P.S.-I intend sending you from home an advance copy of a mémoire on the opium question by my friend M. le Pasteur Paumier, prepared in view of The Hague Conference.
Sir,
Enclosure 1 in No. 1.
J. G. A.
Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade to the "Yorkshire Post.”
181, Queen Victoria Street, London, October 4, 1911.
ON my return from attending a conference on the continent I have read the Shanghai telegram on the subject of the suppression of opium traffic in China, published in issue of the 27th September. I note that the Indian opium merchants in China
your are asking, in their own interests, for the immediate stoppage of the Bengal sales. This is a demand which our society can heartily support, as it would put an end at once to the direct connection between the British Government of India and the opium traffic with China.
The other proposal put forward by the opium merchants, however, can only meet with our most determined opposition. They wish, it seems, that the prohibition of the entry of Indian opium should not be extended to any more Chinese provinces until "a more strict observance of the last agreement" on the part of China has taken place. This may
sound plausible, but is in fact a mere pretext for delay. Let me briefly state the facts :-
On the 8th May we signed an agreement with the Chinese Government providing (clause 3) that "Indian opium shall not be conveyed into any province in China which can establish by clear evidence that it has effectively suppressed the cultivation and import of native opium." China, on her part, undertook in the meantime (clause 7) to withdraw "all restrictions placed by the provincial authorities on the wholesale trade in Indian opium," but this stipulation was not to "derogate in any manner from the force of the laws already published or hereafter to be published by the Chinese Government to suppress the smoking of opium and to regulate the retail trade in the drug in general."
When the Chinese Government claimed to exclude Indian opium from Szechuan, Shansi, and Manchuria, on the ground that opium production has ceased in those provinces, the British Minister at Peking replied that in Canton province additional taxation was in force contrary to article 7. This taxation was consequently withdrawn, and China's request was thereupon conceded. Objection was also taken in the first instance that in Fukien province regulations contrary to article 7 were in force, but this objection appears to have been dropped. A translation of the regulations in question has been sent to me by Bishop Price, of the Church Missionary Society in Fukien, and they contain nothing to which the Indian opium merchants could be entitled to object. Yet it now proposed that the British Government should withdraw from its pledges, and refuse to free further provinces of China from the curse of imported opium, simply in order to give these merchants a chance of disposing of their accumulated stock.
We may surely trust that our representatives in China and their superiors in the Foreign Office at home will repel such a monstrous claim. In China enormous sacrifices are being made by both Government and people in the effort to stamp out a national vice. Four or five years ago, when the opium dens were all closed on one day in the native city of Shanghai, a noble Chinese official provided out of his own pocket a large sum to enable their owners to set up in honest business. No such assistance is needed, much less is it deserved, by the opium millionaires of Hong Kong and Shanghai, who have already made large fortunes out of China's vice and misery and the dishonour of the British Empire.
As Mr. Theodore Taylor, M.P., recently wrote to the Times," respecting their claim to go on selling Turkish and Persian opium: "It is well that the attention of the British public should be drawn to the kind of thing in support of which these gentry ask
power and prestige of the British good name.'
Yours, &c.
the
<:
JOSEPH G. ALEXANDER, Hon. Secretary.
(Private.)
3
Enclosure 2 in No. 1.
Dr. Maxwell to Dr. Richter.
Dear Sir,
ON behalf of the representative board of anti-opium societies, 1 am desired to
September 13, 1911. lay before you the following considerations with regard to the international conference on the opium question proposed to be held at The Hague. We hope that the Ausschuss der deutschen evangelischen Missionen, of which we believe you are a member, may see its way to exercise its influence with the German Government in support of the proposed conference. A copy of this letter is being sent to Mr. Oldham, secretary of the continuation committee of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference.
As
you may remember, an international commission on the opium question met at Shanghai in February 1909 at the instance of the United States Government, at which the following Governments were represented :----
United States of America, Austria-Hungary, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, and Siam.
repre-
The commission adopted a series of recommendations, which have been considered and to some extent acted upon by the Governments represented. The United States Government last year proposed that an international conference, composed of sentatives of the same Powers, should meet at The Hague, in order to complete the work of the Shanghai commission and adopt an international convention for the regulation of the traffic in opium. The British Government, in accepting the proposal, stipulated that the scope of the proposed conference should include the regulation of the trade in morphia and cocaine, on the ground that these drugs are being extensively used in the Far East as substitutes for opium. This was, we understand, readily accepted by the United States and most of the other Governments, but difficulties have been raised which are thus referred to in a telegram from Reuter's agency at The Hague dated the 14th August, 1911-
"There is now very little probability that the International Opium Conference will meet at The Hague in October, as the participation of one of the States most interested in the question is still uncertain. The postponement of the conference till next spring is under serious consideration,"
The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, replying to a question in the House of Commons on the 17th August, stated that no date had yet been fixed for the conference, but that it was hoped that the conference might meet during the spring
of next year, to this extent confirming the telegram; but he said nothing as to the reason for postponement.
We have learned on private, but reliable, authority that the Government referred to in Reuter's telegram is that of Germany. This fact has not yet, so far as we know, been published in the British press.
The World's Chinese Student's Journal" for July 1911, published at Shanghai, states that the Dutch Minister in Peking has informed the Wai-wu Pu that the opium conference has been indefinitely postponed, and that the Chinese chargé d'affaires in Holland has also wired to the same effect saying that the reason for the postponement is the refusal of Germany, Portugal, and Japan to agree to the fifth resolution adopted by the conference held at Shanghai. This resolution was in the following terms -
t
"That the International Opium Commission finds that the unrestricted manufacture, sale, and distribution of morphine already constitute a grave danger, and that the morphine habit shows signs of spreading; the International Opium Commission, therefore, desires to urge strongly on all Governments that it is highly important that drastic measures should be taken by each Government in its own territories and possessions to control the manufacture, sale, and distribution of this drug, and also of such other derivatives of opium as may appear on scientific enquiry to be liable to similar abuse and productive of like ill effects."
It is said that the action of the German Government in this matter is due to the influence of German manufacturers of morphine and cocaine, and we believe it to be the fact that by far the greatest portion of these drugs imported into the Far East come from Germany. A recent official report on the working of the Government
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