882.00/930: Telegram

The Minister in Liberia (Mitchell) to the Secretary of State

30. My telegram No. 29. The following memorandum was read and then presented in person to me by Assistant Secretary of State J. Edmund Jones:

“In the aide-mémoire which Mr. Mitchell claims to have been directed by the Government of the United States of America to hand Mr. Barclay, certain allegations with respect to the activities of the [Page 712] Liberian Frontier Force under Colonel Davis last autumn in the Kru country are set out as satisfying that government that these activities were tyrannical and high-handed in an inexcusable degree. The Government of the United States of America would appear to have received further unconfirmed information that these alleged proceedings are being repeated at the present time and are exposing the Kru population to personal violence and outrages and destruction of property. The Government of the United States of America, therefore, irrespective of motives underlying the measures which have been taken against the Krus, demand explicit assurances that such activities will cease, pending the conclusion of certain arrangements between the United States, the League and Liberia for the future administration of the country.

As no action justifying the unconfirmed information which is claimed to have satisfied the Government of the United States of America has in the past or is now being taken against the Krus by the Liberian Frontier Force under Colonel Davis the question of an explicit assurance that such action should cease does not arise.

Explicit assurance is, however, hereby given that no action will be taken against the Kru tribes concerned so long as they refrain from attacking neighboring peaceful tribes and threatening foreign interests established under the protection of the Liberian Government. Executive Mansion, Monrovia, March 8, 1932.”

The foregoing not right.

Paragraph 1 as contained in Barclay’s memorandum is a repetition of fact as included in the British and French notes but no reference—either written or oral—was made by the American Minister in this connection.

The replies to my British and French colleagues are identical.

Mitchell