hoorka indifference and Chinese hostility. Tibet
remains a sealed book, and, despite treaty rights to enter it, no
Englishman goes thither, although the attraction is great, and the prize
to be secured far from vague or trivial. The assumed reason is the
covert hostility of the Chinese.

If we turn farther to the east, to Assam--which we have absorbed--to
Birma, and even to Siam, we find the same causes in operation. We
recognized in Yunnan the Panthay Sultan of Talifoo; we have always
striven to treat the kings of Birma and Siam as independent princes,
whereas they are only Chinese vassals; and we are believed to have
carried on intrigues with the Shans and other tribes beyond the Assamese
frontier. These steps may be prudent or they may not for other reasons;
but they certainly are imprudent for the reason that they offend the
Chinese. As a policy intended to conciliate the Chinese, our frontier
policy on the north and the east has been the worst possible, and a
tissue of blunders from beginning to end; and the result is that for the
last half-century we have lived on the very worst terms with the
Chinese. We should have conciliated them, but we aroused instead all
their latent suspicion and dislike. We should have become friendly
neighbours, and, on the contrary, we are neighbours who, if not
decidedly hostile to each other, shun each other's presence. And the
real base of our sentiment towards the Chinese is to be seen in the fact
that one of the first articles in the creed of Indian state policy is
"to keep China as far off as possible." That precept, which may have
been very useful, has served its turn, and it is time that our
Indo-Chinese policy should be set upon a new basis. With China once more
supreme upon our whole northern frontier, and with her presenting
ultimatums at Bangkok, and coercing the ruler of Mandalay as she esteems
fit, it is high time for us, apart from the Central Asian question
altogether, to set our house in order with the Chinese. The mistakes we
made in championing the Ghoorkas, in acknowledging the Panthays, and in
a general policy of indifference to Chinese opinion, have all tended to
bring about the present deadlock in our relations with China. Our
acknowledgment of the Athalik Ghazi cannot have conduced to the creation
of any very friendly sentiment among the Chinese towards us, and,
therefore, at the present moment we must assume that the state of
feeling existing among the Chinese i