CO129-451 - Public Offices - 1918 — Page 237

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

OPIUM.

CONFIDENTIAL.

(245234]

No. 1.

C O

234

_6281

[January 17]

REC

RER 4 FEB 18

SECTION 1.

Sir,

Foreign Office to India Office.

Foreign Ofice, January 17, 1918. IN the letters from this Office of the 18th September and the 31st October, I transmitted in original, by direction of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, despatches as noted in the margin from His Majesty's hargé d'Affaires at Peking,* enclosing the reports of the consular officers appointed to inspect the provinces of Kwangtung, Yunnan, Kueichow, Kiangsi, Kiangsu, and Shansi, for the cultivation of opium.

I am now directed by Mr. Balfour to refer to these reports (printed copies of which are enclosed herewith for convenience of reference), and to enquire whether the Secretary of State for India concurs in the view taken by Mr. Balfour that they are satisfactory and disclose no evidence which would justify His Majesty's Government in delaying. their consent to the formal closing of the six provinces as contemplated by the now expired Opium Agreement of 1911.

If Mr. Secretary Montagu concurs, Mr. Balfour proposes to instruct Sir John Jordan to intimate as soon as possible to the Chinese Government that be is prepared to make arrangements with them for the formal closing of the provinces in question.

At the same time I am to refer you to the correspondence connected with the Opium Combine Agreement, and in particular to the letter of the 29th September from this Office, and 1 am to add that as a condition precedent to these arrangements Mr. Balfour proposes, in accordance with the view expressed in the last paragraph of that letter, in which the Secretary of State for India has already concurred, to instruct Sir John Jordan, if he sees no objection, to insist upon the Chinese Government withdrawng their note to Mr. Alston of the 18th May, 1917, as an admission of their misinterpretation of the conditions of the 1911 agreement, and of the illegality of the position they adopted in regard to the premature closing of the ports of Shanghai and Canton.

I am, &c.

[2766 r —1]

* No. 242, August 6, 1917′ and No. 268, August 20, 1917.

W. LANGLEY.