WALL AGAINST DRUGS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4349, 25 January 1938, Page 7

WALL AGAINST DRUGS

ALBANIA GLOBES WORST GAP With the adherence of Albania to the Narcotics Limitation Convention of 1931 the network in Europe against the manufacture and distribution of dangerous drugs is all but complete. Only Yugoslavia, long a potential threat against the world system of regulation, now remains outside the network in Europe, with the exception of Iceland, which is not considered important. And now the Powers believe they can close in on Yugoslavia and obtain conformity with the world svstem.

Addition of Albania to the list of Powers supporting the 1932 convention raises to C 3 the number now co-operat-ing, a total higher than so far recorded for any other of the conventions negotiated under the auspices of the League of Nations.

GREAT HOPES AROUSED. The work of the supervisory body in Geneva which administers the 1931 convention has been an encouraging success, but the prospect of making the European regulation watertight raises great hopes. At the first session of the supervisory body on August 1, 1933, only 11 estimates of drug production and requirements were received under the requirements of the treaty, and only 38 States had ratified the convention. At its 1937 meeting the supervisory body examined the estimates for 140 countries and territories, with 02 States having ratified the convention. Application of the system of estimates—which sets a world quota for dangerous drugs and enables the supervisory body to restrict manufacture to legitimate needs—has now become increasingly general. The system of estimates and of international supervision has become a reality, surviving the test of practical application. The limitation convention of 1931 established an entirely new system of international legislation, appreciably in advance of the general evolution of international law. Its provisions apply ■to and are administered and interpreted not only in modern industrial States with fully-developed administrative organisations, but in less advanced countries and small islands of the Atlantic and Pacific.

A NEW TECHNIQUE. “An entirely new technique of international administration ” is the way one Geneva authority describes the work, going on to say: “ Thanks to this technique, applied regularly day by day, we are endeavouring. within the framework of the League of Nations, to co-ordinate the administrative methods of the States and slowly to create, in a modest but important field of activity, precedents which some day may serve perhaps to enable greater conceptions, more important for humanity, to be successfully realised.” Outside of Europe, the convention has been adhered to by all nations with these exceptions; Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ethiopia, Liberia, the Union of South Africa. Adherence of Albania, a State commonly regarded as under Italian influence, indicates continued co-operation of Italy with the anti-narcotic work of the League, though it has retired from League membership. Thus the antinarcotic work becomes one of the few remaining frameworks of world solidarity and universality. The United States has always been a strong participant.

what is spoken of as Dr Johnson’s seat, not forgetting to feast their eyes reverently on the greasy mark his head left on the panelled wall. As a fact, there is not a jot of evidence to suggest the doctor ever set foot in the inn; there is not a word in Boswell to support such a belief. FAMOUS INNKEEPERS. Famous legendary innkeepers should be preserved with the jealous care taken of famous legendary inns themselves. Alas, they cannot last for ever. Old Joe Jordan, of the George at Dorchester, is gone. He weighed 22st; his wife weighed LBst. He made his own damson and sloe gins; he had recipes hundreds of years old for distillations of every herb you could line! in a country walk. The walls of his little parlour were covered as completely as wallpaper with original masterpieces by the greatest living English painters, who had found him a friend as well as a landlord. Williams, the eminent novelist, is still a boniface in the far west, and the arts are also represented by John Fothergill, perhaps England’s most famous innkeeper. He has left the Spreadeagle at Thame, and Ascot after it, and ho is now to be found in the dour north. He is a unique character. He wears eighteenth century dress and brilliant scarlet shoes with silvqr buckles. If he dislikes your face he charges you double for your meal. Fothergill was, 1 believe, author of an important article on art in an earlier edition of the ‘ Encyclopaedia Britannica.’ You could order the choicest of wines by the single glass when you dined at the Spreadeagle, and when you entered it you wrote your name in pencil on the panelling behind the door. If he disapproved of you Fothergill rubbed it out. I found my own name still there, a day or two ago, surviving Fothergill—a remarkable circumstance, because 1 once took a greyhound into his tea room and the (.log licked a huge cake off the table as if it had been an oyster —not a crumb was left behind. John Fothergill said the dog was the finest plate-cleaner invented yet, and should bo in the ideal home exhibition. He took it upstairs and gave it a ride on his model railway as a reward for tidiness.