London, Jan. 12.
The Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium has been meeting in Geneva. There seems to have been a good deal of acrimonious speaking at different stages of the proceedings, though Sir Malcolm Delevigne was unanimously elected Chairman without any trouble at all.
Sir John Jordan made a slashing speech in favour of publicity, pointing out that, as things were, the Advisory Committee was in a backwater at Geneva, and that no outside interest was taken in its meetings. The Chinese Government had made great use of the press in its campaign against the morphia traffic, and it was entirely due to the press that that campaign had enjoyed so large a me-assure of success. They had publicity at the Washington Conference, and he could not see why they could not have it at Geneva. Nobody read the Committee's belated publications, and the reports had in any case to-be analyzed by expert journalists to make them intelligible. Many questions with which the committee dealt were hardly ever mentioned in the press. The export of opium from India and the Far East, for example, had passed unnoticed by papers, and nothing ever appeared regarding the situation of the opium question in China.
Mr. Chu Chao-Fsin agreed with Sir John Jordan, at least as regards the majority of the meetings; he desired publicity with regard to China. [The Chinese people were afraid of foreign intervention. If proper publicity were given to the proceedings of the League with regard to the opium question, that fear would be removed, and public opinion in China stimulate. ed. That opinion would have its effects on the Chinese military leaders, and compel them to suppress the cultivation of opium. The work of the League must be made known in China.
Sir John Jordan pointed out that the work of the committee would be useless unless its results and its deliberations were not immediately made known in China. The reports received from China showed that that country had no idea of the work accomplished by the committee. The Chinese Government had the greatest difficulty in prohibiting entirely the use of opium. and the support of the public opinion of the whole world was indispensable for it.
Ultimately, if was agreed to issue a daily communique and to hold a public meeting at the end of the Session.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.