WAR AGAINST OPIUM.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 78, 28 September 1907, Page 13

WAR AGAINST OPIUM.

HOW THE CHINESE DENS WERE ' CLOSED. .Returning from my journey round the world, which has included six months in China, writes Joseph G. Alexander in the Tribune. I have been gratified to find in the Foochow Daily Echo a remarkable account of the closing of 3000 opium dens in Foochow on 12th May last. As I spent a week there last November, and was twice entertained to Chinese banquets by the anti-opium societies of the city, I may bo able to throw light on the. proceedings which havo culminated so dramatically. Tho leader of the anti-opjuni movement in Foochow is a young mandaiin, Mr. Lin, of considerable ability, g_reat grandson of tho famous Corumissionfir Lin, whose destruction of 2000 chests of opium in 1839 led to the opium war. Mr. Liv does not regret, on the contrary, he glories in, the action of his ancestor. In an address of" welcome which he was good enough to give mv, ho expressed his determination to follow his great-grandfather's example. As president of tho principal Anti-Opium Society he has been working, evidently to good effect, to secure the faithful carrying out of the Imperial decree of last August, and tho regulations which followed, issued in November, for stopping the use and sale of opium in China. Notico was given, in accordance with those rpgulations, that \t the end of six months the opium shops would all be closed, and that was carried out on the day named. REUALUTTRANTS GO TO GAOL. Vainly" the opium-den keepers protested, vainly did they present petitions asking for an extension, first of two months, then of one month, then of weeks or days, lastly of only one day. Their leader, w.ho presented the pefci- ' tion and offered &- bribes of lOOOdols to j the officials, was put into prison. The ' anti-opium societies formed vigilanco committees, with watchers appointed for every ward of ttio city and its suburbs, so that, when the fateful day arrived, only three or four dealers dared to open their shops, and these men were ! promptly seized and hustled off to gaol ! Great demonstrations were made in celebration of tho closing of these places. "Long processions of students — tho students all orer China arc strong against opium ; an English professor in a Chinee Government university told me ho found the students so o shamed of their country's national vice that they did not like to speak of it to a foreigner— "paraded the streets with banners, lanterns, and flags, and hnn- j dreds of shops were decorated with I bunting and pennants. Many mass j meetings were held throughout tha ! city. At these meotings tho Chinese I officials spoke, and so groat was the !' enthusiasm that a foreigner who h.ip- • pened to attend one of the meetings out of curiosity was hedged to address the crowd, which ho did amidst great applause." It is indeed well that the- House of Commons last year, only just in time to do it with good grace, placed itself, by a _ unanimous vote, on the sido of the rising Chinese indignation againpt tho vice which British policy, under tho influenre of misguided Anglo-Indian officials, has so long fostered. A British Consul said to me : "Yom- visit has done what neither we officials nor the missionaries could have done — it has . prevented this anti-opium movement from becoming an anti-British movement." This was simply because I was able wherever I went to tell tha Chinese that tho British Parliament and Government of to-day have repenttd of ' British wrong-doing in tho past, and are determineJ to eo-opeT&te with China for the suppression of her greatest scourge.