We learned that the opium trade was freely indulged in, at Singapore, fostered by the Government. Singapore is a large city of about 300,000 inhabitants, a great number of which are Chinese. It has wide, beautiful streets, fine government buildings, magnificent quays and docks—a splendid European city at the outposts of the Orient. We found that a large part of its revenue is derived from the opium traffic—from the sale of opium, and from license fees derived from shops where opium may be purchased, or from divans where it may be smoked. The customers are mainly Chinese.
I wanted to visit these Government-licensed opium shops and opium dens. A friend lent me two servants, as guides. We three got into rickshaws and went down to the Chinese quarter, where there are several hundred of these places, all doing a flourishing business. It was early in the afternoon, but even then, trade was brisk. The divans were rooms with wide wooden benches running round the sides, on which benches, in pairs, sharing a lamp between them, lay the smokers. They purchased their opium on entering, and then lay down to smoke it. The packages are little, triangular packets, each containing enough for about six smokes. Each packet bears a label, red letters on a white ground, "Monopoly Opium."
In one den there was an old man—but you can't tell whether a drug addict is old or not, he looked as they all do, gray and emaciated—but as he caught my eye, he laid down the needle on which he was about to cook his pill, and glanced away. I stood before him, waiting for him to continue the process, but he did not move.
"Why doesn't he go on?" I asked my guide. "He is ashamed to have you see him," came the reply.
"But why should he be ashamed?" I asked, "The British Government is not ashamed to sell to him, to encourage him to drug himself, to ruin himself. Why should he be ashamed?"
"Nevertheless, he is," replied the guide. "You see what he looks like—what he has become. He is not quite so far gone as the others—he is a more recent victim. He still feels that he has become degraded. Most of them do not feel that way—after a while."
So we went on and on, down the long street. There was a dreadful monotony about it all. House after house of feeble, emaciated, ill wrecks, all smoking Monopoly Opium, all contributing, by their shame and degradation, to the revenues of the mighty British Empire.
Packet of opium, actual size, as sold in licensed opium shop in Singapore. The local government here derives from forty to fifty per cent of its revenue through the sale of opium.
That evening after dinner, I sat on the wide verandah of the hotel, looking over a copy of the "Straits Times." One paragraph, a dispatch from London, caught my eye. "Chinese in Liverpool. Reuter's Telegram. London, January 17, 1917. Thirty-one Chinese were arrested during police raids last night on opium dens in Liverpool. Much opium was seized. The police in one place were attacked by a big retriever and by a number of Chinese, who threw boots and other articles from the house-top."