Geneva, June 1.
One of the strongest indictments of Japanese opium policy in northern China ever heard by the Opium Advisory Commission was made today by Mr, Stewart Fuller, the United States delegate.
Alter complimenting the Chinese Government on. its" sincere and successful efforts to stamp out the opium habit, and after pointing out that the opium crop in Honan and Szechuen had been reduced by Atty per cent, Mr. Fuller said that in the three Nofth-Eastern Provinces, namely Manchuria, there had been a seven teen per cent. increase in the area under cultivation and an increase of 28 per cent, in the revenue realized {rom the culture of opium poppy.
Contrary to the terms of the Drug, Convention, Mr. Fuller proceeded, an ever-increasing quantity of Iranian opium appeared to have been im ported into Manchuria for use in the manufacture of morphine and heroin. 'The quantity was now at least forty' or fifty tons a year, sufficient to manufacture four or five times the world's annual needs of heroin for medical and selentife purposes.
The province of Hopel, the American delegate declared, had become the seat of the world's most extensive manufacture of illicit heroin. Condltions in Peiping, Tientsin and Eastern, opel were appalling beyond deserip= tion.
"Tt remains to be seen," Mr. Fuller concluded, "whether those responsible for the ash heaps in Harbin, Mukden, Tongshan and Peiping will do any: thing about it before they are overtaken by retribution, which all their iMlegotten gains cannot avert."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.