BRULATOUR, Chargé d’ Affaires to Jules Ferry Challemel-Lacour, August 11, 1883

Mr. Brulatour to Mr. Challemel Lacour.

Sir: I am instructed by my Government to call your excellency’s attention to the facts stated in the letter herewith inclosed from Mr. John C. Lowrie, secretary of the board of foreign missions of the Presbyterian Church, in relation to a decree of the French Government concerning primary schools at Gaboon, and to ask if it would not be possible to relieve the mission from the embarrassment it will suffer from its application.

The object of the decree is to enforce the use of the French language in that part of Africa. Now the self-sacrificing American citizens, men and women, who are engaged in the benevolent labor of extending the benefit of Christian education amongst the natives of Africa, have learned that, to make this teaching effective, it must be imparted in the native language. To this end, the best talent and greatest experience of the mission have been given to the work of translating and compiling text-books in the vernacular languages of the country, but the American missionaries make use of the native languages only because it is absolutely necessary to their special object.

The enforcement of the decree above mentioned will evidently embarrass the prosecution of the self-imposed task of these worthy persons in leading into civilization the nations whom they are endeavoring to educate.

“It would seem,” says Mr. Frelinghuysen, in the dispatch he has addressed to me on the subject, “that a mild application of the decree would lead sooner to the result aimed at by France than a strict and literal enforcement of its provisions, and that by first educating the natives in their own tongue and training their minds by study in a dialect familiar and easy to them, the way would be prepared for acquiring the French language more easily and with less distaste to the pupil than were his untrained mind immediately directed to the study of a foreign tongue.”

I am therefore instructed to submit the matter to your excellency, “with a view of obtaining any concessions which may properly be granted modificatory of the decree, and which may relieve the hardships otherwise to be suffered by the agents of the board of foreign missions of the Presbyterian Church, in a work which cannot fail to obtain the approval and sympathy of the French Government.”

I avail, &c.,