Those living in the distant interior these days are surely appreciating the excellent service rendered by the Chinese Post Office. That the service is carrying on and maintaining such efficiency is simply marvellous, and no doubt shows the extraordinary ability and energy of those quietly working behind the scenes. We had a letter from Dr. Bare, who lives some twenty days west of us in Tachienlu, a few adys ago, He is the only Protestant missionary living directly under Lhasa rule. And he shares this honour with Pere Nussbaum of the French Mission. Pere Nussbaum is resisting with all his German pugnacity the ambition of the Tibetan authorities to levy taxes on missión properly. The Pere maintains he has never paid taxes to any authority so why begin now. The Lhasa authorities have heretofore not had the privilege of levying taxes on foreign owned property, so they say, why not begin. Dr. Bare is an American missionary and lives in rented property. France, Germany, China, and Tibet are all mixed up in this international complication, Pere Nussbaum is a German in a French mission with a Chinese passport living in Tibetan territory. And how did all this come about? It reminds one very much of the difficult boundary question between Edinburgh and Leith in which some of the cemeteries extended from one side of the border to the other making it somewhat embarrassing to discover just exactly where the dead man lay.
Some years ago when the boundary dispute came up between China and Tibet, the authorities of both states decided to make the Yangtze the dividing line. When this was done Pere Nussbaum found himself a mi Xonary in the Land of the Lamas. It was not his own choosing; circumstances over which he had no control forced it. When the Chinese administered the territory the Pere paid no taxes; when the new boundary line was drawn the priest found himself in the Forbidden Land and directly under Lhasa authority and subject to taxation. This he refuses to pay and stoutly resists the Tibetan authorities, As far as one can gather there seems to be no court of appeal. If the Lhasa Government demands taxes or clear out, this pugnacious pere has to do is wave the flags of Germany, France, Italy, and China in front of the Tibetan authorities: and what can they do without a navy or an air force or mechanized units? Pere Nussbaum with his Chinese passport and German nationality and French affiliation and Italian Papacy, though only one piecee man' can defy the whole Tibetan army. It is a most interesting situation and the pere is not prepared to submit to the Lhasa demands and pay taxes till he has received permission from all the governments concerned; and fortunately the governments concerned have no great love for each other.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.