وع
369
C.O.
12290
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Maiesty's Government.]
[M44k07.]
12
WPR 13.
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[10634]
No. 1.
Mr. Taylor to Sir Edward Grey.—(Received March 7.)
Hôtel du Paradis, Cannes, Dear Sir Edward Grey,
March 4, 1913. THE fact that the latest proposals of China re opium are of such importance that you may be bringing them before the next Cabinet meeting is my reason for troubling you with this letter.
Lord Crewe was good enough to give privately to a deputation from the Anti- Opinn Board which I took to him nearly three weeks ago some idea of what China is proposing. Though we are keeping that information absolutely private, we have consulted a very few of our most valued colleagues (such as Mr. Joshua Rowntree, ex-M.P. for Scarborough) so as to be able to present to the Government the opinion of some at least of the best-informed people in Great Britain on the question. We are unanimous in believing that if China's willingness to pay money for these stocks were, under present circumstances, to be taken advantage of, not only foreigners but our own people at home would feel that China had been roughly treated. Surely our infliction of this "morally indefensible traffic " upon China for seventy years past has punished her enough already! If money reparation is owed by anyone, it is surely by Great Britain or by India! If it is owing to anyone, surely it is owing to China !
The 1907 agreement was made by us, I presume, with two objects, viz., (1) to get a little more revenue for India so as to accustom her to do without it, and (2) by the pari passu arrangement, to give the central Government of China a lever to enforce the suppression policy upon her provincial authorities.
As I have proved up to the hilt over and over again (and the India Office have never denied it), our opium receipts since 1907 have already enormously exceeded the expectation for the whole extinguishing period, viz., up to the 31st December, 1916. So No. 1 condition is satisfied.
No. 2, the pari passu policy, was defensible up to a point. But when it becomes the case (as for two years past it has been) that the Chinese Government has to enforce opium suppression by the most drastic measures, including on a considerable scale capital punishment, contemporaneously with the admission of the foreign drug at a time when the production of the article has become almost inconceivably profitable, the position of China is an absolutely intolerable one. In the judgment of every fair-minded man, it surely calls for her unconditional and immediate release from the obligation to take any more of our Indian article. Only last week I read a telegram from Peking saying that in the province of Tukien alone "the troops were steadily destroying poppy and killing hundreds of armed resisters.”
May I once more very respectfully press upon you the great bearing of our present attitude towards China in this respect upon our future relationship with her? It is not a party or a sect or a dynastic section in China that is engaged in this life and death struggle with a gigantic evil. It is every good element in the nation itself that is determinedly grappling with it, and must be permanently embittered against us if we longer stand in its way.
I am sure you must know how long, how considerately I have refrained from worrying you with House of Commons questions. It was always in the belief that very soon you would do the right thing by poor China and set her free. The time has at length come when in very decency we must set her free. I am sure every member of the Cabinet must realise this. Pray let the end be soon.
As to the dealers, left this time with stocks speculatively bought in the horrid hope that China's reform zeal would break down, they deserve no mercy. Their trade is a wicked one; their profits have been large; their ability to bear loss is large too. You have not guaranteed them, the Indian Office has not guaranteed them customers, payments, or profits. In his answers to questions in the House the last two months this point has been well safeguarded by Acland.
But even the dealers' position will be improved if the Indian Government will announce now the resolution which, I imagine, it has already come, viz., to have no
[2850 g-1]
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.