This page has been validated.
197
CHAPTER XII.
THE OPIUM QUESTION.
The Chinese Government have set their hand to a task in comparison with which the whole twelve labours of Hercules pale into insignificance. To root out in a period of ten years the insidious vice of opium-smoking, which on their own showing has laid its palsied touch upon no less than 40 per cent of a population computed at 400,000,000, is an undertaking which may well stagger the imagination of even the most visionary of moral reformers. Yet this is the modest proposition advanced by the issue of a simple edict on the 20th of September 1906:—
"It is hereby commanded that within a period of ten years the evils arising from
