in the attitude of Germany. Another treaty was proposed to
Malietoa and refused; the cause of the rebel Tamasese was invented or
espoused; Malietoa was seized and deported, Tamasese installed, the
tripartite municipality dissolved, the German Consul seated
autocratically in its place, and the Hawaiian Embassy (sent by a Power
of the same race to moderate among Samoans) dismissed with threats and
insults. In the course of these events villages have been shelled, the
German flag has been at least once substituted for the English, and the
Stars and Stripes (only the other day) were burned at Matafatatele. On
the day of the chase after Malietoa the houses of both English and
Americans were violently entered by the Germans. Since the dissolution
of the municipality English and Americans have paid their taxes into the
hands of their own Consuls, where they accumulate, and the German
representative, unrecognised and unsupported, rules single in Apia. I
have had through my hands a file of Consular proclamations, the most
singular reading--a state of war declared, all other authority but that
of the German representative suspended, punishment (and the punishment
of death in particular) liberally threatened. It is enough to make a man
rub his eyes when he reads Colonel de Coetlogon's protest and the
high-handed rejoinder posted alongside of it the next day by Dr. Knappe.
Who is Dr. Knappe, thus to make peace and war, deal in life and death,
and close with a buffet the mouth of English Consuls? By what process
known to diplomacy has he risen from his one-sixth part of municipal
authority to be the Bismarck of a Polynesian island? And what spell has
been cast on the Cabinets of Washington and St. James's, that Mr.
Blacklock should have been so long left unsupported, and that Colonel de
Coetlogon must bow his head under a public buffet?

I have not said much of the Samoans. I despair, in so short a space, to
interest English readers in their wrongs; with the mass of people at
home they will pass for some sort of cannibal islanders, with whom faith
were superfluous, upon whom kindness might be partly thrown away. And,
indeed, I recognise with gladness that (except as regards the captivity
of Malietoa) the Samoans have had throughout the honours of the game.
Tamasese, the German puppet, has had everywhere the under hand; almost
none, except those of his own clan, have ever supported his cause, and
even these begin now to desert him. "