A Mission-festival in India

Americo-Liberians, who came there as liberated slaves from the United States or are the children of such immigrants. The native people live in small villages, in an almost impenetrable hinterland of forest jungle. Two of the seven or eight tribes have attained a tolerably high level of intelligence and development. The Kru tribe is noted for the physical strength of its members and their skill as boatmen. The Vai tribe has a written language of its own.

The native tribes grow rice, corn, potatoes, cotton, tobacco. and other crops, and in most of the villages there are found people proficient in some handicraft. Working in iron, leather, silver, basketry and pottery, weaving and dyeing cloth, are occupations to be found among them. A deplorable thing seems to be the fact that the Negroes from America and their children devote themselves almost exclusively to politics in its narrowest sense instead of applying themselves to business and the industrial development of the country. Politics is said to be corrupt, and 90 per cent. of the taxes are consumed in salaries. What is still worse, legitimate taxes seem to be only a fraction of the money taken from the taxpayers.

In giving such complete attention to politics, the Americo-Liberians have failed to bring the blessings of agriculture, industry, and commerce to their adopted country. The great economic movements of the last seventy-five years seem to have left Liberia almost untouched. Highways, railroads, tel-egraphs, and telephones are almost unknown. Public health is given little or no attention. It will not surprise our readers to hear that education has also made very little headway. Excepting the pupils attending the schools carried on by foreign missionary societies, the 9,000 children along the coast are neglected despite the fact that Liberia has a compulsory school law on paper. Were it not for the influence of the foreign missionaries, there would be great danger of the Liberians' rapidly falling back into barbarism.

The commission of the League of Nations found intertribal domestic slavery in Liberia. Also pawning was found there. Pawning is an arrangement by which in return for some consideration in money or goods a human being is held in slavery for an indefinite time. Women held by a man in pawn are used to entice young men into immorality, and the men who succumb to such temptations are then seized, fined, and made to work out the fine on some farm. A traffic in human beings, practically the same as slave-trading, has been found.

It is generally admitted that foreign assistancewill be needed to bring about a better state of affairs in Liberia, especially among the oppressed natives. One of the most prominent of our American Negro citizens who cooperated with the League of Nations in its inquiry, emphasizes the opportunity here offered his race to uplift and develop native African tribes. He feels that, if Liberia is to be saved from disaster, it must change its economic and commercial attitude, pay greater attention to the health and education of its people, and abolish the cruel treat~ent of the natives in the hinterland.

And there are many who share the views of this distinguished member of the Negro race and are willing to help bring about better days in Liberia under Negro leadership. These men and women of good will in America and other countries desire nothing more earnestly than that Liberia, under Negro leadership, may provide a magnificent example of. what the Negro race can do.

Statistics. - Area, 45,000 square miles; population, 2,000,000 (100,000 civilized; American Negroes, 20,000); nominal Christians, 19,929; communicants, 10,000; hospitals, 4, with 20 beds. There are 108 foreign workers, including wives, in Liberia, and of these 34 are ordained; the native mission-workers number 429, of whom 99 are ordained. Various mission-societies support 150 schools, and of these 146 are elementary; ·6,266 pupils are enrolled in the elementary schools, about 1,000 in secondary schools, and only 3 in a higher institution, a so-called college. F. J. L.

A Mission-Festival in India.

A mission-festival is so closely connected with a Missouri Lutheran church and the mode of its celebration so well known that it seems almost a waste of energy to write up· one in particular. A mission-festival in India does not di1fer essentially from one at home. However, there seems to be enough of interest to be said about such a festival in India that we venture to tell you .about it. Festivals, even among Christian churches in India, are not rare. Mission-festivals, however, are rare. You will readily understand the reason why they should be rare. A person must be a Christian before he can be told with effect to do mission-work and be expected to carry out the Great Commission of Jesus. Thank God, the number of such as are willing and ready to rally around the Captain of their salvation here in India js increasing. There