then our coursers may be stopped, but not otherwise.
Whether or not complications in Western China will be viewed as seriously by others as by me, it yet may be taken for granted that the rape of Tibet will not be forgotten by the statesmen of interested nations when they gravely begin that general readjustment which must follow the close of the Russo-Japanese war. No incident as large as that just precipitated by Lord Curzon's fears and Colonel Younghusband's ambition can stand alone in the world's politics of to-day. It is probable that even if the main mist upon Tibet be permitted to be permanent, Great Britain will somewhere else be required to yield a quid pro quo out of proportion to the value gained in Tibet. I say out of proportion because I consider that value as nil or negative, and I mean the value to the average inhabitant of Great Britain and also to the average inhabitant of India.
If Great Britian were a cooped-in nation, if her energetic sons found no open spaces in the world for stretching their legs and sharpening their wits, then perhaps the opportunity for even the few whom Tibet could support would be of general benefit. But the administration of present holdings by Government, and the maintenance of a sharp commercial contest throughout the world,—these two national activities create demands for men, for brains, which are not more than met. There is no surplus. Such work as England has so largely in hand requires high-grade men. The ordinary white man is not the typical sahib, yet in many corners of her subject-world, it is only the sahib quality in her
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