London, Aug. 15.
The League of Nations announces that 20 of its members, including the principal European countries together with Germany and also China, India, Japan, Siam and the British Colonies, have accepted the system of import certificates recommended by the Opium Advisory Commission.
The "Daily News'' pays a tribute and says that a certain degree of illicit traffic in opium will no doubt survive as it has survived in the slave trade in the face of an ternational agreement but there fas been an enormous moral gain in that the countenance of the Governments has been withdrawn from it and that condign punishment will hereafter follow its detection. Great Britain by her leading part in the change has done something to atone for the long disgrace of her enforcement of Indian opium upon China.—Reuter's Special Service.
A Dprence or Kansv.
Peking, Aug. 12.
A letter received by the International Anti-Opium Association from Kansu says: It must be remembered the position last autumn of Mr. Pan Ling-kao, Opium Commiekioner of Kansu, was a very delicate one. He was practically inquiring into the doings of the Civil Governor, whom he eventually succeeded. The Civil Governor, Mr. Chen Yin, was a close personal friend of President Hsu Shih-chang and any strongly adverse reports on his administration would have been construed as a personal attack and would have prejudiced the succession to the Civil Governorship eventually attained by Mr. Pan.
Mr. Pan Ling-kao is represented as being personally anxious to do his best to clear Kansu of opium, but he is much hampered by the semi-independent generals in the province, notably by the Chinchow and Pingliang commands. At the end of March he was reported to be doing his best in the midst of
planting of pop) this year.—many aitienlties to prohibit the Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.