t war declared against you, and the principal chiefs
taken to a distant island." He forbade mortgages of copra, a frequent
source of trickery and quarrel; and to clear off those already
contracted, passed a severe but salutary law. Each individual or family
was first to pay off its own obligation; that settled, the free man was
to pay for the indebted village, the free village for the indebted
province, and one island for another. Samoa, he declared, should be free
of debt within a year. Had he given it three years, and gone more
gently, I believe it might have been accomplished. To make it the more
possible, he sought to interdict the natives from buying cotton stuffs
and to oblige them to dress (at least for the time) in their own tapa.
He laid the beginnings of a royal territorial army. The first draft was
in his hands drilling. But it was not so much on drill that he depended;
it was his hope to kindle in these men an _esprit de corps_, which
should weaken the old local jealousies and bonds, and found a central or
national party in the islands. Looking far before, and with a wisdom
beyond that of many merchants, he had condemned the single dependence
placed on copra for the national livelihood. His recruits, even as they
drilled, were taught to plant cacao. Each, his term of active service
finished, should return to his own land and plant and cultivate a
stipulated area. Thus, as the young men continued to pass through the
army, habits of discipline and industry, a central sentiment, the
principles of the new culture, and actual gardens of cacao, should be
concurrently spread over the face of the islands.

Tamasese received, including his household expenses, 1960 dollars a
year; Brandeis, 2400. All such disproportions are regrettable, but this
is not extreme: we have seen horses of a different colour since then.
And the Tamaseseites, with true Samoan ostentation, offered to increase
the salary of their white premier: an offer he had the wisdom and good
feeling to refuse. A European chief of police received twelve hundred.
There were eight head judges, one to each province, and appeal lay from
the district judge to the provincial, thence to Mulinuu. From all
salaries (I gather) a small monthly guarantee was withheld. The army was
to cost from three to four thousand, Apia (many whites refusing to pay
taxes since the suppression of the municipality) might cost three
thousand more: Sir Becker's high feat of arms coming e