Office of the Historian

File No. 511. 4A1/921.

The Secretary of State to Minister Calhoun.

Department of State,
Washington, December 6, 1910.
No. 90.]

Sir: The department acknowledges the receipt of your dispatch No. 112, of October 25 last, with which you transmit copies of notes received from the foreign office, dated August 31, 1910, and October 3, 1910, wherein it is stated that China has appointed delegates, whose names are given, to represent her in the proposed international opium conference; also copy of an imperial edict which appeared on September 28, 1910, and an editorial from the Peking Daily News of the same date, both of which relate to the opium question.

You will inform the foreign office that this Government is highly gratified that China’s plenipotentiary representatives are to be Lew Yuk-lin, T’ang Fuo-an, and T’ang Tsai-fu, the first two having so ably represented China at the International Opium Commission.

You will also inform the foreign office that Great Britain, in accepting this Government’s proposal for the conference, did so on condition that the interested Governments make a preliminary study of the manufacture and trade in morphine and cocaine, and that they indicate their willingness to enact drastic measures to control such manufacture and trade. The Netherlands Government, which most courteously consented to arrange with the interested Governments the date for the meeting of the conference, has informed this Government that May 30, 1911, has been decided upon, and that it will learn from the participating powers their views in regard to the manufacture of and trade in morphine and cocaine. The Japanese Government has already informed this Government that it is favorably inclined to the British proposals; and the department feels assured, in virtue of the morphine articles in the British-Chinese and American-Chinese commercial treaties of 1902 and 1903, and China’s recent request to be permitted to apply the general principle of these articles to the importation of cocaine, that the British proposals will be acceptable to the Chinese Government.

I am, etc.,

P. C. Knox.