Chapter IV: Part 4

The first den we entered was on the second floor of a rickety building. We climbed the steep, infinitely dirty stairway, crossed a narrow hall, and opened a door. At first I found it difficult to see distinctly in the dim light and through the thick blue haze; and the overpowering, sickish fumes of the drug got into my nose and throat and made breathing a noticeable effort. There was a desk by the door, behind which sat the keeper of the den, with a litter of pipes and thimble-like cups before him. In a corner of the desk was a jar of opium, a thick, sticky substance, dark brown in colour, in appearance not unlike molasses in January. There were twenty smokers on the couches, some preparing the pellet of opium by kneading it and pressing it on the pipe-bowl, some dozing off the fumes, and a few smoking. An attendant moved about the room with fresh supplies of the drug. For each thimbleful, enough for one or two smokes, the price was fifteen cents (Mexican).

The smokers seemed to be mainly of the lower classes; though hardly so low as coolies, who are lucky to earn as much as fifteen cents in a day. It was evident to both of my companions, from the appearance of these men and from their talk, that they could ill afford the luxury. The number of smokes indulged in seemed to range from three or four up to an indefinite number. The youngest and healthiest appearing man in the room told us that after three pipes he could go home and go to sleep in comfort. He had been at it less than a year, he said; and, judging from the expression of peaceful content that came over his face as he held the pipe-bowl over the lamp and drew the smoke deep into his lungs, he had not yet begun to feel the ravages of the drug.

The next den we entered was small, crowded, and dirty. The price was only ten cents. But the third den was the largest and decidedly the most interesting of any that we saw. Like the others, it was situated in a prosperous section of the Taiku Road, with its red light conspicuously displayed over the door. From the facts that it was frankly open for business and that not the slightest concern was shown at our entrance, it seemed fair to believe that the keepers had no fear whatever of publicity or of the law. Even when we announced ourselves to be investigators, our questions were answered cheerfully and fully, and the man who escorted us from room to room was apparently proud of the establishment. The couches were not all occupied, but I counted thirty-five men sitting or reclining on them. One man had a child with him, a girl of some six or eight years of age, and when he had prepared his pipe and smoked it he permitted her to take a whiff or two. In a rear room we saw four women smoking with the men. The price of a smoke in this den was twenty-five cents.

I do not know how many opium dens were open for business in the French concession on this particular April 23d, 1907, but of those that were open I personally either entered or at least saw fifteen or sixteen, and that without attempting anything in the nature of an exhaustive search. In the Italian and Russian concessions I found about sixty dens open, mostly of a very low grade. But the worst of the concessions, in this regard, was the Austrian. Lying nearest to the native city, it had profited more largely than any of the others by the native prohibition. It seemed also to have the largest Chinese population; indeed, in appearance it was more like the quaint old Chinese city than any of the other foreign municipalities.

We entered only three of the Austrian dens. But we saw the signs and glanced in through the doorways of so many others that I was quite ready to accept Mr. Sung's rough estimate of the total number within the narrow confines of the concession: he put it at fifty to one hundred. It is difficult to be exact in these estimates, because where laws are so languidly enforced the official returns hardly begin to state the full number of flourishing establishments. These three dens which we entered were enough to make an ineffaceable impression on the mind of one traveller. I have eaten and slept in native hostelries, in the interior, so unspeakably dirty and insanitary that to describe them in these pages would exceed all bounds of taste, but I have never been in a filthier place than at least one of these Austrian dens. And the other two were little better. It would require some means more adequate than pen, ink, and paper, to convey to the reader an accurate notion of the mingled, half-blended odours which seemed to underlie, or to form a background for, the overpowering fumes of what passed here for opium. What this drug compound was I really do not know; but it was sold at the rate of two pipes for three cents, Mexican, equivalent to a cent and a half, gold. For real opium, of fair or good quality, it is quite possible, in China, to pay from ten to twenty times as much. Such dens as this, then, are not only vicious resorts maintained for the purpose of catering to a degrading habit; they are also breeding places of disease and pestilence.

Thus one night's work made it plain that the foreign concessions were taking no steps that would evidence a spirit of cooeperation with the Chinese authorities in their vigorous attempt to check and control the ravages of opium. Tientsin, like Shanghai, did not care. Tientsin, like Shanghai, is sowing the wind in China.

Let us now turn aside for a moment to consider the third important point of contact between the two kinds of civilization--Hongkong.

Hongkong is neither a "settlement" nor a "concession." It is a British crown colony, with its own government and its own courts. The original property, a mountainous island lying near the mouth of the Canton River, was taken from the Chinese in 1842, as a part of the penalty which China had to pay for losing the Opium War. Later, a strip of the mainland opposite was added to the colony. Hongkong is one of the most important seaports in the world. It is the meeting place for freight and passenger ships from North America, South America, New Zealand and Australia, India, Europe, Africa, and the Philippines and other Pacific islands. It commands the trade of the Canton River Valley, which, though not geographically so imposing as the wonderful valley of the Yangtse, supports, nevertheless, the densely populated region reached by the innumerable canal-like branches of the river. The city of Canton alone, eighty or ninety miles inland from Hongkong, claims 2,500,000 inhabitants. It is safe to say that fifty million Chinamen are constantly under the influence of the civilizing example set by Hongkong.

What is the attitude of the Colonial government towards the opium question? Simply that the opium habit is a legitimate source of revenue. The British gentlemen who administer the government seem never to have been disturbed by doubts as to the morality or humanity of their attitude. Let me quote from the report of the Philippine Commission:

"Farming is the system adopted (renting out the monopoly control of the drug to an individual or a corporation) and a considerable part of the income of the colony is obtained from this source. The habit seems to be spreading. No effort--except the increased price demanded by the farmer to compensate for the increased price he has to pay to secure the monopoly--is made to deter persons from using opium in the colony. Most of the opium comes from India."

The attitude of the residents and merchants of the colony seems to be expressed plainly enough by an editorial in a leading Hongkong paper which lies before me, dated December 1, 1906: "It will take volumes of imperial edicts to convince us that China ever honestly intends or is ever likely to suppress the opium trade. It is up to China to take the initiative in such a way as to leave no doubt that her intentions are honest and that the native opium trade will be abandoned. Until that is done, it is idle to discuss the question."

In other words, Hongkong refuses to consider giving up its opium revenue until the Chinese take the market away from it.

I think we may consider the point established that Great Britain is directly responsible for the introduction of opium into China, and, through the ingenuity and persistence of her merchants and her diplomats, for the growth of the habit in that country. To-day, in spite of an unmistakable tendency on the part of the Home government (which we shall consider in a later chapter) to yield to the pressure of the anti-opium agitation in England, the government of India continues to grow and manufacture vast quantities of the drug for the Chinese trade. To-day the representatives of that government at Hongkong are profiting largely from a monopoly control of the opium importation. To-day, at Shanghai, where the British predominate in population, in trade, and in the city government, the opium evil is mishandled in a scandalous manner, and--as elsewhere--for profit. Small wonder, therefore, that other and less scrupulous foreign nations, where they have an opportunity to profit by this vicious traffic, as at Tientsin, hasten to do so.

These three great ports--Shanghai, Tientsin, and Hongkong--are in constant touch commercially with a grand total of very nearly 200,000,000 Chinese. They are, therefore, constantly exerting a direct influence on that number of Chinese minds. As I have pointed out, this influence, because it is concentrated and tangible, is much stronger than the admittedly potent influence of the widely scattered missionaries, physicians, and teachers. From the life and example of the Western nations, as they exist at these ports, the Chinaman is drawing most of his ideas of progress and enlightenment.

In a word, the new China that we shall sooner or later have to deal with among the nations of the world is the new China that the ports are helping to make--for this new China is to-day in process of development. She is struggling heroically to digest and assimilate the Western ideas which alone can bring life and vigour to the sluggish Chinese mass. And yet, turning westward for aid, China is confronted with--Shanghai, Tientsin, and Hongkong. Turning to Britain for a helping hand in her effort to check the inroads of opium, she hears this cheerful doctrine from the one British colony which China can really see and partly understand, Hongkong--"It is up to China." Dr. Morrison has stated in one of his letters to the _Times_ that Britain's attitude towards China is one of sympathy, tempered by a lack of information. One very eminent British diplomat with whom I discussed the opium question assured me that that attitude of his government was "most sympathetic." Later, in London, I found that this same government was quieting an aroused public opinion with assurances that steps were being taken towards an agreement with China in the matter of opium. All this was in the spring and summer of 1907. Six months later, the one British colony in China, and the two great international ports, were cheerfully continuing their cynical policy of sneering at or ignoring the attempts of the Chinese to overcome their master-vice, and were cheerfully profiting by the situation.

It would perhaps seem fanciful to suggest that the great nations should unite to regulate the coast ports. It would appear obvious that such regulation, in so far as it might create a better understanding between the Chinese and the representatives of foreign civilizations with whom they must come in contact, would work to the advantage of commercial interests. Anti-foreign riots are in progress to-day in China which have their roots partly in racial misconception, partly in a long tradition of injustice and bad faith; and it is hardly necessary to suggest that an atmosphere of injustice, bad faith, and rioting is not the best atmosphere in which to carry on trade. But, nevertheless, the inevitable difficulties in the way of drawing the great nations together in the interests of a better understanding with the Chinese people would seem to make such a solution academic rather than practical.

But, still hoping that something may be done about it, something that may lessen the likelihood of the reaping of a whirlwind in China, suppose that we alter the phrase of that Hongkong editorial and state that instead of the problem being up to China, it is distinctly up to Great Britain? Great Britain brought the opium into China. Great Britain kept it there until it took root and spread over the native soil. Great Britain has admitted her guilt, and had pledged herself by a majority vote in Parliament, and by the promises of her governing ministers, to do something about it. Suppose that Great Britain be called upon to make good her pledge? It would be an interesting experiment. All that is necessary is to cut down the production of opium in India, year by year, until it ceases altogether, and with it the exportation into China. This course would solve automatically the opium problem at Hongkong; and it would put it up to the municipal authorities at Shanghai and Tientsin in an interesting fashion. It would in no way jeopardize Britain's interest in the diplomatic balance of the Far East. It would work for the good rather than the harm of the trade with China. And it would be the first necessary step in the arduous matter of cleaning up the treaty ports and setting a higher example to China.

To this course Great Britain would appear to be committed by the utterances for her government. But the world, like the man from Missouri, has yet to be "shown." In a later chapter we shall consider this question of promise and performance in the light of Britain's peculiar governmental problem.

VII

HOW BRITISH CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST

We have seen, in the preceding chapters, that the Anglo-Indian government controls absolutely the production of opium in India, prepares the drug for the market in government-owned and government-operated factories, and sells it at monthly auctions. Let me also recall to the reader that four-fifths of this opium is prepared to suit the known taste of Chinese consumers. The annual value to the Anglo-Indian government of this curious industry, it will be recalled, is well over $20,000,000.

Now we have to consider the last strong defense of this policy which the British government has seen fit to offer to a protesting world, the report of the Royal Commission on Opium. Against this stout defense of the opium traffic in all its branches, we are able to set not only the findings of other governments, such as those of Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, which have opium problems of their own to deal with, but also the curious attitude of a certain British colony, amounting almost to what might be called an opium panic, on that occasion when the Oriental drug found its way near enough home to menace British subjects and British children.

The men who administer the government of India have a chronically difficult job on their hands. In order to keep it on their hands they have got to please the British public; and that is not so easy as it perhaps sounds. It would apparently please both the government and the public if the whole opium question could be thrown after the twenty thousand chests of Canton--into the sea. But the British public is hard-headed, and proud of it; and the spectacle of the magnificent, panoplied government of India gone bankrupt, or so embarrassed as to be calling upon the Home government for aid, would not please it at all. Of the two evils, debauching China or gravely impairing the finances of India, there has been reason to believe that it would prefer debauching China. That, at least, is what successive governments of Britain and of India seem to have concluded. It has seemed wiser to endure a known quantity of abuse for sticking to opium than to risk the cold British scorn for the bankrupt; and, accordingly, the Indian government with the approval of one Home government after another, has stuck to opium. The only alternative course, that of developing a new, healthy source of revenue to supplant opium, the unhealthy, would involve real ideas and an immense amount of trouble; and these two things are only less abhorrent to the administrative mind than political annihilation itself.

But there came a time, not so long ago, when a wave of "anti-opium" feeling swept over England, and the British public suddenly became very hard to please. Parliament agreed that the idea of a government opium monopoly in India was "morally indefensible," and even went so far as to send out a "Royal Commission" to investigate the whole question. Now this commission, after travelling twenty thousand miles, asking twenty-eight thousand questions, and publishing two thousand pages (double columns, close print) of evidence, arrived at some remarkable conclusions. "Opium," says the Royal Commission, "is harmful, harmless, or even beneficial, according to the measure and discretion with which it is used.... It is [in India] the universal household remedy.... It is extensively administered to infants, and the practice does not appear, to any appreciable extent, injurious.... It does not appear responsible for any disease peculiar to itself." As to the traffic with China, the Commission states--"Responsibility mainly lies with the Chinese government." And, finally (which seems to bring out the pith of the matter), "In the present circumstances the revenue derived from opium is indispensable for carrying on with efficiency the government of India."

To one familiar with this extraordinary summing-up of the evidence, it seems hardly surprising that the Rt. Hon. John Morley, the present Secretary of State for India, should have said in Parliament (May, 1906)--"I do not wish to speak in disparagement of the Commission, but somehow or other its findings have failed to satisfy public opinion in this country and to ease the consciences of those who have taken up the matter."

The methods employed by a Royal Commission which could arrive at such remarkable conclusions could hardly fail to be interesting. The Government opium traffic was a scandal. Parliament was on record against it. There was simply nothing to be said for opium or for the opium monopoly. It was "morally indefensible"--officially so. It was agreed that the Indian government should be "urged" to cease to grant licenses for the cultivation of the poppy and for the sale of opium in British India. This was interesting--even gratifying. There was but one obstacle in the way of putting an end to the whole business; and that obstacle was, in some inexplicable way, this same British government. The opium monopoly, morally indefensible or not, seemed to be going serenely and steadily on. If the Indian government was urged in the matter, there was no record of it.

Two years passed. Mr. Gladstone, the great prime minister, deplored the opium evil--and took pains not to stop or limit it. Like the House of Peers in the Napoleonic wars, he "did nothing in particular--and did it very well." So the vigilant crusaders came at the government again. In June, 1893, Mr. Alfred Webb moved a resolution which (so ran the hopes of these crusaders) the most nearly Christian government could not resist or evade. Sure of the anti-opium majority, the new resolution, "having regard to the opinion expressed by the vote of this House on the 10th of April, 1891, that the system by which the Indian opium revenue is raised is morally indefensible,... and recognizing that the people of India ought not to be called upon to bear the cost involved in this change of policy," demanded that "a Royal Commission should be appointed ... to report as to (1) What retrenchments and reforms can be effected in the military and civil expenditures of India; (2) By what means Indian resources can be best developed; and (3) What, if any, temporary assistance from the British Exchequer would be required in order to meet any deficit of revenue which would be occasioned by the suppression of the opium traffic."

The crusaders had underestimated the parliamentary skill of Mr. Gladstone. He promptly moved a counter resolution, proposing that "this House press on the Government of India to continue their policy of greatly diminishing the cultivation of the poppy and the production and sale of opium, and demanding a Royal Commission to report as to (1) Whether the growth of the poppy and the manufacture and sale of opium in British India should be prohibited.... (4) The effect on the finances of India of the prohibition ... taking into consideration (a) the amount of compensation payable; (b) the cost of the necessary preventive measures; (c) the loss of revenue.... (5) The disposition of the people of India in regard to (a) the use of opium for non-medical purposes; (b) their willingness to bear in whole or in part the cost of prohibitive measures."

Mr. Gladstone's resolution looked, to the unthinking, like an anti-opium document. He doubtless meant that it should, for in his task of maintaining the opium traffic he had to work through an anti-opium majority. Mr. Webb's resolution, starting from the assumption that the government was committed to suppressing the traffic, called for a commission merely to arrange the necessary details. Mr. Gladstone's resolution raised the whole question again, and instructed the commission not only to call particular attention to the cost of prohibition (the shrewd premier knew his public!), not only to find out if the victims of opium in India wished to continue the habit, but also threw the whole burden of cost on the poverty-stricken people of India--which he knew perfectly well they could not bear. The original resolution had sprung out of a moral outcry against the China trade. Mr. Gladstone, in beginning again at the beginning, ignored the China trade and the effects of opium on the Chinese.

But more interesting, if less significant than this attitude, was the suggestion that the Indian government "continue their policy of greatly diminishing the cultivation of the poppy." Now this suggestion conveyed an impression that was either true or false. Either the Indian government was putting down opium or it was not. In either event, if Mr. Gladstone was not fully informed, it was his own fault, for the machinery of government was in his hands. The best way to straighten out this tangle would seem to be to consult the report of Mr. Gladstone's commission. This commission, on its arrival in India, found no trace of a policy of suppressing the trade. Sir David Balfour, the head of the Indian Finance Department, said to the commission: "I was not aware that that was the policy of the Home government until the statement was made.... The policy has been for some time to sell about the same amount every year, neither diminishing that amount nor increasing it. I should say decidedly, that at present our desire is to obtain the maximum revenue from the opium consumed in India." As regarded the China trade, Sir David added: "We will not largely increase the cultivation because we shall be attacked if we do so." And this--"We have adopted a middle course and preserved the _status quo_ with reference to the China trade."

Mr. Gladstone's resolution was adopted by 184 votes to 105, the anti-opium crusaders voting against it. And the Royal Commission, with instructions not, as had been intended, to arrange the details of a plan for stopping the opium traffic, but with instructions to consider whether it would pay to stop it, and if not, whether the people of India could be made to stand the loss, started out on its rather hopeless journey.

One thing the crusaders had succeeded in accomplishing--they had forced the government to send a commission to India. They had got one or two of their number on the body. The commission would have to hear the evidence, would be forced to air the situation thoroughly, showing a paternal government not only manufacturing opium for the China trade, but actually, since 1891, manufacturing pills of opium mixed with spices for the children and infants of India. If the Indian government, now at last brought to an accounting, wished to keep the opium business going, they could do two things--they could see that the "right" sort of evidence was given to the commission, and they could try to influence the commission directly. They adopted both courses; though it appears now, to one who goes over the attitude of the majority of the commission and especially of Lord Brassey, the chairman, as shown in the records, that little direct influence was necessary. Lord Brassey and his majority were pro-opium, through and through. The Home government had seen to that.

The problem, then, of the administrators of the Indian government and of this pro-opium commission was to defend a "morally indefensible" condition of affairs in order to maintain the revenue of the Indian government. It was a problem neither easy nor pleasant.

The Viceroy of India was Lord Lansdowne. He went at the problem with shrewdness and determination. His attitude was precisely what one has learned to expect in the viceroys of India. A later viceroy, Lord Curzon, has spoken with infinite scorn of the "opium faddists." Lord Lansdowne approached the business in the same spirit. He began by sending a telegram from his government to the British Secretary of State for India, which contained the following passage: "We shall be prepared to suggest non-official witnesses, who will give independent evidence, but we cannot undertake to specially search for witnesses who will give evidence against opium. We presume this will be done by the Anti-Opium Society." This message had been sent in August, 1893, but it was not made public until the 18th of the following November. On November 20th Lord Lansdowne sent a letter to Lord Brassey, "which," says Mr. Henry J. Wilson, M. P., in his minority report, "was passed around among the members [of the commission] for perusal. It contained a statement in favour of the existing opium system, and against interference with that system as likely to lead to serious trouble. This appeared to me a departure from the judicial attitude which might have been expected from Her Majesty's representatives."

From this Mr. Wilson goes on, in his report, to lay bare the methods of the Indian government in preparing evidence for the commission. To say that these methods show a departure from the expected "judicial attitude" is to speak with great moderation. It is not necessary, I think, to weary the reader with the details of these extended operations. That is not the purpose of this writing. It should be enough to say that Lord Lansdowne and his Indian government ordered that all evidence should be submitted to the commission through their offices; that only pro-opium evidence was submitted; that a government official travelled with the commission and openly worked up the evidence in advance; that the minority members were hindered and hampered in their attempts at real investigation, and were shadowed by detectives when they travelled independently in the opium-producing regions; and, finally, that Lord Brassey abruptly closed the report of the commission without giving the minority members an opportunity to discuss it in detail. The result of these methods was precisely what might have been expected. Opium was declared a mild and harmless stimulant for all ages. No home, in short, was complete without it.

There is an answer to the report of the Royal Commission on opium more telling than can be found in speeches or in minority reports. In an earlier article we examined into the beginnings of opium. We saw how it is grown and manufactured; how it passes out of the hands of the British government into the currents of trade; how it is carried along on these currents--small quantities of it washing up in passing the Straits and the Malay Archipelago--to China; how it blends at the Chinese ports in the flood of the new native-grown opium and divides among the trade currents of that great empire until every province receives its supply of the "foreign dirt." Now let us follow it farther; for it does not stop there.

The Chinese are great traders and great travellers. The weight of the national misery presses them out into whatever new regions promise a reward for industry. They swarmed over the Pacific to America in a yellow cloud until America, in sheer self-defense, barred them out. They swarmed southward to Australia until Australia closed the doors on them. They swarm to-day into the Philippines and into Malaysia. In the Straits Settlement, in a total population of a little over half a million, more than half (282,000) are Chinese. When America would build the Panama Canal, her first impulse is to import the cheap Chinese labourer, who is always so eager to come. When Britain took over the Transvaal she imported 70,000 Chinese labourers. And where the Chinese travel, opium travels too.

The real answer to the Royal Commission on opium should be found in the attitude of these countries which have had to face the opium problem along with the Chinese problem. Let us include in the list Japan, a country which has had a remarkable opportunity to view the opium menace at short range. What Japan thinks about opium, what Australia and the Transvaal and the United States think, what the Philippines think, is more to the point than any first-hand statements of a magazine reporter. We will take Japan first. Does Japan think that opium is invaluable as a general household remedy? Does Japan think that opium is good for children?

Here is what the Philippine Opium Commission, whose report is accepted to-day as the most authoritative survey of the opium situation, has to say about opium in Japan:

"Japan, which is a non-Christian country, is the only country visited by the committee where the opium question is dealt with in the purely moral and social aspect.... Legislation is enacted without the distraction of commercial motives and interest.... No surer testimony to the reality of the evil effects of opium can be found than the horror with which China's next-door neighbour views it.... The Japanese to a man fear opium as we fear the cobra or the rattlesnake, and they despise its victims. There has been no moment in the nation's history when the people have wavered in their uncompromising attitude towards the drug and its use, so that an instinctive hatred possesses them. China's curse has been Japan's warning, and a warning heeded. An opium user in Japan would be socially a leper.

"The opium law of Japan forbids the importation, the possession, and the use of the drug, except as a medicine; and it is kept to the letter in a population of 47,000,000, of whom perhaps 25,000 are Chinese. So rigid are the provisions of the law that it is sometimes, especially in interior towns, almost impossible to secure opium or its alkaloids in cases of medical necessity.... The government is determined to keep the opium habit strictly confined to what they deem to be its legitimate use, which use even, they seem to think, is dangerous enough to require special safeguarding.

"Certain persons are authorized by the head official of each district to manufacture and prepare opium for medicinal purposes.... That which is up to the required standard (in quality) is sold to the government: and that which falls short is destroyed. The accepted opium is sealed in proper receptacles and sold to a selected number of wholesale dealers (apothecaries) who in turn provide physicians and retail dealers with the drug for medicinal uses only. It can reach the patient for whose relief it is desired only through the prescription of the attending physician. The records of those who thus use opium in any of its various forms must be preserved for ten years.

"The people not merely obey the law, but they are proud of it; they would not have it altered if they could. It is the law of the government, but it is the law of the people also.... Apparently, the vigilance of the police is such that even when opium is successfully smuggled in, it cannot be smoked without detection. The pungent fumes of cooked opium are unmistakable, and betray the user almost inevitably.... There is an instance on record where a couple of Japanese lads in North Formosa experimented with opium just for a lark; and though they were guilty only on this occasion, they were detected, arrested, and punished."

That is what Japan thinks about opium.

The conclusions of this Philippine Commission formed the basis of the new opium prohibition in the Philippines, which went into effect March 1, 1908. The plan is a modification of the Japanese system of dealing with the evil.

Australia and New Zealand have also been forced to face the opium problem. New Zealand, by an act of 1901, amended in 1903, prohibits the traffic, and makes offenders liable to a penalty not exceeding $2,500 (L500) for each offense. In the Australian Federal Parliament the question was brought to an issue two or three years ago. Petitions bearing 200,000 signatures were presented to the parliament, and in response a law was enacted absolutely prohibiting the importation of opium, except for medicinal uses, after January 1, 1906. All the state governments of Australia lose revenue by this prohibition. The voice of the Australian people was apparently expressed in the Federal Parliament by Hon. V. L. Solomon, who said: "In the cities of the Southern States anybody going to the opium dens would see hundreds of apparently respectable Europeans indulging in this horrible habit. It is a hundredfold more damaging, both physically and morally, than the indulgence in alcoholic liquors."

That is what Australia and New Zealand think about opium.

The attitude of the United States is thus described by the Philippine Commission: "It is not perhaps generally known that in the only instance where America has made official utterances relative to the use of opium in the East, she has spoken with no uncertain voice. By treaty with China in 1880, and again in 1903, no American bottoms are allowed to carry opium in Chinese waters. This ... is due to a recognition that the use of opium is an evil for which no financial gain can compensate, and which America will not allow her citizens to encourage even passively." By the terms of this treaty, citizens of the United States are forbidden to "import opium into any of the open ports of China, or transport from one open port to any other open port, or to buy and sell opium in any of the open ports of China. This absolute prohibition ... extends to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either power, to foreign vessels employed by them, or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either power and employed by other persons for the transportation of opium." Thus the United States is flatly on record as forbidding her citizens to engage, in any way whatever, in the Chinese opium traffic.

The last item of expert evidence which I shall present from the countries most deeply concerned in the opium question is from that British colony, the Transvaal. Were the subject less grim, it would be difficult to restrain a smile over this bit of evidence--it is so human, and so humorous. For a century and more, Anglo-Indian officials have been kept busy explaining that opium is a heaven-sent blessing to mankind. It is quite possible that many of them have come to believe the words they have repeated so often. Why not? China was a long way off--and India certainly did need the money. The poor official had to please the sovereign people back home, one way or another. If a choice between evils seemed necessary, was he to blame? We must try not to be too hard on the government official. Perhaps opium _was_ good for children. Keep your blind eye to the telescope and you can imagine anything you like.

The situation was given its grimly humorous twist when the monster opium began to invade regions nearer home. It came into the Transvaal after the Boer War, along with those 70,000 Chinese labourers. The result can only be described as an opium panic. I quote, regarding it, from that "Memorandum Concerning Indo-Chinese Opium Trade," which was prepared for the debate in Parliament during May, 1906:

"The Transvaal offers a striking illustration of the old proverb as to chickens coming home to roost.

"On the 6th of September, 1905, Sir George Farrar moved the adjournment of the Legislative Council at Pretoria, to call attention to 'the enormous quantity of opium' finding its way into the Transvaal. He urged that 'measures should be taken for the immediate stopping of the traffic.' On 6th October, an ordinance was issued, restricting the importation of opium to registered chemists, only, according to regulations to be prescribed by permits by the lieutenant-governor--under a penalty not exceeding L500 ($2,500), or imprisonment not exceeding six months.

"Any person in possession of such substance ... except for medicinal purposes, unless under a permit, is liable to similar penalties. Stringent rights of search are given to police, constables, under certain circumstances, without even the necessity of a written authority.

"The under-secretary for the colonies has also stated, 'that the Chinese Labour Importation Ordinance, 1904, has been amended to penalize the possession by, and supply to, Chinese labourers of opium.'"

Apparently opium is not good for the children of South Africa. That it would be good (to get still nearer home) for the children and infants of Great Britain, is an idea so monstrous, so horrible, that I hardly dare suggest it. No one, I think, would go so far as to say that the Royal Commission would have reached those same extraordinary conclusions had the problem lain in Great Britain instead of in far-off India and China. Walk about, of a sunny afternoon, in Kensington Gardens. Watch the ruddy, healthy children sailing their boats in the Round Pond, or playing in the long grass where the sheep are nibbling, or running merrily along the well-kept borders of the Serpentine. They are splendid youngsters, these little Britishers. Their skins are tanned, their eyes are clear, their little bodies are compactly knit. Each child has its watchful nurse. What would the mothers say if His Majesty's Most Excellent Government should undertake the manufacture and distribution of attractive little pills of opium and spices for these children, and should defend its course not only on the ground that "the practice does not appear to any appreciable extent injurious," but also on the ground that "the revenue obtained is indispensable for carrying on the government with efficiency"?

What would these British mothers say? It is a fair question. The "conservative" pro-opiumist is always ready with an answer to this question. He claims that it is not fair. He maintains that the Oriental is different from the Occidental--racially. Opium, he says, has no such marked effect on the Chinaman as it has on the Englishman, no such marked effect on the Chinese infant as it has on the British infant. I have met this "conservative" pro-opiumist many times on coasting and river steamers and in treaty port hotels. I have been one of a group about a rusty little stove in a German-kept hostelry where this question was thrashed out. Your "conservative" is so cock-sure about it that he grows, in the heat of his argument, almost triumphant. At first I thought that perhaps he might be partially right. One man's meat is occasionally another man's poison. The Chinese differ from us in so many ways that possibly they might have a greater capacity to withstand the ravages of opium.

It was partly to answer this question that I went to China. I did not leave China until I had arrived at an answer that seemed convincing. If, in presenting the facts in these columns, the picture I have been painting of China's problem should verge on the painful, that, I am afraid, will be the fault of the facts. It is a picture of the hugest empire in the whole world, fighting a curse which has all but mastered it, turning for aid, in sheer despair, to the government, that has brought it to the edge of ruin. Strange to say, this British government, as it is to-day constituted, would apparently like to help. But, across the path of assistance stands, like a grotesque, inhuman dragon,--the Indian Revenue.

VIII

THE POSITION OF GREAT BRITAIN

An observant correspondent recently wrote from Shanghai to a New York newspaper: "China has missed catching the fire of the West in the manner of Japan, and has lain idle and supine while neighbour and foreigner despoiled her. Her statesmanship has been languid and irresolute, and her armies slow and spiritless in the field. Observers who know China, and are familiar at the same time with the symptoms of opium, say that it is as if the listless symptoms of the drug were to be seen in the very nation itself. Many conclude that the military and political inertia of the Chinese is due to the special prevalence of the opium habit among the two classes of Chinamen directly responsible: both the soldiers and the scholars, among whom all the civil and political posts are held in monopoly, are notoriously addicted to opium."

The point which these chapters should make clear is that opium is the evil thing which is not only holding China back but is also actually threatening to bring about the most complete demoralization and decadence that any large portion of the world has ever experienced. It is evident, in this day of extended trade interests, that such a paralysis of the hugest and the most industrious of the great races would amount to a world-disaster. Already the United States is suffering from the weakness of the Chinese government in Manchuria, which permits Japan to control in the Manchurian province and to discriminate against American trade. This discrimination would appear to have been one strong reason for the sailing of the battleship fleet to the Pacific. If this relatively small result of China's weakness and inertia can arouse great nations and can play a part in the moving of great fleets, it is not difficult to imagine the world-importance of a complete breakdown. Every great Western nation has a trade or territorial footing in China to defend and maintain. Every great Western nation is watching the complicated Chinese situation with sleepless eyes. Such a breakdown might quite possibly mean the unconditional surrender of China's destiny into the hands of Japan; which, with Japan's growing desire to dominate the Pacific, and with it the world, might quite possibly mean the rapid approach of the great international conflict.

We have seen, in the course of these chapters, that China appears to be almost completely in the grasp of her master-vice. The opium curse in China is a dreadful example of the economic waste of evil. It has not only lowered the vitality, and therefore the efficiency of men, women, and children in all walks of life, but it has also crowded the healthier crops off the land, usurped no small part of the industrial life, turned the balance of trade against China, plunged her into wars, loaded her with indemnity charges, taken away part of her territory, and made her the plundering ground of the nations. She has been compelled to look indolently on while Japan, alight with the fire of progress, has raised her brown head proudly among the peoples of the West. So China has at last been driven to make a desperate stand against the encroachments of the curse which is wrecking her. The fight is on to-day. It is plain that China is sincere; she must be sincere, because her only hope lies in conquering opium. She has turned for help to Great Britain, for Britain's Indian government developed the opium trade ("for purposes of foreign commerce only") and continues to-day to pour a flood of the drug into the channels of Chinese trade. Once China thought to crowd out the Indian product by producing the drug herself, as a preliminary to controlling the traffic, but she has never been able to develop a grade of opium that can compete with the brown paste from the Ganges Valley.

This summing up brings us to a consideration of two questions which must be considered sooner or later by the people of the civilized world:

1. Can China hope to conquer the opium curse without the help of Great Britain?

2. What is Great Britain doing to help her?

In attempting to work out the answer to these questions, we must think of them simply as practical problems bearing on the trade, the territorial development, and the military and naval power of the nations. We must try for the present to ignore the mere moral and ethical suggestions which the questions arouse.

First, then: can China, single-handed, possibly succeed in this fight, now going on, against the slow paralysis of opium?

China is not a nation in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word. If we picture to ourselves the countries of Europe, with their different languages and different customs drawn together into a loose confederation under the government of a conquering race, we shall have some small conception of what this Chinese "nation" really is. The peoples of these different European countries are all Caucasians; the different peoples of China are all Mongolians. These Chinese people speak eighteen or twenty "languages," each divided into almost innumerable dialects and sub-dialects. They are governed by Manchu, or Tartar, conquerors who spring from a different stock, wear different costumes, and speak, among themselves, a language wholly different from any of the eighteen or twenty native tongues.

In making this diversity clear, it is necessary only to cite a few illustrations. There is not even a standard of currency in China. Each province or group of provinces has its own standard tael, differing greatly in value from the tael which may be the basis of value in the next province or group. There is no government coinage whatever. All the mints are privately owned and are run for profit in supplying the local demand for currency, and the basis of this currency is the Mexican dollar, a foreign unit. They make dollar bills in Honan Province. I went into Chili Province and offered some of these Honan bills in exchange for purchases. The merchants merely looked at them and shook their heads. "Tientsin dollar have got?" was the question. So the money of a community or a province is simply a local commodity and has either a lower value or no value elsewhere, for the simple reason that the average Chinaman knows only his local money and will accept no other. The diversity of language is as easily observed as the diversity of coinage. On the wharves at Shanghai you can hear a Canton Chinaman and a Shanghai Chinaman talking together in pidgin English, their only means of communication. When I was travelling in the Northwest, I was accosted in French one day by a Chinese station-agent, on the Shansi Railroad, who frankly said that he was led to speak to me, a foreigner, by the fact that he was a "foreigner" too. With his blue gown and his black pigtail, he looked to me no different from the other natives; but he told me that he found the language and customs of Shansi "difficult," and that he sometimes grew homesick for his native city in the South.

That the Chinese of different provinces really regard one another as foreigners may be illustrated by the fact that, during the Boxer troubles about Tientsin, it was a common occurrence for the northern soldiers to shoot down indiscriminately with the white men any Cantonese who appeared within rifle-shot.

This diversity, probably a result of the cost and difficulty of travel, is a factor in the immense inertia which hinders all progress in China. People who differ in coinage, language, and customs, who have never been taught to "think imperially" or in terms other than those of the village or city, cannot easily be led into cooeperation on a large scale. It is difficult enough, Heaven knows, to effect any real change in the government of an American city or state, or of the nation, let alone effecting any real changes in the habits of men. Witness our own struggle against graft. Witness also the vast struggle against the liquor traffic now going on in a score of our states. Even in this land of ours, which is so new that there has hardly been time to form traditions; which is alert to the value of changes and quick to leap in the direction of progress; which is essentially homogeneous in structure, with but one language, innumerable daily newspapers, and a close network of fast, comfortable railway trains to keep the various communities in touch with the prevailing idea of the moment, how easy do we find it to wipe out race-track gambling, say, or to make our insurance laws really effective, or to check the corrupt practices of corporations, or to establish the principle of local municipal ownership? To put it in still another light, how easy do we find it to bring about a change which the great majority of us agree would be for the better, such as making over the costly, cumbersome express business into a government parcels post?

But there are large money interests which would suffer by such reforms, you say? True; and there are large money interests suffering by the opium reforms in China, relatively as large as any money interests we have in this country. The opium reforms affect the large and the small farmers, the manufacturers, the transportation companies, the bankers, the commission men, the hundreds of thousands of shopkeepers, and the government revenues, for the opium traffic is an almost inextricable strand in the fabric of Chinese commerce. In addition to these bewildering complications of the problem, there is the discouraging inertia to overcome of a land which, far from being alert and active, is sunk in the lethargy of ancient local custom.

No, in putting down her master-vice, China must not only overcome all the familiar economic difficulties that tend to block reform everywhere, but, in addition, must find a way to rouse and energize the most backward and (outside of the age-old grooves of conduct and government) the most unmanageable empire in the world.

On what element in her population must China rely to put this huge reform into effect? On the officials, or mandarins, who carry out the governmental edicts in every province, administer Chinese justice, and control the military and finances. But of these officials, more than ninety per cent. have been known to be opium-smokers, and fully fifty per cent. have been financially interested in the trade.

Still another obstacle blocking reform is the powerful example and widespread influence of the treaty ports. Perhaps the white race is "superior" to the yellow; I shall not dispute that notion here. But one fact which I know personally is that every one of the treaty ports, where the white men rule, including the British crown colony of Hongkong, chose last year to maintain its opium revenue regardless of the protests of the Chinese officials.

Putting down opium in China would appear to be a pretty big job. The "vested interests," yellow and white, are against a change; the personal habits of the officials themselves work against it; the British keep on pouring in their Indian opium; and by way of a positive force on the affirmative side of the question there would appear to be only the lethargy and impotence of a decadent, chaotic race. How would you like to tackle a problem of this magnitude, as Yuan Shi K'ai and Tong Shao-i have done? Try to organize a campaign in your home town against the bill-board nuisance; against corrupt politics; against drink or cigarettes. Would it be easy to succeed? When you have thought over some of the difficulties that would block you on every hand, multiply them by fifty thousand and then take off your hat to Tong Shao-i and Yuan Shi K'ai. Personally, I think I should prefer undertaking to stamp out drink in Europe. I should know, of course, that it would be rather a difficult business, but still it would be easier than this Chinese proposition.

So much for the difficulties of the problem. Suppose now we take a look at the results of the first year of the fight. There are no exact statistics to be had, but based as it is on personal travel and observation, on reports of travelling officials, merchants, missionaries, and of other journalists who have been in regions which I did not reach, I think my estimate should be fairly accurate. Remember, this is a fight to a finish. If the Chinese government loses, opium will win.