February 28.
Carxa is introducing into her present dealings with Tibet a business like dispatch that is strangely at variance with the usual practice Not only has reached its objective with commendable decision, bat within po: fortnight of the Dalai Lama's second flight from the Potala he is solemnly deposed and excommunicated with a thoroughness that doe: creditrto the intentions of the Chi ness Government. The Decree which we publish to-day contains such a terrible indictment of the present incumbent of this sacred office that it threatens irrevocably to bring to a head the issue between China and Tibet. On a previous occasion the Dalai Lama has been divested of his temporal power, which he had virtually forfeited by his flight from the country; but be now deposed from his spiritual office and the fiat has gone forth that another re-incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, another Gyalpo Rinpoche or Precious King must be found. When the former proclamation declaring the Dalai Tama dopered was posted at all the street-corners in Lhasa, the mob tore it down and trampled it in the dost, while the Tashi Lama also refused to acquiesce in the deposition. During the five years of the Dalai Lama's absence from Tibet he must have forfeited some ing veneration and infallibility that his office evokes among the Tibetans bat it remains to be seen whether they will brook active Chinese interference in the ecclesiastical domain of Tibetan affairs. The behest of the Chinese Government that the last re-incarnation should be regarded as a mistake to be cancelled at will, or that a new re-incarnation should take place while the Dalai Lama still lives, would sem, in the light of past events, to be straining even the elasticity of the Tibetan aid Lamaist conscience. Without the exercise of foree—and are now to believe that Chao
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.