March 6, 1909.]
a total exceeding two hundred, cannot materially affect the value of the Opium Farmer's monopoly, and it will occasion no surprise to learn that whatever claim the Farmer might have considered himself justified in preferring in the matter was waived and that the negotiations were con- ducted in a perfectly conciliatory manner. What business has hitherto been done by the twenty-six houses which are now closed will no doubt be distributed among the remaining houses, and the only people to suffer are the persons who have been thus deprived of their occupations, and- unless the premises are let for other purposes -the Colonial Treasury which will suffer a small loss in revenue from taxation. In Shanghai, Amoy and other places arrange- ments have been made for closing in quarterly batches the whole of the divans within the jurisdiction of the respective municipal councils, but so far as we are able to learn the future course of action in Hongkong has not yet been settled. The contract with the Opium Farmer has another twelve months to run, and whatever decison is taken in the meantime is not, we surmise, likely to come into operation until the 1st of March 1910. Now that the Opium Commission at Shang- hai has practically concluded its deliberations we may not have long to wait for the Imperial Government's decision upon the recommendations Bent Home by His Excellency the Governor. Though their nature bad not been made public we may be quite sure that the object of them all is to avoid any violent dislocation of the Colony's finances, and when at the end of February next the present opium contract expires, it can hardly be contemplated that the business will entirely cease. No better plan of deal. ing with this difficult question has been suggested than that formulated last year by the local Committee of the China Association. Their suggestion was that the divans should not be interfered with during the period of the present farm, but that the number of chests drawable should be re- duced from 1,800 to 1,200 per annum, and that in the new contract to be made in 1910 the number should be reduced to 900 chests, until 1913 when a scheme of annual reduc- tion should be adopted, the details depend- ing upon the progress of China's efforts to eradicate poppy cultivation. The advantage of this plan of gradual reduction is that any violent dislocation of the Colony's finances is avoided, and it should appeal to the most ardent advocate of the suppression of opium as a plan better calculated to achieve that purpose than the annual compulsory closing of a certain percentage of the houses which would not necessarily result in a correspond. ing decrease in the quantity of opium consumed.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
CONSULAR REPORTS.
(Daily Press, March 3rd.)
|
AN IMPERIAL ARMY.
187
"
(Daily Press, March 4th.) Since the South African war no subject has been so widely discussed in the Empire as the subject of Imperial organisation. It has come to be recognised in England that the sentiment of a new and individual nationality in the modern and political, rather than the racial sense of the term, is of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a growing and permanent characteristic South Africa, and this sentiment, it is patent, is already strong enough to wreck any scheme of Imperial organisation which seems imperial union exists as strongly in the to antagonise it. The desire for
Colonies as in the Motherland, and the discussion which has taken place during the last six years on the subject of imperial federation is now beginning to take shape in some tangible form. We publish to-day a telegram reporting that "with certain cepted the scheme creating an Imperial modifications the Commonwealth has ac-
General Staff. The Dominion of Canada has also accepted the scheme. It is the outcome of certain suggestions made at the Imperial Conference two years ago in London, by. the Secretary of State for War, with a view to assimilating the war organisations of the various parts of the Empire. One of these suggestions was that the General Staff created on the recommendation, of LORD ESHER'S Committee, should be made Im- perial in the widest sense. object in putting forward this proposal for Mr. HALDANE'S
throughout the Empire was that the General an interchange of General Staff officers
Staff should become "an imperial school of military thought imbued with the same traditions, accustomed to look at military problems from the same point of view, and acquainted with the principles and theo- ries generally accepted at headquarters. REUTER informed us about a month ago that the Canadian Military authorities had conferred with the General Staff and arrived giving effect to the proposal. A memo- at an understanding as to the best means of
randum was finally drawn up giving form General Staff on a broad Imperial basis by to the suggestions and establishing the
doubtless lead in time, perhaps at an early means of a system of exchanges. This will
date, to the readjustment of the Imperial military arrangements and the elimination from the present system of the differences and distinctions which have grown up under conditions which time and development have wholly changed. It will lead also, no doubt, to a binding obligation between the Governments of all parts of the Empire to secure similarity in armament, warlike stores, and all things really essential to such uniformity as is necessary to secure that when the Imperi..l reserves furnished by the terr torial forces from different parts of the Empire are brought together in the field, complication and confusion shall be fact the Colonial Governments have in the avoided. We believe that as a matter of
past made every endeavour to assimilate the pattern of arms, stores and equipment generally with those of the Imperial forces. That is so at least in the case of the ly the case this new scheme will be of great Australian Colonies, and if it is not general- value in securing the desired uniformity. We do not gather that the Colonial forces are affected in any other way by this scheme. The Regular Army and ita re- serves will continue to be the nucleus of the Imperial Army, and for great defen- sive wars the Imperial Army will consist, as in the South African campaign, of the Regular Army and its Reserves, augmented
The United States Government has long required from its Consuls abroad not merely annual reports on the trade of the districts in which they are stationed, but occasional reports on subjects of general and commercial interest which are published for general information as soon as they are received. Thus we notice that there has recently been published in the United States a series of Consular reports on the tendency of prices in the Far East since 1906, measured by silver currency, the Consuls Being requested to report whether firms importing from the United States, Great Britain and Germany had found depreciation of silver a matter of serious embarrassment to their business during last year, and whether the deprecia- tion of silver had stimulated to any considerable extent
the export trade. latest to come under our notice, but many We quote this as a sample because it is the readers are more or less familiar with what must have now become quite a long and valuable series of reports descriptive of the various industries carried on in the districts to which the Consuls are accredited. Every now and then, too, we observe in American commercial journals hints from Consuls that this or that district offers an opportunity for pushing some particular class of goods. All these special reports and timely suggestions doubtless have great value for the mer chant and manufacturer. and it has been a subject of frequent complaint in the British commercial journals that the same assistance is not rendered to trading interests by our own Consular officials. A couple of Consular reports which reached us by the last mail indicate that the British Foreign Office working in co-operation with the Board of Trade has turned over a new leaf in this respect. We have before us a Report on the Matting Industry in Japan, running into twenty-one pages, and another on the Raw Silk Industry of Japan and on Habutae (Japanese Manufactured Silk) which runs to fifty-five pages. In these reports the fullest information is given on all that concerns the industry. Glancing at the Report on the Matting Industry we find that it treats of the interest of British merchants in the trade, its distribution, the characteristics of matting, locality of production and methods of cultivation, looms used in of applying
weaving, possibilities to
power and steam looms, the circumstances of the producers, the factories, the sizes and qualities of matting, and much other information of a similar character. The Silk Industry is dealt with in the same ample and informing manner, A collection of reports of this character covering the industries of every country in the world
commercial public. should prove of inestimable value to the We notice that the two first of the kind to be presented to Parlia- we have mentioned are by no means the
mout, for a list of nearly fifty such Reports is given, including half a dozen from the Far East, viz. one on the Cotton Mills of China; another on Land Taxation in the province of Honam; there is a Report on Japanese paper making; another on Paper Mills in Japan, a third from Japan on Tea Culture; and a fourth on the gold mines in Formosa. There is one from Corea on the results of experiments in Cotton Culture. The Government doesn't advertise " and this "new series of Miscellaneous Reports" consequently remains we fear but little known to the public for whose inform- ation they have been written.
Of the three chief towns of Jara-Batavia, Sourabaya and Samarang-the last name is the
most unhealthy. Dr. De Vogel, the Principal Civil Medical Officer of the town, says that Samarang has a heavy death-rate which, in some sections, reaches the enormous figure of 300 per 1,000! The houses are mostly bad and insanitary, and the drainage system falls far short of requirements. In the outskirts of the town, there is plenty of high-lying land suitable for building, but unhapply the Chinese have
been allowed to mark them off into ceme- teries. The dead hand now stops the extension of the town in healthier ground.
The Mani- cipality is at a loss how to remedy matters, and has appointed a committee to consider the question. The sitration has become intolerable. Dead Chinese occupy land solely required by living Europeans and natives who are dying off in the lower levels.
water
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