if they attempted to go beyond it. He would have been the friend of the Tibetans, and he would have been the friend of the Chinese; and as friends of both he would have made them friends with one another.
I am, then, for a forward policy in Tibet as elsewhere, though by forward I do not mean an aggressive and meddlesome policy. I mean rather one which looks forward into the future, and shows both foresight and forethought—a policy which is active, mobile, adaptive, and initiative. I imply a policy which recognizes that great civilized Powers cannot by any possibility permanently ignore and disregard semi-civilized peoples on their borders, but must inevitably establish, and in time regularize, intercourse with them, and should therefore seize opportunities of humanizing that intercourse, and, by promoting neighbourly association, minimize that risk of war which isolation, aloofness, and estrangement, invariably bring about. It is because we are islanders that we are such inveterate upholders of isolation. But by so doing we are working against the grain of the world, and must indubitably suffer in the long-run.
If I might personify the spirit of such a forward policy, I would choose the personality of the late King Edward. As he drew England out of her “splendid isolation,” so, would I urge, should we be brought out of our Indian isolation. And the means he employed in Europe are equally applicable to Asia. At the bottom of all would be the same broad, generous humanity, great-heartedness, and wealth of sympathy; there would be the same tactful vigilance and the unceasing efforts to know our neighbours and to give them opportunities of knowing us. There would be the same staunch loyalty to friends, and, above all, there would be that same courage and initiative which prompted King Edward, in his first State visit to Paris, to go in among the French people, to dispel the hostility which existed, and to win his way to their hearts by the sheer grace of his personality.
This is the forward policy I would urge for Tibet, as for the frontier generally—far-seeing initiative to control events, instead of the passivity which lets events control us; the use of personality in place of pen and paper; and the substitution of intimacy for isolation.