national obligations. The American
flag waved over more than ships and a portion of the Pacific coast.
Naval officers more than once raised it over islands which they
christened, and Congress authorized the President to exercise temporary
authority over islands from which American citizens were removing guano
and to prevent foreign encroachment while they were so engaged. In the
eighties, fifty such islands of the Pacific were in the possession of
the United States.

In 1872 an American naval officer made an agreement with the local
chieftain of Tutuila, one of the Samoan Islands, for the use of Pago
Pago, which was the best harbor in that part of the ocean. The United
States drifted into more intimate relationship with the natives until
in 1878 it made a treaty with the Samoan king allowing Americans to use
Pago Pago as a coaling station. In return the United States agreed: "If
unhappily, any differences should have arisen, or shall hereafter arise,
between the Samoan government and any other government in amity with the
United States, the government of the latter will employ its good offices
for the purpose of adjusting those differences upon a satisfactory and
solid foundation." In 1884 the Senate insisted on securing a similar
harbor concession from Hawaii, and within the next few years the
American Navy began to arise again from its ashes. The obligation
incurred in exchange for this concession, however, although it resembled
that in the Japanese treaty, was probably an unreflecting act of good
nature for, if it meant anything, it was an entangling engagement such
as the vast majority of Americans were still determined to avoid.

The natives of Samoa did not indulge in cannibalism but devoted the
small energy the climate gave them to the social graces and to pleasant
wars. They were governed by local kings and were loosely united under a
chief king. At Apia, the capital, were three hundred foreigners, nearly
all connected in one way or another with trade. This commerce had long
been in the hands of English and Americans, but now the aggressive
Germans were rapidly winning it away. Three consuls, representing
the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, spent their time in
exaggerating their functions and in circumventing the plots of which
they suspected each other. The stage was set for comic opera, the
treaty with the United States was part of the plot, and several acts had
already been played, when Bismarck s