What eventually occurred showed that there were no possible grounds for such a belief. Even when the Chinese Central Government were aroused, and had ordered the Resident to proceed to the frontier to settle matters, he was unable to get there. The Tibetans refused him transport, and when we reached Lhasa, in August of the following year, we found him to be practically a prisoner, and almost without enough to eat, as the Tibetans had prevented supplies of money from reaching him, and he had actually to borrow money from us. But it was with the Tibetans that we really wished to negotiate. Perhaps they would have come to terms with us if we had been a little less impatient and remained on the frontier? Perhaps they would have sent a Councillor, as we had asked, and negotiated a treaty? On this point, too, our later experience showed that we could not have relied. When we at length reached Lhasa I had to negotiate, not with one Councillor only, but with the whole Council; and not with the Council, but the Regent himself, to whom the Dalai Lama had entrusted his own seal and whom he had appointed in his place; and not with the Council and the Regent only, but with the National Assembly and three great monasteries in addition; and with all in the presence of the Chinese Resident himself. No one man would ever have been entrusted by them with power, and no one man would take responsibility. It was only with the whole together that it was possible to negotiate; and we could negotiate with the whole together no where but in Lhasa itself.
Granted all this, some may say, but even then was it worth incurring Russian resentment in order to settle a trumpery affair of boundary pillars and petty trade interests in a remote corner of our Empire? Now, I most fully sympathize with the Russian view. Our advancing into Tibet would—and, in fact, did—“involve a grave disturbance of the Central Asian situation.” The news of our signing a treaty in the Potala at Lhasa, and of the Dalai Lama having to flee, did produce a profound impression. But if the subject-matter of our dispute was small, there was small reason why the Russians should trouble us about it. The matter grew in dimension because the Tibetans, whom the Chinese suzerains themselves had characterized as obstinate and difficult to influence, had grown still more obstinate and still more difficult to influence, through their having led themselves to believe that they could count on Russian support. In view of Russian disclaimers, we can assume that the Russian Government gave them no intentional grounds for that belief. Nevertheless, they had it, and for practical purposes that was all that concerned us then. The reception of the Dalai Lama’s religious missions by the Czar, the Czarina, the Chancellor and Minister, and the subscriptions they had collected, together with the extraordinary belief they had that Russia was nearer to Lhasa than India was, had led the ignorant Dalai Lama to believe that he could count on Russian support against the British. One can quite realize that the Russians, with their thousands of Buddhist Asiatic subjects, and with the prospect that then seemed near of their absorbing Mongolia, and so possessing still more Buddhist subjects, would be sensitive of our acquiring a predominant influence with the Dalai Lama. But that is scarcely a reason why we should not take measures to counteract an influence which was already, and in hard fact proving, detrimental to our own interests by encouraging the Tibetans in the belief that they could with impunity ignore their treaty obligations. The Russian Government had no intention of sending an agent to Lhasa. Nevertheless, there was in Lhasa all the time a Russian subject who had more influence over the Dalai Lama than the Chinese Resident. When such was the condition of affairs, we could hardly defer to Russia in a matter concerning a country adjoining our frontier, but nowhere adjoining hers.