LIBERIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Since the Slavery Commission's Report to the Liberian Government speaks for itself, there has seemed no necessity for me as President of that Commission to correct the frequent errors that have appeared in the Press in regard both to the inquiry and to the conditions existing in Liberia, but Mr. Paul Shuffrey's letter in your issue of 7th inst. seems too misleading to pass without comment—if your space allows.
The Vais and the Golas, to whom he refers, are the show tribes, as it were, of Liberia, inhabiting the country near the Sierra Leone border of the Republic. Geographically they are at the north-western limit of the Bantu race area, and in touch with Mandingoes and Mohammedan influences from the Western Sudan. They are advanced tribes and able to look after themselves ; able, in fact, to defy the Monrovian Government, and have been left alone on that account. All who know West Africa will agree with Mr. Shuffrey when he says, " What an opportunity among these tribes for a really enlightened administrative experiment!" They have, how- ever, comparatively little in common with the many less sophisticated tribes of the forested Liberian hinterland to the eastward, with which Mr. Shuffrey is perhaps not acquainted.
The oppression described in the International Commission's Report does not by any means " relate chiefly to the coastal region," and not at all to the Golas and Vais. The seagoing, coastal Krumen have certainly suffered heavily enough in respect to forced shipment of their boys to Fernando Po, but it is above the thirty-mile limit and east of Monrovia that most of the serious "exploitation" and ill-treatment of natives has occurred and is still going on, out of sight, quite beyond the short reach of the administration, and as shown in the report, with the aid of a native military force, unfed, unpaid and practically untrained, and unscrupulous negro District Commissioners.
It is the population, perhaps over a million, of this great hinterland region, or the south-eastern part of it, which urgently calls for attention, and which it is to be hoped the Liberian Government has sincerely in mind in seeking the assistance of the League of Nations ; and it is this region which the Inquiry Commission had in mind in making several of its recommendations.
With an oppressed, unenlightened and unproductive hinterland Liberia proper along the coast must remain stagnant and the notorious conditions scarcely distinguishable from slavery only partially relieved.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
