This, in the sequel, was to be a clinching fetter on the action of the Indian Government. They still wanted a representative at Lhasa; and in view of the determined hostility of the Tibetans, they wanted discretion to occupy the Chumbi Valley as a guarantee for the fulfilment of the treaty; and when the Russians had permanently stationed thousands of troops in Manchuria, had constructed railways, built forts, and established posts, where seventeen years before I had not seen a single Russian, and when they had Consular representatives all along their border in Chinese Turkestan and Mongolia, it was hard to see on what grounds they could have objected to the very mild measures which the Government of India desired to adopt. In any case, when the Tibetans had shown, not merely passive obstinacy, but downright hostility, and when, even though it might be the case that, in the words of Count Lamsdorff to Sir Charles Hardinge,[31] “the relations between Russia and Tibet were of a purely religious nature, due solely to the large number of Russian Buriats who regarded the Dalai Lama as their Pope,” it was clear that the Tibetans relied on those merely religious relations as a support against us, the Government of India might have hoped that their hands would be freed to enable them to definitely settle up this intrinsically not very important Tibetan affair. But “wider international considerations” were, as so often happens in Indian affairs, to tell hardly against the Government of India. Since the Mission had started into Tibet war between Russia and Japan had broken out. Our relations with Russia were, consequently, at a very delicate stage. War was in the air, and statesmen had to be careful. For the sake of this insignificant business with Tibet, it would be hardly worth while endangering our relations with Russia, especially when her adhesion to our arrangement with France in regard to Egypt was required. Yet when we look at the map at the end of this book, and see how far the Russian frontier is from Tibet and to what a length our own actually touches it, and when we remember, too, that there was actually in Lhasa at this time a Russian subject who had been accustomed to go backwards and forwards between Lhasa and St. Petersburg, and served therefore all the purposes required of those religious relations which it was very natural should subsist between the Dalai Lama and Russian Buddhists, it does seem hard that the Government of India, now at the climax of all their efforts, should have been tied down through deference to the distant Power.