Part 10 (2/2)
These circ.u.mstances, though not the experience itself, were somewhat exceptional. I was at that particular moment at the highest pitch of existence--that is to say, of my own existence. I had had an unusually wide experience of the wild countries of that most interesting and varied of the continents--Asia, and for that reason had been specially selected for the charge of a Mission to Tibet.
However ill-qualified I might be for other tasks, for this particular business of establis.h.i.+ng neighbourly relations with a very secluded and seclusive Asiatic people, difficult of approach both on account of their natural disposition and of the mighty mountain barrier which stood between them and the rest of the world, I was esteemed to have peculiar qualifications. My comrades were also men selected for their special qualifications--one for his knowledge of the Tibetans, another for his knowledge of the Chinese, another for his knowledge of geology, and so on. The troops engaged were selected for their experience in frontier warfare, and each man had had to pa.s.s a medical test. We were at the top of our physical fitness and ripe in experience.
Besides British officers and a few British troops, there were among the soldiers Sikhs, Pathans, Gurkhas, a few Bengalis, a few Rajputs and Dogras; and among the followers were Bhutias and Lepchas from Sikkim, Baltis from Kashmir, Bhutanese from Bhutan. There were thus Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, and Buddhists: men from an island in the Atlantic, and men from the remotest valleys of the Himalaya. And our destination had been a sacred city hidden two hundred miles behind the loftiest range of mountains in the world.
On our way we had had to battle with the elements of Nature in very nearly their extremest forms and in every variety. We started in the sweltering heat of the plains of India in the hottest season. We pa.s.sed the lower outer ranges of the Himalaya in the midst of torrential rain, like the heaviest thunder-shower in England, continuing all day long and day after day with scarcely a break, and penetrating through a waterproof coat as if it were paper. Following this we had to cross the main axis of the Himalaya in January, to pa.s.s the winter at an alt.i.tude of 15,000 feet above sea-level, and face blizzards which cut through heavy fur coats and left us as if we were standing before it in our bare bones.
We had also had to battle with the Tibetans--not only in actual fighting, but in diplomacy as well. I had deliberately risked my life in order to effect a settlement by persuasion and without resort to arms. Officers and men at my request had done the same.
Subsequently we had both attacked and been attacked. Five hundred of us had for two months to face the attacks of eight thousand Tibetans. Later, again, we had had a long, tough, diplomatic contest with the Tibetans.
Besides battling with the elements and with the Tibetans, I had also had to battle with my own people--as is always and inevitably the case on such occasions. Military and political considerations had to contend against each other. This local question between India and Tibet was part of the general international question of the relations of European nations, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, America, with China, for Tibet was under the suzerainty of China. Local considerations had therefore to contend with international considerations. Then from the local point of view the permanent settlement of this particular question was desirable, whereas those responsible for the international situation would not object to a temporary arrangement of this single question as long as the whole general situation could be favourably secured. The Tibetan question was part of the whole question of our relations with Russia. Our relations with Russia were connected with our relations with France.
We were coming to an arrangement with France as regards Egypt and Morocco. If we did anything in Tibet which vexed Russia she might be troublesome as regards Egypt, and make it difficult to come to an arrangement with France and to bring off the Anglo-French Entente. Of all these international considerations I was kept aware by Government even in the heart of Tibet. But my position required that I should stand up for the political as against the military, the local as against the international, and the permanent settlement as against the temporary arrangement. It was my duty vigorously to battle for this--as it was equally the duty of the military and those responsible for international affairs to battle for their own point of view. And of course I had to submit, after contesting my standpoint, to the decision of those in authority; though I had to contend for the particular, it was the general which had to prevail.
In the end a settlement was reached, and in this remote city we had received congratulations from many different people in many different lands. The troops, my staff, and all about me were filled with delight at the success of our enterprise. Even the Tibetans themselves seemed pleased at the settlement; at any rate, they asked to be taken under our protection. On the morning we left Lhasa the Lama Regent, who in the absence of the Dalai Lama had conducted negotiations with us, paid us a farewell visit and gave us the impression of genuine goodwill towards us. We and the Tibetans had contended strongly against one another. But it seemed that a way had been found by which good relations between us could be maintained. We had discovered that fundamentally we were perfectly well-disposed towards each other, and means had been found for composing our differences. Throughout the Mission we had kept before us the supreme importance of securing this goodwill eventually. The Tibetan frontier runs with the Indian frontier for a thousand miles, and it would have been the height of folly to have stirred up in the Tibetans a lasting animosity. Far more important, then, than securing the actual treaty we regarded securing the permanent goodwill; and when I felt that through the exertion of my Staff and the good behaviour of the troops as well as through my own efforts the goodwill of the Tibetans really had been secured, my satisfaction was profound.
It was after enduring all these hards.h.i.+ps, after running all these risks, and after battling in all these controversies, that this deep satisfaction came upon me. For though at times I felt, as every leader feels in like circ.u.mstances, that success must have been due to everyone else besides myself--to the backing and firm direction I had received from Government, to the sound advice and help of my Staff, to the bravery and endurance of the troops, without all or any one of which aids success would have been unattainable--yet I could not help also feeling that I had often on my own responsibility to make decisions and run risks, and to give advice to Government; and that if I had erred in my decisions or in the advice I gave or in taking the risks, success most a.s.suredly would not have been achieved, however much support I received from elsewhere. I had, therefore, that satisfaction a man naturally feels when his special qualifications and training and the experience he has gained during the best part of his life have proved of acknowledged good to his country. And this was the frame of mind in which I rode out of Lhasa on our march homeward.
These were the circ.u.mstances in which I had the experience I now venture to describe. After arrival in camp I went off into the mountains alone. It was a heavenly evening. The sun was flooding the mountain slopes with slanting light. Calm and deep peace lay over the valley below me--the valley in which Lhasa lay. I seemed in tune with all the world and all the world seemed in tune with me.
My experiences in many lands--in dear distant England; in India and China; in the forests of Manchuria, Kashmir, and Sikkim; in the desert of Gobi and the South African veldt; in the Himalaya mountains; and on many an ocean voyage; and experiences with such varied peoples as the Chinese and Boers, Tibetans and Mahrattas, Rajputs and Kirghiz--seemed all summed up in that moment. And yet here on the quiet mountain-side, filled as I was with the memories of many experiences that I had had in the high mountain solitudes and in the deserts of the world away from men, I seemed in touch with the wide Universe beyond this Earth as well.
After the high tension of the last fifteen months, I was free to let my soul relax. So I let it open itself out without restraint. And in its sensitive state it was receptive of the finest impressions and quickly responsive to every call. I seemed to be truly in harmony with the Heart of Nature. My vision seemed absolutely clear. I felt I was seeing deep into the true heart of things. With my soul's eye I seemed to see what was really in men's hearts, in the heart of mankind as a whole and in the Heart of Nature as a whole.
And my experience was this--and I try to describe it as accurately as I can. I had a curious sense of being literally in love with the world.
There is no other way in which I can express what I then felt. I felt as if I could hardly contain myself for the love which was bursting within me. It seemed to me as if the world itself were nothing but love. We have all felt on some great occasion an ardent glow of patriotism. This was patriotism extended to the whole Universe. The country for which I was feeling this overwhelming intensity of love was the entire Universe. At the back and foundation of things I was certain was love--and not merely placid benevolence, but active, fervent, devoted love and nothing less. The whole world seemed in a blaze of love, and men's hearts were burning to be in touch with one another.
It was a remarkable experience I had on that evening. And it was not merely a pa.s.sing roseate flush due to my being in high spirits, such as a man feels who has had a good breakfast or has heard that his investments have paid a big dividend. I am not sure that I was at the moment in what are usually called high spirits. What I felt was more of the nature of a deep inner soul-satisfaction. And what I saw amounted to this--that evil is the superficial, goodness the fundamental characteristic of the world; affection and not animosity the root disposition of men towards one another. Men are inherently good not inherently wicked, though they have an uphill fight of it to find scope and room for their goodness to declare itself, and though they are placed in hard conditions and want every help they can to bring their goodness out. Fundamentally men are consuming with affection for one another and only longing for opportunity to exert that affection. They want to behave straightly, honourably, and in a neighbourly fas.h.i.+on towards one another, and are only too thankful when means and conditions can be found which will let them indulge this inborn feeling of fellows.h.i.+p. Wickedness, of course, exists. But wickedness is not the essential characteristic of men. It is due to ignorance, immaturity, and neglect, like the naughtinesses of children. It springs from the conditions in which men find themselves, and not from any radical inclination within themselves.
With maturity and reasonable conditions the innate goodness which is the essential characteristic will a.s.sert itself. This is what came to me with burning conviction. And it arose from no ephemeral sense of exhilaration, nor has it since evaporated away. It has remained with me for fifteen years, and so I suppose will last for the rest of my life. Of course in a sense there has been disillusionment, both as to myself and as to the world. As one comes into the dull round of everyday life the glow fades away and all seems grey and colourless.
Nevertheless, the conviction remains that the glow was the _real,_ and that the grey is the superficial. The glow was at the heart and is what some day _will_ be--or, anyhow, _might_ be.
An additional ground I have for believing it to be true is that on that mountain-side near Lhasa I had a specially favourable opportunity of looking at the world from, as it were, a proper focal distance. And it is only from a proper focal distance that we can see what things really are. If we put ourselves right up against a picture in the National Gallery we cannot possibly see its beauty--see what the picture really is. No man is a hero to his own valet. And that is not because a man is not a hero, but because the valet is too close to see the real man. Cecil Rhodes at close quarters was peevish, irritable, and like a big spoilt child. Now at a distance we know him, with all his faults, to have been a great-souled man. Social reformers near at hand are often intolerable bores and religious fanatics frequently a pestilential nuisance. We have to get well away from a man to see him as he really is. And so it is with mankind as a whole.
So I become more and more certain that my vision was true. And the experience of the Great War strengthens my conviction. As we recede from it, what will stand out, we may be sure, are not the crimes and cruelties that have been committed and the suffering that has been caused, but the astounding heroism which was displayed, the self-sacrifice, the devotion and love of country that were shown--heroism and devotion such as have never before in the world's history been approached, and which was manifested by common everyday men and women in every branch of life and in every country.
The conclusion I reach from this experience is that I was, at the moment I had it, intimately in touch with the true Heart of Nature. In my exceptionally receptive mood I was directly experiencing the genius of Nature in the very act of inspiring and vitalising the whole.
I was seeing the Divinity in the Heart streaming like light and heat through every part of Nature, and with the dominating forcefulness of love lifting each to its own high level.
And my experience was no unique experience. It was an experience the like of which has come to many men and many women in every land in all ages. It may not be common; but it is not unusual. And in all cases it gives the same certainty of conviction that the Heart of Nature is _good,_ that men are not the sport of chance, but that Divine Love is a real, an effectively determining and the dominant factor in the processes of Nature, and Divine fellows.h.i.+p the essence of the ideal which is working throughout Nature and compelling all things unto itself.
CHAPTER XII
THE HEART OF NATURE
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