A PROPOSED SOLUTION. 361 



repeated pressure of them upon the British Government 

 during the period in which that body was passing 

 through an unaccountable phase of vacillation, and it 

 is a matter for congratulation that the progress of 

 events has rendered the carrying out of their policy, 

 in part at least, probable. It is to be hoped that a 

 treaty recognised and agreed to by all parties will 

 eventually be concluded at the Tibetan capital, and 

 that a permanent British representative will ere long 

 be acknowledged at Lhassa. For it is, as the Govern- 

 ment of India so tersely put it, " the most extraordinary 

 anachronism of the twentieth century that there 

 should exist within 300 miles of the borders of 

 British India a State and a Government with whom 

 political relations do not so much as exist, and with 

 whom it is impossible to exchange a written com- 

 munication." 



Exactly how a practical solution of the Tibetan 

 difficulty is to be brought about with a minimum of 

 friction, is of course a question which can best be 

 solved by those on the spot. An interesting suggestion 

 has, however, recently (May 1904) been put forward by 

 a writer in ' The Contemporary Review.' ^ The course 

 therein advocated is the creation of a religious revolu- 

 tion by raising aloft the standard of a Buddhist anti- 

 pope with the goodwill of Great Britain behind him. 

 The whole of the Buddhist world, thinks the writer, 

 except of course the Lhassa council of five, would 

 accept the sudden political intervention of the Tashe- 

 Lama at a moment when the Church was in danger, 

 and with an anglophile Buddhist pope raised to supreme 

 power by British support, Anglo-Tibetan intercourse 

 would be assured, while the star of Great Britain 



^ Alexander Ular. 



