"FUROR CONSULARIS"
_December_ 1888 _to March_ 1889
Knappe, in the _Adler,_ with a flag of truce at the fore, was entering
Laulii Bay when the _Eber_ brought him the news of the night's reverse.
His heart was doubtless wrung for his young countrymen who had been
butchered and mutilated in the dark woods, or now lay suffering, and
some of them dying, on the ship. And he must have been startled as he
recognised his own position. He had gone too far; he had stumbled into
war, and, what was worse, into defeat; he had thrown away German lives
for less than nothing, and now saw himself condemned either to accept
defeat, or to kick and pummel his failure into something like success;
either to accept defeat, or take frenzy for a counsellor. Yesterday, in
cold blood, he had judged it necessary to have the woods to the westward
guarded lest the evacuation of Laulii should prove only the peril of
Apia. To-day, in the irritation and alarm of failure, he forgot or
despised his previous reasoning, and, though his detachment was beat
back 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 now
no wish to meet with Mataafa. Words were out of season, shells must
speak.
At this moment an incident befell him which must have been trying to his
self-command. The new American ship _Nipsic_ entered Laulii Bay; her
commander, Mullan, boarded the _Adler_ to protest, succeeded in wresting
from 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 already
excited by the news and the trophies of Fangalii. Already Tamasese and
Lotoanuu seemed secondary objectives to the Germans and Apia. Mullan's
message put an end to hesitation. Laulii was evacuated. The troops
streamed westward by the mountain side, and took up the same day a
strong position about Tanungamanono and Mangiangi, some two miles behind
Apia, which they threatened with the one hand, while with the other they
continued to draw their supplies from the devoted plantations of the
German firm. Laulii, when it was shelled, was empty. The British flags
were, of course, fired upon; and I hear that one of them was struck
down, but I think every one must be privately of the mind that it was
fired upon and fell, in a place where it had little business to be
shown.
Such was the military epilogue to the ill-judged adventure of Fangalii;
it was difficult for failure to be more complete. But the other
consequences were of a darker colour and brought the whites immediately
face to face in a spirit of ill-favoured animosity. Knappe was mourning
the defeat and death of his country-folk, he was standing aghast over
the ruin of his own career, when Mullan boarded him. The successor of
Leary served himself, in that bitter moment, heir to Leary's part. And
in Mullan, Knappe saw more even than the successor of Leary,--he saw in
him the representative of Klein. Klein had hailed the praam from the
rifle-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. To
accuse him of the design and conduct of the whole attack was but a step
forward; his own vapouring served to corroborate the accusation; and it
was not long before the German consulate was in possession of sworn
native testimony in support. The worth of native testimony is small, the
worth of white testimony not overwhelming; and I am in the painful
position of not being able to subscribe either to Klein's own account
of 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 the
most of his share in the exploit, the immediate peril in which he soon
found himself to stand must have at least suggested to him the idea of
minimising it; one way and another, he is not a good witness. As for the
natives, they were no doubt cross-examined in that hall of terror, the
German consulate, where they might be trusted to lie like schoolboys, or
(if the reader prefer it) like Samoans. By outside white testimony, it
remains established for me that Klein returned to Apia either before or
immediately after the first shots. That he ever sought or was ever
allowed a share in the command may be denied peremptorily; but it is
more than likely that he expressed himself in an excited manner and with
a highly inflammatory effect upon his hearers. He was, at least,
severely punished. The Germans, enraged by his provocative behaviour and
what they thought to be his German birth, demanded him to be tried
before court-martial; he had to skulk inside the sentries of the
American consulate, to be smuggled on board a war-ship, and to be
carried almost by stealth out of the island; and what with the
agitations of his mind, and the results of a marsh fever contracted in
the lines of Mataafa, reached Honolulu a very proper object of
commiseration. Nor was Klein the only accused: de Coetlogon was himself
involved. As the boats passed Matautu, Knappe declares a signal was made
from the British consulate. Perhaps we should rather read "from its
neighbourhood"; since, in the general warding of the coast, the point of
Matautu could scarce have been neglected. On the other hand, there is no
doubt that the Samoans, in the anxiety of that night of watching and
fighting, crowded to the friendly consul for advice. Late in the night,
the wounded Siteoni, lying on the colonel's verandah, one corner of
which had been blinded down that he might sleep, heard the coming and
going of bare feet and the voices of eager consultation. And long after,
a man who had been discharged from the colonel's employment took upon
himself 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 private
revenge; it fell long out of date in the good days of Dr. Stuebel, and
had no result but to discredit the gentleman who volunteered it. Colonel
de Coetlogon had his faults, but they did not touch his honour; his bare
word would always outweigh a waggon-load of such denunciations; and he
declares his behaviour on that night to have been blameless. The
question was besides inquired into on the spot by Sir John Thurston, and
the colonel honourably acquitted. But during the weeks that were now to
follow, Knappe believed the contrary; he believed not only that Moors
and others had supplied ammunition and Klein commanded in the field, but
that de Coetlogon had made the signal of attack; that though his
blue-jackets had bled and fallen against the arms of Samoans, these were
supplied, inspired, and marshalled by Americans and English.
The legend was the more easily believed because it embraced and was
founded upon so much truth. Germans lay dead, the German wounded groaned
in their cots; and the cartridges by which they fell had been sold by an
American and brought into the country in a British bottom. Had the
transaction been entirely mercenary, it would already have been hard to
swallow; but it was notoriously not so. British and Americans were
notoriously the partisans of Mataafa. They rejoiced in the result of
Fangalii, and so far from seeking to conceal their rejoicing, paraded
and displayed it. Calumny ran high. Before the dead were buried, while
the wounded yet lay in pain and fever, cowardly accusations of cowardice
were levelled at the German blue-jackets. It was said they had broken
and run before their enemies, and that they had huddled helpless like
sheep in the plantation house. Small wonder if they had; small wonder
had 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 trenchant
opposition. On the 20th, the three consuls met and parted without
agreement, Knappe announcing that he had lost men and must take the
matter in his own hands to avenge their death. On the 21st the _Olga_
came before Matafangatele, ordered the delivery of all arms within the
hour, and at the end of that period, none being brought, shelled and
burned the village. The shells fell for the most part innocuous; an
eyewitness saw children at play beside the flaming houses; not a soul
was injured; and the one noteworthy event was the mutilation of Captain
Hamilton's American flag. In one sense an incident too small to be
chronicled, in another this was of historic interest and import. These
rags of tattered bunting occasioned the display of a new sentiment in
the United States; and the republic of the West, hitherto so apathetic
and unwieldy, but already stung by German nonchalance, leaped to its
feet for the first time at the news of this fresh insult. As though to
make the inefficiency of the war-ships more apparent, three shells were
thrown inland at Mangiangi; they flew high over the Mataafa camp, where
the natives could "hear them singing" as they flew, and fell behind in
the deep romantic valley of the Vaisingano. Mataafa had been already
summoned on board the _Adler_; his life promised if he came, declared
"in danger" if he came not; and he had declined in silence the
unattractive invitation. These fresh hostile acts showed him that the
worst had come. He was in strength, his force posted along the whole
front of the mountain behind Apia, Matautu occupied, the Siumu road
lined up to the houses of the town with warriors passionate for war. The
occasion 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 and
Americans wear a black band upon their arm, so that his men should
recognise and spare them. The hint was taken, and the band worn for a
continuance of days. To have refused would have been insane; but to
consent was unhappily to feed the resentment of the Germans by a fresh
sign of intelligence with their enemies, and to widen the breach between
the races by a fresh and a scarce pardonable mark of their division. The
same day again the Germans repeated one of their earlier offences by
firing on a boat within the harbour. Times were changed; they were now
at war and in peril, the rigour of military advantage might well be
seized by them and pardoned by others; but it so chanced that the
bullets flew about the ears of Captain Hand, and that commander is said
to have been insatiable of apologies. The affair, besides, had a
deplorable effect on the inhabitants. A black band (they saw) might
protect them from the Mataafas, not from undiscriminating shots. Panic
ensued. The war-ships were open to receive the fugitives, and the
gentlemen who had made merry over Fangalii were seen to thrust each
other from the wharves in their eagerness to flee Apia. I willingly drop
the curtain on the shameful picture.
Meanwhile, on the German side of the bay, a more manly spirit was
exhibited in circumstances of alarming weakness. The plantation managers
and overseers had all retreated to Matafele, only one (I understand)
remaining at his post. The whole German colony was thus collected in one
spot, and could count and wonder at its scanty numbers. Knappe declares
(to my surprise) that the war-ships could not spare him more than fifty
men a day. The great extension of the German quarter, he goes on, did
not "allow a full occupation of the outer line"; hence they had shrunk
into the western end by the firm buildings, and the inhabitants were
warned to fall back on this position, in the case of an alert. So that
he who had set forth, a day or so before, to disarm the Mataafas in the
open field, now found his resources scarce adequate to garrison the
buildings of the firm. But Knappe seemed unteachable by fate. It is
probable 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 the
midst of his weakness, to bluster and menace like a conqueror. Active
war, which he lacked the means of attempting, was continually
threatened. On the 22nd he sought the aid of his brother consuls to
maintain the neutral territory against Mataafa; and at the same time, as
though meditating instant deeds of prowess, refused to be bound by it
himself. This singular proposition was of course refused: Blacklock
remarking that he had no fear of the natives, if these were let alone;
de Coetlogon refusing in the circumstances to recognise any neutral
territory at all. In vain Knappe amended and baited his proposal with
the offer of forty-eight or ninety-six hours' notice, according as his
objective should be near or within the boundary of the _Eleele Sa_. It
was rejected; and he learned that he must accept war with all its
consequences--and not that which he desired--war with the immunities of
peace.
This monstrous exigence illustrates the man's frame of mind. It has been
still further illuminated in the German white-book by printing alongside
of his despatches those of the unimpassioned Fritze. On January 8th the
consulate was destroyed by fire. Knappe says it was the work of
incendiaries, "without doubt"; Fritze admits that "everything seems to
show" it was an accident. "Tamasese's people fit to bear arms," writes
Knappe, "are certainly for the moment equal to Mataafa's," though
restrained from battle by the lack of ammunition. "As for Tamasese,"
says Fritze of the same date, "he is now but a phantom--_dient er nur
als Gespenst_. His party, for practical purposes, is no longer large.
They pretend ammunition to be lacking, but what they lack most is
good-will. Captain Brandeis, whose influence is now small, declares they
can no longer sustain a serious engagement, and is himself in the
intention of leaving Samoa by the _Luebeck_ of the 5th February." And
Knappe, in the same despatch, confutes himself and confirms the
testimony of his naval colleague, by the admission that "the
re-establishment of Tamasese's government is, under present
circumstances, not to be thought of." Plainly, then, he was not so much
seeking to deceive others, as he was himself possessed; and we must
regard the whole series of his acts and despatches as the agitations of
a fever.
The British steamer _Richmond_ returned to Apia, January 15th. On the
last voyage she had brought the ammunition already so frequently
referred to; as a matter of fact, she was again bringing contraband of
war. It is necessary to be explicit upon this, which served as spark to
so great a flame of scandal. Knappe was justified in interfering; he
would have been worthy of all condemnation if he had neglected, in his
posture of semi-investment, a precaution so elementary; and the manner
in 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 unable
to move without his consul; and at night an armed boat from the Germans
boarded, searched, and kept possession of, the suspected ship. The next
day, as by an after-thought, war and martial law were proclaimed for the
Samoan Islands, the introduction of contraband of war forbidden, and
ships and boats declared liable to search. "All support of the rebels
will be punished by martial law," continued the proclamation, "no matter
to 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 that
either Hand or Knappe communicated with de Coetlogon, with whom they
were both at daggers drawn. First the seizure and next the proclamation
seem to have burst on the English consul from a clear sky; and he wrote
on the same day, throwing doubt on Knappe's authority to declare war.
Knappe replied on the 20th that the Imperial German Government had been
at war as a matter of fact since December 19th, and that it was only for
the convenience of the subjects of other states that he had been
empowered 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 a
proclamation in that sense. Instantly, again, came that astonishing
document, Knappe's rejoinder, without pause, without reflection--the
pens screeching on the paper, the messengers (you would think) running
from consulate to consulate: "I have had the honour to receive your
Excellency's [_Hochwohlgeboren_] agreeable communication of to-day.
Since, on the ground of received instructions, martial law has been
declared in Samoa, British subjects as well as others fall under its
application. I warn you therefore to abstain from such a proclamation as
you announce in your letter. It will be such a piece of business as
shall make yourself answerable under martial law. Besides, your
proclamation will be disregarded." De Coetlogon of course issued his
proclamation at once, Knappe retorted with another, and night closed on
the first stage of this insane collision. I hear the German consul was
on this day prostrated with fever; charity at least must suppose him
hardly answerable for his language.
Early on the 21st, Mr. Mansfield Gallien, a passing traveller, was
seized in his berth on board the _Richmond_, and carried, half-dressed,
on board a German war-ship. His offence was, in the circumstances and
after the proclamation, substantial. He had gone the day before, in the
spirit of a tourist to Mataafa's camp, had spoken with the king, and had
even recommended him an appeal to Sir George Grey. Fritze, I gather, had
been long uneasy; this arrest on board a British ship filled the
measure. Doubtless, as he had written long before, the consul alone was
responsible "on the legal side"; but the captain began to ask himself,
"What next?"--telegraphed direct home for instructions, "Is arrest of
foreigners on foreign vessels legal?"--and was ready, at a word from
Captain 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 set
that man ashore," Hand is reported to have said, indicating Gallien; "I
wish you would set that man ashore, to save me the trouble." The same
day de Coetlogon published a proclamation requesting captains to submit
to search for contraband of war.
On the 22nd the _Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser_ was suppressed by
order of Fritze. I have hitherto refrained from mentioning the single
paper of our islands, that I might deal with it once for all. It is of
course a tiny sheet; but I have often had occasion to wonder at the
ability of its articles, and almost always at the decency of its tone.
Officials may at times be a little roughly, and at times a little
captiously, criticised; private persons are habitually respected; and
there are many papers in England, and still more in the States, even of
leading organs in chief cities, that might envy, and would do well to
imitate, the courtesy and discretion of the _Samoa Times_. Yet the
editor, Cusack, is only an amateur in journalism, and a carpenter by
trade. His chief fault is one perhaps inevitable in so small a
place--that he seems a little in the leading of a clique; but his
interest in the public weal is genuine and generous. One man's meat is
another man's poison: Anglo-Saxons and Germans have been differently
brought up. To our galled experience the paper appears moderate; to
their untried sensations it seems violent. We think a public man fair
game; we think it a part of his duty, and I am told he finds it a part
of his reward, to be continually canvassed by the press. For the
Germans, on the other hand, an official wears a certain sacredness; when
he is called over the coals, they are shocked, and (if the official be
a German) feel that Germany itself has been insulted. The _Samoa Times_
had been long a mountain of offence. Brandeis had imported from the
colonies another printer of the name of Jones, to deprive Cusack of the
government printing. German sailors had come ashore one day, wild with
offended patriotism, to punish the editor with stripes, and the result
was delightfully amusing. The champions asked for the English printer.
They were shown the wrong man, and the blows intended for Cusack had
hailed on the shoulders of his rival Jones. On the 12th, Cusack had
reprinted an article from a San Francisco paper; the Germans had
complained; and de Coetlogon, in a moment of weakness, had fined the
editor twenty pounds. The judgment was afterwards reversed in Fiji; but
even at the time it had not satisfied the Germans. And so now, on the
third day of martial law, the paper was suppressed. Here we have another
of these international obscurities. To Fritze the step seemed natural
and obvious; for Anglo-Saxons it was a hand laid upon the altar; and the
month was scarce out before the voice of Senator Frye announced to his
colleagues that free speech had been suppressed in Samoa.
Perhaps we must seek some similar explanation for Fritze's short-lived
code, published and withdrawn the next day, the 23rd. Fritze himself was
in no humour for extremities. He was much in the position of a
lieutenant who should perceive his captain urging the ship upon the
rocks. It is plain he had lost all confidence in his commanding officer
"upon the legal side"; and we find him writing home with anxious
candour. He had understood that martial law implied military possession;
he was in military possession of nothing but his ship, and shrewdly
suspected that his martial jurisdiction should be confined within the
same limits. "As a matter of fact," he writes, "we do not occupy the
territory, and cannot give foreigners the necessary protection, because
Mataafa and his people can at any moment forcibly interrupt me in my
jurisdiction." Yet in the eyes of Anglo-Saxons the severity of his code
appeared burlesque. I give but three of its provisions. The crime of
inciting German troops "by any means, as, for instance, informing them
of proclamations by the enemy," was punishable with death; that of
"publishing or secretly distributing anything, whether printed or
written, bearing on the war," with prison or deportation; and that of
calling or attending a public meeting, unless permitted, with the same.
Such were the tender mercies of Knappe, lurking in the western end of
the German quarter, where Mataafa could "at any moment" interrupt his
jurisdiction.
On the 22nd (day of the suppression of the _Times_) de Coetlogon wrote
to inquire if hostilities were intended against Great Britain, which
Knappe on the same day denied. On the 23rd de Coetlogon sent a complaint
of hostile acts, such as the armed and forcible entry of the _Richmond_
before the declaration and arrest of Gallien. In his reply, dated the
24th, Knappe took occasion to repeat, although now with more
self-command, his former threat against de Coetlogon. "I am still of the
opinion," he writes, "that even foreign consuls are liable to the
application of martial law, if they are guilty of offences against the
belligerent state." The same day (24th) de Coetlogon complained that
Fletcher, manager for Messrs. MacArthur, had been summoned by Fritze. In
answer, Knappe had "the honour to inform your Excellency that since the
declaration of the state of war, British subjects are liable to martial
law, and Mr. Fletcher will be arrested if he does not appear." Here,
then, was the gauntlet thrown down, and de Coetlogon was burning to
accept it. Fletcher's offence was this. Upon the 22nd a steamer had come
in from Wellington, specially chartered to bring German despatches to
Apia. The rumour came along with her from New Zealand that in these
despatches Knappe would find himself rebuked, and Fletcher was accused
of having "interested himself in the spreading of this rumour." His
arrest was actually ordered, when Hand succeeded in persuading him to
surrender. At the German court, the case was dismissed "_wegen
Nichtigkeit_"; and the acute stage of these distempers may be said to
have ended. Blessed are the peacemakers. Hand had perhaps averted a
collision. What is more certain, he had offered to the world a perfectly
original reading of the part of British seaman.
Hand may have averted a collision, I say; but I am tempted to believe
otherwise. I am tempted to believe the threat to arrest Fletcher was the
last mutter of the declining tempest and a mere sop to Knappe's
self-respect. I am tempted to believe the rumour in question was
substantially correct, and the steamer from Wellington had really
brought the German consul grounds for hesitation, if not orders to
retreat. I believe the unhappy man to have awakened from a dream, and to
have read ominous writing on the wall. An enthusiastic popularity
surrounded him among the Germans. It was natural. Consul and colony had
passed through an hour of serious peril, and the consul had set the
example of undaunted courage. He was entertained at dinner. Fritze, who
was known to have secretly opposed him, was scorned and avoided. But the
clerks of the German firm were one thing, Prince Bismarck was another;
and on a cold review of these events, it is not improbable that Knappe
may have envied the position of his naval colleague. It is certain, at
least, that he set himself to shuffle and capitulate; and when the blow
fell, he was able to reply that the martial law business had in the
meanwhile come right; that the English and American consular courts
stood open for ordinary cases; and that in different conversations with
Captain Hand, "who has always maintained friendly intercourse with the
German authorities," it had been repeatedly explained that only the
supply of weapons and ammunition, or similar aid and support, was to
come under German martial law. Was it weapons or ammunition that
Fletcher had supplied? But it is unfair to criticise these wrigglings
of an unfortunate in a false position.
In a despatch of the 23rd, which has not been printed, Knappe had told
his story: how he had declared war, subjected foreigners to martial law,
and been received with a counter-proclamation by the English consul; and
how (in an interview with Mataafa chiefs at the plantation house of
Motuotua, of which I cannot find the date) he had demanded the cession
of arms and of ringleaders for punishment, and proposed to assume the
government of the islands. On February 12th he received Bismarck's
answer: "You had no right to take foreigners from the jurisdiction of
their consuls. The protest of your English colleague is grounded. In
disputes which may arise from this cause you will find yourself in the
wrong. The demand formulated by you, as to the assumption of the
government of Samoa by Germany, lay outside of your instructions and of
our design. Take it immediately back. If your telegram is here rightly
understood, I cannot call your conduct good." It must be a hard heart
that does not sympathise with Knappe in the hour when he received this
document. Yet it may be said that his troubles were still in the
beginning. Men had contended against him, and he had not prevailed; he
was now to be at war with the elements, and find his name identified
with an immense disaster.
One more date, however, must be given first. It was on February 27th
that Fritze formally announced martial law to be suspended, and himself
to have relinquished the control of the police.