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turesque mountains and fertile valleys, while the stupendous rivers cau float an enormous commerce, Indeed, China is the most interesting and most important country in the world yet undeveloped, with its several hundred millions of illiterate and superstitions workers whose standard of living is lower than most any other people on earth, Surely China today looks as inviting to the capitalists of the world as it did to the opium feeders of England more than a century ago. The capitalists found several very serious obstacles in the way, and the principal obstruction was opium; an opium consuming race would not make very profitable wage slaves. Therefore the traffic in opium must be abolished.
On February 1st, 1909, there met at Shanghai, at the instigation of the United States Government, commissions from China, Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, Siam, Portugal, Holland, Persia and the Uniten States. These delegates propounded the question of abolishing the opium evil not only in China and the Philippines, but other countries as well.
For a century and a quarter the combined powers of the world refused to interpose and save China from the debauching influence of the poisonous drug. And the great Christian church spent millions of dollars exhorting the Chinamen to come to Jesus, but offered no word of protest against the opium habit inflicted upon her people by a Christian nation.
And now for some reason we find the Christian world determined to abolish the curse.
Since the first opium convention held in 1909, several other important international opium conferences were held.
Here are the newspaper dispatches:
London, Nov. 19, 1911.—American delegates and secretaries of the International Opium Conference at the Hague will arrive at Plymouth tomorrow, Hamilton Wright and Wallace Young will come to London for a brief halt, and Henry J. Finger and Frederick Huyder Kooper will continue their journey to Holland, where the conference opens on December 1.
The Right Rev. Charles Henry Brent, Protestant Episcopal bishop of the Philippines, who was president of the previous commission, will be chosen to preside.
In connection with the published statement that the official appointment of the British delegates had been delayed pending the receipt at London of the
