less Becker re-established that which he had so lately
and so artfully thrown down--the neutral territory--the firm would have
to suffer. If he re-established it, Tamasese must retire from Mulinuu.
If Becker saved his goose, he lost his cabbage. Nothing so well depicts
the man's effrontery as that he should have conceived the design of
saving both,--of re-establishing only so much of the neutral territory
as should hamper Mataafa, and leaving in abeyance all that could
incommode Tamasese. By drawing the boundary where he now proposed,
across the isthmus, he protected the firm, drove back the Mataafas out
of almost all that they had conquered, and, so far from disturbing
Tamasese, actually fortified him in his old position.

The real story of the negotiations that followed we shall perhaps never
learn. But so much is plain: that while Becker was thus outwardly
straining decency in the interest of Tamasese, he was privately
intriguing, or pretending to intrigue, with Mataafa. In his despatch of
the 11th, he had given an extended criticism of that chieftain, whom he
depicts as very dark and artful; and while admitting that his assumption
of the name of Malietoa might raise him up followers, predicted that he
could not make an orderly government or support himself long in sole
power "without very energetic foreign help." Of what help was the consul
thinking? There was no helper in the field but Germany. On the 15th he
had an interview with the victor; told him that Tamasese's was the only
government recognised by Germany, and that he must continue to recognise
it till he received "other instructions from his government, whom he was
now advising of the late events"; refused, accordingly, to withdraw the
guard from the isthmus; and desired Mataafa, "until the arrival of these
fresh instructions," to refrain from an attack on Mulinuu. One thing of
two: either this language is extremely perfidious, or Becker was
preparing to change sides. The same detachment appears in his despatch
of October 7th. He computes the losses of the German firm with an easy
cheerfulness. If Tamasese get up again _(gelingt die Wiederherstellung
der Regierung Tamasese's)_, Tamasese will have to pay. If not, then
Mataafa. This is not the language of a partisan. The tone of
indifference, the easy implication that the case of Tamasese was already
desperate, the hopes held secretly forth to Mataafa and secretly
reported to his government at home, trenchantl