against
the insurgents precisely as little as they have done heretofore." Plant
flags, in fact.

Here was Knappe's opportunity, could he have stooped to seize it. I find
it difficult to blame him that he could not. Far from being so
inglorious as the treachery once contemplated by Becker, the acceptance
of this ultimatum would have been still in the nature of a disgrace.
Brandeis's letter, written by a German, was hard to swallow. It would
have been hard to accept that solution which Knappe had so recently and
so peremptorily refused to his brother consuls. And he was tempted, on
the other hand, by recent changes. There was no Pelly to support de
Coetlogon, who might now be disregarded. Mullan, Leary's successor, even
if he were not precisely a Hand, was at least no Leary; and even if
Mullan should show fight, Knappe had now three ships and could defy or
sink him without danger. Many small circumstances moved him in the same
direction. The looting of German plantations continued; the whole force
of Mataafa was to a large extent subsisted from the crops of Vailele;
and armed men were to be seen openly plundering bananas, bread-fruit,
and cocoa-nuts under the walls of the plantation building. On the night
of the 13th the consulate stable had been broken into and a horse
removed. On the 16th there was a riot in Apia between half-castes and
sailors from the new ship _Olga_, each side claiming that the other was
the worse of drink, both (for a wager) justly. The multiplication of
flags and little neutral territories had, besides, begun to irritate the
Samoans. The protests of German settlers had been received uncivilly. On
the 16th the Mataafas had again sought to land in Saluafata bay, with
the manifest intention to attack the Tamaseses, or (in other words) "to
trespass on German lands, covered, as your Excellency knows, with
flags." I quote from his requisition to Fritze, December 17th. Upon all
these considerations, he goes on, it is necessary to bring the fighting
to an end. Both parties are to be disarmed and returned to their
villages--Mataafa first. And in case of any attempt upon Apia, the roads
thither are to be held by a strong landing-party. Mataafa was to be
disarmed first, perhaps rightly enough in his character of the last
insurgent. Then was to have come the turn of Tamasese; but it does not
appear the disarming would have had the same import or have been gone
about in the same way. Germany was bound to Tamase