Poppy Pow-Wow

The eighth session within three years (TIME, Sept. 10, 1923, et seq.) of the League of Nations Advisory Commission on the Traffic in Opium flowered into an impassioned poppy pow-wow last week.

Woods Raps. Scarcely had the delegates assembled--many of them slant-eyed poppy-landers -- when hard-fisted Colonel Arthur Woods* hurled a policeman's challenge: "There may be too much diplomacy and too little roughshod direct police action in the fight against narcotic outlaws. . . . To crush the international narcotic traffic we must have international police action!"

Thrusting his point, Colonel Woods told that information of an expected drug shipment from one country to another now passes through such decorously deliberate diplomatic channels that the drug-running ship often outstrips by several weeks the information which would make possible its seizure. Smacking down his fist the Colonel cried: "Direct international police communication by cable would result in the seizure of almost all drug shipments!"

Diplomatic Contribution. Having dozed or pondered while the foreign-devil-policeman spoke, slant-eyed delegates awoke to attention when Dr. Chao-Hsin Chu, Chinese Minister to Italy, made his contribution to the proceedings: "You insult my government and I am not afraid to insult yours!"

This explosion was the counterblast to a series of remarks by diplomat Sir Malcolm Delevingne, the British representative. Sir Malcolm, to be sure, had charged --though in the most diplomatic way--that the Chinese government is corrupt, and asserted that the International Anti-Opium Association recently informed him of an instance in which 220 lb. of morphine* was allowed to enter China on permits signed by high Chinese officials.

"I need only point out," shouted Chao-Hsin Chu, "that the International Anti-Opium Association, which furnished this alleged disclosure, is directed by ENGLISHMEN! Draw your own conclusions, gentlemen. . . . If you can find a single man in China in whose breast there does not beat anti-British feeling, he is not a Chinese.

"You. . ." turning back to Sir Malcolm Delevingne, "you can reply to me by an appeal to diplomacy or you can reply by an appeal to arms. China will welcome your attack. . . . I hereby publicly assume the responsibility for declaring that China will soon tear up the unequal treaties forced on her. . . . I can officially inform the committee that the time when China will tolerate foreign interference in her internal affairs is nearing its end. . . .

"Today for the first time Chinese representatives have the courage to make such statements publicly against foreign interference."

Significance. Sir Malcolm Delevingne was far from smoothing matters over when he contemptuously refused to take offense, postulating instead an obvious truth: that "the Chinese delegates represent only themselves," because the new "Government of China" (TIME, Dec. 8, 1924, CHINA) exists merely as a puppet show whose wires are pulled by military adventurers. (See CHINA.)

The diplomats having thus hopelessly disrupted the commission, no subsequent constructive debate or action was reported last week.

*Police Commissioner of New York City 1914-18.

*Value $30,800 wholesale.