Home Office,
9th July, 1923.
430
:
to have the figures in the Table on page 177 carefully checked and brought up to date. At the same time I think it would be very
desirable, in the case of the Colonies whose rate of consumption is high as compared with other Colonies, to remind them that special attention will have to be paid to this point in their examination of the proposals of the Advisory Committee, as it will be very difficult for the British Goverment to defend auch a high rate of
consumption.
Yours sincerely,
Malcolm Delevigne
Dear Grindle,
We have received a letter from the Foreign Office dated 22nd June (and are informed a similar letter has been addressed to you) enclosing a dispatch from Jir Lonald Macleay at Peking, on the subject of the activities of the Feking International Anti-Opium Association. The Foreign Office want to know whether we can provide material for a reply to the criticisms made by the Association upon the opium policy of certain British Colonies, particularly the Straits Settlements and British North Borneo, and I presume they have made the same request to
you.
I am afraid it will be very difficult to prepare a defence of those two Colonies which public opinion generally would consider satisfactory. They do compare, of course, very unfavourably with most
I enclose a Table other places, and everybody knows that this is so. which was prepared for the Oplum Advisory Committee at its recent
meeting.
In your letter to as of the 12th August last (36956/22) you BULLested several reasons why the consumption in North Borneo would naturally be higher than in Hong Kong, but I doubt if we can, in the light of Part II of the Opium Convention, defend the enormous excess
(By the of consumption in the Straits Settlements and North Borneo. way, the flures in the Table do not tally with those in your letter of 12th August, and if the Table is right North Borneo is much worse than I am inclined to think therefore that the appears from your letter.) wiser course is for the Embassy at Peking to leave Dr. Aspland's attacks unanswered, and if we are questioned about the matter here, to reply that the Government's polic is contained in the proposals submitted to the
Opium/