ny with precedent and in the light of the
proven facts.

The recommendation made in my special message of April 27 last is
renewed, that appropriation be made to reimburse the master and owners
of the Russian bark _Hans_ for wrongful arrest of the master and
detention of the vessel in February, 1896, by officers of the United
States district court for the southern district of Mississippi. The
papers accompanying my said message make out a most meritorious claim
and justify the urgency with which it has been presented by the
Government of Russia.

Malietoa Laupepa, King of Samoa, died on August 22 last. According to
Article I of the general act of Berlin, "his successor shall be duly
elected according to the laws and customs of Samoa."

Arrangements having been agreed upon between the signatories of the
general act for the return of Mataafa and the other exiled Samoan
chiefs, they were brought from Jaluit by a German war vessel and landed
at Apia on September 18 last.

Whether the death of Malietoa and the return of his old-time rival
Mataafa will add to the undesirable complications which the execution of
the tripartite general act has heretofore developed remains to be seen.
The efforts of this Government will, as heretofore, be addressed toward
a harmonious and exact fulfillment of the terms of the international
engagement to which the United States became a party in 1889.

The Cheek claim against Siam, after some five years of controversy, has
been adjusted by arbitration under an agreement signed July 6, 1897, an
award of 706,721 ticals (about $187,987.78), with release of the Cheek
estate from mortgage claims, having been rendered March 21, 1898, in
favor of the claimant by the arbitrator, Sir Nicholas John Hannen,
British chief justice for China and Japan.

An envoy from Siam has been accredited to this Government and has
presented his credentials.

Immediately upon the outbreak of the war with Spain the Swiss
Government, fulfilling the high mission it has deservedly assumed as the
patron of the International Red Cross, proposed to the United States and
Spain that they should severally recognize and carry into execution,
as a _modus vivendi_, during the continuance of hostilities, the
additional articles proposed by the international conference of Geneva,
October 20, 1868, extending the effects of the existing Red Cross
convention of 1864 to the conduct of naval war. Following the example
set by France an