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Gouvernement des Pays-Bas invite immédiatement les Puissances signataires à cette date de désigner des délégués pour procéder à La Haye à l'examen de la possibilité de faire entrer en vigueur la Convention internationale de l'Opium du £3 janvier, 1912.”*
This vau, as M. van Deventer explained, goes farther than a mere prolongation by one year of the period prescribed by paragraph 2 of article 23 of the convention; it recommends that should the signature of all the Powers not be obtained by the end of the present year a further Conference should be summoned, not to examine the possibility of depositing ratifications, because that question has already been deait with, but to examine the possibility of putting the convention into force.
In the discussion which ensued Dr. Wu Lien-Teh expressed the opinion that the period of six months allowed for further signatures might well have been reduced to one or two months, but no other delegates spoke in support of this view,
The vau in the form proposed by the Editing Committee and certain recommendations as to the arrangement of the other vœux already agreed to having been adopted, the final protocol was unanimously passed without further discussion.
At the fifth and closing session on the 9th July the final protocol was signed by all the delegates except those of Brazil and Colombia, who were unavoidably prevented from attending, but who affixed their signatures subsequently.
M. Pellet, the French delegate, and Mr. Lloyd Bryce, the American delegate, made short speeches expressing the thanks of their colleagues to Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands and to the Government for the hospitality extended to us, and to M. Cremer, our president, for the zeal, patience, and impartiality with which he had conducted the business of our sessious. M. Cremer, in replying, paid a well- deserved tribute to the valuable assistance received from our honorary president, M. van Swinderen, Netherland Minister for Foreign Affairs.
M. van Swinderen said a few words congratulating the delegates on the progress made towards the goal which they had set before them, and accepted on behalf of the Netherland Government the fresh task which they had been invited to undertake and in the execution of which they would count on the active support of the signatory Governments. He then declared the Conference closed.
To the superficial observer it might perhaps appear that little had been achieved by the Second Opium Conference, but a closer comparison of the position of affairs as they were at the close of the first Conference with the present situation will show that such a conclusion is unwarranted. At the close of the first Conference twelve Powers had signed a convention to regulate the trade in opium, morphia, and cocaine, but had simultaneously come to the conclusion that there could be no idea of any practical enforcement of the provisions of that convention without first securing the co-operation of numerous Governments who had not even been represented at the Conference. At present the position is far different; a large majority of the Govern- ments of the world have signed the convention, several have already signified their readiness to ratify, and only a very small minority, though representing powerful interests, have decided to postpone ratification, in the hope of first securing the co-operation of the Governments which have not yet signed.
In our report on the work of the first Conference, we claimed to have established a new principle of international morality in laying down that, in regard to the traffic in these harmful drugs, it was not sufficient for a particular State to take measures for the protection of its own subjects, but that it must also assist the efforts of other countries by organising international control over the traffic in these drugs; but we pointed out that, in order to give adequate effect to this principle, a substantial degree of unanimity among the nations of the world as to the measures to be adopted was essential. We now claim that a long step has been made towards the attainment of that unanimity. The second Conference has served to review the international
position and accelerate the pace.
Our instructions were to direct our efforts to securing the co-operation of the signatory Governments in such measures as, in the opinion of the delegates, were most likely to induce those countries which, for one reason or another, had not yet signed,
* TRANSLATION.—"That if the signature of all the Powers invited in accordance with paracroph 1 of article 23 be not obtained by the 31st December, 1913, the Government of the Netherlands do immediately invite the signatory Powers to appoint delegates to proceed to The Hague to examine the possibility of putting in force the International Upium Convention of the 23rd January, 1912.”
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to sign the convention without further delay, and thus enable His Majesty's Govern- ment to ratify. A perusal of the final protocol will, we think, show that we have succeeded in carrying out our instructions to the letter. It would nevertheless be idle to disguise the fact that the refusal of His Majesty's Government to ratify, there and then, was a cause of great disappointment to many of the delegates. venture, however, to point out that the position is already different from what it was when His Majesty's Government decided that the question of ratification must be postponed. After the suminoning of the Conference, but before the opening of its sessions, Chile and Nicaragua had signed; during the Conference Uruguay intimated its intention of signing, though it has not as yet done so, while since its close, according to information received from the Netherland Government, Peru, whose abstention was so fatal to any effective_control of the cocaine trade, has come into line; and, more recently, Norway and Sweden have also signed the convention. This reduces the number of non-signatory Powers to nine, viz., Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Roumania, Servia, Switzerland, Turkey, and Uruguay, and of these six have certainly had more vitally important questions to occupy them lately than the regulation of the international trade in certain noxious drugs. There is therefore, we consider, every indication that matters will soon have reached a stage which will justify His Majesty's Government in altering their attitude and ratifying the convention.
M. van Swinderen, in his closing speech, referred to the disappearance of all doubt as to the sincerity of the individual intentions entertained by the Governments concerned as being the great forward step made by the Conference, and he further expressed his conviction that the task of civilisation to which the Conference had devoted its energies would be realised in its widest conception. We sincerely hope, nay, we have every reason to believe, that events will justify M. van Swinderen's confidence. There may be delays and disappointments yet to be encountered; several Powers have still to ratify before the putting into force of the convention; there will then be further difficulties to be surmounted in regard to the enactment of the legislative and other measures entailed, and finally there will be the fixing of the date for the enforce- ment of those measures. Time must elapse before this final stage is reached, but, without wishing to be unduly optimistic, we may at least say that there seems every indication that we have reached a point from which we cannot go back, but are bound to go forward till the work that the Powers which framed the convention set before them is finally accomplished.
In view of the fact that the putting into force of the convention by Great Britain must necessitate the enactment of entirely new legislation in respect of the drugs which are the subject of the convention, it would appear desirable that the Department concerned should have in preparation a Bill to give effect to the provisions therein laid down, in anticipation of the next and subsequent stages which must follow upon the deposit of ratification, which has already commenced.
Before closing, there is one further point to which we wish to draw attention. In the list, which accompanied our instructions, of the dominions, colonies, dependencies, and protectorates of His Majesty which have refused to sign the convention, we noticed the names of the Union of South Africa, of several of our West Indian colonies, and of British Guiana and British Honduras. The question of the signature of the British colonies was not mentioned at the Conference, and the abstention of those figuring in the above-mentioned list may not, perhaps, be considered to have the same importance as, for instance, the abstention of French Cochin-China, to which we have already referred. Nevertheless it is evident that so long as colonies possessing important ports such as those mentioned above, which could be used for the unrestricteil transhipment of opium, morphia, and cocaine to neighbouring countries, refuse to be bound by the provisions of the Opium Convention in regard to the international trade in those drugs, we lay ourselves open to the same criticism that we have applied to the refusal of the other countries to sign, namely, that the abstention of those colonies must prove prejudicial to the full and effective enforcement of international measures for the suppression of the illicit trade in opium, morphia, and cocaine.
Finally, we wish again to give public expression to our grateful sense of the obligation under which the Netherland Government have laid all the Governments interested in this humanitarian work, not only by affording us the opportunity of meeting together for discussion, but also for so readily undertaking for the second time the task of securing further signatures to the convention. We feel that the whole world owes a debt of gratitude to the Government of the Netherlands for the repeated proofs they have given of their readiness to promote international settlement of
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