drug stores throughout China carry large stores of morphine. Japanese medicine vendors look to morphine for their largest profit. Through Tarren morphine circulates throughout Manchuria and the Province adjoining. Through Tsingtan morphine is carried with opium and other contraband by motor driven fishing boats to some point on the mainland from whence it is distributed throughout the Province of Fukien and the north Kwangtwant. Everywhere it is sold by Japanese under extra territorial protection. While the morphine traffic is large there is every reason to believe that the opium traffic upon which Japan is embarking with enthusiasm is likely to prove more lucrative. In the Calcutta opium sale, Japan has become one of the considerable purchasers of Indian opium. She purchases for Formosa, where the opium trade shows a steady growth, and where opium is required for the manufacture of morphine. Sold by the Government of India, this opium is exported under permits applied for by the Japanese Government, is shipped to Kobe, and from Kobe is transshipped to Tsingtau. Large profits are made in this trade, in which are interested some of the leading firms of Japan. It must be emphasized that this opium is not imported into Japan. It is transhipped in Kobe harbor from which point, assisted by the Japanese-controlled railroad through Tsinanfu it is smuggled through Shantung into Shanghai into Yangtse Valley. Two thousand chests are smuggled, selling at $20,000-$40,000,000. The Japanese authorities levy a tax upon this which does not appear in the estimates, equivalent to $5,000 a chest, a total for 2,000 chest of $10,000,000. The customs where smuggling is done are wholly under Japanese control. Moreover, Japanese military domination would forbid in both ports any interference with the traffic in which the Japanese are interested, either officially or unofficially."

From the Missionary Review of the World, May 19, E. W. Thwing, of the Internation Reform Bureau, says: "Japan imports 20 tons of morphine a year into China."

Many quotations in Millards Review and the Far Eastern Magazine.

Under 10 year arrangement with England in 1907, the Chinese cleared all their Provinces of native opium in 7 years, and then the Indian opium trade was supposedly stopped, but tacitly smuggling still allowed, and now under Japanese domination, China must submit to the full reestablishment of the vile traffic. Shall America indorse such Hunnish acts toward a sister, friendly, allied republic by signing the treaty in its present form?

W. E. MACKLIN.

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing is now closed. There will be an executive session of the committee this afternoon at the Capitol room at 3 o'clock.

(Thereupon, at 11.30 o'clock a. m. the committee adjourned until to-morrow, Friday, August 29, 1919, at 10.30 o'clock a. m.)

y

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10.30 o'clock a. m., in room 426 Senate Office Building, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge presiding.

Present: Senators Lodge (chairman), Brandegee, Harding, Johnson, New, and Moses.

The CHAIRMAN. The hour for the hearing having arrived, the committee are ready to hear the gentlemen who appear here in behalf of the mid-European peoples. The time is limited. The committee can not sit after 12 o'clock. I will call on Mr. R. T. Caldwell, of New York, representing the League of Four Nations in the American Mid-European Association.

STATEMENT OF MR. R. T. CALDWELL.

Mr. CALDWELL. Gentlemen of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, it is always a pleasure for an American citizen to appear before any American tribunal or governmental body of any kind on behalf of an oppressed nationality.

During the Great War, I had the privilege of knowing Dr. Thomas G. Masaryk, the first President of the new Czecho-Slovak Republic. Through him I first became interested in the struggling nations of Europe who have been so long in subjugation. His sincere sympathy with all aspirations for freedom deeply moved me. I esteemed and admired his lofty and simple character and his great intellect. With his approval I participated in the formation of the Mid-European Association with the object of fostering relations between the United States and these suffering nations.

Later on I went overseas as the representative of the United States Department of Labor to attempt to aid in establishing closer relations between America and the European countries. I spent many weeks in Paris. I came to know very well many of the prime ministers and cabinets of these nations of Europe. My interest and my sympathy grew with my knowledge.

And so I am to-day, on behalf of the American Mid-European Association, and also on my own behalf as a citizen of the United States, presenting to your committee the cause of these four countries Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, and Ukraine.

To me, gentlemen, it is a matter of great satisfaction that these peoples from remote places should turn by common consent to the American Senate for sympathy and aid in the hour of their perplexity, feeling as they do that here a friendly ear shall receive their petition.

If it is natural for these aspiring people to turn to the United States Senate for strength and guidance, it is no less natural for our Senate to extend them the hand of encouragement and friendship, for they seek the path our fathers trod.

Our forefathers undertook, 3,000,000 strong, to carve a nation out of a wilderness and in doing so planted the seed of national aspirations which still flourish, and their achievements find emulation among peoples everywhere.

The appearance of these four nations before you is a direct result of our own national achievements. Our generations before us have each met their problems as they arose. We having to meet the problem of our day in helping to win the war, have set these nations free from the bondage which has long oppressed them. But to set them free without means of sustenance is but to cast them adrift on the tide.

They are living on our bounty, which is a trying ordeal for any people worthy of their freedom. They are becoming more deeply in debt and we continually more involved. We can not forsake them nor can they or we continue as we are. We should arm them to fight back the murderous Bolsheviki.

The independence of these peoples have been recognized by various nations-Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany. Germany's recognition of Lithuania bodes no good to us, to the Lithuanians, nor to the peace of the world.

All these nations lie immediately between Germany and Russia. They are now the prey of Germany who seeks to control them in order to have an undisputed highway to the mastery of Russia, yet they are intensely anti-German.

Again, the record of all four of these countries is clean in rendering valiant service to the cause of the Allies in the defeat of the Bolsheviki. No more vital link in the whole universal body politic of the world exists for the peace of the world than Lithuania and these three neighbors.

If Germany is permitted to maintain a private highway to the political and commercial conquest of Russia, it bodes ill to the future of all. The steadfast refusal of the Germany Army to obey Foch's command to retire from Lithuania speaks plainly Germany's intention to retain Lithuania at all hazards. These Baltic Provinces are flooded with German printed money and with German troops. Shall we permit these anti-German allies to be Germanized against their will and against our interests? They have fought the fight and fight it still, never despairing against overwhelming odds.

Though stripped of their resources, though attacked on all sides, though poorly equipped are their armies and people, yet never once have they grown faint-hearted though the peace conference persistently passed them by, while besieged by the Poles on the south, by the Germans on the west, and the Bolsheviki on the east. Shall these brave people, all four of them, who have fought for their independence, since ravaged by the Teutonic knights, be deserted by us to whom they rightfully look as to an elder brother? Until they receive recognition by us who have the greatest number of their nationals who have departed from their own borders, they have not the means of establishing their credit in the only quarter where natural conditions are favorable. For of these combined peoples, embracing in all in excess of 60,000,000, we have in this country about 2,000,000. With recognition the people could sell a bond issue to their nationals here which would reestablish their commerce and create employment in their respective countries and offer the best

offset to Bolshevism, and in turn render them good customers for the world. So long as they remain prostrate they remain a menace, and so long we must continue to feed and clothe them. Their combined nationals in the United States bought in excess of $70,000,000 of Liberty bonds, showing them a thrifty, frugal, patriotic body among us. These people have come among us and have become part of us. They are good citizens and largely naturalized.

The Congress who made Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines to prosper and freed them from the pestilence of foreign oppression, who has been the support and friend of South and Central America, to such a Congress is it not on the record of history's pages that so deserving peoples as these should ask for bread and receive a stone?

Gentlemen, it is your privilege to render a great service to a vast people and in doing so to render service to our country and to the world distraught and torn. The world expects this thing of us by the record this Congress itself has established. A wonderful opportunity lies before us this morning. Will this committee give the message to the world that the principles of self-determination shall be applied to these nations and that Germany after having lost the war shall not win the peace? Will we arm these nations to fight our fight, which they desire to do? For myself I can not entertain a doubt of the attitude of this committee on this issue.

These nations ask each for a separate resolution from your committee recognizing its national independence and expressing sympathy with its national aspirations. These resolutions I hope may be considered as a matter entirely separate and distinct from the covenant of Paris. It is not our intention to intrude on the consideration of that question by your committee, but we do most earnestly hope and pray that your committee will grant to each of these four nations the recognition they ask and which they deserve. Mr. George Gordon Battle, of New York bar, who is counsel for the Mid-European Association and for the representatives of the four nations, will briefly address you, and will then introduce the national spokesmen.

STATEMENT OF MR. GEORGE GORDON BATTLE.

Mr. BATTLE. Mr. Chairman and Senators, I appreciate that the time is limited, and shall proceed at once to the subject matter, and promise to be extremely brief. I can not, however, enter upon the actual discussion of what we have to say here this morning without expressing my profound gratitude and the gratitude of these four peoples whom I represent here this morning for the opportunity of appearing before this committee and of voicing their national aspirations before such a tribunal.

I appear, sir, as counsel for the League of Four Nations-the Esthonians, the Letts, the Lithuanians, and the Ukrainians-and also as counsel for the American Mid-European Association, and as an American citizen interested in this subject, as all American citizens

are.

Let me first point out to the committee on the map just where these four nations are located. This map, which is behind the chair

man, will show you at a glance what the four nations are who appear before you this morning. The Esthonians inhabit the territory marked in green on the map, just south of the Gulf of Finland, between the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga, and this lake on the east. The green area on the map represents the Esthonians.

The Esthonians are a different people racially from the other three nations which are before you this morning. The other three nations are Slavic.

The CHAIRMAN. The Lithuanians are Aryans?

Mr. BATTLE. The Esthonians are closely akin to the Finns.

Below Esthonia is the country inhabited by the Letts, which is, roughly speaking, bounded by that blue line. Then, south of the Letts, is the State of Lithuania, which is, roughly speaking, bounded by that blue line and having its outlet on the Baltic Sea. Below that is Ukrainia. Of course, these boundaries are indefinite. They have not been definitely delimited yet, but they are fairly certain, and the Ukrainian boundary is the blue line running along here in the southern and central part of Russia.

These are the four nations appearing before you this morning and asking for recognition. Each of these nations in August, 1914, at the beginning of the European war, farmed a part of the Russian Empire. They had all been unwilling subjects of the Russian Empire. They had always had national aspirations. Each of them formed a separate national stock, with roots reaching back into antiquity, with a romantic national history and national traditions, with national literatures, with national artistic aspirations, strongly national in their feeling. Each of these four nations has set up and established a substantial provisional Government. This Government in each case is republican in its character, based and formed along the lines of the French Republic, with a president and a premier, a Government strictly republican in its character. The Governments are not provisional in the sense that there is anything uncertain about them. They are established and certain, they have armies in the field. They are now fighting the forces of Bolshevism in Russia. During the war these four nations fought bravely and with the greatest devotion for the cause of the Allies. After the collapse of Russia and after the coming on of the Bolshevik régime in Russia these nations were opposed to Bolshevism and their armies in the field are fighting against Bolshevism. One of the principal reasons why it is to the interest of this country, we respectfully submit, that these nations be recognized, is that they complete the chain of buffer nations running through central Europe and forming a barrier against the aggressions of Germany from the west and the attacks of Bolshevism on the east. By a glance at the map you will see how it is necessary to have this full chain of nationally independent States if it is intended to separate Germany from Russia. The State of Lithuania for instance, if it is recognized and established, bars the advance of Germany into Russia, bars the penetration of Germany into Russia along the northern boundaries of Germany, just as Poland bars it along the southern boundaries of Germany.

Now, what we ask of your committee, Mr. Chairman, is that you take such action as in your judgment will be appropriate and proper to secure for these countries and for their governments the recogni