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
Lubeck 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 [Thater] 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 fitted 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.