Opium conference-unfortunate failure of our government to enact recommended legislation

In my message on foreign relations communicated to the two Houses of Congress December 7, 1911, I called especial attention to the assembling of the Opium Conference at The Hague, to the fact that that conference was to review all pertinent municipal laws relating to the opium and allied evils, and certainly all international rules regarding these evils, and to the -fact that it seemed to me most essential that the Congress should take immediate action on the anti-narcotic legislation before the Congress, to which I had previously called attention by a special message.

The international convention adopted by the conference conforms almost entirely to the principles contained in the proposed anti-narcotic legislation which has been before the last two Congresses.  It was most unfortunate that this Government, having taken the initiative in the international action which eventuated in the important international opium convention, failed to do its share in the great work by neglecting to pass the necessary legislation to correct the deplorable narcotic evils in the United States as well as to redeem international pledges upon which it entered by virtue of the above-mentioned convention.  The Congress at its present session should enact into law those bills now before it which have been so carefully drawn up in collaboration between the Department of State and the other executive departments, and which have behind them not only the moral sentiment of the country, but the practical support of all the legitimate trade interests likely to be affected.  Since the international convention was signed, adherence to it has been made by several European States not represented at the conference at The Hague and also by seventeen Latin-American Republics.

EUROPE AND THE NEAR EAST

The war between Italy and Turkey came to a close in October last by the signature of a treaty of peace, subsequently to which the Ottoman Empire renounced sovereignty over Cyrenaica and Tripolitania in favor of Italy.  During the past year the Near East has unfortunately been the theater of constant hostilities.  Almost simultaneously with the conclusion of peace between Italy and Turkey and their arrival at an adjustment of the complex questions at issue between them, war broke out between Turkey on the one hand and Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Servia on the other.  The United States has happily been involved neither directly nor indirectly with the causes or questions incident to any of these hostilities and has maintained in regard to them an attitude of absolute neutrality and of complete political disinterestedness.  In the second war in which the Ottoman Empire has been engaged the loss of life and the consequent distress on both