OPIUM TRAFFIC SUPPRESSION

The press dispatches from Shanghai announce that the international opium commission has practically concluded its work. It was almost a foregone conclusion that the resolutions it adopted should be all one way, the evidences of the evils of the opium traffic have been so self-evident in recent literature. While the evil of opium smoking is apparently greatest in China, we have the testimony of missionaries and other non-official witnesses, as well as the inferential evidence from such literature as Kipling's "Gate of a Hundred Sorrows," that it is an evil appreciated by disinterested observers in India. In the second resolution the commission finds, in agreement with American observers in the Philippines, that the use of opium is not confined to smoking alone, as the morphin habit shows signs of spreading and should be checked. The recommendation that the various governments holding concessions or settlements in China should close the opium