Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 3, 1907, (In two parts), Part I

File No. 774/18–19.

The Secretary of State to Ambassador Reid.

Department of State,
Washington,January 31, 1907.

No. 385.]

Sir: By the department’s No. 297 of September 27 last,^a you were instructed to ascertain the views of the British Government, in advance of general overtures being made to the other powers having possessions or interests in the Far East, as to whether it would be willing to join in a general and impartial investigation of the scientific and material conditions of the opium trade and the opium habit in that quarter; and a similar instruction was on the same day sent to the ambassador at Tokyo with reference to the Japanese Government.

The initial inquiries thus made having elicited favorable responses from the Governments of Great Britain and Japan (see your No. 291 of November 27, 1906,^b and the copy of No. 103 of November 24, 1906,^c from the embassy at Tokyo, inclosed herewith), and the cooperation of China seeming assured by the imperial restrict of November 21, 1906, the department has issued instructions to the diplomatic agents of the United States accredited to France, Germany, and the Netherlands inquiring whether the government to which each is accredited, respectively, would be willing to join in a conference on the opium question, or whether, if another course were deemed more convenient and practical, it would be prepared to name a commissioner who, in concert with like commissioners of the other powers named, would investigate the subject, with a view to submitting a joint recommendation to the powers, or, in case of divergence of views, a statement thereof to the several governments for their consideration and appropriate determination in the direction of united action, as the result of a conference, or coincident action by each government in its own sphere. A copy of the instruction is inclosed.

As the former instructions to you had reference to an inquiry and made no mention of a conference, the department desires you, in bringing the present information to the knowledge of the British Government, to inquire which of the two courses suggested would be the more convenient and acceptable to it.^a

I am, etc.,

Elihu Root.

1. See Foreign Relations, 1906, p. 360.
2. See Foreign Relations, 1906, p. 365.
3. See Foreign Relations, 1906, p. 364.
4. Copy sent mutatis mutandis to the embassy at Tokyo, January 31, 1907. No. 65.