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For 18 years I have been president of the American Colonization Society which in 1847 deeded as a free gift to Liberia the entire territory now occupied by that Republic. Consequently, I had more than a perfunctory interest in the recent comment on the Liberian situation (TIME, June 24). Your article contains many undeniable facts but there are some statements that are more picturesque than accurate. For instance, there may be a million rats in Monrovia but I have been there twice and I can only say that I never saw one. Again, you state that the Liberian Government has "never succeeded in controlling the million or more Afro-Africans who inhabit Liberia's 43,000 square miles of equatorial jungle." On the contrary, the natives, with the exception of the independent and frequently turbulent Krus, are remarkably peaceful and even in the case of the Krus there is more than a suspicion that their uprising has been inspired by outside agitators with ulterior motives. Pedestrian strangers are safe everywhere and there have been no revolutionary movements such as we constantly witness in the South American so-called republics. Certainly there has never been such a dark and bloody chapter as is recorded by our American Indians, with torturings, murderings and scalpings. Neither is it a month's journey to Liberia, for by sailing on the Italian Line and transferring at Gibraltar, Monrovia can be reached in 14 days. Health conditions have greatly improved and I heard and saw nothing of bubonic plague or yellow fever. For a month I lived opposite the Executive Mansion and I saw none of the tin cans you so vividly describe.
I admit that there are many things in Liberia that demand improvement—that Monrovia is still primitive without a water supply, sewage disposal, pavements or telephones, and that the few and dim electric lights only emphasize the darkness of the tropic night. I had no sympathy with, and in fact publicly criticized, the action of Liberia in regard to a just debt but that matter has now been straightened out. It is also true that there is but one semblance of a road in the Republic, outside the Firestone plantation, but the Government is now building a thoroughfare through the interior to the French border and another road parallel with the coast to the southeastern boundary.
The main point, however, is that the U. S. Government, by its recent formal recognition of Liberia, thus resuming the diplomatic relations which were so unfortunately interrupted five years ago, has insured a complete restoration of the era of good feeling between the U. S. and Liberia which had existed for nearly a century. I believe that this action will contribute immeasurably to the future development and progress of a nation which needs and deserves encouragement. More than this, it will tend to preserve the sovereignty of Liberia against the cupidity of foreign nations which would like nothing better than the flimsiest excuse to treat Liberia as Japan is acting toward China and Italy toward Abyssinia.
HENRY LITCHFIELD WEST
Washington, D. C.
To Henry Litchfield West, 75, oldtime Washington newsman, president of the Gridiron Club (1900), onetime Commissioner of the District of Columbia, all thanks for readable footnotes on Liberia. —F.D.
He-Man's Tobacco
Sirs: