While we are all waiting for news of the impending attack upon the Tibetan stronghold at Gyangtse, it is interesting to note that that desperate hero, Mr. A. Henry Savage-Lander, has been unfolding his views on the situation to. an interviewer at home. His travels in the Forbidden Land, we are told, "give him an authority second to no other English-speaking man a statement which cheerfully ignores Mr. Rockhill, the Little-dales, Captain Bower, Sven Hedin, Major Wellby, Mr. Claude White, Colonel Waddell, Captain O'Connor, Colonel Younghusband, and other modest people. Mr. Lander confided to his interlocutor that the Tibet Mission was being bungled through lack of tact and coolness. If the Government of India really wanted to avail themselves of these desirable attri-bates, they ought to apply to him. Ho would undertake to see the thing through. Ho explained "Some time ago, foreseeing that some disaster was coming, I deemed it my duty to offer the Government my services for no remuneration whatever, and offered to go out and place at their disposal my knowledge of the country and the people.
"Twas informed that the presence of anyone possessing knowledge of that country and its inhabitants would cause offence to the leaders of the expedition, and no doubt it would, as is evident by what is happening.
would personally undertake with only 300 men of my own selection—but mark, they must be of my own selection—to reach the Forbidden City without any bloodshed worth speaking of and carry on what negotiations have to carried on. I mean this, and am ready to carry it out, if allowed."
It was uncommonly kind of Mr. Lander to offer to get the Government out of their difficulties by acting as Envoy Extraordinary; but then, as he ingenuously adds, "Governments have ways of reasoning of their own." Mr. Lander is not unknown in this country; we have all road of his thrilling adventures before. He told the interviewer that he " teache nearer Lhassa than anybody except the three men who actually got in at the beginning of the last century." Now the Littledales penetrated within seventy miles of Lhassa before Mr. Lander ever set foot in the country, and they made no fuss about.it. Sven Hedin got within 120 miles of the capital year or two ago. Wo have still to learn how far Mr. Landor's boast is justified. Several other explorers have seen a great deal more of Tibet than Mr. Lander ever did in his lonely excursion north of the Himalayas; and we venture to think ti eral of the officials now with the Mission know—despite the mistakes that have been made—far more of the character of the Tibetans that Mr. Lander can possibly do. Here is his notion of the tactics which he and his Three Hundred would pursue if they were allowed to take the place of the Tibet Field Force.
"All the bloody battles, if one can call them so, we have heard about could have been avoided by using a little more judgment and keeping a cool head. When these same Lhassa troops that are now fighting were sent out to capture me, they very often rushed my camp the same way as they are now attacking the Mission, but I never even dreamed of wasting one cartridge on them, I just struck one soldier or two on the head or stomach with the butt of my rifle, and the rest invariably stampeded. The Tibetans, as you know, are known all over Asia for their inconceivable cowardice. Contempt for a people like that does, I think, just
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.