men. This
Opium Combine had been appealing for an extension of the ten-year
contract, an extension of nine months. They had appealed to the
various British officials in China, and to the Foreign Office in
London, but apparently the British Government had turned a deaf ear to
these pleas, which must have been a hard thing to do, considering the
enormous revenue that country derives from her opium monopoly. Even
without the Chinese markets, one would have supposed that the markets
of India, Siam, the Straits Settlements, etc., and other subject or
helpless states, would afford these dealers opportunity to get rid of
their surplus stocks. But no. The opium was in China, in their
go-downs in Shanghai, and they wanted nine months' additional time in
which to get rid of it.

If this time extension had once been granted, however, pressure would
have been brought to bear at the end of the nine months for a further
extension; and so on, and so on, upon various pretexts. Accordingly, the
British Government refused to interfere in the matter, and very
honorably decided that the opium traffic in China was to end on the date
specified, April 1, 1917.

But what did the Shanghai Combine do? Finding they could not sell their
remaining chests of opium before the first of April (which they could
easily have done had they not held them at such exorbitant prices), they
apparently "influenced" the Vice-President of China to purchase them in
behalf of the Chinese Government! There were some three thousand of
these chests, each one containing about a hundred and forty pounds of
opium, and the sum which the Vice-President pledged China to pay for
this opium was twenty million dollars. China was under no obligation
whatsoever to purchase this. In a few more weeks the contract would have
expired, and China would have been automatically freed. The Shanghai
Combine could either have disposed of their chests at reasonable prices
within the time limit, or else hawked them round to other markets. But,
the Vice-President having been "influenced" in this manner, this
well-nigh bankrupt country is now about to issue domestic bonds to the
value of twenty million dollars to pay for this indebtedness.

This secret treaty, this dastardly betrayal of China by her
Vice-president and the British opium-dealers, is apparently a one-man
deal. After the contract between them was signed, Parliament and the
country at large was notified of the transaction, and on