CHAPTER IX
"FUROR CONSULARIS"
_December_ 1888 _to March_ 1889
Knappe, in the _Adler,_ with a flag of truce at the fore, was enteringLaulii Bay when the _Eber_ brought him the news of the night's reverse.His heart was doubtless wrung for his young countrymen who had beenbutchered and mutilated in the dark woods, or now lay suffering, andsome of them dying, on the ship. And he must have been startled as herecognised his own position. He had gone too far; he had stumbled intowar, and, what was worse, into defeat; he had thrown away German livesfor less than nothing, and now saw himself condemned either to acceptdefeat, or to kick and pummel his failure into something like success;either to accept defeat, or take frenzy for a counsellor. Yesterday, incold blood, he had judged it necessary to have the woods to the westwardguarded lest the evacuation of Laulii should prove only the peril ofApia. To-day, in the irritation and alarm of failure, he forgot ordespised his previous reasoning, and, though his detachment was beatback to the ships, proceeded with the remainder of his maimed design.The only change he made was to haul down the flag of truce. He had nowno wish to meet with Mataafa. Words were out of season, shells mustspeak.
At this moment an incident befell him which must have been trying to hisself-command. The new American ship _Nipsic_ entered Laulii Bay; hercommander, Mullan, boarded the _Adler_ to protest, succeeded in wrestingfrom Knappe a period of delay in order that the women might be spared,and sent a lieutenant to Mataafa with a warning. The camp was alreadyexcited by the news and the trophies of Fangalii. Already Tamasese andLotoanuu seemed secondary objectives to the Germans and Apia. Mullan'smessage put an end to hesitation. Laulii was evacuated. The troopsstreamed westward by the mountain side, and took up the same day astrong position about Tanungamanono and Mangiangi, some two miles behindApia, which they threatened with the one hand, while with the other theycontinued to draw their supplies from the devoted plantations of theGerman firm. Laulii, when it was shelled, was empty. The British flagswere, of course, fired upon; and I hear that one of them was struckdown, but I think every one must be privately of the mind that it wasfired upon and fell, in a place where it had little business to beshown.
Such was the military epilogue to the ill-judged adventure of Fangalii;it was difficult for failure to be more complete. But the otherconsequences were of a darker colour and brought the whites immediatelyface to face in a spirit of ill-favoured animosity. Knappe was mourningthe defeat and death of his country-folk, he was standing aghast overthe ruin of his own career, when Mullan boarded him. The successor ofLeary served himself, in that bitter moment, heir to Leary's part. Andin Mullan, Knappe saw more even than the successor of Leary,--he saw inhim the representative of Klein. Klein had hailed the praam from therifle-pits; he had there uttered ill-chosen words, unhappily prophetic;it is even likely that he was present at the time of the first fire. Toaccuse him of the design and conduct of the whole attack was but a stepforward; his own vapouring served to corroborate the accusation; and itwas not long before the German consulate was in possession of swornnative testimony in support. The worth of native testimony is small, theworth of white testimony not overwhelming; and I am in the painfulposition of not being able to subscribe either to Klein's own accountof the affair or to that of his accusers. Klein was extremely flurried;his interest as a reporter must have tempted him at first to make themost of his share in the exploit, the immediate peril in which he soonfound himself to stand must have at least suggested to him the idea ofminimising it; one way and another, he is not a good witness. As for thenatives, they were no doubt cross-examined in that hall of terror, theGerman consulate, where they might be trusted to lie like schoolboys, or(if the reader prefer it) like Samoans. By outside white testimony, itremains established for me that Klein returned to Apia either before orimmediately after the first shots. That he ever sought or was everallowed a share in the command may be denied peremptorily; but it ismore than likely that he expressed himself in an excited manner and witha highly inflammatory effect upon his hearers. He was, at least,severely punished. The Germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour andwhat they thought to be his German birth, demanded him to be triedbefore court-martial; he had to skulk inside the sentries of theAmerican consulate, to be smuggled on board a war-ship, and to becarried almost by stealth out of the island; and what with theagitations of his mind, and the results of a marsh fever contracted inthe lines of Mataafa, reached Honolulu a very proper object ofcommiseration. Nor was Klein the only accused: de Coetlogon was himselfinvolved. As the boats passed Matautu, Knappe declares a signal was madefrom the British consulate. Perhaps we should rather read "from itsneighbourhood"; since, in the general warding of the coast, the point ofMatautu could scarce have been neglected. On the other hand, there is nodoubt that the Samoans, in the anxiety of that night of watching andfighting, crowded to the friendly consul for advice. Late in the night,the wounded Siteoni, lying on the colonel's verandah, one corner ofwhich had been blinded down that he might sleep, heard the coming andgoing of bare feet and the voices of eager consultation. And long after,a man who had been discharged from the colonel's employment took uponhimself to swear an affidavit as to the nature of the advice then given,and to carry the document to the German consul. It was an act of privaterevenge; it fell long out of date in the good days of Dr. Stuebel, andhad no result but to discredit the gentleman who volunteered it. Colonelde Coetlogon had his faults, but they did not touch his honour; his bareword would always outweigh a waggon-load of such denunciations; and hedeclares his behaviour on that night to have been blameless. Thequestion was besides inquired into on the spot by Sir John Thurston, andthe colonel honourably acquitted. But during the weeks that were now tofollow, Knappe believed the contrary; he believed not only that Moorsand others had supplied ammunition and Klein commanded in the field, butthat de Coetlogon had made the signal of attack; that though hisblue-jackets had bled and fallen against the arms of Samoans, these weresupplied, inspired, and marshalled by Americans and English.
The legend was the more easily believed because it embraced and wasfounded upon so much truth. Germans lay dead, the German wounded groanedin their cots; and the cartridges by which they fell had been sold by anAmerican and brought into the country in a British bottom. Had thetransaction been entirely mercenary, it would already have been hard toswallow; but it was notoriously not so. British and Americans werenotoriously the partisans of Mataafa. They rejoiced in the result ofFangalii, and so far from seeking to conceal their rejoicing, paradedand displayed it. Calumny ran high. Before the dead were buried, whilethe wounded yet lay in pain and fever, cowardly accusations of cowardicewere levelled at the German blue-jackets. It was said they had brokenand run before their enemies, and that they had huddled helpless likesheep in the plantation house. Small wonder if they had; small wonderhad they been utterly destroyed. But the fact was heroically otherwise;and these dastard calumnies cut to the blood. They are not forgotten;perhaps they will never be forgiven.
In the meanwhile, events were pressing towards a still more trenchantopposition. On the 20th, the three consuls met and parted withoutagreement, Knappe announcing that he had lost men and must take thematter in his own hands to avenge their death. On the 21st the _Olga_came before Matafangatele, ordered the delivery of all arms within thehour, and at the end of that period, none being brought, shelled andburned the village. The shells fell for the most part innocuous; aneyewitness saw children at play beside the flaming houses; not a soulwas injured; and the one noteworthy event was the mutilation of CaptainHamilton's American flag. In one sense an incident too small to bechronicled, in another this was of historic interest and import. Theserags of tattered bunting occasioned the display of a new sentiment inthe United States; and the republic of the West, hitherto so apatheticand unwieldy, but already stung by German nonchalance, leaped to itsfeet for the first time at the news of this fresh insult. As though tomake the inefficiency of the war-ships more apparent, three shells werethrown inland at Mangia
ngi; they flew high over the Mataafa camp, wherethe natives could "hear them singing" as they flew, and fell behind inthe deep romantic valley of the Vaisingano. Mataafa had been alreadysummoned on board the _Adler_; his life promised if he came, declared"in danger" if he came not; and he had declined in silence theunattractive invitation. These fresh hostile acts showed him that theworst had come. He was in strength, his force posted along the wholefront of the mountain behind Apia, Matautu occupied, the Siumu roadlined up to the houses of the town with warriors passionate for war. Theoccasion was unique, and there is no doubt that he designed to seize it.The same day of this bombardment, he sent word bidding all English andAmericans wear a black band upon their arm, so that his men shouldrecognise and spare them. The hint was taken, and the band worn for acontinuance of days. To have refused would have been insane; but toconsent was unhappily to feed the resentment of the Germans by a freshsign of intelligence with their enemies, and to widen the breach betweenthe races by a fresh and a scarce pardonable mark of their division. Thesame day again the Germans repeated one of their earlier offences byfiring on a boat within the harbour. Times were changed; they were nowat war and in peril, the rigour of military advantage might well beseized by them and pardoned by others; but it so chanced that thebullets flew about the ears of Captain Hand, and that commander is saidto have been insatiable of apologies. The affair, besides, had adeplorable effect on the inhabitants. A black band (they saw) mightprotect them from the Mataafas, not from undiscriminating shots. Panicensued. The war-ships were open to receive the fugitives, and thegentlemen who had made merry over Fangalii were seen to thrust eachother from the wharves in their eagerness to flee Apia. I willingly dropthe curtain on the shameful picture.
Meanwhile, on the German side of the bay, a more manly spirit wasexhibited in circumstances of alarming weakness. The plantation managersand overseers had all retreated to Matafele, only one (I understand)remaining at his post. The whole German colony was thus collected in onespot, and could count and wonder at its scanty numbers. Knappe declares(to my surprise) that the war-ships could not spare him more than fiftymen a day. The great extension of the German quarter, he goes on, didnot "allow a full occupation of the outer line"; hence they had shrunkinto the western end by the firm buildings, and the inhabitants werewarned to fall back on this position, in the case of an alert. So thathe who had set forth, a day or so before, to disarm the Mataafas in theopen field, now found his resources scarce adequate to garrison thebuildings of the firm. But Knappe seemed unteachable by fate. It isprobable he thought he had
"Already waded in so deep, Returning were as tedious as go o'er";
it is certain that he continued, on the scene of his defeat and in themidst of his weakness, to bluster and menace like a conqueror. Activewar, which he lacked the means of attempting, was continuallythreatened. On the 22nd he sought the aid of his brother consuls tomaintain the neutral territory against Mataafa; and at the same time, asthough meditating instant deeds of prowess, refused to be bound by ithimself. This singular proposition was of course refused: Blacklockremarking that he had no fear of the natives, if these were let alone;de Coetlogon refusing in the circumstances to recognise any neutralterritory at all. In vain Knappe amended and baited his proposal withthe offer of forty-eight or ninety-six hours' notice, according as hisobjective should be near or within the boundary of the _Eleele Sa_. Itwas rejected; and he learned that he must accept war with all itsconsequences--and not that which he desired--war with the immunities ofpeace.
This monstrous exigence illustrates the man's frame of mind. It has beenstill further illuminated in the German white-book by printing alongsideof his despatches those of the unimpassioned Fritze. On January 8th theconsulate was destroyed by fire. Knappe says it was the work ofincendiaries, "without doubt"; Fritze admits that "everything seems toshow" it was an accident. "Tamasese's people fit to bear arms," writesKnappe, "are certainly for the moment equal to Mataafa's," thoughrestrained from battle by the lack of ammunition. "As for Tamasese,"says Fritze of the same date, "he is now but a phantom--_dient er nurals Gespenst_. His party, for practical purposes, is no longer large.They pretend ammunition to be lacking, but what they lack most isgood-will. Captain Brandeis, whose influence is now small, declares theycan no longer sustain a serious engagement, and is himself in theintention of leaving Samoa by the _Luebeck_ of the 5th February." AndKnappe, in the same despatch, confutes himself and confirms thetestimony of his naval colleague, by the admission that "there-establishment of Tamasese's government is, under presentcircumstances, not to be thought of." Plainly, then, he was not so muchseeking to deceive others, as he was himself possessed; and we mustregard the whole series of his acts and despatches as the agitations ofa fever.
The British steamer _Richmond_ returned to Apia, January 15th. On thelast voyage she had brought the ammunition already so frequentlyreferred to; as a matter of fact, she was again bringing contraband ofwar. It is necessary to be explicit upon this, which served as spark toso great a flame of scandal. Knappe was justified in interfering; hewould have been worthy of all condemnation if he had neglected, in hisposture of semi-investment, a precaution so elementary; and the mannerin which he set about attempting it was conciliatory and almost timid.He applied to Captain Hand, and begged him to accept himself the duty of"controlling" the discharge of the _Richmond's_ cargo. Hand was unableto move without his consul; and at night an armed boat from the Germansboarded, searched, and kept possession of, the suspected ship. The nextday, as by an after-thought, war and martial law were proclaimed for theSamoan Islands, the introduction of contraband of war forbidden, andships and boats declared liable to search. "All support of the rebelswill be punished by martial law," continued the proclamation, "no matterto what nationality the person [_Thaeter_] may belong."
Hand, it has been seen, declined to act in the matter of the _Richmond_without the concurrence of his consul; but I have found no evidence thateither Hand or Knappe communicated with de Coetlogon, with whom theywere both at daggers drawn. First the seizure and next the proclamationseem to have burst on the English consul from a clear sky; and he wroteon the same day, throwing doubt on Knappe's authority to declare war.Knappe replied on the 20th that the Imperial German Government had beenat war as a matter of fact since December 19th, and that it was only forthe convenience of the subjects of other states that he had beenempowered to make a formal declaration. "From that moment," he added,"martial law prevails in Samoa." De Coetlogon instantly retorted,declining martial law for British subjects, and announcing aproclamation in that sense. Instantly, again, came that astonishingdocument, Knappe's rejoinder, without pause, without reflection--thepens screeching on the paper, the messengers (you would think) runningfrom consulate to consulate: "I have had the honour to receive yourExcellency's [_Hochwohlgeboren_] agreeable communication of to-day.Since, on the ground of received instructions, martial law has beendeclared in Samoa, British subjects as well as others fall under itsapplication. I warn you therefore to abstain from such a proclamation asyou announce in your letter. It will be such a piece of business asshall make yourself answerable under martial law. Besides, yourproclamation will be disregarded." De Coetlogon of course issued hisproclamation at once, Knappe retorted with another, and night closed onthe first stage of this insane collision. I hear the German consul wason this day prostrated with fever; charity at least must suppose himhardly answerable for his language.
Early on the 21st, Mr. Mansfield Gallien, a passing traveller, wasseized in his berth on board the _Richmond_, and carried, half-dressed,on board a German war-ship. His offence was, in the circumstances andafter the proclamation, substantial. He had gone the day before, in thespirit of a tourist to Mataafa's camp, had spoken with the king, and hadeven recommended him an appeal to Sir George Grey. Fritze, I gather, hadbeen long uneasy; this arrest on board a British ship filled themeasure. Doubtless, as he had written long before, the consul alone wasresponsible "on the legal side"; but the captain began to ask h
imself,"What next?"--telegraphed direct home for instructions, "Is arrest offoreigners on foreign vessels legal?"--and was ready, at a word fromCaptain Hand, to discharge his dangerous prisoner. The word in question(so the story goes) was not without a kind of wit. "I wish you would setthat man ashore," Hand is reported to have said, indicating Gallien; "Iwish you would set that man ashore, to save me the trouble." The sameday de Coetlogon published a proclamation requesting captains to submitto search for contraband of war.
On the 22nd the _Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser_ was suppressed byorder of Fritze. I have hitherto refrained from mentioning the singlepaper of our islands, that I might deal with it once for all. It is ofcourse a tiny sheet; but I have often had occasion to wonder at theability of its articles, and almost always at the decency of its tone.Officials may at times be a little roughly, and at times a littlecaptiously, criticised; private persons are habitually respected; andthere are many papers in England, and still more in the States, even ofleading organs in chief cities, that might envy, and would do well toimitate, the courtesy and discretion of the _Samoa Times_. Yet theeditor, Cusack, is only an amateur in journalism, and a carpenter bytrade. His chief fault is one perhaps inevitable in so small aplace--that he seems a little in the leading of a clique; but hisinterest in the public weal is genuine and generous. One man's meat isanother man's poison: Anglo-Saxons and Germans have been differentlybrought up. To our galled experience the paper appears moderate; totheir untried sensations it seems violent. We think a public man fairgame; we think it a part of his duty, and I am told he finds it a partof his reward, to be continually canvassed by the press. For theGermans, on the other hand, an official wears a certain sacredness; whenhe is called over the coals, they are shocked, and (if the official bea German) feel that Germany itself has been insulted. The _Samoa Times_had been long a mountain of offence. Brandeis had imported from thecolonies another printer of the name of Jones, to deprive Cusack of thegovernment printing. German sailors had come ashore one day, wild withoffended patriotism, to punish the editor with stripes, and the resultwas delightfully amusing. The champions asked for the English printer.They were shown the wrong man, and the blows intended for Cusack hadhailed on the shoulders of his rival Jones. On the 12th, Cusack hadreprinted an article from a San Francisco paper; the Germans hadcomplained; and de Coetlogon, in a moment of weakness, had fined theeditor twenty pounds. The judgment was afterwards reversed in Fiji; buteven at the time it had not satisfied the Germans. And so now, on thethird day of martial law, the paper was suppressed. Here we have anotherof these international obscurities. To Fritze the step seemed naturaland obvious; for Anglo-Saxons it was a hand laid upon the altar; and themonth was scarce out before the voice of Senator Frye announced to hiscolleagues that free speech had been suppressed in Samoa.
Perhaps we must seek some similar explanation for Fritze's short-livedcode, published and withdrawn the next day, the 23rd. Fritze himself wasin no humour for extremities. He was much in the position of alieutenant who should perceive his captain urging the ship upon therocks. It is plain he had lost all confidence in his commanding officer"upon the legal side"; and we find him writing home with anxiouscandour. He had understood that martial law implied military possession;he was in military possession of nothing but his ship, and shrewdlysuspected that his martial jurisdiction should be confined within thesame limits. "As a matter of fact," he writes, "we do not occupy theterritory, and cannot give foreigners the necessary protection, becauseMataafa and his people can at any moment forcibly interrupt me in myjurisdiction." Yet in the eyes of Anglo-Saxons the severity of his codeappeared burlesque. I give but three of its provisions. The crime ofinciting German troops "by any means, as, for instance, informing themof proclamations by the enemy," was punishable with death; that of"publishing or secretly distributing anything, whether printed orwritten, bearing on the war," with prison or deportation; and that ofcalling or attending a public meeting, unless permitted, with the same.Such were the tender mercies of Knappe, lurking in the western end ofthe German quarter, where Mataafa could "at any moment" interrupt hisjurisdiction.
On the 22nd (day of the suppression of the _Times_) de Coetlogon wroteto inquire if hostilities were intended against Great Britain, whichKnappe on the same day denied. On the 23rd de Coetlogon sent a complaintof hostile acts, such as the armed and forcible entry of the _Richmond_before the declaration and arrest of Gallien. In his reply, dated the24th, Knappe took occasion to repeat, although now with moreself-command, his former threat against de Coetlogon. "I am still of theopinion," he writes, "that even foreign consuls are liable to theapplication of martial law, if they are guilty of offences against thebelligerent state." The same day (24th) de Coetlogon complained thatFletcher, manager for Messrs. MacArthur, had been summoned by Fritze. Inanswer, Knappe had "the honour to inform your Excellency that since thedeclaration of the state of war, British subjects are liable to martiallaw, and Mr. Fletcher will be arrested if he does not appear." Here,then, was the gauntlet thrown down, and de Coetlogon was burning toaccept it. Fletcher's offence was this. Upon the 22nd a steamer had comein from Wellington, specially chartered to bring German despatches toApia. The rumour came along with her from New Zealand that in thesedespatches Knappe would find himself rebuked, and Fletcher was accusedof having "interested himself in the spreading of this rumour." Hisarrest was actually ordered, when Hand succeeded in persuading him tosurrender. At the German court, the case was dismissed "_wegenNichtigkeit_"; and the acute stage of these distempers may be said tohave ended. Blessed are the peacemakers. Hand had perhaps averted acollision. What is more certain, he had offered to the world a perfectlyoriginal reading of the part of British seaman.
Hand may have averted a collision, I say; but I am tempted to believeotherwise. I am tempted to believe the threat to arrest Fletcher was thelast mutter of the declining tempest and a mere sop to Knappe'sself-respect. I am tempted to believe the rumour in question wassubstantially correct, and the steamer from Wellington had reallybrought the German consul grounds for hesitation, if not orders toretreat. I believe the unhappy man to have awakened from a dream, and tohave read ominous writing on the wall. An enthusiastic popularitysurrounded him among the Germans. It was natural. Consul and colony hadpassed through an hour of serious peril, and the consul had set theexample of undaunted courage. He was entertained at dinner. Fritze, whowas known to have secretly opposed him, was scorned and avoided. But theclerks of the German firm were one thing, Prince Bismarck was another;and on a cold review of these events, it is not improbable that Knappemay have envied the position of his naval colleague. It is certain, atleast, that he set himself to shuffle and capitulate; and when the blowfell, he was able to reply that the martial law business had in themeanwhile come right; that the English and American consular courtsstood open for ordinary cases; and that in different conversations withCaptain Hand, "who has always maintained friendly intercourse with theGerman authorities," it had been repeatedly explained that only thesupply of weapons and ammunition, or similar aid and support, was tocome under German martial law. Was it weapons or ammunition thatFletcher had supplied? But it is unfair to criticise these wrigglingsof an unfortunate in a false position.
In a despatch of the 23rd, which has not been printed, Knappe had toldhis story: how he had declared war, subjected foreigners to martial law,and been received with a counter-proclamation by the English consul; andhow (in an interview with Mataafa chiefs at the plantation house ofMotuotua, of which I cannot find the date) he had demanded the cessionof arms and of ringleaders for punishment, and proposed to assume thegovernment of the islands. On February 12th he received Bismarck'sanswer: "You had no right to take foreigners from the jurisdiction oftheir consuls. The protest of your English colleague is grounded. Indisputes which may arise from this cause you will find yourself in thewrong. The demand formulated by you, as to the assumption of thegovernment of Samoa by Germany, lay outside of your instructions and ofour design. Take it immediately back. If your t
elegram is here rightlyunderstood, I cannot call your conduct good." It must be a hard heartthat does not sympathise with Knappe in the hour when he received thisdocument. Yet it may be said that his troubles were still in thebeginning. Men had contended against him, and he had not prevailed; hewas now to be at war with the elements, and find his name identifiedwith an immense disaster.
One more date, however, must be given first. It was on February 27ththat Fritze formally announced martial law to be suspended, and himselfto have relinquished the control of the police.