882.516/51: Telegram
The Chargé in Liberia (Reber) to the Secretary of State
108. Department’s 71, August 22, 6 p.m. The Acting Financial Adviser, McCaskey, has prepared an act to create a Liberian Treasury, without consulting President King but in line with a suggestion of the President who is considering the alternatives of a national bank or a government treasury. King assured McCaskey that in either case a foreign officer would be placed absolutely in control.
The proposed bill would provide for a Treasurer General who (1) shall be an American citizen to be nominated by the Financial Adviser and to be responsible to the latter; (2) shall be custodian of all Government funds; (3) may receive incoming funds from private sources and may make payments against these accounts; (4) shall control appointments and dismissals of all Treasury employees.
The Financial Adviser is to be charged with preparing regulations relating to the receipt, custody, and payment of public funds and also to the Treasury’s administration. No reference to the currency to be used is made in the bill.
If enacted in its present form, the bill would seem to give the Treasurer General complete authority and would require no extension of the 1926 loan agreement. It is doubtful whether the bill will be approved without some change intended to diminish the authority of the American fiscal officers. The Fiscal Agent might in this event refuse recognition to the Government Treasury as official depository for such assigned revenues not under terms of the loan agreement and insist upon putting into effect its major provisions. I believe [Page 406] this clause of the loan agreement should be used fully to insure the Treasurer General’s adequate control, since undoubtedly the proposal will meet with the present administration’s full opposition.
Regarding your queries:
- (a)
- For the moment the anxiety of the Government over the financial situation appears to be allayed by the presence of funds. Due to receipt of the hut taxes, this relief is temporary and forecasts no lasting financial improvement. The Government’s chief attention, therefore, is directed to the next elections and to the results from the International Commission’s report. Regarding the latter, the natives, among whom there is unrest, feel that reform must come, even if induced by outside sources, yet lack any leader and probably will not be able to accomplish much even at the elections. Doubtless the Government will try to minimize the findings of the Commission and to shelve the report by promising reform, while suppressing with severe measures any native disturbance. On the other hand, many who are classed as Liberians appear to think that the Commission’s activities will result in bringing about a demand by other nations for some sort of foreign supervision to be exercised and consider that the only means to avoid this is to punish the principal offenders and to change the administration generally. However, this feeling marks merely the rivalries and disputes within the dominant political party, since it seems well established that, without a fundamental change in Liberia’s political structure, the true Whig Party’s nominee again will succeed at the election in the spring.
- (b)
- The present Government’s strength lies in the true Whig Party’s control of all public offices, in the absence of an effective opposition, and in the seeming inability of the native tribes to cooperate with each other. The district commissioners in the interior, with frontier force support, are able to impose themselves on the natives and remain supreme. The frontier force is made up of natives with little political interest, and then chief virtue is in their obedience to the officers selected from party adherents. In the event of any serious disorder, however, the effectiveness of the frontier force distinctly is open to question. On such an occasion the militia and police would play a negligible role. The position of Colonel Lewis has been limited to that merely of an adviser who has no control over the armed forces of Liberia.
- (c)
- Should any change occur in the Government other than a transfer of authority inside the dominant party, the position of American interests would probably be strengthened, since the People’s Party appears more friendly to the United States, while the natives, from all reports, seem themselves to have more confidence in the authority of whites than of Liberian politicians. Any successful true Whig Party candidate, on the other hand, undoubtedly would continue the present policy of anti-Americanism and opposition.
- Telegram in two sections.↩