Sound Swishing

Big, black, wealthy Charles E. Mitchell of West Virginia State College was at the U. S. State Department last week, conferring with Secretary Henry Lewis Stimson, preparing to sail for Monrovia as President Hoover's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the little black Republic of Liberia.

Statesman Stimson showed to Mr. Mitchell, then released publicly for the first time, his recent exchange of notes with the Liberian Government.

Subject: Slavery.

Result: The resignation of President King and Vice President Yancy of Liberia, leaving as President today former Liberian Secretary of State Edwin Barclay.

"Twin Scourges." Why did Mr. Stimson pick Liberia from the list of lands in which one form or another of slavery still exists?-- Plainly because U. S. blacks founded the Republic in 1847, named it "Liberty" (Liberia), named their capital Monrovia, after U. S. President James Monroe.

Key dates in the secret history of Liberia for the past four months as revealed last week:

Sept. 8, 1930: A League of Nations commission of three (one U. S. citizen, one Liberian and a British chairman) reported the existence of slavery in Liberia. The report was not made public until last week, though distributed last fall to all governments concerned, including the Liberian.

Nov. 1: The Liberian Government learned that President Hoover had cabled to the Emperor of Abyssinia, sovereign of the greatest slave nation of the world, congratulations on his coronation (TIME, Nov. 10), declaring "on behalf of the American People and Government . . . confidence that the traditional ties of friendship and mutual understanding which so happily exist between our two countries . . . will be strengthened during your majesty's reign."

Nov. 17 (16 days later): The Liberian Government received a note in which Mr. Stimson stigmatized as "shocking" the League's revelation that Liberia's "suppression of natives" is "scarcely distinguishable from slave raising and slave trading."

"International public opinion will no longer tolerate these twin scourges," continued the Stimson note. "Unless they are abolished . . . [there] will result . . . final alienation of the friendly feelings which the American Government and people have entertained for Liberia."

Dec. 5: Supposing, in view of President Hoover's note of Nov. 1, that Secretary Stimson was only fooling in his note of Nov. 17, the Liberian Government waited, hoping for the best until Dec. 5, on which date President King and Vice President Yancy resigned.

To correspondents last week Secretary Stimson made clear that he was not fooling, that he and President Hoover are aroused, that U. S. Minister Mitchell goes to Monrovia to make clean a filthy mess.

So filthy is Monrovia that last week the local branch of the Bank of British West Africa closed permanently "because the complete lack of sanitation endangered the lives of employes"; but brave black Minister Mitchell will risk his life gladly.

League Report. There is nothing new in the League report on Liberian slave conditions. It is important because it exonerates the U. S. Firestone rubber interests of slaving. This was most important to Secretary Stimson. If he had whitewashed Firestone while tarring Liberia, the whole thing might have looked queer to Europe, queerer to Latin America.

But candid as day is the League report: "There is no evidence that the [Firestone] company forcibly impresses labor or consciously employs labor which has been impressed."

That magic sentence untied Secretary Stimson's hands, enabled him to swish Liberia for President Hoover as he swished Nicaragua for President Coolidge.

Grand old Liberian facts, confirmed by the League: 1) No slave markets exist in Liberia, but forced labor indistinguishable from slavery is used on nearly all Government works, frequently diverted to private works by corrupt officials; 2) Children are "pawned" by their parents to work until the parent's debt is discharged; 3) Contract laborers are shipped to French Congo, Spanish Fernando, "under conditions of criminal compulsion."

To season their 200 weary pages, the League's commissioners added a few spicy details, stories of rapes, torturings, floggings, soldiers "who amused themselves by collecting one by one the hairs of the chief's long mustache." Liberian slavers have two favorite tortures, the commission reported, known respectively as "Getting the Basket" and "Putting in the Kitchen." In the first a large round basket is filled with earth and stones. It is then placed on the head of the victim who is made to turn round and round. The basket is occasionally twitched the wrong way, causing broken necks. In the second, the victim is roped round the middle, hauled to the roof rafters of a hut while a fire is lighted beneath him on which handfuls of pepper have been thrown.

*See Slavery, by Lady Kathleen Simon (wife of Sir John), London, 1929 (Hodder & Stoughton). Her well-documented slavelands list: Abyssinia, Afghanistan, Arabia, Sierra Leone, Liberia; also ("modified slavery") Portuguese East Africa, Portugal's West African Islands St. Thome & Principe, French Equatorial Africa, Tanganyika etc. Lord Cecil recently estimated that there are at least 5,000,000 human slaves today. Liberia's estimated population, including freemen: 2,200,000.

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