duplicated in the history of Liberia.  In one house two young girls were instantly killed and an elderly woman and a little boy fatally wounded; but except in this one home the actual damage was comparatively slight, though there might have been more if a passing British steamer had not put the submarine to flight.  Suffering of another and more far-reaching sort was that due to the economic situation.  The comparative scarcity of food in the world and the profiteering of foreign merchants in Liberia by the summer of 1919 brought about a condition that threatened starvation; nor was the situation better early in 1920, when butter retailed at $1.25 a pound, sugar at 72 cents a pound, and oil at $1.00 a gallon.

President Howard was succeeded by Charles Dunbar Burgess King, who as president-elect had visited Europe and America, and who was inaugurated January 5, 1920.  His address on this occasion was a comprehensive presentation of the needs of Liberia, especially along the lines of agriculture and education.  He made a plea also for an enlightened native policy.  Said he:  “We cannot afford to destroy the native institutions of the country.  Our true mission lies not in the building here in Africa of a Negro state based solely on Western ideas, but rather a Negro nationality indigenous to the soil, having its foundation rooted in the institutions of Africa and purified by Western thought and development.”

3. International Relations

Our study of the history of Liberia has suggested two or three matters that call for special attention.  Of prime importance is the country’s connection with world politics.  Any consideration of Liberia’s international relations falls into three divisions:  first, that of titles to land; second, that of foreign loans; and third, that of so-called internal reform.

In the very early years of the colony the raids of slave-traders gave some excuse for the first aggression on the part of a European power.  “Driven from the Pongo Regions northwest of Sierra Leone, Pedro Blanco settled in the Gallinhas territory northwest of the Liberian frontier, and established elaborate headquarters for his mammoth slave-trading operations in West Africa, with slave-trading sub-stations at Cape Mount, St. Paul River, Bassa, and at other points of the Liberian coast, employing numerous police, watchers, spies, and servants.  To obtain jurisdiction the colony of Liberia began to purchase from the lords of the soil as early as 1824 the lands of the St. Paul Basin and the Grain Coast from the Mafa River on the west to the Grand Sesters River on the east; so that by 1845, twenty-four years after the establishment of the colony, Liberia with the aid of Great Britain had destroyed throughout these regions the baneful traffic in slaves and the slave barracoons, and had driven the slave-trading leaders from the Liberian coast."[1] The trade continued to flourish, however, in the Gallinhas territory, and in course of time,