to be a man beyond the reach of the shafts of chance and circumstance. But Fate knew otherwise. Working out her inexorable purposes, she set him a nice problem delicately attuned to the man he was. To a man of a different type, one of narrower vision or less scrupulous a sense of responsibility, it would have been no problem at all. If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, so also are there loose rocks about to keep the mountain goat intrigued; in other words, we are all of us happily provided from time to time with the particular difficulties and assuagements we require for our due development. There was no particular reason why the clouds should have gathered just then, unless it was that Fate had decided to drench him. The Tibetan question was for the moment dormant, and neither side desired or was in a position to press its claims and contentions by force of arms. The Armistice, which had brought to an end the hostilities of 1917-18, had been scrupulously observed on both sides, and responsible opinion on the one side as on the other seemed to agree that the general question between the two countries was not susceptible of a military solution. The political horizon was clear, peace reigned, and nothing of particular importance was coming through the oracles, which seem almost to be the form the shadow of coming events takes in that part of the world. Then fate

took a hand, or it may have been Terang-gungchi, the sprite of mischief whom the Tibetans believe to play quite an important rôle in human affairs. However that may be, the chaos which is China of a sudden stretched forth, octopus-like, a tentacle and he was in the coils. It was like this. In the aforesaid hostilities, which were happily brought to an end through the mediation of my predecessor on the frontier, the Tibetan armies had recovered a large slice of their lost territories, ousting the alien claimant from the Lama States of Riwoche, Chamdo, and Draya, the kingdoms of Derge, Hlato, and Lintsung, the provinces of Markham and Gonjo, and the Thirty-nine Banners of Jyade. As a result, they found themselves in possession of a new north-eastern frontier in the form of a salient which lay athwart the lines of communication between the Chinese frontier outposts of Jyekundo in the north and Tachienlu in the extreme east. That in itself was not of much consequence. Commercial intercourse was in no way interrupted; and of political and military co-operation, to which, of course, the wedge could not but be an obstacle, there was normally little or none between the places concerned, each being under a virtually independent satrap who took no particular interest in his distant fellow. Soon afterwards, however, the Central Government of China decided to send by this route a

consignment of arms and ammunition and funds to the Tachienlu satrap, or to give him his proper title-the Occupation Commissioner (that is, Civil and Military Governor) of the frontier area, who, unlike most of the military leaders in the province in which his satrapy lay, was sympathetic to the party then in power at Peking. It was a small consignment, but still large enough, it was thought, to prevent his political extinction, a matter of definite moment to Peking. Large enough also, however but that couldn't be helped, to constitute too tempting a morsel to the various satraps through whose domains it would have had to pass if it had been sent by the ordinary route. Indeed, the latter had actually been tried, and the consignment had been swallowed almost before it had got under way, gobbled up, in fact, by the first commander who saw it-like some worm spotted by a lucky chicken. Hence the tremendously circuitous route chosen for the second attempt, a route which had, however, the advantage of lying entirely within regions controlled by men who still took orders from Peking, apart, that is, from the last stage which lay through Tibetan territory, the wedge aforesaid. Its passage through that was unavoidably left for the Commissioner himself to arrange as best he could and if he could.

He proceeded to do so. He detailed a battalion of troops

to proceed to Jyekundo to take delivery of the said supplies, wrote to the Kalon Lama requesting him to allow it right of way across the salient, and at the same time sent up two deputies with full powers to arrange the necessary details of procedure, transport, and so on. He took it for granted that the Kalon Lama would accede to his request. His proposition was, in his own eyes, eminently reasonable; all he wanted was his supplies; his convoy would merely cross the

salient like any merchant caravan, pick up the consignment and bring it back, a matter of a month or two at the most, and then everybody would be as they were before. He had no military or territorial designs, no ulterior motives, no anything save a fixed determination to get those supplies of his, upon which his political survival depended. His enemies-not Tibetans, but his own fellow countrymen and military rivals-were beating at his gates, he was short of arms and ammunition and money, and his only hope of maintaining his position lay in getting in these supplies. There was, of course, nothing illicit in the matter; they were his, consigned to him by the Government of his country. He was entitled to them, and he must have them or go under. The whole thing was a domestic matter, of no concern whatsoever of the Tibetans; it was merely a geographical accident that the route of approach

passed through their territory, and all they had to do was to let his convoy through. He was not even raising the major question—namely, whether the Tibetans were in rightful occupation of the salient at all. In his eyes they were not a brief year ago it had been part of his own domain, but it was not his purpose to complicate a simple issue by digging up that aspect of it. As far as his present proposition was concerned, that particular question could remain in the abeyance to which it had already got accustomed, lulled to sleep, like some fierce dog, by the measured periods of diplomacy. It was all very good and considerate of him, and no doubt he felt that such an attitude of sweet reasonableness could hardly but bring its own reward. Moreover, he conceived himself as giving the Tibetan authorities an opportunity of conceding on their own volition what he could, if he liked, exact by force of arms. But could he? It can be said that he was convinced he could. Nor was he, in his own view, asking anything impossible of the Tibetans. What possible objection could they raise? Immediate compliance was their proper rôle. Like all of us, any one who has happily provided himself with a fixed idea, he could see no flaw whatsoever in his case. As far as this matter was concerned, he was in a pulpit, made, like all pulpits, for one.

stage when I returned to the frontier after an absence of several years, and immediately set forth on a tour which developed into a comprehensive journey, lasting some eight months in all, throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Tibet. The Commissioner, an old friend of mine from my previous term of service on the frontier, took the opportunity to request me to support his proposition vis-à-vis the Kalon Lama, but I had to be non-committal. Possible difficulties and objections were, of course, obvious to me, and, anyway, the whole thing had nothing to do with me except in so far as it might endanger the peace of the frontier. It had had been agreed that the Tibetan question should be settled by negotiation between the three countries concerned -Tibet, China, and Great Britain,-who all desired that the situation should not be complicated by regional developments, most important of which were, of course, anything in the nature of a renewal of hostilities on the frontier.

I reserved my opinion, and set forth. About a fortnight's trek brought me to the farthest Chinese garrison post, on the very edge of the salient, where I found the two delegates kicking their heels. It appeared that the Tibetan authorities were not prepared either to discuss the Commissioner's proposition or to receive his delegates on their, the Tibetan, side of the frontier-an impasse,

in fact. I crossed the de facto frontier, and in another fortnight reached the Kalon Lama's headquarters at Chamdo, a town situated on the right bank of the Mekong (there known as the Dza Chu), at the point where that river is joined by its affluent, the Om Chu. I was received by the GovernorGeneral with the greatest ceremony and courtesy. He had sent officials to meet me; the oracles were consulted to discover the most auspicious day for my entry into his capital, and on the date thus happily fixed I rode in escorted by his own bodyguard of twenty-five cavalry, flags flying and bugles blowing, in all a gay display which the whole town, of course, turned out to see. My comings and goings were in general thus ceremoniously marked throughout my wanderings in Tibetan territory. Wherever there happened to be troops they paraded, and all the available sources of display were put into use-processions, flags, bugles, bagpipes, lama orchestras, bonfires, and so on,-all helping to lend a gala air to these occasions. It was all in strong contrast to the experiences of travellers in Tibet in the old days when our prestige in that country was not what it is now.

The Kalon Lama lost no time in putting me in possession of the Tibetan point of view regarding the Commissioner's proposition. The flawless case proved, when viewed from the Tibetan standpoint,

full of flaws, the greatest of which, like Aaron's serpent, swallowed up the rest-namely, that Tibet could not permit the passage of Chinese troops through her territory. That the accommodation the Commissioner required was temporary only, that he had no ulterior purposes, was raising no other issues, and was in a desperate plight—all this made no appeal whatsoever to the Tibetan authorities. They were quite as sure as the Commissioner whose was the rightful ownership of the territory, and, moreover, they were in possession of it, de facto by force of arms and de jure by, inter alia, the terms of the armistice signed by the Commissioner's own plenipotentiaries. And, what would have stung him most had he been aware of it, they were entirely and unaffectedly indifferent to his woes.

A beetle on its back could scarcely have aroused less emotion in them. The colossus before whom men trembled in his own domain had become, viewed from this distance, invisible to the naked eye.

They decided, however, after mature deliberation, that his letter might as well be given a reply as not, and the Kalon Lama was good enough at my suggestion to couch it in the terms of a non possumus as being less provocative than the blunter nolens. And so the matter rested for the moment while the imp of mischief thought again.

I had not previously met the