Lord Cecil recognizes that it would be a'-farce' _to pretend
that we could prevent the_sninggling_a_npium a thing very easily smuggled—into our Far Eastern territories, so long as China is behaving quite lawlessly. Nothing would be more disastrous than to make laws in our 'Dependencies which we could not enforce. The solution seems to us to- be not inamediate-prohibition---:, would that it were possible !—but an intensification of the system of licensing and of ,granting certificates for export and . import. Great Britain and America have already agreed in principle that an International Central Board ought to be established to draw up statistics and later to fix and sanction. the amount of opium that may be sold. The Opium Advisory Committee of the League has recommended the extension- of licensing, and indeed the Conference was inclined to rule out the American proposals as being outside its scope, if not impracticable. As America and Great Britain have plenty of common ground on the subject, -and we are not divided in our ideals but only in our methods, it is not too much to hope that the gulf will be bridged.
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