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College of Psychic Studies [British National Association of Spiritualists] [London Spiritualist Alliance]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/14/20


The College building on Queensberry Place

The College of Psychic Studies (founded in 1884 as the London Spiritualist Alliance) is a non-profit organisation based in South Kensington, London. It is dedicated to the study of psychic and spiritualist phenomena.

History

British National Association of Spiritualists

In August 1873, the British National Association of Spiritualists (BNAS) was formed by Thomas Everitt, Edmund Rogers and others at a meeting in Liverpool.[1][2]


William Stainton Moses, founder of the London Spiritualist Alliance.

Early members included well known spiritualists such as Charles Maurice Davies, Charles Isham, William Stainton Moses, Stanhope Templeman Speer, Morell Theobald and George Wyld.[2][3] The BNAS carried out experimental séances and investigations into mediumship. It held no dogmatic religious views but was known for "sympathising with the religion of Jesus Christ".[2]


Member list for the London Spiritualist Alliance in March, 1884.

The first public meeting of the BNAS took place on 16 April 1874 under the chairmanship of Samuel Carter Hall.[4] By 1875 the BNAS had over 400 members.[2] Its headquarters moved to Great Russell Street, London.[1] In 1879 the German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner became an honorary member.[5]

William Henry Harrison and his colleagues from the "Scientific Research Committee" of the BNAS were involved in experiments that weighed mediums during materialization séances.[6] Specially built self-recording instruments were used. This was considered controversial and not all members agreed in conducting such experiments. In 1872, Harrison also caused controversy in the spiritualist community by exposing the fraud of spirit photographer Frederick Hudson.[6] In 1875, Harrison with C. F. Varley conducted an unsuccessful experiment in photographing the alleged Odic force of Carl Reichenbach.[6]

There was a large dispute between Moses and Harrison over its leadership council. Harrison was expelled from the BNAS.[6] In April 1879, Charles Massey a vice-president resigned, as did Moses on December 31, 1880.[2] In 1882, the BNAS changed name to the Central Association of Spiritualists (CAS). The remaining members such as vice-president Edmund Rogers, one of Moses's loyal supporters tried to reconstruct the society.[7] However, internal conflict between members and financial problems caused the group to dissolve.[2][7]

London Spiritualist Alliance

In October, 1883 a special conference was set up to discuss the ideas of Moses to form a new society.[8] In March 1884, Moses and others formed the London Spiritualist Alliance (LSA). The first meeting was held on May 5 at the banqueting room in St James's Hall.[2] Moses was president and members included John Stephen Farmer, Massey, Rogers, Stanhope Templeman Speer, Alaric Alfred Watts and Percy Wyndham.[7] After Moses died in 1892, Rogers became the president. The LSA obtained a wider membership under the leadership of Rogers including notable figures such as Alfred Russel Wallace.[7]

In 1886, Eleanor Sidgwick from the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) claimed that the medium William Eglinton was fraudulent. Members from the LSA and articles in the journal Light supported Eglinton and accused Sidgwick of bias and prejudice. Some spiritualist members resigned from the SPR.[9]

In 1925, Arthur Conan Doyle became president and the LSA bought a new headquarters at Queensberry Place, South Kensington.[10]

Between October, 1930 and June 1931 the materialization medium Helen Duncan was investigated by the LSA. Despite early favourable reports, an examination of Duncan's ectoplasm revealed it was made of cheesecloth, paper mixed with the white of egg and lavatory paper stuck together. One of Duncan's tricks was to swallow and regurgitate some of her ectoplasm and she was persuaded to swallow a tablet of methylene blue before one of her séances to rule out any chance of this trick being performed and because of this no ectoplasm appeared.[11] The journal Light endorsed the court decision that Duncan was fraudulent and supported Harry Price's investigation that revealed her ectoplasm was cheesecloth.[12]

College of Psychic Studies

In 1955 the LSA changed name to the College of Psychic Science, and in 1970 it became the College of Psychic Studies.[13][14][15]

According to psychical researcher Simeon Edmunds by 1955 when the LSA had changed name to the College of Psychic Science there was "no doubt that from that time onwards the society was no longer a spiritualist one" as it was accepting non-spiritualist members and held no corporate opinion on the question of survival.[16] In the 1960s, after a revival in spiritualism, the college associated itself with the Society for Psychical Research, collecting thousands of case files.[17]

Paul Beard was the president of the college for 16 years.[17] In 2006, the college offered twelves courses on psychic abilities.

Publications

Books

In 1930, the London Spiritualist Alliance published a series of five books under L.S.A Publications Ltd. These were:

• Helen A. Dallas. Human Survival and its Implications.
• Charles Drayton Thomas. The Mental Phenomena of Spiritualism.
• Stanley De Brath. The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism.
• Helen MacGregor and Margaret V. Underhill. The Psychic Faculties and Their Development.
• Oliver Lodge. Demonstrated Survival: Its Influence on Science, Philosophy and Religion.

Journal

The oldest spiritualist journal in Britain is known as Light. It was formed in January 1881 by Edmund Rogers and became affiliated with the BNAS and its successor organisations.[18]
The College of Psychic Studies publishes the Light journal twice a year.[19]

Notable historical members

• Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and writer
• John Stephen Farmer, lexicographer
• Samuel Carter Hall, journalist
• Frederick Hockley, occult writer
• Charles Isham, gardener and landowner
• Edmund Dawson Rogers, journalist
• George Wyld, homeopathic physician
• Percy Wyndham, politician

References

1. Oppenheim, Janet. (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0521347679 "The British National Association of Spiritualists emerged from a meeting in Liverpool, in August 1873, sponsored by the local Psychological Society. Attendance was not confined to spiritualists from the immediate area, and among the participants were W. H. Harrison and Thomas Everitt from London. The meeting heard several papers advocating the benefits of national organization for the expansion and consolidation of British spiritualism, and these arguments carried the day. The conference resolved to form a national association, and initiative then passed to London, where the following year the BNAS commenced its activities. From 1875, it was comfortably housed at 38 Great Russell Street, the scene of its numerous stances, both public and private, committee meetings, lectures, and social gatherings."
2. Lavoie, Jeffrey D. (2014). Search for Meaning in Victorian Religion: The Spiritual Journey and Esoteric Teachings of Charles Carleton Massey. Lehigh University Press. pp. 19-20. ISBN 978-1611461848
3. Spence, Lewis. (2006 edition, originally published 1920). An Encyclopaedia of Occultism. Cosimo. p. 80. ISBN 978-1596052376
4. Podmore, Frank. (2011 edition, originally published 1902). Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism. Volume 2. Cambridge University Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-1-108-07258-8
5. Lavoie, Jeffrey D. (2014). Search for Meaning in Victorian Religion: The Spiritual Journey and Esoteric Teachings of Charles Carleton Massey. Lehigh University Press. p. 61. ISBN 978-1611461848
6. Noakes, Richard J. Instruments to Lay Hold of Spirits: Technologizing the Bodies of Victorian Spiritualism. In Iwan Rhys Morus. (2002). Bodies/Machines. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 125-163. ISBN 1-85973-690-4
7. Oppenheim, Janet. (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. pp. 55-57. ISBN 978-0521347679
8. Nelson, G. K. (2013). Spiritualism and Society. p. 110. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415714624
9. Luckhurst, Roger. (2002). The Invention of Telepathy, 1870-1901. Oxford University Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0199249626
10. Lycett, Andrew. (2008). The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Free Press. p. 434. ISBN 0-7432-7523-3 "Having benefited from a memorial fund for the war dead, the London Spiritualist Alliance had bought a new headquarters in Queensberry Place, South Kensington. With Arthur as its president beginning in 1925, it held a three-day bazaar at Caxton Hall in May, raising 1,000 pounds to renovate and furnish the place. It also rented out its top floor to Harry Price, thus giving him a permanent location for his National Laboratory for Psychical Research."
11. Haynes, Renée. (1982). The Society for Psychical Research 1882-1982: A History. MacDonald & Co. p. 144. ISBN 978-0356078755 "The London Spiritualist Alliance had fifty sittings with her between October 1930 and June 1931; for these sittings she was stripped, searched and dressed in 'seance garments'. Two interim reports in Light were favorable, a third found indications of fraud. Pieces of 'ectoplasm' found from time to time differed in composition. Two early specimens consisted of paper or cloth mixed with something like white of egg. Two others were pads of surgical gauze soaked in 'a resinous fluid'; yet another consisted of layers of lavatory paper stuck together. The most usual material for 'ectoplasm' however, seemed to be butter muslin or cheesecloth, probably swallowed and regurgitated. Distressing choking noises were sometimes heard from within the cabinet; and it was interesting that when she was persuaded to swallow a tablet of methylene blue before one of the seances at the London Spiritualist Alliance, no ectoplasm whatsoever appeared."
12. Hazelgrove, Jenny. (2000). Spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars. Manchester University Press. p. 279. ISBN 978-0719055584
13. Rosemary Guiley. (1994). The Guinness Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits. Guinness World Records Limited. p. 125. p. 334. ISBN 978-0851127484
14. Fichman, Martin. (2004). An Elusive Victorian: The Evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace. University Of Chicago Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0226246130
15. Byrne, Georgina. (2010). Modern Spiritualism and the Church of England, 1850-1939. Boydell Press. pp. 60-62. ISBN 978-1843835899
16. Edmunds, Simeon. (1966). Spiritualism: A Critical Survey. Aquarian Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0850300130
17. "Paul Beard". The Telegraph.
18. Oppenheim, Janet. (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-0521347679
19. "Light". College of Psychic Studies.
Coordinates: 51.49461°N 0.17762°W

External links

• Official website

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British National Association of Spiritualists
by Encyclopedia.com
Updated Mar 10 2020

A society formed in 1873 mainly through the instrumentality of Dawson Rogers to promote the interests of Spiritualism in Great Britain. The British National Association of Spiritualists (BNAS) numbered among its original vice-presidents and members of council the most prominent Spiritualists of the day—Benjamin Coleman, Mrs. Macdougall Gregory, Sir Charles Isham, Mr. Jacken, Dawson Rogers, Morell Theobald, Dr. Wyld, Dr. Stanhope Speer, and many others. Many eminent people of other countries joined the association as corresponding members.

In 1882 BNAS changed its name to the Central Association of Spiritualists. Among its committees was one for systematic research into the phenomena of Spiritualism, in which connection some interesting scientific experiments were made in 1878.

Early in 1882, conferences, which were held at the association's rooms and were presided over by William Barrett, resulted in the formation of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Many members of the SPR were recruited from the council of the BNAS, such as the Rev. Stainton Moses, Dr. George Wyld, Dawson Rogers, and Morell Theobald. The BNAS was at first associated with the Spiritualist, edited by W. H. Harrison, but in 1879 the reports of its proceedings were transferred to Spiritual Notes, a paper which, founded in the previous year, came to an end in 1881, as did the Spiritualist. In the latter year Dawson Rogers founded Light, with which the society was henceforth associated.

From the beginning, the BNAS held itself apart from religious and philosophical dogmatism and included among its members Spiritualists of all sects and opinions.

In 1884 the association reorganized as the London Spiritualist Alliance. The journal Light is now published by the College of Psychic Studies, London, which developed on similar lines to the former British College of Psychic Science.

Sources:

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The History of Spiritualism. New York: Charles H. Doran, 1926. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

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A Short History of The British Psychological Society [Cox's Psychological Society]
by Dr G.C. Bunn, B.P.S. Research Fellow at the Science Museum. The text has been adapted from the author’s Introduction to G.C. Bunn, A.D. Lovie and G. D. Richards (eds) Psychology in Britain: Historical Essays and Personal Reflections. Leicester: BPS Books, 2001.

1901

Psychology was a modest enterprise in Britain in 1901. Laboratories for experimental research had been established in London and Cambridge, and elementary psychophysiology was being taught at Liverpool. A lectureship in comparative psychology had been created at Aberdeen and Oxford had appointed a reader in Mental Philosophy.1 An informal psychology discussion group had been formed at University College London. It was here, on October 24 1901, that a Psychological Society was founded. The aim of the Society, its members quickly decided, was ‘to advance scientific psychological research, & to further the co-operation of investigators in the various branches of Psychology.’ The ten founders resolved ‘that only those who are recognised teachers in some branch of psychology or who have published work of recognisable value be eligible as members’.2

Although a variety of attempts had been made to institutionalise the subject during the previous quarter century, the ‘new psychology’ nevertheless remained the activity of but a few specialists.3 Alexander Bain had first broached the idea of bringing out a new philosophical journal in 1874. The principal aim of the new venture, editor George Croom Robertson declared in the first issue of Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, was to ‘procure a decision of this question as to the scientific standing of psychology’ (Neary, 2001). The first attempts at creating a formal institutional setting for psychology were made by Edward Cox in 1875, who established the Psychological Society of Great Britain to investigate the workings of ‘psychic force’ (Richards, 2001). In 1877, James Ward unsuccessfully lobbied the Cambridge University Senate to establish a psychophysical laboratory. Fourteen years later he was given a small grant for apparatus (Hearnshaw, 1964: 171-2).

Shortly after the P.S.G.B’s demise in 1879, some of its members formed the Society for Psychical Research to gather information on telepathy, hypnotism, hauntings and hallucinations (Hearnshaw, 1964: 158). A year after publishing his Inquiries into Human Faculty (1883), Francis Galton set up an Anthropometric Laboratory at the International Health Exhibition in London which continued at the South Kensington Museum until 1891 (Hearnshaw, 1964: 59). Galton’s laboratory provided James McKeen Cattell with a base for applying methods he had learned as a student in Germany to anthropometric testing. Having brought experimental apparatus from Leipzig, Wilhelm Wundt’s American research assistant was also able to run an unofficial and short-lived psychological laboratory at Cambridge between 1887 and 1888 (Sokal, 1972).4

In 1897, W.H.R. Rivers established a psychological laboratory at Cambridge in a room donated by the Physiology Department (Slobodin, 1978/1997: 16). That same year, Henry Wilde, a successful electrical engineer, offered the capital to Oxford University to endow a Readership in Mental Philosophy. The holder was obliged to lecture ‘on the illusions and delusions which are incident to the human mind’ and ‘on the psychology of the lower races of mankind, as illustrated by the various fetish objects in the Anthropological Museum of the University’ (Oldfield, 1950: 346). George Stout, whose Manual of Psychology was to became the standard text book for generations of students, was appointed to the position. With assistance from Galton, James Sully opened an experimental psychology laboratory in early 1898 at University College London. Appointed to undertake the teaching of students, Rivers managed to obtain experimental apparatus from Hugo Münsterberg’s laboratory in Freiburg (Valentine, 1999).5 A Department of Experimental Psychology had also been set up in 1901 in connection with the Pathological Laboratory of the London County Council Asylums at Claybury.6

As the British Psychological Society’s first historian, Beatrice Edgell, later recalled, the most outstanding feature of British psychology at the turn of the century ‘was the development of experimental and of quantitative methods.’ Three British psychologists, Charles Myers, W.H.R. Rivers and William McDougall had employed the new techniques on the famous 1898 Cambridge anthropological expedition to the Torres Strait (Richards, 1998). Edgell had herself pioneered experimental psychology at Bedford College London on her return from Würzburg in 1901 (Valentine, 1997, forthcoming). ‘In Germany and in America psychology was already established as an independent science with laboratory courses. This country was awakening to the importance of this new development.’ (Edgell, 1947: 113). One indication of the enthusiasm was the creation, in 1904, of the British Journal of Psychology. James Ward and the ubiquitous Rivers were the founding editors.

1919

Membership of the British Psychological Society increased steadily until the First World War. On his return from serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in November 1918, the then editor of the British Journal of Psychology initiated changes that would have revolutionary consequences for British psychology. Charles Myers proposed that the British Psychological Society should support sections for specialised aspects of applied psychology. He noted that medical, industrial and educational psychology groups were already moving to establish separate organizations. In 1918, when the Society had almost a hundred members, only recognised scholars or teachers were eligible to join. But following the acceptance of Myers’ proposal that anyone merely ‘interested in psychology’ should be allowed to join, by the end of 1920 the Society’s membership had increased to over 600. Myers was duly elected the Society’s first President.

Myers’ career spanned the period during which British psychology emerged as a recognised speciality. The trajectory of his career was, to a considerable extent, indicative of some of the changes that British psychology experienced during the first half of the twentieth century. With ecumenical interests that reflected the variegated character of the new discipline, he had a comprehensive knowledge of his subject that would be impossible to acquire today. An enthusiastic advocate of experimental psychology, he also wrote on the philosophy of mind. He was particularly fascinated by the psychology of hearing and music, an enterprise that was no doubt assisted by his musical expertise. The research for his first scientific paper--‘An account of some skulls discovered at Brandon, Suffolk’--was undertaken before he had taken his Cambridge B.A. degree. His final publication fifty years later was a report on Attitudes to Minority Groups. ‘He passed on to us his own deep and wide love of human studies,’ his student and protégé Frederic Bartlett recalled, ‘and a complete freedom from that dogmatic theorizing which has been the bane of psychology. He taught us how to treat psychology as a biological science without forgetting the wide human world beyond the laboratory.’ (Bartlett, 1945-1948: 774).

In terms of ‘his flair for organization’ as Bartlett put it, Charles Myers was certainly the most important British psychologist of the first half of the twentieth century: ‘He built a laboratory, a society, an institute.’ (Bartlett, 1945-1948: 769; see also Bartlett, 1965). Having been drawn to anthropology under the influence of Rivers, he settled in Cambridge in 1902 after further foreign expeditions. 7 He proceeded to advance the cause of experimental psychology by establishing a laboratory at Kings College London, writing a series of text books, and lobbying for the replacement of the ‘damp, dark, and ill-ventilated cottage’ that then served as the Cambridge laboratory. Funded largely from his own considerable wealth, the new laboratory opened in 1912.8 An advisor to the British Journal of Psychology since its inception in 1904, Myers became its sole editor in 1914, the year in which it was acquired by the British Psychological Society. In 1915, he was given a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps to supervise the treatment of functional nervous and mental disorders occurring in the British Expeditionary Force. Although he later came to regret it, it was Myers who coined the term ‘shell shock’.9

The increase in B.P.S. membership that the 1919 reforms had created brought ‘a welcome release from the genteel penury of the past’ (Lovie, 2001). As Myers had planned, Medical, Industrial and Educational Sections were formed in the aftermath of his changes and an Aesthetics Section was established in 1922. The following year saw the creation of regional Branches. In 1926, the Society rented accommodation from the Royal Anthropological Society at 52 Upper Bedford Place, Bloomsbury. As Sandy Lovie has argued, the 1919 reorganisations initiated a tension between ‘the wish for an exclusive and controlled Society devoted to the progress of a scientific psychology, on the one hand, and the equally potent demand, on the other, for an identifiable physical presence which only a large and growing BPS membership could bring’. The tension between the scientific and practical aspects of psychology has animated the Society ever since.

In March 1925 for example, a proposal was received ‘for the formation of a Psychological Club on the lines of the original Society, with a view to the communication and discussion of papers of a more technical nature than those calculated to interest the members of the present Society as a whole.’ Rejecting this idea, the B.P.S. Council countered with the recommendation that Fellowships of the Society be created, ‘elected on grounds of psychological eminence and standing from amongst the Members of the Society’.

1934

Opportunities for educational, clinical and industrial psychologists had greatly increased by the 1930s, thanks to the emergence of Child Guidance Clinics, psychodynamic psychotherapy and the N.I.I.P. A 1934 report submitted to the B.P.S. by S.F.J. Philpott appealed to the Society to recognise the existence of a group of people for whom ‘Psychology is rapidly becoming a profession...making it their vocation and livelihood.’ Having asserted that ‘the question of an organisation to look after their corporate interests is arising’, Philpott concluded that ‘A register should be maintained; an eye kept on matters of professional status, and so on’ (Quoted in Lovie, 2001). This task fell to the subsequentlynamed Professional Status Committee. Inclusion on the register was dependent on ‘competence in theoretical knowledge of psychology and its applications.’ It was also decided ‘That qualification should be based on professional training but not necessarily paid employment. That the degree in psychology should not necessarily be an Honours degree. etc.’ (Quoted in Lovie, 2001).

In November 1936, The Society’s President, James Drever Snr., opened a discussion on ‘the desirability of seeking to secure for the Society either a Charter or incorporation.’ Incorporation would allow the Society to create new types of legally defined membership with legally prescribed entry criteria. It also held out the possibility of a Royal Charter. Incorporated status was finally achieved on October 1st, 1941.

Thanks to a series of memoranda submitted by Margaret Lowenfeld suggesting that the Society set up a Section devoted to child psychology, together with the work of the Fildes Committee, a Committee of Professional Psychologists (Mental Health) was created by the B.P.S. in 1943. Although the Committee was initially only concerned with those engaged in professional work with children, by 1950 its target group had been broadened to include psychologists involved with adults in the mental health field. It also extended its remit to include psychologists engaged in educational practice, while early on also splitting into separate regional Committees of Professional Psychologists for England and Scotland. These Committees transformed themselves into regionally based Divisions of Professional Psychologists (Educational and Clinical) in 1958 after the new rules had been accepted by the Society’s membership (Lovie, 2001).

The Second World War played a considerable role in the professionalisation of many branches of British psychology (See Rose, 1989; Bunn at al., 2001). Yet not everyone was pleased with the new developments. In June 1946, at the invitation of Oliver Zangwill, five men met in Frederic Bartlett’s room in St. John’s College, Cambridge to form a new psychological group: ‘Zangwill opened the meeting by saying that as a result of discussions he had had during the past few years with a number of the younger experimental psychologists in this country, he had come to feel that there existed the need for a new body which would cater for those actually engaged in psychological research.’ As Zangwill later recalled, ‘there can be no doubt that the formation of the Group owed something to misgivings felt by a number of us about certain tendencies current in British psychology at the time.’ (Quoted in Mollon, 1996). The Experimental Psychology Group changed its name to the Experimental Psychology Society in 1959.

1948

In his 1947 Presidential Address to the Society, R.J. Bartlett concluded with the words: ‘Psychology is now a vast subject split up into many different sections, each using its own jargon, knowing very little of what is happening in other sections, and, in several cases, claiming that its part is the whole.’ (R.J. Bartlett, 1948). The following year, partly in order to meet such criticisms, the B.P.S. launched the Quarterly Bulletin of the British Psychological Society. Its editor was Frederick Laws, a journalist with the News Chronicle. In his first editorial, Laws reported that it had recently been suggested ‘that there is too little contact between psychologists working in different fields, that specialists in one branch of the subject are as ignorant as the general public of new developments outside their professional range of interest.’ (Laws, 1948). This is probably as true today as it was fifty years ago. Psychology is now a vast enterprise. Over 33,000 people for example currently receive The Psychologist, the Quarterly Bulletin’s successor publication.

In 1950, membership of the B.P.S. stood at 1,897, rising only to 2,655 in 1960. By 1982 the Society had over 10,000 members. Since the 1950s, the work of numerous B.P.S. committees have doubtless had a tremendous impact on British society. For example, the Society’s 1954 Memorandum to the Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency had a considerable influence on the drafting of the 1958 Mental Deficiency Act. The following year, the Society’s Memorandum of Evidence submitted to the Home Office Departmental Committee on the Law Relating to Homosexual Offences and Prostitution came to very liberal conclusions for the period: ‘it can be said that a biological tendency for inversion of sexual behaviour is inherent in most if not all mammals, including the human species.’ (QBBPS, Vol. 29, 1956, p.1-7). Other influential policy documents to which the B.P.S. has contributed include the Memorandum to the Royal Commission on the Penal System in England and Wales (1966) and The Summerfield Report (Psychologists in the Education Services, HMSO, 1968).

1965

Two highlights of the 1960s were the granting of a Royal Charter to the Society in 1965 and the hosting of the 19th International Congress of Psychology in 1969. In the 1970s, the Society again showed its willingness to confront controversial issues with the publication of the findings of its Working Party on Animal Experimentation in 1978, and its Balance Sheet on Burt in response to the Cyril Burt ‘scandal’ in 1980 (BBPS, 33, 1980). On December 18, 1987, at Buckingham Palace, the Queen granted amendments to the Society’s Charter, thereby allowing it to maintain a Register of Chartered Psychologists. The reforms of the last few years have radically altered the Society’s organisational structure. In 2000, with the purchase of offices in London, the Society symbolically returned to the city in which it was founded almost a century before.

Not everyone has agreed with the reformist agenda. ‘It seems to us that the Society has undergone a fundamental shift of emphasis,’ two disaffected psychologists wrote to the Bulletin’s editor in 1985, ‘from being a body devoted to psychology, to being an organization serving the self-orientated “profession” of psychologists. The recent pursuit of chartering, registration and ethical codes leave no other interpretation except to those blind to the social history of professional establishments, and the dynamics of their self-serving ideologies.’ (Letter, BBPS, Vol. 38, 1985, p.53). As has been demonstrated above, similar issues have been raised in one form or another since at least the 1920s.

2000

Psychologists now work in every institution of modern life, from hospitals, schools and prisons, to the armed forces and government departments, to advertising agencies, the media and multinational corporations. Psychologists advise the police and act as consultants to the legal profession. Entirely new fields have emerged in recent years, such as environmental psychology, community psychology and traffic psychology. In addition to the traditional areas of cognitive, education, and occupational psychology, the British Psychological Society also supports the activities of consciousness and experiential psychology, lesbian and gay psychology, and sports and exercise psychology. The Society currently consists of 7 regional Branches, 14 special interest Sections and 9 professional Divisions. It also publishes 10 primary science journals, books, and The Psychologist, the monthly in-house journal issued free to all members. As British psychology’s first historian, Leslie Hearnshaw, quaintly put it over forty years ago: ‘In more ways than one psychologists today are in the public eye. Their work is frequently referred to in the press, on the air, even in Parliament, and it excites a variety of reactions and prejudices. Psychologists are no longer rare specimens in the community.’ (Hearnshaw, 1964: v).

_______________

Notes:

1 See Hearnshaw (1964: ch.11) and Boring (1929/1957: ch.20) for British psychology’s  experimental and institutional beginnings. For an extensive but accessible history of the  human sciences, see Smith (1997). Richards (1996) provides a critical historical introduction  to psychology.

2 As the British Psychological Society’s first historian later recalled, the change of name from  The Psychological Society to The British Psychological Society in 1906 ‘was not due to any  sudden uprising of imperial pride, but to the fact that members had discovered another body  of persons who were using the former title. To prevent confusion with this unacademic group  the change in title was agreed to.’ (Edgell, 1947: 116).

3 According to American historian of psychology E.G. Boring, ‘From 1890 to 1920, when  Germany and America were teeming with laboratories and professional experimental  psychologists, Great Britain was advancing slowly in the new science only by way of the work  of a few competent men.’ (Boring, 1929/1957: 460).

4 In London, an informal Psychological Club sprang up around Mind editor George Croom  Robertson in the late 1880s. ‘The meetings this winter are to consider original psychophysical  research’, Cattell told his parents in November 1886, ‘and to discuss how psychological terms  are used and should be used.’ J.M. Cattell to Parents, 19 November 1886. In Sokal (1981:  236). Sophie Bryant, who would later become one of the founder members of the  Psychological Society, also attended these meetings.
 
5 It was James Sully, Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University College London, who  had called the meeting that led to the founding of The Psychological Society. W.H.R. Rivers  was also a founder member. For biographical sketches of all ten original founders of the  Society, see Steinberg (1961).

6 Three of the original founder members of the Psychological Society were associated with  the Asylum; W.G. Smith, F.W. Mott and R. Armstrong-Jones. See Steinberg (1961).

7 For the expedition to the Torres Strait, see Herle and Rouse (1998).

8 On Myers and the ‘Cambridge school’ see Crampton (1978).

9 Myers recounted his work in the First World War in Myers (1940).

References

BARTLETT, F.C. (1945-1948) Charles Samuel Myers, 1873-1946. Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol.5. London: The Royal Society.

BARTLETT, F.C. (1965) Remembering Dr Myers. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 18, 1-10.

BARTLETT, R.J. (1948) Mind. Quarterly Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 1 (1), 14-24.

BORING, E.G. (1929/1957) A History of Experimental Psychology, 2nd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.

CRAMPTON, C. (1978) The Cambridge School: The Life, Work and Influence of James Ward, W.H.R. Rivers, C.S. Myers and Sir Frederic Bartlett. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh.

EDGELL, B. (1947) The British Psychological Society. British Journal of Psychology, 37, 113- 132.

HEARNSHAW, L.S. (1964) A Short History of British Psychology 1840-1940. London: Methuen.

LAWS, F. (1948) Editorial. Quarterly Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 1 (1), 1.

LOVIE, S. (2001) Three Steps to Heaven: How the British Psychological Society Attained Its Place in the Sun. In G.C. Bunn, A.D. Lovie and G. D. Richards (eds) Psychology in Britain: Historical Essays and Personal Reflections. Leicester: BPS Books.

MOLLON, J.D. (Ed) (1996) The Experimental Psychology Society 1946-1996. Cambridge: The Experimental Psychology Society.

MYERS, C.S. (1940) Shell Shock in France, 1914-1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

NEARY, F. (2001) 'A Question of Peculiar Importance': George Croom Robertson, Mind and the Changing Relationship Between British Psychology and Philosophy 1876-1920. In G.C. Bunn, A.D. Lovie and G. D. Richards (eds) Psychology in Britain: Historical Essays and Personal Reflections. Leicester: BPS Books.

OLDFIELD, R.C. (1950) Psychology in Oxford, 1898-1949. Quarterly Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 1 (9), 345-353.

RICHARDS, G. (1996) Putting Psychology in its Place: An Introduction from a Critical Historical Perspective. London: Routledge.

RICHARDS, G. (1998) Getting a result: The Expedition’s psychological research. In A. Herle and S. Rouse (Eds) (1998) Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

RICHARDS, G. (2001) Edward Cox, The Psychological Society of Great Britain (1875-1879) and the Meanings of an Institutional Failure. In G.C. Bunn, A.D. Lovie and G. D. Richards (eds) Psychology in Britain: Historical Essays and Personal Reflections. Leicester: BPS Books.

ROSE, N. (1989) Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge.

SLOBODIN, R. (1978/1997) W.H.R. Rivers: Pioneer Anthropologist, Psychiatrist of the Ghost Road. Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd.

SMITH, R. (1997) The Fontana History of the Human Sciences. London: Fontana Press.

SOKAL, M. (Ed.) (1981) An Education in Psychology: James McKeen Cattell’s Journal and Letters from Germany and England, 1880-1888. Cambridge: MIT Press.

SOKAL, M.M. (1972) Psychology at Victorian Cambridge—the unofficial laboratory of 1887- 1888. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 116, 145-147.

STEINBERG, H. (Ed.) (1961) The British Psychological Society 1901-1961. Leicester: The British Psychological Society.

VALENTINE, E. (1997) Psychology at Bedford College London 1849-1985. London: Royal Holloway, University of London.

VALENTINE, E. (1999) The founding of the Psychological Laboratory, University College London: “Dear Galton...Yours truly, J Sully” History of Psychology 2, 204-218.

VALENTINE, E. (forthcoming) Beatrice Edgell: An appreciation. British Journal of Psychology.

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The Dalai Lama and his [Rolex] watches
by Manuel Lütgens
watchmaster.com
September 4, 2018

Alongside this noticeable success, Freda faced some acute disappointments. She made enemies as well as friends, and sometimes these rivalries became vicious. Lois Lang-Sims commented, without saying what prompted the observation, that Freda's enemies 'were not only numerous but of an almost incredible malevolence'. That intense animosity seems to have been behind the most wounding public assault on Freda and her integrity. The stiletto was wielded by D.F. [Dosabhai Framji] Karaka, an Oxford contemporary of the Bedis. He was a writer and journalist of some distinction, though by the early 1960s he was the editor of a not-so-distinguished Bombay-based tabloidstyle weekly, the Current. This was awash with brash, sensationalist stories, reflecting Karaka's fiercely polemical style, his crusading anticommunism and his impatience with Nehru, India's prime minister, for his supposed lack of zeal in standing up for the national interest. The weekly paper bore the slogan 'God Save the Motherland' on its front page.

In September 1963, Freda's photograph graced the front-page of the Current, accompanying a story which also took up much of the following page. It was a hatchet job. Under his own byline, Karaka asserted that 'an Englishwoman, married to an Indian, is attempting to express a great deal of anxiety to help the Buddhist cause as a screen for her Communist activities'. He insisted that 'Mrs Freda Bedi ... will always, in my opinion, be a Communist first, irrespective of her outwardly embraced Buddhism.' This was an absurd accusation. Freda's days as a communist sympathiser had come to a close almost twenty years earlier. Her husband had abandoned communism a decade previously.

But the accusation of being a concealed communist was deeply wounding especially when the Tibetan refugees regarded communist China as their arch enemy -- the occupiers of their homeland and destroyers of their culture, faith and tradition -- and when India had recently been at war with China.

'Freda has dabbled with Communism ever since my student days in Oxford,' Karaka reported. 'She was, in fact, at Oxford at the same time as myself. Later, she married Bedi, a well known Indian Communist. They both came out to India and plunged themselves into the Communist movement.' The article resorted to innuendo, suggesting that 'the alleged indoctrination of Sheikh Abdulla [sic] was largely to be traced to his very close association with Freda Bedi'. It suggested that some former associates of the Bedis in Kashmir had 'mysteriously disappeared'. Freda was alleged to have been caught up in controversy about Buddhist property and funds before turning, 'with the active encouragement of Shri J. Nehru, the Prime Minister', to the running of the Young Lamas' Home School. The article suggested that Freda was getting money from the Indian government, and using government headed paper to appeal for funds from supporters in America and elsewhere. Karaka suggested that the Tibetan Friendship Group was a 'Communist stunt' and he alleged that 'noted Communists, with the usual "blessings" of Mr. Nehru, are using the excuse of helping Tibetan refugees and Buddhist monks for furthering the cause of Communism in strategic border areas.'

Aside from the venomous smears, the only evidence of inappropriate conduct that the article pointed to was her use of official notepaper to appeal for funds for her school and other Tibetan relief operations. It cited a letter of complaint, sent by an unnamed Buddhist organisation which clearly was antagonistic to Freda, stating that she had been using the headed paper of the Central Social Welfare Board which bore the Government of India's logo. A civil servant's response was also quoted: 'Mrs Bedi is not authorised to use Government of India stationery for correspondence in connection with the affairs of the "Young Lama's Home" or the "Tibetan Friendship Group". This has now been pointed out to Mrs. Bedi.'

Even if Freda has been using government headed paper to help raise money -- which those who worked with her say is perfectly possible -- it was hardly a major misdemeanour. But detractors were able to use this blemish to damage her reputation. She was, it seems, distraught at this vicious personal attack and took advice about whether to take legal action. She was advised, probably wisely, to do nothing, as any riposte would simply give further life to accusations so insubstantial that they would quickly fade away. 'The accusation was that Freda was a communist in nun's clothing -- not that Freda was a nun at that time,' recalls Cherry Armstrong. 'I remember her being particularly distressed and "beyond belief' when she believed she had identified the culprit. Freda was totally dumbfounded about it.'

Freda was convinced that another western convert to Buddhism, Sangharakshita (earlier Dennis Lingwood), was either behind the slur or was abetting it. They had much in common -- including a deep antipathy to each other. Lingwood encountered Theosophy and Buddhism as a teenager in England and was ordained before he was twenty by the Burmese monk U Titthila, who later helped Freda towards Buddhism. During the war, he served in the armed forces in South and South-east Asia and from 1950 spent about fourteen years based in Kalimpong in north-east India, where he was influenced by several leading Tibetan Buddhist teachers. In the small world of Indian Buddhism, the two English converts rubbed shoulders. More than sixty years later, Sangharakshita -- who established a Buddhist community in England -- recalls coming across Freda, then new to Buddhism, living at the Ashoka Vihar Buddhist centre outside Delhi. 'She was tall, thin, and intense and wore Indian dress. She had a very pale complexion, with light fair hair and very pale blue eyes. In other words, she looked very English! I also noticed, especially later on, that she was very much the Memsaheb ... During the time that I knew Freda she knew hardly anything about Buddhism, having never studied it seriously .... She had however developed what I called her "patter" about the Dalai Lama, compassion, and the poor dear little Tulkus. So far as I could see, Freda had no spiritual awareness or Enlightenment.[/size] She may, of course, have developed these later.' His view of the Young Lamas' Home School is also somewhat jaundiced -- 'some of [the tulkus] developed rather expensive tastes, such as for Rolex watches.'

-- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

At one retreat [Sogyal] Rinpoche blessed a devotee who was wearing a Rolex watch. It is said he told the man: “You have to put this in the offering bowl at the end.”

-- The Bad Buddha: Dark side of celeb guru Sogyal Rinpoche who ‘sexually abused’ the beautiful young women dubbed his ‘Dakinis’, by Oliver Harvey, The Sun, 9/22/18

[Tai] Situ [Rinpoche] was already a thirty-something sell out, his generations folly, the first of the Rolex Rinpoches. known for his embrace of the “greed is good” ethos of what has has become thirty years later as today’s one percent.

-- Keeping the Faith in the Age of the Rolex Rinpoches, by Tinfoil Ushnisha

In 1989 he was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, he is the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism -– and he, himself is a self-confessed watch lover. The speech is of course by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Granted, the ascetic monk is not the first name that comes to mind in connection with luxury watches. But the Dalai Lama has a weakness for mechanical watches and has been happy to disassemble and reassemble them for years. His personal collection consists of over 15 watches, about which, however, little is known. The native Tibetan wears his watches usually turned inwards on cheap elastic stainless steel bracelets, so that the housing and dial remain hidden.

However, three of his watches can be clearly seen in photos and we are able to identity them. In addition to a Patek Philippe pocket watch, given to him as a young boy from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the monk also has two Rolex models whose origin is unknown.


The first watch of the Dalai Lama, a Patek Philippe Ref. 658

His love of mechanical watches began very early: At the age of 6 or 7, the Dalai Lama received his first watch, from none other than the U.S. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Rumours and assumptions grew around the watch itself and its reference, as the Dalai Lama’s headquarters in Dharamsala always rejected journalistic questions. It was known for a long time that it was a Patek Philippe pocket watch -– but then in 2016, pictures appeared on the internet for the first time. They were posted on US Senator Patrick Leahy’s Facebook page, who is known by cameo appearances in some Batman films (including Batman & Robin, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and The Dark Knight Rises). They show the watch presented by the Senator to Dalai Lama. Eric Wind identified the watch 2016 in a Hodinkee article as a pocket watch with Ref. 658, of which only 15 were made between 1937 and 1950, a truly special gift! But the watch is probably just as special as its story, which Thomas Laird tells in his book Tibet -– The History of a Country: The Dalai Lama in Conversation with Thomas Laird. Roosevelt did not hand over the gift personally. Two agents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of today’s CIA, offered the watch along with a letter from the president. Brooke Dolan and his colleague Ilia [Ilya Andreyevich]Tolstoy, who was allegedly the grandson of the famous author Leo Tolstoy, strictly followed the protocol: visitors silently handed over their presents and received a so-called 'katha‘, a prayer shawl traditionally handed over. The two had a mission to find out more about the possibility of building a road from India to China, which was strategically important to the United States for supplying China during the war with Japan.

The OSS and the Dalai Lama
by Rob Crotty
National Archives Office of Strategy and Communications staff writer
February 8, 2011


OSS spies Brooke Dolan and Ilia Tolstoy traveling to Lhasa (still from "Inside Tibet", Records of the Office of Strategic Services)

In the summer of 1942, the Allies’ war against Japan was in dire straits. China was constantly battling the occupying Japanese forces in its homeland, supplied by India via the Burma Road. Then Japan severed that supply artery. Planes were flown over the Himalayan mountains, but their payloads were too little, and too many pilots crashed in the desolate landscape to continue the flights.

The Allies were desperate to find a land route that would reconnect China and India. The task fell to two OSS men—Ilia Tolstoy, the grandson of Leo Tolstoy, and explorer Capt. Brooke Dolan. To complete the land route would require traversing Tibet, and to traverse the hidden country required the permission of a seven-year-old boy, the Dalai Lama.

When the two men arrived in Lhasa, the remote capital of Tibet, these spies were received as ambassadors. A military brass band played, and they were treated as guests of honor in a city that only a few decades earlier had forbidden Westerners to enter.

They came carrying a message from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On December 20, at 9:20 in the morning, they were granted an audience with His Holiness. As a further sign of his respect for these two emissaries, the men were allowed to ride horses up the Potala to the quarters of the Dalai Lama. After a brief wait, they entered the highest room in Lhasa. Lt. Col. Ilia Tolstoy wrote of his first glimpse of Tibet’s leader in a 1946 National Geographic:

His Holiness was seated cross-legged, a high-peaked yellow hat on his head. We were immediately impressed by his young but stern face and not at all frail constitution. His cheeks were a healthy pink.

Tolstoy proceeded through the tradition of offering gifts to the Dalai Lama—bread and butter followed by an image of Buddha, a religious book, and a chorten (a Buddhist reliquary). Then, for the first time in history, he made direct contact between the Dalai Lama and the President of the United States by passing a letter written by FDR to the young leader.

After half an hour of discussion, the men left. A week later, they received the permission they were seeking to cross Tibet. It was the first such permission granted in 22 years, according to Tolstoy.

Five months later, they crossed the Tibetan plateau, and the two men arrived in northern China, completing their journey. They had traveled over a thousand miles and spent over a hundred days in the saddle to pioneer a route to connect allied supplies with allied fighters across some of the world’s harshest terrain. Their mission was complete.

While the route was never employed during the war—a diplomatic crisis prevented its use, and planes continued to fly “the hump” across the Himalayan mountains—Tolstoy and Brooke made history, bridging two cultures that before had never formally met. Brooke Dolan filmed the entire journey, and the reels are now housed in the motion picture holdings of the National Archives. The video is below.

For more on spies and the National Archives, join us at 7 p.m. tonight at the International Spy Museum for “Spies and Conspiracies: Espionage in the Civil War.” For more footage from the OSS, CIA, and FBI, you can pick up our latest offering from the National Archives eStore: FBI/CIA Films Declassified. http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/cBgP9 ... n_US&rel=0

Rolex Datejust 16233

The Dalai Lama’s watch is a complex and rare specimen that displays the moon phases, date, day of the week and months. It aroused his enthusiasm for mechanical watches and watchmaking. A well-known photograph shows him working on watches. But he was sometimes more, sometimes less successful. For example, in one of his books he tells the anecdote:


Rolex Sky Dweller 326933

"Me as an example, I’ve always liked to repair watches. But from my boyhood I can remember a number of situations in which I completely lost the temper in dealing with the tiny, fine parts. I then picked up the movement and slammed it on the table. Of course, later on I was ashamed of my behaviour and regretted it, especially when I had to return one watch to its owner in a condition worse than their original one." (Dalai Lama: The Book of Humanity: A New Ethic for Our Time)

Such a rare watch, of course, also raises questions of its value. Hodinkee cites two sales of the same reference, which valued at $ 253,605 and $ 357,909. According to the Dalai Lama, the watch was sent to Switzerland several times for repair, so it is functional, but bears some signs of wear. However, considering its famous owner and the history behind it, it is probably worth a whole lot more.


Rolex Sky Dweller 326933

Tenzin Gyatso’s Rolex watches

If you are interested in mechanical watches, there is no way around a classic Rolex. The Dalai Lama owns two models that are well-known: A Rolesor Rolex Datejust made of gold and stainless steel with a Jubilee bracelet and a Rolex Day-Date, both presumably gifts. The latter is made of yellow gold and has a blue dial, as seen in some photographs. Some people say that they are a sign of proudness among a monk, but if you look at the meaning of the colours in Tibetan Buddhism, you will see a beautiful picture: blue stands for heaven and spiritual insights, yellow for earth and the experiences of the real world. Thus, the watch purely by chance reflects the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Dalai Lama shows that the rejection of consumer culture can still be accompanied by respect for outstanding craftsmanship. However, he does not fail to emphasise that objects can not replace interpersonal relationships for him. "Watches have always fascinated me,“ he writes, "and although I particularly appreciate the one I wear most of the time, it never brings me any affection.“ (Dalai Lama: The Book of Humanity: A New Ethic for Our Time)

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Brooke Dolan II
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/15/20



Brooke Dolan II (1908 – Chongqing, China, August 19 or 29, 1945) was an American adventurer and naturalist in the 1930s and 1940s.[1][2][3] His father was Brooke Dolan, a wealthy American industrialist in Philadelphia. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant and captain.[4][5]

Overview

Brooke Dolan II was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University.[1][4][6][7] He was a trustee of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. He led two expeditions to China and eastern Tibet in 1931 to 1932 and 1934 to 1936.[4][7][8] The first expedition comprised Ernst Schäfer, a German zoologist, Gordon Bowles, Otto Gneiser, and Hugo Weigold.[4][8] The second comprised Schäfer[4][7][8] and Marion Duncan, an American missionary. Dolan's second expedition may have been motivated partly by the need to take a leave of absence from Philadelphia society after a January 1934 arrest on disorderly conduct charges.[4]

On April 15, 1934, Dolan married Emilie Campan Gerhard, daughter of Albert Pepper Gerhard, of Overbrook, Philadelphia[6] who accompanied him for a while on his second trip to China.[4]

Dolan joined the United States Army Air Forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor.[1][4] In 1942 he traveled to Lhasa with Ilia [Ilya Andreyevich] Tolstoy, a grandson of Leo Tolstoy, as a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), to meet with the Tibetan government. On December 20, 1942, they met the young 14th Dalai Lama and his Regent, the 3rd Taktra Rinpoche.[5][7][9] They were the first Americans ever to meet a Dalai Lama.[5] Tolstoy and Dolan, who were nicknamed "Mud" and "Slug" by their fellow OSS officers, both received the Legion of Merit for the mission.[9][10] They are considered to have gone beyond their authority in leading the Tibetan government to believe the United States had given international political recognition to Tibet.

After the Tibetan expedition Dolan transferred from the OSS to the Army Air Forces and joined the United States Military Observer Group in Yunnan, China.[1][11] Dolan died in Chongqing, China. According to some accounts, he was killed on an OSS mission to rescue downed Allied bomber crews;[1] according to other accounts, he took his own life on August 19, 1945.[3]

References

1. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael (2003). Whose Bird? Common Bird Names and the People They Commemorate. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. p. 108. ISBN 0-300-10359-X. LCCN 2003113608.
2. The Anglers' Club Story, Our First Fifty Years, 1906-1956. Anglers' Club of New York. 1956. p. 47.
3. Meyer, Karl E.; Brysac, Shareen Blair (2006). Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. New York: Basic Books. p. 550. ISBN 978-0-465-04576-1.
4. Meyer & Brysac 2006, pp. 534–536
5. Starks, Richard (2012). Lost in Tibet: The Untold Story of Five American Airmen, a Doomed Plane, and the Will to Survive. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 90–92. ISBN 978-0-7627-8931-3.
6. Carter, Thomas T. (May 11, 1934). "Tibetan Explorer Trapped". Princeton Alumni Weekly. XXXIV (31): 716.
7. Coleman, Katie. "PhilaPlace - Academy of Natural Sciences: From Science to War – Brooke Dolan II of The Academy of Natural Sciences". Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Retrieved July 29, 2017.
8. Troelstra, A.S. (2016). Bibliography of Natural History Travel Narratives. Brill Publishers. p. 375. ISBN 9789004343788.
9. Moon, Tom (2000). This Grim and Savage Game: OSS and the Beginning of U.S. Covert Operations in World War II. Da Capo Press. pp. 76–79. ISBN 0-306-80956-7.
10. Meyer & Brysac 2006, p. 546
11. Meyer & Brysac 2006, p. 548

Sources

• Meyer, Karl Ernest; Brysac, Shareen Blair (2006). Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-04576-1.
• Dolan II, Brooke, Road to the Edge of the World, Frontiers, October 1936, pages 5–9
• Dolan II, Brooke, Road to the Edge of the World, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia), 1937
• Duncan, Marion, The Yangtze and the Yak, Alexandria Va, 1952
• Hale, Christopher, Himmler’s Crusade, Hoboken NJ: Wiley & Sons, 2003
• Knaus, John Kenneth, Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival, Chapter 1, New York: Public Affairs, 1999

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The OSS and the Dalai Lama
by Rob Crotty
National Archives Office of Strategy and Communications staff writer
February 8, 2011


OSS spies Brooke Dolan and Ilia Tolstoy traveling to Lhasa (still from "Inside Tibet", Records of the Office of Strategic Services)

In the summer of 1942, the Allies’ war against Japan was in dire straits. China was constantly battling the occupying Japanese forces in its homeland, supplied by India via the Burma Road. Then Japan severed that supply artery. Planes were flown over the Himalayan mountains, but their payloads were too little, and too many pilots crashed in the desolate landscape to continue the flights.

The Allies were desperate to find a land route that would reconnect China and India. The task fell to two OSS men—Ilia Tolstoy, the grandson of Leo Tolstoy, and explorer Capt. Brooke Dolan. To complete the land route would require traversing Tibet, and to traverse the hidden country required the permission of a seven-year-old boy, the Dalai Lama.

When the two men arrived in Lhasa, the remote capital of Tibet, these spies were received as ambassadors. A military brass band played, and they were treated as guests of honor in a city that only a few decades earlier had forbidden Westerners to enter.

They came carrying a message from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On December 20, at 9:20 in the morning, they were granted an audience with His Holiness. As a further sign of his respect for these two emissaries, the men were allowed to ride horses up the Potala to the quarters of the Dalai Lama. After a brief wait, they entered the highest room in Lhasa. Lt. Col. Ilia Tolstoy wrote of his first glimpse of Tibet’s leader in a 1946 National Geographic:

His Holiness was seated cross-legged, a high-peaked yellow hat on his head. We were immediately impressed by his young but stern face and not at all frail constitution. His cheeks were a healthy pink.

Tolstoy proceeded through the tradition of offering gifts to the Dalai Lama—bread and butter followed by an image of Buddha, a religious book, and a chorten (a Buddhist reliquary). Then, for the first time in history, he made direct contact between the Dalai Lama and the President of the United States by passing a letter written by FDR to the young leader.

After half an hour of discussion, the men left. A week later, they received the permission they were seeking to cross Tibet. It was the first such permission granted in 22 years, according to Tolstoy.

Five months later, they crossed the Tibetan plateau, and the two men arrived in northern China, completing their journey. They had traveled over a thousand miles and spent over a hundred days in the saddle to pioneer a route to connect allied supplies with allied fighters across some of the world’s harshest terrain. Their mission was complete.

While the route was never employed during the war—a diplomatic crisis prevented its use, and planes continued to fly “the hump” across the Himalayan mountains—Tolstoy and Brooke made history, bridging two cultures that before had never formally met. Brooke Dolan filmed the entire journey, and the reels are now housed in the motion picture holdings of the National Archives. The video is below.

For more on spies and the National Archives, join us at 7 p.m. tonight at the International Spy Museum for “Spies and Conspiracies: Espionage in the Civil War.” For more footage from the OSS, CIA, and FBI, you can pick up our latest offering from the National Archives eStore: FBI/CIA Films Declassified. http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/cBgP9 ... n_US&rel=0

***********************************


Description: Brooke Dolan (second from left) and Ilya Tolstoy (right) with their monk-interpreter, Kusho Yonton Singhe, standing in front of a traditional Tibetan tent set up outside Lhasa for the expedition's official greeting ceremony. Date 1942. Author Brooke Dolan and Ilya Tolstoy.


US Captain Brooke Dolan II in local tunnel warfare in north China in 1945. [File photo] Captain Brooke Dolan II traveled to the central battlefront of Hebei province as a US observer in January of 1945 when China was undergoing the final crucial phase of the anti-Japanese war. The captain visited the local tunnel warfare and marveled at the fortifications created by the Chinese people. Unfortunately, his where-abouts were detected by the Japanese military and soon he was surrounded. The captain was escorted by Shi Shaohua, deputy editor-in-chief of Jinchaji Huabao (a local official magazine), and retreated together with the local people. In the tunnel, he, together with the residents, was saved at the cost of the life of an eight-month-old crying baby, who was suffocated to death by his mother with her breast in order not to be heard by the enemies.

-- US captain's China adventure, by ChinaDaily.com, 8/24/15


In October 1942, Brooke Dolan II traveled with fellow OSS officer Ilya Tolstoy to Lhasa, and met the young Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso




Brooke Dolan WWII OSS, Tibet Expedition ID Card, Wallet, Notebook & Ephemera


Count Ilya Tolstoy, left, Captain Brooke Dolan, centre, and a mounted Gurkha guide can be seen riding across Tibet in 1942


With the silver framed photograph of President Roosevelt went a personal letter to the Dalai Lama in a cylindrical casket, a gold watch and other gifts. The silver galleon (right centre) was presented to His Holiness by Colonel Tolstoy and Captain Dolan


Description: English: The Dalai Lama, photographed in 1942 by the official United States expedition to Tibet headed by Ilya Tolstoy and Brooke Dolan. Date 20 December 1942. Source https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&id=bHnJSq8yH4AC&dq. Author Brooke Dolan and Ilya Tolstoy


Members of the 1943 Dolan expedition to Tibet. Brooke Dolan is on the left. Ilya Tolstoy, grandson of Leo Tolstoy, is just to the right of the man on foot. Ewell Sale Stewart Library & Archives Coll. no. 64.

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Marion Duncan, Missionary in Tibet, Intelligence Aide
by Washington Post
February 4, 1977

Marion Herbert Duncan Papers (MS coll. 64B), 1933-67, 78 items.
Background note: Marion Herbert Duncan (b. 1896) went to Tibet in 1921 and remained in Batang with the Tibetan Christian mission of the Church of Christ. The mission closed in 1932 after the battle of Batang and he returned to the United States the following year. The following material relates to his second trip to China as part of Brooke Dolan's expedition beginning in 1935.
CORRESPONDENCE/MANUSCRIPTS: Correspondence with Brooke Dolan II, the Academy, and Ernst Schaefer, and related papers concerning Duncan's participation in the Dolan Expedition to West China and Tibet, 1934-36.

-- Christianity in China: A Scholars's Guide to Resources in the Libraries and Archives of the United States, by Archie R. Crouch, Steven Agoratus, Arthur Emerson, Debra E. Soled

-- Marian L. Duncan, A Flame of the Fire (Spring Hill, Tennessee: Marian Duncan, 1999), 27, wrote, "Furlough is much harder than being in the mission field because expectations are so high for speaking engagements.
-- Arlene Adams to Marion Duncan, Apr. 1, 1931, Tibetan Christian Mission File, Disciples of Christ Historical Society, Nashville, Tennessee, stated, "You no doubt know the Un-Ch-M-Soc received many valuable courtesies from different railroads in America."
-- Customs and Superstitions of Tibetans, by Marion H. Duncan
-- Love Songs and Proverbs of Tibet, by Marion H. Duncan (1961)
-- The Mountain of Silver Snow, by Marion Herbert Duncan (1929)
-- The Cycle of Existence, by Marion H. Duncan (1966)
-- More Harvest Festival Dramas of Tibet, by Marion Herbert Duncan (1967)

Marion H. Duncan, 81, a former missionary and retired Army intelligence employee, died Jan. 30 at the Fahrney-Keedy Memorial Home for the Aged in Boonsboro, Md.

He had served with Army intelligence here from 1942 until retiring in about 1965. During that period he had lived in Alexandria except for tours of duty in Japan and Hong Kong.

Born in Celina, Ohio, Mr. Duncan served in France with the Army in World War I, and later graduated from Hiram College in Ohio.

He was ordained a minister in the Church of Christ (Disciples). He and his wife, Kathryn Habecker Duncan, served as missionaries in Tibet from 1921 to 1933. They spent another two years in western China and Tibet on an expedition for the Philadelphia Museum of Natural Science.

Before joining Army intelligence, Mr. Duncan worked for the Unemployment Compensation Service in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

He was a member and elder of the First Christian Church of Alexandria.

After his retirement, he and his wife moved to Berkeley Springs, W.Va. They had lived in the Fahrney-Keedy Home for several years.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, John, of Alexandria, and Robert, of Vienna; two daughters, MarianAdams, of Hagerstown, and Esther Dunker, of Pekin, Ill.; a brother and sister in Ohio, 12 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

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Part 1 of 2

Across Tibet from India to China
by Lieutenant-Colonel Count Ilia [Ilya Andreyevich] Tolstoy


Tibetan Cavalry welcomed Count Tolstoy and Captain Dolan when they rode into Lhasa on their secret mission to "Shangri-La"

In the Spring of 1942, when the war looked grimmer day by day to the Allies, and the Burma Road was lost, I was given the assignment of crossing Tibet from India to China. The venture, which was primarily to discover ways and routes of transporting supplies to China, was under the auspices of the Office of Strategic Services.

Given the choice of going alone or taking along a unit of personally picked men, I selected as my companion Capt. Brooke Dolan, who was then anchored to an Army Air Forces desk in Washington and was casting an eager eye around for overseas duty. The mission, I felt, would have a better chance of success if shared by two men. If one was lost, the other might get through.


Colonel Count Ilia Tolstoy (left) and Captain Brooke Dolan (right) are greeted by a Tibetan official.

President Roosevelt Greets the Dalai Lama

Since Tibet proper is closed to all visitors, no permits to enter could be obtained in the United States. The best passport available for the trip was a letter from President Roosevelt to the Dalai Lama of Tibet. This we were to carry, together with the customary gifts to His Holiness and other officials in Lhasa.

On our departure from Washington by air in July, Col. (later Major General) "Wild Bill" Donovan, Director of OSS, bade us "Keep in touch if you can"— a hard task since radio equipment compact enough to carry on such a trip was not procurable at the time.

We carried 290 pounds of equipment, including vital instruments, cameras, film, etc., and 27 pounds each of personal belongings. In those days before the Air Transport Command was fully developed, bucket seats on planes were luxuries, and we slept on some of our cargo.

Arriving in Delhi, we reported to Lt. Gen. (now General) Joseph W. Stilwell, who was then China-Burma-India Theater commander. His rear echelon headquarters occupied only one wing of the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi, though it was the nucleus of the CBI forces.

In our negotiations with the Tibetans through the British Government offices in India, we were aided by Col. (later Brig. Gen.) Russell A. Osmun, USA; Capt. (later Lt. Col.) Charles Suydam Cutting, AUS, an ardent student of Tibet who had been to Lhasa twice in previous years; and George R. Merrill, Secretary of the U. S. Mission at New Delhi.

The success of the negotiations was due in part also to the warm support and assistance of O. K. Caroe, Secretary of External Affairs of the Government of India; Sir Basil John Gould, Political Officer for Sikkim and British Representative for Bhutan and Tibet; and Frank Ludlow, Additional British Political Officer for the same region, who at the time was already in Lhasa.

While arrangements with Lhasa were under way by British wireless, Brooke and I prepared for the trip.

India was in turmoil. There was rioting in the streets of Delhi, and the city was declared out of bounds. Finally, however, we were given a jeep with permission to go wherever we wished, and we darted around old and New Delhi, obtaining all needed supplies and equipment with the exception of a compact radio receiving set.

At the end of September, 1942, we were granted permission to proceed as far as Lhasa. Our prospects of going on from Lhasa to China looked exceedingly doubtful.

"Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's Best Wishes

Before our departure General Stilwell found time to call us in and bid us Godspeed in his perfect Chinese. Late at night we struggled into our compartment on a train swarming with Hindus and troops. Our quarters were so jammed with thirty-odd pieces of equipment, all packed in containers for pack animal transport, that we had to sit on some of the cases. Luckily our train got through safely to Calcutta; the one behind us was derailed by rebels.

An overnight train took us on to SiIiguri. There we were met by Sandup, a 29-year-old Tibetan who had studied in English schools in India and was one of the post managers of the Tibetan telephone and telegraph line between Lhasa and India. He was to be our Number 1 man and interpreter on the journey to Lhasa and during our stay there.

With our gear piled into some aging touring Fords, we started a 70-mile climb through the lush vegetation of the Himalayan foothills into the State of Sikkim. The road, though narrow, was fair, damage from washouts and slides being repaired constantly by gangs of Gurkha and Lepcha laborers, mostly women.

We wound precariously along steep hillsides where the slightest swerve would have dropped us hundreds of feet into canyon streams. Once we came to a bridge so tottering that Sandup suggested our walking across and letting the cars go over one at a time.

We were soon in the toylike city of Gangtok, capital of Sikkim, whose Maharaja is much interested in promoting the welfare of his people. Here we were guests in the charming English country house of Sir Basil John Gould. B. J., as we called him, had represented the British Government at the inauguration of the present Dalai Lama. Though now more than 60 years of age, he thinks nothing of making the 300-mile journey to Lhasa.

We found him deeply engaged in the preparation of a new type of English-Tibetan dictionary and working out new methods for learning the Tibetan language. He speaks Tibetan, Hindustani, and Lepcha dialects and can write in those languages. Brooke and I absorbed from this remarkable man all we could about the customs and people of the country into which we were going.

While we were staying with B. J., the Prime Minister of Bhutan, Rani Dorji, with his charming Tibetan wife, was also visiting him. Madam Dorji was translating some Tibetan poetry and old ballads into English.

While we were preparing for the trip to Lhasa, Rai Sahib Sonnam, British trade agent from Yatung, the first Tibetan town of any importance on our route, came to Gangtok and gave us valuable assistance. He helped us organize our outfit and advised us on customs, procedures, protocol, and the presentation of gifts to officials along the way and in Lhasa.

Ready for the Trip to Forbidden Lhasa

We were fortunate in finding a cook who later on became our Number 1 man, and an almost indispensable member of the party. Son of a Chinese father and Tibetan mother, he spoke enough English to act as our interpreter after Sandup left us. His name was Thami, which we changed immediately to Tommy. Our other newly engaged boy was Lakhpa, a quiet, hardworking Lepcha about 26 years old.

With our party thus augmented to five, plus whatever transport men were driving the animals, we struck out in clear October weather. The first pack train we hired from the Maharaja of Sikkim, and Rani Dorji lent us two of his fine riding mules as our mounts for the first part of the journey.

For three days, while we were winding up the side of a valley toward the top of a Himalayan pass, we could look back and see the little town of Gangtok with its palace on a knoll. Our overnight stops were at dak bungalows (Government rest-houses).


Tolstoy's caravan climbed dangerous Himalayan mountain paths such as this one on their way to the Forbidden City of Lhasa.

Usually a day apart, these stretched on for 13 stages up to the city of Gyangtse. There was a keeper at each place, and although modern conveniences did not exist, the quarters were adequate and comfortable.

Nearing the summits, the road sometimes was only a trail so narrow that it was difficult to pass oncoming caravans burdened with bulging loads. Here and there slides made the trail almost impassable.

At 14,000 feet we sometimes felt the effect of the altitude and thin air and would wake up in the night gasping for breath. We found that propping ourselves in a semi sitting position was best for sleeping. In the daytime it was difficult to walk any distance uphill without frequent stops and rests, and we soon got used to doing everything as if in slow motion.

The Natu La (13,500 feet), first pass over the Himalayas, was surprisingly easy and level, with a good wide stretch of road approaching it. It is rocky, bare of vegetation, and in October free of snow. There was a little snow on slopes near by.

First Glimpse of Mysterious Tibet

For a while we were in the clouds and could see neither behind nor ahead of us. Then the mists parted for a moment, allowing us to take our last look back at India and our first ahead into the thick, evergreen forests below us and the sea of ranges in the distance. We were looking down into mysterious Tibet.


A Tibetan outrider leads Tolstoy and his men into Tibet.

Leaving Natu La, we dismounted to spare our horses and walked down into Tibet over old washed-out trails. Our path in the valley of the Amo led often along dry freshet courses. On the way we paused to have a cup of buttered tea with the abbot of Kargyu Gompa (gompa, in Tibet, or gomba, in China, means "monastery"), the first small Tibetan monastery we encountered.

The headman of Yatung, on the Amo, met us with an escort about five miles from the city limits. Both our parties dismounted, and we performed the ceremony of exchanging scarfs, known as kattaks.

Rai Sahib Sonnam and several other acquaintances of the city greeted us just outside the town with military honors presented by a detachment of Indian Sepoy infantry in the employ of the Indian Army. We were then escorted to our quarters in a bungalow truly palatial for that territory.

Yatung is one of the larger Tibetan cities, though it numbers probably not more than 1,500 to 2,000 people. For livelihood the people depend upon agriculture and trade with passing caravans.

Tibetan Etiquette Complicated

As soon as we were settled, we were called upon by all the dignitaries of the city. They came with their servants, bringing gifts ranging from Tibetan carpets to yak butter and hen eggs. Our Number 1 man always knew when a caller was to arrive, and consequently we were prepared with the indispensable tea, and candies, cookies, and dried fruit.

The ceremonies of greeting varied with the importance of a caller. The more important he was, the farther away from the room we met him. We had to acquaint ourselves with the rules so as to know whether to greet a caller at the end of a room, at the door, in the yard, or at the front gate!

The day after our arrival in Yatung we had an early lunch with Rai Sahib Sonnam in his modern little home. Lunch was served in the Western style. We met here the first Tibetan of high social standing, Mary Taring, wife of a prominent young Tibetan official from Lhasa, and her two daughters. The younger girl was going to school in India, and the older was about to marry the son of Rani Dorji, Prime Minister of Bhutan. The Tarings later on became our great friends.

At that luncheon we also met Pangda Tsang, one of the two strong men in the Tibetan world of finance. He is a Yatung merchant, whose agency is scattered far and wide.

The next day we were invited to the first really Tibetan luncheon in the Tsangs' typical well-to-do Tibetan home. We rode out to the house with all our group, a thing that is always done, custom demanding that the host provide a good meal for the guest's retinue. Since we were considered high officials, we were expected to uphold the prestige of the United States.

Our three assistants and few pack animals made a show so unimpressive that we had to resort to the excuse that in wartime everything must be done simply and economically.

A Tibetan Luncheon Party

With a throng of Tibetan guests Pangda Tsang's luncheon party was a gay affair. The food, more than abundant, consisted of Tibetan and Chinese delicacies, some of which had come from the coast of China before the war. We ate our meal with chopsticks, washing it down with many cups of tea and also with chang, the Tibetan national drink, made of lightly fermented barley.

We had regular Chinese shark-fin soup, some small ocean shrimp originally dried, transparent noodles made from pea flour, pickled vegetables (cabbage, cucumber, and a sort of cross between a chutney and a pickle), boiled rice, several dishes of cold and hot meat prepared in different ways, and round balls of dough stuffed with meat, fruit, or brown sugar and then boiled or steamed. These last had been pinched all around before steaming and stained with a red dye. The final course was a succulent noodle dish.

The soup dish and dessert were eaten in the middle of the meal. Dessert, served hot, was a syruplike jelly containing raisins and apricots.

Pangda Tsang asked us when the United States would again buy Tibetan wool. Before the war the bulk of Tibetan wool had been sold to the United States for manufacture of auto rugs, but the war had cut off the export and the Tibetans were temporarily without this important source of revenue. I referred the inquiry to Washington.

We soon realized that Tibetans who knew of the United States were interested in the outcome of the war and had a sympathetic feeling toward us. They had, however, great doubt as to our ability to defeat Japan, since at the time Japan was almost at their border.

A Letter from the Dalai Lama's Court

In taking our leave from the party, we left, through our Number 1 man, the customary adequate tip for our host's chief servant. Several of Pangda Tsang's riders escorted us to our home. This was good etiquette on such occasions, for the more gaily a guest departs, the better proof to all the neighborhood that the entertainment was lavish.

While we were at Yatung, we received from Lhasa the Red Arrow Letter, a courtesy gesture from the Dalai Lama's court for traveling through the country.

This letter was a piece of red cotton cloth, about 16 inches wide and 2 feet long, to be carried in the bosom or on a staff by an outrider who would precede the party by one or two days. It stated that two American officers were en route to visit the Dalai Lama and requested the headmen of all the villages to supply them with accommodations and transport at a certain rate.

Given a military send-off with honors when we left Yatung, we proceeded up the valley toward the next town of Phari Dzong, several days' journey away.

We passed some scattered villages, their houses built of stone with shingled roofs, and went through little meadows of Li Ma Tang, the only flat grassland we had seen on the bottom of the valley. It was haying time. The villagers had their tents pitched in the meadows and were cutting the grass with scythes, then raking it to dry.

The trail was crowded with little donkeys and mules almost completely hidden under their loads of hay. Even old men and women were carrying enormous backloads.

The Loftiest Post Office in the World

Our first panoramic view of the typical Tibetan town of Phari Dzong and the country around it was truly magnificent. Here we were greeted by the distinguished old administrator, who is also the abbot of the local monastery of 400 monks. We stayed in the compound of a Tibetan house that also served as the post office for the Tibetans, supposedly the highest-situated post office in the world.

Some crops are grown in the country around Phari Dzong, and barley can be planted above a 15,000-foot altitude. In the plains and foothills we saw some of the first black tents of the nomads and herders, with their winter corrals and homes made out of yak dung and sod.

The weather was freezing, high winds sweeping across the plain with great velocity. Because the Himalayas catch almost all the precipitation from the south, this territory is virtually arid.

Our road climbed so high that the passes were hardly noticeable. They were nothing but rolling, saddlelike open stretches, adorned with the customary sacred mani stone piles and prayer flags and stone pillars.

On October 22 we crossed a pass of this type called Tang La, 15,200 feet, which is part of the great Himalayas, and entered into the approaches of the vast Tuna plain.

Along the road we kept meeting caravans, mostly mules, donkeys, and bullocks, loaded down with wool, marmot hides, and grain. Occasionally we ran into a party of armed merchants from some of the outlying districts of Tibet, all well clothed and mounted, some of them wearing gaily painted masks and goggles as a protection from dry wind, sand, and sun.

At a little place called Dochen we came upon one of the most beautiful panoramas we saw in Tibet, where the deep-blue waters of Ram Tso reflect for miles the Himalayan range beyond, with the vast mountain Chomo Lhari towering over it. There was a little ice along the shores of the mirror-calm lake. Thousands of bar-headed geese lined the shore, and flocks of ruddy sheldrakes, or Brahmany ducks, were filling the air with a moaning cry.

In that region the natives had few horses, and our transport consisted entirely of bullocks, often tended by women or young boys.

A Sportsman's Paradise, but Closed

Where the salty Kala Tso without outlet is slowly receding, there is considerable crop raising, and we watched the native farmers at work in their fields. Taking Sandup and a native with me, I climbed a 2,000-foot promontory in search of Tibetan bighorns (Ovis ammon hodgsoni). Five rams, one with a magnificent head, paused less than 100 yards from our place of vantage!

Unfortunately for my huntsman's desires, it is against the Tibetan religion and the wish of the Dalai Lama to kill wild game. I had to be satisfied with a rather long-view photograph of the animals.

The next day we crossed the Kala plain, its little tufts of grass reminiscent of some parts of our West. Brooke and I were tempted again when we began running into kiang, the wild ass of Asia, and gazelles.

In the little village of Samada great fall activities were in progress. Manure was carried to the fields in baskets on pack animals, neatly deposited on the soil, and covered up with dirt to prevent it from being blown away.

Knee-deep in barley and peas, domestic animals were being driven round and round threshing floors. Here and there the grain was being hand-winnowed, and along a stream women and children were washing peas in brass cauldrons and woven baskets.

In the afternoon we visited the village of the Porus people, nearest caste counterpart in Tibet to the Untouchables of India, though without doubt much happier than the lowest-caste Hindus. Several families of them lived in semi-cave houses on a hillside a mile or so from the main village. These people, though

they till the soil, gain their primary livelihood by disposing of the dead and butchering cattle for the other villagers.

In Tibet people are not usually buried. The Porus carry bodies to a hilltop where, with the skill of a surgeon, they cut them into portions small enough to be devoured by vultures. The Porus are paid for this task and also inherit certain silver decorations from the dead. Those we saw were well bedecked in silver.

Some cattle herders or nomads came down into the village to trade. Magnificent specimens of manhood, they were clothed only in sheepskin chupas (capelike coats) and trousers. They wore no hats, but had long braids wound about their heads. Apparently the weather in the 12,000-foot valley was too hot for them! They wore their chupas with one arm slipped out, exposing half their bodies above the waist.

A Telephone in the Cloudlands

We stopped overnight at the Kangmar dak bungalow where there is a telephone station. Occasionally one can communicate with either Gangtok or Gyangtse from there, and rarely with Lhasa. This telephone operates spasmodically. Sometimes it is silent for two or three weeks at a stretch when some brigand gets away with a span or two of the wire. If an offender is caught, the punishment is severe, usually the chopping off of one hand.

Our Number 1 man, Sandup, had his home station here, and we met his young wife and two-year-old baby daughter. In the yard of the bungalow a few potted plants added a touch of charm.

That night while we were finishing supper, Sandup approached us with troubled countenance. He was anxious to take his wife and baby along with us to Lhasa. As a rule, women of Asia are good travelers, and nomad women follow their men, doing work under all conditions. We did not hesitate to grant the requested permission. Sandup's wife was a great help to us all on the trip to Lhasa, and the baby girl became our mascot.

A few miles farther on, an ancient monastery perches above the 16,000-foot elevation. I gave our pack animals a day of rest and, taking Sandup with me as interpreter, went on ponyback to the place. The abbot, a stalwart man under middle age, told me I was the first white man to visit the monastery.

Captain Dolan Falls Ill

At Gyangtse, an important town and the last British trade and mail post, we were met by Maj. R. Gloyne, acting British trade agent, Lt. C. Finch, and Dr. G. H. F. Humphries, with a colorful honor guard. The guardsmen were of a Sepoy infantry detachment mounted on fine matched white Mongolian ponies. They carried British colors. With the British officials were Rai Sahib Wangdi, a Tibetan kingpin in the trade agency, and many other Tibetan city officials.

Very unfortunately, on the second day in Gyangtse, Captain Dolan was stricken with pneumonia. We gave him sulfa treatment, which arrested the progress of the illness immediately, but because of the high altitude and extremely cold weather his recovery was not so rapid as we hoped. For that reason, we were glad that Dr. Humphries was allowed to travel with us to Lhasa.

We stayed in Gyangtse for a month. Two or three times we were fortunate enough to make telephone connections with Mr. Ludlow in Lhasa and discuss with him certain phases of the journey from Gyangtse and the arrival in the Sacred City.

Some of our mail caught up with us there, and the radio of the Agency gave us daily the rather grim news of the outside world.

The British, with their love of sports, had carried that phase of their life into this part of Tibet. The Agency's Tibetan employees had a good soccer team, playing against the men of the Sepoy detachment and the British commanding personnel.

Played at an altitude of 13,000 feet, the games were amazingly fast. Almost without exception they were won by the Tibetans, who not only were fine physical specimens but were accustomed from childhood to rarefied air. Major Gloyne and I made an attempt to play, but soon found that the only positions we could handle were those of goalkeepers.

I undertook the job of giving cavalry drills and training to the newly arrived Sepoys. Every morning we went through a couple of hours in the saddle, sometimes even knocking a polo ball around. To my long experience as a horseman and my skill in caring for saddle animals I attribute the ease with which I made friends with the horse-loving Tibetans.

In the heart of the city is located one of the large and important monasteries of Tibet, Nenning Gompa, in front of which is a gigantic chorten, or shrine, of unique design and beauty, famous all over Tibet. Inside, it contains 80 chambers filled with Buddhist idols and paintings of many types and sizes. It is adorned with gilded religious figures and ornaments.

Gyangtse is situated in a fertile valley criss-crossed with irrigation ditches which our Mongolian ponies took in their stride during our cross-country rides. It is one of the key cities of Tibet, and through it passes all the trade from the east to India and northwest Tibet.

The Agency compound had electric power, generated by a windmill. A few electric-light bulbs made it quite modern, enticing us to later evenings and long conversations with our Tibetan and British friends.

On the Last Lap to Lhasa

The month passed quickly, and on December 4, after a military review of the detachment and numerous calls from high Tibetan officials, we rode out with Major Gloyne and his honor guard toward Lhasa. They escorted us a short distance before turning back; but Dr. Humphries stayed with us. Due for return to India after long service in Gyangtse, he readily obtained permission to visit the Forbidden City. The Anglo-Indian doctor amused us and all the Tibetans by riding, instead of a horse, the smallest mule he could find.

The court of the Dalai Lama had sent two soldiers, a sergeant and a private, to escort us to Lhasa. With pronged rifle across his back and a large silver prayer box slung from one shoulder, the sergeant rode ahead, usually on the best pony he could requisition from the village. His mount was bedecked with ornaments and bells. Had there been any bandits, they would certainly have heard our approach well ahead of time.

When Caravans Meet

By always preceding us, the sergeant added a great air of dignity to our procession, sometimes roughly making approaching caravans get off the road to allow us more room to pass.

Tibetan custom rules that if a traveler sees what might be a more important caravan approaching, he stops within a few hundred yards, gets off the road, dismounts, takes off his hat, and stands while the party passes by. The party, in turn, must greet the dismounted travelers most politely.

Somehow, after leaving Gyangtse, we had the feeling of getting deeper into the real Tibet where the influence of the outside world is negligible. The trails had been worn through the centuries by caravans carrying merchandise from northeast China and India. Although we had to cross several more passes on our way, the terrain was not difficult.

We were meeting more caravans, now mostly of yaks, carrying barley, salt, and wool. It was easy to see that they had been on the trail for months. From this point on we stayed in Tibetan houses, which often were vacated by their occupants for our overnight use.

The headman and owner of the house usually would bustle about and try to make us comfortable, constantly bowing, bringing up the thumbs, sticking out the tongue and hissing—Tibetan ways of showing respect.

The higher the station of the person addressed, and the lower the station of the one who addresses, the lower the latter must bow, the more he is to stick out his tongue, and the more constant must become the hissing, done with quick little intakes of breath. After a while we got used to this and almost did it ourselves. Although we resorted to saluting as an official or any other form of greeting, we often found ourselves bowing while saluting.

In the little village of Ralung at the base of the Ningohi Kangshar mountain, we stayed in the large house of a Tibetan nobleman.

Curtain-like pieces of cloth with little cutouts to admit light were the typical Tibetan substitutes for window glass. The only heat came from charcoal burners, which used yak chips for fuel instead of charcoal. These burners were lighted outside and brought in glowing hot. We got the sensation of heat by sitting almost on top of the burner.

By keeping all our clothes on indoors, we managed to make the entries in our log; then, undressing as quickly as possible, we got into our sleeping bags for the night. The yak chips used in the poorer houses are burned right in the room, which consequently is filled with an almost suffocating smoke.

From Ralung we toiled up to Karo La, altitude 16,000 feet, one of the most dangerous passes because of frequent snowfalls.

The animals were tired from the long, tedious climb, and we paused overnight beyond the pass in a Tibetan mail stage shack. It was a windy and bitterly cold night. All of us huddled into a tiny windowless room, filled with the smoke of burning yak chips, while the animals were huddled together outside in a small yard.

Sandup's wife and baby daughter amazed me by their indifference to the discomfort of the trail. I never heard the baby cry, and she was sick only once—then, I think, from some of our candies. She would ride usually either in the arms of her mother or in the saddle in front of another rider.

From Karo La we descended to Yamdrok Tso, near which is situated the small but important town of Nagartse Dzong, with its striking hillside fort guarding the narrows of the valley.

The "Diamond Sow," a 5-year-old Abbess

We remained in Nagartse Dzong an extra day to visit the famous Samden Gompa, which is headed by an abbess known as the "Diamond Sow." She is abbess over male monks.

The first Diamond Sow abbess dates from 1717, when the monastery was besieged by a band of Mongols. It was a nunnery then. After a long siege the abbess is said to have opened the gates at the monastery yard, turning all her nuns into sows at the same time. The Mongols were so impressed with the miracle that they laid down their arms and retreated. The museum room of the monastery contains large quantities of those weapons.

The abbess at the time of our visit was five years old. She received us sitting cross-legged on her throne with her lay female attendant and her ecclesiastical court monks. Her well-proportioned and chiseled face was stern with a grown-up expression. At no time could I notice any mannerisms of a child.

We presented scarfs directly to her, and the gifts and money donations for the monastery were brought in as usual. We in turn were presented with two fragments of a sacred kattak and some magic seeds wrapped up in Tibetan paper with prayers.

A good Tibetan places these objects in his prayer box, which at home is kept in the religious corner found in every Tibetan house, no matter how poor, and on a journey is carried slung across the shoulder. The Tibetans believe that some strong medicine contained in these prayer boxes will divert a bullet.

Brooke impressed even the monks with his knowledge of the images, which he recognized at a glance. I explained that he was a student of the Buddhist religion. Thereafter, this fact became known wherever he went and gained for our party a scholastic and religious respect.

Well-to-do Tibetans Wear Fine Raiment

At Japsan Ferry, by which we crossed the Brahmaputra, we met the first well-to-do Tibetan family on the march. They were mounted on fine mules bedecked with rug blankets and ornamented tack, with large red woolen tassels hanging from their breastplates. A child was held in the saddle by an arrangement of high wooden crosstrees on pommel and cantle.


Loading the Riding Horses and Pack Mules on the river barge.

The family was dressed in fine silk robes adorned with furs, and wore fur hats in a cutoff conical shape embroidered with gold thread. All the servants wore the same type of colored robes and were well armed with rifles and Mauser pistols.

I was often asked if we were traveling in uniform. Most of our clothing which we wore every day was of the combat type, but we carried with us blouses, riding breeches, and boots, which we made a point to wear for official calls and for certain arrivals and departures at the more important points. Several times we had to fight high winds behind some hill a few miles outside a village while we changed into our best.

At a small village called Chushul Dzong the headman informed us that the famous Tsarong Shape, a Cabinet Minister, had offered us the use of his small overnight cottage. It was a gracious Tibetan building, with several modern conveniences.

In the big reception room we were astonished to find the walls covered with National Geographic Society maps of the world. Later we learned that Tsarong Shape, whose full name is Namgang Dasan Damdu, is the only Tibetan member of The Society. We saw much of him in Lhasa.

Dalai Lama's Escort Meets the Party

Twenty-five miles out of Lhasa we were met by an escort sent out from the court of the Dalai Lama to greet us. It was headed by a powerfully built, fine-looking young monk, Kusho Yonton Singhi, who was to become our guide and inseparable adviser during our stay in the city of mystery.


Tibetan officials such as these negotiated the possibility of allowing Roosevelt and Churchill to create a road from India to China via their mountainous kingdom.

He presented us with a warm letter of welcome and greetings from the joint Foreign Ministers of Tibet, and with the usual scarfs. Knowing our animals were tired, the Ministers had sent two fresh ponies for Brooke and me. It was a pleasure to ride the excellent Mongolian pacer, the kind that in Tibet only wealthy men can afford.

By Tibetan custom horsemen walk down steep hills, but from the moment Kusho joined us, we were not obliged to dismount. One of Kusho's outriders would halt at the top of each steep place, give his horse into charge of someone else, and lead our mounts carefully down the trail. We began to feel as if we were precious china dolls.

At noon we rode up to several gaily decorated Tibetan tents, where we had tea with our guide. The next day we woke up early and rode off briskly with an unmistakable feeling of excitement. Our first goal was near.

Entering the valley of Lhasa, we rode along the Kyi, which flows through the city. We crossed its tributary on Tibet's only modern steel bridge. On a concrete foundation, the bridge was built several years ago by Tsarong without the help of foreign engineers. The feat was remarkable in that all the pieces of steel had to be brought from India over the Himalayas by coolies, as the girders were too heavy for pack animals to carry.

Somewhere within the last four miles of Lhasa we knew a delegation waited to receive us, and one of our men rode ahead to herald our approach. The greeters, thus notified, rode out to meet us a couple of hundred yards from the place where they had been stationed. When about 100 feet apart, our parties dismounted and greeted each other.

The welcoming delegation was composed of the city magistrate of Lhasa, representing the city; Frank Ludlow, Additional British Political Officer for Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet, with H. Fox, Esquire, his assistant and wireless operator; the British Mission doctor, Rai Sahib Bo, who was a Bhutanese by birth; chief British Mission clerk, Minghyu; Dr. Kung Ching-tsung, chief of the Chinese Mission, with several members of his staff; the Bhutanese representatives; the Nepalese representatives, whose honor guard of soldiers was lined up a few miles away; and the Ladakhi representatives.

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Part 2 of 2

The Higher the Seat, the Greater the Man

Greetings were in strict Western fashion. After the introductions our entire cavalcade rode on to a small roadside park where several decorated Tibetan tents had been set up for the occasion. We were welcomed at the gate by the officers representing the court of the Dalai Lama. Most important among them were George Tsarong (Tsarong Se Dabul Namgyal), son of the Tsarong Shape, Dege Se, a royal prince before the Chinese took over his domain and now representative of the Foreign Office.

Escorted into the central tent, we were given the seats of honor behind a little table laden with the usual dried fruits, candies, etc. Our hosts, in order of rank and position, sat down to our right and left, on hassocks of diminishing heights. The farther away from us the lower the seats became, until, as the line passed out the entrance of the tent, overflow guests were sitting on the open ground on flat cushions. There were tables only a few inches high in front of all guests.

Buttered tea was poured from large, silver-ornamented copper teapots, and the ceremonial rice was served. In front of each person was placed a Chinese rice bowl with the rice patted in a high mound. We took a few grains of this rice with our fingers, threw some of it over our shoulders for the appeasement of spirits, and swallowed the few remaining grains. The rice bowls were then taken away, and the representatives of the court gave us letters of welcome and scarfs on behalf of every branch of the court.

This part of the ceremony over, we rode through the little wooded parks that surround Lhasa. To our right a large part of Lhasa's population was congregated on small grass mounds. On the left was lined up a detachment of the honor guard of the famous Tibetan Trapchi regiment, which serves as the bodyguard to the Dalai Lama.

We were surprised and our horses startled by a sudden outburst of stirring military music from a brass band, the only band of occidental instruments in Tibet. Presumably the instruments had been taken from a Chinese army in 1911.

Under the Windows of the Dalai Lama

The magnificent flag of Tibet stood out in its brilliant colors, showing the sun and two Lions of Tibet facing each other, holding the Wheel of Life under the Precious Gems.

Dismounting, we reviewed the detachment of soldiers, smart-looking in their practical native uniforms, and shook hands with their commanding officer. We then proceeded to the attractive Tibetan house of our host, Mr. Ludlow, just outside the West Gate of Lhasa, from where we could see the walls of the Potala topped by the Dalai Lama's personal quarters.

Several members of the welcoming party joined us for tea at Mr. Ludlow's residence. After tea we settled down in cozy Tibetan rooms, specially decorated for us by the court of the Dalai Lama, the floors solidly covered with Tibetan rugs and comfortable Tibetan couches. Mr. Fox proudly showed us his model Diesel plant which supplied the house with electricity and enabled him to make radio contact as far as Indiana, U.S.A.

From that day we lived for weeks by a schedule. There was a definite procedure for whom to see, when, and in what order. During our first few days in Lhasa we received official calls from Dr. Kung, Chinese representative, who had been in the Chinese diplomatic service in Europe and could speak French and some English; and from the joint Foreign Ministers. These last were Surkhang Dsasa, a genial Tibetan nobleman who in younger days had traveled into India and China, and a gracious elderly monk, the Ta Lama, named Yongon Dsasa.

From our first meeting Brooke and I liked the Foreign Ministers and soon became fast friends with them. We had to deal through them with His Holiness's court; thus we were with them often throughout our stay.

Among our other callers were representatives of Nepal, Bhutan, and Ladakh. A Major Bista of Nepal was a highly educated man and had a remarkable library in his home. These visitors were followed by Tibetan lay and ecclesiastical officials and lay dignitaries, some coming in official and some in private capacity.

Each person brought, or sent by servants, customary arrival gifts such as wheat, barley, flour, rice, meat, live sheep, butter, and eggs. As official guests we were also furnished firewood, feed for the ponies, and some provisions for all our group for a month's time.

The Dalai Lama Grants Audience

In accordance with Tibetan custom, we were not to call upon any officials until after His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, had granted us an audience. A few days after our arrival we were informed by the Tibetan Foreign Office that the audience would be at 9:20 on the morning of December 20. That date was selected as the most auspicious for the Dalai Lama, a highly important factor in all of his undertakings.

Early that day we rode out toward the Potala in a sizable cavalcade with all our men, the monk guide and his assistants dressed up in their finery.

The Potala is situated on a hill, and the Dalai Lama's throne room is on the very top. Usually visitors must make a long and tedious climb up the broad steps of the palace. We, however, were extended a great courtesy, being allowed to ride along a narrow path up the mountain to the back of the palace, where we left our horses. Then we were escorted through the courtyards and long labyrinths of the Potala building to a small, unpretentious waiting room.

Here we were joined by the representatives of the Foreign Office, a few other dignitaries, and a charming young Tibetan official named Changnopa, whom everybody called Ringang. Ringang had studied at Rugby and spoke beautiful English. After tea had been served, we rehearsed the procedure for greeting the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans explaining to us some of the fine points of etiquette. A monk entered soon and announced that we were to proceed to the throne room.

Escorted by a stately procession of monks, we ascended to the roof of the Potala, above which rose the single room used for receptions. On both sides in front of the entrance were seated rows of high monk dignitaries, and in the background were crowds of lesser monks and some laymen and pilgrims who were to be given a blessing by the Dalai Lama after our reception.

We stood in line for a few moments until the heavy curtain was drawn from the entrance, then walked into the richly decorated throne room. Rows of monks and lay officials were standing along the walls, but the central portion of the room remained open. Directly in front of us stood the Dalai Lama's throne, a square, flat-topped seat about four feet high and four feet wide, with a straight back.


The ten-year-old Dalai Lama who greeted Long Riders Tolstoy and Dolan in 1942.

His Holiness was seated cross-legged, a high-peaked yellow hat on his head. We were immediately impressed by his young but stern face and not at all frail constitution. His cheeks were healthily pink.

A few feet away to his right, on a similar but lower throne, sat the dignified Regent of Tibet. Until the Dalai Lama becomes of age at eighteen, the Regent assumes his duties and is the highest authority in Tibet, ecclesiastical or civil.

Still farther away to the Regent's right was seated the Dalai Lama's father, a layman, dressed in rich robes and hat. Ruddy and youthful in appearance, and wearing a neat little down-turned mustache, he presented a contrast to the ecclesiastical dignitaries.

Delivery of the Historic Letter

As we stepped inside the threshold of the throne room, we saluted. Our hats were kept on throughout the entire ceremony. We then walked up to the throne of the Dalai Lama and, standing before him, saluted again. A monk came up and laid a presentation scarf across my outstretched hands, then placed a bread-and-butter offering upon the scarf. Bowing, I presented the offering to the Dalai Lama, who took it into his hands and passed it over to a monk on his right.

This procedure was repeated as a monk placed in turn upon the scarf I held an image of Buddha, a religious book, and a chorten.

These objects I passed on to the Dalai Lama.

Meanwhile, Captain Dolan, standing to my right, had been holding the casket containing President Roosevelt's letter to the Dalai Lama. He now passed it to me, placing it on the scarf. In the same manner I presented the casket to the Dalai Lama. So far as we could learn, this was the first time in history that direct communication had been made by a President of the United States with the Dalai Lama of Tibet.

I then laid the scarf across the throne in front of His Holiness, saluted, and proceeded to the throne of the Regent at my left.

Captain Dolan stepped up to the throne of the Dalai Lama, a scarf over his hands, and presented to His Holiness a photograph of President Roosevelt. He then saluted and joined me in front of the Regent's throne.

At this point our servants presented the gift of President Roosevelt, a gold chronographic watch, to the major-domo standing away from the throne. This functionary accepted it in behalf of the Dalai Lama, together with the personal gift Captain Dolan and I had brought, a silver ship.

Saluting the Regent, I bestowed upon him gifts similar to those presented to the Dalai Lama: an image of Buddha, a religious book; a chorten, and objects of silver. After placing the presentation scarf across the Regent's hands, I passed on to the throne of the Dalai Lama's father.

The Exchange of Scarfs

Brooke also saluted the Regent, presented him with a scarf, and joined me at the left. The father of the Dalai Lama was saluted in turn and honored with scarfs by us both. No gifts were presented to the father on this occasion, but were given at a later date.

The presentation of gifts and scarfs accomplished, we returned to the right-hand side of the room, where we sat on a long, low cushion placed near the center. A low table was set in front of us. From the far corner of the room came a monk bearing a pot of tea. He stopped before the Dalai Lama, joining another monk kneeling in front of the throne, who reached into his robe and pulled out a silver cup into which a little tea was poured. This monk then tasted the tea to insure its being satisfactory.

We were then served tea and rice. Although we were offered three cups of tea, we drank only two, leaving the third untasted as custom dictates. We ate a bit of the rice and threw a few grains over our shoulders.

While we were thus occupied, our retinue of servants proceeded to the Dalai Lama's throne and presented scarfs which a monk, standing by the side of His Holiness, accepted on his lord's behalf. The Dalai Lama then blessed them by touching their heads with a holy wand. They paid the same respects to the Regent and the Dalai Lama's father.

The servants were followed by a chain of monks and other people specially admitted to the throne room. These also presented scarfs and bowed before the throne to receive the blessing of His Holiness.

When the procession to the throne had ceased, the Dalai Lama addressed us through an interpreter, inquiring about the health of the President of the United States. I stood up to answer his query, then again sat down.

After a time a staid monk stood beside the throne and announced in a deep voice, "The reception is over." We left the throne chamber, followed by our servants and the rest of the spectators.

Upon the close of the official reception in the throne room, we returned to the waiting room of the Potala, presently to be ushered into the private chamber of the Dalai Lama. He was sitting on a small, low couch, with a table before him holding religious objects. Beside His Holiness sat the Regent on a similar couch. We were seated on chairs directly in front of them.

Ringang accompanied us. He acted as interpreter in the ensuing conversation, which continued in an informal vein for about a half hour. The private audience was then ended, and we left the Potala.

A Round of Courtesy Calls

The next few weeks we devoted to making calls upon all the ecclesiastical and lay officials in the order of their rank and position, and presenting them with gifts. We also called on the Dalai Lama's family. There followed a round of dinners, luncheons, and teas exchanged in both official and unofficial capacity.

We visited the Oracle, a rather remarkable middle-aged man, who has his own small monastery a few miles outside Lhasa. A short journey took us to the two largest monasteries in the world, Drepung and Sera, both near the city.

All the foreign representatives entertained us hospitably, and Dr. Kung had the pupils of his Chinese school turned out to greet us. These little children are of mixed Chinese and Tibetan parentage, and the school is provided by the Chinese Government.

The only other lay school in Tibet is conducted by a monk who is a radio operator. His pupils are children of nobility and lay officials in Lhasa.

Deke Lingka, headquarters of the British Mission, in which we lived, was next to the famous Holy Walk which stretches for seven miles around the Potala grounds.

Along that walk we could see pilgrims from all Tibet circumambulating the Potala, some by prostrating themselves along the walk, getting up and stepping the length of their bodies, then prostrating themselves again. Thus they measured their way around the Potala like inchworms.

Tibetan New Year Begins in February

As the New Year holidays approached, the stream of pilgrims increased daily.

The first month of the Tibetan year begins in early February. It is celebrated by a series of religious and historical ceremonies, all of which we attended upon the invitation of the Kashag, or Grand Council, which furnished us with special seats and gave a luncheon and entertainment for us at each function.

At the time of the New Year the city and its administration were taken over by monks from the near-by monasteries. All day throngs of them kept pouring into Lhasa. Caravans with goods from India and northern Tibet arrived daily, and tents were pitched in the parks and fields around the city.

Traveling sorcerers and bands of dancers roamed the city, entertaining on the streets and in the homes of the wealthy. Women wore magnificent dresses and the Lhasa style of three-pronged headdresses covered with seed pearls and semiprecious stones. Had they appeared on the streets not dressed in holiday costume, the monks most likely would have sent them home.

There were pageants by soldiers in 15th-century armor who went through sham battles and dances depicting battles of days gone by. Magnificent religious dances performed in the courtyard of the Potala by monks in grotesque masks portrayed the lamas of the church ridding the people of evil spirits.

Most of the festivities began early in the morning and lasted throughout the day. Wielding large willow sticks, the provost monks had difficulty maintaining order and keeping the public from blocking the way of the processions in the narrow streets.

At the end of the month, when the New Year's ceremonies were almost over, permission was granted us by the Tibetan Government to proceed to China.

Since further communication with the outside world would be impossible until we reached China, and since we faced dangerous unknown terrain, peril of bandits, and hazards of passes likely to be snow-blocked, we took great care in outfitting ourselves for the journey. Two of our men, who were returning to India, had to be replaced.

Mr. Fox, the British radio operator, had just received some small American commercial radio receiving sets which he had ordered from the United States over a year before. He was kind enough to let us have one, and we carried it with us all the way to China. This little radio kept us informed of the events of the world and astonished many nomads along the way.

We usually could get London once a day and at times Chungking and India. Occasionally we got San Francisco. Tokyo we could get at any time—a fact which sometimes embarrassed us when Tibetans wanted to hear the United States.

After awaiting an auspicious date to depart, we started out from Lhasa about the middle of March, our caravans leading the way. Near the northern outskirts of the city we were given a military send-off by an honor guard and were served ceremonial tea and rice in specially erected tents. From there a large group of our friends and officials rode with us to the estate of a nobleman, where we were given a luncheon.

Scarfs Serve as Leis Do in Hawaii

After the luncheon, according to Tibetan custom, we were accompanied to the gate. There our friends placed scarfs over our heads. This was done by everyone, including even our servants, just as leis are placed around the necks of travelers leaving Hawaii. By the time the last person had bidden us farewell, our necks were bundled in more than 200 of those scarfs.

Following the custom further, we got on our horses, still wearing the kattaks, and rode the rest of the day with them on. For the remainder of the trip each of us carried at least one scarf around his neck.

Both Brooke and I felt a moment of sadness at leaving our friends behind, and we could see sincere emotion on their faces.

Concerned about our safety in bandit territory, the Tibetan Government detailed a sergeant and five soldiers to accompany us as far as we wished to take them. We took them as escort only through Tibet proper. The Chinese representative informed us that we would be met at the border by a detachment of Chinese soldiers. They never showed up.

Sandup Bids the Party Good-bye

Our boy Sandup and his wife had to return to India. Since he had been our interpreter, we felt that losing him weakened our outfit in that respect. We had only our cook, Tommy, to replace him.

Tommy became our Number 1 man and Lakhpa was promoted a step. We found a young Tibetan named Punzo to act as camp boy and a young monk to look after the ponies. This monk was going in our direction also and was delighted to work his way through. He changed his monk's robes to a simple Tibetan civilian garb.

All the servants had to be given proper clothes and bedding for the trip, and their family affairs had to be carefully worked out before departure.

After the first few days we approached the wide, valley-like stretches of the Tibetan northern steppes, or plateaus. On the way up to and down the passes the streams were frozen, often with thick ice bridges over dried stream beds.

We carried peas and considerable grain, especially barley, and as much as we could of barley straw, for it was necessary to maintain our fine animals in good condition through the bitter stretch of northern uplands where neither straw nor grain was grown or available. Since it was March, the last year's grass was either grazed down or worthless after the winter snows.

On March 23 we crossed the upper Kyi near Phongdo. The men crossed on a crude suspension chain bridge lined with yak hides, and the animals forded the stream, which was low at that time of year.

We left our trail for half a day's ride to Reting Gompa, the seat of the ex-Regent of Tibet, a very high religious personage. Before leaving Lhasa, we had exchanged greetings and gifts with the ex-Regent by means of messengers, and he had invited us to stop with him on the way north.

Our poor Lakhpa fell ill here, and after we got him well we had to leave· him behind to return to Gyangtse. In his place we found a simple Tibetan boy.

The ex-Regent was a great lover of horses and without a doubt had the best stable of imported Mongolian pacers in Tibet. Some of his ponies came from as far away as Urga (Ulan Bator), Outer Mongolia.

He had one remarkable animal, a cross between a Mongolian pony and a wild ass, or kiang. This type of mule has almost as great endurance and ability to live off the country as the wild ass. It is much larger and stronger than the ordinary mule and has the advantage of hoofs shaped like those of a horse.

On April 3 we crossed the divide of Langlu La. It is 15,000 feet high and separates the waters of the Brahmaputra and the upper Salween. Within another two days we reached Nagchu Dzong, administrative capital of northern Tibet. Here we were met by the commissioner, Tsarong's son-in-law, a few other city officials, and an honor guard detachment.

We picked up at Nagchu Dzong some additional supplies we had sent ahead. After a three-day rest we set off again.

Hit by the First Snowstorm

Two days out of Nagchu Dzong we hit our first snowstorm. The going became difficult, since the snow had covered some of the dangerous spots. It was remarkable how our animals sensed and avoided the hazards.

For the first time we encountered a caravan carrying tea from China. It had left Jyekundo (Yushu) four months previously with 1,000 yaks and 25 ponies. Only 700 yaks and 15 ponies survived, for the winter was extremely severe. The drivers were brewing tea in the lee of the stacked-up loads of tea, while the yaks were grazing in the hills.

About April 13 we came to Kema, where a nomad chieftain had been notified of our arrival. He received us with great honor by setting up guest tents, at the end of which had been erected two pillars of loosely piled stones. On the top of them burning yak chips and brush threw off heavy columns of smoke.

From these pillars stones were laid out in a line as if marking the approach to the camp. This is a customary gesture toward ranking visitors, and it certainly added a little air of importance to our modest outfit.

When the Dalai Lama travels across Tibet, the natives lay similar stones along both sides of the road for many miles at a stretch and individually bring along small containers in which they burn brush and incense while he passes by.

That justice is rigorously upheld in that part of the country was attested by an occasional gallows fashioned of a flimsy pole, from which was suspended the head of a horse thief or bandit. Rumors of banditry were becoming more prevalent, and by now our outfit was well whipped up for defense in any emergency.

The road became quite difficult and the terrain cut up with steep banks of mud and snow. Some of the streams were only partly frozen, and the animals kept breaking through the ice. Snow fell intermittently. Whenever the sun was in, we could feel the bitter cold and wind through our Tibetan fur robes.

A Precarious Suspension Bridge

A few miles beyond Sok Gomba we crossed the first suspension bridge over the Sok River. This bridge was nothing but two chains over which was drawn a matting of saplings, with no railing or support along its sides. As the animals passed over it, the bridge swerved and shook like a ribbon in midair, 250 feet above the gorge.

One man led each animal by the head and another held the tail. The yaks and the more stubborn of the other animals had to ford the cold water a couple of miles downstream. Even some of our native men crossed that bridge on all fours.

We saw the first spring plowing being done in the Sok Valley. In this region yaks were used for that purpose.

On April 19 we reached Pachen, where we remained for a few days. Some miles beyond was the Tsangne La, which leads into Tsinghai Province. The Chinese representative in Lhasa had told us we would be met at the pass by a detachment of Chinese soldiers, but runners we sent ahead returned to say that no Chinese were anywhere in sight and that none of the nomads had seen any Chinese in that region for a couple of years.

At this point we sent our Tibetan escort back to Lhasa and proceeded with our small group from one nomad camp to the other, trusting in Tibetan gods and keeping alert.

The administrative jurisdiction of the Dalai Lama ends at this point, and beyond, for over 200 miles to Jyekundo, bandits and feuding nomad clans prey on the transports.

With the help of a nomad chief on the Tibetan side we finally were able to gather drivers and animals to take us across. However, they refused to proceed until we had hired at least 25 more men with rifles.

On April 23 we parted with the accommodating baron of the Pachen nomads, who had assisted us in procuring the transport, and began climbing the border range of Tsangne La, more than 16,000 feet high. The higher we went, the deeper the snow became. This pass is seldom open in January, February, and March.

At that high altitude, carrying full loads, the yaks had a system for getting through heavy snow. The leading animal would lunge through the drifts until it was winded. Then it would lie down while the next yak in line came up to make a few more lunges. When the second, too, became exhausted, the third yak passed the first two. This process continued until the animals eventually reached solid ground.

After a blizzard had subsided, we could see from the top of the pass the vast, forbidding-looking wastes of the northern uplands, with a few snow-capped ranges in the distance. The temperature was below freezing, and the ceaseless winds were the strongest yet encountered.

Birthplace of Great Rivers of Asia

We dropped into this vast area and next day were riding along the mountains which served as a divide for the headwaters of the Salween, Yangtze, and Mekong.

We were now traveling over the territory from which many of the great rivers of Asia start. On April 30 we again began to encounter ranges of cut-up terrain. Two days later we reached the encampment of a nomad chieftain who furnished us with transport for the next six days, together with some men, most of whom were armed only with slings. Those boys were extremely accurate with these weapons, even up to 60 yards, and could kill a dog or a man with them easily.

Our only interpreter now was Tommy, and he with his limited Chinese and English had a hard time understanding the natives, who spoke a different Tibetan dialect.

One day we were surrounded by men on horseback, who rode around us at a great distance out of range. We let out a few machine-gun bursts in the direction we were heading, and the riders disappeared from our path. One night our mastiff caught a bandit spy near the camp. We turned the fellow over to the chieftain the next day.

Often one chieftain would tell us that another one was a bandit. In a few cases we had to resort to keeping a close watch on a chieftain and his men while they were traveling with us.

Fording the Mekong River

On May 6 we forded the Mekong River, which, though rather wide, was shallow. We camped at an attractive little monastery called Zuru Gomba. Unmolested by the monks, large flocks of blue sheep, or bharals, ranged the hills. Here we watched a remarkable feat by a Tibetan hound. The dog actually ran down and hamstrung a full-grown gazelle.

At all times we tried to send ahead an outrider to notify the next chieftain of our coming and need of transport. In one instance we had a Tibetan monk write out an important-looking document ordering a chieftain to provide us with transport.

On May 10 we passed the beautiful valley and plain of Nima Rungsha where hundreds of wild asses and gazelles were grazing. The mountain slopes were thickly forested, and we saw musk deer jumping high through the underbrush. Riding along a stream, we jumped a small flock of Lhasa stag, also known as Prejevalsky's deer.

An Outpost of Chinese Mohammedan Soldiers

In this territory travelers often lost their horses and mules. The animals ran away to join wild ass herds. For that reason we kept bells on all our stock while they were resting or running loose. The noise of the bells frightened away the wild asses.

On May 12 we came upon the first outpost of Chinese Mohammedan soldiers, who were grazing their transport animals in the fertile valley. Maj. Ma Ying-hsiang, their leader, told us that his commanding general in Jyekundo had been notified by Gen. Ma Pu-fang, Governor of Tsinghai Province, that Chungking expected our arrival there and that he had been on the lookout for us, searching for some time along the different passes. He was relieved that we finally had arrived safely.

After 56 days on the road from Lhasa, we halted for two days to clean up and rest before appearing in Jyekundo. We understood that Gen. Ma Pu-Iang was to give us an elaborate reception.

On May 15 we rode into the outskirts of Jyekundo. The commanding general, his staff, and the town's officials greeted us. A detachment of cavalry was lined up along the side of the road, and farther on monks of the local monastery were out with their band.

A holiday was proclaimed in the city, flags and banners were displayed, and all the people turned out to greet us. Whenever we approached a native sitting in the street, he would rise in welcome.

We were escorted into a comfortable Tibetan house by our host, the General. Here we were really settled in style, with big Chinese beds made up with brand-new silk quilts, servants and a cook to attend us, and two armed guards to watch the gate. In all this customary Chinese hospitality we relaxed and forgot the worries of the trail.

There was a wireless from Jyekundo to Sining, and we asked the General to send a message to Chungking via Sining to notify General Stilwell's headquarters of our safe arrival.

The General told us he had instructions to facilitate the procurement of our transport and escort to Sining. In a few days our four faithful Tibetans were ready to start back to Lhasa and the Indian border, this time via the southern route through Chamdo.

The Pack Animals Swim the Yangtze

When we left Jyekundo, we were escorted for several miles by the General, his staff, and an honor guard. It was only a short journey from Jyekundo to the Yangtze River, which was a hundred yards or more wide at that point and rather swift. We swam the animals across and ferried the equipment on rafts floated on blown-up skin bags.

On June 1 we camped near Shewu Gomba, which perches on the side of a mountain. The country became more and more swampy in the lower parts of the valleys and plains and our animals bogged down frequently.

On June 3 a heavy snowstorm caught us and made traveling difficult for several days. The climate of this section of the country is severe, snow sometimes falling even in midsummer. The ranges are farther apart, and the valleylike plains bear better grass than elsewhere. Because the numerous rivers are broad, many of them were difficult for the animals to swim. We had to stop sometimes and kill sheep to make blown-up skins for our rafts.

Though we were now traversing country where the wild yak once was numerous, we saw none of these animals. The introduction of automatic rifles by Chinese Mohammedan troops had exterminated the herds. Day after day we passed horned skulls.


The Stars and Stripes reach China.

On June 7 we neared the Tra La between the Yangtze and Yellow (Hwang) River headwaters. We came across as many as nine bears in one day. This bear appeared very close to our grizzly in size and coloring. Captain Dolan shot one, and we preserved its skull and hide.

There were signs of the great Asiatic bighorn sheep, and on a few occasions we got away for short hunts off the trail. A group of nine rams was the largest I spied. Crossing the Yehmatan plains with their almost impenetrable swamps, we camped for three nights virtually in water. Even at night without their loads, the animals bogged down.

Reaching Gamoh Nor, a large freshwater lake situated near the Chinese military outpost of Hwanghoyen, we crossed the Yellow River not many miles from its source.

This country was familiar to Captain Dolan, for in 1935 he had taken an expedition there to collect mammals for the, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

Floods Make River Crossing Difficult

Beyond Changshitou our helpers and escort were Ngoloks. These people, taller and more rugged than central Tibetans, are known as the fiercest tribe in this area.

On June 17 we came to the Ta River, on the far side of which was the old Chinese fort of Tahopa. A downpour in the morning had swelled the river to about 300 feet in width, and it was exceptionally swift. It took a day and a half to cross our animals and supplies on rafts.

The Tahopa fort was known to have telegraph and telephone communication, but we found both out of commission. In the summer-time several trucks manage to get up to the fort over the hard turf. At the time of our visit, however, motor traffic was out of the question.

On June 21 we approached the west end of Koko Nor (Tsing Hai), where we were met by the Chinese Mohammedan garrison commander of Cheche. Here and there were signs of fields that had been under cultivation in previous years. Our yak transport gave way to bullocks of yellow Mongolian cattle.

The night of June 25 we rested in another Chinese fort, Chapucha, where we met a large detachment of Mohammedan cavalry on their way to Jyekundo. They were wearing white felt robes made for warmth as well as for shedding the frequent rains of that region.

Skirting a considerable stretch of desert not unlike the arid sands found in Arizona, we passed over several dunes which the winds keep moving from place to place.

For some time now we had felt the approach of spring, and every day we saw more and more wild flowers. We soon rode through solid expanses of wild iris.

We arrived in the Chinese city of Hwang-yuan on the 89th day of travel and, proceeding along the cultivated valleys and through small Chinese villages, soon were within a day's march of Sining. The last ten miles we rode in a car sent out for us by the Governor of Tsinghai.

First Place of Call a Turkish Bath

The most memorable occurrence in Sining, outside of a visit with the Governor, was our visit to the Turkish bath, which we made our very first place of call in the city.

From Sining we hired a truck and drove on to Lanchow over a fairly good road. There, awaiting us, was our mail, which had been sent up by plane from Chungking to the compound of American missionaries. We reported our safe arrival to General Stilwell by telegram, and a few days later received his telegram of congratulations and orders to report to Chungking.

After their return to the United States, Dolan was sent back to China. Sadly, the young naturalist, turned army officer, was killed soon after combat had been officially concluded with Japan. So it was left to Tolstoy to record the tale of this remarkable equestrian journey.

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Ilya Andreyevich Tolstoy
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/16/20



Ilya Andreyevich Tolstoy (3 February 1903 – 28 October 1970), count, U.S. Army Colonel. President F. D. Roosevelt's envoy in Tibet. He was one of the founders of Marineland of Florida, of the Bahamas National Trust, and he served on the Caribbean Conservation Commission. He was a grandson of count Lev Tolstoy.

Life

Count Ilya Tolstoy was born in 1903 at Toptivovo, Tula, Russia. His father was Count Andrey Lvovich Tolstoy, son of writer Lev Tolstoy, and his mother was Olga Diterichs, daughter of General of the Infantry Konstantin Diterichs (and sister of General Mikhail Diterikhs). Tolstoy attended the Moscow School of Agriculture, before joining the Imperial Cavalry and serving in Tashkent. In 1917 – 1918 he worked for the Russian Department of Agriculture in Turkestan.

Tolstoy emigrated to the United States in 1924. He studied at the William Penn College and Iowa State University, Ames.

In 1927, Tolstoy became associated with the explorer and naturalist, William Douglas Burden, an associate and trustee of the American Museum of Natural History. He was inducted into the Explorers Club in New York in 1931. [1] Tolstoy was one of the pioneers of underwater photography and one of the founders and owners of the world's first oceanarium, Marineland of Florida with William Douglas Burden, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and Sherman Pratt.



In World War II Tolstoy was an officer in the Office of Strategic Services. He went to Tibet as an envoy of the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942 and met the Dalai Lama, then barely seven years old.[2] In 1945 he headed a top-secret mission into the interior of China of search of uranium.

His first marriage in 1920 was to Zoya Dmitrievna Platonova (born on 18 December, 1891, died on 27 September, 1978). His son Count Alexander Tolstoy was born in 1921. His second marriage was to Vera Ilinichna Sidorkova (born on 28 September, 1894, died on 10 August, 1974), by whom he had a daughter, Sofija, born in 1922. The marriage ended in divorce.

Tolstoy died on 28 October, 1970 in New York and was buried in the cemetery of the Novo-Diveevo Cemetery, Nanuet, New York, USA.

References

1. “When the Caribou Failed”: Ilia Tolstoy in the Barren Lands, 1928–1929, Graham A. MacDonald, Manitoba History, Number 45, Spring/Summer 2003
2. Tolstoy Foundation's award for Dalai Lama

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Part 1 of 4

The Sino-Indian Border Dispute
Section 2:1959-61
DD/I Staff Study
CIA/RSS
Reference Title: Polo XVI
by Central Intelligence Agency
August 19, 1963

-- Nehru on Communism: An Awakening, by cia.gov

-- Nehru: The Lotus Eater From Kashmir, by D.F. Karaka

This document contains classified information affecting the national security of the United States within the meaning of the espionage laws, US Code Title 18, Sections 793, 794 and 795. The law prohibits its transmission or the revelation of its contents in any manner to an unauthorized person, as well as its use in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States.

It is to be seen only by US personnel especially indoctrinated and authorized to receive [DELETE] information; its security must be maintained in accordance with [DELETE] REGULATIONS.

No action is to be taken on any [DELETE] which may be contained herein, regardless of the advantages to be gained, unless such action is first approved by the Director of Central Intelligence.

Off. Ser. No. 2

THE SINO-INDIAN BORDER DISPUTE

SECTION I I. (1959-1961)

This is the second in a series of three working papers on the Sino-Indian border dispute. This Section II deals with the period from late 1959 to early 1961. Section III will cover the remainder of 1961 and most of 1962, through the Chinese attack of 20 October.

Useful comments by P. D. Davis and H. G. Hagerty of OCI have been incorporated. The DDI/RS would welcome comment, addressed either to the Chief or to the writer, Arthur Cohen, [DELETE]

SECTION II. (1959-1961)

Summary

By fall 1959 the Chinese leaders were convinced of the need for negotiations with Nehru, in order to prevent their international prestige -- including. their position in the world Communist movement -- from deteriorating. Shortly after the August 1959 clashes they also recognized, or were made aware by Indian party boss Ghosh, that Nehru's advisers might use these skirmishes to push him and the entire government further to the "right"-- i.e. towards a militant anti-China policy and a willingness to accept some degree of American support in this policy. The practical strategic danger such a development posed was that the arc of U.S. bases "encircling" China would be extended through India. They continued to see Nehru as still having a "good side" (anti-Western) as well ad a "bad side" (anti-Chinese) and therefore as possibly still amenable to persuasion through personal diplomacy on the matter of a border settlement. This meshed well with their new-found concern with preventing the establishment of a military government in New Delhi.

As they moved toward negotiations, however, they took an irrational action which temporarily clouded the atmosphere for talks in New Delhi. The Chinese physically and mentally coerced the leader of a small Indian police party they had captured during a clash in October 1959, in order to secure a "confession" that the Indians had sparked the incident. When it became public knowledge that the Indian prisoner had been manipulated by Maoist methods used in forced confession, popular and official Indian resentment caused a reaction which hurt Peiping more than the charge that Chinese troops had fired first. Having learned the lesson, the Chinese have since made a special point of their "brotherly" concern for Indian prisoners.

By late fall, Chou began to press Nehru hard to begin talks with him. During an exchange of ministerial letters, Nehru raised certain pre-conditions for talks, stipulating on 16 November the requirement that the Chinese withdraw from Longju and that both sides withdraw from the disputed area in Ladakh. In the latter area, Indian troops would withdraw south and west to the line which Peiping claimed on its 1936 maps, and Chinese troops would withdraw north and east of the line claimed by India on its maps. In effect, Nehru's stipulation would be tantamount to a Chinese withdrawal from the Aksai Plain and the Sinkiang-Tibet road, and the Chinese said as much. Chou En-lai's reply of 17 December went right to the point of realpolitik, arguing from actual Chinese possession, complaining that Nehru's concession would be only "theoretical" as India had no personnel there to withdraw, and insisting on the area's importance for "it has been a traffic artery linking up the vast regions of Sinkiang and Tibet." The Indian leaders indicated some sensitivity on Chou's additional point that New Delhi was "utterly unaware" of Chinese roadbuilding in the area until September 1958 -- "proving" continuous Chinese jurisdiction -- and informed their embassies to take the line that intrusions cannot give a neighboring country any legal right to an area "merely because such intrusions were not resisted by us or had not come to our notice earlier." Turning a conciliatory side, Chou in this 17 December letter stated that following the 21 October 1959 clash Peiping had stopped sending out patrols, and he requested a personal meeting with Nehru to establish "principles" for negotiating the dispute. Chou then hinted that Peiping would be willing to exchange its claim to the area south of the McMahon line for New Delhi's claim to the Aksai Plain. Nehru was reluctant to meet personally with Chou, and persisted in this attitude until January 1960, when, on the advice of his ambassadors and certain cabinet members, he agreed to drop his pre-conditions.

In this period, Khrushchev made several public statements in which he deplored the border dispute, clearly implying that Chinese military actions were jeopardizing Moscow's relations with New Delhi. In November, he described the dispute as a "sad and stupid story" -- a remark which angered the Chinese leaders -- and hinted that he favored a compromise. Soviet officials tried to create the impression among Indian diplomats that Khrushchev had intervened directly with Peiping on New Delhi's behalf, but, when pressed for explicit proof, scaled down their remarks to suggest that the Russians had merely urged talks on Peiping as soon as possible. The Russians, in fact, had no influence with the Chinese leaders. Foreign Secretary Dutt later told an American official that Khrushchev had been no help with the Chinese "at all," remaining just as neutral in private as in public and hoping that these two "friends" of the Soviet Union would settle their dispute. Although the Chinese leaders clearly viewed Khrushchev's .public remarks as hostile to them, and Peiping subsequently claimed that Sino-Soviet polemics logically followed the September 1959 TASS statement of neutrality between China and India, the Soviet position on the Sino-Indian dispute in fact remained a peripheral issue in the Sino-Soviet dispute.

In January 1960, the Chinese moved quickly to bring the Burmese to Peiping for a Sino-Burmese border agreement, in order to provide an "example" of how a friendly country should settle its border problems with China. Prior to that time, the Chinese for several years had been parrying Burmese requests for a settlement, but, once the decision to bring Nehru to negotiations had been made (October-November 1959), the Chinese leaders apparently calculated that a speedy border agreement with Prime Minister Ne Win would make it more difficult for Nehru to reject similar talks. The Chinese also used the Sino-Burmese agreement against their critics in the Soviet bloc, and Ne Win speculated on 30 January that the Chinese leaders had been "quite anxious" to settle the border dispute with Burma prior to Khrushchev's stopover in New Delhi, trying thus to undercut Nehru's argument to the Soviet leader on the intransigence of the Chinese on the border issue.

Constantly under pressure from Parliament and the press not to take a soft line with Peiping, Nehru was compelled to make even an agreement "to meet" with Chou appear as part of a hard, anti-China policy. Nehru's 5 February 1960 letter to Chou agreed to a meeting but not to substantive negotiations, as the Chinese claim that the entire border had never been delimited was "incorrect...and on that basis there can be no negotiations.'' Nevertheless, he invited Chou to meet with him in New Delhi to explore every avenue for a settlement, and he defended this formal invitation in Parliament by calmly insisting that no policy change was involved: he had always said he was prepared "to meet" anybody, anywhere. It was Nehru's intention merely to determine what Chou "really wants" -- as Foreign Secretary Dutt put it -- and to probe Peiping's long-term intentions on the border. The firmness of Nehru's letter of invitation was intended partly to scotch rumors that he and his advisers were willing to exchange the Aksai Plain for formal Chinese recognition of the McMahon line -- rumors fed by Krishna Menon's slip in a speech to the effect that India would not yield "...any part of our administered territory along the border," i .e. would remain silent on areas occupied by the Chinese. In February and early March, there were other indications that Nehru was looking for some way to accept Chinese use of the Sinkiang-Tibet road while retaining nominal Indian sovereignty over the Aksai Plain.

The Chinese leaders apparently read these early signs as tantamount to an invitation to further probe the apparent soft spot -- relating to the Aksai Plain -- in the Indian position, and prepared for substantive negotiations rather than meaningless "exploratory" talks. They attempted to make credible their expressed willingness to negotiate a settlement, not only by agreeing to send Chou to India in the face of two Nehru refusals to go to China but also by acting quickly to sign a border agreement with Nepal in March, just two months after Chou's success with the Burmese. But when Chou indicated to Nehru his intention to spend six days in New Delhi (despite Nehru's busy schedule) and to come at the head of a high-level delegation, Nehru and his advisers were taken aback. Nehru's advisers noted that whereas New Delhi was approaching the Chou-Nehru meeting merely in terms of improving relations, Chinese notes and Chou's acceptance letter had looked toward a concrete border "settlement." When asked what Chou would be doing In New Delhi for six days, Nehru replied that Chou was quite capable of talking steadily for three or four hours at a stretch. When Nehru in April contemplated and discussed the line to take during the anticipated bargaining Chou would conduct, the advice he received from all sides was to be adamant. Thus Chou, who on late April came with a business- like delegation and a real hope of gaining agreement in principle that the border was not delimited and was therefore subject to negotiation, was confronted by an Indian prime minister who had already rejected bargaining.

In probing the presumed soft spot in the Indian position, Chou departed from diplomatic precedent, working over Nehru and his top advisers, including Krishna Menon, in separate, private, man-to-man sessions. In each session, Chou ran into a stone all of opposition -- even with his "old friend,'' Menon -- and after three days of almost uninterrupted discussions, he had made no dent in the Indian position on Ladakh; in turn, he rejected Nehru's suggestion that Chinese troops be withdrawn from "occupied" areas. The most Chou was able to salvage from his near- total failure was to be able to give an impression that the talks would be continued. The Chinese clearly underestimated Nehru's adamancy in April 1960. They may have read the signs of compromise in New Delhi correctly in February and March, but they carried that estimate into late April, well after Nehru's back had been stiffened decisively by his advisers.

The April 1960 Chou-Nehru talks seem in retrospect to have been Peiping's last chance for a negotiated settlement with Nehru. Nehru rejected Chou's proposal that they meet again, and refused to agree formally either to a ''line" of actual control or to stop sending out Indian patrols. Nehru agreed merely to a temporary, informal "understanding" to halt patrolling and to turn the issue over to subordinate officials, who were to meet to examine the historical and legal evidence of each side and draft a joint report, but who were not empowered to recommend a solution.

The border experts talks in middle and late 1960 served as an instrument of the Chinese effort to perpetuate an impression of continuing negotiations, but they eventually proved detrimental to Peiping's historical and legal case. By the end of the third and final session in December 1960, the Indian experts were convinced that the vaunted Chinese case had proved to be in fact a weak one. The Indian case, owing much to the excellent and extensive administrative records the British had maintained in the India Office Library in London, and published in a detailed Report available to the general public, was impressive. It was argued adroitly on many points of fact (i.e. documentary evidence), logic, and international law, demonstrating that New Delhi could produce a respectable legal case when British-educated, first-class legal experts and historians were called on. However, New Delhi's ability to drive home effectively to laymen specially selected points was inferior to Peiping's, and Indian officials later commented that India's position in the dispute had not been understood in Southeast Asia, partly because "All-India Radio is no match for Peiping Radio." That the Chinese themselves were troubled and recognized that the Indian case was at least as strong as their own is suggested by their failing to publish the experts reports, and by their limiting knowledge of the reports' contents to certain CCP members and deputies of the National People's Congress rather than distributing it to the general public and foreigners. (As of mid-1963, Peiping has not made generally available the texts of the separate Indian and Chinese experts reports.)

Following the Chou-Nehru talks, the Chinese leaders apparently followed a two-fold policy of ceasing regular patrol activity along the border while on occasion sending out reconnaissance parties in the immediate vicinity of their border posts. The primary goal was to reduce further the possibility of armed clashes, clashes which had hurt them politically and had spoiled any chance they may have had of negotiating a settlement. The rationale of a policy of only limited reconnaissance was set forth in a captured Tibetan document of November 1960, which warned PLA personnel to remain cool, not to replace political policy with emotions, otherwise

We would not look to the larger situation and would not ask for orders or wait for directions from above before opening fire and striking back. In that case, we might gain a greater military victory, but politically we would fall into the trap of the other side and would cause only great injury to the party and state -- the biggest mistake.

The document also suggested a Chinese estimate as of November 1960 that New Delhi did not intend to re-take large areas of Chinese-held border territory because the Indians did not have the military capability to do so. However, the cessation of regular forward patrolling did not mean an end to the cautious and surreptitious construction of certain new posts at specially selected points, particularly in the more inaccessible valleys in Ladakh. In addition to this stealthy forward movement of individual posts, the Chinese border experts gave the Indian experts in 1960 a new map of the Chinese-claimed "line" -- a "line" which in 1960 was at points well to the west of the map-alignment of the same area which Chou had shown Nehru in 1956.

Regarding Indian protests in 1960 that Chinese planes were violating Indian airspace, Chou told Nehru in April that India need only shoot one of the planes down to see that these were not Chinese Communist aircraft. However, the Indian leaders continued to protest, reluctant to believe Peiping's claim that the planes belonged to the U.S., or reluctant to state publicly that they believed the claim.

As of January 1961, the Chinese strategy remained: to work for a rapprochement with New Delhi, to treat India as still nonaligned, and to avoid personal attacks on Nehru. The prospect of a major Sino-Indian war apparently was considered only as an unlikely eventuality, which, if it were to occur, would completely change the nature of the border struggle, then regarded as political. According to a Chinese Communist Foreign Ministry report of January 1961, it was Mao himself who provided the general principle of diplomatic forbearance for the period: "In 1960, Chairman Mao again instructed us repeatedly that in our struggle, some leeway must be provided to the opponent." This was conceived as the key part of Mao's dual policy of "unity and struggle" toward India, at times taking a hard line with New Delhi and at other times taking a soft line. The Chinese may have seen this dual policy as flexible, but to New Delhi China was becoming India's most important enemy and the policy of ''unity and struggle" toward India meant nothing but "struggle." It may be, therefore, that the Chinese leaders, including Mao, by early 1981 believed that they had some room for future diplomatic maneuvering with New Delhi, when in fact such room no longer existed.

THE SINO-INDIAN BORDER DISPUTE

SECTION 11. (1959-1961)

Prelude to Negotiations: Fall 1959 - January 1960

The Chinese leaders recognized, or were made aware, [1] shortly after the August 1959 clashes, that Nehru's advisers might use these skirmishes to push him and the entire government further to the "right" -- i.e. towards a militant anti-China policy and a willingness to accept some degree of American support in this policy. The practical strategic danger such a development posed was that the arc of U.S. bases "encircling" China would be extended through India. Both Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-chi reportedly alluded to the danger in their talks with Indian party boss Ajoy Ghosh in Peiping in early October 1959. At the 8 October meeting with Ghosh, Liu reportedly stated:

We have taken very seriously the establishment of military rule in Pakistan. There is an entire game being planned by the U.S. imperialists to capture major Asian nations, especially the countries which are neighbors of China and the Soviet Union. Burma, Japan, Pakistan, Nepal, Ceylon, India and other countries like Indonesia are the major Asian countries by which the two great socialist countries, the Soviet Union and China, are being surrounded. In this way, by capturing the Asian countries, the U.S. imperialists want to encircle the socialist camp militarily.

In Pakistan and Burma, they have already succeeded, and they are still trying to repeat the same episode in Indonesia. After the successful coup in Pakistan, the Americans are now trying to make the same thing happen in India.

This persistent concern with "encirclement" by military regimes combined with General Thimayya's attempt to force Krishna Menon's removal as defense minister apparently raised real fears among the Chinese leaders (as it had among the Indian Communists) that India was on the brink and must be snatched away from going into the U.S. imperialist camp" (Liu to Ghosh, 8 October meeting).

Regarding their appraisal of Nehru's political attitude, Mao is reported to have told Ghosh on 5 October that the Chinese recognize -- as Ghosh did -- a difference between Nehru and certain of his advisers. The latter, particularly those in the Ministry of External Affairs and including General Thimayya, were "rightists" who wanted to exploit the border dispute to help the U.S. "isolate China." According to Liu Shao-chi's remarks to Ghost on 8 October, Nehru might decide in favor of these "rightists," but for the present all efforts should be directed toward preventing him from doing so. Regarding their appraisal of Nehru's "class background," Liu stated that the Chinese leaders see the Indian prime minister as "a reactionary and basically anti-Communist; he is not even like Sukarno, who has appreciated the Indonesian Communist Party." Despite this doctrinal characterization, they seem to have acted on the basis of political expediency, centering their attention on Nehru's political attitude within the Indian leadership -- that is, on their view of him as still different from the Indian military figures such as Thimayya, who were unalterably "hard" on the matter of policy toward Peiping.

The Chinese prescription for preventing the establishment of a military dominated government in India, avoiding thereby a repetition of developments in Pakistan and Burma, was two-fold and seemed to exclude military pressure. According to Mao and Liu, there must be

(1) CPI efforts to develop more support for Nehru against military "rightists"; and

(2) settlement of the entire border dispute through Sino-Indian negotiations -- a course which would require first a "proper atmosphere" and then the "pressure of the masses" on Nehru to negotiate.

The first part of the prescription continued to impose on the Indian party, which was already split into a pro-Soviet and a pro-Chinese faction, the dilemma of trying to support Nehru's policy while avoiding anti-Chinese statements. The neutral stand taken by the Indian party on the border issue provided it only a temporary refuge, and on 14 November 1959, under the pressure of public opinion, the Communists finally came out in support of India's claim on the McMahon line. However, in its important resolution, the Indian party refrained from condemning Chinese military action on the border, equivocated on the matter of Ladakh, and insisted on "no pre-conditions" for talks.

The second part of the prescription required a major Chinese Communist diplomatic effort. However, Mao and Liu had told Ghosh of their desire not to appear ''weak" in calling for negotiations. They were aware that some Indian troops had been moved up to border posts on the Indian side, and they apparently intended in October 1959 to have the PLA increase its own presence on the Chinese side. Chinese troops in October were directed to warn Indian border-post personnel to retire from the border area. Under these circumstances, an appeal from Peiping for immediate talks -- along the lines requested by the CPI with Soviet encouragement -- would, in the Chinese view, embolden rather than discourage the Indian leaders in their effort to firm up their border posts. The Chinese leaders insisted to Ghosh that negotiations must await a "proper atmosphere" in India and that when circumstances were ripe for talks there must be no Indian "prior conditions." [2] They wanted to approach negotiations in a series of steps, in the course of which Sino-Indian tensions were expected to ease. When Chou finally wrote to Nehru on 19 October suggesting that Vice President Radhakrishnan visit Peiping, he indicated that such a visit "might serve as a starting point for negotiations." When the letter was delivered by the Chinese ambassador on 24 October, Nehru and the vice president were in an angry mood and Nehru turned the proposal down because Chinese troops had shot up a patrol of Indian border police on 21 October. This incident made it necessary for the Chinese to reconsider the step by step approach to talks.

In his 7 November letter to Nehru, Chou indicated that talks were now an urgent matter and requested that the Indian prime minister meet with him "in the immediate future" to discuss a border settlement. Chou also indicated his concern about the possibility of future clashes. He stated that the "most important duty" was for both sides to work for the complete elimination of the possibility "of any border clash in the future," and suggested that in order to create "a favorable atmosphere" for settlement of the border issue, both Indian and Chinese troops should withdraw 12-1/2 miles from the McMahon line in the east and the line of actual control in the west. This suggestion, he asserted, was merely an extension to the entire border of an earlier Indian proposal (note of 10 September 1959) that neither side send its troops into Longju. Actually, Chou's suggestion that troops withdraw, leaving a demilitarized zone under "civil administrative personnel and unarmed police," was a refinement of his own 8 September proposal for a return to the "long-existing status quo" under which the Chinese accepted the McMahon line de facto while retaining unchallenged possession of northeastern Ladakh. Chou's view of military disengagement along the border included no real Chinese concessions. His letter indicated that a mutual, rather than a unilateral, withdrawal was necessary; Chou in this way tried to break the impasse created by Nehru's stipulation that Chinese troops must be pulled back from certain outposts in Ladakh before negotiations.

Chou's letter left Nehru with the choice of accepting the mutual withdrawal proposal or appearing the intransigent party. However, it was not an attempt to stall any further on the matter of beginning ministerial talks.

Nehru's first response indicated that the atmosphere in India was still not ripe for bargaining, nor were his advisers disposed to do so. Cabinet members at the 9 November Congress Working Committee meeting recorded their opinion that adequate steps should indeed be taken to prevent further clashes, but these steps should not affect India's security or involve any acceptance of "Chinese aggression." That is, Nehru's stipulation of 26 September, regarding Chinese withdrawals prior to negotiations, still held. However, the Indian leaders did not slam the door: they informed the press that Nehru on 9 November had stated that "the spirit of the Chinese letter is not bad."

At this time, when the Chinese leaders were moving toward negotiations, they indulged in a bit of irrational Maoist gaucherie which clouded rather than cleared the atmosphere. Through a Foreign Ministry note, the Chinese had informed the Indian ambassador on 12 November that Chinese "frontier guards" were prepared to turn over the 10 Indian "soldiers" (New Delhi insisted they were border police) captured by them and the bodies of the nine who had been killed. The Indians were handed over on 14 November near the Kongka Pass together with their arms and ammunition, 20 days after they had been captured. New Delhi's suspicion that the Chinese had been handling the captured police in a typical Maoist manner, attempting to coerce them into seeing things Peiping's way, was confirmed. At the prisoner-return ceremony, Karam Singh, the leader of the captured Indian group, waved goodby to his Chinese "brothers," according to an NCNA dispatch, and according to the leftist president of the India-USSR Society for Cultural Relations, Baliga, who had had two long interviews with Chou En-lai in Peiping in early November, Chou claimed that Karam Singh had "confessed" that the Chinese troops had not used mortars on the 21 October clash as India had alleged. Baliga told American officials in Hong Kong on 11 November that he was convinced the release of the Indian prisoners had been delayed until the Chinese were certain their brainwashing had been completed. When it became publicly known [3] that they had been "interrogated" in a special Maoist way and that Karam Singh had been forced to "confess," [4] a wave of anger swept Parliament and the Indian press, nullifying any propaganda gains the Chinese may have made or thought they had made by the "fraternal" release of the prisoners with their weapons.

The Indian leaders did not accept Chou's proposals for ministerial-level talks and a mutual troop pullback, and they countered by stipulating a new set of pre-conditions for negotiations. Nehru's answer to Chou's 7 November letter was drafted primarily by Home Minister Pant and reviewed by the Prime Minister before it was dispatched on 16 November. As preliminary stipulations for negotiations, it advanced the following proposals and for the following reasons:

(1) Chinese withdrawal from Longju, with India ensuring that it will not be re-occupied by Indian forces. (This was stipulated because it was in "our possession" and "our personnel were forcibly ousted by the Chinese therefore they should withdraw, " [DELETE])

(2) Mutual Indian and Chinese withdrawal from the entire disputed area in Ladakh. Indian troops would withdraw south and west to the line which China claimed on its 1956 maps and Chinese troops would withdraw north and east to the line claimed by India on its maps. (This required the Chinese to withdraw from Aksai Plain, the area traversed by the Sinkiang-Tibet road, imposing a very small burden on the Indians, as they had not yet moved any regular army or additional police-administrative personnel into the area.) [5]

(3) Personal talks with Chou En-lai are acceptable, but "preliminary steps" should first be taken to reach an "interim understanding" to ease tensions quickly. (This was intended to sidestep a Chinese effort to rush Nehru into "summit" talks with Chou and to premit special representatives with detailed information to argue with the Chinese over specific claims.)

(4) A mutual 12-1/2-mile withdrawal all along the border is unnecessary, as no clashes would occur if both sides refrained from sending out patrols. India has already halted patrolling. (This was intended to retain [DELETE]alll posts on the McMahon line, which are favorably situated on "high hill- tops" and are supplied by air, to prevent the 12-1/2-mile proposed fallback from leaving new posts 5-days march from the NEFA border, and to retain a "large majority" of the passes which open from Tibet into India. If no settlement were reached, "it would be impossible for us to establish the status quo in all these places and easy for the Chinese to come down and occupy them.")

Foreign Secretary Dutt reportedly anticipated that the Chinese would attempt to compromise on these proposals by accepting the Longju stipulation, but insisting that New Delhi in turn accept the status quo in Ladakh. The counterproposals provided Nehru with a policy which rejected any military action against the Chinese and established the border dispute as a long-term matter requiring cautious and adroit political maneuvering. He had moved effectively to disarm his critics among the press and in Parliament by not agreeing to withdrawals from Indian territory; on the contrary, he called for Chinese withdrawals from Longju and the Aksai Plain, indicating thereby that he was taking a firm line with Peiping. At the same time, he suggested to the Chinese that he was willing to consider the merits of their claim to the Aksai Plain despite the fact that they would be required to withdraw as a price for such consideration. On this point, he expected the stalemate to continue, which was an implicit assurance to Peiping that India would not attempt to retake the area by military action. If the final outcome of the exchange of letters in November were only an agreement to begin talks on a lower level, neither he nor Chou would be conceding anything important to the other and neither would lose face.

During the three-day debate in Parliament in late November, Nehru demonstrated a remarkable ability for maintaining an even keel. He spoke of the need to maintain India's nonalignment policy but conceded that it must necessarily become nonalignment "with a difference," the difference presumably being a new policy toward Peiping. [6] In reply to the Opposition's call for "action" to make the Chinese vacate Indian territory, Nehru said the border issue was simply part of a greater problem — i.e. the overall Chinese political and economic as well as a military challenge, which is a long-term matter — that the issue was not just one of war and peace between two countries, but one concerning the whole world, and there is no nation more anxious for peace than the Soviet Union and none which cares less for peace than Communist China. Following a concerted Opposition attack on Defense Minister Krishna Menon, Nehru intervened to stress the entire Cabinet's responsibility for India's defense policy. In his speech of 27 November, he vouched for Menon's patriotism and hoped the dispute sparked by Thimayya's threatened resignation would die down: we are working together satisfactorily and to continue the dispute "especially in present circumstances" would be "harmful." When the Opposition commented favorably on the possibility of a common defense arrangement with Pakistan, Nehru pointed to a recent statement by President Ayub, refusing to accept any Indian proposals affecting Ladakh's status, as an example of the difficulties involved in suggestions for common defense. As a result, by 28 November most of the press and Parliament appeared to be temporarily satisfied that Nehru's attitude toward Peiping had hardened and that his line would be firm and unyielding. [7]

A sign of Nehru's changed attitude toward the Chinese was his new view on the need to obtain better intelligence on the border areas. On 19 November he told Parliament that he could not confirm a report that the Chinese had built an airstrip in the Aksai Plain, but that he could not deny it either. He pointed out that inasmuch as the Chinese held the area it was difficult for Indian intelligence to obtain definite information, the only possible way being for Indian aircraft to conduct photo missions, which was a matter for the Indian military to consider. His attitude in November thus differed from his view prior to the October clash. When the question of aerial reconnaissance arose in connection with the existence of Chinese roads, Nehru had told Parliament on 12 September that India believed that photographing the areas was not feasible and he pointed to the danger to the aircraft from mountainous terrain and from being shot down.

Chou En-lai, replying on 17 December to Nehru's counterproposals of 16 November, reiterated Peiping's claim to the Aksai Plain more strongly than before. Chou went right to the point of realpolitik, arguing from actual possession. He first noted that the Indian press itself had viewed Nehru's 16 November proposal for a mutual withdrawal in Ladakh as only a "theoretical" concession because India had no personnel there to withdraw while China would have to withdraw from a territory of about 33,000 square-kilometers, "which has belonged to it, its military personnel guarding its frontier" as were its civil personnel. Chou then insisted that the area is of "great importance" to China and claimed that since the Ching Dynasty, "this area has been the traffic artery linking up the vast regions of Sinkiang and Tibet." After thus indicating the strategic importance of the Aksai Plain road to China, Chou described PLA use of the area to make "regular" supply runs into Tibet from Sinkiang since 1950 and the roadbuilding activity since March 1956. That New Delhi was "utterly unaware" of this activity until September 1958 was, Chou said, "eloquent proof that this area has indeed always been under Chinese jurisdiction and not under Indian jurisdiction." [8]

Chou made two proposals which the Indians apparently had not anticipated. (1) He agreed to the evacuation of Longju (occupied in August 1959) in the east, but only on condition that the Indians withdraw also from 10 other disputed outposts, most of which are in the west (occupied since 1964-55). (2) He made his proposal for a meeting with Nehru appear more urgent than before by naming a specific time — 26 December — and place — either in China or in Rangoon — insisting that unless "some agreements on principles" were reached by the premiers, lower level talks on detailed border matters "may bog down in endless and fruitless debates." The Indians probably were prepared, however, for his statement that the Chinese had stopped sending out patrols from their posts. Chou added that this step had been taken immediately following the late October 1959 clash, pointing up the Chinese leaders' desire to try to prepare an atmosphere for negotiations.

Regarding the apparent Chinese willingness to exchange their claim to the NEFA for ownership of the Aksai Plain, Chou rejected as "unfair" Nehru's proposal for a mutual withdrawal in Ladakh. He pointed out that the Chinese had made no corresponding demand on New Delhi to withdraw its forces from the Chinese-claimed area south of the McMahon line. Chou hinted more strongly than before that Peiping was willing to waive its claim to this area if New Delhi would do the same regarding the Aksai Plain. Thus regarding the McMahon line, Chou stated:

Your Excellency is aware that the so-called McMahon line... has never been recognized by past Chinese governments nor by the government of the People's Republic of China [PRC], yet the government of the PRC has strictly abided by its statement of absolutely not allowing its armed personnel to cross this line in waiting for a friendly settlement of the boundary question. [emphasis supplied]

In sum, the Chinese were anxious to begin negotiations on the ministerial level and to move step by step toward an overall settlement, but remained adamant on retaining the Aksai Plain. This left the dispute deadlocked.

The deadlock was affirmed by Nehru in his flat rejection on 21 December of Chou's claim to the Aksai Plain and of Chou's two proposals regarding Indian withdrawals from 10 outposts and a ministerial meeting on 26 December. Nehru advanced no new proposals, noting that Chou had found his "practical" suggestions unacceptable and had merely reiterated Peiping' s claims, which were based on "recent [post-1956] intrusions by Chinese personnel." He said he was willing to meet with Chou anywhere and anytime, [9] but saw no point in engaging in such high-level discussions of principles when the two sides had not yet agreed on the facts. Presumably, low-level talks, too, could not begin until the Chinese showed a willingness at least to withdraw from Longju.

Nehru's uncompromising official position had been reached in large part as a result of cabinet, Opposition, and public pressure, and it apparently was difficult for him to abandon this stand and simultaneously satisfy public opinion. He nevertheless ruled out military action and left the door open for future negotiations. When chided by an opponent in Parliament on 21 December regarding the desirability of any negotiations with the Chinese, Nehru angrily replied that there were only two choices, "war or negotiation." "I will always negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, right to the bitter end." On 22 December, he expressed surprise in Parliament at the idea of "police action," which, he insisted, is possible only against a very weak adversary. "Little wars," Nehru continued, do not take place between two great countries and any kind of warlike development would mean "indefinite" war because neither India nor China would ever give in and neither could conquer the other.

During the deadlock, the Chinese continually tried to draw Nehru into a meeting with Chou. They seemed to believe that if such a meeting could be arranged without delay and Nehru were to agree (1) to the "principle" that the border was not delimited and (2) afterward, to subcommittee meetings of experts, the hard details of contradictory border claims could be argued over in the privacy of the conference room. In his letter of 17 December, Chou had left unanswered questions on details of border claims which the Indians had raised in Nehru's 26 September letter and New Delhi's 4 November note. The Indians persisted, asking for a Chinese answer on the matter of substantive claims. It was in response to these repeated requests that the Chinese Foreign Ministry sent its note of 26 December, declaring the Peiping "feels sorry" that it must go into detail, but it appears that "some arguing cannot be helped." The 26 December note referred to "the forthcoming meeting" between Chou and Nehru almost as though the Indians had already agreed to it. It suggested that the Chinese concern with first of all having the prime ministers meet reflected their aim of first obtaining the "necessary" acknowledgment in principle that the border had not been delimited, and that it is therefore "yet to be settled through negotiations."

In tone, the Chinese note was moderate. A special effort was made to allay the fears of all neighbor countries about alleged Chinese expansionism. It is "impossible, improper, and unnecessary" for China to aggress against countries on its borders. The note pointed to Chinese domestic problems and to Peiping's need for peace to obtain goals, of "peaceful construction." It then pointed to Peiping's record of trying to avoid provocation and border incidents with India, placing the blame for the August and October 1959 clashes entirely on New Delhi. Finally, it linked Indian territorial claims to the British policy of "aggression and expansion," making the Indian argument seem in effect a continuation of British imperialism in Tibet.

The note then touched on Bhutan and Sikkim. Regarding Bhutan, it made the first formal Chinese statement regarding this sector of the border, claiming that there is "a certain discrepancy between the delineations on the maps of the two sides in the sector south of the so-called McMahon line," but the China-Bhutan border "has always been tranquil." Regarding Sikkim, the boundary "has long been formally delimited and there is neither any discrepancy between the maps nor any disputes in practice." Allegations, therefore, that China wants to "encroach on" Bhutan and Sikkim are "sheer nonsense." In this way, the Chinese sought to contradict persistent reports about Chinese subversive aims in these border states.

The Chinese note was hard on matters of substance. It gave a detailed legal and historical justification for Peiping's border claims, creating a massive case on the matters of (1) whether the border had ever been formally delimited and (2) where the "traditional customary" boundary line actually is. Regarding the Aksai Plain, it is the "only traffic artery linking Sinkiang and western Tibet." As for the McMahon line, Chinese Communist military and civil personnel were under orders "not to cross it," but Chou's references to it in his talks with Nehru in late 1956 "can by no means be interpreted as recognition of this line" by Peiping. The note then emphasized that the prerequisites for an overall settlement were recognition of the undelimited status of the border and a mutual withdrawal of 12-1/2 miles or any distance jointly agreed on.

In sum, the note's early portions contained a clever refutation of Indian claims and its final portions sounded almost aggrieved that Nehru had so misjudged Chinese intentions. The massive case it presented on the matter of border delimitation and on the "traditional customary" boundary line constituted a direct contradiction of Nehru's official position that adjustments on small sectors along the border were negotiable but on the entire border line were not. [10]

Peiping's 26 December note thus confronted Nehru with several immediate courses of action: to begin substantive negotiations on the basis that the entire border remained to be delimited, to take no action allowing the Chinese to consolidate their holdings, or, as the note put it, to continue "arguing like this without end." Still under Opposition and public pressure, Nehru decided on the last alternative — i.e. to keep the Sino-Indian argument going on paper.

Nehru was aware [DELETE] that the long-range Chinese goal was to accept the McMahon line in return for Indian acceptance of Peiping's claims in Ladakh. At the Cabinet's Foreign Affairs subcommittee meeting in the first week of January 1960, Nehru indicated that he nevertheless wanted explicit Chinese acceptance of the McMahon line — subject only to minor demarcation adjustments — as the price for starting negotiations "at any level." The Chinese note of 26 December had rejected his earlier contention that Chou's 1956 statements constituted recognition of the line. Nehru centered his attention on this rejection, virtually ignoring the hint — by then standard with Peiping — that Chinese troops were under orders not to cross the McMahon line. At the early January meeting, Nehru indicated that the only possible Indian concession was a "pre-negotiation" agreement on continued "non-military" Chinese occupation of part of Ladakh, including the Aksai Plain road, but only if the McMahon line were first explicitly accepted as the eastern border.

Nehru's first public response to the Chinese note was made at a press conference on 8 January. He reaffirmed his willingness to meet and negotiate, but stated that the time of the meeting depended on "conditions" being such that good results would be produced. That he did not see conditions as favorable was implied in his remark that there was "a very big gap" between the Indian and Chinese positions and "there does not appear to be any meeting ground." Nehru characterized the Chinese note as "argumentative" and stated that a reply would be sent in due time. Nehru and his advisers apparently needed time to draft India's formal reply. The Indian ambassadors to Peiping and Moscow were summoned to New Delhi for consultations and Ministry of External Affairs officials were reported on 12 January to be marshalling evidence to refute the massive Chinese case.

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Part 2 of 4

Nehru Advised to Meet with Chou: January 1960

In their [DELETE] briefings of Nehru, the two ambassadors are reliably reported to have advised the Prime Minister to moderate his position and work toward a settlement as quickly as possible. Each ambassador stated different grounds for such a course.

The ambassador to Peiping, Parthasarathy, gave Nehru his view of the Chinese threat to India as a long-term "non-military expansionist policy in Asia." He stated that it would be unwise for India to make too much of an essentially tactical issue which would divert its attention from the major "strategic" competition ahead. He then recommended that New Delhi not make things worse on the border issue by shouting about this long-range Sino-Indian competition and urged Nehru to begin talks with the Chinese as soon as possible. He told Nehru that in a mid-November talk with Chou, the Chinese premier had been "very earnest" about a personal meeting. Parthasarathy was reported to be a protege of Krishna Menon, with whom he had had several talks since his return from Peiping. Both were [DELETE] expressing a view — directly opposed to the official Nehru-Ministry of External Affairs line — that the border incidents of August and October 1959 were probably accidental, and that the Chinese had had no intention of killing any Indians.

The ambassador to Moscow, K.P.S. Menon, advised Nehru that the Russians could not do much more than they already had done. The best that New Delhi could hope for was that the "advice" Khrushchev had given the Chinese leaders would have an effect on their policy. Menon went on to transmit the gist of Khrushchev's final remarks to him in Moscow in mid-January: we have exercised "what influence we could"; the Chinese are far too sensitive to world opinion to indicate immediately that they have "submitted" to our advice; and India should not make it too hard for the Chinese to come to an agreement. Menon then urged that everything be done to bring the border conflict to an end as soon as possible. It was apparent from this briefing that Khrushchev was well aware of his inability to change Peiping's position, but was trying to create the impression that he had sought to make the Chinese leaders more conciliatory. At the same time, he was seeking Indian cooperation.

In this period, Khrushchev had been attempting by public and private means to prevent the dispute from jeopardizing the Soviet Union's relations with India. Khrushchev made several public statements on the border conflict in October and November 1959. Speaking to the Supreme Soviet on 31 October, he had stated that the Soviet Union was "especially grieved by the fact that as a result of the recent incidents, casualties occurred on both sides... we would be glad if the incidents were not repeated and if the existing unsettled frontier questions could be solved by means of friendly negotiations." [11] He was less cautious at a Kremlin reception on 7 November, and after reiterating the remarks he had made to the Supreme Soviet, he made the following amplifications, according to a correspondent's account (published in New Age, 15 November 1959):

After a pause, he added that it was a sad and stupid story. Nobody knew where the border was, he declared, and agreed with my remark that practically no one lived in that area. Continuing, Khrushchev recalled that the Soviet Union had amicably settled differences over the border with Iran. "We gave up more than we gained," he said and added, "What were a few kilometers for a country like the Soviet Union?" [emphasis supplied] [12]

These remarks suggested that Khrushchev in November 1959 favored a Chinese concession, presumably in the form of a partial withdrawal from the Aksai Plain, and that he wanted New Delhi to be informed of his view. His agreement with the observation that the border area was sparsely populated (and, by implication, not worth a quarrel) [13] has been criticized by the Chinese on several occasions, the latest being in the Peiping People's Daily editorial of 5 March 1963. According to one version of Teng Hsiao-ping's closed-door speech in Moscow on 14 November I960, Teng charged that Khrushchev's remarks to the newsman made Nehru "more adamant", preventing Chou from reaching a compromise with Nehru. The charge is a distortion of Khrushchev's preference for a compromise. As will be shown, Nehru's own advisers were largely responsible for his adamant stand'. Soviet diplomats in [DELETE] talks with Indian officials tried to indicate Soviet intercession to bring the Chinese to a "reasonable" position. In mid-November, Soviet cultural counselor Efimov had told Indian officials that Chou En-lai's 7 November letter offering to negotiate the dispute was sent on Soviet advice. When pressed, however, on how his government had exerted itself, Efimov stated, "I would not say we have directly intervened, but we have made them more aware of real Indian feelings." The Russians had worked hard even in Peiping. The new Soviet ambassador, Chervonenko, who arrived in Peiping in early November, had impressed Indian Ambassador Parthasarathy as "friendly, warm-hearted, and helpful." Chervonenko told Parthasarathy that the Chinese did not appreciate the full implications of peaceful coexistence and characterized Chinese border claims as "tendentious history." On 22 November, Khrushchev transmitted an oral message to Nehru through the Indian ambassador in Moscow stating that the USSR had given "friendly advice" to Peiping to work out a negotiated settlement of the border dispute with India. Khrushchev stated that he would like to see negotiations begin "as soon as possible."

Partly as a result of these ambassadorial briefings, Nehru changed his early January position of no ministerial-level talks without Chinese withdrawal from Ladakh and explicit acceptance of the McMahon line. He was [DELETE] reported to have relaxed these preconditions and to have decided to meet with Chou En-lai. Foreign Secretary Dutt indicated on 23 January that Nehru was considering such a meeting for April, with Nehru inviting Chou to New Delhi. Dutt also indicated that the Indian government would merely acknowledge Peiping's 26 December note rather than reply in detail in order to avoid a "hardening of positions" on both sides. [/b][/size]

Actually, Indian officials were hard put to come up on short notice with a detailed diplomatic reply systematically refuting the Chinese case on the legalities of ownership and the precise border alignment. A team of Indian historians, led by Dr. S. Gopal, who later in 1960 participated in the border experts' talks, had been sent to London to try to strengthen the documentation of India's claims. [DELETE]

The Indians concentrated on drawing up a documented reply. Shortly after Khrushchev had indicated to Nehru his desire to stop over in New Delhi enroute to Djakarta, Nehru on 22 January reversed the initial Ministry of External Affairs decision not to provide a detailed reply to Peiping's 26 December note; he reversed this in order to have India's full legal position on the record before Khrushchev's arrival. As a first step in preparing public opinion for his shift of position on the matter of talks with Chou En-lai, the Ministry of External Affairs apparently leaked the information to the Times of India, which carried a feature article on 26 January on "An Early Nehru-Chou Meeting." The final draft of the Indian reply to Peiping's note was approved and the decision for a Nehru-Chou meeting was made at a Foreign Affairs subcommittee meeting on 2 February. When Nehru announced that he had decided to meet with Chou without prior Chinese acceptance of New Delhi's preconditions, Home Minister Pant alone objected. [DELETE] Nehru replied along two lines: (1) there was no alternative. "If we do not meet, we will have another long letter from Peiping, and this will go on endlessly. Let us continue to maintain our case, but not avoid a meeting." (2) Nehru insisted that there was great pressure on India, which would appear to be the recalcitrant party if it were to reject a meeting. Nehru cited the Sino-Burmese border agreement and Burmese press opinion that India should negotiate. Actually, Nehru had decided on a meeting with Chou at least five days prior to the announcement of the 28 January Sino-Burmese border agreement.  

The Sino-Burmese Border Agreement of 28 January 1960

The Sino-Burmese border agreement provided the Chinese leaders with their first "example" among accords with border countries to be used to pressure New Delhi into beginning negotiations. Prior to fall 1959, however, they had been moving very slowly and with reluctance toward the agreement. At an early date they had explored the advantages and disadvantages of giving the Burmese such an accord and apparently decided to hold the matter indefinitely in abeyance. So long as the Burmese prime minister was not stimulated to demand a settlement, the Chinese were anxious to avoid committing themselves to one. Chou En-lai declared in a joint communique with Prime Minister U Nu on 12 December 1954 that the undefined portions of the border should be settled "at an appropriate time through normal diplomatic channels." In November 1955, an armed clash occurred between Chinese and Burmese outpost units, and it was only on Burmese initiative that preliminary talks began in 1956, surfacing the fact of a Sino-Burmese border dispute three years before the one between China and India.

Prior to October 1959, the Burmese side was the active side in pressing for a border settlement. In February 1956, the Burmese leaders began to press Chou En-lai vigorously for the establishment of a joint commission to define disputed sectors of Burma's 1,000-mile frontier with China. Chou took a stiff stand on all the substantive points at issue and indicated reluctance to negotiate for any overall settlement, leaving some Burmese to conclude that they could not hope for a favorable agreement in the near future.

The new prime minister, General Ba Swe, however, was unwilling to be put off. In summer 1956, a Burmese press campaign (attacking Chinese border "incursions"), which had been stimulated by the government, combined with Ba Swe's warnings of possible Burmese enmity, compelled the Chinese leaders to reconsider and agree to early border talks. Ba Swe sent a note on 22 August to Chou En-lai through his new ambassador to Peiping, Hla Maung, strongly urging the Chinese to accept the "1941 line" in the Wa States area and to withdraw their troops which were west of that line. "To do otherwise," Ba Swe warned, "would. . .open up the possibility of lasting enmity. . .between the two countries." Ba Swe also warned that he would be compelled to report officially on the presence of Chinese Communist troops on Burmese soil [14] when Parliament convened on 30 August and urged Chou to withdraw the troops before that date or, if this were physically impossible, give assurances by 30 August that they would go as soon as possible. Ba Swe rejected Chou's characterization of this portion of the border as "the southern undetermined section," insisting that the boundary demarcated in 1941 by Nationalist China and Britain should be accepted and requested that a joint commission be established to set up boundary markers along this section. This blunt language was unusual for a Burmese prime minister to use in communicating with Chou and apparently was taken by the Chinese as evidence that Ba Swe would persist in his demands for a Chinese troop withdrawal and acceptance of Rangoon's border claims.

General Ba Swe also moved to lay the groundwork for the intercession of other neutralist powers on Rangoon's behalf were his own efforts to fail in obtaining satisfaction from Chou. General Ne Win briefed Tito on 25 August on Chinese Communist border "incursions" and Ba Swe cabled Indonesian Prime Minister Ali and Nehru to withhold "temporarily" any action on Rangoon's behalf until the results of the new "intensive" phase of Sino-Burmese diplomatic exchanges were appraised. In late August, the Burmese ambassador in Peiping urged Rangoon to seek intervention by the Colombo powers only as a last resort. Chou had indicated considerable sensitivity to Ambassador Hla Manng's suggestions that Burma might appeal to the Colombo powers and was anxious that India and Indonesia be kept out of the dispute. (Nehru did, in fact, write to Chou in mid-September, suggesting that he agree to negotiate a settlement with the Burmese.) Hla Maung also requested that Rangoon moderate the anti-Chinese press campaign. He reported that Chou had been annoyed and angered by the press attacks — and the bad publicity for Peiping from them — and that the Chinese premier assumed that the Burmese government had inspired these attacks.

The vigorous effort of Premier Ba Swe to assert Burma's border claims was a clear-cut departure from the cautious policy of U Nu which had been motivated by a pervasive fear of antagonizing Peiping. U Nu was reliably reported to have tried in August and September 1956, without success, to restrain Ba Swe from challenging Chinese Communist claims and from warning Chinese leaders too openly and too forcibly.

Partly because of Ba Swe's adamancy and refusal to subside and partly because the Chinese were anxious that Nehru not be stimulated to question Peiping's intentions regarding the Sino-Indian border, Chou agreed to withdraw Chinese troops from the disputed Wa States area. In a message of 14 September to Peiping, Premier Ba Swe welcomed Chou's promise to withdraw the troops and agreed to keep Burmese troops out of the area. However, he insisted on the validity of the Wa States boundary as demarcated by Nationalist China and Britain in 1941 and on the validity of the Kachin State border farther north as a de facto line, and complained that Chinese troops had also crossed the border at the northern tip of the state and should be withdrawn. He then stated that Burma would accept the establishment of a joint boundary commission — actually an earlier Burmese proposal — which would examine the Kachin frontier and make "recommendations to the respective governments." On the suggestion of Hla Maung in Peiping, Chou En-lai — who was anxious to undercut Burmese press attacks — in early September invited U Nu to lead a delegation to China to discuss the dispute. The Burmese stressed, however, that U Nu would go only in an "unofficial" capacity and would not represent the government in discussions with Chou — i.e. his statements would not prejudice Ba Swe's firm position.

The Burmese hoped for informal proposals leading to an acceptable settlement and Chou fostered the impression that China was prepared to make them. During talks with the U Nu delegation in November 1956, Chou made a "proposal about principles" relating to three sections of the border still in dispute. (1) Regarding the "1941 line" in the Wa States area, Chou indicated readiness to withdraw Chinese troops and asked that "pending a final agreement on the line and the setting up of boundary markers," Burmese troops not enter the evacuated area. Chou and Ba Swe had in fact agreed privately on this matter in September. (2) Regarding the Namwan leased tract, Chou was prepared to negotiate so as to decide on concrete steps to abrogate the "perpetual lease." (3) Regarding the northern border, the section from the Izurazi Pass northward to the Diphu Pass was to be demarcated along the "traditional boundary line" and from the Izurazi Pass to the High Conical Peak was to be determined along the watershed. The Hpimaw tract of three villages — Hpimaw, Kangfang, and Gawlun — was to be "returned" to China, and Burmese troops in the area were to withdraw at the same time that Chinese troops were retiring from the "1941 line" farther south. In sum, Chou indicated that Peiping was prepared to withdraw in the Wa States and yield long-standing Chinese claims to parts of northern Burma — on the face of it, a reasonable position containing no loopholes. However, with regard to the seemingly small matter of the extent of China's claim to about 500 square miles around the three villages in the Hpimaw tract, Chou remained adamant.

Chou' s discussions with U Nu in November 1956 fell short of producing an overall settlement and appear to have been intended as a holding operation. The withdrawal of Chinese troops from positions west of the "1941 line" in December effectively negated Rangoon's lively propaganda campaign about Chinese Communist border "incursions." At the same time, the Chinese began to act on their apparent decision to coast along on the momentum of their concession (troop withdrawals), which mollified the Burmese in December.

Throughout 1957, the Chinese continued to avoid a final overall settlement, their task having been made easier by the election of U Nu to the premiership in February. Prime Minister U Nu spent 11 days in China in March 1957, talking with Chou at Kunming without moving him toward a final agreement. U Nu stated on 9 April that his talks with the Chinese premier still left "two or three details which need to be ironed out" and that the border issue was "a big problem not amenable to easy solution." In late April, the Chinese used a second-rank official (the acting governor of Yunnan Province) to make a new demand for Burmese territory near the Namwan leased tract. The permanent secretary of the Burmese Foreign Office told the British ambassador in early May that in addition to the Namwan area, the Chinese had "recently" asked for a "readjustment" in their favor at the northern end of the "1941 line." The area claimed was small, and the claim was made ambiguously, further indicating that the Chinese had desired merely to keep the entire question of a border settlement open indefinitely. Chou's implicit refusal to go ahead with a settlement was a sharp disappointment to U Nu, who had desired an agreement to provide an auspicious beginning for his new term as premier. Prior to his Kunming visit, U Nu was reported to have stated privately that he considered Peiping "morally obligated" to live up to the tentative agreement he and Chou had reached in November 1956.

Chou En-lai sought to blur the strong impression in Burma and elsewhere that Peiping was stalling. He told the National People's Congress (NPC) on 9 July 1957 that "a good start" had been made with U Nu for settlement of the dispute and that a "general agreement of views" had been reached. He added significantly, however, that a "comprehensive, fair, and reasonable settlement" would be reached when the views of both countries were brought into accord "through continued negotiations" on concrete "problems." Chou's statements were resented in Rangoon, as U Nu had told the press earlier that Chou was expected to submit the general agreement to the NPC for final approval prior to intergovernmental accords. On 22 July, the usually optimistic Ambassador Hla Maung in Peiping [DELETE] had become convinced that the Chinese "are now going back on all of their words" in connection with the tentative border agreement reached between Chou and U Nu in November 1956. Hla Maung cited Chou's apparent questioning of the Burmese version of the northern sector of the boundary as the latest of a number of incidents which had led him to this conclusion. He commented sarcastically that on this portion of the border the Chinese had now challenged Burmese claims to land in the north and the east and that he "would not be surprised if they also mentioned the west, were there any land to the west."

U Nu received Chou En-lai's long-awaited letter containing Peiping's formal border proposals in late July and, according to the American embassy in Rangoon, they included a new demand for the cession of some 70 square miles of territory in the Lufang area of the Wa States. Taken together with a demand for more territory in the Hpimaw area, the new Chinese position on Lufang indicated to the American embassy a Chinese effort to create maximum problems for the Burmese government with various border peoples while still maintaining a pose of friendship and desire to reach a settlement. Thus while avoiding a settlement, Chou made it difficult for the Burmese leaders to accuse Peiping publicly of outright intransigence. After they dispatched Chief Justice U Myint Thein to China in the hope of ending Chinese stalling, Chou told Myint Thein on 28 September that he would have to take time to study the new Burmese proposals and that although the "1941 line" was "unjust," Peiping would accept it "out of feelings of friendship." Nevertheless, the Burmese considered Myint Thein's mission a failure and in late October, when Foreign Minister Sao Hkun Hkio spoke to the Australian ambassador, he stated that "negotiations might well take five or ten years."

The Chinese leaders continued to parry Burmese requests for a settlement in 1958. They began to invoke "Tibetan interests" in the border area as a device to prolong the deadlock. The Burmese ambassador in Peiping told Foreign Minister Chen Yi on 1 April that China's new argument was "difficult" for Rangoon to accept and stated that there are Tibetans living on the Burmese side who have been paying taxes to Burma "for generations." In reference to Peiping's claims regarding Tibetans living far to the south of the border, he protested that "a big portion" of northern Burma would have to be ceded to China.

The Chinese at this time apparently were trying out on the Burmese a claim they hoped later to use with the Indians, viz. that borderland peoples, and the territory in which they resided, traditionally had been Chinese. Since early 1950, the Chinese policy toward Himalayan border tribal peoples had centered on exploiting their ethnic and historical ties with Tibet. Chinese propaganda, disseminated through agents by word of mouth and published materials and through broadcasts by Lhasa Radio, had stressed the theme of "democratic reform and progress" in Tibet with the goal of directing the loyalties of these people more and more toward their ethnic homeland and away from Indian and Burmese influence. [15]

The Chinese indicated no desire to resume border talks until July, when the Burmese press began another major propaganda campaign, charging that Peiping was clearly stalling and guilty of bad faith. Again, as in summer 1956, the press campaign compelled the Chinese leaders to resume top-level talks. Chen Yi told the Burmese ambassador at a banquet on 31 July that a letter soon to be sent from Chou En-lai to Premier U Nu would "eliminate" the argument of the Burmese press that the Chinese are unwilling to negotiate. Chen declared: "If we go on discussing, nobody will be able to make up stories" — an undiplomatic bit of outspokenness which led Hla Haung to report that Chen, who had revealed that the primary aim of the Chinese in resuming border talks was to keep Burmese newspapers "muzzled up," was "not so sharp" as Chou. At the same banquet, Chou took the line that the prevailing no-settlement situation favored Rangoon. Chou told Hla Haung that the present indefinite border arrangement was to Burma's advantage because Rangoon continued to administer small areas claimed by Peiping in the Kachin and Shan states. When Hla Maung countered by saying a definitive agreement would silence those who seek to drive a wedge between the two countries, Chou temperately advised that he not listen to "third parties" and reassured the envoy that Peiping would negotiate the border question within the framework of the five principles. The general implication of Chou 'a remarks was that Burma should rest content with the status quo.

The new prime minister Ne Win, began to press the Chinese more vigorously than his predecessor, U Nu. Ne Win is [DELETE] reported to have told Burmese officials in January 1959 that the new ambassador to China would make a fresh approach to Peiping regarding the unresolved border dispute. The new prime minister may have been encouraged to order a new attempt to ascertain the Chinese leaders' position on a settlement because the Chinese were making aerial surveys of certain portions of the border. Ne Win indicated to the Chinese that he was prepared to confirm the concessions, made by U Nu informally to Chou En-lai in November 1956, of the three border villages in the Hpimaw area and the Namwan leased tract, but was unwilling to surrender any territory where the boundary had been formally established in the past. If the Chinese were to remain adamant on concluding an agreement, Ne Win stated in early May to Burmese officials, he would consider cancelling Chinese civil aviation rights in Burma. Ne Win subsequently proposed that Peiping accept a group of proposals as a package, but in June 1959, Chen Yi riposted by telling the new Burmese ambassador that the "package deal" had to be "studied" and hinted there might be no solution for some time, as }interested" racial minorities — primarily Tibetans — had to be "consulted" regarding any border settlement. Chen repeatedly stressed the need for cordial relations and stated that whether the question of "conceding a little portion here or there" is agreed upon or not, "it is the friendship that really counts." Ne Win apparently had anticipated further Chinese stalling and had informed the American ambassador in mid-May that his "package deal" would be withdrawn in December and that he would then proceed with a harder line in dealing with the Chinese.

The August and October 1959 clashes between Chinese and Indian forces apparently led the Chinese leaders to review the advantages and disadvantages of granting the Burmese a border settlement. They apparently calculated that an agreement with Rangoon would make it more difficult for New Delhi to reject negotiations on the Sino-Indian border dispute. In October 1959, the Chinese ambassador in Rangoon characterized Ne Win's package proposal as being "very near the mark." Rangoon informed Peiping on 4 November that if the Chinese were indeed prepared to accept the package — containing the maximum concessions Burma was willing to make — Ne Win would personally come to China to formalize "an agreement in principle" on the border issue. The Burmese also indicated willingness to accept the Chinese suggestion that a treaty of friendship and nonaggression accompany the border accord. [DELETE] Chou invited New Win to Peiping to hold talks on "matters of principle on how to settle" the dispute. Chou promised that these talks would "promote concrete discussions and settlement" of the border issue. Chou's stress on reaching an agreement on principles first of all was similar to the line he was taking with Nehru — i.e. his letter of 17 December— that lower level talks would bog down unless "some agreements on principles" were reached by the premiers. Thus by December 1959, the Chinese seemed to be pressing the Burmese to begin serious talks for a final settlement. Diplomats from almost every East European mission in Peiping had approached the Burmese first secretary in December and suggested that the time was "opportune" for the Chinese to agree to a settlement, suggesting a new, concerted effort to arrange a quick agreement with Rangoon.

In January 1960, Chou moved adroitly to bring Prime Minister Ne Win quickly to Peiping. Ne Win had rejected Chou's invitation on 3 January, requesting that Peiping accept in advance Burma's June 1959 package proposals as the condition for coming to China and initialing a border agreement. In a letter of 12 January, Chou repeated his 22 December invitation and carefully avoided mentioning Ne Win's condition. Chou said he felt it would be "very useful" toward promoting a settlement if Ne Win were to give him the chance to explain the Chinese government's position and to discuss "matters of principle" for eliminating the remaining differences. Chou was also careful to minimize the points of disagreement between the two sides as "relatively small." Ne Win responded by dropping his condition of prior Chinese acceptance of the "package deal" and informed Chou that he could arrive on 23 January for three days — sufficient time, he hoped, "to eliminate the relatively small difference" between the positions. He arrived on 24 January [DELETE]. The Burmese felt that the Chinese had made concessions and that the remaining differences could be referred to a "joint commission." On 28 January, four days after Ne Win arrived in Peiping, NCNA announced the signing of a border agreement and a treaty of friendship and mutual non aggression.

Thus, in striking contrast with his footdragging since early 1956, Chou had moved with considerable speed in order to conclude an "agreement on principles." He apparently calculated that it would be seen by neutrals and New Delhi as analogous to the "agreement on principles" he was trying to obtain from Nehru and would help to promote similar negotiations with New Delhi. Chou seemed to believe that Nehru would find it difficult to maintain that talks on "principles" with the Chinese would serve no useful purpose before the "facts" were agreed on. That this is what Chou was driving at is indicated by the following sentence in the 29 January Peiping People's Daily editorial on the accord:

This agreement proves that on such a complicated question as the boundary issue, it is a practical and feasible means conducive to a speedy solution of the question for the premiers of two nations to reach, first of all, an agreement in principle and then to leave to the representatives of both parties to work out a concrete settlement.

This statement directly contradicted, and was intended to refute, Nehru's 21 December reply to Chou in which the Indian Prime Minister had maintained that such high-level discussions of principles were pointless when both sides had not yet agreed on the facts.

Following his return to Rangoon, Ne Win on 30 January told Burmese officials that the Rangoon-claimed "1941 line" in the Wa State area would not change except for an area of about five miles, that the Chinese also accepted Burma's position on the watershed boundary for the Kachin State — which would be formally determined by a joint border commission — and that the Chinese had backed off from their original demand of about 500 square miles regarding the Hpimaw area, asking instead for an area of between 50 and 100 square miles. In sum, Ne Win stated (with slight exaggeration) that the Chinese had been so eager to obtain a settlement that Burma could have received "anything" it demanded, and the Burmese Military Training Director concluded that Burma had done "quite well" with the Chinese. [16]

As for the Chinese, they were not only better armed to press New Delhi for ministerial talks (on the Chou-Ne Win pattern), but also were in a tactically better position than they had been to undercut Nehru's likely line of argument with Khrushchev regarding Chinese intransigence. Ne Win speculated on 30 January that the Chinese had been "quite anxious" to settle the Sino-Burma border dispute prior to Khrushchev's stopover in New Delhi en route to Djakarta. [17]

The Chou-Nehru Talks; 19-25 April 1960

The Chinese extensively exploited the Sino-Burmese agreement to disarm the arguments of neutral critics and critics in the Soviet bloc that Peiping was unwilling to settle its border disputes amicably. They hoped it would provide them with an important propaganda instrument for promoting discussions with New Delhi. [18] Chinese anxiety in early 1960 to arrange a Chou-Nehru meeting and Nehru's tactical decision of late January not to appear intransigent prepared the way for ministerial-level talks. Ambassador Parthasarathy left for Peiping on 9 February, carrying a carefully drafted Indian note replying to the Chinese note of 26 December as well as Nehru's letter to Chou. [DELETE] the Indian note was drafted in such a way as to indicate that New Delhi was not opposed to a Chou-Nehru meeting. The note did not mention the earlier pre-conditions of Chinese withdrawal from Ladakh and explicit acceptance of the McMahon line. Nehru's 5 February letter to Chou also significantly omitted these stipulations.

Constantly under pressure from Parliament and the press not to take a soft line with Peiping, Nehru was compelled to make even an agreement "to meet" with Chou appear as part of a hard, anti-China policy. Prior to surfacing his invitation to Chou, Nehru on 12 February responded to opponents in Parliament in such a way as to create the impression that he was against even meeting with Chou. Actually, he had been careful to reject only "negotiations" but not a face-to-face meeting:

I see no ground whatever at present, no bridge between the Chinese position and ours....There is nothing to negotiate at present. Whether that will arise later I cannot say.

These remarks, carrying a hard tone and indicating a firm line of no negotiations, brought cheers from Parliament. However, parliamentary and press tempers were rekindled on 15 February, when the government released the texts of (1) Nehru's 5 February letter to Chou inviting him to a meeting in India and (2) the Indian 12 February reply to Peiping's 26 December note. The finesse of Ministry of External Affairs officials in handling the press by briefings had minimized adverse public reaction but did not stifle all criticism. On 16 February, the Times characterized Nehru's alleged reversal as "astonishing. . . nourishing dangerous illusions" and the Hindustan Standard referred to the whole matter as "insulting" to Parliament and the country. Nehru is reliably reported to have been disturbed by even this limited reaction and to have laid on a further "off-the-record" Ministry of External Affairs press briefing.

Nehru's 5 February letter to Chou agreed to a meeting but not to negotiations. Nehru restated his position (16 November 1959 letter to Chou) that the Chinese and Indian positions were so wide apart that there was little ground left for useful talks and that "certain preliminary steps" — the meeting of experts, to discuss historical data and alignment — would have facilitated discussions. Nehru then flatly asserted that the Chinese claim that the entire border had never been delimited was "incorrect...; on that basis there can be no negotiations." Nevertheless, in the interest of exploring every avenue for a settlement, Nehru finally agreed that "it might be helpful for us to meet," and thereupon issued his invitation for Chou to come to India some time after mid-March. Nehru defended this formal invitation in Parliament on 16 February, calmly insisting that no policy change was involved: he had always said he was prepared "to meet" anybody, anywhere, as this was ingrained from 40 years of training.

Nehru therefore apparently viewed a meeting as a tactic to appear amenable to a peaceful settlement and to probe Chinese long-term intentions, but he did not intend to make the concessions the Chinese considered necessary for a settlement of the border dispute. [19]

The Indian note of 12 February covered in greater detail the basic premise of Nehru's letter to Chou. It reiterated that New Delhi was prepared to discuss only specific disputes regarding the location of places on the border and to make minor border rectifications where agreed necessary. As for determining the entire border on a new basis, "such a basis for negotiations would ignore past history, custom, tradition, and international agreements, and is, therefore, entirely unacceptable to the Government of India." The note then argued in support of India's case for the watershed principle, complaining that Peiping "seems unaware that "traditional boundaries in mountainous areas tend to follow the main watershed rather than any other natural feature....That the alignment of the northern boundary of India throughout follows the major watershed supports the fact that this became the boundary through custom and tradition." After applying the watershed principle to Ladakh, the note stated that the line along this western sector of the border had been fixed and "well recognized" from the 17th century onward and that the Chinese complaint that this sector was not delimited was in fact supported by evidence which shows only that the boundary "was not demarcated on the ground."

The note's point-by- point rebuttal of the Chinese position as set forth on 26 December 1959 was accompanied by remarks designed to repair the damage done to the Sino-Indian relationship. It stressed the urgent need for an interim understanding to avoid a further worsening of the situation — i.e more border clashes — and the need to do everything possible to remove misunderstanding and restore traditional friendship. This appeal for a more normal relationship was intended to provide a tone conducive to a Chou-Nehru meeting, after the attempt, in 14 pages, to destroy the Chinese case for defining the border anew.

The firmness of Nehru's letter and the Indian note on the unbridgeable gap between the Chinese and Indian positions was intended partly to scotch rumors that Nehru, Ministry of External Affairs officials, and the Indian military chiefs were willing to exchange the Aksai Plain for formal Chinese recognition of the McMahon line. Such rumors had been fed by Krishna Menon's slip in a speech which was brought to light by the Hindustan Times editor on 1 February. Menon apparently stated that India would not yield... any part of our administered territory along the border." There were other indications that the rumors had some basis in fact. [DELETE] Ministry of External Affairs officials had been considering in February a possible formula for Ladakh entailing some form of international status for the road traversing the Aksai Plain. Moreover, after receiving Chou's reply, Nehru reportedly told President Prasad on 29 February that in talking with Chou, he would adhere to the public policy set forth in New Delhi's notes, but would try to avoid appearing intransigent. If Chou remained adamant on Ladakh, he might agree to neutralizing the area occupied by the Chinese if an adequately supervised agreement could be reached whereby the road linking Sinkiang with Tibet could be used by both countries. From questions directed to him on 1 March by a Ministry of External Affairs official, regarding cases in international law where one country [China] had access through a second country [India] to a portion of its own territory which was cut off from the motherland by natural barriers, an American embassy officer gained the definite Impression that the Indian leaders were searching for some sanction in international practice which would permit Nehru to propose Chinese use of the road while retaining nominal Indian sovereignty over the Aksai Plain. [20]

Chou's reply to Nehru's invitation was devoid of rancor and again indicated Peiping's desire for an early meeting. In contrast to his letters to Nehru since January 1959, Chou's 26 February 1960 letter accepting Nehru's invitation and setting April as the time avoided any discussion of substance on the border dispute — particularly the claim that the entire border was undelimited— and thus appeared accommodating to Nehru's refusal to negotiate on this basis. Chou described Sino-Indian differences as "temporary," implying a willingness to compromise, and characterized the border clashes of fall 1959 as "Unfortunate and unexpected," implying Peiping had not planned them and even regretted them. Chou was also prepared to relinquish some "face" by coming to New Delhi, reversing the implication of his 17 December 1959 letter that India was not a suitable site for talks because of "activities hostile to Sino-Indian friendship." Nehru had twice refused Chou's invitation, and Chou's acceptance despite this record was another small concession of "face," evidencing Peiping's urgent desire to mollify the Indians [21] and work toward an overall border settlement.

The Chinese acted to create an impression of confidence that the meeting would bring satisfactory results. Ambassador Parthasarathy reported his impression from Peiping on 7 March that the Chinese were prepared to compromise. At the same time, Deputy Foreign Secretary Mehta had noted that whereas New Delhi was approaching the meeting in terms of improving relations, Chinese notes and Chou's latest letter had stressed a border "settlement." [DELETE]

The Chinese tried to make the impression of their willingness to negotiate a settlement even more credible by acting quickly to sign a border agreement with Nepal. Nepalese Prime Minister Koirala arrived in China on 11 March at Chou En-lai's invitation, apprehensive that the Chinese intended to take a hard line with him. However, his discussions with Chou apparently went along without a major hitch — although the Chinese tabled a claim to Mt. Everest — and on 29 March Koirala signed with Chou a Sino-Nepalese border agreement calling for the entire boundary to be delineated and demarcated "on the basis of the traditional customary line." As with the Sino-Burmese border agreement of 28 January, the Sino-Nepalese accord established a joint commission to discuss and solve various questions of detail, conduct border surveys, erect boundary markers, and draft a border "treaty." Thus the Nepalese were used in roughly the same manner as the Burmese; that is, they were persuaded to settle their border differences with China in a two-step process, first agreeing to principles and the establishment of a joint commission and then working out a final treaty. The 21 March agreement provided for the mutual cessation of armed patrolling within a 12-1/2 mile zone from the border — a proposal for a quasi-demilitarized zone similar to one made by Chou earlier and rejected by Nehru for the Sino-Indian border. It also called for determining the border line in accordance with terrain features and the "actual jurisdiction" by each side, and, where actual jurisdiction was disputed, teams dispatched by the joint commission were to ascertain actual control "on the spot." The Peiping People's Daily stressed on 25 March that all border disputes between China and its neighbors could be solved by taking into account the historical background and the "present actual conditions" and by maintaining the status quo, citing the agreement with Burma as well as Nepal. Shortly after Koirala arrived in Peiping, the chief editor of a Hong Kong Communist newspaper told his staff that Peiping hoped the cordiality of the talks between the Nepalese and Chinese prime ministers would be noted by India, [22] and later at an "exclusive interview with NCNA" in Hong Kong on 25 March, Koirala was quoted as follows:

I think the present unhappy condition between China and India should be ended and I hope the coming talks between Premier Chou and Premier Nehru will be successful.

Chinese maneuvering prior to the Chou-Nehru meeting was incessant. For example, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials informed the Burmese ambassador in late March that Chou planned a stopover in Rangoon from 16 to 18 April with "nothing particular in mind" except that he hoped the instruments of ratification of the Sino-Burma border agreement could be exchanged during his stay. On 7 April, the Burmese were [DELETE] reported rushing preparations to ratify the border agreement and friendship treaty. Rangoon's Director of Military Training, Maung Maung, [DELETE] conceded that these two accords were being used as propaganda weapons by Peiping, but Burma "had to look out for itself."

The Chinese indicated that they were coming to engage in more than a mere exchange of generalities and historical arguments and that they expected positive concrete results. When, in late March, Chou (through the Indian ambassador) indicated to Nehru his intention to spend six days in New Delhi — despite Nehru's busy schedule — and that he would come at the head of a high-level delegation to arrive 30-strong in three aircraft, Nehru and his Ministry of External Affairs advisers were somewhat taken aback. They had seen nothing in the substance of Peiping 's notes that would necessitate a business-like delegation and a long visit. When asked at an off-the-record news conference on 5 April what Chou would be doing for six days in New Delhi, Nehru replied that Chou was quite capable of talking steadily for three or four hours at a stretch, but did not further elaborate. On the same day, Nehru informed the cabinet Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that Peiping's 3 April note merely reiterated earlier Chinese positions — including a denial that the entire boundary follows the Indian-cited watershed — and Nehru expressed total pessimism on the possible outcome of his meeting with Chou: "I may have to break off the talks in two days." [23]

As Nehru contemplated and discussed the line to take with Chou, the advice he received from various quarters was to be adamant. During discussions in New Delhi in early April, Nasir urged him to resist Chinese territorial demands, and Sukarno warned that "Any weakening on your part will have a strongly adverse effect on Asian resistance to Communism." President Prasad repeatedly counselled Nehru not to make any concessions to Chou, and on 13 April wrote to the Prime Minister in order to ensure that future generations would have no cause to blame those who took part in the freedom struggle for any "capitulation" now. Ambassador Parthasarathy implied to American officials in Hong Kong on 12 April that he was concerned that Nehru might be taken in by Chou and, on arriving in New Delhi, he suggested to Nehru that Indian's policy can only be to reject firmly all Chinese territorial claims. In addition, the press and Opposition leaders — the latter in a 4 April letter — admonished Nehru not to concede any Indian territory.

Thus Chou, who came with a real hope [24] of gaining agreement in principle that the border was not delimited and therefore subject to negotiation, was confronted by an Indian prime minister who was more adamant than anticipated. Nehru's plan was to reject substantive negotiations pending Chinese withdrawal from the Askai Plain. His tactic was to exclude advisers from the talks as long as possible in order "to have it out personally" with Chou for two or three days.

From the very start of Chou's visit, Nehru used unusually direct language. At the airport on 19 April, Nehru stated that since Chou's last visit in 1956 events had placed a great strain on Sino-Indian friendship and had shocked India, imperiling the relationship at present and in the future. On 20 April, Nehru spent most of his first two-hour talks with Chou lecturing the latter on "ancient history" of the border. After Chou responded by maintaining that the Aksai Plain belonged to China and that Chinese engineers, having found no administration in the area, simply had gone ahead with building the road, Nehru decided to give Chou more "lectures." Chou ran into a stone wall even with his old friend, Defense Minister Krishna Menon, whom Nehru conspicuously had excluded, for domestic political reasons, from his advisory entourage but whom Chou requested [25] to see "to thank him for support in the UN." Menon reportedly told Chou on 20 April that no part of Indian territory would be yielded and that the Chinese should take advantage of the fact that Nehru's government was more friendly to China than any subsequent Indian government could be, implying that Chou should make some concession.

On 21 April, Chou continued to depart from diplomatic precedent by resuming his effort to influence Indian leaders in separate, private talks — a tactic Nehru had not anticipated but did not try to block. Chou's separate talk with Home minister Pant on 21 April was essentially another lecture, as Pant spoke bluntly and with some heat on the theme of "We feel betrayed." Finance Minister Desai did not mince words when he took his turn with Chou on 22 April. When Chou was stimulated to criticizing New Delhi for granting asylum to the Dalai Lama, Desai was [DELETE] reported to have replied: "You should be the last person to object to political asylum. Where would you be today if political asylum had not been given to Lenin?" On the same day, when Chou told Vice President Radhakrishnan — also at a separate talk — that he could not convince "the Chinese people" that Ladakh and the Aksai Plain in particular did not belong to them because of the legends going back to the 12th century which supported Chinese claims, the vice president reportedly replied that on such a basis India could claim Kandahar, Kabul, and many other areas including parts of China. Radhakrishnan went on to nettle Chou with the comment that "You have hurt us deeply, and it is surprising you don't know it!" Thus at the end of three days of almost uninterrupted discussions with Nehru and top officials, Chou had not made a dent in the Indian position on Ladakh and had shown no willingness to agree to Nehru's suggestion that Chinese troops be withdrawn from "occupied" areas.

Chou's public and private remarks made it clear that the Chinese had tried to gain from Indian officials an exchange of the NEfA for Chinese-occupied Ladakh. The 27 April circular message to Indian embassies stated that the Chinese "throughout the discussions had invariably linked Ladakh with the NEFA and stressed that the same principles of settling the boundary must govern both areas. It was also obvious that if we accepted the line claimed by China in Ladakh, they would accept the McMahon line." At one point in their long conversations, Chou reportedly had offered to withdraw Chinese troops from Longju as a friendly gesture, and Nehru had responded by offering a withdrawal of some Indian forces at one point in Ladakh, but during the final drafting of the communique, Chou was again adamant and dropped his original offer. Regarding a future meeting, Chou proposed that a statement to that effect be included in the communique as well as the phrase, "and we hope this border dispute will be solved forever;" Nehru rejected both proposals and agreed only orally to meet with Chou on condition that the talks to be held by subordinate officials produced concrete progress. [26] At his 25 April press conference — reportedly held despite official Indian disapproval — Chou professed willingness to come again to New Delhi if necessary for Sino-Indian amity. Thus the most Chou was able to salvage from the total deadlock was some leeway to give an impression of partial success and the impression also that the talks would be continued.

The failure of Chou's probe for a soft spot in the position of Nehru and his advisers [27] was clearly indicated in the 25 April communique he issued with Nehru. The talks had led to a "better" understanding of opposing views but "did not resolve the differences that had arisen." Nehru rejected Chou's proposal to include in the communique that he would meet again with Chou. All that Nehru did agree to was to turn the issue over to subordinate officials of both countries, who were to meet from June to September to examine, check, and study the historical evidence of each side and draft a joint report on points of "agreement and disagreement" but they were not empowered to recommend a solution. Failure was also reflected in Chou's formal statement to a press conference in New Delhi on 25 April, when he conceded there were "still distances" between the two countries on six points "of proximity" including the matter of patrolling along the border. After reading this prepared statement, Chou answered questions and made a comment about the border, drawing distinctions between the three sectors. The differences (1) in the central sector were "small... and only on particular areas," (2) in the eastern sector were minor because the Chinese would not cross the so-called McMahon line and "we have not set forth any territorial claims," and (3) in the Western sector were "bigger" because the Chinese asked New Delhi to take a similar stand — i.e. in return for Chinese acceptance of the NEFA status quo, "India was asked not to cross the line which appears on Chinese maps" in Ladakh — but New Delhi "has not entirely agreed ." [28] Regarding Longju, Chou insisted to the Journalists that it was Chinese territory and north of the McMahon line. Trying to salvage a modicum of goodwill, Chou referred to his formal statement that the dispute is only "temporary" and invited Nehru to come to Peiping when convenient for further talks and "to promote friendly relations." An Indian circular message of 27 April summed up the results of Chou's visit in terse language — "The views of the two governments remain as far apart as before" — and directed Indian embassies to rebutt the final impression Chou sought to create at his surprise news conference (at which he issued what was, in effect, a unilateral communique) that each side now appreciated the other's point of view better or that there was a prospect for a "settlement."

When Chou and his delegation had left for Katmandu, Nehru apparently decided to insist publicly that the "wrong" must be undone — that is, that the Chinese vacate, their "aggression." During his talks with Chou, his attitude had been that the dispute could not be settled by bargaining or by an exchange but rather by Chinese withdrawals in Ladakh. Chou's position was that if they were to withdraw, nothing would be left to negotiate about. Nehru told Parliament on 26 April that India's entire argument was based on "Chinese forces having come into our territory." Returning from Nepal — where he had signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship (not a non-aggression pact as Chou had proposed in March in Peiping) and had tried to sooth tempers aroused by Peiping' s claim to Mt. Everest during his March 1960 talks with Koirala — Chou on 29 April stated in Calcutta with faintly concealed pique that Nehru had never mentioned aggression during their New Delhi talks and that such an accusation after the Chinese departure was "unfriendly." The Chou-Nehru relationship had fallen to its lowest point ever.