There has also been a great increase in the drug trafic, morphia and heroin, especially in the country disttiets, where Japanese and ' Korean pedlars are allowed to go round celling these drugs and enticing the ignorant peasantry to take up the Tu certain districts where was known to be parti cularly bad the number of beggure—from which, otherwise, Manchoukuo as compared with China is remark ably free—is very noticeable, 'A Japanese gendarmerie officer to whom I suggested that the large number of beggars in his district were definitely due to the drug raffle gave me, however, a really charming reply.' He said that it was not due to that at all, but to the fact that Manchoukuo had become such prosperous and happy country that the beggars from all over China were swarming into it}
Some of the strongest critics of the Japanese opium policy went as far as to suggest that it was being carried out of set purpose, order to debauch and demoralize the Chinese population. They pointed out that the Japanese authorness, punish very severely any of their own nationals caught taking drugs smoking then, should they encourage the Chin do so? I do not, for a moment, be-Neve this view to be correct. The Japanese are not fools, and can have nothing to gain, but everything to lose, by undermining the moral and physical fibre of the population, Another explanation given me Is probably much nearer the mark. It 4s simply a question of finance. In the first place the opium monopoly yields a very considerable revenue with which a young state like Manchoukuo cannot afford to dispense; in the second place big Japanese fran dal interests are behing the drug trate which brings them in enormous profits, and Manchoukio cai not antagonize these interests which have helped to finance her loans.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.