CO129-406 - Public Offices - 1913 — Page 21

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As a result of his tour Mr. Smith is of opinion that smoking has considerably decreased in the areas visited, and that traffic in the drug is restricted and dangerous, whilst he has been unable to find any evidence of crops which can be harvested this year.

British Consulate, Chinan Fu, May 28, 1913.

Enclosure 5 in No. 1.

Memorandum by Mr. Fitzmaurice.

IN accordance with instructions, I left Tien-tsin on Tuesday the 22nd April, arriving in Tsinan on the same day. It was there arranged that I should undertake the inspection of the Shih Ping and I Chow districts. The Peking delegates called at noon on the 24th April, and I left on the following morning to visit the Shih Ping district to the west of Tsinan.

Cultivation.

Crossing the Huang Ho at Ch'i Ho and keeping to the north of the main road, I reached Shih Ping on the evening of the second day, and on the return journey passed through San Shih Li P'u and, after recrossing the river at Tung Chia Ssu, Ch'ang Ch'ing. On the morning of the 26th April I made what proved to be the only find of poppies during the trip. Just outside the village of Chi Chia Chuang in Ch'ang Ch'ing Hsien, beside a small river called the Liu Shui Ho, I came across a man in the act of destroying a patch of poppy seedlings which were barely an inch in height. He said that he was hoeing them up as a result of orders received from the ti pao on the previous day. The patch was approximately 18 yards by 28 yards; it was hidden from view by the high bank of the river on one side and by a roughly-constructed earth mound on the other. In a garden in the same neighbourhood a few small plants were also found, but I was satisfied with the explanation given-that these seedlings had escaped by chance the destruction of the crop. The deputies had failed to remain with me on the morning in question, although I had pointed out to them that they should do

From this time on, however, they accompanied me everywhere.

80.

On arrival at Chang Ching, I saw the Chi Chia Chuang poppy grower being dragged through the streets handcuffed, a chain round his neck, and on his back a placard describing his offence. I was told that he had been sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and to 4,000 blows with the light bamboo. The residents of Chang Ch'ing petitioned me to ask for a pardon for him; but whatever I might have done would have been so liable to misrepresentation that I refused to take any action; I had an idea, too, that the petition was instigated by the magistrate who was dismissed from his post as a result of the find. On my

final return to Tsinan the commissioner of the interior told me that he had reduced the heavy sentence imposed by the Ch'ang Ch'ing Hsien on the

poppy grower, but the magistrate had not been reinstated.

On returning from Shih Ping, I spent one day in Tsinan and left on the 1st May to inspect the I Chow district, reaching Yi Hsien by rail the same evening. I spent three days along the Kiangsu border, between Yi Hsien and T'an Ch'êng, but made no find. The south of Shantung is overrun with troops who have been charged with the task of destroying the poppy as well as that of guarding against raids by the Chiangsu brigands, and I am told by missionaries in Yi Hsien and also heard from other sources that the officials had been very thorough in the work of suppression, and that there was no poppy growing in the district. I heard a different story at Tan Chêng, where a missionary told me that the poppy was being cultivated extensively at Hung Hua P'u, a lawless district infested by brigands, which, he said, the officials and soldiers did not dare to visit. There seems to be a perpetual state of war around T'an Chiêng, between the soldiers and the brigands, and the heads of nine of the latter were on the city gate on my arrival. My servants asked if they might be excused from going to Hung Hua P'u, and the deputies were obviously unwilling to go; the magistrate, however, readily provided an escort to accompany me thither, but, although I visited every village belonging to Shantung in the neighbourhood, there was no poppy to be found. The T'an Chêng missionary was wrong, too, in saying that the authority of the officials did not extend to Hung Hua P'u.

At I Chow and Chuchow the missionaries knew of no poppy still growing; they told

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me that it had been sown on a very large scale everywhere, but subsequently uprooted. The people had expected that the hands of the Government would be too full with other matters to permit of a campaign against opium. From Chuchow I went on to Ishui where the report of the success of the repressive measures was less convincing than it had been anywhere, and the magistrate told me it would not be easy to guarantee his district as free from cultivation. A German missionary told me that he had recently seen the poppy growing in walled gardens in Northern Ishui, when passing on horseback: if he had been on foot, he would have seen nothing. But he did not belong to the Ishui district and could give me no idea as to places, directions or distances. There were not many of these walled gardens, they belonged to wealthy people only, and it would only be by chance that, even though keeping off the roads, one would make a find of this sort. It was common report in Ishui that poppy was being grown in the district, and that its existence was known to the officials; and the provincial deputy told me later that he had written to the tutu asking for the dismissal of the magistrate. In the neighbourhood of Ishui I met several soldiers who told my servants that immediately after our arrival at Chuchow, word was sent to Ishui repeating the order for the destruction, before we could reach the district, of any poppy still remaining. They said they had been sent out in consequence, and were returning to Ishui after the completion of their task. I could not ascertain their number, but a great number of these soldiers had been sent out; and the fact that they were sent at such short notice would seem to confirm the report that the officials knew of such poppy as was growing at that time. It was hardly surprising that I was able to find nothing. In Mengyin I heard that very little poppy had been grown ever since the original prohibition of cultivation, as the extortions of the yamen runners had taken away all profit from the growth of the crop; the missionaries were convinced that none had escaped destruction this year. On leaving Mengyin I crossed the Meug Shan and spent some days travelling within the square, having Mengyin, Feihsien, Tenghsien, and Yenchow, as the four corners, reaching the last named on the 21st May. From Yeuchow I travelled to Tsinan by rail, and continued my journey thence to Tien-tsin on the 24th May. No find of any sort was made in the I Chow district.

In many places, particularly in the Shih P'ing district, the drought had been so severe that the poppy would probably not have survived even if it had escaped destruction at the hands, or by the order, of the officials. The bulk of the crop had been uprooted early in the spring, but an officer who accompanied me for about a week said that the province could not have been described as "clean" till after the arrival of the deputy in Tsinan. Telegrams were sent in all directions, repeating the order for the suppression of opium cultivation, and telling of the coming of deputies and even of the dismissal of the Ch'ang Ch'ing magistrate. Proclamatious were issued to the same effect, and detailed the punishments for any breach of the regulations.

On several occasions I heard, from my servants and from the three detectives whom I employed, that small patches of poppy had been destroyed one or two days before my arrival; the most reliable of these reports concerned places to the east of Shih Tzu Lu in Chuchow, the Ishui district, and San Kuan Miao in Feihsien; but there were several others, so that there was reason to believe that in some places the crop was only destroyed when the near approach of my party made the presence of poppies too dangerous for the owners. I obtained information that the destruction of poppy at this late hour was due to warnings sent ahead by the provincial deputy. The deputy appointed by the Ministry of the Interior was also of this opinion, and even volunteered the statement that he thought we should have found poppy in several places but for this facr. It may or may not have been true; it would have been impossible to prevent him from sending word if he wished. All that I could do was to keep my projected movements secret, and on one occasion, when he wrote a letter to a military post against my wishes, I insisted on his having the messenger brought back and the letter destroyed.

Import of Native Opium.

I was unable to obtain any proof of the import of native opium. It was regarded as a recognised fact in the south of Shantung that opium was smuggled across the Kiangsu frontier-according to some of my informants, in very large quantities. But the fact that brigands abound over the Kiangsu border has given that province a bad name, and the inhabitants are thought capable of all nefarious practices, including the cultivation and smuggling of opium; so the reports were probably exaggerated. It was also said that much of the opium smuggled into Shantung passed through Kiangsu by way of Chingk'ou, where I was told that no steps of any sort were taken to control the

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