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0493 India and Tibet : vol.1
インドとチベット : vol.1
India and Tibet : vol.1 / 493 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000295
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one to make an understanding with, and that the emissary
we had sent to them, at the first place inside their border,
accompanied with a just sufficiently large escort to protect
him in venturing into these wild regions, could find no one
to communicate with, and had his letters returned, would
the proper thing then have been to bring him back home,
and say that as we could do nothing further except
by using force—and the use of force was wicked—we
must give up the whole business, not mind how many
letters were written to the German Emperor, and whether
the Highlanders did exclude our traders, and occupy our
pasture-lands, and throw down our boundary pillars? We
might say that the game was not worth the candle, that
the coming to an understanding was not worth all the
expense and trouble of sending our emissary by force into
the very heart of the Highlands. But can it really be
contended that there would be anything unjustifiable,
wicked, or immoral in increasing our emissary's escort and
sending him still farther into the Highlands, with orders
that, by the use of force, if necessary, he must proceed till
he could find someone of authority sufficient for us to
make a lasting understanding with him, so that this
intercourse with our neighbours might for the future be
properly regulated, and any risk of their entering into
undesirable connection with possible rivals be removed?
There surely would be nothing wicked in that. Yet
that is precisely similar to what we in India did in Tibet,
and for which we were accused of lowering British
prestige.
Allowing, however, that the proceedings were strictly
in order as far as their morality went, it might still be
contended that by using force we should defeat our ends
—we should make enemies when we wanted to make
friends. This argument was, indeed, used in Parliament.
"You cannot make friends by force," it was said. And
nothing would seem more obvious to the ordinary Briton,
who had never left his island. But, contrary to expecta-
tions, we not only can make friends by force, but we
actually did. The Tibetans were more friendly with us
after we had fought our way to Lhasa than they were