356 A TIBETAN EPISODE. 



to say, the same old story was repeated, innumerable 

 excuses for delay were hatched in the fertile Chinese 

 brain, and the Tibetans, less versed in the art of polite 

 diplomacy than their more accomplished co-commis- 

 sioners, uncompromisingly refused to negotiate at all. 

 Moreover, they proceeded to emphasise their contempt 

 for diplomatic subterfuge by deciding upon war in the 

 National Council at Lhassa, by collecting soldiers with 

 every display of hostility, and by casting two unoffend- 

 ing British subjects incontinently into prison. 



By October 1903 it seems to have at last dawned 

 upon Downing Street that the Government of India 

 did, after all, perhaps know something about Indian 

 affairs and India's neighbours, and in November his 

 Majesty's Government reluctantly sanctioned the ad- 

 vance of the mission to Gyangtse, though they at the 

 same time repeated that they were not prepared to 

 sanction any form of permanent intervention in Tibetan 

 affairs. 



So accustomed had those concerned become to find 

 invariable success crown their policy of trifling with 

 Great Britain, that the news of the above decision came 

 upon the Chinese Foreign Office as an absolute bolt 

 from the blue. The Wai-wu Pu, electrified to action, 

 fell to telegraphing wildly to the new Amban, who 

 had been appointed to proceed to Lhassa and to take 

 charge of the Tibetan question generally, and who was 

 wandering unconcernedly among the deserts and oases 

 of the interior, to hasten by forced marches to his post, 

 and exact obedience from the Government of Tibet to 

 the imperial commands forthwith to resume negotia- 

 tions with the British commissioners. The communica- 

 tion made to the Chinese Minister did indeed seem, as 

 his Majesty's Minister at Peking somewhat dryly re- 

 marked, " to have awakened the Chinese Government 



