In closing my _The Truth about the Congo_, I said: “If it is necessary for us as a nation to look for African adventure; if to give a strenuous President the feeling that he is ‘doing something’ we must meddle in the affairs of the Dark Continent, there is a district where we might intervene with more of reason and consistency and grace than we are doing by going to the Congo. We once established on African soil, whether wisely or not I do not intend to discuss, a free republic for the blacks. In Liberia we have an American enterprise, pure and simple. It has not been a great success. It is just possible--though I doubt it--that Liberia would at several times have profited and been advantaged by our instruction and interest. But it seems to possess little interest for us. Just now, like the Congo, it is attracting British attention. Whether it has large or little value, whether it possesses great opportunities or not, it is now a center of interest to Great Britain. She does not need our help in pulling chestnuts from the fire there, and there has been strange silence and ignorance in this country regarding it as a new sphere for English influence. If we assist England in expanding her African possessions at the expense of the Congo Free State, Liberia will be the next fraction of Africa to succumb to English rule. England’s methods of procedure are various. It might be a useful lesson for our statesmen and politicians to study Liberia’s prospects with care. We are still young in the business of grabbing other people’s lands. England could teach us many lessons. The latest one may well be worthy of our attention, since, in a certain sense, it deals with a district where we naturally possess an interest.” At the time, these suggestions caused some surprise. Americans were (and are) totally ignorant regarding Liberia and felt that my remarks were due to prejudice. I have no prejudice against England, from which my ancestry chiefly came. A few months have proved the truth of my predictions. In May last a Commission appointed by the Liberian government called upon President Roosevelt and begged the intervention of the United States for the purpose of guaranteeing independence and “integrity against the encroachments of powerful European governments.” Among the reasonable ideas urged by this Commission was that disputes between Liberia and France, Germany and England should be settled by arbitration and not by a resort to force. We wisely refused to establish a protectorate over Liberia, but our government agreed to use its good offices with England, France and Germany. Considerable correspondence seems to have taken place and some interest relative to Liberia has been aroused. But on the whole no serious progress has been made and a few days since the newspapers contained the following item: