Opium Impasse

While the Council of the League discussed matters at Rome, the Opium Conference tried to discuss opium at Geneva.

Discussion, wearying and pointless, centred about the U. S. proposal for a central body to control production of the drug and a plan to decrease importations by 10% annually. Mrs. Hamilton Wright of the U. S. delegation brought up a new proposal to send expert committees into opium-producing countries to determine what crops could be profitably grown instead of opium. Nobody could agree with anybody; all presented compromise plans; none accepted them, and there the matter rested. After U. S. Bishop Charles H. Brent had withdrawn from the Conference, disgusted, and one of the Indian delegates had been withdrawn, Japanese Delegate M. Sugimura declared he could stand no more of it, withdrew from the subcommittee. The Conference went on bravely, agreed to take up the American proposal first of all at a meeting in January, adjourned.