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.

Besides these political results, there were also scientific results of no mean value. Captain Ryder’s survey operations have already been referred to. Mr. Hayden made valuable geological collections, which are on view in the Museum at Calcutta, and which are described by him in the Records of the Geological Survey of India. Captain Walton’s natural history and botanical collections are placed in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington and in Kew Gardens, and have been described in various scientific works. Colonel Waddell was unable to discover any secrets of the ancient world said to be hidden in Tibet, but he made a collection of Tibetan manuscripts, which are deposited in the British Museum.

If all these political and scientific results may not seem to the ordinary Englishman to amount to much, the most obtuse must at least see one good that came from the Mission—the proving for all time that we can get to Lhasa, and that, even at the cost of crossing the Himalayas in mid-winter, we will see our treaties observed. Anyone practised in affairs knows the advantage of a reputation for enforcing obligations, and this at least accrued to us from the Mission of 1904.

But I have already mentioned that the Secretary of State felt himself unable to approve of the Treaty as signed, and I have now to show how it was that some of the advantages to which the Indian Government attached most importance had to be abandoned.

A week after the signing of the Treaty the Government of India telegraphed to me that the Secretary of State considered that a difficulty was presented by the amount of the indemnity, especially when the provision for its payment was read in conjunction with Clause VII. of the Treaty, the effect being that our occupation of Chumbi might have to continue for seventy-five years. This was, the Secretary of State said, inconsistent with the instructions conveyed in his telegram of July 26, and with the declaration of His Majesty’s Government as to withdrawal. The Government of India were, therefore, asked to consider whether, without prejudice to the signed agreement, it would not be possible to intimate to the Tibetans that the amount of the indemnity would be reduced on their duly fulfilling the terms agreed to and granting further facilities for trade.

Some correspondence followed, but, owing to the shortness of my stay at Lhasa and the undesirability of attempting to alter a Treaty directly it had been made, no action was taken, and I returned with the Treaty intact.

The Government of India wrote on October 6 to the Secretary of State^[42] reviewing the conditions under which I had had to make the Treaty, and saying that they considered I was fully justified in using my discretion as I did and in signing the Treaty on September 7 without awaiting approval of the amount of the indemnity and the method of its payment, and pointing out that any alteration in the terms at the critical moment would probably have led to a recommencement of the whole discussion.

They also thought my action in acquiring the right for our Agent at Gyantse to proceed to Lhasa under certain conditions might be approved. They were still of opinion that the right might be of the greatest value hereafter, and, hedged in as it was by the conditions mentioned in it, it could not be held, they thought, to commit us to any political control over Tibet.

At the same time the Government of India expressed their sincere regret that the instructions of His Majesty’s Government were not carried out to the letter, as they would have been if communication with their Commissioner had not been a matter of twelve days even by telegraph.

Regarding the amendment of the Treaty to meet the wishes of His Majesty’s Government, they proposed by telegram on October 21^[43] that in ratifying it a declaration should be appended by the Viceroy reducing the indemnity from 75 to 25 lakhs, and affirming that after three annual instalments had been paid the British occupation of the Chumbi Valley should terminate, provided the terms of the Treaty should in the meantime have been carried out.

To this proposal the Secretary of State agreed on November 7,^[44] but he added that, as regards the agreement giving the Agent at Gyantse the right of access to Lhasa, His Majesty’s Government had decided to disallow it, for they considered it unnecessary, and inconsistent with the principle on which their policy had throughout been based.

Finally, the Secretary of State reviewed the whole affair in a despatch dated December 2. When Lord Curzon, in his despatch of January 8, 1903, made his proposal for a Mission to Lhasa, Tibet, though lying on our borders, was practically an unknown country, the rulers of which persistently refused to hold any communications with the British Government even on necessary matters of business; and if the Tibetan Government had become involved in political relations with other Powers, a situation of danger might have been created on the frontier of the Indian Empire. This risk had now been removed by the conclusion of the Treaty. And it was considered most satisfactory that, having regard to the obstinacy of the Tibetans in the past, I should, besides concluding the Treaty, have good reason to believe that the relations which I had established with them at Lhasa were generally friendly.

In the Treaty I had inserted a stipulation that the indemnity was to be paid in 75 annual instalments, and I had retained without modification the proviso that the Chumbi Valley was to be occupied as security till the full amount had been paid. The effect of this was to make it appear as if it were our intention to occupy for at least seventy-five years the Chumbi Valley, which had been recognized in the Convention of 1890 and the Trade Regulations of 1893 as Tibetan territory. This would have been inconsistent with the repeated declarations of His Majesty’s Government that the Mission would not lead to occupation, and that we would withdraw from Tibetan territory when reparation had been secured.

It had been hoped that it would be possible to alter the Treaty before I left Lhasa, but it was clear in the circumstances that it was not desirable that I should have postponed my departure.

As to the separate agreement, the question of claiming for the trade agents at Gyantse the right of access to Lhasa was carefully considered before His Majesty’s Government decided that no such condition was to be included in the terms of the settlement, and a subsequent request made by the Government of India for a modification of this decision was negatived by the telegram of August 3. No subsequent reference was made to the Secretary of State on the subject, and it was not till the receipt of the letter of October 6 from the Government of India that he learned that I had taken on myself the responsibility of concluding an agreement giving the trade agent at Gyantse the right to visit Lhasa to consult with the Chinese and Tibetan officers there on commercial matters, which it had been found impossible to settle at Gyantse. In the circumstances, His Majesty’s Government had no alternative but to disallow the agreement as inconsistent with the policy which they had laid down.

Attention had already been drawn to the fact that questions of Indian frontier policy could no longer be regarded from an exclusively Indian point of view, and that the course to be pursued in such cases must be laid down by His Majesty’s Government alone. It was essential that this should be borne in mind by those who found themselves entrusted with the conduct of affairs in which the external relations of India were involved, and that they should not allow themselves, under the pressure of the problems which confronted them on the spot, to forget the necessity of conforming to the instructions which they had received from His Majesty’s Government, who had more immediately before them the interests of the British Empire as a whole.

Such were the final views and orders of the Secretary of State upon the Mission. The reasons for my action in extending the period of payment, in securing the right to occupy the Chumbi Valley during that extended period, and in obtaining the right for our Agent at Gyantse to proceed to Lhasa, have been already given. I had to act in circumstances that were very exceptional, and I thought I was not taking more latitude than such circumstances naturally confer on an agent. The pledges to Russia were given with a qualification, but the main pledge, that we would not annex Tibet, or establish a protectorate over it, or interfere in its internal administration, had not, in my view, been infringed by the Treaty I signed.

We may assume that Government had some pressing international consideration of the moment which necessitated their taking no account of the qualification to their pledges, but there is some justification for thinking that if the Treaty had not been modified, and the right to occupy the Chumbi Valley and to send the Gyantse Agent to Lhasa had been maintained, we might have prevented the present trouble from ever arising.