-
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
OPTUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[36695]
No. 1.
-20
[September 19.]
SECTION
2749
of 9 OCT 1
Mr. Bryce to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received September 19.) (No. 231. Confidential.) Sir,
Sealharbour, Maine, September 8, 1911.
HAVE the honour to report that on the 6th instant Dr. Hamilton Wright, one of the American representatives to the proposed opium conference at The Hague, called on me here with a letter from the Acting Secretary of State (copy of which enclose herein), having travelled to this place in order to see me.
The object of Dr. Wright's visit was to ask me to telegraph to you suggesting that it would be desirable for His Majesty's Government to intimate officially, as soon as possible, to the Netherlands Government their willingness to send representatives at an early and definite date to the proposed International Opium Congress.
I enquired what were the special reasons for which the United States Government desired that this expression of their wish should be conveyed through me instead of through the American Ambassador in London, who had been in charge of the negotiations throughout. Mr. Wright informed me that instructions had been sent in this sense to Mr. Reid, who reported that he had been unable to communicate them personally to you owing to your absence from London, to which I naturally replied that the matter could have been presented to, and dealt with by, the Under-Secretary of State in charge.
After some further conversation Mr. Wright practically admitted that it was thought that the matter might be advanced by being also treated through another channel, and that in the interests of humanity at large, and from the desire of the United States Government to accelerate progress with the matter, it was their belief that additional representations, transmitted through this embassy, would have further weight, and convey more fully their anxiety to see something done. He was rather vague in his way of putting this, but one could see what he meant. He observed that he understood that His Majesty's Government might feel that the United States Government were unduly pressing the matter, but at the same time he was desirous that, without incurring the suspicion that they had any ulterior motive in this, it should be known that the Department of State were becoming anxious to put the matter through. They had latterly left it to the Dutch Government, but the slow action of the latter was now obliging them to take it up themselves. He eventually showed me a confidential report from Mr. Beaupré, United States Minister at The Hague, in which the latter stated his own personal suspicions, based, it would seem, on conversations with persons in the Dutch Foreign Office, that His Majesty's Government were, for some reason or other, by no means eager that the conference should meet in the near future. Mr. Wright went on to say that he personally did not think Mr. Beaupré's views entitled to much weight, and that both he and the Department of State entirely disclaimed any such suspicions, and were convinced that His Majesty's Government were altogether sincere in the wish they had expressed for the meeting and success of the conference. Proof of this had been given by their action in India. I replied that it was the fact, and the correspondence communicated to me by you showed it. His Majesty's Government were equally desirous with the United States Government that the conference should meet as soon as it properly could, and that their only anxiety was that the representatives of the different Powers interested should be in full possession of the necessary facts and figures, not only respecting opium, but as regards morphine and cocaine also, before the meeting, in order that their deliberations might cover all the subjects involved, and might handle them so effectively as to avoid the necessity of calling a further conference at a later date, when interest in the matter might possibly have begun to evaporate.
Mr. Wright then informed me confidentially that it was in his view not inconceivable that the delay in the matter came from the Netherlands Government, who perhaps attempted to conceal their own lack of zeal by attributing such lack to His Majesty's Government. The Dutch, he remarked, were the nation who would incur the greatest loss by the total suppression of the traffic in opium, which was largely grown in Java; and he further alleged, without, however, dwelling on the suggestion, that reasons of economy
[2182 t-1]