Private and Personal.
}
Ful A A
36
33
Government House,
Singapore.
September 22nd,1927.
My dear Wilson,
I am not very happy about the proposed
arrangements for our opium supply. The Department cabled
to me on September 2nd, recommending Bellairs Atkinson
as our Agents for the purchase of opium from Persia;
but as the matter is not urgent from our point of view, as we have an ample stock of opium on hand, I propose
to reply by despatch, not by wire, and must first consult
the Government of the F.M.S. and, it may be, the Governments
of the U.M.S. also.
What I should like to be quite sure of is that
Bellairs Atkinson are in a specially favourable position
to purchase opium for us at reasonable prices. I have not,
of course, seen the terms of the proposed Agreement with
Messrs Bellairs Atkinson, and I therefore am not in a
position to judge how, and to what extent, our interests
are safeguarded. There appears to be some reason to
think, however, that the market for Persian opium is, at
the present time, a practical monopoly in the hands of a
ring of black-listed firms with which is connected the
Mr. M.A.Nemazee, whom Sir Malcolm Delevingne is for ever
hunting, carrying his crusade against him as far as
Batavia on the one side and to Siam and French Indo-China
on the other. The grounds upon which this crusade is
based an alleged shady transaction in connection
with opium supplied to Ind-China, with which, however,
the French Authorities there seem to have been better
satisfied than is Sir Malcolm do not appear, on the
face of them, to be extremely strong; and if these
people