CO129-445 - Public Offices - 1917 — Page 361

[This Document is the Property of F: Britannic Majesty's Government.]

C.O

OPIUM.

58546

CONFIDENTIAL.

REC?

REG 29 NOV 17

[210318]

No. 1.

357

[November 7.]

SECTION 1.

1

I

+

Sir,

Foreign Office to India Office.

Foreign Office, November 7, 1917. WITH reference to your letter of the 11th ultimo, expressing the concurrence of the Secretary of State for India in the reply which the Secretary of State for Freign Affairs proposed to send to His Majesty's Minister at Peking approving the terms of Mr. Alston's note of the 26th June to the Chinese Government on the subject of the 1911 Opium Agreement, I am directed by Mr. Balfour to transmit, for the information of Mr. Secretary Montagu, copies of telegraphic correspondence which have passed between Sir John Jordan and this Department on the question whether His Majesty's Legation in Peking should intervene officially in the negotiations between the Chinese Government and the Opium Combine for the disposal of the stocks in bond in Shanghai and Cauton.*

Mr. Balfour desires me to state that after careful consideration he is in favour of adopting the second of the three courses suggested in Sir J. Jordan's telegram No. 502 of the 27th ultimo, viz., to make no further protests to the Chinese Government against their violation of the 1911 Agreement by declaring the ports of Shanghai and Canton closed to the import of opium before the six remaining open provinces had been declared free from opium cultivation under the terms of that agreement, and to leave the merchants to continue to make their own arrangements with the Chinese Government in regard to the disposal of their stocks as they have done since May 1915.

alternative is based on the following

Mr. Balfour's selection of this considerations:-

The holder of the stocks is not necessarily the importer, and he does not consider that His Majesty's Government are under any obligation towards the holder, who could have sold his stocks long ago at a fair price if he had not cherished the hope of obtaining an exorbitant figure by holding them back. He is strongly of the opinion that there is no reason why His Majesty's Government should put themselves out in the least for the Combine, and, in fact, every reason why they should not, as any official intervention by His Majesty's Minister at Peking in the matter at issue betweea the Combine and the Chinese Government, either in the form of mediation or by direct negotiations between the two Governments, would only result in bringing His Majesty's Government into odum with both the Chinese Government, the auti-opium faction in this country, and eventually in all probability with the Combine itself.

In these circumstances Mr. Balfour proposes, subject to Mr. Montagu'a concurrence, to inform Sir John Jordan by telegraph that His Majesty's Government prefer to adopt the second of the three alternative courses suggested. I am to request ihat an early reply may be returned to this letter, as is Majesty's Minister at Peking is awaiting instructions.

I am,

&c. W. LANGLEY.

*Sir J. Jordan. Nos. 471, 502, 514 (Telegraphic), October 16 and 27, and November 3; to ditto. No. 407 (Telegraphic), October 23, 1917.

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