1938: Liberia

With a balanced budget despite greatly increased social expenditures, Liberia in 1938 presented a picture of a nation in rapid progress toward more civilized living conditions. With forced native labor wiped out, the Government has now appropriated funds for beginning an ambitious road-building program to open up large areas in the interior which have hitherto been inaccessible. American influence, always predominant in the republic, was maintained by signature of a new treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation at Monrovia on August 9, and by the visit of an American 10,000-ton cruiser from October 29 to November 3, when the site for a new United States legation was dedicated. At this ceremony Henry S. Villard, United States foreign service officer, served as the State Department's special representative. This extraordinary display of cordiality was due not so much to the celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of treaty relations between the United States and Liberia as to the Department of State's concern lest Liberia be occupied by Germany as part of a new African colonial settlement. The Negro republic is an unofficial American protectorate; the American Negro press closely follows its progress; and the 1,000,000-acre Firestone Rubber Plantation, the only source of rubber controlled by Americans, is just coming into production. The United States would therefore be opposed to any European designs on the country.