A full-dress Russian invasion of India, through Tibet, no responsible person ever dreamed possible. But, without a real invasion, Russia established in Lhasa, while we were unrepresented there, could cause Government a great deal of anxiety. In practical detail it would mean the increase of our army on the North-East frontier by several thousand men.
It was obviously prudent, therefore, to prevent her acquiring a more predominant influence than our own in Tibet. While it was quite natural that she should be glad to have an influence at Lhasa, it was still more natural that we should be jealous of her having more influence than we had. For, while our border was contiguous with Tibet for 1,000 miles, from Kashmir nearly to Burma, the Russian border nowhere touched or even approached Tibet. The whole breadth of Chinese Turkestan lay in between the Russian frontier and the nearest frontier of Tibet, and Lhasa itself was 1,000 miles distant from the nearest point on the Russian frontier. To appreciate the position, let the reader draw out the map at the end of this volume.
The Government of India, accordingly, recommended prompt action. The attempts to negotiate an understanding with the Tibetans through the Chinese had proved a failure. It had been found impossible to open up direct communications with the Tibetans. The result of the exclusion of the Tibetans from the pasture lands at Giagong, though it had materially improved our position on the border, was not in effect more than a timely assertion of British authority upon the spot. These different rumours from such varied sources tending, in the opinion of the Government of India, to indicate the existence of some kind of an arrangement between Russia and Tibet, necessitated dealing with the situation far more drastically and decisively than it had ever been dealt with before. Continuously since 1873 the Government of India had been trying by every correct and reasonable method to regularize their intercourse with Tibet. Their patience was now exhausted, and, instead of trifling about on the frontier with petty Chinese or Tibetan officials, they proposed, in the very important despatch of January 8, 1903,[[16]] to send a mission, with an armed escort, to Lhasa itself, there to settle our future relations with Tibet, and to permanently establish a British representative.
This proposal, when it reached England, seems to have caused considerable surprise. But Warren Hastings, a century before, had meant to do this very thing; and the Russians had a Consular representative in Chinese Turkestan alongside their frontier, so there seemed no particular reason why we should not have had a similar representative in Tibet alongside our frontier. The risk had to be considered, it is true, but why the case of Cavagnari’s murder at Kabul should be everlastingly brought up as an argument against sending an officer outside our frontier it is difficult to understand. It is ignoble to the last degree to be scared for all time by what happened then. Cavagnari was murdered. What then? 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.
These, however, are merely my own views. The contention of the Government of India was that, in suggesting a mission to Lhasa, they were merely reviving a proposal which had been supported as far back as 1874 by Sir T. Wade, then British Minister at Peking, and which was almost taking definite shape in 1885–86, when the importance of a Burmese settlement appears to have so impressed itself upon all parties that the Lhasa Mission was sacrificed in order that the signature of the Chinese Government to the Burmese Convention might be obtained. The Government of India considered it a grave misfortune that they should have been diverted from a project of unquestionable importance by the exigencies of political considerations that had not the remotest connection with Tibet. They recommended, therefore, the revival of this precedent, and the firm pursuance of the policy which was then abandoned.
The Government of India regarded the so-called suzerainty of China over Tibet as a constitutional fiction. China was always ready to break down the barriers of ignorance and obstruction and to open Tibet to the civilizing influence of trade, but her pious wishes were defeated by the short-sighted stupidity of the Lamas. In the same way Tibet was only too anxious to meet our advances, but she was prevented from doing so by the despotic veto of the suzerain. The Government of India wished to put an end to this “solemn farce,” and would have preferred to deal with Tibet alone. But they recognized that China could not be entirely disregarded, and only asked that, if the Home Government trusted to the interposition of China, this might be accompanied by a resolute refusal to be defeated by the time-honoured procedure, and that if and when a new treaty was concluded, it should not be signed by the British and Chinese alone, but by a direct representative of the Tibetan Government also.
At the same time, said the Government of India, the most emphatic assurances might be given to the Chinese and Tibetan Governments that the mission was of an exclusively commercial character, that we repudiated all designs of a political nature upon Tibet, that we had no desire either to declare a protectorate or permanently to occupy any portion of the country, but that our intentions were confined to removing the embargo that then rested upon all trade between Tibet and India, and to establishing those amicable relations and means of communication that ought to subsist between adjacent and friendly Powers.
These proposals the Government of India commended to the favourable consideration of His Majesty’s Government, in the firm conviction that if some such step were not taken, “a serious danger would grow up in Tibet, which might one day, and perhaps at no very distant date, attain to menacing dimensions.” They regarded the situation, as it seriously affected the frontiers which they were called upon to defend with Indian resources, as one in which their opinion was entitled to carry weight with His Majesty’s Government; and they entertained a sincere alarm that, if nothing was done and matters were allowed to slide, they might before long have occasion gravely to regret that action was not taken while it was still relatively free from difficulty.