Part 6 (2/2)
The real answer to the Royal Commission on opium should be found in the att.i.tude of these countries which have had to face the opium problem along with the Chinese problem. Let us include in the list j.a.pan, a country which has had a remarkable opportunity to view the opium menace at short range. What j.a.pan 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 j.a.pan first. Does j.a.pan think that opium is invaluable as a general household remedy? Does j.a.pan 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 j.a.pan:
”j.a.pan, 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 j.a.panese 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 att.i.tude towards the drug and its use, so that an instinctive hatred possesses them. China's curse has been j.a.pan's warning, and a warning heeded. An opium user in j.a.pan would be socially a leper.
”The opium law of j.a.pan 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.panese 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 (500) for each offense. In the Australian Federal Parliament the question was brought to an issue two or three years ago. Pet.i.tions 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sively.” 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE THE CHINAMAN TRAVELS, OPIUM TRAVELS TOO A Consignment of Opium from China to the United States, Photographed in the Custom House, San Francisco]
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 ill.u.s.tration 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 quant.i.ty 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 500 ($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 circ.u.mstances, 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 gra.s.s 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 c.o.c.k-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 const.i.tuted, would apparently like to help. But, across the path of a.s.sistance stands, like a grotesque, inhuman dragon,--the Indian Revenue.
VIII
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