CHAPTER XXIV

SOME CONCLUSIONS

The close of the long narrative of our efforts since 1773 to effect the single object of harmonizing our relations with Tibet having now been reached, it may be useful to draw here some practical conclusions from our past experience which may be a help for future action. And first I would make some observations on the agency through which our intentions have been carried into effect.

On several occasions in the course of this narrative I have referred to the relations of local officers with their Provincial Governments, of these Local Governments with the Supreme Government in India, and of the Indian Government with the Imperial Government in England. Since the days of Warren Hastings there has been a marked tendency towards centralization. More and more control has been exercised by London over Simla, by Simla over the Provincial Governments, by them, again, over their local officials. This tendency has been accentuated in the last few years. It has never been more pronounced than at the present time. And if the conduct of Tibetan affairs since 1873 may be taken as an example—as I think it may—there is not much evidence that it is producing satisfactory results.

It has been said, indeed, that if ever we lose India it will be in London. I am not of those who think we ever shall lose India, for I have much too great a faith in the common sense and spirit of my countrymen. Nor do I say that we are worse than other peoples in “trusting the man on the spot.” I think we are very much better. It requires a really big people to give their representatives rope; and a big people we are, and in the main the British nation has supported its Viceroys, Governors and their Agents better than any other nation have supported theirs, or we should not be in India now.

But of late the discretion and responsibility of the Government of India have been most seriously diminished. Secretaries of State, partly of their own initiative, and partly because active bands of faddists exert a disproportionately great influence upon them, while the more sensible members of the House of Commons, on account of their silence, exercise a disproportionately small influence, have interfered more and more in even the details of Indian administration. The system is no longer one of selecting the best available men, and then supporting them, on the assumption that in the unusual conditions under which we govern India, they will rule it better than anyone can from England. The system is now becoming one of directing the Government from England on lines which an ignorant British electorate is most likely to approve. The result is a general weakening all down the line. No one feels responsibility. And the British elector, who has been held up to the Englishman in India as the man who ultimately controls his actions, and who should, therefore, have the responsibility, simply shrugs his shoulders and asks what India has to do with him.

And while British administrators in India thus have less and less confidence placed in them, they on their part have little cause to be placing increasing confidence in their controllers and rulers. Those who control Indian affairs from London have, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, never been in India. They are as a rule personally unacquainted with Indian conditions. And the Cabinet is not composed of men with a wide and long experience of Imperial affairs; of Indian and Colonial, as well as English, questions; and of European and Asiatic diplomacy. It may occasionally include an ex-Viceroy of India, but it never includes a Colonial statesman, or an ex-Colonial Governor, or an ex-Ambassador, much less an Anglo-Indian administrator. It is almost exclusively composed of men with purely English Parliamentary experience, and a Minister is put in control of India who has not even seen it from the window of a railway-carriage, or probably spoken to a single Indian or Anglo-Indian in his life. Even when there does happen to be available a politician who has visited India and specially studied it, who, being a peer, has naturally some sympathy with the aristocratic inclination of Indian methods of rule, and who, being a Liberal, might be expected to infuse into any too aristocratic methods a sufficiency of the English democratic spirit, he is put (like Lord Crewe) to control Colonial affairs, while another politician who is noted for his specially democratic inclinations, and whose knowledge of India is purely literary, is put to control India. Such methods may in practice produce very fair results, just as the House of Lords does, on the whole, work remarkably well. But better methods would produce better results. By the present system the confidence of administrators can never be secured, and for that reason alone it stands in need of revision. The composition and action of the House of Lords are now subject to criticism, because peers, not being elected, are supposed to be out of touch with the feeling of the people. But, after all, the peers do live in Great Britain, they do know the country and the people and the conditions to a very great extent; and if, knowing all this, they do not yet possess the confidence of the people, how much less can it be expected that Englishmen in India could have any real confidence in the present method of governing India from England? If the composition and methods of the House of Lords need revision, how much more do the composition and methods of the Imperial Cabinet need reform?

Again, agents in India can hardly help feeling that under the existing system less attention is paid to their matured views than to the opinions of inexperienced British electors. Not only is it that the latter are near, while the former are distant, but also that the latter can turn the London controllers of Indian affairs out of office, while the former have to run the risk of being turned out themselves. It stands to reason that the Indian Secretary must be looking more to the will and wishes of the electors who put him where he is, and who may remove him, than to the advice of the agents in India whom he controls, and that he will be more influenced by the English agitator than by the Anglo-Indian subordinate. Indian administrators may say that a particular course is necessitated by local conditions. The Secretary of State will say that the man in the street in England will not understand or give his approval, and the Indian administrator will go by the board without appeal. An English Member of Parliament, holding strong views on an Indian question contrary to those held by the Secretary of State, may, by expressing them with sufficient force, help to remove a Secretary of State for India from office, or at least make him abandon or modify his policy. An Anglo-Indian administrator, if he holds views in opposition to those of the Secretary of State, will not damage the latter, but he may ruin his own career, as Sir Bampfylde Fuller ruined his, though events have shown his views to have been right. Under such conditions, Englishmen in India cannot be expected to have confidence in the present plan of ruling India directly from England.

One very natural result of this system is a resort to half-measures—deporting seditious agitators, and letting them out again a few months afterwards; allowing an agent in Tibet, but not at the capital, only halfway to it, where he runs every bit as much risk and has one-tenth part of the practical effect.

Secretaries of State lecture the Indian Government about the “wider view,” the “larger Imperial interests,” and so on; but administrators in India have a suspicion that, however broad the views of a Secretary of State may be, they are probably not much longer than the distance which separates him from the next General Election. In any case, whether or no he is looking—as indeed he ought, under the theory of our Constitution, to be looking—to the next General Election, he cannot be expected to have the same _length_ of view as the Indian Government; for he is, after all, a bird of passage, in the India Office for a few years and then not heard of there again. And as to the larger Imperial interests, most British administrators are aware of them, for they have been about the world more than British politicians. They are well enough aware that Indian considerations must be weighed in the balance with other Imperial considerations, and that in the last resort it is the British statesman who must decide. But what they doubt is whether the full weight of the Indian considerations is ever put into the Imperial scale. Since 1873 every sort of consideration has been given more weight than the Indian in these Tibetan affairs, and the consequence is that they still drag on in as unsatisfactory a state now as they were thirty-seven years ago.

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These are some defects of the present system, but there is little use in criticizing if no remedy is suggested for the supposed evil. The main remedy I would, with all deference, suggest is that the Parliamentary control, which must always exist, should be exercised, less by means of meddlesome and mischievous questions, and more by means of full debates, in which, on Indian affairs, both Houses always show great sense and dignity and restraint. Such debates, critical though they may be of the work of British administrators, assist, encourage, and educate rather than hamper them, and do not tend to impair that responsibility which should be theirs if India is to be well governed. They put faddists in their proper place, and let rounded common sense and wide experience in large affairs have their due influence. The British public probably do not expect any more than this of their Parliamentary representatives. In all likelihood they would be quite willing to allow a greater freedom to their representatives in India, and have no desire for their Parliamentary representatives, by incessant bombardment on trifling points, to be putting such pressure on the Secretary of State as to encourage any natural inclination he may already have to increased interference in the details of Indian administration.

If this be really the wish of the British people, then a much ampler latitude might be allowed to the Viceroy, Lieutenant-Governors, and high Frontier Officers, and a greater deference be shown to their views. If agents abuse this latitude, then they can be censured, as I was censured, or punished in any way that is necessary. And if the present men are not good enough to be entrusted with responsibility, then means might be taken for sending out better. Competitive examinations are not the only or the best means of obtaining rulers for India. And there is no reason why India should not be provided with just as good men as go to Whitehall or Westminster. But never can it be seriously believed that it is the wish of the British people that the principle of trusting the man on the spot be abandoned, or the sense of responsibility in their agents damped down.

For the good working of this principle, which I would here again remark is much more fully carried out by the British Government, with all its imperfection of constitution, than by any other Government in the world, there must, however, be much more intimate relationship than there is at present between these men and their principals in England. The men in India and the politicians in England must be better known to each other, and have more confidence in one another. And it is upon this point that I would make a few suggestions of a practical nature.

Politicians who aspire to control the affairs of our most complex Empire might, like our Royal Family, make an effort at some periods of their lives to become personally acquainted with the local conditions of the more important parts of the Empire. Communication is rapid and easy nowadays, and a week in a railway-train through India would be better than not seeing India at all. If you have seen a man for a couple of minutes you understand him, and, above all, take an interest in his actions, more than if you had never even seen him. And if it is impossible for all Secretaries of State to have visited India before they come to the India Office, there does not seem any inseparable impediment to a Secretary of State visiting India during his term of office. There are many and great objections, I know, but these surely cannot be more numerous or more serious than are the objections to the present system. Mr. Chamberlain’s visit to South Africa benefited him and the Dominion, and the precedent would be well worth consideration.

But if this is quite out of the question, the corresponding idea of the Viceroy visiting England at least once in his five years’ term of service should not be so utterly impracticable. A swift cruiser would take him home or out again in twelve days very easily, and the rest and the advantages of personal conference would be of inestimable value. The Agent-General in Cairo comes home every year.

More practicable and feasible, and probably more useful, than either of these suggestions is that the India Office, instead of being manned half by officials who have never been to India and half by officials who will never go there again, might be completely manned by officials who have both been to India and who will return there—men of the Indian Service in active employ. At present it consists of officials of the Home Civil Service and of retired Indian officials. What is wanted is an ebb and flow—a strong, fresh current running to and fro from England to India. It is bad to keep men out in India too long at a time, and it is bad to have a Secretary of State who knows nothing about India surrounded by men who have either never seen it or who have left it for good. A Secretary of State would, moreover, if the India Office were filled with men of the active Indian Service, have a better acquaintance than he now has with the personnel of the Indian Services; while, on their side, the latter would experience an infiltration of men who were acquainted with English conditions, and of the especial difficulties and influences which beset Secretaries of State in London.

Another direction in which improvement is possible is in politicians in England making more effort to see men serving in India who are home on leave. Lord Morley has done far more in this direction than any other Secretary of State, and his courtesy in this respect has been much appreciated. His is a good precedent for other Secretaries of State to follow and develop; and if English politicians could regard men of the Civil Service in India as something more than clerks it would be well. A Lieutenant-Governor who had successfully ruled a great province in India told me he was convinced they looked upon him as a clerk, because they were always so “damned polite” to him.

Especially at the present time, too, men who are actually holding high positions in India should be taken notice of and brought forward when they come to England. The old East India Company used to take great pains in this respect, realizing the importance of their agents being known among the best men in England, and having the opportunity of gaining their confidence, and realizing, too, that for the efficient discharge of their duties in India they should be armed with the prestige which high public recognition in England gives. This will be a specially important point in the time to come. From one cause and another, the Service in India has been losing its prestige, and this when, as at no previous time, it requires all the prestige that is its rightful due. The abandonment of Lord Curzon in his controversy with Lord Kitchener, and of Sir Bampfylde Fuller in his efforts to suppress sedition in Eastern Bengal at its rise, have been severe blows to the Viceroyalty and Lieutenant-Governorships, which have to be amended.

Lastly, there is scope for much fuller personal intercourse between local officers and superiors in India itself and between India and England. Facility of communication is not taken sufficient advantage of in this way. To refer again to this case of Tibet. During all that time occupied in the correspondence leading up to the Mission an Indian official, thoroughly well posted in the local conditions and with the views of the Government of India upon them, might have been sent to Peking, St. Petersburg, and London, to put the Indian and local view before our Ambassadors and the Home Government, to be informed in return of the Chinese and Russian and Imperial views, and to be the bearer of the final decision thereon of the Imperial Government, which he could explain with much greater effectiveness than is achieved by letters and telegrams. An advantage, additional to the better settlement of the actual question in hand, would be that the Indian official so employed would be gaining some all-round experience, which would be of value on future occasions.

By all these means that personal, intimate contact will be increased which alone can beget mutual confidence. At present men in India feel that they are regarded with suspicion by English politicians, as if they were guilty till they could prove themselves innocent. No strong inspiration comes from England to them. They have to carry on the greatest Imperial work that any country has ever undertaken, chilled by distant critics who know them not. These are conditions which obviously call for improvement, and perhaps these suggestions would go some way to this end, and render it more possible for English politicians to place that trust in the men on the spot, which is the bed-rock principle on which England should carry on the government of her great Dependency.

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All this, however, is a matter of machinery. I have touched on it first because it is, in my opinion, through the machinery being of a defective type that the object of our policy in Tibet has not been attained. It is now time to examine the results of our efforts there since 1773.

The net result is that at last we find the Tibetans anxious to be on neighbourly terms, and, indeed, to form an alliance with us, but that the action of the Russians on the one hand and of the Chinese on the other, together with lukewarmness in England, stands in the way of our being as intimate with the Tibetans as they now wish us to be. It has proved in the result that the Tibetans are not really the seclusive people we had believed. By nature they are sociable and hospitable and given to trade. They are jealous about their religion, but as long as that is not touched they are ready enough for political relationship, for social intercourse, and for commercial transactions. The present obstacle to neighbourly intercourse is the suspicion of the Chinese. There is some reason to think that from the first they have instilled into the Tibetans the idea of keeping themselves secluded. Anyhow, now they are quite evidently keeping us apart. And any means we had of preventing the Chinese insinuating themselves between us and the Tibetans have been taken from us through the jealousy of the Russians. Owing to this, we are not now in Chumbi and we have not an agent at Lhasa. The Chinese fear we may absorb Tibet and press them in Szechuan, and the Russians fear a predominant influence with the Dalai Lama might be used by us detrimentally to their Buddhist subjects present and to be. Both, therefore, stand in the way of that close relationship with the Tibetans which is now desired even more by them than by us.

This in brief is the situation at which we have arrived, and in drawing conclusions as to any future action we must first make our minds clear as to what we want in Tibet.

Many say that we do not want anything at all. They argue that the Tibetans live at the back of a stupendous range of snowy mountains, and we had much better leave them alone. Some go so far as to say that it was actually wicked of us forcibly to enter Tibet in 1904. The Mission was styled in the House of Commons “an ignoble little raid,” and even the then leader of the Opposition, after its successful conclusion, said that it had “lowered our prestige.” Before, then, I proceed to examine what we actually do want I will deal with this question as to whether we really want anything at all, and whether there was anything inherently wicked in the Lhasa Mission of 1904.

This idea of the immorality of in any way coercing a people like the Tibetans is, I believe, largely based on the assumption lying unconsciously at the back of people’s minds that Tibet is as distant and as much separated from India as it is from England, that it is some remote and inaccessible country into which no one but meddlesome adventurers should want to enter. And they think that for us to go out of our way deliberately to interfere with a people who only wanted to be left alone was sheer wanton wickedness, and nothing else—except, perhaps, inane folly and wastefulness of human life and good money. This view proceeds, I am convinced, from the quite intelligible lack of appreciation by those in England of the actual conditions prevailing on the spot. For the men who act on the confines of the Empire in this supposedly evil way are, after all, kith and kin with themselves. They were born and bred in England, and are probably not more naturally wicked than an ordinary Member of Parliament.

Now, I have shown that, however remote Tibet is from England, it is not remote from India, but, on the contrary, adjoins and marches with India for 1,000 miles. And if Russia, whose border nowhere comes within hundreds of miles, can yet take such a practical interest in the country as to protest time after time at each little move we make in relation to the Tibetans, surely there is some probability that we also have a necessity for interesting ourselves in it? If the Russians as well as ourselves take practical interest in Tibet, and feel it necessary to have some fairly sharp diplomatic correspondence about it, the probability is that any action we take is not merely inspired by inquisitiveness, idle curiosity, or love of adventure, but that animating this interest must be some real practical necessity.

What that necessity is must, I think, be evident to those who have read the previous pages. Though it is the fact that Tibet is divided from India by the lofty Himalayas, it is also the fact that there is connection and intercourse between the inhabitants of the two countries. Tibet is not isolated like an oceanic island. The inhabitants of India and the inhabitants of Tibet have always had relation and intercourse with one another. And it is the necessity for regularizing and harmonizing the intercourse, and for putting it on a business-like footing, that has been the cause of our interest in the country.

Let me bring the point a little nearer home. Supposing there were in the far Highlands of Scotland a people who had drawn their religion from England, who always looked with veneration upon and made pilgrimages to the sacred cities of Canterbury and York; who were accustomed to come and trade in Perthshire, and occasionally in Glasgow and Dundee; who pastured their flocks and herds along the Grampians; and who intermarried with the people in the Lowlands; and, supposing that this people said they wanted to keep to themselves in their own country in the far Highlands, and not admit anyone from outside, we would say that we could sympathize and understand such a wish, though it certainly seemed somewhat one-sided, considering they had all the advantage of coming into the Lowlands of Scotland and into England whenever they liked. For the benefit of these Lowlanders and Englishmen we might send some emissaries to the Highlanders, as Hastings sent Bogle and Turner to the Tibetans to try by amicable methods to get them to admit our traders, to the reciprocal advantage of both. But if they resented them strongly, we should probably say to ourselves that as long as they did not worry us we would not worry them, and would leave them in their isolation in the Highlands.

But if they _did_ worry us, would not the whole situation be changed? If 10,000 of them came down one day and built a fort in the Perth Hills and refused to move, would not that change our ideas as to leaving them alone? And if, in addition, after they had refused to receive a letter from us, they sent an emissary with letters to the German Emperor and his Chancellor, would not that yet further change our ideas as to respecting their seclusion? The Chancellor might explain that the letter to him was merely to inquire after his health, and that the business with the German Emperor was of a “purely religious nature”; but we should, all the same, think it was about time to be bestirring ourselves to come to some practical understanding with these inhabitants of the Highlands. We should say to them: “We do not in the least mind your keeping yourselves absolutely to yourselves, though we think it inhospitable and unneighbourly; but now you have begun to worry us and to have communications with our rivals, we must come to a clear understanding with you.”

But supposing we found it impossible to discover anyone to make an understanding with, and that the emissary we had sent to them, at the first place inside their border, accompanied with a just sufficiently large escort to protect him in venturing into these wild regions, could find no one to communicate with, and had his letters returned, would the proper thing then have been to bring him back home, and say that as we could do nothing further except by using force—and the use of force was wicked—we must give up the whole business, not mind how many letters were written to the German Emperor, and whether the Highlanders did exclude our traders, and occupy our pasture-lands, and throw down our boundary pillars? We might say that the game was not worth the candle, that the coming to an understanding was not worth all the expense and trouble of sending our emissary by force into the very heart of the Highlands. But can it really be contended that there would be anything unjustifiable, wicked, or immoral in increasing our emissary’s escort and sending him still farther into the Highlands, with orders that, by the use of force, if necessary, he must proceed till he could find someone of authority sufficient for us to make a lasting understanding with him, so that this intercourse with our neighbours might for the future be properly regulated, and any risk of their entering into undesirable connection with possible rivals be removed?

There surely would be nothing _wicked_ in that. Yet that is precisely similar to what we in India did in Tibet, and for which we were accused of lowering British prestige.

Allowing, however, that the proceedings were strictly in order as far as their morality went, it might still be contended that by using force we should defeat our ends—we should make enemies when we wanted to make friends. This argument was, indeed, used in Parliament. “You cannot make friends by force,” it was said. And nothing would seem more obvious to the ordinary Briton, who had never left his island. But, contrary to expectations, we not only can make friends by force, but we actually