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.