JAPAN ARRAIGNED.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1919, Page 12

JAPAN ARRAIGNED.

THE ATTEMPT TO DEBAUCH CHINA (Christian Science Monitor). "It i 3 part of the Japanese programme always to undermine the morals and the morale of the people whom they wish to subject to their domination. I am not excusing our people. They should not buy drugs from the Japanese, but the fact remains that it is part of the Japanese policy deliberately to tempt the weak and to debauch the Chinese by any means in their power." Thus did Mr. H. F. Kung, the Shantung delegate to the Peace Conference, sum up to a representative of this paper, the other day, what is gradually coming to be recognised as one of the greatest of present-day international scandals, namely, the export by Japan of morphia to Chiua. It is no less than a del'beratedy, carefully planned attempt on the part of Japan to make, still more certain her hold on, China by debauching the Chinese people. Barely escaped, and that largely by her own efforts, from the terrible blight of the opium traffic, still numbering among her vast population many millions whose freedom had only been rendered possible by the courageous and drastic prohibition laws enacted by the government, China is faced by a deliberate attempt on the part of Japan to take advantage of her weakness.

For the last ten years, the importation into China of morphia and morphia appliances of all kinds haa been prohibited. Japan, is herself a signatory to. the agreement which forbids this traffic. And yet, it is a fact all too well known that the exportation of morphia and morphia appliances to China is one of the most flourishing of Japanese tnules. Literally tens of millions of yen, declares one authority, are transferred annually worn China to Japan for the payment of Japanese morphia. The trade has the financial backing of one of the largest banks in Japan. The great morphia laboratories in Formosa are tinder government supervision, and the chief agent for the distribution of morphia in China is the Japanese post office. A large aim steadily increasing supply of the drug passes, week by week and month' bymonth, through the parcel post. No inspection of parcels passing through the ■Japanese post odices in China is allowed to the Chinese customs oflicittls. These officials have to he content with a statement written on the outside giving the alleged contents of the parcel. The actual contents may be anything. In this way, it is estimated, morphia is entering China by the ton.

At every point, the Japanese morphia smuggler is protected by hi* government. Day by day, motor driven "liahing boats" carry the drug across the Straits of Formosa to the nearest point in Fukien, and, day by day. it is sold throughout an ever-increasing area in China' in Japanese morphia shops under extra-ter-ritorial protection. Every purse is catered for. Those who can pa;.' for it ear. lay i>_ as large a store iis they please, while the poorest workman may satisfy an immediate craving by the smallest outlay. "It is always pos'sible," declares a United States official repurt on the subject, dated July, ''for the lowest class of Chinese laborers to purchase an injection from any so-called Japanese drug store at a price from 3 lo 5. copper cents, say from to 2J .American cents. In this way the Japanese have ruined many of the lowest class mentally, morally and physically." Kow, if all this i* as stilted, and it is. of course, indisputably so, what is to be said about it? This is not a case in which a few, or even a large number of unscrupulous and immoral business men are defying their government, and embarking on a contraband trade sincerely reprobated by authority. It. is a case of a, carefully organised, govern-ment-planned and government-protected trade carried on in open and cynical defiance of the desires and laws of a friendly neighbor. .Such conduct as this in an individual would make him an outcast from the socicly of decent men, and there is only one standard of righteousness, whether it be in the case of the individual or the nation. The question may be put with quite a measured simplicity. Is (he Government that can thus deliberately plan for- the debauching of a whole people, in order that it may Ihe more readily secure assent to its claims upon (hat people's lan<,!s and resources, to be'allowed to succeed in its purpose? The question before the world to-dav, so htr as -(apart and China are concerned, is not the comparatively simple anil comparatively innocuous one of whether Japan, after the fashion of many other countries, at nny rate before the war, shall bo allowed to achieve the territorial aggrandisements she is seeking. The question is whether a nation that has shown itself secretly committed to so many of the evils that the world has been struggling against during the horror of the last live years shall lie allowed to pursue its course unchecked; and not only be allowed but be aided in the effort. From the day thai Japan adopted the German constitution, just thirty years ago. (iermany has been her model, and those who imagine that the war has discredit ml the. German method in the ryes of Japan are indeed sorely mistaken. "'1 he method is well enough," says the Japanese statesman in effect. "Germany failed in putting it into practice. But where Germany failed we can succeed." And so the work is pushed forward. It is almost completed in Korea. It is well under way in Manchuria, and ; now, with the consent of the allied i governments, it is about to he inaugurated officially in Shantung.