assertions that it was with the utmost reluctance that we used force against them. Yet, if they could have seen all the official and private correspondence which took place between the Indian Government and the Home Government, and between the Indian Government and me, and could have overheard conversations that had taken place, they would have been convinced that the last thing we wished was to inflict pain or cause trouble.
Those who have had any experience of the Government of India know that nothing is less congenial to them than spending their hard-earned savings in costly military expeditions. Government will go on for years—often to what we agents, who have to bear the brunt of the injury, think an exasperating degree—putting up with affronts from the weaker peoples on our border, hoping against hope to settle a question without resorting to force. And so it was in Tibet. They tried, and I, their agent, tried to effect a settlement by every conceivable means, and the exercise of a patience and forbearance such as can only be equalled by that which a Minister of the Crown has to maintain in the House of Commons of the present age. For this end I even risked my life by riding over, unescorted, into the camp at Guru to reason quietly with the Tibetans, and I did what was harder still, I instructed other men to risk their lives by advancing against their position without firing, so that we might give them a chance up to the very last possible moment. But when, in the end, in spite of every effort to avoid hostilities, we had to use force, and when, as a result, we saw the terrible injury inflicted not on the real originators of all the trouble, but upon the innocent people, who were driven along like sheep, there was not an Englishman who went to Tibet who did not earnestly desire to make up in every possible way to the country people for the injury which, in the exercise of their duty, they were bound to inflict. And this is the feeling which evidently animated those soldier-administrators who, a century ago, had been engaged in
