t 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code, published and withdrawn the next day, the 23rd.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