TWO YEARS IN A FORBIDDEN LAND

Hokitika Guardian, 3 October 1929, Page 8

TWO YEARS IN A FORBIDDEN LAND

LONDON, August 21. Lieut.-Col. vF. M. Bailey, of the Political Deparfcmenit of the Indian Government, has just arrived in England. He has kept the gates of Sikkim, where India meets the forbidden land of Tibet, for more than 20 years. Last night ho told how lie had penetrated into the forbidden fastnesses of Russian Turkestan in the years immediately following the Bolshevik revolution. There were 100,000 Austrian prisoners there; 80,000 of -them died of typhus fcjver, (and nobody worried much as to the precise identity of the survivors.

WHEN LIVES WERE CHEAP. I.ieut.-Col. Bailey dressed himself in the uniform of one of the dead prisoners and spent two years as an alleged prisoner of war in an enemy country. He was able to titin.sin.it valuable information to our own Government.

He was always what his interrogator was not. He is a master of many tongues, but this ruse gave him the loop-hole of escape if he made some small slip in dialect. He spent two years in/ Tashkent and Bokhara at a time when lives wore cheap—and he is alive.

To-day he has hung his sword on Ihe wall arid taken to breeding dogs. He has brought back six Tibetan mastiffs and five “Afso” (which means goat-like) dogs.