Little wonder, then, if in the past the Liberian Legislature had chosen to look on the white man as somebody to be squeezed in return, and nobody can say they have not shown imagination in their methods. At one time a German shipping agent was the chief sufferer. His chauffeur killed a dog and the next day was arrested at the suit of the owner. The German agent was brought into court, and the owner in evidence said that last year her bitch, which she valued at ten dollars, had had five puppies which had fetched ten dollars each : that in a week or two she would have borne five more puppies, which she would have sold for the same figure. The court fined the German sixty dollars.
On another occasion the same agent was fetched out of bed by the police to meet a claim for damages suffered by a Liberian woman who was travelling in an Italian steamer for which the German line acted. She had been scratched by a monkey belonging to another passenger while the steamer was in Spanish territorial waters. The doctor had put iodine on the scratch and no harm was done, but the woman mentioned the incident in a letter to her husband and he brought an action against the only person who could be reached, the German agent. The court awarded him 30,000 dollars. This was going too far and after a protest by the representatives of England, France and Germany, the Supreme Court found that the action lay outside the scope of the Liberian courts.
The Exiles
A curious international life was led by the few whites in the little shabby capital. Apart from the Firestone employees, who lived outside in European comfort on the plantation, there were not more than three dozen whites in Monrovia; there were Poles, Germans, Dutch, Americans, Italians, a Hungarian, French, and English; two of them were doctors, others were storekeepers, gold smugglers, shipping agents, and consuls. There was some comfort to be found at the legations; and though there was not such a thing as a water-closet in Monrovia, nearly everyone had an ice-box, for in the little dingy town there was little to do but drink, drink and wait for the fortnightly mail-boat which might bring frozen meat but was unlikely to bring a passenger.
These men and women were more exiled than the English in Freetown; they had less comfort and far less amusement; there was no golf course and the surf was far too dangerous for bathing. Once a week they played a little tennis at the British Legation or had a game of billiards, and once a week, too, the other men of the white colony shot with a pistol at bottles perched above the beach at the edge of the British Legation ground. That custom had been going on for years, every Saturday evening until die light was too bad to see. One advantage their isolation had : it killed snobbery. Chargι d’Affaires and shop assistant, Consul-General’s wife and storekeeper’s wife were equal in Monrovia. It was the democracy of men and women wrecked together on a deserted coast, and to the casual visitor social life there seemed more human and kindly than in an English colony, in spite of the scandals and the tiny commercial and diplomatic intrigues and the fever, always the fever. I was only in Monrovia for ten days during the most healthy season of the year, but eight of the tiny population of whites went down with fever while I was there.
One couldn’t expect them to do anything else but drink, beginning after breakfast with beer at each other’s houses and ending with whisky at four in the morning. But what was worst was the iced crθme de menthe. It was served everywhere automatically after lunch and dinner : it would have been thought eccentric not to like the sweet nauseating stuff, as it would have been thought curious not to enjoy at sundown, in the damp heat of the evening, while the backs of the hands and the armpits sweated all the time, the heavy cloying Tokay the Hungarian doctor kept. They had every reason to drink; you couldn’t read much in a climate which rotted your books; you couldn’t even deceive yourself that you were there for some good, ruling the natives, for it was the natives in this case who ruled you and presented, so far as the Cabinet Ministers were concerned, a depressing example of sobriety and attention to business; you couldn’t womanise, for the range was too embarrassingly limited; there were no games to play, no strangers regularly bringing the gossip of one’s own country; there was no ambition, for Liberia, whether to the diplomat or to the storekeeper, was about the deadest of all ends; there was really nothing but drink and the wireless, and of the two the drink was preferable.
But, nevertheless, all the English had wireless: at six o’clock they would turn on the Empire Programme from Daventry, but even that limited and depressing choice of entertainment was inaudible; the West Coast defeated any instrument; and as a background to every drink and to all conversation the powerful instruments would wheeze and groan and whistle until eleven o’clock. This was the nearest they got to Home, this piercing din over the Atlantic. By eleven o’clock one was too drunk to mind, anyway.
As for the intrigues which brought a little liveliness into the hot damp day, a little activity, a small sense of importance, there were two while I was there. A gentleman with a great financial reputation had arrived in Monrovia to try to obtain for a big British trust the concession for all gold and precious minerals that might be found in the interior and to drive out such small lonely prospectors as Van Gogh. It was a confirmation of the story I had heard in Bo. He had arrived at the right moment, within two months of the Presidential election, when money was urgently needed, and he was prepared to spend £30,000 on easing the concession through. The only danger was that he might be backing the wrong horse, but in a Liberian election this risk is small; no one really doubted that Mr. Barclay would be reelected. Unfortunately within a few days of his arrival the financial expert was taken ill before he had been able to interview the President, and nothing would persuade the Liberian Ministers but that this was an astute move to lower the price. They were the soul of stiff politeness, but it was obvious that they intended to show that they could bargain too.
The other intrigue was diplomatic and concerned the Royal Jubilee. The Secretary of State had been for a very long while trying to persuade the British Chargι d’Affaires to go to church and hear the sermons of the Minister for Education. There was nothing political in his motives, he was an earnest humourless young man, he just thought that it would do anyone good to go to church, and the services at this church were almost identical with those of the Church of England. But his reforming zeal gave the British representative a chance to perform a diplomatic coup. He told the Secretary of State that not only would he come to church, but he would guarantee the presence of every British subject and probably of the other foreign representatives as well if on the particular Sunday the Minister for Education included in the prayers some reference to the Royal Jubilee. The Secretary of State, I think, was a little taken aback: he asked for time to consult the Minister of Education, but alas ! I did not stay long enough in Monrovia to hear whether the bargain was struck.
One could hardly wonder that the more excitable representatives in the international colony craved for a faster life. They were living on the barren edge of the country; not one of them had been more than a few days’ trek into the interior, they had the most meagre and mistaken ideas of the native tribes; nor would any longer journeys or a more profound knowledge of Liberian conditions have been welcome to the Government, who had seen what damage a roving foreigner could do them in the British Blue Book based on a Vice-Consul’s journey down the Kru coast. There was an occasion, many years ago, when the British residents raised the English flag in Monrovia, trying to re-enact on a miniature scale the Outlander revolt in Johannesburg, but the result failed as ignominiously as the Jameson Raid. I do not think there was any imperial ambition among the storekeepers of Monrovia, or among the foreign representatives, nor had they much to complain about from the Government. There was less discrimination against the white than there was against the black in most white colonies, and I think a fair observer would have been astonished at the moderation of the black rulers. What the whites suffered, they suffered with the whole population from the lack of drainage, medical services, communications, and the desire to intervene was an expression of boredom rather than of imperialism. The man, perhaps, most to be pitied was the American financial adviser, an elderly man who had seen successful service in Arabia and the Philippines, but whom Liberia had defeated. For since the President had declared a moratorium, he had been without any work. Two Poles were the active unofficial advisers, and the American lived on in Monrovia at a reduced salary with nothing to do but shoot at bottles and hit billiard balls.