The Secretary of State,[[23]] in a telegram dated November 6, at last gave his sanction to an advance. In view of the recent conduct of the Tibetans, His Majesty’s Government felt that it would be impossible not to take action, and they accordingly sanctioned the advance of the Mission to Gyantse. They were, however, clearly of opinion that “this step should not be allowed to lead to occupation or to permanent intervention in Tibetan affairs in any form. The advance should be made for the sole purpose of obtaining satisfaction, and as soon as reparation was obtained a withdrawal should be effected. While His Majesty’s Government considered the proposed action to be necessary, they were not prepared to establish a permanent Mission in Tibet, and the question of enforcing trade facilities in that country should be considered in the light of this telegram.”
It was a curious telegram, which I never quite understood. It said that the advance was to be made for the sole purpose of obtaining satisfaction. But it was always understood, and it was most emphatically laid down, that this was not a punitive expedition to obtain satisfaction and get reparation. It was a Mission despatched to put our relations with the Tibetans on a regular footing, to establish ordinary neighbourly intercourse with them. Lord Lansdowne himself said in the House of Lords[[24]]: “We desire that a new Convention should be entered into between the Government of India, on the one hand, and the Tibetans and Chinese, as the suzerain Power, on the other. That is the object of the Mission.” It is remarkable that a document which was so often quoted to the Russian Government, to the Indian Government, to the Chinese Government, and which the Indian Government on one occasion quoted to me in terms of admonition, should have described with so little precision the real purpose of the advance—and this at the culminating point of thirty years’ effort on the part of the Government of India. It was not till after the Mission had been attacked at Gyantse, and on account of that attack, that we demanded satisfaction—in the shape of an indemnity. The obvious purpose of the advance was to do what Warren Hastings had attempted, what the Government of Bengal since 1873 had been advocating—to put our intercourse with the Tibetans on proper terms. We had found it impossible to effect this object on the frontier or by negotiation with the Chinese Government. We were going to advance into Tibet, to Gyantse, to see if we could not effect it there, to get the frontier defined and recognized, to have the conditions under which trade could be carried on determined, and to have the method of communication between our officials and Tibetan officials clearly laid down. This, and not the obtaining of satisfaction, which is the business of a military commander in charge of a punitive expedition, was obviously the purpose of our advance into Tibet, and it is odd that this was not recognized in what was so often afterwards quoted as the fundamental statement of our policy.
The telegram was not very purposeful or instructive, but such as it was we were glad enough to get it. It at least allowed us to go to Gyantse, and though at the time when my advice was asked I said I did not think we should get the business really settled till we reached Lhasa, we certainly stood a better chance at Gyantse than at Khamba Jong. In all civilized countries envoys who have to negotiate a treaty go straight to the capital, and how it could ever have been expected that in Tibet, where all power was concentrated in a supposed god, who relied upon the support of Russia in any difficulties, we should have been able to negotiate a treaty at anywhere short of Lhasa, it is hard now to realize.
However, as I told Lord Curzon at his camp in Patiala, where I took leave of him on my return to Tibet, I meant to do my very best to get the thing through. He once more gave me the same warm encouragement he always extended to those in India whom he believed to be working well, and I left again for Darjiling.
While we were making preparations at Darjiling for the next move, correspondence was also taking place from headquarters. The Viceroy, in reply to a letter of the Lhasa Resident’s of October 17, stating that he had nominated a Colonel Chao in place of Mr. Ho, that he had asked the Dalai Lama to send a Councillor of State to accompany him (the Resident) to Khamba Jong, but that all this required time to settle, and asserting that the Tibetan passes were guarded by soldiers, and requesting the Viceroy, therefore, to instruct the British Commissioner not to move from the present camp, told the Resident that he understood that Colonel Chao was of lower, not higher, rank than Mr. Ho, and that, as the Resident’s departure was contingent on the Dalai Lama’s nomination of a Councillor, and as the Dalai Lama had for four months past failed to send, as desired, an officer of the highest rank, he saw no prospect of the Resident arriving at Khamba Jong within any reasonable time. The Viceroy then recapitulated our various grounds of complaint, and concluded by saying that, in these circumstances, he had no alternative but to transfer the place of negotiations to some more suitable spot, where he hoped they might be resumed. And as the Resident had stated that the Tibetan passes were guarded by soldiers, he had been compelled to take measures to insure the safety of the Commissioners in moving from Khamba Jong, and to prevent any possible interruption of communication with them.
The Chinese Government made on November 16 a protest to Lord Lansdowne against an advance, and hoped that I would be instructed to await the arrival of the new Resident, who, it will be remembered, had been instructed nearly a year previously to proceed as rapidly as possible to Lhasa; but Lord Lansdowne informed them that His Majesty’s Government had learnt by experience that the Tibetans systematically disregarded the injunctions of the Emperor and the Chinese Government, who had no real influence in restraining them from acts such as those we complained of. We had treated the Tibetans with the utmost forbearance, but these recent proceedings compelled us to exact satisfaction, and we could not remain inactive until the arrival of the new Resident, who had unnecessarily protracted his journey.
The Chinese Minister said that his Government recognized the forbearance shown by the British authorities towards the Tibetans, and also the friendly spirit brought by the British Commissioners to the discussion of frontier questions, and they hoped that we would recognize the difficult position in which China had been placed by her obstinate and ignorant vassal, and enjoin our Commissioners to exercise patience and forbearance, and thus assist the Resident, who had been instructed to proceed in person to the frontier to bring the Tibetans to a juster sense of their duties and responsibilities as good neighbours.
To this Lord Lansdowne replied that the Chinese had hitherto signally failed in such attempts, and the attitude of the Tibetan authorities had of late been of increased hostility. It was impossible, therefore, for us to desist from the measures already sanctioned.
In the event, it turned out that the Resident never did meet me on the frontier, and that even his successor, when at last he arrived at Lhasa, did not care to meet me even at Gyantse, for the Tibetans, so he informed me, would not provide him with transport. Lord Lansdowne’s refusal to desist from action and pursue still further the policy of patience and forbearance was, therefore, amply justified by events.