[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[2276]
No. 1.
[January 17]*
562
со
2546
+0
SECTION 2.
REG? 26 JAN 12J
British Delegates to International Opium Conference to Sir Edward Grey.--- (Received January 17.)
(No. 10.) Sir,
The Hague, January 16, 1912. IN continuation of our despatch No. 9 of the 14th instant, we have the honour to forward a revised draft, drawn up by the Comité de Rédaction," of the clauses relating to the signing, ratification, and enforcement of the convention. You will observe that the amendments referred to in our previous despatch have been accepted in substance, as also the French amendment which we foreshadowed, and which places administrative action on the same footing as legislation for the purposes of what are now paragraphs 10-12.
This being so, we are at a loss to understand, with reference to your telegram of the 15th instant, why the procedure proposed can be still regarded as not fully satisfactory by the Board of Trade. We submit that it does effectually meet the conditions on which they laid stress in their letter of the 12th January, since no country is now obliged to bring laws into force, or take equivalent administrative action, without consultation with the rest, which of course implies knowledge of what they propose to do, any difficulties which may thereupon arise being solved if necessary by a conference ad hoc. We cannot devise any better means likely to be accepted by the conference as a whole, of ensuring that British trade interests shall not suffer by restrictive action which might not be taken to a like extent in other countries, while the position which might be created by important countries remaining outside the convention is adequately provided for by paragraphs 5 and 6 of the present draft.
We take this opportunity of stating, with reference to your telegram No. 2 of the 12th instant, that, after further informal discussion with us, the German delegation proposed to the conference to-day their amendments to articles 10 to 16 of the original draft of the convention on the subject of morphine and cocaine, and that the articles as they proposed to redraft them will be found in the second enclosure to this despatch. We made it clear in the debate that ensued that our Government deprecated these amendments, but we eventually accepted them with reluctance as the sole means of arriving at an agreement. After some discussion the amendments were provisionally accepted with some slight verbal modifications.
The next business before the conference is now the consideration of the revised draft of the "Comité de Rédaction," referred to in the first paragraph of this despatch, and we hope that we may be at once placed in a position to say that our Government authorises us to accept this solution.
We have, &c.
(For British Delegation to Opium Conference), W. S. MEYER.
Enclosure 1 in No. 1.
CONFÉRENCE INTERNATIONALE DE L'OPIUM,
Comité de Rédaction.
Projet modifié en tenant compte des Suggestions de leurs Excellences de Marees van Swinderen et Asser et de la Délégation britannique.
Signature supplémentaire.
LES Puissances non représentées à la conférence seront almises à signer la présente convention.
2. Dans ce but, le Gouvernement des Pays-Bas invitera immédiatement après la signature de la convention par les plénipotentiaires des Puissances qui ont pris part à
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