i. Harking Back to the Tibetan Revolution

READER, WE have followed the sorry tale through to its end. We have seen one of the two great streams of history lose itself in a swamp of misery and abject brutishness. We may now return to that point where I first realized an inconsistency in my experience of man’s career, where, in fact, the torrent of history was already dividing. This was the point at which the Tibetan revolution had been successfully brought off by the Young Lamas. Under their guidance the new Tibetan state was already becoming a thing of splendid achievement and more splendid promise.

I had already noticed among the Tibetans two very different tempers. Sometimes the one had dominated, sometimes the other. In the one mood the leaders of the new society faced their task with sober fortitude and a clear understanding that only by a miracle could they preserve the new order against the hostility of the two great empires. In the other mood these same leaders, though they fully realized the difficulties and dangers, were buoyed up by a seemingly irrational and almost boisterous hopefulness, nay a certainty of victory. Though they recognized that only a miracle could save Tibet and perhaps the whole species, they also knew, so long as the mood of exaltation was on them, that the miracle had already happened in themselves, and that it could be made to happen in the whole Tibetan people. By now the Tibetan people had supreme confidence in their leaders. Even the dullards, who could not appreciate at all clearly the aim of the new society, felt vaguely that they were sharing in a glorious enterprise.

The first sign of inconsistency in my experience was a strange sense that this miraculous hopefulness both dominated and did not dominate the whole life of the people. Then inconsistencies of external events began to appear, so that little by little my torn mind was forced to live in two mutually exclusive worlds.

This duality of temper, followed by a duality of external events, soon made itself evident beyond the frontiers of Tibet. The progressive minority in all lands was dominated and was not dominated by a new, defiant, and gay confidence. Each mood produced everywhere its effect on action; but it was in Tibet that hope first triumphed, and it was Tibet’s miraculous success that inspired the rest of the world.

It was in connection with the synthetic faith propagated in Russia and China that the Tibetans gained their first important success. The calculated appeal to man’s baser nature, it will be remembered, had been propagated in order to defeat the Tibetan missionaries. In the story that I have already told it succeeded; in the story that I shall now tell it failed. The Tibetan missionaries in their mood of bright confidence disconcerted the imperial governments by laughing the new movement into frustration. For a sham faith cannot stand ridicule. The symbols and slogans of the religion of pain were ridiculed and parodied on every wall. By skilful heckling the meetings organized by the dervishes were given a tilt towards farce. But this was not all. Many a missionary bore witness to his own faith by unflinching behaviour under torture. For the governments were at first eager to ‘make an exhibition’ of them, until it was clear that every public martyrdom merely spread the Tibetan faith. The missionaries were trained both in spiritual discipline and in the technique of advertisement. The symbols and slogans of their faith were made to appear in every public place, often superimposed on the emblems of the synthetic faith. The propaganda meetings organized by the dervishes were often frustrated by some obscure member of the audience who challenged the speaker to compete with him in an ordeal by torture. According to the synthetic faith, it will be remembered, the supreme ecstasy was to be experienced under torture. The challenger would suggest to the dervish that they should both, in public and at once, inflict severe pain on themselves, or be tortured by a third party. The mere challenge was often enough to expose the impostor. But when dervishes who had been specially chosen and handsomely paid for their ability to endure pain undertook to prove their faith under torture, it soon appeared that the missionaries could draw upon some source of strength inaccessible to hired martyrs. The missionary could allow his flesh to be torn or crushed to a far greater extent, and in doing so he made no false claim that he enjoyed it. Though he rejoiced in the opportunity to bear witness to his faith through pain, he took no delight, he said, in pain itself. The dervish, on the other hand, would make agonized protestations of delight, until suddenly, and sooner than his rival, he called out for release. The governments did, indeed, gain a temporary success by sending out dervishes who had been specially prepared for the inevitable ordeal by having an arm permanently anaesthetized. But it was not long before the trick was exposed. The next move by the imperialists was to organize ‘spontaneous’ lynchings of those who dared to challenge the dervishes. But this policy also was defeated, partly by the courage of the missionaries, partly by highly trained crowd-controllers who by shrewd interjections often succeeded in turning the temper of the mob from sadism to kindliness.

The source of the courage of the missionaries was, of course, their faith in the spirit. But courage alone might not have achieved so swift and complete a discomfiture of the synthetic faith had it not been reinforced by a sly and friendly ridicule. There was nothing new in the method of the missionaries; but never before had it been used on such a scale and with such expert psychological understanding. And never before had those who used these methods been the emissaries of an established Utopian society preparing to fight for its life.

The success of the missionaries certainly did not depend wholly on their powers of enduring pain. They constituted a great army of ‘fifth-columnists’ disseminated throughout the imperial territories, secretly inspiring the people with dangerous political and social thoughts. The original Tibetan missionaries were reinforced by a great company of native missionaries in every country. Altogether there were millions of them, and each one was a travelling spark of the new fire. Under this influence men’s desiccated hearts were tinder. Most of the missionaries worked at some trade in the lower or middle reaches of society, and were at pains to earn the respect and love of their fellow workers for their efficiency, integrity, and loyal comradeship. Armed with this personal prestige, they were able to capture the allegiance and fire the imagination of all who were not yet hopelessly perverted; and to build up little by little a great body of servants of the light in every land. Their method combined that of the religious missionary with that of the social revolutionary. On the one hand, though they showed no insistence on any metaphysical doctrine, they preached the inner light, and manifested it in action. On the other, though they avoided the subtle Machiavellian intrigues which had been used by so many revolutionaries in the past, they entered into political disputes and declared, often at the cost of their lives, that the time had come to withhold from Caesar the things that were Caesar’s. Of the universe, as a whole, they said, man knows next to nothing; but in our hearts we find that in right personal relation man fulfils himself. Love, they said, and wisdom are right absolutely. True community of mutually respecting individuals, and also fearless free intelligence and imagination, are right absolutely. And we all knew it. There is one intrinsic good, they said, and one only, the awakened life, the life of love and wisdom. This is the sacred thing which all developed beings throughout the universe cannot but will, unless they have been blinded. This spirit, they said, is in the long run all-powerful in the affairs of conscious beings. But the run may be very long. And what the scope of that spirit is in the whole of things no man can know, nor needs to know.

The world-wide missionary effort would have been far less effective if the missionaries had not been able to point to the example of Tibet’s actual achievement. ‘In Tibet the police are few and unarmed,’ they said. ‘In Tibet no doors need be locked. In Tibet no one feels any need of the debauch of cruelty. We have neither rich nor poor. Our prisons have been destroyed or turned into laboratories and art galleries. We know how to live, and we have the means.’ Visitors to Tibet were welcomed and could see for themselves that these claims were true. At last the imperial governments adopted drastic measures. Realizing that ‘the roof of the world’ was becoming a Mecca where the seditious gathered to study and plan revolution, they forbade all travel to Tibet, and made a great effort to round up and destroy all the missionaries. But intercourse with Tibet continued. In spite of all restrictions, hosts of daring enthusiasts managed to slip through into ‘the fortunate country’ for mental and spiritual fortification; and to slip out again to spread the gospel. And the stream of native Tibetan missionaries was restricted not by the imperial attempt to put an end to it but by the needs of the home country to organize a desperate military defence.
ii. War Against the Empires

At last war came. I have told how, in the theme of darkness it resulted in the destruction of man’s most promising society. In the theme of light the issue was far otherwise. Not only had the empires been effectively undermined by the missionaries, so that rebellions were frequent; more important was the fact that the servants of the light in all countries, and specially in Tibet, were armed with an inner certainty of victory. As in the darker theme, the Tibetan frontier was defended by microbes which reduced the invaders to infantilism. But whereas in the dark theme the respite thus secured was used merely for strengthening the defence, in the theme of the triumphing light it was turned into an opportunity for attack. Against all probability, the small but highly trained and highly mechanized Tibetan army, supported by its small but well-appointed air force, pushed forward into the imperial territory of Kashmir. There it attacked before the Russians had had time to recover from the effects of the microbe, and it gained a surprising victory. The Russian imperialists hastily concentrated vast new armies and air forces upon the invaders; but owing to a combination of inefficiency, corruption, and above all half-heartedness and positive disloyalty the imperial armies put up a feeble resistance, and were presently retreating in disorder, closely pursued by the Tibetans, and constantly attacked by the natives themselves. Organized revolt had of course broken out in Kashmir, and the imperialists’ defeat ensured its success. The whole of this mountainous land was soon freed. A temporary government was set up by the Kashmiri servants of the light, and the new state formed a close alliance with Tibet.

The moral effect of this surprising victory was immense. In Russia itself, particularly in Moscow, there was serious disorder. An army which was ordered to proceed to the recovery of the lost territory, was incapacitated by mutiny. Meanwhile the whole mountainous tract stretching from Kashmir through Afghanistan, Persia, and Turkey to the Aegean Sea rose against the oppressors. In Greece, in Britain, and in Scandinavia isolated rebellions were started. To the north of Tibet, Sinkiang and the more mountainous part of Outer Mongolia overcame the local imperial forces. Meanwhile the main Tibetan land and air armament, far from resting on their success, were hurried from the western to the eastern end of the country where the Chinese, a much more formidable enemy, were heavily bombing Lhasa and the whole comparatively rich eastern part of Tibet.

It was desperately important for the Tibetans to secure at once some positive and spectacular success against the Chinese Empire, so as to start in China also that process of galloping decay which was already at work in the rival empire. The people of eastern Tibet were able to retire to their deep shelters, prepared long before the war, and to escape the destruction which now fell upon their cities, their herds, their precious irrigation system. It now appeared that the government, convinced many years ago of the inevitability of war, had established a great number of underground munition factories. But the attack was too heavy to be endured for long without the crippling of the Tibetan resistance. The method of surprise, which had succeeded so well in Kashmir, was impossible against the Chinese imperialists, for they had concentrated an immense force in Chwanben. The efficiency of this army was beyond question. Its loyalty to its imperial master had never been tested. After much discussion the Tibetan leaders decided that there was nothing for it but to court disaster and hope for a miracle. Or rather, divinely confident of victory, they saw that the only way to it was the way of inspired foolhardiness. The Tibetan air force, though heavily outnumbered, proved far more resourceful and skilful than the Chinese, and their courage was fanatical. They did their utmost to destroy the enemy aerodromes. They dropped bombs and the microbes of infantilism on the advancing army in Chwanben. They scattered leaflets on the great industrial centres. At the same time the Tibetan land forces put up a desperate defence upon the frontier.

There is no need to give details of the fighting. At one time it seemed that resistance had broken, yet the Tibetan leaders and fighters maintained their irrational confidence. ‘Hang on, hang on,’ it was said. ‘The tide will turn.’ And sure enough it did. The enemy’s attack began to weaken, both in the air and on land. Deserters, who came over in large numbers to the Tibetan side, told that the population of Chwanben had sacrificed itself in thousands so as to create confusion behind the lines. The spirit of the imperial army was changing from bored acceptance of this tiresome frontier war to whispering complaint and doubt. The air force was suffering from badly damaged professional pride. The Tibetan leaders judged that the moment had come for the great gamble. Instead of using the lull to recuperate and prepare to withstand the next blow, they threw the whole Tibetan strength into an attack which violated all the accepted principles of warfare. Though they were the weaker side, they flooded the whole of Chwanben with parachute troops, leaving Tibet almost undefended. The effect was as spectacular as the result of peppering a forest with incendiary bombs. Bewildered by the multitude of the parachutists, and never imagining that this move was the last effort of a beaten enemy, the Chinese troops fell into disorder. Some, of course, obeyed their officers and rounded up the aerial invaders, but many others rallied to the parachutists themselves. The whole of Chwanben fell into chaos. The minute remnant of the Tibetan land army advanced into Chwanben without meeting serious opposition. From the eastern heights of the province they looked down upon the hilly lowlands of Szechwan, amazed at their own success. Disorder now broke out all along the Yangtze Valley and spread to most of the great cities of China.

But the Chinese Empire was tougher than the Russian. The imperial air force bombed many of the revolting cities into submission. The routed imperial armies in the Yangtze Valley were rallied and stiffened with fresh troops. The rebels in the eastern part of Szechwan were overcome and massacred. The fantastic Tibetan advance was checked before Ichang.

The leaders of Tibet knew well that the peoples of China could not be freed unless the imperialists were everywhere attacked by their own subject population. This seemed at first likely to happen; but Chinese nationalism was a strong sentiment, and the rulers were able to make good use of it. The Tibetan leaders, though daring and even foolhardy when their daemon urged them forward, were also realists. Instead of trying to press on into the heart of China, they consolidated the positions they had gained, and waited. They also broadcast to the people of China, saying in effect, ‘We are not conquerors. We desire no empire. If you want freedom, rebel, and we will press on to help you.............