ously inexact in statistical matters. The officials
who drew up the edict probably wished to convey the impression that the
situation is really grave, and employed this form of statement in order to
give force to the document. No accurate estimate of the number of opium
victims in China is obtainable; but it is possible to combine the
impressions which have been set down by reliable observers in different
parts of the "Middle Kingdom," and thus to arrive at a fair, general
impression of the truth. The following, for example, from Mr. Alexander
Hosie, the commercial attache to the British legation at Peking, should
carry weight. He is reporting on conditions in Szechuen Province:

"I am well within the mark when I say that in the cities fifty per cent.
of the males and twenty per cent. of the females smoke opium, and that in
the country the percentage is not less than twenty-five for men and five
per cent. for women." There are about forty-two million people in Szechuen
Province; and they not only raise and consume a very great quantity of
opium, they also send about twenty thousand tons down the Yangtse River
every year for use in other provinces. The report of other travellers,
merchants, and official investigators indicate that about all of the
richest soil in Szechuen is given over to poppy cultivation, and that the
labouring classes show a noticeable decline of late in physique and
capacity for work.

In regard to another so-called "opium province," Yunnan, we have the
following statement: "I saw practically the whole population given over to
its abuse. The ravages it is making in men, women, and children are
deplorable.... I was quite able to realize that any one who had seen the
wild abuse of opium in Yunnan would have a wild abhorrence of it."

In later chapters we shall go into the matter more at length. Here let me
add to these statements merely a few typical scraps of information,
selected from a bundle of note-books full of records of chats and
interviews with travellers of almost every nationality and of almost every
station in life. The secretary of a life insurance company which does a
considerable business up and down the coast told me that, roughly, fifty
per cent of the Chinese who apply for insurance are opium-smokers. Another
bit comes from a man who lived for several years in an inland city of a
quarter of a million inhabitants. The local Anti-opium League had 750
members, he said and he believed th