"eye-wash".
S
23.
However, as I have said, domestic considerations
were not the only motive, nor indeed the chief motive,
for my action. I was more concerned with the palpable
failure of this Colon, to fulfil the international
obligations undertaken on its behalf. No one who
has perused the voluminous literature that has
flowed from the Secretariat of the League of Nations
since its assumption of duties in relation to the
Hague Opium Convention, can fail to observe that,
if there is one note more constantly reiterated than
another, it is a note of alarm lest smugglers should
defeat the objects of the Convention; and, if there
is one remedy more consistently urged than another,
it is the assumption of governmental control over
opium traffic. That diagnosis and that remedy
were, as you know, finally embodied in the most
formal way in the preamble and first article of the
agreement made at the First Opium Conference at
Geneva.
24. In the present condition of southern
China, the Governments of European Colonies
established on her coast Hong Kong, Macao,
Kwong-chau-wan
can maintain control over the
opium traffic in one way only, namely, by themselves
supplying the insistent demand within their own
territories and resolutely holding their own market
against all smugglers. This can only be done by
adjusting the quality and price of official supplies
23
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