882.51/2093: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Liberia ( Carter )
48. Your 48, April 10, 5 p.m.; 52, April 25, 11 a.m., and 58, May 3, 8 p.m. The Department understands that payment has been made on the semi-annual interest due May 1 on the bonds and also that Liberia’s salary expenditures amount to 46 rather than 85 percent of total expenditures. The cause of the present financial stringency is not stated in your telegrams. Since the loan’s successive installments were earmarked, not for current expenditures, but for specific construction, sanitary, and floating debt purposes, the Department’s assumption is that the withholding of the loan installment last April 1 is not responsible for the present situation. The Department wishes a very brief statement regarding the cause of this situation.
This Government has no intention whatsoever, as you, of course, are aware, of “intervening” in Liberia. As it is understood by the Department that the total foreign bonded indebtedness of Liberia is covered by the 1926 loan held in this country, and as the Department has no information that foreign lives and property in Liberia are in any danger, the Department does not understand on what facts your fear of foreign intervention is based.
The Department would gladly consider carefully any concrete suggestions which you may wish to make respecting informal advice for the Liberian Government in order to help it in the difficult situation [Page 398] at present. Upon receiving your recommendations, the Department will instruct you; and meanwhile you will not make any commitments nor express any views on this Government’s behalf in regard to important developments in the internal affairs of Liberia.