CO129-385 - Public Offices - 1911 — Page 335

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

OPIUM.

CONFIDENTIAL.

C 40533

о

REC?

R$18 FC ||

[46309]

No. 1.

333

[November 20.]

SECTION 2.

M. le Baron,

M. van der Goes to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received November 20.)

Légation des Pays-Bas, Londres, le 18 novembre, 1911. POUR faire suite à mon office en date du 15 de ce mois, j'ai l'honneur de transmettre ci-joint à votre Excellence cinq exemplaires du mémorandum mentionné dans ma lettre précitée, à l'usage des délégués britanniques à la Conférence sur le Trafic de l'Opium.

Veuillez, &c.

VAN DER GOES,

Enclosure in No. 1.

Memorandum for the Netherlands Minister, being an Excerpt from general Instructions issued to American Delegates to the International Opium Conference.

THE need of an international conference was suggested by the American delegation to the International Opium Commission at one of the final sittings of that body which met at Shanghai in February 1909; and although no formal action was taken, the Department of State, having considered the unanimous conclusions arrived at by the commission as a whole, and the report of the American delegates thereto, deemed it advisable to issue a proposal to the interested Governments that a conference should meet at The Hague, or elsewhere, composed of one or more delegates of each of the participating Powers, and that such delegates should have full powers to give to the main salutary propositions of the commission and the essential corollaries derived there- from the force of law and international agreement. Therefore, on the 1st September, 1909, this Government issued a circular proposal to the Governments concerned, in which it was stated that the United States had learned with satisfaction of the results achieved by the International Opium Commission; that in the opinion of the leaders of the anti-opium movement much had been accomplished; and that both the Government and people of the United States recognised that this was largely due to the generous spirit in which the representatives of the Governments concerned approached the subjects submitted to then.

It was pointed out that the Government of the United States appreciated the magnitude of the opium problem and the serious econoraic interests involved in the production of and trade in the drug, and that a deep impression had been made by the friendly co-operation of the Powers financially interested, and by the desire, as expressed by the resolutions of the commission, that the opium evil should he eradicated not only from Far Eastern countries, but also from the home territories and possessions in other parts of the world of the Powers therein represented. It was stated that, as the result of the investigation of the opium problem in the United States, it had become apparent, quite apart from the question as it affected the Philippine Islands, that a serious opium evil obtained in the United States itself; that this was primarily due to the large Chinese population in the country, to the intimate commercial intercourse with the Orient, and to the unrestricted importation of opium and manufacture of morphia.

Thus it was observed that the interest of the United States in the opium problem as material as well as humanitarian, and that, as the result of the investigation made before the meeting of the International Opium Commission, the Congress enacted legislation which aimed to prevent the importation of opium into the United States except for medical purposes. But it was noted that the United States is not an opium-producing country, and that in order to make its present and proposed laws fully effective, and so stamp out the national opium and allied evils, there should be control of opium and other habit-forming drugs shipped to this country; and, therefore, that to attain to this end, it would be necessary to secure international co-operation and the sympathy of opium-producing countries.

Continuing, the proposal stated that this Government, impressed by the gravity of the opium and allied problems, and the desirability of divesting them of local and

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