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 suddenly
injected a tragic element.

In 1884, at the time when the German statesman began to see the
vision of a Teutonic world empire and went about seeking places
in the sun, the German consul in Samoa, by agreement with King
Malietoa, raised the German flag over the royal hut, with a
significance which was all too obvious. In 1886 the American
consul countered this move by proclaiming a United States
protectorate. The German consul then first pressed home a quarrel
with the native king at a time opportunely coinciding with the
arrival of a German warship, the Adler; he subsequently deposed
him and put up Tamasese in his stead. The apparently more