work and a call for volunteers was issued. Among others, several professors and students of your college responded and at once left for Harbin, where the plague was seen in its worst form. Leaving self and family out of consideration, they thought only of the good they could do, and as doctors they remembered that their duty and ambition was to fight disease and death: And it is this spirit, I believe, should inspire you throughout your lives, the spirit of service and sacrifice.

Within the year 1911, the Chinese government twice sought the coöperation of the Union Medical College in Peking when their own resources were insufficient. The first was in the case of the epidemic in pneumonic plague in Manchuria referred to by Na T'ung and the second was during the revolution. The imperial army medical corps was altogether inadequate for the task and desired the Medical College to coöperate. The reply was in the affirmative provided a Red Cross Society could be organized and that the imperial government would apply the rules of the Geneva Convention to the treatment of wounded rebels. It took a month of the time of the most active hostilities before they could be persuaded to do so, but in the end these civilized rules prevailed and three companies with nine teachers and about forty students went to the front. Aside from this and the efforts of other Red Cross Societies in China whereever there were medical missionaries their hospitals if required were filled with wounded. On the rebel side there was little army medical corps work but several organizations including the Red Cross Society in Shanghai sent companies to the scene of hostilities. The public service during these two visitations of pestilence and war has aided greatly in showing the officials in China what western medicine is by actual demonstration. After the plague one heard on every side among officials of the necessity of reform in medical education and in supervision of public health. There is no question but that the new government will move rapidly in this direction and that the institutions now at work and many others will be needed to coöperate with those that the government will establish to train physicians and public health officers for new China.

THE OPIUM ABOLITION QUESTION

By J. O. P. Bland, formerly of the Imperial Maritime Customs, Secretary to the Shanghai Municipality and "Times" Correspondent in China

I am deeply sensible, ladies and gentlemen, of the honor conferred and of my privilege in addressing so distinguished and representative an audience. I am also sensible of the fact that the opinions which I am about to lay before you in connection with the opium question in China are very different, on the whole, from those which you are accustomed to hear and to hold. The subject of opium production and smoking in China is one which many writers have discovered to be of an extremely difficult and thorny nature. Mr. H. B. Morse, an American who for many years served the Chinese government loyally and well, writing on this subject observes that he who tries to investigate the facts with no predisposition to either side is likely to find himself branded as a trimmer by the one party and a Laodicean by the other, with no opportunity to defend himself.

In bringing before you the present aspect of the opium question and the views and opinions which I and many other observers hold on this subject, I would ask you to believe that I am actuated by a feeling of sincere sympathy and regard for the Chinese people and that the views which I hold are entirely sincere, even where they differ from those advanced by the missionary bodies, the anti-opium societies and many earnest Chinese reformers in China. I am aware that one runs the risk of being misjudged in this matter, but it is a risk which must be faced by those who sincerely believe that the proceedings of the anti-opium societies, initiated with the very best of motives, are likely in the long run to aggravate the evil of opium smoking in China, even after the Indian trade has been completely abolished, and to a certain extent because of the abolition of that trade.

Speaking for myself and for many other observers whose opinions are based as much upon the political, economic and social aspects of the question as upon its high moral grounds, it seems to me a matter for sincere congratulation that Great Britain has assented to the abolition of the Indian trade, a traffic in itself highly demoralizing to the Chinese and therefore discreditable to Great Britain. Having said this much, however, it seems to me necessary that we should recognize the fact that the practical issues of the question of opium abolition as a whole have been very frequently confused by too general an acceptance of certain postulates loudly proclaimed upon high moral grounds. It seems to me that many of the philanthropists, missionaries and eminent divines who have taken a prominent part in the antiopium movement are afflicted in their field of morals by the same persistent delusion as that which commonly afflicts reformers in the field of political economics. "They are all pervaded," as Spencer says, "by the conviction, now definitely expressed and now taken as a self evident truth, that there needs but this kind of instruction or that kind of discipline, this mode of repression or that system of culture, to bring society into a very much better state.' Misled by laudable enthusiasms, blinded by benevolent hypotheses, it is a characteristic of the advocates of this good cause, that they are generally predisposed to ignore or to misinterpret those facts of the situation which militate against their own conclusions. Influenced by these enthusiasms, they fail to take into account, not only the structural character of the Chinese race in particular, but the inherent weaknesses of humanity in general.

If we turn to the history of the agitation against the Indian opium trade, we find that amongst the arguments most frequently advanced, two have been most persistent; first, the argument that Great Britain has forced the Indian trade upon China at the cannon's mouth, and secondly, that the recent anti-opium legislation introduced by the Chinese government opens up a new and particularly promising vision of reform. As regards the first of these two, the fallacy of the cannon's mouth line of argument has been so

frequently demonstrated by unbiased and competent writers that the facts are easily available. Nevertheless, it continues to figure prominently in all the activities of the antiopium societies and is apparently not to be upset by any reiteration of historical fact. To give only one recent instance, let me quote to you from a work published a month ago, Men and Manners of Modern China by Dr. Macgowan.

Seventy years ago [he says] a great western power forced on China an opium treaty at the mouth of the cannon. Since then not a dead hand but a mailed fist has been held up threateningly to prevent its being evaded. Her merchants have carried on the opium traffic and her warships have patrolled the eastern seas, to see that they are not defrauded of their rights.

The years dragged slowly on for China, and during these opium was slowly weaving its web over the land, and its black fingers were fastening themselves round the hearts of countless thousands, and homes were being desolated by a curse which the government might never try to remove, for the iron fist was always on guard. And then the great miracle took place. The passion that had been burning in the hearts of the best men in the country blazed forth with a mighty fire. The conqueror was appealed to some five years ago or so, and slowly the mailed arm was dropped.

The effect of well-meant but wholly inaccurate statements of this sort has been clearly reflected in the attitude of many Chinese promoters of the anti-opium movement and has resulted in diverting the attention of many from the real and vital issues of that question to the actually subordinate question of the Indian trade. This attitude of the Chinese was most remarkably demonstrated at the Hague Conference which took place at the close of last year. I was present, on behalf of the London Times, on that occasion and was struck by the fact that, although at this time the cultivation of the poppy was being rapidly reintroduced into many provinces in China, the attitude of the Chinese delegates was one of virtuous condescension and high moral superiority, so much so, that they were brought to book and rebuked on more than one occasion. At the end of 1910 when, as a result of a wave of public enthusiasm and concerted efforts, sincerely backed by the Manchu government, opium cultivation had been reduced by something approximating to twenty-five per cent of the area under poppy, the

adoption by the Chinese delegates of an attitude of moral superiority might have been condoned; but in 1911, with cultivation again in full swing it was certainly indefensible. The complete abolition line of argument, like the cannon's mouth theory, is based upon fallacies and on untruths easily disprovable. To refute the cannon's mouth legend, for instance, I may observe that amongst the events which led up to the treaty of Nanking in 1842, opium was only one factor and that the question settled by that treaty was not the question of the importation of opium (or other goods) at Canton, but the right of foreign envoys to treat directly with the Chinese government.

But be this as it may, the Indian opium trade may now be regarded as dead, England's present attitude in the matter amounting to recognition of the fact that the game is not worth the scandal, and that the abolition of a trade in which only a limited number of British merchants and bankers and a few millions of Indian agriculturists are concerned, will be politically and economically to the advantage of the British Empire, quite apart from all moral considerations. Economically, the substitution of grain cultivation for opium in India must in the end be productive of good, for the enormous increase of population in that country is already producing serious social and economic difficulties and it must be obvious that every field taken from opium and given to the production of grain will eventually afford a measure of relief to the pressing problem of the world's food supply. On the other hand, however, it must be evident that, now that as China resumes the cultivation of opium upon a large scale, the difficulties of the food supply problem in China are likely to be aggravated in the near future.

In order to gauge the future action of the Chinese Government and its people in regard to this question of opium, it is necessary before all to consider the question of the permanent sincerity of the governing class. At the Shang-Hai Conference in 1909, it was recorded as the unanimous opinion of the International delegates that they believed in the "unswerving sincerity" of the Chinese government.