These proposals the Government of India commended to the favourable consideration of His Majesty’s Government, in the firm conviction that if some such step were not taken, “a serious danger would grow up in Tibet, which might one day, and perhaps at no very distant date, attain to menacing dimensions.” They regarded the situation, as it seriously affected the frontiers which they were called upon to defend with Indian resources, as one in which their opinion was entitled to carry weight with His Majesty’s Government; and they entertained a sincere alarm that, if nothing was done and matters were allowed to slide, they might before long have occasion gravely to regret that action was not taken while it was still relatively free from difficulty.
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[17] communicated to the Foreign Office, it was stated that, according to the information 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 Komba-Ovaleko. 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. He told the Ambassador[18] that the language of the communication had seemed to him unusual, and, indeed, almost minatory in tone. He referred especially to the statement that the Imperial Government might, in consequence of our action in a country which immediately adjoined the frontiers of India, find it necessary to take measures to protect Russian interests in those regions. Lord Lansdowne said he could not conceive why it was necessary for Russia to evince her interest in this manner.