India and Tibet : vol.1 / Page 105 (Color Image)

0105	India and Tibet : vol.1

CHAPTER VII

NEGOTIATIONS WITH RUSSIA

I WOULD again recall the fact that when the Government

of India wrote the above-quoted despatch, Russia was not

yet at war with Japan, and was very much in the

ascendant and active in Asia. She had recently occupied

Port Arthur, and run a railway through Manchuria ; and

she was in a dominant, almost domineering, position at

Peking. And as showing the interest she took in Tibet,

there came, ,just after the receipt by the India Office of

Lord Curzon's despatch, a representation from the Russian

Chargé d'Affaires in London, founded apparently upon

our very humble efforts of the previous summer within

our own frontier. In this representation, which was made

in the form of a memorandum* communicated to the

Foreign Office, it was stated that, according to the infor-

mation which the Russian Government had received from

an authoritative source, a British military expedition had

reached Komba-Ovaleko, on its way north by the Chumbi

Valley, and that the Russian Government would consider

such an expedition to Tibet as likely to produce a situation

of considerable gravity, which might oblige them to take

measures to protect their interests in those regions.

It was impossible to trace what place was intended

by Iiomba-Qvaleko. Mr. White and his little escort of

150 men had never gone outside the limits of Sikkim,

and had long since returned to their headquarters. There

was no difficulty, then, in giving the Russian Ambassador

the assurance that this " authoritative " information was

without the smallest foundation. And Lord Lansdowne

went further than merely refuting the false information.

* Blue-book, p. 178.

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