The Week's Doings

Opium. The International Opium Conference adjourned its deliberations, began to study the draft of the Anti-Narcotics Convention, the monument which the Conference erected to its imperishable memory. The chief British delegate, Lord Cecil, returned to England.

After weeks of discussion and quarrels, the net result of the parley was reported:

1) An agreement between Britain, France, India, Japan, Holland, Portugal and Siam to Abolish opium smoking in the Far East within 15 years from the date when a League commission shall have declared that China has curbed overproduction of opium and eliminated the danger of smuggling. (The U. S. delegation wanted the prohibition made immediately effective.)

2) An agreement between the above nations, Portugal making certain exceptions, to substitute government monoply of opium exports and imports for privately conducted trade. (The U. S. delegation wanted the source of production--i.e., the cultivation of the opium poppy--controlled progressively until finally restricted to purely medicinal uses.)

3) An agreement to permit legal sales under rule of The Hague Convention, of heroin and laudanum (opium products). (The U. S. delegation, here joined by the British, wanted both these drugs barred as being medicinally dangerous.)

The Finnish delegate caused a commotion by declaring that Chinese Tuchuns (Military Governors) produced and sold opium illicitly in order to buy illicitly munitions for their wars. Arthur Brisbane, Hearst sage, remarked:

"That's a nice picture of civilization, Christian nations using one part of their money to send missionaries to the Chinese and another part of their money to stimulate the deadly opium traffic, that the heathen may be able to purchase weapons to kill each other."

Protocol. The Protocol to the Covenant of the League of Nations, designed to enforce arbitration, security and disarmament (TIME, Oct. 13) was thought to have died a natural death. It was freely predicted that Britain would ask for more time to consider the protocol proposals, owing to the fact that her Dominions had declined to attend an Imperial Conference on the subject. This, in turn, was regarded as unfavorable and a project was in hand to drop the security proposals out of the drafted protocol and refer the whole question to this year's Assembly. There was probably no truth in the report that Britain would offer France a separate security pact.