DISPUTING THE SAMOAN ISLANDS WITH GERMANY

By Harry Thurston Peck.

DR. PECK gives this stirring account of the threatened conflict between the United States and Germany over the Samoan Islands, in his "Twenty Years of the Republic," published by Dodd, Mead & Company. In 1888 interests hostile to the Germans brought about the election of Mataafa as opposition King to Tamasese, and civil war broke out. While a general insurrection was in progress, with several German, British and American warships anchored in Apia roadstead, on March 16, 1889, a tidal wave and typhoon destroyed the American and German fleets. The British cruiser, Calliope, alone escaped.

Of the American vessels, the Trenton and the Vandalia were sunk, and the Nipsic cast on shore, fifty-two officers and men being lost. Eventually the incident" was closed by a complete American diplomatic victory, in the Act of Berlin, June 14, 1889.

THE Samoan Islands are twelve in number, lying in the track of vessels which ply between the American seaports on the Pacific Coast and Australia. They have, therefore, a certain commercial importance, and to a naval power a definite strategic value. Upon the principal island, Upolu, where the chief town, Apia, is situated, a number of Germans, Americans and English had settled. A Hamburg trading firm was established there, besides a thriving American business house and a company of Scotch merchants. In 1878, a treaty was made by which the Samoan chief or "king" of that time gave to the United States the use of the harbor of Pago-Pago for a naval station.

As was natural, the small foreign community in Upolu, isolated from the greater world outside and thus thrown in upon itself, was rent by the small jealousies, intrigues and bickerings which arise when petty interests clash in a petty sphere. Race prejudice intensified the feeling, until Apia fairly seethed with pent-up enmities. Gradually, however, two distinct factions were formed, when the Americans and English made common cause against the Germans, who were the more numerous and who were also unpleasantly aggressive. By the year 1884, it had become clear that Germany intended by hook or by crook to get control of the Islands, and in doing so to ignore the rights of the English and American residents. The German consul, one Herr Stubel, began to manifest extreme activity. He had all the "morgue and frigid insolence of the true Prussian official, and moreover he had at his beck several German ships of war, which always appeared most opportunely whenever Stubel was carrying things with a particularly high hand. The German residents assumed a most offensive bearing toward the other foreigners as well as toward the natives. In April 1886, Stubel raised the German flag over Apia and in a proclamation declared that only the Government of Germany should thereafter rule over that portion of the islands. The British consul hesitated to act without instructions; but the American representative hoisted the colors of the United States and proclaimed an American protectorate. This conflict of authority was serious, and led Secretary Bayard to energetic action. A conference at Washington between the representatives of Germany, Great Britain and the United States, agreed that the action of both consuls should be disavowed and that the "status quo ante" should be preserved in Samoa pending further negotiations.

Bismarck, however, had no intention of abandoning his ultimate purpose, or even of abiding by his agreement. A new consul, Herr Becker, was sent out from Berlin and proved to be as obnoxious as his predecessor. He planned a stroke that was delivered with prompt efficiency. The native king, Malietoa, was favorable to the English and Americans. Becker, seizing upon the pretext afforded by a drunken brawl between the German sailors and a few Samoans, declared war upon Malietoa, "by order of His Majesty, the German Kaiser." Martial law was proclaimed in Apia; German marines were landed; Malietoa was seized and was deported in a German ship ; while a native named Tamasese, a creature of the Germans, was set up in his place. From that moment events tended rapidly toward a crisis. The American consul, Mr. Harold M. Sewall of Maine, wrote vigorous despatches to Washington and sent emphatic protests to Herr Becker, who answered him with sneering incivility. The Samoans refused to acknowledge the German puppet king and took to the bush, where the English and Americans furnished them with arms. But in Apia, a German judge was set over the local courts, the captain of a German cruiser was made Prime Minister, and the German flag again flew over the soil which Germany had pledged itself to regard as neutral territory. A writer of genius, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, who was a resident of Samoa throughout these troublous times, has left a minute account of the intolerable bearing of the Germans and of the indignities to which other foreigners were subjected by them. Mr. Sewall, single-handed, resisted their aggressions. The British consul sympathized with him ; but the spell of Germany's predominance in Europe seemed to paralyze his will. At last, to punish those Samoans who were in arms against Tamasese, the German corvette "Adler" was ordered to shell the native villages, and thus to inspire the people with a wholesome dread of German power.

just prior to this time, there had arrived in Samoan waters the United States gunboat "Adams,' I under the orders of Commander Richard Leary. Commander Leary was to his very finger-tips a first-class fighting man. His name, as Stevenson remarked, was diagnostic. It told significantly of a strain of Celtic blood in the man who bore it. Leary had, indeed, a true Irishman's nimbleness of wit, an Irishman's love of trouble for its own sake, and even more than an Irishman's pugnacity. When he had learned just how things stood in Apia, and when he had noted the bullying demeanor of the Germans, his blood grew hot. Until now the notes of protest addressed to Becker had been couched in formal phrases. From the moment when Leary took a hand in the correspondence these notes became suddenly pungent with a malicious and most ingenious wit which made the sacrosanct emissaries of His Imperial and Royal German Majesty fairly gasp with indignation. The diabolical cleverness with which Leary followed up their every move was utterly infuriating, and no less so was his supreme indifference to what they thought or wanted. When the German warship fired rocket-signals at night, Leary used to sit on his after-deck and send up showers of miscellaneous rockets, which made the German signaling quite unintelligible. He refused to recognize their appointed king, and in a score of ways he covered them with a ridicule which seemed likely to make them ludicrous even in the natives' eyes. Meanwhile, a German night attack upon the Samoan "rebels" had been repulsed and several Germans had been killed. Very eagerly, then, did Herr Becker urge the captain of the "Adler" to bombard the "rebel" position at Apia. Surely the sound of the "Kanonendonner" would bring the natives, and also the insolent Yankees, to their senses. Captain Fritze of the "Adler" therefore ordered up his ammunition and prepared for the bombardment.

Leary's ship, the "Adams," was a wooden vessel whose heavy armament consisted of smooth-bores, only a few of which had been converted into rifled guns. The German corvette was also wooden, but her guns were of the latest pattern turned out by Krupp. Nevertheless, at short range, this superiority would count for little; and the "Adams" was commanded by a sailor who would rather fight than eat. At the appointed hour, the "Adler" steamed out with the German ensign flying at her peak. The "Adams" followed close upon her heels, as if for purposes of observation; but it was noticed that her deck was cleared for action. Soon the "Adler" slowed down and swung into position, so as to bring her broadside guns to bear upon the helpless village. Instantly volumes of black smoke poured from the funnel of the "Adams," the long roll of her drums was heard as they beat to quarters, and the American ship dashed in between the "Adler" and the shore, where she, too, swung about, her guns at port and trained directly on the Germans. Presently, Commander Leary in full uniform and accompanied by his staff boarded the "Adler." His colloquy with the German captain was short and sharp: "If you fire," said he, "you must fire through the ship which I have the honor to command. I shall not be answerable for the consequences !" So saying, he took his leave and returned to his own vessel.