At a time when the drug-evil, as it is called, is attracting so much attention all over the world, it does not seem out of place to tell the public something about how conditions in regard to it obtain in India and Burma. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is no literature on this subject outside “blue books,” and those admirable compilations are notoriously dry reading. A novel called “Dope” by Sax Rohmer professes to deal with the drug-evil and the traffic in drugs in the West; but it is a novel; has a hero, a heroine, a forbidding type of detective, and some degenerates, and a few impossible Chinamen in it, to give verisimilitude to the title and all that it implies.

I do not profess to write as an authority on the subjects I have taken up. I realise that there are scores of others more experienced, and infinitely better able to make a book on these subjects than I am; but there seems to be little hope of their ever getting the better of their modesty and appearing in print. I write of what I have seen for myself, and ventilate opinions I have formed which I expect no one to subscribe to who differs from them. My readers may rest assured, however, that what I relate is true. I have not consciously exaggerated, nor have I suppressed facts. I write on a subject in which I am interested; and, if the attention that has at different times been given to my verbal accounts is an indication of something more than the polite toleration of the raconteur, then there are others also who are interested, and I need offer no apologies for my attempt to supply a deficiency in the bookshelves of those who want more information.

A preface often affords the writer an opportunity of performing a pleasant duty. That which I have to perform is to record my thanks to Mr. F. W. Dillon, Barrister, and author of “From an Indian Bar Room,” for the trouble he took in reading the manuscript, and his many helpful suggestions.

R. K. ANDERSON.

Redfern,
26th March, 1921.