accept a treaty which, for 25,000 francs
and the relinquishment of all other claims, permitted her to take all
the territory east of the Cavalla River. In 1904 Great Britain asked
permission to advance her troops into Liberian territory to suppress a
native war threatening her interests. She occupied at this time what
is known as the Kaure-Lahun section, which is very fertile and of easy
access to the Sierra Leone railway. This land she never gave up; instead
she offered Liberia L6000 or some poorer land for it. France after 1892
made no endeavor to delimit her boundary, and, roused by the action
of Great Britain, she made great advances in the hinterland, claiming
tracts of Maryland and Sino; and now France and England each threatened
to take more land if the other was not stopped. President Barclay
visited both countries; but by a treaty of 1907 his commission was
forced to permit France to occupy all the territory seized by force; and
as soon as this agreement was reached France began to move on to other
land in the basin of the St. Paul's and St. John's rivers. This is all
then simply one more story of the oppression of the weak by the strong.
For eighty years England has not ceased to intermeddle in Liberian
affairs, cajoling or browbeating as at the moment seemed advisable; and
France has been only less bad. Certainly no country on earth now has
better reason than Liberia to know that "they should get who have the
power, and they should keep who can."

[Footnote 1: Ellis in _Journal of Race Development_, January, 1911.]

The international loans and the attempts at reform must be considered
together. In 1871, at the rate of 7 per cent, there was authorized a
British loan of L100,000. _For their services_ the British negotiators
retained L30,000, and L20,000 more was deducted as the interest for
three years. President Roye ordered Mr. Chinery, a British subject and
the Liberian consul general in London, to supply the Liberian Secretary
of Treasury with goods and merchandise to the value of L10,000; and
other sums were misappropriated until the country itself actually
received the benefit of not more than L27,000, if so much. This whole
unfortunate matter was an embarrassment to Liberia for years; but in
1899 the Republic assumed responsibility for L80,000, the interest being
made a first charge on the customs revenue. In 1906, not yet having
learned the lesson of "Cavete Graecos dona ferentes," and moved by the
re