May 16, 1904.]
difference, that while the process in Shang- hai has been one of natural growth, the new scheme of Mr. TREVELYAN, though seeming- ly identical, bears all the external marks of artificiality.
THE TROUBLE IN TIBET,
(Daily Press, 14th May.)
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
"
gotten as quickly as that of their expulsion from Sikkim. Lhassa, therefore, beckons, and Colonel YOUNGHUSBAND should not only go there, but his entry should be made with as much show as possible"-including, the Pioneer suggests, a British Infantry regiment with its red uniform and two or three smart Indian regiments. There is wisdom in this, if it is climatically practi- A somewhat new light is thrown upon cable, for the larger the British force the the Tibet Mission's difficulties by the tele-less likelihood of fighting. The smallness grau coming through REUTER's agency of the Mission cannot but have encouraged and derived ultimately from a despatch of the vastly more numerous Tibetans to make the Times representative at Gyangtse. their mad attacks. Great Britain and Hitherto, though the responsibility for India desire the Tibetan difficulties settled delay in the negotiations has been divided as quickly as possible. A rapid and yet between the Chinese and the Tibetans in duly protected advance on Lhassa promises proportious difficult to make out accurately, the quickest settlement. It is Lhassa all the only actual treachery, as exhibited in along, with the vague support of China the attack at Guru ou the 31st March, was behind the Lamas, which has flouted every due to the Tibetan commander who lost his attempted advance from India and dis life on that occasion. After the severe regarded every engagement. Even as early lesson administered by the British Indian as WARREN HASTINGS's time it was the force at Guru an immediate effect Dalai Lama who opposed BOGLE, sent to was apparently produced, not only on arrange a commercial treaty. The Teshu the Tibetans but also upon the Chinese Lama of Shigatze, spiritually superior but Commissioner MA who wrote to temporally inferior to the Dalai Lama, was Colonel YOUNGHUSBAND from Lhassa, friendly then, and this attitude seems to saying that the Dalai Lama was wholly to have remained to the present day. But the blame for their not having met, as he had Dalai Lama and the Lhassa bi rarchy have refused to provide him (MA) with transport; kept themselves firmly seated on the he himself was auxious to meet the British shoulders of the Tibetan people, with the representative. This seemned a fairly support of Peking and by aid of the tea reasonable excuse to anyone acquainted with monopoly as nuch as anything. It is the secular obstruction by Lhassa of all not unnatural that they should obstruct attempts to penetrate Tibet from India. Indian advances, which threaten their Probably Colonel YOUNGHUSBAND accepted supremacy gravely. With their prestige the explanation and, while pressing on to dissipated by the arrival of a foreign force Gyangtse, looked forward to a meeting at Lhassa, and with Indian tea on the with China's delegate. Gyangtse was Tibetan market, to what are the Lhassa reached in the middle of April, after Lamas to look? With regard to the tea slight opposition at the" Red Idol Gorge," question, we may recall some words of Mr. and the Mission then settled down T. T. COOPER, who in 1868 tried unsuccess- for another period of waiting. No Chinese fully to cross into Tibet over the Szechuen Commissioner appeared, and all the news frontier, armed with the Viceroy's pass. to be had on the subject resolved itself into He wrote The whole business in life of the futile questions in Parliament, to which the
"Tibetans seems to be to procure a suffi- Ministerialist answers were commendably
ciency of tea; and it is no cheap luxury; brief and reticent. Then, on the 5th May, "for the Lamas, keeping in their hands the a sudden attack was again made, by about "retail as the Chinese do the wholesale 800 Tibetans. Happily it did not catch the 'trade, reduce the people by this means to Mission unawares, and the loss on our side
"absolute dependence, exacting in return was only two wounded as against 250 "for the precious article labour and produce. Tibetans reported killed. But now a fact
Grain, yaks, sheep, horses, and even children, is revealed in connection with this attack,
are given to the rapacious priesthood in on the authority of the Times correspondent
payment for tea." The sanie was true as at Gyangtse, which puts a most serious early as the days of Huc, and the same is aspect on the affair.
He avers that Com true now, and it is only at Lhassa itself that missioner MA deliberately concealed a
any chance of changing this state of affairs Tibetan plot to attack the Mission-and seems possible. With regard to the justifi- was therefore equally guilty of treachery cation of the British Indian ente prise in with the Tibetans. Moreover, Mr. PARR, Tibet, no one can deny that Tibet has made of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, promises of certain trading facilities which who is the Englishman representing the after a decade of years remain unfulfilled. Chinese Government jointly with MA, had In the meantime Lhassa, not ignorant of a narrow escape from death, while all his China's decline, has been coquetting with servants were killed. Ma, in fact, seems to S. Petersburg- a fact which, it must be have most grossly and outrageously violated admitted, has had some influence in quicken- his duties and has made instant removal ing the action of British diplomacy. Con- imperative. Needless to say, the work of sidering the enormous importance of our the Mission will be once more grievously frontier-position in India, who can say that delayed. We do not see that anything this action is unwarrantable? remains but to proceed to Lhassa after rein- forcements have reached Colonel YOUNG. HUSBAND. The remarks of the Allahabad Pioneer, quoted by us three days ago, appear absolutely correct. Our contem, porary claims that it would be the greatest possible mistake to stop short at Gyangtse. Much money has been spent and much blood shed, and to ensure any commensurate return it is necessary that some permanent impression should be produced on the minds of the Tibetans. An entry to Lhassa would certainly be vividly remembered by them for decades, whereas the recollection of the defeats by the present Mission will be for.
"
(<
**
"
THE PEAK RESERVATION
QUESTION.
363
(Daily Press, 12th May.) It is not often that Indian papers trouble themselves to comment on the affairs of Hongkong. Occasionally only do we re- member seeing mention in the Times of India, one of the best known of them, of this Colony, and then it has generally been when our Bombay contemporary has chosen to refer, somewhat slightingly, to the outery made by Hongkong journals about the ravages of plague here. plague sufferings in the past have seemed To Bombay our slight, reckoned merely numerically and without regard to the effect on the trade of this port, one of the great clearing-houses of the world. However, just about a year ago, Mr. FRASER, the Editor of the Times of India, paid a visit -his second, we be- lieve-to Hongkong and wrote for his journal a very able article on this Colony, in which he dwelt with insistence on the need of an European reservation for Hongkong. We see in one of the latest numbers of the Times of India an article entitled "A Lesson from Hongkong," in which the writer discusses our Peak Reservation Ordinance with the highest approval and holds it up for the emulation of Bombay, Our contemporary takes some credit for having stirred up public opinion in Hong- kong on the subject last year. In justice to ourselves we must point out that the question of an Europeau reservation is one on which we have always taken a firm stand, and that it is hardly just for the Times of India to say in this connection that "what was everybody's business ended in being nobody's business in Hongkong.' was rather that no attempt was made to reserve the Peak district until it was judged that this district was actually threatened. Previously there was an agitation in favour of an European reservation in Kowloon- for a less wealthy class of Europeans than those of the Peak, it will be understood but there was a distinct feeling against this among the home authorities, and no reser- vation has been sanctioned. With regard to the Peak we still await the decision of Downing Street, not without hope, seeing that the local Government has lent its sup- port to the petition and that the respectable Chinese have concurred in the wisdom of the measure. We are glad, however, to see that we have the support of the Times of India, the writers on which see in Bombay conditions at least analogous to those prevailing in Hongkong. They are able to recognise how imperative it is to the health of European residents in the tropics—and, in particular, European women and children
The Universal Gazette now hears that since Viceroy Wei, of Nanking, refused to appoint an official to take charge of the improvement of the Whangpoo with other foreign officials, he proposes now to ask the Senior Consul of Shanghai to inform the Consular Body, who in turn are to inform their respective Ministers at Peking, that China would undertake to obtain the necessary funds herself to carry out this remarks that the Viceroy's proposal is certainly work within a certain period. preferable to carrying out the work jointly with foreign officials and partly with foreign capital.
The Gazette
|
The cuse
to live under conditions somewhat, even if remotely, resembling those of home, and not amid crowded Eastern surroundings. They recognise that it is not a matter of race at all, merely of health of the Europe- ans, who after all must be considered the backbone of the Colony, and whose prede- cessors from home, as the Times of India points out, sacrificed their lives in hundreds at a time when the risks of life in the tropics were less understood and guarded against than they are to-day. Is it too much to hope that the home authorities will be able to see facts as our Eastern neigh- bours see them and to admit that in our petition we have only asked for sanction to a measure which will secure the best interests of the Colony?
It is not generally known that there is a son of the late Sir Edwin Arnold on the Hongkong- Canton run. He is chief officer of one of the river steamers.
!