CO129-373 - Public Offices - 1910 — Page 109

This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]

[B]

OPIUM.

CONFIDENTIAL.

CO

29814

108

[September 14128 SEP 10)

SECTION 1.

[33412]

No. 1.

Sir,

India Office to Foreign Office.—(Received September 14.)

India Office, September 14, 1910.

I AM directed by the Secretary of State for India in Council to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 25th August on the subject of the date for the assembling of the proposed Opium Conference at The Hague, and to suggest that a reply should be made to The Hague Government in the sense that His Majesty's Government have asked the Government of the United States for assurances on certain points and for assent to certain conditions, and that until they have received and considered the reply they are not in a position to intimate their intention to participate in the proposed conference or to suggest a date for the meeting.

With reference to your further letter of the 26th August, 1910, I am directed to inform you that Viscount Morley concurs in the terms of the draft reply to the United States Ambassador, subject to the amendments suggested in the margin of the enclosed copy, and assents to the proposal to reserve for future consideration, after Sir C. Clementi Smith's views have been ascertained, the question of the memorandum on Dr. Wright's report.

With reference to the assurance given in the draft reply as to the enquiries set on foot in this country, I am to suggest that the Board of Trade should be requested to commence the necessary enquiries relating to the manufacture, export, and trade in morphia and cocaine in this country, to consider and advise as to the restrictions to which these might be made subject, and to state when the enquiries are likely to be completed.

I am, &c.

COLIN G. CAMPBELL.

*To Mr. Whitelaw Reid.

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