CO129-371 - Public Offices - 1910 — Page 542

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OPIUM.

CONFIDENTIAL.

>

([10346]

No. 1.

539

[March 26.]

C. O.

SECTION 1.

12549

REC (REG! 28 APR 10

Sir,

India Office to Foreign Office.-(Received March 26.)

India Office, March 24, 1910.

I AM directed by the Secretary of State for India in Council to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated the 21st February, 191, transmitting with remarks a copy of a letter from the London and Edinburgh Committee for the suppression of the Opium Traffic on the subject of the agreement for the gradual extinction of the Indian opium trade with China,

2. In reply, I am to say that it seems doubtful whether the committee's letter calls for a detailed and reasoned reply on the lines suggested in your letter. The Government case has already been stated at length in the reply addressed by the Foreign Office to the Edinburgh Committee on the 8th December, 1909, and that case is not materially disturbed by the considerations advanced by the London and Edinburgh Committee. The reports in the " China White Book No. 3 of 1909," from which the committee quote, were before His Majesty's Government when your letter of the 8th December, 1909, was written, and they entirely bear out the view taken in that letter, that the present question is not whether the ten years' period for the extinction of the Judian trade should be shortened, but whether the Chinese Government will be able to satisfy His Majesty's Government, when the experimental term expires in December of this year, that they have carried out so far their part of the agreement. This being the present position, it is useless to speculate whether total suppression of the poppy cultivation in China will or will not be achieved within or before the appointed time, and what would be the disposition of His Majesty's Government in circumstances at present unknown.

3. I am also to suggest that, for a definitive statement of the present attitude of His Majesty's Government with regard to the ten years' agreement, the committee should be referred to the answer given by the Under-Secretary of State for India in the House of Commons on the 10th March, 1910, to a question asked by Mr. Theodore Taylor. 4. With reference to the last paragraph of your letter, I am to say that the Government of India have now telegraphed that they concur in the suggestion that steps should be taken by the British Government during the present year to ascertain by means of an enquiry conducted by a selected consular officer the extent of poppy cultivation in China prior to the close of 1910. They presume that Sir Alexander Hosie would be the officer selected, and that he would choose his assistants, who would work under his direction. I am to express the hope that Sir Edward Grey will be able to arrange for the enquiry, and that it will be set on foot as soon as practicable. Viscount Morley considers that the revenues of India should not be required to defray any portion of the cost.

I have, &c.

COLIN G. CAMPBELL.

Enclosure in No. 1.

Question asked in the House of Commons, March 10, 1910.

Mr. Theodore Taylor asked whether, seeing that the production of opium in China is being very largely restricted, he is now prepared to respond to the desire of the Chinese Government to shorten the period of nearly eight years during which India is to continue to send opium to China?

Answer.

The Under-Secretary for India (Mr. Montagu).-In undertaking, in response to the request of the Chinese Government, that the Indian opium traffic with China should,

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