July 7.
Tue appointment by the Central Government of two Commissioners to investigate poppy cultivation in Shensi and Fukien is of no more importance than other instances of the government's periodical interest in this matter. By the time they have completed their work the product of the poppy will have been gathered in, and though Peking may fulminate against the practice, its thunder will have been forgotten by the time the next planting season comes round. These tours of investigation are old friends: solemn farces which lead nowhere, for, as our readers know full well, reports from our correspondents of opium-growing in their districts are the rule vather than the exception. They know that in Fukien the farmers have been compelled to grow poppy for the purposes of a double taxation and that in other provinces famine has supervened through plantings delayed by the necessity of waiting until the opium crop has been reaped. Indeed when the indications are considered fully, it is a question reasonably open to doubt as to whether the whole world has not been completely humbugged by the story of the great public opinion in China against opium. For even if the Peking Government were as powerless in this matter as in others, that public opinica. if it existed, could continue to suppress what it is alleged to have stamped out a few Years ago.
At the meeting in, May of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on the opium traffic, some interesting facts were adduced. Mr. J. Campbell (India) declared that the four chief opium-growing countries were China. Persia, Turkey and Tndia. Of these, he said, China grew far more than all the rest put together—twenty-five to forty times as much as India, which grew about as much as Turkey and a little less than Persia. Sir John Jordan thought the figure for China exaggerated, but admitted there were no exact figures and the amount was certainly large. To this Mr. Campbell replied later that So long as China is growing something like 90 per cent. of the world's opium, to India's and Turkey's three per cent. and Persia's four per cent. it would be a meaningless sacrifice to abolish the cultivation of the poppy in India, where it is strictly controlled.'' Finally, we learn, the committee adopted H.E. Tang Tsai-fou's suggestion that the Council of the League be recommended to call the attention of the signatories of the Hague Convention to Article 5, Chapter IV, of the Hague Convention, pledging them to prevent the smuggling into China of the drugs mentioned in the Convention."" Meaning principally opium. To what end should this be done? To prevent opium smoking in China? There is hardly a foreigner throughout the length and breadth, of the country who does not know that the drug is as freely smoked as ever it was. There is not a newspaper reader who has not read almost daily evidence that the poppy is being grown in most flagrant openness, And there is not a signatory to the Convention who does not know that such a reminder from the League is utterly worthless so long as conditions in China are what we know them to be.
In this connexion it is not inopportune to ask whether sentiment has not again taken the place of practical politics. Because of the evils arising from its abuse, foreign nations, particularly Great Britain, agreed to discontinue the export of opium to China and in doing so sacrificed a very substantial sum from the Indian revenue. It may be no argument that because China grows opium we should continue to supply it to her. It certainly is not, but what is to be the world's opinion of the whole proceedings? Surely little less than that by the chicanery of some one or other the domestic production of the drug has become exceedingly profitable to people who are more or less secure from Governmental action. In face of the facts the very pledge to assist the Chinese Government to prevent smuggling into China is but an occasion for derisive laughter. For as things stand the foreign Powers are pledged to assist in maintaining a monopoly in China for the home grower of the poppy. And that is what they are indeed doing. There has been too much sentiment over the whole matter: there appears ta be too much now. and the wiser course
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.