CO129-471 - Public Offices - 1921 — Page 420

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It is not a very long time to look back to the days when anti-opium agitation was a favourite pastime with a certain section of our countrymen, and Englishmen indulged to the full the national penchant for self-depreciation. Trafficking in opium was stigmatised as an "immoral trade." The helpless and innocent Chinese were said to have "opium forced upon them." It was a blot on Britain's escutcheon," and a great deal of talk to the same purpose. The Chinese press, naturally, took us at our own valuation, and even went one better than our own mentors. The trade in opium was said to be a nefarious scheme to keep China poor and to rob her people of their national stamina, so that they would never be able to take the place in the community of nations that was theirs by right, and so on ad nauseam. In May 1906 the Parliament of Great Britain passed a resolution stigmatising the opium traffic as being "morally indefensible," and in September of the same year the Court in Peking issued an edict ordering the abolition of opium-smoking within ten years. In 1909 the International Opium Commission met in Shanghai and decided to give all needed assistance to China to enable her to rid herself of the incubus of opium. In 1911 an agreement was come to between the Governments of China and Great Britain, whereby the importation of opium into any of the provinces of China which could prove that they were themselves clean from the planting of the poppy was forbidden. By the end of March 1917 China declared that opium was no longer grown within her borders and the importation of Indian opium ceased. Reformers the world over held this to be, as indeed it was, a great moral achievement, and for a brief period China was in the limelight, and her action compared to that of America, in freeing the slaves or of Russia in abolishing the sale of vodka. Enthusiasts asked whether it were not possible that the most ancient of the nations was about to set a new standard of national morality.

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But, alas! how soon are the mighty fallen! It is easy to glow with high enthusiasm for a brief moment, but it is hard to have the 2 o'clock courage that sticks to its purpose when the enthusiasm has all ebbed away. The Chinese describe them- selves as five-minute enthusiasts. They can make good resolutions, but have not the tenacity to see them through. They are not unlike the rest of the world in this respect. Russia abolished vodka, but the Russian peasant may bemuse himself to his heart's content to-day and nobody will him

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America freed her slaves, but, nay. though she acknowledges the negro to be a man, she will not call him a brother.

We went into the war to end war, to replace secret treaties by fair and open contracts, to make Britain a land for heroes to dwell in, and to do a dozen equally impossible things which it irks us too much even to write of. And so we rise ou the crest of one wave only to sink in the trough of the next. We are enthusiasts in our youth when we see how much may be done and pessimists in our old age when we are conscious that so little has been accomplished. Happy are we if, like Galileo, we have faith to believe, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, that "it" moves. We must have a like faith in China's future. She is now passing through a period of reaction from the bound forward which she made at the time of the revolution, and the recrudescence of opium-smoking is only one of the symptoms of that general ataxy with which the body politic is afflicted. It would be a thousand pities if the country were allowed to slj back into the degrading habit of opium-smoking, which made China a byword amongst the nations before the purge of 1917. But one thing is worthy of note. China needed a spur to stimulate her to the exertion needed to rid the land of opium. That epur was found in the promise made by Great Britain that when China was clear of opium the importation of the drug from India should cease. Now our Government has intimated that in no circumstances will the export of opium from India to China be resumed; the spur has been removed, and the planting and smoking of opium have been very generally resumed.

There is a parallel here to which we would call attention. China is anxious that the extra-territorial rights of the Treaty Powers should be rescinded. She has been promised that when her judiciary and penal systems have been reformed, the treaties in which these rights are stipulated will be open to reconsideration. This is a powerful spur urging China forward; were those rights abrogated without the reforms which are now demanded as a preliminary to the discussion, should we not see the present reformi falter and fall as we have seen the movement for opium suppression fail before final and complete success has been attained?

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(2.)

The Great Wealth of Shensi.

Record Harvests: Opium Fortunes: Famine Relief now spells Pauperisation. The harvest of the Sian-fu plain this year promises to be a record oue, possibly the best for thirty years. Usually a good crop yields about 8 tons to the mow, a very good one, 1 tan (10 ton), but this year, at least, south of the Wa River, farmers are assured that the mow will yield anything from 12 to 15 tons, and in very good land more than that.

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Unfortunately, not all the land is sown with grains, for much has been given up to opium cultivation some districts are a veritable devil's garden, as the poppy is now in full bloom, and I have noted that, where the scarcity has been greatest, there opium is most in evidence. I am informed that one hsien alone has yielded 800,000 dollars in opium taxes, and this is a low estimate. It must be so, as it is an open secret that only friends of the powers that be are given the coveted office of opium inspectors, as their fortunes are assured in a few days, they being bribed to declare only a fraction of the amount actually grown. Recently, thirteen carts laden with opium, gold and silver passed from one city a little to the west to another city well known to me; this, with six women, was a present to an official in the latter.

(3.)

Dust in Shanghai.

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Has there ever been so much dust blowing about Shanghai as recently? Possibly, observant residents of lon gstanding may be in a position to express an opinion, but, should it happen that the dust has been greater recently, it may be found to have an intimate relation to the famine conditions prevailing in the north. This, however, must not be taken as an attempt to express any scientific view it may be nothing more than giving the imagination a little play. The view, it may be explained, originates from a paper read by Mr. Geary Gardner recently at Manchester, wherein he pointed to the cause of the famine. Deforestation in North China has led to a change in climate and consequently in soil, and he instances (as did Colonel Bruce in his book) the great stretches of loess which are encountered in the north and west. blown about by every storm which occurs, and sweeping down over once fertile regions tends to reduce them to the state of a desert. Bearing that view in mind, it is surely not an excessive effort of the imagination to suggest that Shanghai may now be suffering unduly for the same reason as the northern provinces. But, whether or not, it is safe to agree with Mr. Gardner that until afforestation on an adequate scale is put into operation the menace to China through famine will continue unabated.

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