Bassa and Cape Mount.  The next year, under threat of force, she compelled Liberia to accept a treaty which, for 25,000 francs and the relinquishment of all other claims, permitted her to take all the territory east of the Cavalla River.  In 1904 Great Britain asked permission to advance her troops into Liberian territory to suppress a native war threatening her interests.  She occupied at this time what is known as the Kaure-Lahun section, which is very fertile and of easy access to the Sierra Leone railway.  This land she never gave up; instead she offered Liberia L6000 or some poorer land for it.  France after 1892 made no endeavor to delimit her boundary, and, roused by the action of Great Britain, she made great advances in the hinterland, claiming tracts of Maryland and Sino; and now France and England each threatened to take more land if the other was not stopped.  President Barclay visited both countries; but by a treaty of 1907 his commission was forced to permit France to occupy all the territory seized by force; and as soon as this agreement was reached France began to move on to other land in the basin of the St. Paul’s and St. John’s rivers.  This is all then simply one more story of the oppression of the weak by the strong.  For eighty years England has not ceased to intermeddle in Liberian affairs, cajoling or browbeating as at the moment seemed advisable; and France has been only less bad.  Certainly no country on earth now has better reason than Liberia to know that “they should get who have the power, and they should keep who can.”

[Footnote 1:  Ellis in Journal of Race Development, January, 1911.]

The international loans and the attempts at reform must be considered together.  In 1871, at the rate of 7 per cent, there was authorized a British loan of L100,000. For their services the British negotiators retained L30,000, and L20,000 more was deducted as the interest for three years.  President Roye ordered Mr. Chinery, a British subject and the Liberian consul general in London, to supply the Liberian Secretary of Treasury with goods and merchandise to the value of L10,000; and other sums were misappropriated until the country itself actually received the benefit of not more than L27,000, if so much.  This whole unfortunate matter was an embarrassment to Liberia for years; but in 1899 the Republic assumed responsibility for L80,000, the interest being made a first charge on the customs revenue.  In 1906, not yet having learned the lesson of “Cavete Graecos dona ferentes,” and moved by the representations of Sir Harry H. Johnston, the country negotiated a new loan of L100,000.  L30,000 of this amount was to satisfy pressing obligations; but the greater portion was to be turned over to the Liberian Development Company, a great scheme by which the Government and the company were to work hand in hand for the development of the country.  As security for the loan, British officials were to have charge