particularly loud, in chorus with the Americans, in demands for the maintenance of Chinese integrity. Her ruthless act in Tibet must undoubtedly shake the prestige of Pekin authority all over Mongolia and Turkestan, and may have indirect results of most serious character.
As to what will be the duration and vigour of resistance offered by Russia and China to the confirmation and enforcement of Younghusband's convention, that is plainly a question whose answer must be heard in some echo from the mountains of Manchuria. China's diplomatic movements are habitually slow, even when her interests would seem to demand haste. In this case, unless she is prepared to brave the insistent English, her interest lies with delay. But Russia and China are not alone, though vastly preponderant, in their interest in the Tibetan question. The indirect effects may be of wide international import. This phase of the question was broached by me in a paper appearing in the North American Review of May, 1904, shortly after my return from Asia, and before the rigorous Clause IX., or any part of the drastic Younghusband convention had been published. That its near-by previsions were just, the event has proved.
A quotation from that paper may well explain the ultimate danger to the Asiatic—hence to the European — situation that may spring from the apparently isolated events in an almost unknown mountain-region.
" The practical destruction of Thibetan independence, which may be assumed as the object of the present
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