Palm Whoopee

"Liberia is not a prohibition country. . . . The natives make palm wine. They drink it at their fetes and frolics. Naturally at the time they feel good and make whoopee. . . . However I have seen very few cases of drunkenness among the Liberian people."

Thus last week spoke Third Secretary Clifton R. Wharton of the U. S. Legation at Monrovia, according to an A. N. P.* correspondent who interviewed him as he arrived in Boston. A thoroughgoing optimist concerning the Black Republic, Secretary Wharton parried questions about forced or "slave" labor there, spoke tolerantly of Liberian voodoo customs in the interior.

"Some of their practices," said he, "are in the nature of religious rites. They prick their backs and limbs with needles and make marks on their bodies to drive away 'bad spirits.' We take blood tests and are inoculated to drive away 'bad health.' The difference may be a matter of name."

*Associated Negro Press.

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