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no thing in the renewal of the Opium Contract between the Govern- ment of India and that of the Straits Settlements to prevent the arrangements contemplated in the Opium Convention of 1912 from being brought into effective force, seeing that the main object of the Hague Convention is to confine the use of opium to medical purposes.
4. Lord Curzon is emphatically of opinion that the time has
now come when a serious effort should be made to limit the dura-
tion of both these Opium Monopolies. His Lordship feels that so long as large quantities of opium continue to enter Singapore and
Hongkong, more especially the latter, it is inevitable that a
considerable portion of the drug will still be smuggled from these
territories into China. His Lordship is fully alive to the fact
that a curtailment of the Hongkong Opium Monopoly must involve a
heavy sacrifice of revenue for the Colony, but at the same time
the continued existence of that Monopoly hampers the freedom of action of His Majesty's Government with a view to a reduction of
the annual limit of opium chests re-exported from Hongkong to the
Portuguese Colony of Kacao, in regard to which, as Lord Milner is
aware from correspondence ending with the communication from this
Office F 1930/17/10 of September 2nd, 1920, the Portuguese Govern-
ment has been already approached early in the present year.
5. Lord Curzon is of opinion that the question of the Hongkong
and Singapore Opium Monopolies has become of increasing importance
in view of the ratification by Great Britain of the Versailles
Treaty, and thereby of the Covenant of the League of Nations, by
Article 23 (c) of which the Members of the League "will entrust
the League with the general supervision over the execution of
agreements with regard to the traffic in opium and other
dangerous/