882.00/924: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Liberia (Mitchell)
21. Your telegram No. 23, March 1, 4 p.m.25 You are instructed to make the following communication to Edwin Barclay first consulting with your British and French colleagues and ascertaining that their communications are to approximately the same effect:
“The American Government is satisfied that the proceedings of the Liberian Frontier Force under Colonel Davis in the Kru country last autumn were tyrannical and high-handed in an inexcusable degree.
According to information which the American Government cannot disregard, although it equally cannot as yet regard it as confirmed, these proceedings have very recently been repeated and are exposing the Kru population to personal violence and outrage and destruction of property.
The Liberian representative denied before the Council of the League of Nations on February 6 that these events in any way represented reprisals upon people who had given evidence before recent official investigators under international auspices.
The American Government must, however, irrespective of the motives underlying the measures which have been taken against the Kru, ask for an explicit assurance that such proceedings will be discontinued immediately.”
The Department leaves it to you and your British and French colleagues to determine the manner in which your respective communications should be made. It is felt that a joint interview, with each representative reading his communication, would probably be the most effective, copies in the form of aide-mémoire to be delivered at the same time as a matter of record. If this course is pursued, you are authorized to add orally that your Government makes the foregoing statement, notwithstanding the fact that it has not recognized the Liberian régime, and without bearing upon that matter.
Should an interview be denied, the communication may be made by joint or separate notes, at the discretion of yourself and your colleagues.
The Department suggested that the British Government obtain the cooperation of the German Government, through its representative at Monrovia. The British Government stated that while having no objection in principle to German participation, they were unwilling to incur the further delay. The Department is informing the British Government today that it hopes the British Government may [Page 711] nevertheless take up the matter with the German Government to the end that the German representative may if possible be instructed to make a similar communication subsequently.26
Report fully by telegraph.
- Not printed.↩
- In note No. 96, March 14, the British Embassy informed the Department that the British Government had been advised by the German Government that, if outrages were found to exist, the German Government would associate itself with the representations already made by Great Britain, France, and the United States (882.00/938).↩