STEVENSON'S GERMANY THE CASE AGAINST GERMANY IN THE PACIFIC BY C. BRUNSDON FLETCHER AUTHOR OF 'THK NEW PACIFIC" AND "THE PROBLEM OF THK PACIFIC NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1920 Printed in Great Britain. AUTHOR'S PREFACE THIS volume concludes the argument against Germany begun in " The New Pacific " and continued through " The Problem of the Pacific." It is also an effort to place Robert Louis Stevenson before the world as an important witness in the case ; and substantially it is a Stevenson book. Yet to get Stevenson into the witness box the history of Germany's thirty years of intrigue and ter- giversation, before he reached Samoa, has to be told. This has brought other important witnesses forward. Broadly, therefore, the book is an account of Stevenson's Germany the Germany he discovered in the Pacific, ruthless and grasping. Stevenson did not imagine, even so, that the brutal Power he had found out could prove " insolent " in the true Greek sense of the word, and run headlong to ruin. Insolence, when applied to himself and his writings, was a word which moved his most vehement protest. Sir Sidney Colvin says that the particular protest under this head, in one of the Vailima letters, was not uttered by the true Stevenson. It was not like him ; and the shadow of death upon him was the only explanation. But in Stevenson's denial there was a real appreciation of the meaning of insolence. He said he had frankly supposed the word to be tabooed between gentlemen. He did not use it to a gentleman and he would not write it of a gentle- man. But during his five years in Samoa he learned the larger lesson. As Germany loomed over the group he 45S30 viii AUTHOR'S PREFACE realised how " insolent " was her attitude ; and he there- fore thrust his pen into the fire that was so near to him, and out of its trenchant steel he forged both sword and spear. Yet his main object was to make peace between Germany and Samoa. Hence because he wrote, moved by German insolence, the present book has been made possible. The documents in the case are, unfortunately, not plentiful, neither have they been easily collated ; but they are conclusive as far as they go. For in this connection Stevenson builded better than he knew. Yet even then a verdict upon the accumulated evidence can be reached only as its circumstantial side is allowed due weight ; inference has often to take the place of reliance upon direct testi- mony. Nevertheless, the verdict of dispassionate readers, I honestly believe, will be unanimous. They will say that the Germany of the African atrocities and horrors is the Germany of the Pacific. Therefore German possessions v 1 in the Pacific^ are jiot to^e returned, but retained. My thanks are due to several sympathetic friends and helpers in the writing of these books. Especially was the late Rt. Hon. Sir William MacGregor, P.C., G.C.M.G., my strong tower. He never ceased to encourage me, and I shall not easily forget his words of comfort and com- mendation. To the Lieutenant-Governor of Papua, the Hon. J. H. P. Murray, C.M.G., my acknowledgments are due for information ungrudgingly given when " The New Pacific " was being written and for facts made available in his reports, which are so full of evidence of work well done. The Hon. J. Hedstrom, of the Fijian Legislative Council, has also placed me in his debt by supplying me with evidence and information. Mr. Irvin S. Cobb has given me from New York greetings and assistance for which AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix I am very grateful ; and Mr. F. Graham Lloyd, of London, has placed me under obligation by his untiring assistance in the difficulties due to distance from my publisher. The Rev. R. H. Colwell has also been my willing helper throughout in reading the proofs and in preparing or correcting the indices. My friends in Australia have always been full of en- couragement and appreciation. Dr. F. W. Ward, of Bris- bane, has stood by me with words of good cheer ; and by his criticism and weighty advice has assisted me in the develop- ment of the argument. Mr. A* Atlee Hunt, C.M.G., Secretary of the Department for External Affairs, has from time to time supplied me with matter of great value. The Rev. J. G. Wheen, Dr. Bromilow, and Rev. Benjamin Danks, among others, have been ready to give from their wealth of knowledge of the Pacific ; and Mr. Percy Allen, who is an expert in Pacific history and affairs, has responded to each call upon his good nature. My cousin, Mr. J. J. Fletcher, M.A., B.Sc., Secretary of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, has helped with friendly criticism as my researches have progressed ; and the resources of his library have been mine for the asking. Finally, my special acknowledgment is due to the Mitchell Library in Sydney. Under its Assistant Public Librarian, Mr. Hugh Wright, the library is becoming indispensable to the student of the Pacific, its affairs, administration, and possibilities. C. BRUNSDON FLETCHER. SYDNEY. CONTENTS CHAPTER I AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC pp. 1 9 The Germany of 1894 and 1914. Stevenson's knowledge. Pre- sident Wilson's Fourteen Points. Africa's case proved up to the hilt. Mr. Gorges's xeport. M.Ren6 Puaux in support, Mr. Watt at Bendigo. Mr. Massey in New York. Mr. Walter Long's announcement. Germany equally ruthless in the Pacific. Never a trustworthy neighbour. CHAPTER II THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PACIFIC .... pp. 10 16 A double difficulty to be overcome. Veils of silence and indif- ference. Germany's attitude. Romance ending in sordid political compromises. Rupert Brooke's experience. Mariner's " Tongan Islands " and Thackeray. Charles Dickens and the Pacific. Germany entered the Pacific in 1854. No reports of German doings. Bishop Selwyn's. work. Stevenson's story. CHAPTER III No GERMAN EXPLORATIONS . . . . . pp. 17 25 Germany before 1870. Hamburg and the Godeffroys. French and British explorers. Carteret and New Britain. First annexation of a Pacific island. Bougainville at New Britain. His discovery of Carteret's camp. Beautemps-Beaupre' and D'Entrecasteaux. The French Revolution. Beautemps- Beaupre alive in 1854. CHAPTER IV A MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY pp. 26 36 Interesting documents. New Zealand Blue Book of 1874. Stonehewer Cooper's " Coral Lands." Miss Gordon Cum- ming's writings. Sterndale a Godeffroy employee. Louis Becke another Godeffroy employee. Trood a third em- ployee. Trood's " Island Reminiscences." Thackeray again. Silence about Germany's " black labour " traffic. Stevenson's light upon it. Sterndale's testimonial. xii CONTENTS CHAPTER V AN OUTLINE pp. 37 51 Sir John Thurston's report. Godeffroy's advent and progress. Weber as dictator and German Consul. A network of trad- ing stations. The manager and the missionary. A great programme laid down. America and Pago Pago. Steven- eon's evidence begins. Political history of Samoa. Samoan wars. Germany always interfering. Samoan instability served the German purpose. CHAPTER VI GERMAN ARROGANCE pp. 52 62 Germany took what she wanted. Story of the Samoan club. Nabo til's vineyard again. Dr. Brown's intervention. Stevenson's policy for Samoa. Others than Germans in- volved. Some reason in German claims. But Germany must never be criticised ! No talking about the German slave trade ! Mr. Walter Coote's book. Stevenson's biographers and Stevenson's interference. Germany still claimed freedom from criticism. CHAPTER VII GERMAN SLAVE LABOUR pp. 63 74 The Sterndale report. Sir Julius Vogel's scheme. " The fright- ful system of slavery " in the Pacific. Can Germany ever be trusted f No reservoirs of labour. Sterndale's panegyric of Godeflroy and Son. The firm's recruiting agents. Stevenson's remarks upon the German slave trade. Escaped negritos in Samoa. Stevenson heavily handicapped. Sir John Thurston frowned upon him. Germany's aim to get everything. CHAPTER VIII A SETTLED POLICY pp. 75 87 Sir John Thurston in the Pacific. His report on Samoa in the British Blue Book (18851889). He touches the German slave trade with a pair of tongs. German claims in Samoa. The Agreement of 1886. Treated as a "scrap of paper." Trade in the Pacific a preparation for war. Close parallel with the Cameroons in Germany's treatment of the natives. Mr. Poultney Bigelow's evidence. Atrocities in the Caroline Islands. Africa and the Pacific must be taken together. CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER IX TRADE AND STRATEGY ...... pp. 88 100 Germany as pedlar and planter. Deutschland iiber Alles. Ger- man thoroughness in duplicity. Bolivian dollars and double profits. Stevenson again. German thoughts of trade dif- ferent from British. Ruthless cut-throat competition. Sir John Thurston and the German trade in arms and liquor. Rise of German companies. The Marshall Islands and Australian threats. German shipping subsidies. Australia was to be a new German base. Sympathy of Marshall Island chiefs with Australia. CHAPTER X THE SETTLEMENT OF SAMOA pp. 101 110 George Brown and Stevenson. Their plan of settling Samoan difficulties. Some Power in control imperative. ' Germany too well entrenched. No hope from Gladstone. Sir George ^ Grey turned to America. Germany in possession. Native lands secured to Samoans. Samoa in the limelight. Dr. Solf given a free hand to meet the difficulty. Samoans given representation on Council. Samoa never developed by Germany. A comfortable British anticipation of ex- change. Stevenson a trustworthy witness. CHAPTER XI THE Two IDEALS pp. 111125 German and British ideals in better perspective. Report of the Australian Inter-State Commission. Mr. C. H. Hughes's evidence against Germany. Analogy to the Sterndale report. Captain Strasburg's favourable testimony. Com- mission's report a purely business document. Chinese in Samoa. German New Guinea Company. Are there no spiritual or moral forces behind business operations ? Germany's study of Malaysia. Australia and the Dutch East Indies. CHAPTER XII THE MISSIONARY FACTOR pp. 126 136 Germany never an explorer. Equally indebted to Britain on the missionary side. Yet bad for German trade. Instructions against missionaries. Sir George Grey and Bishop Selwyn as Imperialists. Caroline Island chief moved to approve. New Zealand and the king movement. Maori Christianity. Maori loyalty. " This is my flag." George Brown watching it all. Maoris fighting for the Empire. xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII GOVERNMENT BY PRECEPT pp. 137 145 Sir George Grey and Tawhiao. They sign the pledge. Sir Arthur Gordon and Maafu. Sir William MacGregor's way. Dr. Brown in New Britain and the Solomons. Gladstone's policy. Cost of the wars in New Zealand. Catching Tartars. Dr. Brown's criticism of Government fears. The case of Fiji. Germany benefited by Gladstone's hesitancies. CHAPTER XIV. CLEARING A WAY FOR GERMANY .... pp. 146 157 Samoa a whirlpool of mischief. Colonel de Coetlogon. Stevenson and Moors wait upon him. The interview full of surprise. Sir John Thurston and Stevenson. Threat of deportation. Samoans called liars and thieves. George Brown's love for the Samoans. His way with the natives. An incident in New Britain. A treacherous chief. The missionary's triumph. Germany again benefited by British efforts. CHAPTER XV ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION pp. 158 171 The MacGregor reports from New Guinea. Australia's crisis in 1 893. A MacGregor wanted. Twenty years after in Queens- land. The strong man in the Pacific. Found only to be transferred elsewhere. Sir John Thurston. A critical moment in Samoan history. The naval man in action. Sir William MacGregor and the Fijian chiefs. The German spirit again. CHAPTER XVI STEVENSON'S PLACE AND POWER .... pp. 172 182 Tusitala, the writer of stories. Why give him the limelight ? Germany roused the man in him. His love for and under- standing of the Samoans. A missionary after all. He stood for the natives against the aggressive white man. The two spirits in conflict. Mataafa's scorn. The German pro- clamation. Germany's bludgeon in play. The Road of the Loving Heart. Stevenson's speech to the Samoan chiefs. A lesson for the Germans. CONTENTS xv CHAPTER XVII CONCLUSIONS pp. 183 205 German efficiency and British mismanagement. Sir William MacGregor's lecture. The argument in a nutshell. The same Germany in Africa and the Pacific. Problems for Australasia. Native populations not increasing. American criticism. Indian labour in Fiji. A rejoinder to attacks upon the system. Conditions in India. Examples from Java and the Philippines. German trade and strategy. German possessions must not be returned. Mr. Watt s speech on the German menace. APPENDIX A APPENDIX B pp. 207209 pp 210 212 APPENDIX C APPENDIX D INDEX . pp. 213218 pp. 219222 . . 223230 STEVENSON'S GERMANY (GERMANY IN THE PACIFIC) CHAPTER I AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC The Germany of 1894 and 1914. Stevenson's know- ledge. President Wilson's Fourteen Points. Africa's case proved up to the hilt. Mr. Gorges's report. M. Ren6 Puaux in support. Mr. Watt at Bendigo. Mr. Massey in New York. Mr. Walter Long's announcement. Germany equally ruthless in the Pacific. Never a trustworthy neigh- bour. BETWEEN 1894, the year of Robert Louis Stevenson's death, and 1914, when the war opened, Germany matured her plans for world conquest. But when war was declared in the latter year she was the same Power as when Stevenson watched the development of Bismarck's policy from Samoa nearly two decades before. Between " the drums and tramp lings " of a Germany almost victorious through the invasion of Belgium, and the inglorious retreat of German armies upon the Rhine after the armistice of November, 1918, there has been revelation upon revela- tion ; and yet it is still the same Germany upon whom the world is gazing. Stevenson saw enough before he died to realise the dangers of a German peace, though he strove to make an understanding possible between the Samoans and their coming masters. But to-day, as we look back, the essential thing is to prove that the Germany of more 3.0. B 2 STEVENSON'S GERMANY than half a century in the Pacific cannot be dissociated from the Germany of Africa and Europe. Stevenson's Germany has been consistent to the end, and the story only needs to be told. When dealing with the history of German activity in the Pacific, or stating the case for keeping Germany from this, the largest ocean on the earth's surface, it is necessary to give preliminary consideration to Africa. Stevenson was gently rallied on one occasion over his tendency in his monthly epistle to write about local Samoa rather than to discuss the world of literature. But he was trying to express himself in terms of a great discovery in life and affairs, with imagination as an aid to expression only, not as the beginning and end of all things. The Vailima letters, as edited, are a reflex of the thought that people cared little about Samoa except as it contained Stevenson ; whereas Stevenson himself had decided that the group was the supreme object in a struggle between right and might, and that the writer of stories was as nothing in comparison. So, to give the true Germany with reference to the Pacific, one must begin with the world in the actual present, and not with a part of it in some artificial relation. Nothing could be more conclusive than the case against Germany in East and South- West Africa. It has been presented by several writers and supported by many witnesses. If President Wilson's fifth point, in the fourteen points offered at the beginning of January, 1918, as a basis for the discussion of peace, governs the return of German possessions in Africa, there is little left to say ; but since the Pacific Ocean is brought into range it may be repeated here. President Wilson insisted that one of the conditions of debate at the Peace Conference must AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC 3 be : " A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that, in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined." * Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech made in the previous December, had taken practically the same ground. Not spoils to the victors, not national aggrandisement, and not the mere question of merited punishment for the abominable crimes committed by Germany, but the peace of the world is to govern everything. Security for the future of our civilisation is to be assured. Small nations and the native races in Africa and the Pacific are to be given the fullest protection and the most trustworthy warrant for their development along the lines of congenial existence. Again it must be admitted that Africa's case has been proved up to the hilt. Mr. E. H. M. Gorges, Administrator of South- West Africa, has presented a report of his section of the Dark Continent which leaves little to be said. An indication of its facts and conclusions is offered here because those who are concerned in the future of German colonies in the Pacific will be asked whether they can give an equally powerful indictment based upon similar investigations, and it is well to know what is expected of us. Briefly, Mr. Gorges's report is a telling reply to Dr. Solf s recent claim that " Germany's pre-war humane treatment of the native races had won for her the moral right to be called a great Colonial Power." Mr. Gorges says of Africa : " Native opinion here is unanimously against any idea of ever being handed back to the tender mercies of Germany, * The Times, January 10th, 1918. B 2 4 STEVENSON'S GERMANY and any suggestion of the possibility of an act of that kind on the part of Great Britain produces the utmost consterna- tion." * For a quarter of a century the Germans in South Africa broke every rule which civilised humanity has accepted as fair and reasonable in dealing with uncivilised races. They oppressed the unfortunate natives in their power, deceiving them, taking their lands, breaking agree- ments without scruple, and finally, after robbery and unimaginable cruelties, murdering them until whole tribes were almost extinguished. Rebellions were the natural result of treatment which meant slavery for the men and concubinage for the women ; and in the end the Hereros were decimated until 80,000 became 15,000. The Hottentots in the same way fell from 20,000 to less than half that number, and the Berg Damaras from 20,000 to 12,800. Is it any wonder that the details of this awful story should make the blood run cold or that one should leave it quite convinced that nothing remains to be said ? Germany cannot be allowed to return as master of her late possessions in South-West Africa. The story of East and West Africa is no less gruesome. It has been told with sufficient amplitude to satisfy the most exacting ; but those who wish a summary of it, and German comments thereupon, should read the pamphlet by M. Rene Puaux, recently published and entitled " The German Colonies : What is to become of them ? " The writer of this pamphlet, after making many telling quota- tions and presenting a series of facts, says : " Were we to restore her colonies to Germany to-morrow we should be guilty of a crime against humanity, for we should expose the natives not only to falling again under the * " Blue Book. Union of South Africa," Cd. 9146, p. 11. AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC 5 hateful yoke, but to the terrible revenge of their old masters, whose cause they deserted to welcome their liberators." M. Rene Puaux rightly urges that even a short examina- tion of the story of the German colonies will compel the con- clusion that their restoration to Germany is neither neces- sary nor desirable, and he argues in this way for the Pacific as well as for Africa. But, unfortunately, in this outline of African atrocities and mal-administration, the history of German possessions in the Pacific is not offered. In the largest area on the earth's surface no effort is made to present a special case for the islands or groups of islands brought under German control from 1884 onward ; a single indictment is made to cover all. This is good as argument, but it does not go far enough. President Wilson, for instance, might quite reasonably have been asked at the Peace Conference whether he was satisfied that the story of Germany's crimes in Africa covered all the ground. Would he have been fortified against his critics ? Are there not other facts to present and a different story to tell of the Pacific ? What of Samoa ? Does not Dr. Solf s claim that Germany's pre-war treatment of the natives has been humane find substantiation in that group, and if so has she not still a moral right to be regarded as a great Colonial Power ? Is it not a fact that Germany to-day finds apologists in the Pacific who are not German but British-born ? No doubt an effective reply may be offered in the claims and charges of responsible Australasian statesmen. Mr. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia, hardly needs to be quoted in this connection, so constant and consistent have been his denunciations of Germany and so urgent his cam- paign against her both in Australia and Great Britain. But 6 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Mr. Watt, who has been Acting Prime Minister in Mr. Hughes's absence, has not hesitated to say that Australia does not want extra territory, but that she does want safety for the future. This was a statement made during a speech at Bendigo, in Victoria, in September, 1918, and Mr. Watt continued : " Now that war has taught the people of Aus- tralia how great a menace these islands (German posses- sions in the Pacific) would be if they passed back into German hands, Australia, with a united voice, should pray to England that they may be handed over to a friendly power." * This might easily have been a conclusion based upon the revelations of German devilry in South-West Africa, and indeed, Mr. Watt spoke at Bendigo at the very moment that Mr. Gorges's revelations were reaching Australia. But the Pacific has its own story of German treachery to tell, and the Acting Prime Minister of Australia had no need to fall back upon Africa for ammuni- tion. There is, however, a strategic as well as a humani- tarian side to the argument, and this must be kept in mind. When Mr. Gorges's startling disclosures were being made Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward were the guests of honour in New York at a luncheon party given by the British War Mission. But Mr. Massey simply kept step with Mr. Watt and there could hardly have been an understanding be- tween them. Said the Premier of the Dominion of New Zealand : " We are not in the war for territory. But one thing we know, we do not want Germany in the Pacific any more. We will not tolerate the menace of the establish- ment of a German nation in the South Pacific." f New * Sydney Morning Herald, September 13th, 1918. t Sydney Morning Herald, September 14th, 1918. AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC 7 Zealand has been so long concerned about Germany's enter- prises in the Pacific that, on the facts, in the history of the ocean, as Mr. Massey knows them, this may be taken as a just denunciation. In the Pacific, as in Africa, there is a case against Germany, but it would be quite reasonable to urge that what has been revealed on the side of the continent cannot find a substantial denial in the case of the ocean. The real Germany has been disclosed by the war illuminated by the African reports and revelations. Why ask for mountain to be piled on mountain in this way ? Has not Mr. Walter Long, who is at the head of the British Colonial Office, added his word to the rest ? Speaking at a dinner to the delegates of the Australasian Press at the end of September, 1918, he said : " We are told that we did not enter the war for extension of territory. This is absolutely true. We are told that these territories must be returned to Germany. I am here to-night to say this : That if these territories are returned to Germany the sacrifice of our heroes will have been made in vain. And I say the spirits of these men will come from their graves to rebuke us, if after the sword has done its splendid work the pen is so cowardly as to give back what the sword has won. The Germans regard the Pacific Islands as bases for wireless stations, aeroplanes, and submarines. If Germany is allowed to return to the position she occupied before the war the peace of the world will be threatened. We must make Germany understand that she has over-stepped the bounds." * This takes strategic ground, but the conclusion of the Secretary of State for the Colonies is as definite as that of the representatives of Australasia already quoted ; and if these able men are satisfied, why should the world not * Sydney Morning Herald, September 28th, 1918. 8 STEVENSON'S GERMANY accept their verdict, as for the Pacific, without insisting upon another detailed indictment of Germany ? Briefly, then, there is a case against Germany from native and European experience in the Pacific, and in justice to everybody concerned it must be added to the general indictment. President Wilson might fairly have demanded that nothing should be omitted from the sum of Germany's misdoings. Moreover, Germany will defend herself ; and she can undoubtedly point to something in the Pacific which shows her capable of dealing as fairly with the natives as Great Britain or the United States. Her difficulty, of course, will become greater in consequence, because her sins elsewhere will be seen more clearly to have been committed against the light, not through ignorance. But, though her activity has been modified by the condi- tions of life there, Germany has been as ruthless and un- principled in the Pacific as in Africa. The Polynesians and Melanesians, over whom she flourished her whip or against whom she drew her sword, were sometimes capable of standing up to Germany, and in Samoa the Powers were looking on. But in the main it has been the same Germany. From the very beginning she has been a stone of stumbling for the other white people in the Pacific, and a rock of offence to the natives wherever she has gone. Lord Bryce has summed up her character in well- chosen words : " Neither in the Pacific nor elsewhere has the German power been found a pleasant or a trustworthy neighbour." * This was the judgment of one who has studied the Pacific as a traveller, not as an armchair philosopher, and whose eminence as historian and statesman makes the verdict conclusive. But, though the strictest accuracy and the * " The New Pacific." Preface by Lord Bryce. AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC 9 firmest justice have marked his course in dealing with Germany, Lord Bryce has always been on the side of mercy. Preceding the above quotation from his preface to " The New Pacific " is the sentence : " Among the Governors who have served Germany, I know of at least one upright man who has wished to rule the islands with justice and fairness all round." This tribute to Dr. Solf did not prevent the conclusion that Germany has been a bad neighbour everywhere a conclusion which must be the theme of this book. CHAPTER II THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PACIFIC A double difficulty to be overcome. Veils of silence and indifference. Germany's attitude. Romance ending in sordid political compromises. Rupert Brooke's experience. Mariner's " Tongan Islands " and Thackeray. Charles Dickens and the Pacific. Germany entered the Pacific in 1854. No reports of German doings. Bishop Selwyn's work. Stevenson's story. IN any attempt to present a reasonable case against Germany in the Pacific a double difficulty has to be over- come. One side of this is to be found in the nature and history of the greatest of the world's oceans, the other in Germany's attitude and relation to it. The Pacific is a waste of water covering hall the earth's surface, and almost from the beginning of her appearance there Germany has been the sly trickster trying to exploit it behind vast veils of silence and indifference. Those, therefore, who expect a story of outrage and terrorism among the natives of the Pacific similar to that told by Mr. Gorges of South-West Africa will be disappointed. There are details of abomina- tion, no doubt ; but the conditions of the ocean's history are entirely different from those of the great continent so close to Europe. Germany has ever been ruthless and insolent among subject or inferior races, but individual Germans have proved capable administrators, just gover- nors and fine colonists the latter mostly under other flags. In the Pacific she has found special problems in the supply of native labour and in her own relations with the British THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PACIFIC 11 Dominions. Before the war, she was, no doubt, under constant scrutiny in part of the Pacific, and she was obliged again and again to retrace her steps and disguise her policy. But she was always resentful of criticism. This will be brought out in the course of the present story. It is sufficient, however, to warn expectant readers that the present book is not an account of horrors comparable with what Africa has given them since 1914, nor is it a history or drama with German traders and officials as the only villains. Germany has attempted great and evil things ; but her temptations also have been mighty, even when not directly aggravated by the folly or indifference of other Powers. The peculiar trouble of the scribe who tries to present a true picture of Germany's activity in the Pacific lies in an ocean history that began in an atmosphere of high romance, continued under sordid political compromises, and ended in friction and misunderstanding. Rupert Brooke's experience, when traversing the widest reaches of the ocean, is typical of the whole. He entered it with his wonderfully sensitive mind and fine genius ready for the glamour of tropical waters and dazzling beaches, in fact quite prepared to meet the Pacific more than half way. By report and reading he knew enough of it to understand something of its charms, and he expected to repeat Stevenson's experiences, under a thousand thrills from hovering sky and heaving sea. Just in the same way the European world began when the first Spaniard made his wild guess at the sight of its waters, or when Sir Francis Drake prayed upon the Isthmus of Darien for a chance to sail upon it. Explorations followed, until the exploits of Dampier, Carteret and Cook eventually filled the minds 12 STEVENSON'S GERMANY of monarchs and men of science with fresh hopes and strange imaginings. The new world of America had a wider reach than the greatest romancer had ever outlined. French expeditions, under the prompting of a fine unselfish spirit of scientific investigation, added their wonderful results, and the Pacific seemed to have become an open book to the rest of the world. A whole hemisphere was again offered for possession ; and at last what the Dutch and the Spaniards had indicated was now declared to be ready for enterprise and exploitation. But just as Rupert Brooke grew disappointed and depressed with his experiences in Hawaii and Fiji, so the interest in the Pacific which had arisen weakened and waned. Australia was considered by Britain as only good enough for a penal settlement ; and France soon began to cast out her shoe in emulation upon the lands near by. Rupert Brooke found Honolulu just an extension of American city life and Suva a part of Europe with a fragment of battered India fastened upon it. Had he returned by way of Australia and Asia his disillusionment would have been complete, for the civilised surroundings of the one and the barbaric splendours of the other would have made the Pacific seem an ocean of wasted beginnings and endings. But he retraced his steps and recovered some of his lost dreams. The world is doing likewise, but with misgivings about Germany and her possessions ; and it is because the average thoughtful denizen of lands upon the Atlantic has not brought the Pacific into focus that Germany may yet score against us. How surely the distance of the Pacific from Europe has aided Germany in her designs upon that ocean may be seen in many ways. When about 1854 Hamburg THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PACIFIC 13 merchants began their invasion the German trader as pedlar and not as a pioneer of civilisation Thackeray had not long finished his lectures upon the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century. Mariner's " Tongan Islands " had been published for more than thirty years, but the great novelist and critic did not take it seriously. He classed it with Daniel Defoe's immortal book as a work of imagination, and placed Mr. William Mariner beside Mr. Robinson Crusoe. Thackeray was concerned, in the introduction to his lecture on Steele, to show that the histories of past ages are more often wrong than right, while contemporary writers may prove the greatest of liars. " You offer me an autobiography," he says : "I doubt all autobiographies I ever read ; except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no object in setting themselves right with the public or their own consciences ; these have no motive for concealment or half truths ; these call for no more confi- dence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the Spectator, and I say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true." And so Mariner's " Tongan Islands " was dismissed as fiction or its equivalent. It was not even honoured by Thackeray with a note, as other references had been, when the lectures were published ; and one of the best- known English classics to-day is offered to school children, who have to study the " English Humorists " for University examinations, without a glance in its annotations at Mr. William Mariner. At least, the editor of the copy now before the writer apparently knows nothing of one 14 STEVENSON'S GERMANY of the best books about an important island group in the Pacific that ever left the printer's hands. It is not necessary to elaborate this point, because the only desire now is to show how little the Pacific was thought about in the important days of Germany's advent there. New Zealand was then the furthest point from England ; and when Dr. George Brown, as an adventurous youth, decided to try his luck abroad he went there for that very reason. So, he would sometimes humorously remark, did other people fly to the Pacific to get away from civilisation. Charles Dickens had no idea when he wrote " Nicholas Nickleby " that he was consigning the son of Wackford Squeers, Esquire, to the wilds of New Zealand, because of a libellous attack upon the original of his horrible schoolmaster. Dr. George Brown's father was a solicitor at Barnard Castle when " Nicholas Nickleby " was pub- lished ; and the original of Wackford Squeers called upon him one day to see whether Dickens' cruel caricature of his school and of himself was not actionable, but Mr. Brown strongly advised against a lawsuit. It would only advertise Dickens and very probably end in disappointment for the plaintiff, who was already nearly ruined by the book in which he had been pilloried, though he was really a decent Yorkshire schoolmaster of the time. Dr. Brown says that he was a respectable man who did not deserve in the least the notoriety he had been given, for there could be no question that his school had been taken by Dickens as a fair example of an abominable system, when it was probably among the best of its class. But the son of the much- maligned schoolmaster fled. He went to the ends of the earth to get away from the horror of it all, and on a farm in New Zealand sought refuge from the consequences of THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PACIFIC 15 this unjust attack upon his father. It may be mentioned that even the Pacific did not hide him, for Dickens was still too strong for him. The great novelist, who vied with Thackeray for chief place in the world's regard at the moment, afterwards became a light to shine still further afield ; and New Zealand and the Pacific were advertised in turn as it became known that Wackford Squeers, Junior, could be seen there by enterprising tourists. In the end the unfortunate man would run at the sight of strangers, so the story goes. And thus a paradox is reached as Germany comes again into focus. Behind this screen of indifference, and worse, Germany entered the Pacific. It was a vast desert of waters, with islands that invited exploitation scattered in various directions ; but the nations of Europe were thinking of the Crimea, of the Indian Mutiny, of the Civil War in America, and finally, of the Franco-Prussian War, and the significance of German trading activity was not realised. There was no time to spare for the Pacific, and practically no reports of Germany's doings therein. Missionary enterprise indeed was receiving some notice ; and the astonishing results of carrying Christianity to the islands were undoubtedly accepted as true and were widely commented upon. Bishop Selwyn and his son, heroic missionaries like Williams and Patteson, and men of flame like those who carried the gospel to Fiji and elsewhere, were given their place and fame ; but Germany, right up to 1884 when she flung a bomb into the Pacific by annexing New Guinea, worked without much let or hindrance from an unwelcome limelight. It is true that, as a Power, she was more or less under surveillance. She was suspect ; her course had been discovered not to be a way of pleasant- 16 STEVENSON'S GERMANY ness, nor were her paths those of peace. But British Governments did not want to be bothered about the Pacific. Africa was more than enough for them to hold, and books about that continent were multiplying. Who does not remember as a boy the days when Speke and Grant and Baker were telling of their travels and explorations, when Livingstone was filling a great place on the stage as mis- sionary and pioneer, and when Zulu wars and South African complications were absorbing attention ? There was little room for the Pacific ; and things were being done then with impunity by German traders, which if attempted at the end of the nineteenth century would have roused a tempest of controversy. Yet even then it was not per- mitted to speak disrespectfully of Germany. Under the directing hand of Bismarck she had already become something of a world bully, and the rattling sword and shining armour of the German Emperor in later days were only a natural corollary. Those who wrote of abuses or atrocities did so in veiled language, or, like Robert Louis Stevenson, only hinted at outrage because they could not be sure of publication if they dared to go into particulars or to give chapter and verse. Even so, Stevenson stood up to Germany and scored heavily against her ; but his " Footnote to History " was hardly read at the time, nor has it been accepted since as a reasonable presentation of the facts. The recent war, no doubt, has given it a new value. It is realised now that there must have been something very serious behind ; and because a genuine case lay against Germany, which could not then be drawn as it deserved, the present book is now being offered to the public. Stevenson's story of Germany's doings in the Pacific was a flash of lightning at the time, but its illumination was too vivid for European readers. CHAPTER III NO GERMAN EXPLORATIONS Germany before 1870. Hamburg and the Godeffroys. French and British explorers. Carteret and New Britain. First annexation of a Pacific island. Bougainville at New Britain. His discovery of Carteret's camp. Beautemps- Beaupre and D'Entrecasteaux. The French Revolution. Beautemps-Beaupr6 alive in 1854. A DOUBLE difficulty has been indicated in dealing with Germany in the Pacific, and the obverse side of it lies in her relation to that ocean. Now, before 1870 we have to think of Germany as divided, but still truly represented by Prussia, by the North German Confederation in its time, or by the Hanse cities of Hamburg and Bremen. The Godeffroys came from Hamburg, and that free city had long been identified with the world's great oceans by its trade. But, as has been truly said, the German trader has been ever a follower of civilisation, not a leader in the van. It is well to remember this, because much of the case against Germany consists in a recognition of her readiness to take advantage of other nations, to appropriate the results of their work, and to ignore their claims when- ever occasion demands their suppression. The way in which Great Britain and France were treated in New Britain and New Ireland when Germany took possession has already been indicated.* Place names have been altered, and the credit due to French and British explorers has thus been insolently denied. German exploration in * " The New Pacific," Chap. I. s.a. c 18 STEVENSON'S GERMANY the Pacific had not preceded German trade ; the work of exploration had already been done for Germany through the magnificent endurance and self-denial of her European neighbours. The present chapter is written just to show how far Great Britain and France paved the way in genuine co-operation ; Germany does not appear in it except to play cuckoo at the end. One hundred and fifty years ago, or a little more as one writes, Captain Carteret made the first island annexation in the Pacific for Great Britain. To be exact, on Septem- ber 7th, 1767, he landed upon what he thought was New Britain, and recorded the incident as follows : " I took possession of this country with all its islands, bays, ports, and harbours, for His Majesty George III., King of Great Britain ; and we nailed upon a high tree a piece of board faced with lead, on which was engraved the English Union with the name of the ship and her commander, the name of the cove, and the time of his coming in and falling out of it." This is taken from the " Voyages " in the Hawkes- worth Collection. Thus Carteret's name may be associated with Dampier's, Cook's, Bougainville's, D'Entrecasteaux', and in the end, Sir William MacGregor's. He was surely one of the most adventurous of British voyagers and explorers ; and the two French navigators mentioned with him give the link with France which no true history of the Pacific can overlook. Indeed, as one studies the exploring activity of France in that ocean in the later years of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth, there is a singular contrast in some respects with that of Great Britain to the disadvantage of the latter. The spirit in which no less than seven or eight French expeditions were fitted out, the fine courtesy and admirable ability of NO GERMAN EXPLORATIONS 19 the men to whom command was given, and the general success of their scientific work, deserve more space than is available here. At times there might be competition sharpening into hostility ; but the idea of the principal French navigators in those days seemed to be that so far away from home all white men were brothers. They were engaged in service for science, not necessarily to take possession of empty lands ; and to-day if one wishes to know something fairly exhaustive about the flora and fauna of Australasia and of other parts of the Pacific, when Carteret and Cook were alive, when British vessels were filled with convicts or when British explorers and settlers had to endure the most abominable privations to reach the Antipodes, it is not to English books that one must go, but to French. The magnificent volumes of the French expeditions still remain the text books for the inquirer, though his interest may have been sharpened by the results of the self-denying labour and fine patriotism of Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage, or by the fruit of John Gould's ornithological researches in Australia half a century later. Years afterwards German naturalists and botanists came, no doubt, to carry on the work, but too often they were only the advance guard of the German trader, or even spies for a Germany ready to take possession where other nationalities had made a way. Carteret was a plain British sailor like Cook, and he did his work in spite of the stinginess of the Government which sent him out. He even lived to be a rear-admiral, when by all the signs he should have died or been drowned in the Pacific. Sir Walter Besant thought that he was delibe- rately abandoned by Captain Wallis, who commanded the 02 20 STEVENSON'S GERMANY expedition which resulted in the above incident, after they had reached the Pacific together. Wallis had a fine, well- found man-of-war, while Carteret had only the sloop Swallow, which lacked the commonest necessaries of equip- ment, and was surely never intended for the astonishing things its captain achieved. Captain Wallis may have assumed that his companion would turn back and leave him to continue the voyage through the Pacific alone ; but Carteret was made of sterner stuff and endured to the end, reaching England with the knowledge that he had not suffered in vain. It was at an inlet called English Cove that he took possession, as he thought, of New Britain for George III. ; and had the matter been allowed to stand Germany would never have spread herself as she has done, even to the displacement of Dampier's name for New Britain and the cool dismissal of other names which France and England had fairly won the right to instal. But, as it happened, Carteret had not landed upon New Britain at all, though he may have taken possession of his landing place. He had been driven into " a Deep Bay or Gulph," which Dampier had named Saint George's Bay ; and as the current seemed to indicate a channel he went ahead and found that the original so-called New Britain was two islands instead of one. New Ireland was thus placed upon the map. The " Gulph," therefore, was altered to " St. George's Channel " ; and the Duke of York Island, which became a very important factor in Germany's later move for possession, was discovered in the passage through. Three months after Wallis and Carteret left England Bougainville sailed from Nantes ; and nine months later than Carteret he reached New Ireland. Carteret's Gower Harbour was then entered and called Port Praslin, and an NO GERMAN EXPLORATIONS 21 eclipse of the sun was observed there. " This observation," wrote Bougainville, " is so much the more important as it was now possible, by its means, and by the astronomical observations made upon the coast of Peru, to determine in a certain fixed manner the extent of longitude of the vast Pacific Ocean, which till now had been so uncertain." But of special interest also was the discovery of Carteret's presence there before them. Bougainville and his officers were making notes of the birds and animals they saw when a sailor, looking for shells, found the remains of the lead plate just mentioned, which had evidently, by the holes in it, been torn from a tree. This moved the party to search until the English camp was found. From subsequent inquiries at Batavia Bougainville concluded that he had come upon Carteret's tracks, and wrote : " This is a very strange chance by which we, among so many lands, came to the very spot where this rival nation had left a monu- ment of an enterprise similar to ours." How interesting European nations found Bougainville's history of his voyage may be seen in the fact that his " Voyage autour du Monde par la Fregate du Roi La Boudeuse et la Flute VEtoile, 1766-1769," was published in Paris in 1771, with a second edition in 1772. An abridged edition with a German translation appeared in Leipsic, and an English translation, by John Reinhold Forster, in London, in the latter year.* The quotation^ given are from Forster's translation. Bougainville, before he finished, set his mark upon the Pacific. He visited the Solomons and discovered the Straits which were called after himself; while an island of the group now bears his name. His circumnavigation of the globe was considered an event in history, and it * " Circumnavigation of the Globe," published 1859, p. 210, 22 STEVENSON'S GERMANY ante-dated Cook's wonderful voyages by eighteen months. But for us the principal interest lies in his over-running Carteret as he did, and in the latter' s preparation for British possession of lands which at last (in 1914) had literally to be thrust by war into the mother country's hands through an Australian expeditionary force. Not for a hundred years after Carteret 's landing did white men make any attempt to secure New Britain and New Ireland ; and then Germany changed names that ought to have remained upon our maps. To indicate the prominent mountain at the entrance of Blanche Bay she substituted the name of Bismarck's country place, Varzin, for that of Beautemps-Beaupre, and generally advertised the Iron Chancellor by applying the name Bismarck Archipelago to denominate the whole group. The way was thus opened for Germany by other nations. A whole generation of British and French enterprise lies behind the discoveries which placed Australia in view ; but after all, it was the genuine interest of George III. and Louis XVI. in Pacific exploration which made much of the work possible. Thus it was that La Perouse visited Botany Bay. Captain Cook had been killed and no one was more concerned at his death than the French King, who admired the English navigator and desired to see his work carried on. La Perouse made a sensation by arriving with his two vessels the Boussole and the Astrolabe just when Captain Phillip and the first fleet were moving round to Port Jackson from Botany Bay ; and there seemed to be a suspicion that he might be on some sort of cutting- out expedition. But if that had been the case La Perouse would not have spent six months in the far north. He would have gone to Australia instead, and would have NO GERMAN EXPLORATIONS 23 been in ample time to forestall Captain Phillip. Assuredly he could have annexed the south of Australia for France,, had he discovered it, for, as Professor Ernest Scott hasj pointed out in his monograph, Great Britain would hardljl have objected. She cared little enough for her immediate share of the continent at the time. When La Perouse sailed away he was never seen again ; and D'Entrecasteaux was sent out to search for him or to settle the question of his fate. D'Entrecasteaux' name brings in that of Beautemps-Beaupre, which has been used in connection with the annexation of New Britain and New Ireland in evidence of German insolence. D'Entrecasteaux visited these islands with the expedition of which he was commander, having with him a very able man as hydrographer-in-chief, M. Beautemps-Beaupre. One would like to know a good deal more about this gentle- man, for he certainly stands in great repute as a member of D'Entrecasteaux' scientific staff. Professor Scott notes that D'Entrecasteaux never visited Botany Bay, although it was the last point of call for La Perouse, and he has also a word for his hydrographer-in-chief. The south coast of Australia was apparently avoided as much as the east coast. " That great chance was missed. Some excellent charting which ten years later commanded the cordial admiration of Flinders was done by Beautemps- Beaupre, who was D'Entrecasteaux' cartographer, especially round about the S.W. corner of the continent." * The end of the expedition was tragic enough, for D'Entre- casteaux died while on his way along the north of New Guinea ; and M. D'Auribeau, who took command, also died at Sourabaya, in Java. Finally, on arrival at Soura- * " La Perouse," by Ernest Scott, p. 87. 24 STEVENSON'S GERMANY baya, news was given of the French Revolution, the beheading of Louis XVI., and the end of everything. The frigates were dismantled and the officers and crew became divided into two parties. It may be mentioned that most of these sailed for Europe in two Dutch vessels ready to leave Sourabaya, but some were captured by English cruisers, " including those on board of which were the journals, naturalists, their whole collection of specimens and all the materials of their history, nautical and scientific." * There is a note to the chapter from which this quotation is taken that may appropriately be given here. It runs : " The plans and papers drawn by M. Beautemps-Beaupre, hydrographer-in-chief, were among those captured on board the Esperance, and placed with others in the hands of the Admiralty." An allegation was made later on that these were used by the Admiralty, although they had been put into the possession of M. Rossel, " comme Tomcier le plus ancien de 1'expedition " ; but the editor responsible for the charge afterwards admitted that he had made a mistake. This charge against Great Britain appeared in the " Bibliotheque Universelle des Voyages " ; but the actual account of the expedition, which ended with so much disappointment for M. Beau- temps-Beaupr6 at the moment, was published when Napoleon Buonaparte was at the height of his power, and by his order. D'Entrecasteaux' hydrographer-in-chief lived on till 1854, when Bismarck had made his place as the coming man in Prussia, just about the time when the firm of Godeffroy & Son began its trading in the Pacific with Samoa as centre. He may have seen the signs of Germany's power and perhaps realised that a new day was * " Circumnavigation of the Globe," 1859, p. 494. NO GERMAN EXPLORATIONS 25 breaking with heavy clouds upon the horizon. But he surely never imagined that it would be a Germany small and mean enough, though great beyond all precedent, to rob him of an honour fairly won in the exploration of the world's widest ocean. Mount Beautemps-Beaupre has disappeared from the maps since Germany took possession of New Britain, but it may well reappear now the work of the Peace Conference has been completed. CHAPTER IV A MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY Interesting documents. New Zealand Blue Book of 1874. Stonehewer Cooper's " Coral Lands." Miss Gordon Cum- ming's writings. Sterndale a GodefEroy employee. Louis Becke another Godeffroy employee. Trood a third em- ployee. Trood's " Island Keminiscences." Thackeray again. Silence about Germany's " black labour " traffic. Stevenson's light upon it. Sterndale's testimonial. PROMINENT among many interesting documents relating to the Pacific is a Blue Book issued by the New Zealand Government in 1874. The Hon. Julius Vogel was then Premier, and it was just before he went to England as Agent-General. He became Sir Julius in 1875, and while in London had plenty of opportunity to push his ideas about extending the Empire in the great ocean whence he had travelled to the home land. The Blue Book in question is entitled, " Papers relating to the South Sea Islands," and it is made up of memoranda, addresses, and despatches. As Premier, Sir Julius Vogel had written many times about the position in the Pacific, and the Governor of New Zealand, when transmitting the various papers to the Colonial Office, added important comments of his own. But, in order to throw all possible light upon the subject, the various island groups, and the danger in which they stood from German designs, were dealt with in reports or memo- randa provided by authorities upon the Pacific. In parti- cular an ex-employee of Godeffroy & Son was asked to set down the facts about the islands in general and about the A MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY 27 * German firm in particular. The result is an exceedingly interesting document which has been quoted with con- siderable effect in Lowe's " Life of Bismarck," though credit is given therein to H. Stonehewer Cooper's " Coral Lands," instead of to the source from which the main facts were obtained. Mr. Stonehewer Cooper, a clergyman, acknow- ledged his indebtedness to Mr. H. B. Sterndale, the ex- employee of Godeffroy & Son, but managed to incorporate so much of the latter's matter in his book that it was diffi- cult to tell it from his own. However, Miss Gordon Gumming also used Sterndale's report, with due acknow- ledgments ; and the result in her case was a slashing in- dictment of the German firm. There is no doubt some very good evidence against Godeffroy & Son found in the Sterndale report ; but at the time it was written, and in the succeeding years up to 1914, Germany was too great a Power to be attacked without serious circumspection. In his " Footnote to History," Robert Louis Stevenson does not refer to the New Zealand Blue Book of 1874. Pro- bably even in 1892 copies of it had become exceedingly scarce ; and the present writer has to thank the Mitchell Library in Sydney for access to it, since the present book was begun. It is possible that the appearance of Rev. H. Stonehewer Cooper's book in 1880 moved Miss Gordon Cumming to use the Sterndale report for her own book " A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War," which appeared in 1882. Like the ex-employee of Godeffroy & Son, she knew the Pacific from actual experience ; and her voyage in 1877, at the invita- tion of the captain of the French man-of-war, the Seignelay, was an interesting and informative supplement to her experiences in Fiji when, as a member for two years of the 28 STEVENSON'S GERMANY household of Sir Arthur Gordon, the earliest Governor, she learned to know the Pacific at first hand. Miss Gordon Cumming was evidently profoundly impressed with the Godeffroy activities and with the treacherous nature of their methods of extending trade. In this connection the Sterndale report does not disguise the facts. Nor need readers of it, as will be shown from other documents, be (under any misconception as to the spirit in which white men other than Germans were treated. They were to be broken on the German wheel, and all that the British or American competitor stood for in modern civilisation was to be disregarded. Christianity and the ordinary rules of morality were out of date in the Pacific, according to the Godeffroy plan as laid down by Theodor Weber ; and every care was taken otherwise that the world should know as little as possible of what was being done. The manager, ^Poppe, who took Weber's place when the latter returned to Hamburg for a season, usually asked a man who wanted to become an employee of the firm three questions. The first had relation to the natives of the island or group to which the man was prepared to go : " Can you speak the language ? " The second was : " Can you live among the natives without quarrelling with them ? " And the third most important of all : " Can you keep your mouth shut ? " Mr. Sterndale explains in his report that the meaning of the last question was that there must be no talking about the firm's business with other white men. Missionaries were to be discredited and opposed everywhere. They were a dangerous nuisance, for they told the natives that they were men and women with souls like Europeans, and with equal rights to life and liberty. It was nonsense, in the Godeffroy reading of native claims, that their women should A MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY 29 be regarded as anything else than the white man's play- things. Every German could do as he pleased, but there must be no marriage with native women, and Miss Gordon Gumming underscores this challenge to civilisation with a heavy pen. In passing, it may be noted that a great deal of light is thrown upon Pacific history by the comments and annota- tions of one authority on another. Mr. Stonehewer Cooper has nothing to say about these revelations of the German spirit, while Miss Gordon Gumming speaks out indignantly against the " Graballs " of the Pacific. She notes the " establishments " kept up by Godeffroy's employees, and, curiously enough, it was upon the margin of Mr. Stone- hewer Cooper's book that Louis Becke added a special word of endorsement. " Coral Lands " was sufficiently well received to warrant an Australasian edition in 1888, but with the title altered to " The Islands of the Pacific." Louis Becke' s copy of the latter is in the Mitchell Library, with the chapter dealing with Bully Hayes copiously annotated. But the chapter which embodies a considerable portion of the Sterndale report is also marked the principal allega- tions with an affirmative as to their truth and, where the establishment of the Godeffroys at Apia is set down in detail in 1872, an omission is supplied with startling emphasis. Sterndale had given the number of men superintendent, surgeon, surveyor, etc. but had left out the native women provided for their enjoyment. But Louis Becke was also\ at one time an employee of Godeffroy & Son as recruiting) agent and trader. He has left on record his experiences, as one seeing the show from the inside, and he is quite frank about the business in hand. Black labour from the Gilbert and Solomon Islands and from other groups was urgently 30 STEVENSON'S GERMANY required for the Upolu plantations, and recruiters were specially wanted. But everything in the early seventies was done in secret. The foundations of a great business in the Pacific were laid with great caution, and vessels left Apia under sealed orders so that nobody knew their destina- tion. Miss Gordon Gumming notes this in her book with some feeling because she was never sure of a mail for her letters while in Samoa. Godeffroy's varied activities in the Pacific never helped her. But Louis Becke tells his side of the story on this point with sufficient directness. Godeffroy's schooners sailed everywhere, and they were put in commission to kill other trade wherever competition appeared. Always, too, there was dislike, growing to hatred, of everything British. The instructions to Gode- ffroy's traders were that they were to undersell and finally drive out rivals at any cost. All losses, in this connection, would be considered. Becke's article, of which the above is a brief summary, concludes : " During a residence and continuous voyages of half a lifetime, in and about the Pacific Islands, the writer has gained some knowledge of German action towards the hated Englishman. . . . The managers of these companies are, often enough, in receipt of secret service pay as a reward for ' blocking ' the expansion and continuance of British trade, inciting the natives to mischief wherever a British trader founds a new station in Northern Melanesia, and injuring British interests in any way, no matter in how ignoble or paltry a manner. . . . Twenty years ago when a German trader was in fear of his life from attack by the savage natives of the Solomon Islands, he would flee for safety to his nearest English neighbour, and, later on, appeal to the commander of a British warship for reinstatement and protection. . . . A MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY 31 There seems to be, in the German mind, an utter forgetful- ness of all that Englishmen have done for them in Oceania." * This was dated from France, on September 9th, 1905, long before the recent war began, when it was still an article in the creed of many British statesmen that Germany was a peace-lover at heart and only asked for a fair field and no favour. Louis Becke knew better. His article in some details is not trustworthy, because he does not mention Theodor Weber as the man behind the gun in the Pacific in the most important period of German trading history there. He only recalls the first manager of Godeffroy & Son, Anselm, who was drowned in 1864, ten years after the firm was established in Samoa. But when he speaks of his own experiences as an employee he is on solid ground ; and he gives earnest affirmation to the Sterndale report, repro- duced so voluminously by Stonehewer Cooper, where the methods of Weber and his successor are recounted. A third employee of Godeffroy & Son may be quoted in Thomas Trood, whose " Island Reminiscences " were pub- lished in Sydney, two years before the war of 1914 was in full flame ; he died in 1916. Trood's book is an extra- ordinary hash of dates and incidents ; and, like a dictionary, makes very disconnected reading. But it is full of interest, because important events, prominent people, and the years in which they appeared and passed out, are clearly given. A curious fact must be mentioned in the somewhat breathless reference everywhere to Theodor Weber, and to i the German trade machine's working throughout the Pacific. It is that Godeffroy's great manager is given the highest possible character. He was everything to all men, as has been already discerned in the success of his opera- * Sydney Daily Telegraph, December 10th. 1905. A 32 STEVENSON'S GERMANY tions ; and Thomas Trood speaks of his patriotism in terms which would argue that he could do no wrong even when preparing to treat Tonga as Samoa had been treated. Indeed the admission is made in " Island Reminiscences " that the two men parted company because Weber's German patriotism made it impossible for Trood as a Briton, and also a patriot, to work further with him. Trood left \ Godeffroy's employment in 1879, illustrating in his own person the truth that the Hamburg firm was willing to use men of every nationality in furtherance of its plans. Louis Becke admits that the policy was to range up alongside rival I firms or individual traders, destroy their business, and when they were ruined to take them on the Godeffroy pay-roll. Half of the vessels in the Godeffroy fleet in the Pacific were apparently British owned and were chartered to serve the Godeffroy ends. In the next chapter an outline will be attempted of the history of the Godeffroy policy, merging after 1870 into an imperial German plan of campaign in the Pacific. This should be possible by the aid of these three witnesses, who knew the firm so well and who have given evidence from the inside ; but again, it may be remarked that the criticisms of one witness upon another, and the notes of authorities on the Pacific upon books already written, have made much comparatively easy which could not otherwise be attempted. This method of tracing a course of events has a very fasci- nating side. What, for instance, would Thackeray say if to-day he were to enter the Mitchell Library, in Sydney, and look through the shelves devoted to the literature of certain island groups ? Here is the section dealing with Tonga, and prominent in it are the editions of Mariner's " Tongan Islands," whose 6ew6 fides he so confidently dis- A MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY 33 counted. Dr. Martin, no doubt, at first gave some ground in his title page for dubiety about Mariner's existence ; for this story of a returned exile from some tar-away island of a little-known group is not told at first hand. Dr. Martin had to present Mariner to the public after reducing an account of his experiences to writing, and the narrative apparently only appealed to Thackeray as a very good duplicate of Robinson Crusoe. But in the Mitchell Library is a first edition, with every chapter extended and criticised by somebody who had found the book a veritable field of discovery. Probably some missionary who had lived in Tonga was studying and annotating Mariner at the time that Thackeray was writing his " English Humourists " and dismissing the book as good fiction. This first edition was published in London in 1817, and a French translation appeared in Paris in the same year. A second edition followed in London in 1818. Two years later, in Boston, an American edition was published ; and beside these volumes in the Mitchell Library is a delightful edition published in Edinburgh, in 1827 *' considerably improved " for serious Scottish readers ! Mariner has been widely read, and those who know Tonga best declare that he still is un- approached as the historian of the group up to the date of his compulsory residence there. This scrutiny and annota- tion have been going on all the time since. Here in one's hand is Rev. J. B. Stair's " Old Samoa," with Dr. Brown's notes upon its margins ; and his final word to the present writer was that it was " good, right through " fit to place beside Mariner's " Tonga." Mr. Stair was another dweller in the Pacific who took a keen interest in everything, and was able later on to place important facts on record for the use of students and an interested public. Unfortunately, SO. D 34 STEVENSON'S GERMANY this particuK * history stops short of the Godeffroy era ; and neither Mariner nor Stair has any light to throw upon international rivalry in the Pacific. They indicate the foundations, however, upon which any student worth the name has to work ; and the beginnings of history in such wise have been well laid even in the ocean which has been lost to view for so long. Among the British Blue Books, in this connection, is one published in 1889, just as the crisis was developing which ended with the historic hurricane. Sir John Thurston (then Mr. and Acting Governor of Fiji) had been appointed with Consul-General Travers, the German j representative, as a Commission to report on Samoan affairs between 1885 and 1889 the period covered by the Blue Book and some very interesting reading is to be found in the official document. It embodies all the despatches, reports, and promulgations of the period as they bear upon Samoa. But specially do the Thurston comments illuminate an unhappy period and invite criticism in their confident challenge of other writers and publicists. Thus the New Zealand Blue Book of 1874, the Gordon Gumming volume following, the British Blue Book of 1889, and Robert Louis Stevenson's " Footnote to History," cover most of the ground between Godeffroy's advent to the Pacific in 1854 and the final settlement of Samoa by the Treaty of 1900. The most important fact, however, which has to be faced^is the silence of nearly everybody concerned about Germany's share in the black labour traffic, which had developed since the white man discovered illimitable wealth in cocoa-nuts and sugar-cane under Pacific condi- tions. Not until Stevenson's " Footnote to History " A MACHIAVELLIAN POLICY 35 appeared was it suggested that the firm of Godeffroy & Son could be a party to enslaving the natives. Consequently, with German possession of Samoa completed in 1900, and with a period of supposed unimpeachable administration since, the difficulty of establishing any case against Germany is considerably enhanced. It was Stevenson's great crime, therefore, that he destroyed the legend of German impecca- bility. His notes upon the position, as he saw it in Samoa, were a revelation which became a serious obstacle in the path of Consuls and British High Commissioners, anxious to smooth away difficulties between competitors in the group. Stevenson was not then taken by the whole world as a man concerned to tell the truth, but as a novelist with a bee in his bonnet, or as a romancer in the Pacific letting his imagination run away with him. But, though to-day his " Footnote to History " can be read in the fierce new light of the great war, few realise what a wonderful comment it is upon the German policy of secrecy in the Pacific. When people in Australasia are asked, therefore, to tell what they know about the treatment of the natives by Germany they cannot turn to Sterndale, Becke, or Trood for direct evidence. Nor, indeed, can they quote Miss Gordon Cumming. It is certainly asserted that native women everywhere were regarded as a convenient means for German enjoyment ; but the actual recruiting of native labour and the practical enslavement of men and women for work on the plantations is not dealt with by any. The Sterndale report goes out of its way to give Godeffroy & Son an excellent testimonial, although Sir Julius Vogel had made the labour traffic one of his principal reasons for demanding that Great Britain should step in at once and take possession of various island groups, or at any rate, i> 2 36 STEVENSON'S GERMANY help New Zealand to do so. This will be dealt with in due course. At present it is enough to point out that the documents can only be quoted by a method of cross examination, and that even so, the final judgment must be reached on something very like circumstantial evidence. But, while discussing the documents, reference may be made to American comment upon German ways in the Pacific. It has already been shown that President Cleve- land had to make notes and express opinions for the world's behoof, but this was upon the position in general. In his message to Congress from the Executive Mansion in Washington in the beginning of 1889 he complained that Germany was not playing the game ; and we know how near American and German men-of-war were to actual conflict in Samoa during that year. Now it was at the end of 1889 that Stevenson appeared; and what President Cleveland had laid down in January was soon grasped by the keen observer of men and things on the spot in December. When the Scot took up his pen in 1891 and 1892 he reviewed the history of the eight years since Germany jumped on New Guinea and hauled up her flag in the Bismarck Archipelago. So the round of examination extends. Stevenson must be studied if the truth is to be reached, while the protests and powerful interference of the United States add weight to each inference that Germany could never be trusted in the Pacific either in her relations with white men or natives. CHAPTER V AN OUTLINE Sir John Thurston's report. Godeffroy's advent and progress. Weber as dictator and German Consul. A net- work of trading stations. The manager and the missionary. A great programme laid down. America and Pago Pago. Stevenson's evidence begins. Political history of Samoa. Samoan wars. Germany always interfering. Sainoan in- stability served the German purpose. In 1886 Sir John Thurston was commissioned to report upon the condition of Samoa. He may have quoted from the Sterndale report, when he wanted the date of Godeffroy & Son's advent in the Pacific ; but at any rate, he adopted the year mentioned by Sterndale, 1857, without qualifica- tion, and he gives no references which would make the date more certain. This is contained in the Blue Book already mentioned, issued by the British Government on the affairs of Samoa, 1885 1889. But Thomas Trood declares that he himself landed in Samoa for the first time in 1857 and found Godeffroy & Son already established, with an enterprising manager in charge who had been there nearly four years. This manager, Unselm or Anselm (the latter is Sterndale's and Louis Becke's spelling), had been in charge of the firm's business at Valparaiso, and this is an indi- cation of the range of activities of Hamburg merchants in those days. Indeed, it must be admitted that the great free city of Hamburg made a name for its enter- I 38 STEVENSON'S GERMANY prise throughout the Indian Ocean and the Spanish Main ; and had it been true to its traditions in the early years of the nineteenth century there would have been little trouble over Samoa and the other island groups in the Pacific, to which its trade was taken. In the early fifties, then, Messrs. Godeffroy had a fleet of vessels which centred upon Cochin at one end of the Pacific and worked round through the Atlantic to Valparaiso at the other end. A paragraph in the Sterndale report is worth giving here because it sums up so much of the early history of the firm in the Pacific. " At this time," says Mr. Sterndale, " it was customary for Tahitian traders to dispose of their produce at Valparaiso, and to return to the Society Islands with cargoes of flour, etc., for the supply of the French garrison. The attention of Mr. Anselm, the agent of Messrs. Godeffroy, was attracted to their operations. He visited the Society Isles, and, perceiving the great profits which Messrs. Hort Brothers and John Brander were making by the traffic in cocoa-nut oil and pearl shell, he himself established an agency in the Paumotos. Messrs. Hort and Brander had separate branch establishments in the Navigator Isles (Samoa), which they made an inter- mediate station between Tahiti and Sydney. Anselm, following their example, removed himself there, and, under instructions from his principals in Hamburg, made it the headquarters of their operations in the Pacific. He was lost at sea, but the establishment which he founded flourished and assumed gigantic proportions. By the exercise of great tact and a show of liberality in dealing with the natives, he and his successor (Mr. Theodor Weber) in a great measure swallowed up the trade of the Samoan AN OUTLINE 39 group, and in a manner thrust both Hort and Brander off their own ground, as far as that portion of the Pacific was concerned." * According to Trood the first Godeffroy manager, Unselm, was drowned in a hurricane in 1864 after about ten years of success in establishing the firm's business. Weber had joined him in 1861, a clerk trained under the eyes of the firm in Hamburg, who on his departure for the Pacific was actually appointed first Consul for Hamburg and the North German Confederation. This was the entry of the German Consulate to the great ocean, and Stevenson well notes its power for making mischief in the troubled affairs of Samoa. Trood says that when Augustus Unselm died Weber, though too young to be given definite control, nevertheless took charge of the business. It is singular that Weber should have been found mature enough for the post of Consul ; but as there could have been little enough to do in that office in 1861 the appointment had prospective rather than immediate value. Every year would challenge the disability of youth with weaker touch ; and when 1870 came, with the war against France and the emergence of united Germany, Weber became Imperial German Consul. Thus in 1874, while Sterndale was' writing his report, the Bismarck among German traders was firmly in the saddle, not only as Godeffroy's omnipotent manager, but also as Germany's recognised official repre- sentative in the Pacific. These two facts must be kept together and always remembered, for they explain most of the history of German duplicity up to the exploitation and annexation of the island groups to the north in and after 1884. Weber died just before the * New Zealand Blue Book, 1874, p. 3. 40 STEVENSON'S GERMANY great hurricane of 1889 which broke the American and German war vessels upon the reefs in Apia Harbour, but his nearly thirty years of activity were exceedingly fruitful. By the end of 1869, Thomas Trood remarks in his " Island Reminiscences," Weber Jbad established " a network of trading stations from ^ew^ Britain in the north to Tongatabu in the south, including the Line Islands." Everything centred upon his will at Samoa. There he directed a hundred different activities, and when not con- cerned with the intricacies of a great web of trade he was watching the development of Godeffroy's plantations on the island of Upolu with Apia as his head office. Trood speaks of him in the highest terms and says that he had reason to know him, as Weber lived in his house at Tonga for more than twelve months. Dr. Brown always admitted the man's wonderful force and charm. The manager and the missionary got on very well together ; and when Weber on one occasion refused to give anybody exchange except at exorbitant rates, thus asserting an autocratic power in finance as he already exercised it in trade, George Brown was given a way out. Remittances to Sydney could only be made at reasonable rates if Weber were willing ; but though he declined to make an exception for George Brown in this instance he annulled a definite exaction by giving him a subscription for the mission, and by carrying mis- sionary effects in his vessels for nothing. This more than compensated for the impost. But the point is made to show the basis of Dr. Brown's increasing influence with the German authorities. He was given endless opportunities of reading the German mind and of studying Germany's ways ; so that when he went to New Britain and New AN OUTLINE 41 Ireland he and Theodor Weber had not much to learn of one another. In 1872, the latter had returned to Hamburg ; for the Godeffroy firm was likely to go to pieces as a conse- quence of the Franco-Prussian War. But he returned in 1875, when George Brown had already entered his new sphere of work. In New Britain they met again, Weber being sent to spy out the land and gauge the strength of native opposition. Here the missionary told him quite frankly that he would not promise to interpret for the German Consul. He said he would warn the natives and inform Great Britain if anything that had passed through his hands were likely to prove detrimental to the interests of either. Thus the two men, after arriving almost together in Samoa more than fifteen years before, now followed one another. It is an interesting story, because no one was more concerned than George Brown to give the natives fair play and no one knew better than he the German way with them. They were practically robbed of their lands in Samoa, notwithstanding that the titles given to the Germans were afterwards confirmed ; and they were actually deceived and robbed of strategic areas in the groups, pre- pared by this German raid for annexation. It was know- ledge which caused the missionary to write with sharpened pen when he appealed through the Sydney Morning Herald in the early eighties for prompt action on the part of Great Britain. His articles stirred the Foreign Offices both in London and Berlin ; and his nom de plume, " Carpe Diem," was not withdrawn nor was his identity disclosed. Weber and George Brown respected each other and never quarrelled ; but one was an unscrupulous German, who looked upon natives as chattels and who hated mission work, while the other was a patriotic Briton, who placed the interests of the 42 STEVENSON'S GERMANY natives first, and was never afraid that Great Britain at heart would misunderstand him. Sterndale's report makes it quite plain that before 1870 Godeffroy & Son had laid down a great programme, and that the possession of some thousands of acres of the best land in Samoa was but a preliminary to the proposed influx of many Germans as settlers. It was to be a military settlement, and the Samoan group was to dominate the Pacific as from a fortified centre. But the Franco-Prussian War knocked the bottom out of the scheme and brought down the firm of Godeffroy & Son with a great crash. It failed for a million sterling. Yet by 1879 there was a resurrection in the " Long Handle Firm," and Louis Becke rsays that the German Government gave a million marks to help the new company along. Whether this be so or not, it is clear that Germany was substantially behind Theodor Weber in the new order. But something had happened meanwhile which made a considerable difference in the value of Samoa. Since the firm of Godeffroy & Son spread itself in the group and threw its net over the Pacific, the United States had been watching developments. After 1871, with a united Germany in view, there was much to think about ; and in 1872 an arrangement was made by an American naval commander with the Samoan Chief at Tutuila for the cession to America of Pago Pago as a naval station. This was not formally settled till the end of the decade, but nothing was allowed to disturb the understanding. The United States had thus obtained the one good harbour in the group before Weber had returned from Germany on his mission of reconstruction, and, in the end, this meant a good deal. Meanwhile, however, much land had come into German possession upwards of 150,000 acres and AN OUTLINE 43 plantation work had been pushed ahead. When the Sterndale report appeared in 1874 native labour had been continuously recruited from the Gilbert and Solomon Islands, and by the time that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote " A Footnote to History " there were several hundred imported men and women at work in Samoa. How were these treated ? Stevenson shall indicate the truth a little later on ; but Sterndale has nothing but good to say of the business. He seemed to think that it was enough to feed the natives well, and flog them " under consular over- sight," in order to consider them very benevolently handled, seeing they were among the most brutal and degraded of the Pacific tribes. This is a matter which must be dealt with by itself, for through it we get to the root of the differ- ence between the British and the German attitude to the native races everywhere. Under the new German Company the plantations were extended and soon more natives were employed ; but the Samoans looked down upon it all and so gave Theodor Weber and his successors a further hold upon them through the robbing of the plantations. Steven- son puts the position very well : " You ride in a German plantation and see no bush, no soul stirring ; only acres of empty sward, miles of cocoa-nut alley : a desert of food. In the eyes of the Samoan the place has the attraction of a park for the holiday schoolboy, of a granary for mice. We must add the yet more lively allurement of a haunted house, for over these empty and silent miles there broods the fear of the negrito cannibal," escaped from the German com- pounds, after being carried in the Company's recruiting vessels from far away. It must be explained that this had not been brought to perfection by Samoan labour. For the Samoan, as 44 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Stevenson continues, sees " something barbaric, unhand- some, and absurd in the idea of thus growing food only to send it from the land and sell it. A man at home who should turn all Yorkshire into one wheatfield, and annually burn his harvest on the altar of Mumbo-Jumbo, might impress ourselves not much otherwise." * Naturally there were thefts. The Samoans lived a communal life, and could not understand that they did wrong to take food when hungry ; for their wars involved privation, since the men were unable to plant and grow food while preparing to fight. But this again meant punishment at the hands of the German firm, and fines accumulating if unpaid. Stevenson concludes his paragraph : " And the firm which does these things is quite extraneous, a wen that might be excised to-morrow without loss but to itself; few natives drawing so much as day's wages ; and the rest beholding in it only the occupier of their acres. The nearest villages have suffered most ; they see over the hedge the lands of their ancestors waving with useless cocoa-palms ; for the sales were often questionable, and must still more often appear so to regretful natives, spinning and improving yarns about the evening lamp. At the worst, then, to help oneself from the plantation will seem to a Samoan very like orchard-breaking to the British schoolboy ; at the best, it will be thought a gallant Robin-Hoodish readjustment of a public wrong." f This raises the whole question of Germany's use of trade to aggrandise herself, for native lands were sold to forward native wars in the purchase of arms and ammunition ; and so by their very quarrels the Samoans gave the German firm a larger grasp of the group. * " A Footnote to History," p. 40. t Ibid., p. 41. AN OUTLINE 45 The political history of Samoa begins here. When Theodor Weber took Augustus Unselm's place as manager for Godeffroy & Son he found a whole ocean before him, with such opportunities for exercising power as come to few men in history. He was half the world away from Europe, news travelled slowly or not at all, and the most abomin- able things could be done at leisure and with little risk. Every German trader in the Pacific became another hand to Theodor Weber, reaching out for power, and we know how rivals were crushed ; but in Samoa the opportunity came to make trade exceedingly profitable by stimulating native quarrels. Thus it was that lands which really belonged to the community were handed over by individual Samoans to the firm for rifles and the like. Not Germans alone but other Europeans shared in the spoil. The whole business was bad ; and in the end native wars led to the division of the group, with Germany in possession of every- thing except the small islands already pre-empted in effect by the United States. It must not be assumed that the Samoans would not have quarrelled but for German incitement. District feuds, developing into war, give an insight into the general in- stability of Samoan affairs at the time, with unscrupulous men providing guns and ammunition, and Godeffroy & Son, through the firm's manager, fishing all the time in troubled waters. It would be unfair in this connection also to deny the worth of a great deal of German enterprise, and equally unfair to forget that Britons and Americans were engaged in spoiling the Samoans at one period and another. But after the German Empire came into being in 1871, when George Brown was still in Samoa, a new spirit seemed to inspire the German trader. Colonial aspirations and 46 STEVENSON'S GERMANY ambitions were born, and societies were formed to give them expression and to bring them to fruitful bearing ; Hamburg became a centre for aggression. And, as his term drew to a close in 1874, the great missionary gradually realised the danger of the whole business. Now it only needs a glance at Samoan history, just before and during this transition stage, to realise all that was involved. Samoan wars, up to the advent of John Williams, in 1 830, had been many and bloody, and the Rev. J. B. Stair quotes the great pioneer missionary as saying : " The wars of the Samoans were frequent and destructive . . . The island of Apolima was the natural fortress of the people of Manono, a small but important island. These people, although ignorant of the art of writing, kept an account of the num- ber of battles they had fought by depositing a stone of a peculiar form in a basket, which was very carefully fastened to the ridge of a sacred house appropriated to that purpose. This basket was let down, and the stones were counted while I was there, and the number was one hundred and twenty-seven, showing that they had fought that number of battles.'' * As Mr. Stair points out, this was the tally for only one portion of the Samoan group, and a stone was not put in after each battle but at the end of a campaign- larger or smaller according to its duration. How these conflicts originated may be seen from what has happened since ; and in passing it may be mentioned that in one w r ar, at the time when John Williams first saw Samoa, he was witness to the most awful sights on the island of Upolu. This island is divided into three districts Aana, Tuama- sanga, and Atua ; and in that war Aana was being cruelly punished. Manono, two-thirds of the island of Upolu, and * " Old Samoa," by Kev. J. B. Stair, p. 243. AN OUTLINE 47 part of Savaii, had been arrayed against Aana ; and after the final victory had been won, the captives women, children and everybody alive and captured were driven into immense furnaces and burnt alive. John Williams saw and recorded the terrible holocaust. When German traders entered Apia, and white men later on began through certain chiefs to make and unmake Kings of Samoa, the insult to the chiefs of other districts was great indeed. Apia was situated in the district of Tuamasanga, and " who ever heard of headship arising in that part of Samoa ? " The districts of Aana and Atua were specially aroused by this indignity ; and when the so-called " Laws of Samoa " were promulgated at Apia by irresponsible chiefs, the insult became unbearable. For the essence of u chiefly " rule in Samoa has always been the independence of the several parts. A king, Malietoa, for instance, could be chosen, but it was always a matter of choice, and of free speech. So, in the transition stage, the white man simply stirred with a sword the devil's broth in the Samoan cauldron ; and Apia became a German strong- hold, only to the continued humiliation of a people intensely sensitive, and equally unable to combine against a common enemy. George Brown, in his nearly fifteen years among them, watched the Samoans with increasing understanding and with growing sympathy. He realised their charm and loved them all the time with deepening affection. But he could see that unless some uniting hand was laid upon them they would be like Reuben excelling in strength but unstable as water. Samoans were always quarrelling and fighting, but there had been periods of quiet, when one great chief as king exercised authority over them. Nevertheless the ease with 48 STEVENSON'S GERMANY which friction could be caused made it possible to force the hands of Great Britain and the United States ; for Germany was as determined to have Samoa, from the time that Weber proved the Pacific to be the most profitable field of enter- prise in the world, as the two other Powers were earnest to prevent it. Stevenson wrote " A Footnote to History " because, like George Brown, he put the natives first. He placed himself beside the Samoans in their desire that Mataafa, the chief of their own choosing, should reign over them. Two other chiefs, Malietoa and Tamasese, had been alternately supported and deported by Germany ; but Mataafa was clearly able to command the confidence of the Samoan people, or a substantial majority of them. Therefore, in 1892 Stevenson implored German officials, in the closing words of his book, to be reasonable to give Mataafa fair play. But this was never the German game, and nothing suited Germany better than to see chief after chief fail when given European support. It brought the end so much nearer. Mataafa might have proved a leader indeed and so welded the Samoans into a nation. Steven- son dreamed of something of the sort, or at any rate he pleaded that Mataafa should be tried in the kingship. In 1893 there was a collision again, which proved a sad busi- ness for the man who loved the Samoans so well. He is credited with having written the article which appeared in the Samoa Weekly Times, of July 15th, of that year. The " Cyclopedia of Samoa " gives the full text of it, but the following extract will show how Stevenson's spirit throbbed through its lines. Here were two great Samoan chiefs at war, after agreeing to unite Malietoa and Mataafa, first in one another's arms, after the former's return from an exile forced by Germany, and then at one another's throats AN OUTLINE 49 and the whole outlook was dark. Stevenson wrote : " We have here a king publicly and solemnly renouncing his dignity and title in favour of another, and that other elected freely and spontaneously to the vacant throne ; we have the three greatest states of modern times recognising in one breath the free right of the people to elect their own chief or king, and in the next declaring that their nominees must be chosen. Nay, more, when that nominee volun- tarily resigns, they compel the people to annul the election of his successor, command them to restore the former occupant of the position to the place he had relinquished and force the unwilling king to resume once more the burden which, but two months before, he laid down with a feeling of relief and satisfaction." The Samoa Weekly Times is long dead, but Stevenson's words remain. Germany's hand was pulling the strings ; and Germany, while appearing to desire fair play for the Samoans, was always making it impossible. It is true that in this indictment Stevenson arraigned Great Britain and the United States also, but at least they could plead an honest intention ; they did most anxiously wish that the Samoans should be given every chance to work out their own salvation. But ever and anon Germany would protest and palaver. One cannot read the history of Samoa up to the final division in 1900 without feeling that from the days of Theodor Weber to the advent of Dr. Solf it was one long tragedy, with Germany as the mischief-maker of the piece. The Consuls of the three Powers were always in evidence, and one plan after another was tried, closing with a species of tripartite government. But the end was ever the same. No real agreement could be reached because Germany was determined that the natives should count for nothing. As S.Q. IB 50 STEVENSON'S GERMANY far back as 1848, according to Trood, Great Britain had appointed her Consul in the person of Mr. William T. Pritchard. The Thurston report gives the year as 1843 without further particulars. Eventually also Britain had more than one offer of control genuine offers from the Samoan chiefs. But she would not accept the responsi- bility. The United States, too, had appointed her first official representative in 1853, before German traders appeared on the scene ; and when Britain failed in the seventies America was turned to for protection, as German aims began to be understood. Never did Germany receive an honest request from the Samoans, though she could on occasion engineer an appearance of the thing from tools specially prepared for the purpose. The natives had learned to know her too well, and that notwithstanding the eulogies of the Sterndale report, when dealing with Weber's wonderful ways with imported labour. German traders had to be civil to natives in distant groups if they were to do business, but Samoans never misunderstood the German glance of arrogance or the German demand for their islands. Thus it was that Samoan instability and strife served the German trader's purpose in the first place, and the German Government's policy in the final settlement. War after war had marked the end of each decade from 1869 to 1899 ; and, while this was an expression of the Samoan character, it was unfairly exploited to the undoing of Samoa. Many lives were sacrificed, and opportunities for beginning a peaceful control were missed, because Germany was deter- mined that there should be no peace. Elsewhere in the Pacific Germany had her way. If the natives rebelled or were restive the German gunboat and the German whip AN OUTLINE 51 made short work of them ; and, as in the Carolines, reprisals for native attacks were as brutal and tragic as in South- West Africa. This is the story of Germany's progress in the Pacific, and it represents her spirit from beginning to end. 12 CHAPTER VI GERMAN ARROGANCE Germany took what she wanted. Story of the Samoan club. Naboth's vineyard again. Dr. Brown's intervention. Stevenson's policy for Samoa. Others than Germans in- volved. Some reason in German claims. But Germany must never be criticised. No talking about the German slave trade ! Mr. Walter Coote's book. Stevenson's biographers and Stevenson's interference. Germany still claimed free- dom from criticism. IF Germany wanted an island group in the Pacific, and nobody but Great Britain stood in the way, she took it when she grew in power as witness the annexations of 1884. Sometimes, however, she desired nothing more than a chief's club. This was the case on one occasion, in the years following 1900, after possession of Samoa was obtained. It is intended here to show more particularly the German spirit in Pacific enterprise, as a preliminary to the detailed discussion of German ways with the natives ; and Samoa is again given due place because in the Samoan group after 1900 Germany became a model of all the virtues. Now, in Dr. George Brown's museum is a Samoan club of special value and carrying an interesting record. If one could only trace its movements it represents, indeed, a chapter in the history of Germany's relations with Samoa, until it was taken away by a missionary who had refused to part with it under German blandishments, and who at last was in danger of deportation for defying German threats. The club is an old one and exceedingly valuable. GERMAN ARROGANCE 53 It was so much wanted by Germany because it is probably unique of its kind ; and it was no doubt intended for Berlin, and a royal welcome. This, at any rate, is the story as Dr. Brown gave it to the present writer on one occasion when the aged missionary had made the club the text for a warm denunciation of German ways in the Pacific. Only his intervention on behalf of his brother missionary, during a special visit to Samoa for the purpose, saved the former from exile and rescued the club, as it happened, for his own collection later on quite beyond expectation or desire. How many men this particular club had killed must remain a matter of conjecture ; but its age takes it far enough back to warrant the assumption that it was carried and used through most of Samoa's sternest fighting. Men, women, and children have, no doubt, fallen before its whirl and crash ; and as a means of discipline in the hands of an angry chief it must many a time have taken deadly toll. Its value, however, consists in its original ownership as well as in its shape and finish. A chief's club, it carries its sign manual upon one side in the shape of a fish, the Samoan word for which (I'a) became the family name. It is carved from a heavy piece of Samoan wood, widening gradually from the handle down to a double blade, but never losing its club form ; and both sides are covered with special figuring, embracing at last the chiefs name in the fish engraved near the striking end. The missionary into whose possession it had come received it as a token of regard as well as a warrant of relinquishment as a weapon of war. It was the true acknowledgment of surrender, when Fiji was ceded by its chiefs to the British Government, that Thakombau should send his own club to Queen Victoria. 54 STEVENSON'S GERMANY No club surely carried so much horror upon it as Thakom- bau's, for no chief ever made his weapon drink more deeply of human blood than he through a long life. But many Samoan clubs had records of slaughter which marked them as notable, and the club of I'a was so saturated with grue- some horror that Germany regarded it as hers by right or might. Naboth's vineyard is the illustration for things unobtainable, when desired by people in high places, and in this case it represented the one thing in the world, to be obtained by ordinary means, if possible, otherwise by force or fraud. The missionary who stood for Naboth on this occasion at last found the coils closing round him. A German collector had offered to give him his own price, but the club had no price to the man who looked upon it as a milestone in mission history, and not as a curio in the market-place. Then, to his surprise, he found that it was not to be regarded as a curio, but as Germany's prize and badge of sovereignty against Samoan chiefs. And Germany was in possession of Samoa. The missionary was at last threatened, on some flimsy ground, with deportation, while the club clearly was not to be allowed to pass out with him. In his extremity he appealed to Dr. Brown, who was then General Secretary of Missions for his church, and had always been a man of considerable influence with the German authorities. Dr. Brown went to Samoa himself and reasoned with the Governor until the difficulty was removed. The missionary kept his club till he died ; and after his death his widow asked Dr. Brown to accept it, with four others, as a token of gratitude. Dr. Brown wanted to pay for it, but in such a transaction no money could pass, and the club takes its place in a great collection, with many other trophies that have been given to the man so GERMAN ARROGANCE 55 widely known and loved by white men and natives through- out the Pacific. Germany could not afford to let Dr. Brown go away from Samoa with this story to tell, in the terms of its first setting. Robert Louis Stevenson had made pother enough for one generation, and his spirit was still abroad in the land. Indeed, his step-daughter has said that he was to be credited with outlining a policy " that has since been adopted with success by the Germans in their occupation of Upolu and Savaii." * But this had better be left to another chapter, for Dr. Brown comes in again as Steven- son's adviser ; and the position must be developed because it serves to explain Germany's attitude towards the natives in Samoa later on so different from her way with them in the Bismarck Archipelago, the Carolines, and the Marshalls. And, lest the heading of this chapter should be misunderstood, a reminder is due at the outset. It is not suggested that Germany, as represented by her traders and officials from 1854 till 1914, was alone in blustering manners and high-handed dealings with people brown and white. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his " Footnote to History," writes of the Godeffroy domination : " The firm, with the indomitable Weber at its head and the Consulate at its back there has been the chief enemy of Samoa. No English reader can fail to be reminded of John Company ; and if the Germans appear to have been not so successful, we can only wonder that our own blunders and brutalities were less severely punished. Even in the field of Samoa, though German faults and aggressions make up the burthen of my story, they have been nowise alone. Three nations were engaged in this infinitesimal affray, and not one * " Robert Louis Stevenson," by Isobel Strong, p. 81. 56 STEVENSON'S GERMANY appears with credit. They figure but as the three ruffians of the elder playwrights. The States have the cleanest hands, and even theirs are not immaculate." * This was written two years or so before Stevenson died, and eight years before Germany, by the Treaty of 1900, was given possession of the greater part of the Samoan group. Practically forty years of German trading and scheming had passed ; and nearly a decade before " A Footnote to History " was published the German flag was ready to be hoisted over New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. Stevenson, therefore, appeared upon the scene when possession in the Pacific was culminating for Germany in substantial domination through a vast area of the ocean. But Stevenson recognised that there was a measure of reason in the German claims. He had written, before drawing the above conclusion : " The German Consulate has shown itself very apt to play the game of the German firm. That game, we may say, was twofold, the first part even praiseworthy, the second at least natural. On the one part, they desired an efficient native administra- tion, to open up the country and punish crime ; they wished, on the other, to extend their own provinces and to curtail the dealings of their rivals. In the first, they had the jealous and diffident sympathy of all whites ; in the second, they had all whites banded together against them for their lives and livelihoods. It was thus a game of 4 Beggar my Neighbour ' between a large merchant and some small ones. Had it so remained, it would still have been a cut-throat quarrel. But when the Consulate appeared to be con- cerned, when the warships of the German Empire were thought to fetch and carry for the firm, the rage of the * " A Footnote to History," by Robert Louis Stevenson, p. 38. GERMAN ARROGANCE 67 independent traders broke beyond restraint. And, largely from the national touchiness and the intemperate speech of German clerks, this scramble among dollar hunters assumed the appearance of an inter-racial war." * This brings in German arrogance as a factor, and makes any writing of the history of the Pacific at this stage very difficult. What Stevenson has called " the national touchiness " explains a great deal, but not everything. He himself recognised the " something more " in a German attitude which resented any criticism of German ways and actions, though he still calls it " touchiness " in the follow- ing criticism : " In the Germans alone, no trace of humour is to be observed, and their solemnity is accompanied by a touchiness often beyond belief. Patriotism flies in arms about a hen ; and if you comment upon the colour of a Dutch umbrella, you have cast a stone at the German Emperor." f The typical instance is the German rebuke to one who tried to complain of the vermin on a mail cutter. It was a German ship, let there be no criticism ! Now this national touchiness had developed marvellously since the Franco-Prussian War and the birth of the German Empire. No one must speak disrespectfully of Theodor Weber or the Godeffroys before 1871, but after the world was ordered to respectful silence, except as it praised Ger- many. It will be understood, therefore, that such a thing as the black labour traffic has been ventilated, denounced, and abandoned along with all the stones thrown at British dependencies by British hands. The German labour traffic from the commencement must have had some heart- * " A Footnote to History," by Robert Louis Stevenson, pp. 57 58. f Ibid., pp. 3334. 58 STEVENSON'S GERMANY breaking experiences in it for innumerable natives, and much heart-searching for white men with consciences who were brought into direct relations with it ; but as far as history goes it has been largely a matter of " Hush ! hush ! " There could be no comment on German cruelty, lust, and rapine ! It was a German business and therefore sacro- sanct ! Take, for instance, a small book published in 1883, written by Walter Coote, F.R.G.S., entitled " The Western Pacific, being a description of the groups of islands to the north and east of the Australian Continent." Mr. Coote begins his preface by explaining that " the attitude of the Australian Colonies with reference to the island-continent of New Guinea and the groups of islands in the Western Pacific has taken England altogether by surprise." Then it is suggested that the vast majority of English people find themselves entirely in the dark about the islands which it is proposed to annex. But what had happened ? Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, the author notes, had attempted to annex New Guinea, an action repudiated by the British Government. Out of this repudiation had arisen an agitation which led to the calling of a Convention in Sydney, and the Australian Colonies in conference, through their political leaders, had passed certain resolutions about the islands and island groups of the Pacific not far away. Who, then, was threatening Australia ? It does not appear from Mr. Walter Coote's book that Germany as a Power was threatening or even troubling anybody, although German machinations were at the root of Sir Thomas Mcllwraith's determination to hold the New Guinea approaches for the Empire. But more significant than anything is the con- cluding chapter which deals with " Labour and Trade in the Western Pacific." A sentence in it runs : " The labour GERMAN ARROGANCE 59 trade is in a bad state everywhere, whether under French flag or English, and what is said here on the subject applies equally to all the colonies to which natives are taken." Samoa was not then a German possession. Germany did not annex New Guinea and the rest of the islands thereabout until 1884, and consequently had no plantations in that part of the Pacific in need of labour. But to Samoa many natives had been brought, since the house of Godeffroy started developing the resources of its landed property, acquired so cheaply at the expense of the Samoans. Not a word appears in " The Western Pacific " about this ; but the author gives several pages of details about outrages and murders by the natives upon white men and vice versa all the outcome of the labour traffic. It would be easy for Germany to draw a terrible indict- ment against Great Britain and her Colonies in the Pacific from the attacks of English writers and publicists, and it would be difficult for critics of Germany to retaliate on similar grounds, if voluminous documents were essential. But quite enough happened before 1914 to make the latter task possible to-day ; and Robert Louis Stevenson's " Footnote to History " comes like a flash of lightning at a critical moment. Unfortunately it was not regarded when published as illumination but rather as tending to create darkness and discord, in this respect, perhaps, making the lightning flash as an illustration more fitting than at first appeared. The Stevenson biographies are not helpful on the point. At any rate, in the eleventh edition of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " the great writer is noted as plunging " with more generous ardour than coolness of judgment into the troubled politics of the country " ; and 4 A Footnote to History : Eight Years of Trouble in 60 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Samoa," is described as written " in the endeavour to win over British sympathy to his native friends." As Mr. Edmund Gosse is the biographer in this case, one hesitates before making the statement that German intriguers were regarded as having a stronger case than the Samoans, and Stevenson as making mischief rather than as settling trouble. But in the light of the present war " A Footnote to History " simply reveals as in a flash a ruthless, unprincipled Ger- many. Mr. Edmund Gosse would not allow that Stevenson was wise in his interference any more than Mr. Walter Coote would mention the name of Germany in " The Western Pacific." The latter, no doubt, wrote only of what he had himself seen ; and as a traveller he was not concerned with politics or the strife of rival traders. But he was exceedingly exercised over the labour traffic ; and although he had not visited Samoa, he certainly records his impressions of Fiji, where labour shortage for the planta- tions had created much difficulty. What Germany had been doing in Samoa was of special interest to those who were interested in Fiji ; and surely German activity and intrigue were known and talked about when Mr. Coote was travelling through the islands of the Pacific ! When Stevenson wrote his chapter on Samoan history, covering the eight years between 1884 and 1892, he saw serious danger in a general ignorance about Samoa and in the refusal to write plainly about Germany. No one would stand up to Bismarck, and the Pacific was far away. The black labour traffic was certainly a bad business ; but who could be expected to make the unhappy Samoans a text for denunciatory leading articles ? Besides, the tangle between Germany, Great Britain, and the United States was too thick to invite interference or description. GERMAN ARROGANCE 61 Hence Germany carried on. Even the missionaries dared not speak out. After Dr. George Brown realised that the annexation of New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, and other islands was intended he never ceased his warnings. But he was persona grata in Berlin, for his work as a pioneer in New Britain and New Ireland had made it easy to approach and deal with the natives. Yet he was very unhappy about German ways and works. All the strategic points on the coasts and the best lands everywhere were being acquired for a song or taken by sheer chicanery. When annexation was achieved there was nothing left to trouble about, because the way had been carefully prepared ; but for twelve months beforehand, through Dr. Brown's constant appeals, the people of Australia knew what was coming. Sir Thomas Mcllwraith's protest was made in the form of direct action in New Guinea itself, but even so there was no attempt to pillory Germany for underhand ways and mean tricks. The truth could only be indicated, and " the thing accomplished " became another reason for not rousing German animosity. German arrogance was thus a constant guard against the critic. It was assumed that Germany could not be challenged lest the peace of nations be endangered ; and, while every form of abuse practised by British traders and schemers could be denounced and placed on record, Germany was able to frown down criticism. Thus it is not now possible to offer voluminous evidence of her misdeeds, while it is easy for her friends to point to much achievement in lands planted, roads made, and ports provided and equipped. German organisation in her newly-acquired possessions, and German tolerance and practical success in Samoa are indicated and approved ; and, broadly, on these 62 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Germany could offer substantial defence if Robert Louis Stevenson had not written his book, and if George Brown had not placed his fears on record and emphasised the danger to British possessions in the Pacific from German wiles. CHAPTER VII GERMAN SLAVE LABOUR The Sterndale report. Sir Julius VogeFs scheme. " The frightful system of slavery " in the Pacific. Can Germany ever be trusted ? No reservoirs of labour. Sterndale's panegyric of Godeffroy and Son. The firm's recruiting agents. Stevenson's remarks upon the German slave trade. Escaped negritos in Samoa. Stevenson heavily handi- capped. Sir John Thurston frowned upon him. Germany's aim to get everything. LIGHT upon the question of native labour under German control in the Pacific certainly comes with the Sterndale report, but the latter is not illuminating. Rather, if we consider its purpose, does it tend to make darkness visible. As already indicated, it forms an addendum to the Vogel memoranda, which are covered by the despatches of the Governor of New Zealand to the British Colonial Office in the early seventies. Sir Julius Vogel, to give him his later title, was not alone in his concern about the Pacific, for Sir Henry Parkes and Sir John Robertson in Australia, about the same time, were as anxious as he to see something done to protect British interests. To each of these states- men the idea of company enterprise on a grand scale appealed ; and one cannot help feeling that the Godeffroy activities through the ocean from end to end had alarmed them. Why not another East India Company, with governors appointed under great charters and many millions of capital guaranteed by some one Great Britain for preference ? But Sir Julius Vogel put his proposals 64 STEVENSON'S GERMANY into writing, worked them up into the solid shape of a Government offer, and added reports with endless parti- culars about the potential wealth of the various island groups. Godeffroy & Son naturally had to be presented in sufficiently bold outline to suit a large plan ; but Stern- dale was evidently not prepared to say anything very scathing about anybody. Certainly he has not attacked Weber ; and as an ex-employee he must have felt that the Bismarckian trader was a dangerous man to pillory at any time. Sir Julius Vogel, before putting his company proposals into concrete form, made the black labour traffic of the Pacific one of his chief reasons for demanding that Great Britain should interfere. Moreover, he mentions the Samoan group as the centre to be specifically controlled. Here are his words : " Ministers desire very earnestly to add, that if Great Britain really intends to stop the frightful system of slavery which, under the pretence of voluntary labour, is now being carried on and extended amongst the islands of the Pacific, some hold must be obtained upon a group such as the Navigators (Samoa) ; and a feeling must be created that the inhabitants of any of the scattered islands can depend that Great Britain will not only refuse to countenance the iniquities which are driving the islanders to desperation, but will afford protection against slavery in any shape or form." Later on emphasis is laid upon the need of protection for the natives of Samoa, lest they be kidnapped into slavery. Forced labour was apparently feared, but the main stress is put upon the evils of a system, alleged to be voluntary, which was reproducing the worst evils of the old slave trade that Great Britain had spent so much to crush. GERMAN SLAVE LABOUR 65 Questions will arise here which must be answered before the argument against Germany can be properly developed. One has relation to Samoa, as we know the islands since Germany obtained full possession of them, with Dr. Solf as Governor. What has the recital of facts taken from a report written in 1874 to do with the new Samoa ? And, further, how can any historical recital of the sort help to decide whether Germany's Pacific possessions shall be returned to her in some year far ahead ? Now that Germany is thoroughly beaten, and realises that her gospel of might is false, may not present repentance cancel all that appears against her in the records of the past ? The essential question, as summing up the rest, is whether Germany can be trusted to deal fairly with natives that have been regarded by her for so long as less than human certainly as not on the white man's grade and infinitely below the German level. But have the natives of Samoa, New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, and the Solomons been treated in this way ? The reply to all these questions, and finally to the last one, is that the German attitude to the natives of the Pacific has generally been truculent and brutal. This is the position now sought to be established ; and Samoa cannot be kept out of the argument because Dr. Solf was allowed to treat the Samoans after the British plan the only possible way under the circumstances. It becomes a question at last of an ingrained habit of mind, and that notwithstanding the Samoan experience since the year 1900. What was practised systematically in Samoa before 1900 was continued through the Pacific up to 1914, but with modifications, forced by the certainty that German plantations could not be cultivated if the natives were killed or died out. When a man wishes to farm success- 8.0. F 66 STEVENSON'S GERMANY fully he sees that his horses are kept in good condition, are properly handled, and are not overworked. In the Bis- marck Archipelago and in the Solomons the lesson was being learned that the natives, even as animals, were worth preserving ; but never at any time was there a disposi- tion to treat them as men and women with souls to be elevated or with minds to be trained for the higher tasks of civilisation. Germany has never been a missionary in the Pacific. She has never sent pioneers for Christianity there as Great Britain through her great Mission-boards has done ; and when German missionaries have been moved or drawn into the circle of spiritual enterprise it has been through English-speaking channels, or they have been kept under German discipline. Germany has been as truly barbarous in her relations with the native races of the Pacific as in her ruthless handling of the tribes of Africa, but with a measure of restraint because of commercial and industrial pressure. The Pacific has no reservoirs of labour such as Africa can boast ; and in Samoa the German and other plantations have only been kept going by the aid of Chinese introduced under the indenture system. And the Chinese have suffered with the rest. Evidence is recorded on the point in the Australian Inter-State Com- mission Report upon " British and Australian Trade in the Pacific." Mr. C. H. Hughes, Acting Manager in Melbourne of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, said : " The chief difficulty in handling labour in Samoa has been due to the Germans. The natives have a very great dread of the German, and they will not work for him if they can help it. The Germans imported Chinese coolies and treated them so badly that a Chinese Commissioner was sent from Washington to make confidential inquiries to find out how GERMAN SLAVE LABOUR 67 they were treated ... I have not heard of any trouble arising through the importation of Chinese coolies into Samoa, but I know the Chinese dreaded their German task-masters." Samoans do not like work. They do not need to toil, be- cause they have their own way of life and possess land that provides them with plenty of food almost for the asking. Germany had not reached the point in 1914 at which the natives were to be flogged and forced to work again. Forced labour has been a Samoan grievance ; and the differentiation between white and dark- owned lands, where roads under German orders were opened, had raised the bitterest feelings. Stevenson refers to these things in " A Footnote to History " ; but it is enough to indicate the position in passing. The main purpose of this argument is to establish the truth of a German attitude towards the natives in the Pacific right up to 1914 which makes it hopeless to expect harmony if German possessions are restored. To clinch such an argument the Anglo-Saxon attitude must be demonstrated, so that the opposition between the two shall be clearly understood. Are we to assume that Sir Julius Vogel was exaggerating when referring to the black labour traffic ? Was he merely anxious to support his case for a great company, with capital guaranteed by New Zealand for fifty years at five per cent., to buy up existing interests in the various island groups of the Pacific, and to extend production in many different directions ? No doubt the expected profits of such an enterprise stirred his eager mind, and the extension of New Zealand's sphere of influence, if Great Britain agreed, was a thought of power which might easily turn a dreamer's head. But the truth can be vouched for in other ways, and v 2 68 STEVENSON'S GERMANY the logic of facts must be recognised in the general connec- tion. Meanwhile it is only fair to quote the Sterndale report again on the imported labour question. When the report was written some twelve hundred natives, mostly from the Gilbert Islands or adjacent groups, were employed, but the usual number was set down at less than that. Besides these there were Samoans and natives from Nieue and Rarotonga. Of the Line islanders, as they were called, Sterndale had little good to say. On arrival they pre- sented " an example of the lowest type of Pacific savages- naked, brutal, and wolfish in aspect ; having lived abso- lutely without laws, having subsisted only upon cocoa- nuts, fish, and the fruit of the screw palm ; seamed with the cars of incessant affrays, the result of the state of chronic ntoxication in which their brains have been steeped from childhood from the use of the fermented toddy of the cocoa-nut tree ; a large proportion being afflicted with cutaneous diseases and various forms of syphilis, intro- duced among them by the crews of whaling ships. They arrive filthy, lazy, and ferocious. They are comfortably lodged, decently clothed, well fed, and trained to honesty and peaceful industry. After six months of plantation life they do not resemble the same beings, and, at the expira- tion of their agreements, they are so far improved as to be unfit for communion with their brutal brethren in their native isles as they were previously for contact with civilised humanity." This is only the beginning of a panegyric upon the Gode- ffroys' handling of imported labour. One wonders whether the Premier of New Zealand could have read the report, so eulogistic is it of the system which he has reprobated in his memorandum for the information of the British Colonial GERMAN SLAVE LABOUR 69 Office. If half of what Sterndale has said of the wonderful treatment of imported natives on the German plantations at Upolu were true, then Sir Julius Vogel had nothing to vex himself over. Godeffroy & Son were the destined saviours of the natives of the Pacific. The regulations for food, labour, and punishment are given the last-men- tioned being specially humane, since the " cat " as used in the navy is prescribed, with lashes varying from one to four dozen, " administered in the presence of the Consul." It is all very wonderful. Why Theodor Weber did not spread the good news far and wide is equally astonishing. "Their dwellings were of sawn timber large, airy, and clean. Their food consists of pork, fish, taro, yams, plan- tains, breadfruit, and a daily ration of wholesome bread (baked for them in brick ovens) of maize meal, of which they are very fond." And so the story is unfolded of nine hours' work per day and none on Sunday, of medicines and missionaries, and much solicitude in every direction. But Mr. Sterndale has regretfully to report that the still degraded savages appeared to pay no heed to the missionaries, and were not known to have benefited by their teachings. This is interesting in view of the statement that the recruiting of the natives was so carefully and wisely done that none of them was under any misconception as to the contract he was entering into. They were so brutal and degraded that even after six months of the Godeffroys' heaven upon earth in Samoa they could not respond to efforts to lift them into line with the Samoans themselves, but they could understand perfectly all about continuous labour on German plantations with a cat of nine tails laid upon their backs " before the German Consul " if they practised the tricks so well known among Line Island savages. 70 STEVENSON'S GERMANY It must not be forgotten in this connection that the recruiting agents of Godeffroy & Son were like the rest of that class throughout the Pacific. They were mostly non- German adventurers ; for the firm employed more men of outside nationalities than Germans, and was not at all scrupulous about character or antecedents. So much has already been shown in Poppe's questions, which covered enough to guarantee the secrecy required by the Godeffroy practice and purpose. Thus it is impossible to believe that the twelve hundred Line and other islanders employed by the firm were handled merely like fractious children, ready for an adventure when their chiefs agreed to let them go in the German schooners, and it is difficult to understand why the Sterndale eulogy could have been allowed to pass with- out challenge in view of all that must have been known to Sir Julius Vogel. But the denouement is interesting, if Stevenson's " Footnote to History " is read in the general connection. An interval of nearly twenty years had elapsed since the Sterndale report was written, and the Godeffroy plantations had grown larger. Trade had increased and cargoes of copra were more numerous. Surely the magnifi- cent traditions of 1874 were not to be confounded by the facts of 1892 ! It is true that Stevenson does not give chapter and verse of any decline. He does not present himself as a witness against the native labour traffic. His method is to indicate rather than to present the truth. He says : " Seven or eight hundred men and women toil for the company on contracts of three or of five years, and at a hypothetical wage of a few dollars in the month. I am now on a burning question, the labour traffic ; and I shall ask permission in this place only to touch it with the tongs. Suffice it to say that in Queensland, Fiji, New Caledonia, GERMAN SLAVE LABOUR 71 and Hawaii it has been either suppressed or placed under close public supervision. In Samoa, where it still flourishes, there is no regulation of which the public receives any evidence ; and the dirty linen of the firm, if there be any dirty, and if it be ever washed at all, is washed in private. This is unfortunate, if Germans would believe it." * This is sufficiently direct, but Stevenson does not give particulars. The object of his book, after all, is not so much to bray the German firm in a mortar as to make it difficult for Germany, the power behind, to refuse fair play to Mataafa with the eyes of the world upon Samoa. " A Footnote to History " finishes on the note of appeal, and Stevenson is never spiteful, though he is often severe. The truth, however, was his first concern. He was determined that the position in Samoa should not be misunderstood, and, though so little could be said about it, the labour question was undoubtedly a burning one. The Germans, he says again, " have no idea of publicity, keep their busi- ness to themselves, rather affect to ' move in a mysterious way,' and are naturally incensed by criticisms, which they consider hypocritical from men who would import ' labour ' for themselves, if they could afford it, and would probably maltreat them (the natives) if they dared." What follows shows how strong would be the case against the Germans in Samoa if the light could be let in as it has been thrown upon the labour traffic elsewhere throughout the Pacific. The recruiting of the natives from various groups is not men- tioned by Stevenson, and this would prove to be an evil business by itself. But the actual treatment of the natives when they reached Samoa is indicated in terms which con- trast vividly with the details of the Sterndale report. * " A Footnote to History," p. 31. 72 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Stevenson continues : " It is said that the whip is busy on some of the plantations ; it is said that punitive extra labour, by which the thrall's term of service is extended, has grown to be an abuse ; and it is complained that, even where that term is out, much irregularity occurs in the re- patriation of the discharged. To all this I can say nothing good or bad. A certain number of the thralls, many of them wild negritos from the West, have taken to the bush, harbour there in a state partly bestial, or creep into the back quarters of the town to do a day's stealthy labour under the nose of their proprietors. Twelve were arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. Further in the bush, huts, small patches of cultivation and smoking ovens have been found by hunters. There are still three runaways in the woods of Tutuila, whither they escaped upon a raft. And the Samoans regard these dark-skinned rangers with extreme alarm ; the fourth refugee in Tutuila was shot down (as I was told in that island) while carrying off the virgin of a village ; and tales of cannibalism run round the country, and the natives shudder about the evening fire." * It will be noticed that Stevenson calls these imported natives " thralls." They were slaves in his eyes as truly as if they had the thrall's collar round their necks and could be killed or scourged as in the old Saxon days. But, it may be asked, why did not Stevenson keep silence if he could not prove slavery ? Why hint at the thing and leave so much to be inferred ? No doubt the use of the phrase "it is said " warrants these questions ; but Stevenson was not dealing with facts concerning a British community. He was in an alien land facing a great German firm with Germany behind it, and he was in danger of deportation * " A Footnote to History," pp. 3132. GERMAN SLAVE LABOUR 73 himself as a public nuisance. Not individual German planters, but Bismarck and the whole machinery of the Berlin Foreign Office were with Godeffroy & Son ; and the black labour traffic in Samoa was part of the German system. It was extremely venturesome on Stevenson's part to go as far as he did, and he was quite prepared to pay the penalty ; but after all, he was calling to the Government of Great Britain and to a British public that could be aroused on occasion. One realises that Stevenson was heavily handicapped in this joust against Germany, because the officials of his own country could be so hopeless when asked for help. They would insist upon accepting conditions as they were. Why should they interfere because the German labour traffic was being carried on as a system of slavery ? Stevenson thus became in their eyes a meddling humbug ; and Sir John Thurston, as High Commissioner of the Western Pacific and Governor of Fiji, frowned heavily upon him. Thus it happened that the references, above quoted, to German imported labour were disregarded or explained away and that Stevenson was considered to have put more heart than head into his championship of the Samoans. Now, at any rate, one wishes that the novelist, turned his- torian, had put down a good deal more upon paper, if only for publication after his death. But it was the same all round. No one cared to speak or to write against Germany, and we are forced to argue from suggestion instead of being able to recite the facts of the case. There can be no ques- tion whatever, even if the evidence be considered circum- stantial, that in Samoa itself Germans tor nearly forty years were slave owners and slave drivers in the sense that the natives employed by them were not free agents, neither 74 STEVENSON'S GERMANY at the moment of engagement nor in the manner of their employment. The latter were savages, without the slightest knowledge of the conditions to which they were being committed ; and once in Samoa they were driven to work, whipped, and locked up like cattle, though good food and decent quarters may have been provided and white missionaries allowed to visit them. But the point is that Germany, through her Consulate, which was one of the German firm's assets, was a party to it all. In the Pacific individual polyglot adventurers white men on the beaches were ruthless and brutal among the natives. But Great Britain and the United States, through their Governments, have been consistently on the side of the people, whom they found in possession of so many islands and island groups. This is the very crux of the present argument. It is the case against Germany in the Pacific. First in Samoa and then right through the ocean German ways with the natives have been full of treachery, deceit, and devilish- ness. The German trade and labour ideal has been to make as much profit as possible without reference to law or gospel. Added to this since 1870 has been the itching for world power ; and in the Pacific a grasp of so much has prompted the determination to get all at the expense of natives and Europeans alike. CHAPTER VIII A SETTLED POLICY Sir John Thurston in the Pacific. His report on Samoa in the British Blue Book (1885 1889). He touches the German slave trade with a pair of tongs. German claims in Samoa. The Agreement of 1886. Treated as " a scrap of paper." Trade in the Pacific a preparation for war. Close parallel with the Cameroons in Germany's treatment of the natives. Mr. Poultney Bigelow's evidence. Atrocities in the Caroline Islands. Africa and the Pacific must be taken together. PROBABLY nobody knew the Pacific better, on the ad- ministrative side, in the half century preceding his death than Sir John Thurston. He was in Fiji, before the cession of the group in 1874, as right hand to King Thakom- bau ; and when Sir Arthur Gordon arrived as first Governor in the following year he was appointed Colonial Secretary and Auditor-General in the administration of the new colony. Through the rest of a long life he was a trusted official. After Germany had surprised the world by her annexations in the Pacific the British Government sent for Sir John, and he reached London to find some important work awaiting him. In August, 1885, he was appointed British Commissioner, to discuss British and German in- terests in the South Seas with a German representative on an Anglo- German Commission ; and reference has already been made to the Blue Book which embodies the results of conferences, negotiations and so forth between 1885 and 1889. The above summary of Sir John Thurston's activities at a critical time in the history of the Pacific is a 76 STEVENSON'S GERMANY necessary introduction to his references to German trade and claims in Samoa, because the annexations by Germany in 1884 are related by him to the imported native labour required for the Upolu plantations. In the report which he submitted, under cover of a letter dated October 1st, 1886, and written from the office of the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific at Suva, the question is referred to in the following words : " For reasons which need not here be entered into, Her Majesty's Government has not favoured the introduction of Pacific Islanders to act as agricultural labourers in places not within Her Majesty's jurisdiction. The lands of British subjects, therefore, lie almost wholly uncultivated." This had immediate application to Samoa and was intended as a reply to the German claim that only Germans carried on real plantation work there. The dis- cussion of this point, and of other points raised, makes interesting reading, because the reports of the British, German, and American representatives are embodied in the Blue Book above mentioned, which covers the documents upon Samoa from 1885 to 1889. The German Consul- General Travers in his report, a copy of which was handed to Lord Salisbury by the German Ambassador in London, laid it down that nearly everything in the Samoan group was German. He wrote : " The bulk of foreign interests in Samoa lies clearly in the hands of Germans. The moment you enter the harbour of Apia your eye rests upon the great warehouses and business premises of the German firms of H. M. Ruge & Co., and the German Commercial and Plantation Company, especially the yards for cleaning wool and working the cocoa fibre by steam, the extensive store-houses, and, next to them, the long row of houses occupied by the employees of the Company, while you per- A SETTLED POLICY 77 ceive clearly on the green hills which come down close to the harbour the extensive German plantations of Vaitele, Motootua, Vailele, and especially the coffee plantation of Utumapu lying above the rest." The report goes on to explain that every third foreigner met is an employee of the Company for which " the Samoans themselves, and, indeed, every one in Samoa, have only one name, which is 4 the old firm.' The natives know it by no other." Thus does Godeffroy & Son come to light again. " The old firm " had collapsed after the Franco-Prussian War ; but the company resurrected at Hamburg by Theodor Weber, with Prince Bismarck's sympathy and assistance, was straddling over everything. For the moment, it is enough to think of the Company's plantations and of the claim that " only Germans carried on plantation work in Samoa." Of English and American plantations Consul-General Travers in his report writes contemptuously enough : " If this land is called cultivated land, it only means that it has been planted for years with cocoa palms and native useful plants. On the other hand, it is not cultivated by regular workmen, and is generally neglected." Then follows the claim aforesaid that Germans were the only planters worth the name, which was antici- pated in the Thurston report by the reminder that British planters in Samoa were not permitted to import native labour. But Sir John Thurston noted that the German Government had given its sanction to the immigration of natives for labour, and added that it had " lately brought under its influence certain large and populous islands for the sake, as it would appear, of, among other things, con- serving the Samoan plantations, which otherwise might fall into neglect and ruin." This could only refer to the 78 STEVENSON'S GERMANY annexations of 1884, which made a section of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and a portion of the Solomons part of Germany's Colonial Empire. But two significant facts may be noticed in these rejoinders. The black labour traffic is touched by Sir John Thurston with a pair of tongs, to use Robert Louis Stevenson's expressive phrase in his own reference to the vile business ; and the action which re- sulted in the permanent control by Germany of large islands and island groups in the Pacific is related to Samoa. German plantations in Upolu could only be kept going by imported native labour, about which the less said the better, according to Sir John Thurston in 1886 and Robert Louis Stevenson in 1892 ; and, as a fit sequel to all that had gone before, Germany broke her word with Great Britain to insure the supply. As British Commissioner, Sir John Thurston was not concerned with Germany's black labour iniquities. He had to glance at the business and leave it ; because it was necessary, without entering into explana- tions, to indicate why British planters in Samoa could not compete with German slave drivers. Moreover, the dis- cussion of many things was proceeding, since a clearer definition of British and German territorial interests was to be reached as a result of the Anglo-German Commission's work. Out of it came, for instance, the Agreement of 1886, which put the most populous of the Solomon Islands within the German sphere of interest and consigned a multitude of natives to the control of German officials, more con- cerned about plantation profits than human flesh and blood. Sir John Thurston, no doubt, thought he had done well in obtaining Germany's consent to the provision that access to the islands for trade should be equal and that natives in the German Solomons should still be free to A SETTLED POLICY 79 pass into the British Solomons. This was a perfectly legitimate arrangement, because the group is one. Its people are not divided as are, say, the natives of New Britain and New Guinea, but are of the same race ; they speak practically the same language, though in different dialects, and before Germany came were accustomed to pass from island to island as they pleased. The Samoan group in the same way was always occupied by natives able to understand one another and living under the same forms of chiefly control and tribal usage. Hence the provision that no barriers should be erected only continued what nature and the proximity of the islands had arranged in the first instance. This meant, however, that, if and when plantations were started on islands of the Solomon group in the British sphere, labour could be engaged from the other side. It would simply be a question of competition, with the natives left as free agents. This became a real test of British and German practice. When British plantations were begun the German natives went over to enjoy the more humane treatment and milder control of English-speaking folk ; and thereupon German officials treated the Agreement of 1886 as a scrap of paper. There was no direct challenge. It was all done by regulation and clever evasion. German natives were kept at home and under stricter discipline. Soon British planters realised how thoroughly Germany had spied out the land when in the rearrangements of 1900 over Samoa she agreed to take only the islands of Bougainville and Buka with their teem- ing population, and left to Great Britain the islands denuded of people by head-hunting and massacres except that Malaita, with a specially bad name for cannibalism and bestiality, was still a good recruiting ground. 80 STEVENSON'S GERMANY A wider reach was given to German duplicity later on when the trading provisions of the Agreement of 1886 were deliberately torn up by the attacks upon Australian trade in the Marshall Islands in 1904. The story has already been told in Australian newspapers and has been summarised in " The New Pacific " ; but it will serve later on in the present book to emphasise afresh the truth that the German menace in the Pacific had more than one side. The un- scrupulous handling of native labour had its parallel in the ruthless undermining of Australasian trade by considering all agreements as only worth the paper carrying them. Piracy was made to take the place of peaceful competition. A third side in the German plan of campaign for complete possession of the Pacific was found in preparation for war, and in theTchoice of strategic points for aggression at the supreme moment. Native labour was used without ruth when military and naval bases had to be built or altered which brings in again the German attitude to the peoples of the Pacific. As illustrating and strengthening the argument against Germany's gross abuse of native labour nothing could be better than the story told by Staff- Paymaster Cyril Cox, R.N.R., of the German occupation of the Cameroons. What happened in West Africa reads like an account of Samoa before 1900 in many particulars, and especially does it give a wonderful parallel to the German plan of campaign in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands since 1884. Briefly, Mr. Cox thus presents his case : " The cocoa plantations in the Cameroons, which were worked by native labour under the supervision of German overseers, presented all the appearances of highly efficient industrial organisations. Large spaces of jungle had been reclaimed and carefully A SETTLED POLICY 81 cultivated by up-to-date methods. Acres of plantains have been laid out in the vicinity of the cocoa fields, in order to provide the native workers with their principal food. Roads and railways have been constructed to bring the plantations within easy access of a seaport. Provision has been made for the comfort of the workers by the erection of commodious huts, and even of hospitals, which have been equipped with all the devices of modern science for the cure of tropical diseases." This reads like an extract from the Sterndale report on the Godeffroy arrangements in Samoa in 1874, instead of being written in 1918 ; and it only needs the Sterndale eulogy to complete the illusion. Said Mr. Sterndale after his glowing periods upon German efficiency and humani- tarianism : " It would be well for planters throughout the tropics, if the system pursued by the Messrs. Godeffroy were more generally known and adopted. All the other establishments in Samoa where imported labour is employed are conducted on the same humane and just principles." But Mr. Sterndale did not say what the imported natives thought of it all. Mr. Cox, on the other hand, shows that the natives of the Cameroons, who were to all intents and purposes on their own soil, would have none of it when choice was possible. No amount of lavish expendi- ture on huts and hospitals compensated for a very real lack of liberty and worse. They were forced to work and were flogged if they refused, precisely as in German possessions in the Pacific. The system, however, as Mr. Cox explains, could not technically be described as slavery. The Germans " avoided this by the simple device of paying wages to the workers," precisely as was done in Samoa according to Mr. Sterndale. The rest of s.o. o 82 STEVENSON'S GERMANY the paragraph by Mr. Cox may be quoted as again covering the practice by the German firm on its plantations at Upolu in Samoa, and as put into force in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomons : " The wages were merely nominal a few shillings a month but any small sum sufficed to prove that the workers were not slaves according to the strict interpretation of the word. All the same, the fact remains that the workers were forced to work on the cocoa plantations, w r hether they wanted to or not, that they were not allowed to leave their work and seek other occupation when the inclination seized them, and that their German overseers had practically unlimited powers in dealing with them, and could, if they chose, exercise those powers with unbridled brutality." But there is something more in this account of the Cameroons, and it gives strong reinforcement to the argu- ment against Germany in the Pacific. Mr. Cox says quite emphatically that the natives in the Cameroons hated the Germans, and for very valid reasons additional to that of being forced to work for them. While the German plantation and improvement idea was anathema to the natives, as it was sought to be realised, the basis of conduct as between the white man and the black was an impossible one. Always the white man was right ; and he claimed to be above all law. " The administration of justice was based upon the principle of the divine right of the white man. Any German, whether he was a trader, a missionary, a cocoa-planter, or anybody else, could take any native to the police station and have him flogged. If the white man said that the native deserved the punish- ment, his word was enough ; no other evidence was required." So the story is unfolded by contrasting the A SETTLED POLICY 83 British way with the natives. When war was declared there was a general belief among the latter that the English came to avenge the death of " King Bell," one of their hereditary chiefs, who had been hanged by the Germans for saying that he would complain to the English Emperor. But the whole business, and its final exposure by Mr. Cox, exactly fits the case for a refusal to return German posses- sions in the Pacific. It is true that in the Pacific the outbreak of war never gave the Germans a chance to torture unfortunate natives for sympathising with and assisting the British forces. Hostilities ended too quickly, and generally the desert of ocean makes it impossible to carry the parallel further than it has been drawn. But the principles upon which the Germans acted in the Pacific for more than half a century were precisely the same as they adopted and enforced in South Africa. Moreover, the excesses of brutality were paralleled in the Pacific, though on a smaller scale because the natives were less numerous. There is nothing in the round of German occupation to put beside the number of Africans slaughtered, nor among details is there a tally to match the thousands of murdered Hereros in the South- West. But it is only a difference in numbers, not in intention or temper. As to the treatment of the natives in German possessions in the Pacific, Mr. Poultney Bigelow has given his testimony in " Prussian Memories." This takes us to within less than a decade of the outbreak of war in 1914, and it is sufficiently impressive. Mr. Bigelow tells us of the wonderful roads and fine buildings seen in his course through German New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago ; and he gives chapter and verse when describing the terror of the natives at the sight of a German uniform. Everything was G2 84 STEVENSON'S GERMANY thoroughly organised, and notices of practices forbidden were apparently as plentiful as in Berlin. But nowhere could the observant American, to whom all the doors were opened, find a contented native population. There were plantations, and much practical improvement in local conditions, but it might have been the Cameroons instead of New Britain that was voicing oppression and wrong the wrong bred of arrogance and of an attitude towards the natives a century out of date. The forced employment of native labour was always prominent ; but German brutality in the Pacific found its worst modern examples in the Marshalls and the Carolines. Mr. Evan Lewin and Mr. M. Montgomery-Campbell, writing in the Quarterly Review for April, 1918, have put the horror in a nutshell. They say : " One of the darkest blots on the pages of German colonial administration was undoubtedly the ever-recurring and indiscriminate flogging of natives. Notorious cases of this punishment as inflicted by the Germans blacken the name of Landeshauptmann Brandeis, who, when acting in the Marshall Islands, ordered constant floggings and did not enter them in the punishment book. When his delinquencies were mentioned in the Reichstag, the usual official excuses were made for him. He was in a difficult position, it was said ; he acted bond fide ; he even flogged for educative reasons. Dernburg, in apologising for him, could not get over the fact that, in some eleven cases he had been proved to have ordered floggings not legally permissible. Brandeis received a mild reprimand, and eventually a decoration ; and this though no less an authority than Consul-General Knappe, of Shanghai, whom Erzberger called v one of our most experienced politicians,' wrote in an official letter that he had witnessed A SETTLED POLICY 85 the floggings both in the Marshall Islands and Samoa, and that ' the impression was a disgusting one, both for white men and black.' He added that ' it caused great excitement, a public meeting of indignation on account of the flogging in the Marshall Islands being only suppressed by the accidental presence of a squadron.' Erzberger took up the Brandeis case with great vigour, referring to it in more than one speech, and strongly reprehending the practice of the authorities who sought to throw dust in the eyes of the public regarding the way in which the colonial officials exceeded their authority." * This was by way of education and discipline. It may be imagined what German punishment would be like in the case of revolt by natives in the islands of the Caroline group. This story of retaliation may, in fact, be placed beside that of the Hereros in South- West Africa for its brutality and sheer vindictiveness. Lest it should be supposed that the natives of the Caroline Islands were naturally savage and cruel, a certificate of character may be offered from the Sterndale report. They were undoubtedly a difficult people to manage, as the Spaniards had discovered to their cost, but Sterndale, in 1874, said of the natives of Ponape (where some German officials were murdered in 1910) : " They are kindly disposed and peaceable, though they have often been decimated and driven to desperation by hordes of lawless ruffians, who have established themselves upon the island from time to time, and produced much mischief. These have been generally beachcombers from Manilla, Guam or the Sandwich Isles. Sometimes (as twenty years ago) there * Quarterly Review, April, 1918, " How Germany treats the Native," p. 386. 86 STEVENSON'S GERMANY have been as many as a hundred on Ascension (Ponape) at one time ; and it shows plainly enough that these Ascension islanders must have in themselves the germ of very much better things, when we find them, as they are, hospitable, generous, and industrious, after so many years of intimate contact with such irremediable scoundrels as the majority of their European visitors undoubtedly were." * The Caroline Islands, indeed, have a very remarkable history. The natives may be compared in some respects with the Samoans, except that their character has more steel in it, as the Germans discovered when they attempted to put into operation their system of forced labour after taking over the group from Spain. Their hatred of the Germans at last became desperate. When, in 1910, a poll tax was levied for revenue purposes and the natives, on failing to pay, were compelled to labour on the roads and on other public works, they turned upon the German officials and murdered them. They could under- stand that they had to pay a yearly tax to the superior power, but they could not comprehend the justice of being made to work without remuneration. And the natives of the Caroline Islands to-day are not fools. They are still naturally very intelligent ; and, like the Samoans under the London Missionary Society, they have been so far educated by American missionaries and Spanish priests that most of them can read and write. In the official report of the massacre in 1910 reference was made to certain punishments which no doubt were similar to the brutal floggings that so disgusted Consul-General Knappe, of Shanghai, when he witnessed them in the Marshall Islands and Samoa. We have only to imagine the Samoans * New Zealand Blue Book, 1874, p. 23. A SETTLED POLICY 87 rising in their wrath, under a chief strong enough to lead and hold them, to understand the crisis Germany would have had to face if she had pushed matters to extremes in Samoa as she did through her officials in the Carolines. Things would have happened long before in the latter group had it not been for the tact and discretion of Dr. Hahl, who was the first German official appointed to the group and adjacent islands. When he became Governor of German New Guinea troubles arose in the Carolines which ended in tragedy. Germany brought her mailed fist down on the unfortunate natives with an awful smash. It was one of the most brutal revenges she has taken ; and her theory that frightfulness is sound sense was given intense expression, on the principle that natives crushed and broken will make no more mischief. Those shot down in the Carolines may have been included by Professor Schillings, at one time employed in the German Colonial Office, in his estimate that within a few years 200,000 natives had been killed in various risings in the German colonies. If not, the numbers have been sensibly increased. Naturally, therefore, should Germany's African atrocities be considered a bar against giving back those colonies, the verdict must also be against her in the Pacific when it is proposed to return her possessions there. It is only a question of degree, not of fact or foundation. CHAPTER IX TRADE AND STRATEGY Germany as pedlar and planter. DeutscJiland tiber Alles. German thoroughness in duplicity. Bolivian dollars and double profits. Stevenson again. German thoughts of trade different from British. Ruthless cut-throat competition. Sir John Thurston and the German trade in arms and liquor. Rise of German companies. The Marshall Islands and Australian threats. German shipping subsidies. Australia was to be a new German base. Sympathy of Marshall Island chiefs with Australia. GERMANY in the Pacific, as may be seen, was at first a pedlar and then a planter. Trade came before tropical agriculture, with its forced native labour. But in all the vast ocean which gave such wonderful profits in the runs between Valparaiso and Tahiti and on to Samoa the original German merchants found none of their compatriots. Godeffroy & Son followed, to break the backs and cut the throats of Germans already established, but it was only one firm supplanting another for fortunes that should have satisfied both. Even on the dazzling beaches of the island groups German adventurers were hardly found to carry on the great game ; for nearly all the white men were of other nationalities, and they were ready for any- thing that promised an easy living. But it was still trade that the German firm developed, by the aid of an army of free lances, trade with weapons in its hands ; and Godeffroy & Son brooked no rivals. Natives everywhere invited exploitation, so that it should have been easy to live and TRADE AND STRATEGY 89 let live as between white men. But from the commence- ment the German aim was monopoly. Until 1870 and its upset Godeffroy & Son would be supreme ; and thereafter it was " Deutschland uber alles." Trade meant a system of barter with the natives ; cocoa-nut oil, pearl shell, beche-de-mer, and much else, were obtained in exchange for prints, beads, strong drink, hardware of sorts, and rifles and ammunition. But everywhere the German agent, more often British and American than German, had to drive any other trader out, then buy a piece of land for the firm, be sure to discredit missionaries, choose a native woman for himself, and represent a predatory Fatherland as much to the life as possible. On certain of these points Sterndale is clear, though he keeps well in mind the virtues and long arm of Theodor Weber. Island after island was secured in this way, and at last various groups were dominated. Sterndale says : " An examination of the chart will show how vast was the scope of their operations, when we come to consider that between the two points Samoa and Yap (which may be considered as one of the Palos, known to the English as Pelew Islands) they have, or had lately, an agent in their employment upon every productive island inhabited by the copper-coloured race, upon which the natives are as yet sufficiently well-disposed to permit a white man to reside." The list appended by the writer of the above statement is sufficiently impressive as showing the range of Godeffroy interests in the Pacific. One development opened the way for another, as in the case of copra, which took the place of cocoa-nut oil as an article of trade. German thoroughness deserves credit in this connection. Theodor Weber and his assistants discovered that the meat of the cocoa-nut dried in a certain 90 STEVENSON'S GERMANY way was much better for their purpose than the crudely expressed oil ; and copra, the dried cocoa-nut meat, came into its own as king of tropical products. It was not that copra in itself was a new thing, but that German experi- ments and improvements with it opened up a new source of profit in the Pacific. But copra could not be obtained in sufficiently large quantities for the increasing trade and soaring ambitions of the firm. Plantations had to be made on a large scale. Something was being done to stimulate native interest and energy by increasing their wants, but they did not make enough copra. Meanwhile the firm's way of finance became less and less scrupulous. This was crucial for Germany, as far as the missionaries were concerned, because the Bolivian debased coin, intro- duced and practically forced upon the natives, met with the sternest opposition from the Missionary Societies. Sterndale says that this was never forgotten and never forgiven by the German managers. Miss Gordon Gumming thus describes the business : " The coin chiefly in circula- tion here (Samoa in 1878) is the Chilian and Bolivian dollar, of very debased silver, commonly known in the Pacific as ' iron money.' Its introduction was one of the sharp speculations of Messrs. Godeffroy, who obtained an enormous amount at a very cheap rate and therewith commenced trade with the Samoans, who accepted the dollar as the equivalent of 100 cents., or the half-dollar as 50 cents., whereas two half-dollars, or one whole, are barely worth 75 cents. So the profit on this little job was considerable and if it has added one more straw to poor Samoa's burden of trouble, that is no concern of the traders." * No doubt, indeed, Missionary revenue was * " A Lady's Cruise," p. 88. TRADE AND STRATEGY 91 seriously prejudiced by the circulation of coins of which the so-called " dollars " and " half-dollars " were not worth their full value in exchange. Natives making copra were paid in this deceitful money and then gave it to their missionaries as subscriptions, with the result that while Godeffroy & Son made double profit out of the transaction other people were robbed and prejudiced. A controversy naturally arose between the merchant firm and the mission- aries ; and the basis of it was the question whether in the Pacific the Ten Commandments should receive recognition, and whether one of the foundation principles of Christianity, as defined in loving one's neighbour as oneself, should govern the daily life of Europeans in the midst of multitudes of defenceless natives. Germany, through its Hamburg firm, said " No," and this negative has governed the policy of the German Imperial authorities ever since. It is not contended that the story of German trading enterprise in the Pacific is all drab or deadly crimson. No good purpose will be served by darkening the shadows or withholding the truth to make a case. Stevenson, in " A Footnote to History," gives credit to German officials in Samoa, and we know that during his residence there he could find much to like and a good deal to admire in men who were often, nevertheless, giving the unfortunate Samoans less than a chance to reach solid ground. Moreover, German trade and industry have counted in the making of the Pacific ; and rapacity and folly were not German monopolies. Individual Britons and Americans have been sometimes as serious nuisances as individual Germans of the baser sort. But the question here is the spirit which moved Germany in her activities in the Pacific, and its effect upon the natives wherever she asserted herself 92 STEVENSON'S GERMANY against them. It was a spirit of arrogance and of pure materialism. Where trade was concerned it was all for profit no matter who suffered nor what cruelties were practised. Where, in the wide reaches of the Pacific, the larger purpose of world-dominion was cherished the strategic plans had no regard to national claims, or to the rights of white men or dark. With regard to the main argument in this chapter, the German thought of trade, and of the natives in the Pacific as a means of increasing it, has ever been quite different from the British. It has always been low and brutal. Thus the issue of the Bolivian money was more serious then, and has a deeper significance now, than is realised. It covers the whole spirit of German trading enterprise in the Pacific between 1854 and 1914. For sixty years there was a development in trade and industry, begun in ruthless cut-throat competition, con- tinued through a system of practical slavery and oppression for the natives, and culminating in a desperate and devilish design to suppress and destroy everything not German in trade, commerce, and civilisation throughout the widest of the world's oceans. This, of course, was but part of the plan for world-dominion, and the Australasian argument against Germany is that she cannot be regarded as one Power in Africa, to be found guilty there of abominable crimes against the native races, while accepted as another Power in the Pacific, and declared to be not guilty of similar enormities because the evidence is not written out in such large letters. It has been the same Germany, and the same condemnation must be given. But the development of German trade in the Pacific can be indicated by evidence that is at least sufficiently conclusive upon the main question. In this connection TRADE AND STRATEGY 93 Sir John Thurston's report in 1886 may be quoted again. He had been obliged to meet the argument for German dominance in Samoa by pointing out that Great Britain would not permit British planters to import native labour into islands or island groups not flying the Union Jack, and that consequently British plantations could not show the same results as German plantations. But the claim was made for German trade, by Consul- General Travers, that it was twice as valuable and double the volume of British and other trade put together. Germany, therefore, ought to be allowed to control Samoa, though Great Britain and the United States were still to have certain accepted interests in the group. Sir John Thurston and the American representative on the Commission both met this with the same retort. Godeffroy & Son's successor, "The Long Handle Firm," did not comprise a number, even of German interests, but was essentially one, and aimed at a monopoly. The firm was permitted, added Sir John, to use unfair means ; first, in the native slave trade, though that term was not applied except by infer- ence ; and, second, in that British traders were prevented from selling liquor and lethal weapons to these natives, just as British planters were forbidden to import native labour to non-British territory. Samoa was not British, but it certainly was not German. The mischief of Germany's policy right up to the settlement of 1900 lay in her refusal to be bound by any rule of right or reason when dealing with the Samoans, for not only did she sell them the means of destroying each other in the ever-recurrent native wars, but she made equal profits out of the sale of liquor. Sir John Thurston's report runs : " British and American resi- dents, when discussing the question of the predominating 94 STEVENSON'S GERMANY influence claimed and sought for in practice by Germans, make the following observations : " I. That German trade is waning, while British and American, particularly the former, is increasing ; and " II. That British interests have been retarded by the disability of British subjects to procure Polynesian labourers, and to sell alcoholic liquors, arms, and ammuni- tion to the natives." Sir John Thurston remarked that these observations were substantially correct. His reference to the native labour question has already been given, with his disinclina- tion to discuss the matter " for reasons which need not here be entered into." His comment upon German trade runs : " The High Commissioner of the Western Pacific has, by Regulation issued under the provisions of the Western Pacific Orders in Council, made it a penal offence to sell or give such articles to natives, and there can be no doubt of the humanity and sound wisdom of such Regulation. But other traders, Germans especially, sell arms and ammunition freely and thus enjoy an immense advantage over British subjects." * This, again, goes to the foundation of things, for it marks the vital difference between German and British policy in the Pacific. The German was there for trade for personal profit without regard to rights, treaties, or the Ten Commandments. His Government was behind him and approved of his gospel of might. The British traders and planters were not only unaided in the battle, but were expressly forbidden to fight with German weapons. It was a warfare in which reprisals could not help and would only destroy the natives, for whom, however, the fighting was continued by diplo- * Blue Book, " On Affairs of Samoa," 188589, p. 110. TRADE AND STRATEGY 95 matic protests and pressure all practically useless against a Power determined to get its way. Sir John Thurston wrote his report, which later on was embodied in the Blue Book on Samoan affairs, nearly twelve years after the Sterndale report had appeared. A great deal had happened in the interval since 1874 ; and among other important things was the appearance of another German company. The " Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft " had arisen, after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, as successor to Godeffroy & Son ; and when Theodor Weber returned from Hamburg in 1875 to resume his position as Imperial German Consul he was ready to meet the smash of 1878 with a resurrection in the " D. H. & P. G." " The Long Handle Firm " for short. There was still plenty for him and for it to do in preparing the way for the annexations of 1884 ; but in the year following the hoisting of the German flag in New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago another company was formed in the " Deutsche New Guinea Kompagnie." This German New Guinea Company grew and developed until it overshadowed everything. The report on " British and Australian trade in the South Pacific," issued by the Inter-State Commission of Australia, contains much infor- mation about this and other German companies which were formed to exploit the wealth of the islands acquired by the German Empire ; and what has been said of the Godeffroy firm and its successor is true of all, more or less. Great plantations became the natural sequel to a growing trade, and native labour was applied throughout as one of the details in creating a mighty business. While the " D. H. & P. G." had 150,000 acres in Samoa, the German New Guinea Company owned 357,000 acres in New Guinea, 96 STEVENSON'S GERMANY controlling " the largest areas of plantations in the Pacific." * German interests interlaced and ramified, always under the watchful care and guidance of the Imperial Government. When Australian competition became dangerous, however, it was a German company which took up the responsibility of breaking an agreement with Great Britain and, in its trade equivalent, hitting below the belt. The Jaluit Company stopped Messrs. Burns, Philp & Co., but Australian Governments joined hands in official protest and Imperial Germany had to pay damages. But, had it been a matter merely of British diplomatic objection and arrangement, the probability is that once more an abominable wrong would have been done against Australia and the Empire. The Jaluit Company would have pointed to its technical observance of the trading provisions of the Agreement of 1886, in that German vessels were made to pay the same terrific imposts as Australian vessels trading to the Marshall Islands, and that might have been the end of it. That the Jaluit Company paid its levies out of one pocket and put them into another would not have mattered ; and, as it happened, the Australian Governments' threats at reprisals and the British Government's consequent demands did not even then bring Germany to the point of paying damages until some years had elapsed, j- The Jaluit episode comes in the natural lineage of the Bolivian coin swindle, and the spirit behind each was consistently in evidence from the middle years of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twentieth. Behind the Companies, of necessity, stood the Imperial German Government, unavowed at first but towards the * Inter-State Commission Report, p. 110. t " The New Pacific," p. 256. TRADE AND STRATEGY 97 end quite openly sponsor. Without backing from Berlin there could not have been the building of a Colonial Empire, or its apology, in the Pacific, because the inevitable compe- tition of private British and Australasian firms would have kept unfair encroachments within bounds. An invaluable asset for German traders all the time was the belief of the British Government in Germany's good faith. Although she played dirty tricks through her trading companies and flogged the natives everywhere into making her broad plantations, building her fine administrative centres, laying out her wonderful roads, and filling in vast swamps, yet she could not be meaning to do any real wrong. These were only setting up a shining mark for her as the Power that knew how to do things. Even when she subsidised her steamship companies in order to reinforce the trade syndicates so carefully nursed, there was no protest made. Great Britain declined to admit that honest trade was being attacked with a two-handed sword, or even with an assassin's stiletto. Germany, so thorough and efficient, was only realising herself in an extending commerce. Moreover, was not Australian wool being bought to be carried to Hamburg and Bremen with the copra from German plantations ? So German steamers, owned by powerful German companies, multiplied in Australian harbours and thrived under the very subsidies which made it impos- sible for British-owned vessels to compete with them, or for Australian firms to extend their operations in the Pacific. Before war broke out in 1914 Australia herself had been spied out, measured, and marked for possession. This was to come with actual invasion and domination, but, pending the final word for war, more steamship invasions were projected and more and more the grip 8.0. H 98 STEVENSON'S GERMANY upon Australian mining was tightened. All this was being accompanied by the preparation of strategic points in the Pacific for naval and military operations. Wireless plants were established and bases were built, for purposes quite evidently unassociated with commerce and production as such, but obviously auxiliary to the Government's interest in trading companies and in her subsidies to ship- ping concerns like the Norddeutscher Lloyd. Everything had its place as part of a great campaign which was to culminate in the possession of Australia as a new German base for the Pacific, to form a convenient addition to the Dutch Indies, soon to drop like ripe fruit into the Teuton's mouth. The defeat of the Jaluit Company, as it happened, and with it the forcing of the German Government's hand, were significant of the greater collapse which was at last completed by the capture of all German possessions in the Pacific by Allied expeditionary forces. But there is one detail which may be given here as again illustrative of the whole German policy, and in particular of the German attitude towards the natives. It may be remembered that the Jaluit Company's attempted " hold up " was made in 1904. Now, certain of the native chiefs in the Marshall Islands were exceedingly anxious to see British trade established and British vessels coming and going as permanent additions to the business of the group. One of these chiefs, Laelan, wrote on behalf of his colleagues to Messrs. Burns, Philp & Co., when the trading fees were so iniquitously raised, as follows : "I am sorry to hear that your licence has been raised too high for you to consider it profitable to trade here, but I wish to say that you will have the support of the chiefs in the Marshalls should you TRADE AND STRATEGY 99 think it advisable to return. We will make copra for your vessel, and will hold same until January 7th for you. We will make sufficient, I think, to give you 300 tons by then, and you will have our best help." * A little later it was reported from the Gilbert Islands, a British possession, that another of the Marshall Island chiefs who had been visiting there had said that the Marshall Island natives were quite determined to abide by their promise to hold their copra for Messrs. Burns, Philp & Co. They expected that the Jaluit Company would do every- thing in its power to prevent the Ysdbel, the Australian vessel, from returning. In that case the copra would not be sold to the Germans but would be prepared for food, so earnest were the natives in their dislike of German ways. The German retaliation, however, took shape in forcing a third important Marshall Island chief into exile. The chief in question was born in Ocean Island, a British possession, of an Ocean Island mother ; but his father was a Marshall Island chief and the son held much land in the group. A sworn declaration by Mr. John Copeland before a Sydney magistrate set forth that this chief had accompanied the Ysabel on her first voyage round the Marshalls, thus making it easy to trade. This was a crime in German eyes, so the chief was persuaded by the Germans to visit Butaitari in the Gilbert Islands, and, having got him there, the British Commissioner was informed that he would not be allowed to return. The alleged reason was that having an Ocean Island mother he was a British subject ; but the real reason was that he had shown sympathy with the Australian company, and the action was intended to intimidate Marshall Island natives who * Sydney Morning Herald, January 24th, 1905. 100 STEVENSON'S GERMANY were inclined the same way. This is typical of the German policy right through the Pacific, except that other means would be taken to discipline mere natives. Chiefs could be deported or exiled and their property confiscated, but for the rest the lash or the rifle were sufficient when deemed necessary. CHAPTER X THE SETTLEMENT OF SAMOA George Brown and Stevenson. Their plan of settling Samoan difficulties. Some Power in control imperative. Germany too well entrenched. No hope from Gladstone. Sir George Grey turned to America. Germany in possession. Native lands secured to Samoans. Samoa in the limelight. Dr. Solf given a free hand to meet the difficulty. Samoans given representation on Council. Samoa never developed by Germany. A comfortable British anticipation of exchange. Stevenson a trustworthy witness. ABOUT a year before he died in 1894, Robert Louis Stevenson, in the midst of trouble and disturbance, asked Dr. Brown to help him as he struggled with the problem of Samoa's future. The writer of stories, suddenly become statesman, looked to the missionary for advice ; but the latter paused before replying. " No," he said, " I cannot give you any help by word of mouth in these doubtful and difficult times. In good faith you may quote me as saying certain things in the course of conversation, and it may do much harm if I am misinterpreted. I am still engaged in Germany's sphere of interest and activity, though secretary of our Mission Board, and you are one of Germany's most vigorous critics. Just write to me in due form whatever you want to know, and I will in set phrase reply to you. If you quote me you can then do so with the written word to fall back upon." A little later the letter came. Stevenson recognised the force of the con- tention ; and sitting down next day at Vailima this was 102 STEVENSON'S GERMANY in 1893 he wrote, characteristically leaving the date to take care of itself. " DEAR DR. BROWN, You have been all round our distracted islands ; and as a man of something like thirty years' experience, I venture to ask you for an opinion, not so much as to the present state, about which two opinions are scarcely possible, but rather as to the chances of establishing any form of settled government, or of permanent and tolerable unsettled government, such as undoubtedly existed in the past. Our present course is certainly downward ; and if anything is to be done at all with these islands, it seems beyond a doubt that some change of policy must ensue. What that change of policy should be I beg to ask of your long and continuous experience in these islands. " Yours very sincerely, " ROBERT Louis STEVENSON." This puts into a strong light the Imperialist who was still first and foremost a missionary, and the writer of " A Footnote to History " (then twelve months published) who was mightily concerned to see a settlement of Samoa in some stable way of government. Only the war with Germany has made a disclosure and free discussion of the minds of these two lovers of Samoa either possible or advisable ; but the policy pursued by Germany there, since she was given a free hand in 1900 by the other Powers concerned, cannot be understood without them. Now in a letter from Apia, dated July 15th, 1877, Dr. Brown gives expression to the feeling which inspired the form of his reply to Stevenson. He had been away from Samoa THE SETTLEMENT OF SAMOA 103 nearly two years in New Britain, and Stevenson had not then appeared on the scene, nor was he due for another decade and more. But so impressed was Dr. Brown in 1877 with the uncertain outlook in Samoa, which he was revisiting, that he wrote to the secretary of the Mission Board in Sydney : " The natives fought the day before we arrived. The Government party entrapped^the Malietoa party and in one fight completely conquered them. . . . There is, in my opinion, no hope for Samoa except from without, and I do most heartily desire that the group may be united to Fiji and placed under British rule. I firmly believe that this will take place before long, in fact it will become a necessity." This was probably about the time that Sir Arthur Gordon was so much exercised over Samoa and was reaching the point of taking, or refusing to take, action towards annexation. Let it always be remembered, however, that the firm of Godeffroy & Son was using these native quarrels to serve its own ends. It was acquir- ing large tracts of land in exchange for the very arms and ammunition which provoked warfare and extended it. Nothing roused Dr. Brown's indignation like the recollec- tion of this traffic, in which not land alone but human lives and the peace and prosperity of Samoa were at stake. But meanwhile he learned to know Germany in Samoa, and the letter he wrote to Stevenson in reply to his request for advice was couched in terms which must have kept the land question in the foreground. The first thing that Dr. Solf did when exercising his powers as Governor of Samoa was to stop the alienation of land ; Stevenson and George Brown had not put their heads together in vain. But for them the first thing was to secure settled govern- ment. The text of Dr. Brown's letter is not available to 104 STEVENSON'S GERMANY the present writer, as a copy of it could not be found when the question of definite detail was raised. But Dr. Brown was emphatic in his remembrance that he was concerned to help the Samoans while serving Stevenson ; and to that end he counselled patience, not only for Stevenson himself and the native chiefs, but for any Power that ultimately obtained possession of the group. In 1893 both Stevenson and his adviser had lost hope of a British acquisition of Samoa, even at the expense of interests surrendered elsewhere. Germany was too well entrenched. At that time, too, Gladstone was Prime Minister and his Home Rule Bill was engrossing attention. Dr. Brown, like so many other pioneers in the Pacific, had no faith in Gladstone as an Imperialist, because, however convincing on occasion his speeches might be, his actions did not tally with them. But the missionary in those days remembered that the British Prime Minister was a very old man, and it was unlikely that he would pursue any policy of foreign adventure, however ready he might be to attempt to settle Irish difficulties by a great coup. Yet Dr. Brown was certain that, since the Samoans could never be trusted to govern themselves, stable government for Samoa could only be secured through one or other of the Powers. How the problem would work out, and which Power would obtain final control, was another matter ; but Stevenson certainly was not encouraged to hope much from either of the great rival Samoan chiefs. Nor did he trust Germany. His whole experience in Samoa prompted him to challenge her and to expose her practices. In this respect he and Sir George Grey were at one. The latter was appealed to by Malietoa Laupepa before his deportation from Samoa to the Marshall Islands in 1887. THE SETTLEMENT OF SAMOA 105 The 4i paper king," as Stevenson in effect called him, had crumpled up in Germany's hands, and had to be thrown into a corner away from the scene of his immediate troubles ; but before the end came, in his distress he put out his hands to Sir George Grey, who counselled patience. Malietoa Laupepa must possess his soul. He must remember that Germany was strong and unscrupulous, and that it would be futile to fight ; and the Samoan chief realised the wisdom of the advice then, though later on he acted foolishly. But the hurricane of 1889 disarmed Bismarck, and Sir George Grey rejoiced exceedingly. He even reminded Malietoa that the policy of patience had borne due fruit. But he had lost faith in Great Britain as a Power to be reckoned with hi the Pacific. He looked now to the United States to bring order out of the Samoan chaos, and he praised American breadth and strength in an extending influence and power. Yet neither Sir George Grey nor Dr. Brown at the time realised that Germany and the United States would divide Samoa between them, though they could see that Great Britain would not accept further responsi- bility. Only seven years later than Dr. Brown's reply to Stevenson's letter the missionary's old homes in Savaii and Upolu became part of the new possessions of Germany. True, however, to his single-minded purpose to serve and save the Samoans and all other natives within the German sphere of control, he maintained a steady course and worked as far as possible with German officials every- where. Under his supervision German missionaries were taken upon the staff in the Bismarck Archipelago, and Berlin was accepted as the great centre of reference. Thus it happened that Dr. Brown was able to exercise much influence in the German reaches of the Pacific, though he 106 STEVENSON'S GERMANY never ceased to use his knowledge for the benefit of the Empire to which he belonged as citizen and patriot. Mrs. Strong has been quoted as claiming that Stevenson's plan of salvation for Samoa was adopted by Germany. Dr. Brown's counsel was for a recognition of the claims of Samoans to a measure of self-government ; but he always insisted that without their lands they could never be controlled. Stevenson knew the Samoan mind in these directions ; and, moreover, the experience with native lands and native chiefs in Fiji was ever in evidence. Con- sequently, he reached the conclusion that while Germany might obtain possession of the group she could never hold the Samoans, short of killing them out, unless she accepted the inevitable preliminaries to a settlement. Stevenson and George Brown, then, agreed that the only way to deal with Samoa was by placing the quarrelling chiefs under some strong Power the United States for preference. Next, the natives must be protected against themselves by preserving their remaining lands from aliena- tion. Finally, their capacity for self-government must be recognised, and, as in Fiji, their tribal organisation must be used to forward the purposes of administration. What most impresses the student of Samoan history to-day, as he con- siders these lines as laid down by the two white men who knew the Samoans so well, is the practical unity of the people through their language and customs. Those who scoff at the work of the missionaries must, at least, admit their wonderful success in formulating the languages of the Pacific and in thus bringing a new power into play for the white man's service. Both in Fiji and Samoa the translation of the Scriptures into a common language for each group made the work of Great Britain and Germany infinitely easier. THE SETTLEMENT OF SAMOA 107 The world's lessons of sea power were learned in those groups long before Mahan preached the gospel of its influence upon history ; and the language question was also seen to be intimately involved in the possession of islands in strategic positions. For the centres of power were not the large islands, but small ones strategically situated. For instance, Savaii, the largest island in Samoa, was not the most important, but Manono, since the latter, though small, was a naval base. Originally the chief who controlled Samoa made Manono his residence and Apolima, a rocky islet near by, his fortress ; because with a fleet of war canoes he could descend upon the coast wherever he pleased. The natives in other islands were thus never sure when they might not be attacked. So in Fiji, Bau was the strategic centre, though one of the smallest islands of the group. Thakombau ruled a great part of his kingdom from that point ; and until the missionaries obtained foothold upon Bau, after many years, their hopes of christianising Fiji were not fulfilled. It was not always conquest, but safety, that governed the situation ; and in this respect the relation of the small islands to the great ones was like that of Great Britain to Europe. This question raises the issue of the language difficulties of the Pacific. Samoa itself was hardly a source of trouble through varying dialects ; and once the London Missionary Society had done its work through the Rev. George Pratt and others in providing a translation of the Bible the last obstacle was cleared away. The domination of powerful chiefs and the comparatively limited range of the groups made it possible to keep the Samoans one people in language as they were one in blood, thought, and habit. Sea power was thus a strong factor in unification, though it. never 108 STEVENSON'S GERMANY prevented the Samoan tendency to break up into clans and coteries determined to exercise and enjoy the fullest local freedom. In Fiji there was a difficulty at first with varying dialects until the Bau dialect was made the stan- dard, because the coast and inland natives were not con- trolled together, either by Thakombau or by any other great chief, before the missionaries came. When, however, the Fijian Bible was finally given, through the grand work of Cross and Cargill, Hunt, Lyth, Moore, Hazel wood, Langham, and others, the way was open and Fiji has since become one in language. Elsewhere in the Pacific the difficulties have been infinitely greater owing to a diversity of tongues, and Germany's plans of campaign against the natives were correspondingly easier. It was another case of " Divide et impera." Hence, when Stevenson formulated his scheme for dealing with the natives, he was able to leave for Germany's consideration, and for the appreciation of Great Britain and the United States, certain propositions for the successful control of Samoa. That Germany adopted them is to her credit, but it may be urged that there was nothing else to do. Samoa was in the limelight. The group was not in shadow, with native tribes speaking different tongues wherever the white man wandered, and with chiefs exer- cising authority only as far as the village areas went. Germany had bitter experience of the fighting qualities of the Samoans by means of the large control of powerful chiefs, and it was perfectly clear that Great Britain's method of governing Fiji must be practised or paralleled in Samoa. Thus Dr. Solf visited Fiji, and then put into force the recommendations of Robert Louis Stevenson, with George Brown behind him. The natives to-day still THE SETTLEMENT OF SAMOA 109 possess large areas of good land which they cultivate at the foothills in the various islands. It is estimated by those who know that much of it is better than the best now in German hands. The Samoans soon settled down, satisfied with the new regime on this score alone ; but they were given, through their great chiefs, a share in the administration of the group in German control. Like the British planters the Samoans were represented on the Council, and until a Prussian administration was initiated, two years before the war, there was apparently neither oppression nor outrage. But when Prussian officials began to tramp about the Samoans grew restive. It was forbidden to import medicines any more from abroad, and the German chemists alone could provide what was wanted. Prohibitive prices were being charged, and serious resent- ment was felt at a change which threatened a thousand small disabilities and many great ones in the daily round of life. But as long as the British recommendations were followed and liberty in due proportion was allowed, the Samoans had little to complain about, and many of them still look upon Germany as a friend. To argue from this that Germany succeeded in Samoa, and that henceforth she may be trusted to behave like a civilised nation, is to forget that her record has nowhere been good. Even in Samoa after 1900 she was feared by the natives and hated by the Chinese. She was ready to deport a British missionary to secure something in his possession which could not be obtained by legitimate means ; and only the fear of publicity at the hands of a white man, whom she knew might well prove another Stevenson for persistence, altered the programme. Would the Samoans have been likely to remain undisturbed after 110 STEVENSON'S GERMANY a world war in which Germany proved victorious ? Samoa, as a group, has never been developed as German instinct suggested. Even its trading possibilities were neglected, and British planters lived in comfortable anticipation of an exchange which would let the Union Jack be flown over the group. Samoa, therefore, could not fairly be quoted at the Peace Conference as a fine example in the government of a native race by those who would plead for a return of German colonies in the Pacific. The essential thing to keep in mind is the history of Germany's devious ways when Samoa was to be possessed ; and Stevenson, in this connection, becomes an authority that cannot be ignored. He never trusted Germany, though he freely admitted the fine qualities of individual German administrators even in the eight years between 1884 to 1892. " A Footnote to History " is not all diatribe against or attack upon Germany in the person of her nationals, though even there too much must not be inferred. Our experience of the German people in the war is warning enough ; but long before the war the actual practice of Germans in charge of a great trading enterprise, with Samoa as its centre, shows that duplicity and ruthlessness are ingrained in the German character. When the vision is widened, however, and German administration and habits are studied where natives in the Pacific were defenceless the indictment grows more searching and conviction becomes settled against Germany as a neighbour anywhere in the wide waters of that ocean. Let Stevenson and others speak of what they saw in Samoa. Stevenson, at any rate, must be treated as a trustworthy witness of ways that were devious, and practices that were cruel and unrelenting by a Power claiming to be above criticism and suspicion. CHAPTER XI THE TWO IDEALS German and British ideals in better perspective. Report of the Australian Inter-State Commission. Mr. C. H. Hughes's evidence against Germany. Analogy to the Stern- dale Report. Captain Strasburg's favourable testimony. Commission's Report a purely business document. Chinese in Samoa. German New Guinea Company. Are there no spiritual or moral forces behind business operations ! Germany's study of Malaysia. Australia and the Dutch East Indies. IT is now possible to present the German and the British ideal in more definite perspective, but there are still manifest difficulties. The documents remain in the way. German apologists will undoubtedly make pretty play with British and other Blue Books to prove that German commerce and production in the Pacific has not really contravened any British rule or code, since British opinion has been couched in the terms of envy rather than of invective. Possibly the report of the Inter-State Commis- sion of Australia on the trade of the South Pacific will be used with more effect in this connection than any of its predecessors along the lines of official inquiry. It is a perfectly judicial document, issued by a Board whose president is a barrister of repute with a remarkable record, in that he had been chosen as a judge of the High Court of Australia and declined to ratify the appointment. No better guarantee of ability and sound judgment could be offered. This report, therefore, might well have become ammunition for German representatives at the Peace 112 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Conference if it could be shown to be silent about German atrocities in the Pacific, and if it had practically nothing to say about the great moral ideals which have been in conflict in the ocean since Godeffroy & Son drove the pioneers of German trade therein to the wall. As a matter of fact, almost the only adverse reference to Germany's treatment of the natives and of the imported Chinese is contained in the quotation from the report already given.* Mr. C. H. Hughes, representing the Union Steamship Company- one of the largest and most important shipping companies in the Pacific has, quite briefly, added his witness to the evils of a system that has been as ruthless and brutal throughout that ocean as in the continent of Africa. Mr. C. H. Hughes, too, points out that he has no special interest in the island groups. His Company is neither planter nor merchant, and therefore is not concerned about the disabilities of trading and planting in the islands. Nor is it subsidised to carry mails to and from Fiji or Samoa. Thus the evidence of this witness is worth a good deal and cannot be discounted, as some of the rest may be, by the personal interests of those involved. But the point is that there is practically no direct evidence upon German humanitarian ideals evidence given in detail, with examples, and tested by cross-examination throughout the whole report of the Australian Inter-State Commission. In some respects it is like the Sterndale report of 1874 ; for according to it Captain Strasburg, in 1917, gave evidence before the Commission that native labour for Samoa was easily obtained, that the recruiting vessels filled up quickly, and that " boys " who had been there once were quite ready to go again. It may be remarked that the " D. H. * See ante, pp. 66, 67. THE TWO IDEALS 113 & P. G. " could alone recruit from the Solomons and other German possessions, and that before the war Chinese were brought from the German area of control in China to Samoa. British and individual German planters in Samoa had to go afield. Thus the curious power of the " Long Handle Firm " is again indicated, and one would like to sift out the evidence about it in a dozen different directions. But the Inter-State Commission Report helps not at all. The reply, no doubt, is that it is a business document, like the New Zealand Blue Book of 1874. Its range of inquiry was limited to British and Australian trade in the South Pacific ; and Germany only comes in as threatening in the past to strangle our trade or as likely in the future to prejudice its development. Hence the mass of interesting material contained in the evidence is digested and presented in the report, not so much because it offers a case against Germany, but rather as information to guide the repre- sentatives of the Commonwealth of Australia when dis- cussing the trade, commerce, and production of the Southern Pacific at the Peace Conference. Moreover, the native labour question is a very thorny one for planters of all nationalities. Australian and British capital has been invested in German possessions, both in Samoa and the Solomons ; and German control of native labour, with German discipline, had simplified the problem of production for those concerned. It is easy to see that in Samoa, for instance, British planters who have been depending on Chinese labour are likely to be in a parlous plight now if under New Zealand administration the coolies are to be sent back to China as part of a policy of repatriation. The Samoans do not work willingly, and, indeed, do not need to work. As they proved insufficient the Chinese S.G. I 114 STEVENSON'S GERMANY have been brought in, and now the problem for the planters is how to replace them. Samoan chiefs are declared to have protested against the presence of Chinese in the group and are understood to have complained that native women were being interfered with. If this be the basis upon which action has been taken, the official affirmation may come with the actual return of coolies to China, and at the expense of the white planters. But, whether or no, the business men who gave evidence before the Inter-State Commission in Australia were more concerned with the future than the past. They showed that German commerce was a wonderfully organised thing, that everywhere Germany stood behind her traders and planters, that a system of shipping subsidies was working like a great gun upon a specially prepared emplacement, and that there was much in German methods to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. As sheer business the German policy for extending trade and increasing production was felt to be eminently successful. The " D. H. & P. G." paid a dividend just before the war of 36 per cent., " the rate of dividend having gradually risen from 8 per cent., the amount paid in 1900." * As to the German New Guinea Company with a share capital of 375,000 and reserve funds of 132,500 " its receipts from its sale of products and from its trading business for the twelve months ending March, 1913, amounted to 147,138." f Naturally the Australian witnesses were anxious to show how Germany's policy was bearing fruit in sharpening competition. But the Inter- State Commission Report deals with the various phases of this trade war without indulging in adverse * Inter-State Commission Report, p. 109. t Ibid., p. 109. THE TWO IDEALS 115 criticism. Shipping subsidies may still be legitimate business ; and particulars are given of Government assistance, other than the German, in the Dutch and Japanese subsidies to lines of steamers running in the Pacific. Before the war it was all vigorous trading enter- prise on Germany's part ; and after 1914 the business men of Australia have looked back to remember what a complete system had been built up by German thoroughness and attention to detail. They are hardly to be blamed for this. Whether as planters or traders they have to make profits or fall out of the ranks, and the employment of native labour under a milder British administration certainly makes it harder to thrive than under the German method of placing the white man on a throne and regarding the brown man as his slave. Thus the German apologist before the Peace Conference would not have objected to quote from the Report of the Australian Inter-State Commission, because he would proceed to read into its marshalled facts and careful conclusions a tribute to success with little qualification or discount. The sharpness of contrast between German and British ideals cannot be brought out by quotations from these official documents. It is possible, indeed, for the cynic to deny that there are any spiritual or moral forces behind business as such. All business men, therefore, are on one level and the German is as good as the Briton. But the truth about German methods, throwing light upon German intentions and purposes, may be found in other ways, just as the British love for fair play and even-handed justice may be discerned by contrast. Mr. Poultney Bigelow puts the whole thing clearly in his " Prussian Memories." When travelling through to the Pacific in i2 116 STEVENSON'S GERMANY the decade before 1914 he found Germans everywhere setting up a German kingdom and already putting the rest of the world in outer darkness. " In my three journeys to the Far East since the accession of the present Emperor," he says, " I have noted the distinct I had almost said the violent progress of German prestige east of Suez and west of California, owing to the energy with which the Berlin Government was carrying out the great oratorical dictum that Germany's future lay upon the water. Where formerly all white people in the Far East united in one social centre, not merely for sport but also self-defence, if need be, the policy of 1888 showed itself in clubs where only Germans came together and where the one congenial theme was the prospective triumph of the German language over the English as a medium of intercourse with Chinese, Malay, and Hindoo. Even on a German Government steamer carrying the British mail between Hong Kong and Bangkok I found two tables in the main saloon, one for Germans only, and the other for the cosmopolitan white, under which term I seek to designate the sort of man who makes an agreeable travelling or club companion in every part of the world. The Swede, Norwegian, Dane, Dutch, Belgian, Russian, American, Turk all these may blend harmoniously in a Far Eastern club, and each contributes to relieve the common tedium after office hours. But enter a German, and we know him by a metaphorical chip on his shoulder and a tacit assertion that what other members regard as social privileges he intends to claim as legal rights." * German subsidised mail steamers impressed Mr. Bigelow * "Prussian Memories; 1 by Poultney Bigelow, M.A,, F.B.G.S., p. 125. THE TWO IDEALS 117 with their manifest German purpose. " Not only to North American ports, but to Mediterranean as well as to African, Australian, Chinese, and Japanese ports also, the German flag showed itself more and more aggressive each flag representing not merely the thrift of German merchants but a potential auxiliary cruiser commanded by officers of the German naval reserve and a crew trained to handle guns at the porthole no less than soup tureens and beer- mugs in the steward's department." Careful trade organi- sation and the shrewdest attention to detail, in creating a demand for German goods, went hand in hand with the forcing of a world policy which was to leave German Kultur and the German language supreme, with the German heel on every neck and German society reserved for genuine sons of the Fatherland. Mr. Bigelow wrote his book before the United States came into the war, and he was not a mere outside student of German ways. He had lived in Germany and could speak German so well that he had some difficulty on one occasion in his youth, when arrested near Strasburg, in satisfying the military authorities that he was not a German and therefore not liable for military service. The arresting official before letting him go complained that he spoke German without any accent. But Mr. Bigelow had not realised, when in Germany, how the German mind was working in the world's far reaches of Empire and how thoroughly the determination to break Britain was being expressed in act and conduct. He says : " From the club-house verandah at Singapore I one day counted twenty-five funnels of one German line, and when I looked into the matter I found that this great subsidised company had successively bought up small competing English lines and 118 STEVENSON'S GERMANY was now carrying the British mail to British colonies and securing almost a monopoly of the most important know- ledge regarding these imperfectly charted waters, notably between the Philippines, North Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula." * This is a reminder of the strategy behind German trade and shipping enterprise. Australia has always felt the burden of proximity to Asia ; but between herself and Asia lie the Dutch Indies with their dependence upon a mother country which was continually threatened by Germany. Holland's administration of her possessions in the Far East has been so successful that Java, for instance, has been offered as an example of the way to solve the problem of native labour in the Pacific. Its population has steadily increased ; and production has so multiplied in extent and volume that the Dutch have found their profits on one side of the world a fruitful cause of envy to others, just as their seat upon the mouths of the Rhine has been a source of constant anxiety to themselves. Australia has noted it all with growing interest, and the war has not relieved the pressure upon her thought as she has looked northward. The Inter-State Commission Report touches this extra- ordinary development, in the growing number of natives and in an increasing efficiency for production under Dutch rule, with businesslike solicitude. In Australia is a stretch of country within the tropical belt covering something like a million square miles unsettled and uncultivated. Queensland from Rockhampton northward, no doubt, grows sugar and raises cattle ; and sheep are gradually coming to their own as the cattle go further afield. But, all told, the white population of northern Queensland is * " Prussian Memories,*' p. 125, THE TWO IDEALS 119 not much larger than that of a fair-sized city in the south. Chinese and aboriginal natives make up the balance, with a few Japanese ; but when the last soul is counted northern Australia is a vast empty land, practically inviting occupa- tion from Asiatics who are ready and willing to put labour into the rich soil along its rivers and to make the wilderness blossom as the rose. Not far away, then, is Malaysia, a potential Paradise, another million square miles in area, to which the Chinese are steadily gravitating. The part of it owned by Holland already contains nearly fifty millions of people and the great bulk of this population is in Java. A well-informed article entitled " The Conquering Chinese," appeared in Harper's Monthly for July, 1918, which is well worth reading by those who are interested in the subject and have not time to study Year Books and Reports and other carefully prepared volumes of facts and figures. The writer, Mr. Walter E. Weyl, is really dealing with the peace-loving, hard-working Chinaman. His subject is the Celestial Empire as one of the great unconquerable and unchanging forces of the world except as it will absorb and assimilate Western science and know- ledge, finally to embrace and then overcome every obstacle. But China is beginning to settle the million square miles of Malaysia, in which Java alone is fulfilling its destiny. Into this wonderful tropical fairyland which Germany has been watching this million square miles set in a vast space of ocean has come the question of China and the overspill of its eight hundred millions of people. The population of Java in a century of Dutch rule has developed from between four and five millions to thirty millions. And, as Mr. Weyl says, it is still increasing under the excellent administration of Holland, so that to-day the 120 STEVENSON'S GERMANY island with an area which is only about 7 per cent, of that of the Dutch East Indies sustains more than two-thirds of its people. " It has 720 people to the square mile, more than any country in Europe." And Mr. Weyl continues : " It is in the other Malaysian islands, in those still unpopulated, that a field for Chinese immigration lies wide open. If these islands ultimately attain a density of population as great as that of Java they will hold 720,000,000 souls instead of 50,000,000. These islands are yearly becoming more habitable. Under the rule of European and American Governments the best methods of colonial administration will be applied, as well as those new systems of combating tropical diseases which have proved so successful in Panama. They lie close to the southern provinces of China, so close that a few dollars will carry a steerage passenger, bringing with him his own rice. The Chinese thrives under good government ; he spreads as a result of European imperialism, just as in Africa Mohamme- danism spreads under the political expansion of the Christian Powers. In the Dutch East Indies, we are told, there are already 4 1,500,000 Chinese and 300,000 Arabs,' and ' these are the over-lords of the land ; and the Chinese are superior to the Arab traders. Throughout the length and breadth of Malaysia,' writes Dr. Francis Guillemard, 4 the Chinese has made his way.' "* Australia has naturally watched this astonishing development in tropical agriculture and increasing population, so close to her back doors, with absorbed attention, though rather in its relation to Asia as the main problem. Her own million square miles north of the Tropic of Capricorn is a constant source of anxiety ; and when her officials in Papua make comparisons and * Harper's Monthly, July, 1918, pp. 161, 162. THE TWO IDEALS 121 draw conclusions, after visiting Java, the paradox becomes more puzzling than ever. The Hon. Staniforth Smith, Director of Agriculture in the Territory of Papua, has paid three official visits to the Netherlands East Indies in nine years, the last one in 1914 just after the war was developing into the deadlock beyond the Marne. An International Rubber Congress was being held in Batavia, at which he was to represent the Commonwealth of Australia ; and though the failure of his steamer connections prevented his attendance at the time appointed, his report is full of important matter. He has nothing but good to say of the Dutch administration. After each of his three official visits, he has become more convinced that Holland has been successful in dealing with the natives under her control, and in handling the vexed problem of native labour. He says that the Dutch have shown great ability both in directing economic development and in governing and uplifting the subject races committed to their care. Like India, the destiny of these islands was in the hands of an East India Company ; and, as with Great Britain, the Government of Holland stepped in to assume the burden of responsibility. Mr. Staniforth Smith declares, then, that " the first and highest aim of the people of Holland has been to uplift and benefit the millions of natives that are under their charge and control. They have always been prepared to sacrifice revenue and material interests for the true welfare of the natives. They have confirmed the natives in the perpetual possession of the richest and best lands in Java. The taxation is not burdensome, and large sums have been spent in the creation of native hospitals, Pasteur and vaccine institutes to prevent the spread of infectious and contagious 122 STEVENSON'S GERMANY diseases ; in the training of native doctors ; and in the erection of thousands of schools for the scholastic and technical education of the native races."* From a popula- tion in chains, broken by the despotic rule of the rajahs and shrunken by war, there has arisen a people 33,000,000 strong, prosperous, contented, and steadily progressive under European control. " I believe in the whole annals of tropical government it would be difficult to discover an achievement more worthy of praise and emulation." This is the verdict of the Australian official from the Territory of Papua. Here, therefore, were the Netherlands East Indies, and much beside, under Germany's greedy eyes, with an infinite spread of islands still eastward and with Australia com- pleting the magnificent panorama of tropical wealth, two- thirds of its continental area cooling down into temperate regions which greatly enhanced the value of the whole. But we must consider British ideals, as represented through- out the Pacific, and co-ordinating with the Dutch ideals as they were given practical expression in Java, beside the German thought of control through Asia and across the Pacific. Other nations had been building up, cultivating, and developing their possessions, with many slips and reverses, gathering experience and wisdom as they went. Germany, however, was to enter into a mighty domain prepared by Holland in the East, and by Great Britain and her Dominions in India and Australasia, on some crude idea that native races would come to heel at a word, and that the white folk everywhere would be ready for the German yoke after a blow from Germany's mailed fist. * Parliamentary Paper, Commonwealth of Australia, 191415, " The Netherland East Indies," p. 6. THE TWO IDEALS 123 It was to be done on some wonderful plan prepared in Berlin, and uniformity was to be its mark throughout the world. When Mr. Poultney Bigelow travelled round from Singapore to Kiao Chau, the intervening British ports were crowded with contented Chinese. In 1910 Sir Frederick Lugard laid the foundation stone of a Chinese University at Hong Kong, to the cost of which Chinese merchants were subscribing much money, and there was no parade about the business. British prestige was a very real thing in the East, as the shrewd American traveller found. But when he reached German possessions, the whole atmosphere thickened, and the fog got into his throat. The Chinese at Kiao Chau had to be driven to work, and the German settlement was a good place to avoid. Round through to New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago it was the same. Fine buildings and well-ordered administrative centres did not compensate for native distrust ; and an attempt everywhere to carry out the rule and practice of German municipal government only emphasised the fact that Germany's tropical possessions were not possessed at all. But the disaster bred of Germany's mad ambition to control everything, and her readiness to break where she could not bend, has been sufficiently revealed in the war itself. It is enough to say that what happened before the war is being re-interpreted by the light of the war ; and the feeling throughout Australasia is that Germany can never be trusted again. Even business men, who think of a new world with Germany disarmed, cannot forget her devious ways when foiled in time of peace. The evidence given before the Australian Inter- State Commission showed that, although Messrs. Burns, Philp & Co. forced the hands of the Jaluit Company, the former firm was beaten at last 124 STEVENSON'S GERMANY in the field of its most profitable business. The first part of the story has already been told in " The New Pacific " ; and it may suffice to say that the Australian Inter- State Commission Report has noted Germany's efforts to make trade advantage by breaking solemn agreements. So when the Jaluit Company was beaten and Germany paid the fine, the Norddeutscher Lloyd was ordered to take up the foils in a gentlemanly way this time. A director of the company was sent from Germany to Herbertshohe, in New Britain, to arrange a five-years' contract on special terms, on condition that all the German merchants without exception came in. The German merchants were obedient, and indeed it was to their interest to obey, because the Norddeutscher Lloyd was serving them at less than cost price. It did not pay the company ; but the Government subsidy and Government orders were sufficient. Messrs. Burns, Philp & Co. were driven right out of German New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago and only got back when an Australian Expeditionary Force took possession for the Allies. Mr. Balfour's speech at the Australian Club luncheon in London in October, 1918, sums up the whole position in this relation. Australia and New Zealand are far away from the centre of Empire, and have been obliged to fight their own battles more than once. To them it is absolutely vital that Germany shall not be established at points of vantage again. Mr. Balfour said that " time and distance prevented complete community of thought ; therefore there had been thrown upon several units great political responsibility and a great political task, for which there was no precedent. The question was, could we rise to this great responsibility ? To do so we must see that under no THE TWO IDEALS 125 consideration are the great arteries of sea communication severed by any foe. With this in mind, those German colonies secured by the efforts of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa will not be returned to Germany. If they are returned, what security can there be that they will not be used by their original possessors as bases for piratical warfare ? " Mr. Balfour added that " he had given long thought and full consideration to the question, and under no circum- stances consonant with the safety of the Empire could the colonies be returned. This was no selfish or imperial- istic doctrine. It was one in which the whole civilised world as closely concurred as ourselves. Were the means of communication to be at the mercy of a Power who refused to be bound by treaty, who was as deaf to its pledges as to decent methods and humanity in warfare ? " * Germany's thought of the Netherlands East Indies was one of conquest, and all her later trade relations with Australia were based upon a definite plan of campaign to the same end. Her attitude to the natives everywhere has been that of con- queror and her record in the great war has been so full of desperate crime that the people of the British Dominions will never trust her again. * Sydney Morning Herald, October 25th, 1918. CHAPTER XII THE MISSIONARY FACTOR Germany never an explorer. Equally indebted to Britain on the missionary side. Yet bad for German trade. In- structions against missionaries. Sir George Grey and Bishop Selwyn as Imperialists. Caroline Island chief moved to approve. New Zealand and the king movement. Maori Christianity. Maori loyalty. " This is my flag." George Brown watching it all. Maoris fighting for the Empire. IT has already been shown that Germany was never an explorer or pioneer in the Pacific. Other nations laboured there, and she entered into their labours. Through her trade she prepared for conquest, and no moral considera- tions had weight with her. Yet on the moral and spiritual side she was again profoundly indebted to the work of others ; for her trade would have been impossible in the extended form it took if heroic men and women had not first spent or laid down their lives for the native races. Germany in Samoa, in the Solomons, in the Bismarck Archipelago, and in New Guinea, benefited by the civilis- ing and Christianising influences which were constantly brought to bear upon the barbarism and hostility of many tribes and clans. These were face to face, no doubt, with the white man's greed and the white man's vices ; and there is an apparent lack of logic in the general statement. The white man's advent threatened to make the brown man's grave, where it had not already actually dug it deep and wide. Germany entered the Pacific to find white adventurers on many of the beaches, and not infrequently THE MISSIONARY FACTOR 127 living with the natives ; and she simply used the material for her trading purposes as she found it. But had not men like James Chalmers, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Brown, Sir William MacGregor, and other just and able administrators, missionaries, and writers, thrown their weight into the scale, the history of the ocean would have been somewhat like the story of the great war. As far as Germany was concerned it would have begun and ended with outrage and every abomination ; and at last the impossibility of carrying on any enterprise on a basis of mere money-making would have been demonstrated. Self- aggrandisement would have been attempted on islands emptied of their native inhabitants, which for years would have been made as useless for civilisation as Mexico and Peru after the conquering Spaniards had ruined them. Argue as objectors may, the great moral and spiritual uplift of missionary work in the Pacific had a powerful effect in saving the situation for Germany and making possible her plans for trade and industry. Ways were continually being opened for her activities. But missionary work represents the fine broad influence of men of character, not necessarily identified with any church organisation, as well as the labours of such spiritual pioneers as Samuel Marsden, John Williams, the Selwyns, father and son, Patteson, and their successors in a dozen lines of indepen- dent spiritual enterprise. There is, of course, the purely missionary side to this. That all men of strong Christian principle working in the Pacific represented conflict with the pure materialism of German traders like Theodor Weber has been clearly demonstrated, and the battle between them was joined early in the day. But long before W T eber began to play his ruthless game the field had been prepared, and 128 STEVENSON'S GERMANY was being held, not by white traders on the beaches or hardy adventurers on the high seas, but by simple earnest men following a definite line of duty as missionaries in various islands and island groups, and carrying with them the sympathy and support of a multitude of fellow country- men in Great Britain and the United States. The yeast was beginning to work in the mass of dark unspiritual humanity which covered the islands of the Pacific ; and it became bad for trade, as the German carried it on. Thus the Sterndale report, in the New Zealand Blue Book of 1874, is emphatic upon the point of an issue joined and of a definite campaign entered upon by the house of Godeffroy against mission work everywhere. The Godeffroy traders were given certain instructions. Each man was supplied with transport, with material to build a storehouse, and with goods for trade ; but he was paid no salary, as his payment depended upon what he was able to send back from the island or islands under his grasp. Further, the trader was ordered to get a native woman for himself and to oppose and obstruct missionaries at all points. Already the conflict had become sharp over Godeffroy's unscrupu- lous use of debased coinage, not only because it seriously affected Mission revenues, but because it was bad in itself. The natives were being taught to expect fair play and to demand their rights in a deal. The moral side of the question of trade was being set against the material, the Christian ethic was opposed once and for all to the hard grab for profits. Then political power was claimed. It was a natural corollary to the stern demand for gains on the scale that the Godeffroys wanted ; and at once Robert Louis Stevenson put his foot into the arena. This is where Mission work in the Pacific must be recognised for some- THE MISSIONARY FACTOR 129 thing greater than mere Church organisation or competition between societies financed by various religious denomina- tions. Selwyn the elder was a Churchman, and as intense and narrow in some of his views as any small white mission- ary settled among the natives. But when looking abroad in the Pacific he became a statesman in mind and spirit. He influenced men in spite of themselves. George Brown left England in an emigrant ship bound for New Zealand in 1855, with Bishop Selwyn on board, and the latter started classes in Maori for those who cared to learn the language. George Brown joined at once. The thoughtless lad, with no wish but to get to the ends of the earth, was thus brought into contact with both Selwyn and Patteson ; and he admitted quite frankly that they profoundly affected his subsequent career. But the Selwyn who taught Maori to emigrant youths was concerned about the whole native outlook, and he and Sir George Grey would have soon brought the strategic island groups of the Pacific under the British flag. So eager were they to give the natives everywhere a chance that the story had only to be told some years later to a chief in the Caroline Islands by an English traveller to move him to exclaim : " It is indeed well ; one family, one flag. The sea-girt lands will hold together like one household, the people will plant the ground and gather the fruits in security, and war will vanish as the night at sunrise."* This was in the group where Germany subsequently sought to break the natives to her will by forced labour, the lash, and rigid rules of conduct drafted in Berlin and where rebellion was met with slaughter and atrocities of the usual German type. " Sir George Grey's magnificent dream of the federation of * " The Caroline Islands," by F. W. Christian, p. 220. S.Q. K 130 STEVENSON'S GERMANY all the isles of the Pacific, " as the English traveller put it, stirred the imagination of one of these Caroline Islanders, and appealed to his sense of the fitness of things ; while Germany's thought of Empire simply drove him later on into frenzied opposition. How thoroughly this ferment worked upon the native mind is to be seen in the experience of New Zealand herself in the fateful years of the king movement. There was danger as well as safety in the gospel of freedom and the announcement ol universal brotherhood. Sir George Grey and Bishop Selwyn may have realised the implications of their large thoughts of the natives ; for when kings and queens were seen by Maori chiefs at close quarters, and that great chief Hongi learned something of the doings of a wonderful man named Napoleon Buonaparte, there was trouble. It must be remembered that Sir George Grey had two terms as Governor of New Zealand. He left in 1853 and returned in 1863. In the interval the two races faced one another with increasing doubt as to the future ; and the inevitable collision came again in 1859 with war between the Maori and the white folk. Settlements in the earlier days had to be abandoned as a consequence of the raids of Hongi himself, who had set the North Island in a blaze. His trip to England to see the King William IV. had resulted in his return to New Zealand with guns and ammunition, among other things, for the civilisation of his fellow Maori. Withal he had begun to see visions and dream dreams. He, too, would be a king, and he proceeded to use his guns upon the neighbouring tribes, to their utter surprise and discomfiture in such unequal war- fare. He spread fire and ruin through the north. Then there was an interval ; and the revival of the king move- THE MISSIONARY FACTOR 131 ment came during George Brown's stay in New Zealand. The critical decision was reached in 1857, three years before he set out for Samoa, to stay in that group till 1870. One of the principal Maori tribes remained loyal to the British flag, and a station called Waingaroa was its head centre. (This must not be confounded with a northern Maori settlement called Whangaroa which had been the scene of the Boyd massacre in earlier days, when a whole ship's crew was done to death by the natives.) A new ferment was working. The white man's teaching of brotherhood and of liberty under the law was being turned against him and the Maoris were beginning again to ask whether they could not have a native king in their own land. The Rev. J. H. Fletcher, who was Head Master of Wesley College in Auckland and in later years became President of Newington College in Sydney, writing in 1858 said : 44 Maori Christianity is a great fact, yet it has its perplexing aspects. This people suddenly, and as it were at a bound, reached a certain pitch of civilisation and christianisation, and there they halt. . . . One great hindrance to Maori civilisation has been their traditional communism. No man can say that the loaf in his cupboard, or the shirt on his back, is his own. He who built a better house than his neighbour would find everybody else as ready to appreciate it, and as determined to enjoy it, as himself. Then the possession of lands far beyond anything they can ever need, and the chaos into which government has fallen amongst them, lead to fanaticism and political rottenness here a prophet starts up and there a king. . . . Cannibalism, the war-dance, the uproar and madness of heathenism, are gone. The scene is changed beyond question, yet many years of toil, of personal influence and example on the part of the 132 STEVENSON'S GERMANY missionaries, will be needed to bring in the order, the purity of thought, the ascendency of law, the prevalence of industry and enterprise, the literature and the social decencies and proprieties which are inseparable from our ideas of Chris- tianity."* The Maoris were never a race to be trifled with ; and the news of war against the white man stirred Samoa and Fiji to their depths. Proud and sensitive treacherous, no doubt as the Maoris were, they were capable of the highest service and self-sacrifice. This was seen when the king movement was again working to a crisis. The great tribe in the north which could be trusted was actively, not passively, loyal. But evil influences were at work elsewhere. The younger men of the tribes were getting restless, and some of the older men allowed jealousy, and often well- founded irritation, to move them to listen to the voice of the tempter. Then like a thunderbolt the break came, and at last Potatau was proclaimed king, while a new flag was hoisted to take the place of the Union Jack. But the tribe mentioned above, Ngatimahanga, would have none of it, and Dr. George Brown told the present writer that he well remembered hearing one of the leading chiefs, Te Awaitaia, give his opinion of the new flag. The whole thing is interesting because it helps to explain how British influence became known and understood among the Samoans, when Germany through Theodor Weber began to move upon the group, and why the Samoan chiefs more than once offered their islands to Great Britain. An uncle of Dr. Brown, the Rev. Thomas Buddie, was an authority on Maori history and Maori aspirations ; and in his interesting monograph * " Sermons, Addresses and Essays," by Joseph Horner Fletcher, pp. 27, 28. THE MISSIONARY FACTOR 133 " The King Movement in New Zealand," published in 1860, he says that the flag hoisted in place of the Union Jack was one given by William IV. to the united tribes at the Bay of Islands. It, therefore, could hardly have been the flag presented to Hongi on his visit to England in 1820, when he was also given a suit of armour and was excited by stories of Napoleon. The flag hoisted by the king party at a great meeting of 2,000 natives on the banks of the Waikato River in May, 1857, had upon it the inscription " Potatau, King of New Zealand " ; and the opposing party at this meeting headed by Te Awaitaia, hoisted the Union Jack. Dr. Brown heard the latter say scornfully, pointing to the other flag : " What is that ? I do not know it. I never saw it before. Take it away. What fighting has it ever seen ? Has it waved over any battle on sea or land ? Take it away. Has it a name ? Does it live in the hearts of the people ? Can it be found where the ships come and go ; or has it a place among the nations ? Take it away. I do not honour it, and I am not bound by it." Then he turned to the Union Jack and said : " This is the flag. It has been carried in battle and it flies on every sea. What sea is there where it cannot be seen ? What battles have been fought where it was not a pledge of victory ? This is my flag. It is the Queen's flag, and under it I will live and die. Its honour is my honour. Its glory is my glory." The king party was headed by the principal chief of the Ngatihaua tribe, William Thompson Tarapipipi, who was the author and promoter of the movement, and with him was associated Te Heuheu and other influential chiefs. After they had spoken at this meeting, Te Awaitaia rose and said : "I am a small man and a fool. I am ignorant of those scriptures you quote. Ngatihaua don't be dark. 134 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Waikato hear ; Taupo attend. I speak as a father, and my word is this. I promised the first Governor when he came to see me, and I promised all the rest, that I would stick to him and be a subject of the Queen. I intend to keep my promise, for they have kept theirs. They have taken no land. The desire to sell was mine, and they gave me money. Why do you bring that flag here ? There is trouble in it. I can't see my way clear. But I know there is trouble in that flag. I am content with the old one. It is seen all over the world, and belongs to me. I get some of its honour. What honour can I get from your flag ? It is like a fountain without water. Don't trouble me. You say we are slaves. If acknowledging that flag (pointing to the Queen's) makes me a slave, I am a slave. Let me alone. Don't bring trouble upon us. Go back to the mountains. Let us live in peace ; I and the Governor will take our own course." The speech made a profound impression and W T illiam Thompson rose after a long silence and said : " I am sorry my father has spoken so strongly. He has taken away my life." But other meetings and continued agitation moved the tribes at last ; and Potatau was proclaimed king. He was an old man who had been notable in his day, but was chosen because he would not give Thompson and the rest any trouble. He was a good figurehead, and the others had all the power. George Brown watched the movement with increasing interest. But it was clear that the tragedy in view was being born of the old conflict of two rights. The white settlers had their just claims, and the Maoris were conscious of a spirit before which their own privileges and traditions were in jeopardy. The two races were bound to come in conflict unless a better understanding of THE MISSIONARY FACTOR 135 each by the other could arise. George Brown was reaching the conclusion, which he applied right through his life as a missionary, that he must learn to think and feel as the natives did before he could fairly interpret Christianity and the white man's civilisation to them ; but he realised that some of the problems would be well nigh insoluble unless Great Britain acted not only fairly but fearlessly. We know what the result has been for New Zealand. The Maoris to-day are our fellow- citizens within the Empire. They vote and have their own Parliamentary representa- tives. They have fought and have died for the flag which many of their grandfathers would have torn down every- where, but which to-day is the sure warrant of their liberty and of their rights as land owners and wealth producers. Education is bringing them into ever closer relations with their white brethren, and the wonderful progress of New Zealand is as much an asset for them as for the rest of the population. But New Zealand has always been a centre of interest for Samoa and the Samoans. Sir Julius Vogel in his grandiloquent way said : " It is remarkable how the prevailing winds make New Zealand and the islands mutually accessible. They proclaim New Zealand as the natural headquarters of Polynesia." Steam, no doubt, has altered all that ; but the natives of Samoa do not forget that their canoes, built on the island of Savaii, at one time had a great reputation among the Maoris, and that indeed the very name " Savaii " is full of romance. It indicates in itself a Polynesian dispersion from Samoa, and a probable peopling of New Zealand and Hawaii from the group which Germany was able at last to appropriate. This is only mentioned to show how eagerly news from New Zealand was looked for, and how the sense of a common origin 136 STEVENSON'S GERMANY moved the Samoans to think along similar lines, though with a certain condescension. The Maoris were still cannibals long after the Samoans had abandoned canni- balism. But British prestige counted for much ; and when British missionaries conquered Samoa they carried with them the flag, though out of sight, which flew upon every sea and under which New Zealand was settling down to such wonderful prosperity. Why, then, should not Great Britain save Samoa from Germany ? It was a question continually asked by Samoan chiefs in the days when George Brown was striving to teach them the futility of war as a means of settling their differences. Germany may have felt that the conquest wrought by mission work in Samoa was worth little enough, since the natives fought in spite of it and to her ultimate advantage. But from Samoa went George Brown to New Britain with native teachers, ten years before Germany took possession ; and by the time his successors, Benjamin Banks and others, had done their work innumerable barriers were broken down. The hated missionary became Germany's right hand. Country was opened up by their aid ; and villages that had been fighting and were in constant enmity became friendly under the white man's persuasion. As one looks back it is all very strange. There is no finer story of heroism in mission annals than that of the occupation of New Britain by British missionaries where Carteret sailed and took possession for King George III. There the German trader triumphed, but Germany ultimately was disposed of by the forces of a Dominion whose name and place were still to come when the initial British flag was flown. There, too, the Australian Commonwealth to-day is watching develop- ments with the keenest solicitude because of the past. CHAPTER XIII GOVERNMENT BY PRECEPT Sir George Grey and Tawhiao. They sign the pledge. Sir Arthur Gordon and Maafu. Sir William MacGregor's way. Dr. Brown in New Britain and the Solomons. Glad- stone's policy. Cost of the wars in New Zealand. Catching Tartars. Dr. Brown's criticism of Government fears. The case of Fiji. Germany benefited by Gladstone's hesitancies. NEVER was there a better example of the British way of dealing with native chiefs than that given by Sir George Grey in his years as Governor of New Zealand. One is also reminded that the island of Kawau saw many interesting people and events in the twenty years of Sir George Grey's residence between 1870 and 1892. His biographers note that " it was there that the Maori King Tawhiao, who was about to visit England, came to ask Sir George's advice as to his conduct, when Sir George, knowing the weakness of the savage prince, became a total abstainer in order to prevail upon Tawhiao to do the same. With tears the Maori King pledged his word to the ex-Governor, and that word was royally kept. Never once during his trip to England did Tawhiao touch spirituous liquors."* It is interesting to recall the fact that from Kawau in 1880 Sir George Grey wrote the long letter to Malietoa, the King of Samoa, then in the grip of Germany, and that the wisdom and moderation of his advice bore fruit later on, after Malietoa's fall, in his restoration. It was help for Germany * "Life and Times of Sir George Grey," Vol. II., p. 508. 138 STEVENSON'S GERMANY notwithstanding, and this is typical of everything that has happened in the Pacific. On one occasion, when talking with the present writer, Dr. George Brown made a shrewd remark. " What impresses me so much," said the veteran missionary, who was always a student of the currents of Empire as they set and swirled through the Pacific, " is the fact that Sir George was a paradox with quite a reasonable explanation. He was an officer of the British Army, an autocrat, a great Imperialist when other men were afraid of Empire, and a builder of Empire into the bargain, and yet he was the greatest democrat of his time, both at the beginning and the end of it. These extraordinary opposites can be reconciled in his work. He did things ; and his way of doing them, as well as his spirit in doing them, are the key to any success we may hope to achieve in a new order in the Pacific." When Dr. Brown was in England in 1886 he visited Lord Stanmore, Sir Arthur Gordon of the earlier years, and at dinner one night he said to his host : " Lord Stanmore, I have been telling a story about you all over the country, and it is time I found out whether it is true." Lord Stan- more looked up with a puzzled frown, ejaculating, " Eh what ? " Dr. Brown continued : " It is about Maafu." It should be explained that Thakombau and Maafu were the two chiefs principally responsible for the cession of Fiji to the British Government, and that they hated one another. During the ceremonies of cession, had Thakom- bau not called Maafu's name to follow his own in drinking from the Yanqoma bowl there would probably have been no deed signed at all. Lord Stanmore certainly remembered Maafu and said so. "It was upon Maafu," said Dr. Brown, " that my story turned, but you are the principal person in GOVERNMENT BY PRECEPT 139 it after all. I have told audiences up and down this country that after the cession Maafu and Thakombau received pensions from the British Government, and that soon after that event Maafu began to drink heavily. Well, in my story I said that you, the Governor, sent for him and told him what a pity it was. You argued with him. You urged that he was ruining his health, shortening his life, and imperilling his pension by drinking as he was doing, and when this was not effective you on one occasion said : 4 Look here, Maafu, perhaps you think that because I drink wine and you see it on Government House table you are right in doing the same. But it is not the same, and you are in danger. Just to show you what I think about it, I will put all wine from my table and take none myself as long as you keep away from it. If you will sign the pledge I will begin at once and stand by you ; and while you keep to your side of the bargain I will keep to mine. Is that fair ? ' Dr. Brown turned to Lord Stanmore and asked : "Is that true ? " Lord Stanmore looked at his guest doubtfully and replied : "I suppose people will say that I never kept my word because I take something now." Dr. Brown retorted : " But that is not the point. I said that as long as Maafu kept from drinking you kept your pledge and stood by him." Lord Stanmore nodded. " Yes," he said, " that is true " ; and Dr. Brown vouched for the fact that the Governor's steady friendship kept Maafu sober for years. It was well done, for Maafu was worth saving, and as a Tongan chief was one of the finest representatives of his order. Dr. Bromilow, in a recent appreciation, bears the same witness of Sir William Mac- Gregor. He says : " It is true of this great man that, when in Fiji he saw the harm resulting to certain chiefs from the use 140 STEVENSON'S GERMANY of intoxicants, he totally abstained from his own moderate partaking ; and in New Guinea he banished liquor from his own table to save some of his officers." But this was only an example of what was being done all over the Pacific. Even at the limits of Empire in far off Samoa, in New Britain and the Solomons, Dr. Brown looked at things not only with the eyes of the man on the spot, but also with the vision of a prophet. He could see that Gladstone's foreign policy was bearing evil fruit, not because the great man in London could not take large views, but because his ; administration at home and his yearnings for economy made prompt statesmanlike action abroad difficult if not impossible. The pioneers of Empire knew that Downing Street could not, or would not, get the facts into focus nor face the German menace with courage and resource. This, of course, involved more than a maintaining of present boundaries. It meant extending them and increasing the responsibility of Government from the centre in London, and perhaps Lord Morley's defence of Gladstone from this point of view may need repeating. But as it happened, however, it was not Gladstone's fault that Samoa was not annexed when the chiefs offered the group to Great Britain through Sir Arthur Gordon. On one occasion Dr. Brown said to the present writer : "I was talking to Lord Stan- more in his library at home in one of my visits to the old country ; and he took down a book that had never been published, though it had been printed, and perhaps had been distributed privately among his friends. It was just the record of his experiences as first Governor of Fiji, and probably of much beside. But the interesting thing was Lord Stanmore's statement that the most perplexing time of his life was when he had to decide whether to annex GOVERNMENT BY PRECEPT 141 Samoa or not. There was no direct means of communica- tion with the British Government by cable as in these days, and any decision had to be taken under the Governor's own responsibility. Had he annexed Samoa it is unlikely that the act would have been repudiated ; and it would have been the right thing. It would have saved a world of trouble. The way was quite clear, and Sir Arthur Gordon (as he was then) could see the mighty advantages of the course. But he hesitated and was lost. He has been attacked for his policy of annexation and extension in the Pacific, which found some expression in the tacking on of Rotumah to Fiji ; and perhaps he did think that he was justified in spreading the Empire. It certainly appealed to his ambition to leave some such ' footprints on the sands of time.' But he admitted to me that when the actual moment of decision came he could not face the future with the possibility of a great mistake on his conscience. Samoa was not annexed, though he said he was just on the point of committing the Government." When asked what the real reason behind this fear could be, Dr. Brown said that the British Government dreaded the expense of a native war. Sir Arthur Gordon was an inheritor of the Gladstone tradition in colonial administra- tion ; and one must remember that Lord Aberdeen, the head of the House of Gordon, was at one time Prime Minister when Gladstone was a member of the Cabinet. That was in the early fifties, in a coalition Government ; and it is interesting to note that on the break-up of the party alliance, and when a new Government was formed, the messenger from Lord Aberdeen to Gladstone was the future Governor of Fiji.* To turn up Spencer Walpole is * " Life of Gladstone," Vol. I., p. 398. 142 STEVENSON'S GERMANY to get a curious commentary upon this in relation to the present position in the Pacific. The author says that if in 1856 British statesmen and the British people " failed to appreciate at its true worth the value of a great colonial Empire, or the rapid expansion of a greater English- speaking republic, they were equally blind to the new forces that were growing up in Europe. Lord Palmerston, to the end of his life, remained strangely ignorant of the causes which were drawing the German people together, and was equally uninformed of the circumstances which were making the Prussian army the most efficient military machine in the world."* Dr. Brown used to insist that the whole situation was governed by the dread of what Empire would cost. Glad- stone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had a mind filled with thoughts of economy, and he made his mark by his grasp of the intricacies of home finance. When he remem- bered the Maori War in New Zealand, he shuddered at any repetition of the experience ; and if one thinks of the five years of his administration between 1880 and 1885, with the Zulu War and its consequences in black relief, it is possible to realise why the disasters of that struggle should make a timid Government shy of sanctioning the annexa- tion policy of a small colony like Queensland, when in 1883 Sir Thomas Mcllwraith caused the flag to be hoisted in New Guinea. As Dr. Brown on one occasion went over the ground he came to the conclusion that the larger statesman- like view of the Empire had a hard birth. " Lord Stan- more," he said, " thought that he might find himself involved in a native war in Samoa. He was quite wrong, in my opinion, and I told him so. But the idea in his * " History of Twenty-Five Years," Vol. I., p. 27. GOVERNMENT BY PRECEPT 143 mind was that the Samoans were so quarrelsome, and might become such a source of trouble that it was wiser to let well alone. Talleyrand's advice upon the writing of letters ' If you doubt, don't ' was Sir Arthur's guide. He doubted about Samoa and he didn't." Dr. Brown argued that this question of expense affected the whole situation in the Pacific, as far as British Govern- ments were concerned, because Australia at first would not contribute. They did not know enough about the natives, and Sir Arthur Gordon himself was often at sea. He was afraid of catching Tartars ; and he advised against the annexation of outlying groups, like the Solomons and the islands further to the west and north, because of this danger. Thus was Germany mightily assisted. But when talking to Lord Stanmore, Dr. Brown, with his knowledge of the native mind and character throughout the Pacific, scouted the idea of danger. Recalling the above con- versation with him when first Governor of Fiji, he said : " I pointed out that while there was certainly a big Tartar to watch in Fiji and perhaps in Samoa, the only Tartars in the other groups were small ones. This was brought out, too, in the course of my ' Carpe Diem ' papers in the Sydney Morning Herald, when the late Mr. Bernard Wise quoted Sir Arthur Gordon as an authority. Why, in New Britain I found people only five miles apart who could not understand one another's language. They were as much foreigners to one another as if they lived in different groups ; and in one case when I was determined to bring the people of two villages together, and had to leave hostages before I could persuade the principal men to come with me, I found among them old men who had never been outside the narrow boundaries of their native place. This was a 144 STEVENSON'S GERMANY locality in which the village borders approached within a couple of miles of one another, and the villages themselves were certainly not five miles apart. How could such people combine against a common enemy ? And how could chiefs who were aliens to their neighbours, and could not talk to them, raise any following in the country ? In Fiji there were chiefs exercising great authority, and if they combined against Great Britain or any other Power seeking to coerce them there was bound to be serious trouble. But in the Solomons and elsewhere the position was entirely different. The chiefs were small and could never combine ; and actual experience has shown that the people may be easily controlled if the British Government is willing to appoint the right men and spend the necessary money. There is the rub ! " Then one recalled the terrors of a native rising in Fiji, so constantly referred to in the letters of Dr. Fison before annexation. When Sir Arthur Gordon went to Fiji he must have been very much impressed with the fears of the white people under his jurisdiction, and he naturally read into every new situation the possibility of a repetition of the New Zealand wars, with an ever mounting cost to haunt him like a dreadful nightmare for the rest of his days. Britain's despair was Germany's opportunity. But as the situation worked out it was always more and more difficult to deal with such an insidious foe. Germany's ambitions had grown with each advance ; and the consistent progress of New Zealand and Australia added fuel to the flame. What had already been accomplished with native chiefs, impressed by Britain's might and influenced by their sense of British justice, became a German incentive not to go and do likewise, but to impose a yoke upon the natives which would only GOVERNMENT BY PRECEPT 145 gall and exasperate them. Summing up the situation, it may be said that British statesmen were never less logical than in the decade following the last Maori War in New Zealand, and Germany never more logical as the Gladstone hesitancies were capitalised in her favour. Germany scored by their aid, but more especially because of the self-denying labours of a magnificent band of British missionaries. CHAPTER XIV CLEARING A WAY FOB GERMANY Samoa a whirlpool of mischief. Colonel de Coetlogon. Stevenson and Moors wait upon him. The interview full of Burprise. Sir John Thurston and Stevenson. Threat of deportation. Samoans called liars and thieves. George Brown's love for the Samoans. His way with the natives. An incident in New Britain. A treacherous chief. The missionary's triumph. Germany again benefited by British efforts. WHEN Stevenson went to Samoa he found himself in a perfect whirlpool of intrigue and mischief. He had no special interest in the Samoans except such as his own kindly nature prompted ; and his genius was only quick- ened into speech and action at last because he saw that the natives, practically defenceless against German pressure, were actually delivering themselves into bondage. Even then his genuine missionary instinct prompted an attempt at reconciliation and mutual understanding among the contending parties. First he would get into touch with his own official head in the person of the British Consul, Colonel de Coetlogon. Mr. Moors, in his book " With Stevenson in Samoa," calls the latter " a Napoleonic Consul in Samoa." It is, no doubt, true that Stevenson's proposal to call upon the Colonel was at first an impulse of his somewhat erratic genius rather than a thought of help for the Samoans. But he certainly wished to be friends with his own country- man in the high places of Samoan control or lack of it. The incident of his failure, as told by Mr. Moors, is only CLEARING A WAY FOR GERMANY 147 mentioned here because it shows how constantly Germany was served by misunderstandings between the official Briton and the men of missionary mind throughout the Pacific. It is just an illustration, on the other side, of the continual friction that has marked the intercourse between traders and missionaries from the beginning. Stevenson, then, proposed to Moors one Sunday morning that they should call upon the British Consul. The two friends were standing about in their pyjamas, and Stevenson suddenly announced that he had a duty to perform. He had been in Apia for some time without calling on Her Britannic Majesty's representative, and " every Briton of mark should attend to such a duty at the earliest possible moment." But it was pointed out by Moors that Colonel de Coetlogun was a new arrival himself and was, in effect, a typical John Bull, exclusive, crusty, and pompous. Why not wait a while and give the Consul a chance to meet them without the jolting of a surprise visit ? But Stevenson would have none of it, and insisted that his American friend should accompany him to see how Britons the world over stood by one another. The resulting interview was full of surprise for Stevenson ; for the Consul positively declined to have anything to do with him. Stevenson introduced himself by name and mentioned his status in the world of letters, bringing in his friend as an American of mark in Apia. All he was given in reply was a gruff : " Well, what do you want ? " And after a further interchange the final word in effect was : " 1 don't care who you are either of you ! If you have any business at this Consulate, come and state it at the proper time."* Later on, apparently, there was something * " With Stevenson in Samoa," pp. 87 88. L2 148 STEVENSON'S GERMANY like a rapprochement, though Moors never heard of it ; and in " A Footnote to History " Stevenson notes that the Colonel did his duty in the stern old-fashioned British way, while his wife endeared herself to the Samoans by her nurs- ing in the times of stress which came with war and wounds. But the episode is typical of the difficulties which surrounded intercourse, at a time when Germany was making all the capital possible out of dissensions among the Samoans and misunderstandings among the Europeans. Stevenson, in the end, wrote to The Times, published his " Footnote to History," and was practically threatened with deportation by Sir John Thurston, High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. British subjects in the Pacific were under the jurisdiction of the latter, within certain well-defined limits ; and Samoa was as much open to the High Commissioner's call as were New Britain and New Ireland in 1878, when George Brown got into trouble with a cannibal chief named Taleli. It did not matter that certain islands were not under the British flag, or indeed under any other flag. Stevenson in Samoa could have been deported just as quickly as George Brown would have been from New Britain, could Chief Justice Gorrie have got hold of him, and as effectively as the Rev. Shirley Baker was carried off from Tonga later on by Sir John Thurston himself. As a matter of fact a " Queen's Regulation," framed by the High Commissioner, came into force on July 1st, 1893, about eighteen months before Stevenson's death, " for the maintenance of peace and good order in Samoa " ; and Stevenson certainly thought he was aimed at as the particular disturber of the peace in Sir John Thurston's mind. One of the clauses of the regulation which dealt with the crime of sedition by any British subject in Samoa ran : CLEARING A WAY FOR GERMANY 149 " The expression ' sedition towards the Government of Samoa ' shall embrace all practices, whether by word, deed, or writing, having for their object to bring about in Samoa public disturbances or civil war, and generally to promote public disorder in the country." * This was wide enough to promise something like martial law, and Stevenson indicated as much when interviewed by a reporter of the New Zealand Herald during a trip to Sydney. With the above regulation before him he said : " The document is an historical curiosity, and is one of the most extraordinary regulations in the form of British law which this century has produced. The definition of ' sedition ' is unique in its way. It is ' seditious ' to say a word likely to bring about discontent or dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs." When asked if he pro- posed to leave Samoa he retorted : " Certainly not that is, unless I am deported. That Regulation smells of martial law ; but there is no sign of war in the islands, though there has been an attempt to get up martial law over a little clan quarrel in which no one took any interest." When this interview was commented on by the London newspapers, Sir John Thurston happened to be in Sydney ; and the Australian press published a cablegram dealing with the matter. The question of jurisdiction had been raised in the House of Commons, consequent upon a letter by Stevenson which had appeared in The Times, and generally the novelist had managed to raise a pretty pother. Sir John Thurston met it by urging, practically, that as the cap fitted Stevenson he should wear it. He said, almost in as many words, that Stevenson was a sedition-monger, and * "With Stevenson in Samoa," p. 119. 150 STEVENSON'S GERMANY declared that the trouble in Samoa was attributable to " the unceasing interference and meddlesomeness of irresponsible persons." What, then, had Stevenson been doing ? He had undoubtedly sympathised with Mataafa, and " A Footnote to History " sets forth the facts. But, more than that, he had found in the Samoans something infinitely better than Sir John Thurston had indicated in a recent criticism. The High Commissioner for the Western Pacific had called them liars and thieves. In his report to the Foreign Office, embodied in the Blue Book on Samoa (1885 1889), he condemned them as " an excitable, voluble, credulous people, much given to lying and the circulation of false or extravagant rumours. In some degree they are thieves by instinct, and in many cases are now so by necessity." The category of their vices and follies is set forth in several bitter paragraphs, and the British Govern- ment must have listened sympathetically to the German comment endorsing it all. Yet it was not so long after this that Stevenson was honoured by the making of a road to his property by Samoan chiefs released from prison, to whom the work was a genuine burden, though made light by love of Tusitala. Stevenson had learned to know them, and out of his understanding came a conflict with the men who could see nothing but their weaknesses, or who, like the Germans, hated them for their strength, even in division. In this connection it is interesting to turn from Stevenson to George Brown. The latter knew the Samoans even better than the sympathetic Scot, whose clear mind and flamelike spirit grasped so much ; and from one German sphere of interest he went to another, where the High Com- missioner for the Western Pacific would have followed to CLEARING A WAY FOR GERMANY 151 arrest him had a British warship been available. George Brown was a missionary with the full machinery of his Church behind him, no doubt, but twin brother to Steven- son in his earnestness and disregard for conventions. When he went to Samoa he was determined to enter into the mind of the natives and to try to understand their character and outlook. The Samoan is essentially a child of the sun and the sea, and he lives, and will always live, open to the influences of a Nature wrought from colours and forces of infinitely greater range than people of the temperate region know anything about. To order these people to abandon their songs and their flowers, their feasts and their fighting, their fishing and their fun, for German ways and a sober daily routine, reft of music and mirth, was to test them too highly ; while to dress them in European clothes was surely to kill them out, even in their own natural environment. For instance, in the earlier days, a native poet had turned the truths of the Bible and some of the stirring incidents of Biblical history into Samoan songs, and set them to the old processional music of the heathen religion. These went among the people with a new message, and were repeated and sung by them until it seemed that nothing else was worthy thought or tongue. The poet had appealed to his own folk, just as Burns touched Scotland to a new sense of beauty and power ; and, as a Samoan discovery, the songs ought to have been the missionaries' greatest asset. But the principal men among the latter became frightened. The success was too great. The power let loose was too uncertain in their unimaginative grasp. The little books were all called in and destroyed, and the songs placed under an interdict. Ever afterwards George Brown mourned the missionary madness which robbed Samoa of one of its finest 152 STEVENSON'S GERMANY achievements, and he condemned the holocaust in un- measured terms. Like Stevenson, he was moved with a passion of sympathy for the Samoan, which became in time a vision enabling him to understand all natives in the Pacific, and to interpret them to the white man willing to listen. It brought him into conflict with his brethren, not necessarily in angry dispute, but in constant representation of another point of view than that of the average mission- ary. He has his own philosophy of clothes, for instance, and would aver that among naked savages he has found the rarest modesty. A black maiden, with not even Mother Eve's adornment of a fig leaf, would blush at the breaking of some native convention, but never at the sight or thought of the naked men or women around her. George Brown saw the natives of many groups under all conditions of life and well or ill being, but he did not argue that the native needed clothing in self-protection, but rather to serve and save the European. As to the dying out of native races, he insisted that there was no reason why they should dis- appear even in constant contact with the white man. The latter must learn to know the native and his ways and needs. There must be as much give as take. This was not an apology for the savage, nor was it an attack upon the European ; it was simply a plea for that fuller mutual knowledge to which his whole life among the islands of the Pacific had been devoted. Nothing could better illustrate the whole missionary relation to the natives than a little comment upon one extract from George Brown's diary, dated July 10th, 1878. This was in the year of his most difficult experience as a missionary. He had been obliged to take up arms in self- defence against bloodthirsty savages, intent upon killing CLEARING A WAY FOR GERMANY 153 and eating the native teachers and their families and every white man and woman in New Britain ; this was after the cruel murder of some of the native teachers for whom he was responsible. As Stevenson remarks in his Vailima "Letters," the missionary world had been roused to excited protest, and the great Powers had been obliged to make a note. The extract runs : " Left the ship very early and went on shore to see To Porapora, and after long waiting I managed to get the diwara from him which he stole from the Diwawon chief. Went on board to break- fast and then started at 9.30 a.m. Called at Karavia and bought food, etc., and spoke to them about teachers and told them not to listen to the foolish stories told them by other natives. Then went on to Diwawon and returned the diwara which I had got from To Porapora. This will do more than anything to assure the natives of our sincerity and truthfulness. Then went to Raluana and stayed there some time to cook, etc. Left Raluana at about half-past 5 p.m. We had a very strong breeze most of the way over. Reached the house at 11 o'clock very tired, as I had to attend to the engine myself all the day." There is a whole book, not part of a chapter only, behind this simple note in a diary, made up of more blank leaves than full. The writer was too busy and generally too tired, when he was not absolutely ill, to write the story that can now only be given in fragments ; but the stray entries reveal the true man behind. His one thought was to give the natives a gospel of truth and sincerity. All his life in the Pacific was a preaching, not so much of the words of Christianity as of its spirit, shown by service and self-denial, by perfect straight- forwardness, and by that keeping of faith which is more than half the battle in every controversy between man and man. 154 STEVENSON'S GERMANY In this particular instance native trickery had threatened to accomplish what native treachery had failed to do. The Mission had been in danger of instant annihilation, follow- ing a brutal murder, and only the missionary's manliness and courage had saved the day. He had headed the party of white men in New Britain, so few in number, and they had taught the natives a salutary lesson. But just when he had made peace with the natives responsible for the outrage, and had told them in the most definite terms that nothing more was to be done that the last word had been said and they were forgiven one of the friendly chiefs, To Porapora, had played a very dirty trick. He had gone among the people of Diwawon, a coast village that had been burnt during the attack of the friendly natives and white men, and had declared that the missionary had ordered him to collect from them a hundred fathoms of diwara, the shell money of the group. It was a heavy fine coming after a most solemn assurance of reconciliation and forgiveness. George Brown was very angry when he heard of it, and he saw at once the mischief that would be done unless he again acted promptly. As soon as he could get away he hunted out To Porapora and demanded back the diwara. To Porapora laughed. It was a good joke to him. The idea of being able to take so much money by asking for it in the missionary's name was novel, and had proved fruitful, but it showed that at any rate George Brown had more power as a punisher of evil deeds than had been supposed possible at the outset. After some direct speech, however, To Porapora promised to return the diwara, and again played the trickster by not keeping his word. It was all part of the joke. To Porapora had helped to punish the Diwawon natives, and why should he not take his tale of tribute from CLEARING A WAY FOR GERMANY 155 them ? But after a second, and third, laughing promise to return the diwara, not kept but always repeated, George Brown at last brought him to reason. The missionary knew a native custom in debt-collecting which caused the wily chief to become very serious all at once. When one chief owes a debt, which is not paid after due request, the creditor will go to another chief of higher rank or greater power, and pay him, say, ten per cent, of the amount due. That is the debt-collector's commission. Then the second chief will go to the debtor and demand and obtain the full amount owing, and another ten per cent, in addition. That is to say he gets twenty per cent, on the little transaction. So George Brown said to To Porapora : " Very well, don't trouble about this trifling matter ; I will go to so and so," naming another chief in the neighbourhood, " and get him to ask you for it at some other time." This was quite enough, and after a little parley to gain time, To Porapora set about securing the hundred fathoms of diwara, which was duly returned and accepted. But the lesson, as far as the Diwawon natives were con- cerned, and indeed as far as To Porapora himself was a pupil, had only begun. This cunning chief quite thought that George Brown would keep the money collected in his name. That would be the natural thing under the circum- stances, and To Porapora respected the missionary because he had proved the stronger in a trial of wits. But the tired white man had not finished his day's work, and after a short rest started the engines of his little steamer for Diwawon. The diwara had to be returned, but with necessary pre- caution, and in proper order. It would never do to hand it back in a lump, as according to native custom that would only count as one in the payment, whereas there were many 156 STEVENSON'S GERMANY people to placate and impress. The hundred fathoms had to be tied up in bundles of ten, and when Diwawon was reached the natives of the village had to be brought together with proper form and ceremony. They were as little expecting that the missionary would return their money as was To Porapora, though it had been promised them ; and their astonishment, after George Brown had recounted the facts and obtained their assent to his statement of the case, was remarkable. There had never been anything like the proposal to return plunder in this fashion. Then came the climax as one and another was called out and ten fathoms of diwara was flung to him from the launch. George Brown had anchored just off the beach and had made his little ship a pulpit, just as the great Teacher had done on one occasion when the crowd thronged too thickly upon Him. The natives clucked and exclaimed, placing their hands to their mouths as they do when excited, and altogether the lesson was well timed and well learned. But it was not intended to be dramatic in the sense that the chief actor thought of himself at all. George Brown was simply realising his desire to be fair and honest with every man, brown or white, and his wrath and indignation over the trick played upon him were so deep that he was obliged to clear himself in the fullest measure. Stevenson and George Brown represent an influence from the British and American side which has been operating constantly in the Pacific for more than a century. The United States has sent out missionaries in, and out of, ecclesiastical uniform ; and through the Carolines and in the Philippines their work has been fruitful in many ways. But, wherever the white man has gone, it has never been the German who has blazed a trail for civilisation in lives CLEARING A WAY FOR GERMANY 157 laid down and crosses taken up. German missionaries have wrought, no doubt, but they have been few and far between. Where they have reached the Pacific under the German order and discipline they have been part of the German machine. Land was reserved for them, work was done on their behalf by native labour in the German way, and natives were flogged for them as a matter of course. They were as truly under State management and control as the Lutheran Church in Germany. They touched no native problem or perplexity to some happy and unexpected solution, but instead complicated it exceedingly. The British missionary at his best, on the other hand, was ever moving on the face of the waters and bringing order out of chaos. He was a constant nuisance, it is true, and traders and administrators frequently exchanged epithets about him. But men like Stevenson cared nothing for hard words, and only worked the more determinedly for fair play and honest dealing as between Europeans and the native, wherever he was being pushed to the wall. Word of this wonderful thing travelled throughout the Pacific, and the name of George Brown, for instance, became a talisman. Germany worked magic with it and approved of the missionary enterprise he represented. But no one was more emphatic than he that German possessions should not be returned after the war ; and this is the summing up of the matter for all who have common sense, and who only ask for justice as between the white man and the brown. CHAPTER XV ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION The MacGregor Reports from New Guinea. Australia's crisis in 1893. A MacGregor wanted. Twenty years after in Queensland. The strong man in the Pacific. Found only to be transferred elsewhere. Sir John Thurston. A critical moment in Samoan history. The naval man in action. Sir William MacGregor and the Fijian chiefs. The German spirit again. WHEN turning over some papers upon Pacific affairs recently the present writer took up a spare copy of one of the MacGregor reports from British New Guinea and found that it contained a document of unusual interest. It was the report for 1892, and, as usual, was full of good matter. But though Sir William MacGregor had not written the article, or part of an article, which greeted the eye like treasure trove, yet it was in familiar handwriting, the work of one of Australia's best known publicists ; and it dealt with more than the achievements of a remarkable man. In 1893, when the scribe took up his pen, Australia was passing through a cruel strain after a financial and indus- trial crisis, which had, indeed, been world wide at the beginning of the year. In the Antipodes, under the Southern Cross, it was like the recovery from a heavy carouse the morning after a desperate debauch for a great land-boom had burst, and the withdrawal of millions of money by scared British investors had added woe to woe. This, with unprecedented floods and their consequent damage in Queensland, resulted in a general collapse of ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION 159 public confidence. The political world also was in just as great turmoil as the financial, and altogether the Jeremiahs of the day were enjoying themselves. Even the robust common sense and large statesmanship of Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, who was Premier of Queensland, suffered shipwreck. When, therefore, the able and far-seeing writer of this incomplete article expressed confidence in the future of the continent, and particularly in the actual soundness of the young colony in the north of it, he was laughed to scorn. At a public meeting at which Sir Thomas made a speech the matter was referred to in terms of indignation, that any one could so misread the signs of the times. Where could there be room for confidence ? Great bridges in the city of Brisbane itself had been carried away by flood, and there seemed to be little solid footing for the anxious political leader, looking out upon a world of water, actual and metaphorical. Into the whirlpool came this report by Sir William MacGregor ; and a copy reached a certain cheery optimist who had not long before travelled through Canada and the United States, where men inured to financial panics and broken land-booms had mocked at Australia's little misery over such an experience. " Why," said one wise man in Seattle, " we have had more banks smash in this city in a forenoon than all Australia has enjoyed in a week or a month. Australians will soon get busy and the experience will do them good." It was the truth to the last letter ; but the traveller, returning home, found it only so much reinforcement for a conclusion already reached. Looking through the manuscript of this uncompleted article, left in the heart of the MacGregor report as a whimsical commentary upon its strength and sanity, 160 STEVENSON'S GERMANY another student of affairs has found strange wisdom in its conclusions, as applied to the Pacific and to Germany's ways therein. Much of the writing could apply to present Australian conditions, with their political restlessness and instability ; but in 1893 labour longings had become vocal, and everybody wanted a great leader, though few realised what they did want. The writer, to continue with the news of a discovery just made, summarised it all in singularly trenchant sentences. A report by Sir William MacGregor, with its astonishing revelation of power, had shown the man needed for Queensland's recovery. Here he was in full flower and quite near. Why not give him a trial as autocrat ? Let Parliament be closed, its members and ministers be dismissed, and give Sir William MacGregor the job of bringing order out of chaos. The article stopped just as it was working to its climax, and probably because it was a piece of humorous criticism that could not be completed in any vein of serious application. But it is certainly a capital illustration of how one strong man may affect another. It presents Sir William MacGregor as the doer of great deeds and the true example of the builder of Empire, most successful when left to himself. Strangely enough, one's thought came forward twenty years further, when Sir William was Governor of Queensland and a general strike had been declared which threatened to starve and destroy the city of Brisbane, while turning Government and all Government business upside down. After a week of almost civil war, order was restored and an incipient revolution was crushed ; but it was the presence of Sir William MacGregor at Government House in Brisbane which helped to maintain the courage and confidence of those who fought for law and order. This is another story. ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION 161 It is enough that the man so strong in British New Guinea was found to be like " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land " when Australia most needed him. It may be noted that the need for great men was never more urgent anywhere than in the Pacific during the forty years that had elapsed since Sir William MacGregor took up duty as Chief Medical Officer in Fiji. Between 1874 and 1914 Germany and Great Britain were continually face to face, rarely with British consciousness of the gravity of the struggle, and consequently nearly always with a German certainty that the balance of advantage lay with the Father- land. But especially did Great Britain fail where she deliberately chose men to represent her in the Pacific. When Sir William MacGregor was appointed Administrator of British New Guinea in 1888 it was because Australian, not British, statesmen had discovered his wonderful worth and were prepared to share in the expense of looking after a new possession. Sir Samuel Griffith's acumen, after getting to close quarters with the shrewd and capable Scotsman, was responsible for the new appointment. It was not the Colonial Office in London that found this Empire-builder of the first order. When an exceptionally able man like Sir Francis May was sent to Fiji, and in 1912 was making his power felt, the Colonial Office transferred him to Hong Kong. Sir Charles Eliot has recently been sent to Vladivostock as British plenipotentiary, thus being advertised to the world as the ablest man for a most difficult post that could be found. But Sir Charles was in the Pacific long before as British representative on an important commission in which Germany was concerned ; and he proved then his qualification as leader and statesman. He was, however, too good to be kept in the Great Ocean, and S.O. M 162 STEVENSON'S GERMANY so has been building the Empire elsewhere, though nowhere more urgently wanted than in the Pacific. When Sir William MacGregor himself was due for a Governorship in Australia, and before he was permitted to become Governor of Queensland, he was sent first to Lagos for a long term and then to Newfoundland. He had at last been discovered by the Colonial Office, but always the urgency of need was outside the Pacific, never inside. Even Sir George Grey in the earlier days was found to be a nuisance in New Zealand because he was not afraid of responsibility, and was strong enough to insist upon the right course being pursued in the teeth of official opposition in London. One cannot help thinking also of Mr. (now Sir) Basil Thomson, whose term in the Pacific has made him such an authority upon it, and whose books are of enduring interest. His abilities have been engaged in London in dealing with the problems of prison reform and much beside, to the advantage of the Empire at large ; but a decade of his help at the Antipodes would have been a finer asset for Australasia. But it was not Germany's intriguing alone that demanded the finest administrators for British possessions in the Pacific. The natives required them, because only such leading as chiefs give could appeal to them especially where Polynesians were dominant. Thus one tries to imagine what would have happened in the Pacific during the critical years following Germany's jump upon New Guinea had Sir William MacGregor instead of Sir John Thurston been appointed Governor of Fiji and High Com- missioner for the Western Pacific. He was indeed made Administrator more than once, and was always behind the various departmental activities of the group. Thus he took up gubernatorial duties in 1885, after Sir William ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION 163 des Voeux had retired and before Sir John Thurston was permanently appointed. The latter, as has already been shown, was doing delicate and difficult work in connection with Samoa and in the definition with Germany of spheres of interest in the Pacific. Sir John Thurston had made many friends. Dr. George Brown was an admirer, and Sir Arthur Gordon, as first Governor of Fiji, found him a tower of strength. No one apparently knew the natives better than he did ; and his proposals for dealing with them were based upon an understanding of their environ- ment and weaknesses which could only have been reached after long years of residence among them. Yet while Sir John Thurston was a good illustration of the official brought into power in the Pacific by local conditions, he had neither on one side the experience of world politics which makes the statesman, nor on the other the natural genius which compensates for the lack of experience. Because he could not see any good in the Samoans, he had to agree with Germany when he was discussing certain details with her ; nor could he find sense in Robert Louis Steven- son, since he also was in the way with Germany, but dis- covered her to be an enemy not a friend. There was little of the breadth and strength which must go together in future administrators in the Pacific, and which should have been recognised as imperative ingredients in the character of British governors and leaders in those critical years of Germany's encroachments between 1870 and 1900. Naval officers frequently displayed the force of character requisite for complicated situations, and did the right thing in a masterful way so that more than once Germany was checkmated. Through them the situation was really saved. There was a moment in Samoan history when 164 STEVENSON'S GERMANY German and British war vessels were almost at grips ; and thirty years ago it became a question for instant decision whether Great Britain would not be hand in hand with the United States against Germany. Needless to say the decision rested with a German admiral, not with Captain Kane of the Calliope. This was just before the hurricane which gave the latter fame and placed his vessel high up in the list of great things accomplished by British warships. It may also be remarked that the incidents to be summarised briefly at this point are not recounted in Stevenson's " A Footnote to History " except as to one fact the first in order of naval tactics. After the commission of which Sir John Thurston was a member had visited Samoa events had reached a critical stage in the group. Germany assumed authority to search incoming vessels at Apia and the British steamer Richmond was visited in the high- handed German way. A passenger was taken off and a British man-of-war boat was fired upon. An abject apology was afterwards tendered, but the British Vice- Admiral on the Australian station thought that it was time to take action. Germany was proposing to seize certain territory in Samoa and had assembled a squadron which was altogether too powerful for the American war- ships on the spot to withstand, in their protest on behalf of the United States. So the Calliope under Captain Kane was despatched. The German attempt to take the land in question was frustrated by a clever manoeuvre which placed the gunboat Lizard between the German squadron and its objective, so that nothing could be done except by force of arms, for which the German admiral was not ready. As the Lizard refused to move the German squadron had to retire, much to the chagrin of its officers and crews. ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION 165 When another cause of friction arose the result was the same, but after much more apparent likelihood of conflict. Mr. Hector C. Bywater, former Berlin correspondent of the Naval and Military Record, gives the incident in the following terms : " A few weeks later the British steamer Stockton was observed entering the port. The Germans made ready to board her, but a boat's crew from the Calliope got there first, and when a German officer came alongside he was told that the steamer was in charge of the British naval authorities. He requested permission to remain on board while he sent his boat back for instructions. Meanwhile Captain Kane visited the German flagship Olga, and informed the admiral that unless he recalled his officer the latter would be forcibly removed from the Stockton. He then returned to the Calliope. General quarters were sounded, and the ship was cleared for action, with her guns so trained as to cover every ship in the German squadron. Some minutes of breathless excitement followed, and nowhere was the tension greater than on board the American men-of-war, for there is little doubt that if the Germans had shown fight, the Americans would have made common cause with the British. But the Huns lost their nerve, and decided that discretion was the better part of valour. The German officer on the Stockton was signalled to return. He was in a dilemma, for his own boat was away. In the end he had to go off in a British man-of-war's boat. As he went over the side the American warships manned yards, and their bands struck up ' Rule Britannia,' to the strains of which the German lieutenant was rowed back to his ship. This humiliating incident taught the Huns a badly-needed lesson, and thereafter Captain Kane was treated by them with all due respect. In fact, so impressed were they by 166 STEVENSON'S GERMANY his resolute attitude that they never ventured to move a ship without first obtaining his formal sanction." These happenings may be recalled as interesting in the new light of the great war, but they do not impress one so much as others that may be mentioned as showing the difference in the spirit of British and German administra- tion throughout the Pacific. Sir William MacGregor's wonderful record in British New Guinea stands by itself in this regard. There is nothing comparable to it in German colonial history ; and Germany can only retort that it probably would never have been made possible unless Great Britain's hands had been forced by her in the first instance. Sir William also was sent to the scene of his marvellous work more like a marooned sailor than as a powerful administrator with an adequate naval and military force to help him. Yet he brought into sub- jection Britain's reluctantly accepted share of the greatest island in the world ; partly because a great Scotsman, in Chalmers, had prepared the way with the weapons of spiritual warfare, and largely otherwise because he domi- nated men by his wisdom and force of character. This is what has been moving upon the face of the waters of the Pacific since British and American missionaries and administrators appeared there, to make great gains for their Empires but never for themselves. And the story of it has passed from mouth to mouth through the various island groups, until Stevenson, when he despaired of peace for the unhappy Samoans, could cry aloud for a MacGregor and his schooner. In the days when Germany lied and prevaricated her way into power in the Pacific, the white man at his best was represented by an Englishman or a Scotsman, never by a German ; and it has been so since ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION 167 right up to the outbreak of war. Take, for instance, the British and the German way with natives when in the hands of administrators in Fiji and Samoa. Sir William MaeGregor as Administrator of the Government of Fiji had to read the Fijian chiefs a lesson. TJie Fijian people were evidently dying out and everybody seemed to be helpless to check it. Sir William des Voeux had not been able to impress the chiefs with their responsibility in the matter, and it needed a MaeGregor with his medical knowledge, his skill in Fijian, so that he could speak with the Fijians face to face, and his direct and impressive words, when speaking, to deal adequately with the situation. Here it is that one begins to imagine what would have happened in Fiji and the Pacific had the British Colonial Office woke up in 1885, instead of two decades later, to realise the manner of man that lay to its hand for great work. The speech that Sir William MaeGregor made to the Fijian chiefs in the year mentioned is on record* and can be appreciated at its full value since The Australasian Medical Gazette saw fit in 1885 to republish it for the benefit of its readers. But the maker of the speech was profoundly concerned about the shrinking Fijian popula- tion, and he was occupying a position of the highest autho- rity. He was the British Governor for the time being. And could he have followed up his advice with continued attention to the details of life-saving and life-extension the Fijian group would be in a vastly different condition to-day. Had he been appointed High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, in those difficult days leading up to 1889, no doubt the British Government would have been told some home truths, and things would have been done * Appendix C. 168 STEVENSON'S GERMANY in spite of probable dislike or indifference on the part of the Colonial Office in London. That, however, may be left, for Sir William (then Dr.) MacGregor went to British New Guinea in 1888 and set a fine example there and achieved great things for the Empire. When he made his speech to the Fijian chiefs in 1885 the native population was about 110,000. To-day it is less than 90,000, though apparently just in the balance for an increase. So concerned had the British authorities become over the matter, after Dr. MacGregor left, that a commission was appointed to deal with the whole question, and it presented its report in 1896. But not commissions of inquiry were wanted so much as a dominating personality in the Governor of Fiji a chief who could impress the chiefs beneath him with the impera- tive need of doing things and with a proper sense of their own responsibility. In the speech just noted Dr. MacGregor made his points one after another with satisfying clearness, and a close personal appeal was directed to this chief and that. Much of the mortality among the Fijians was the result of un- cleanliness and bad sanitation. The remedy lay in making the houses waterproof and in gathering up all rubbish and garbage. This was so much common-place. But the acting Governor had been round the towns and villages himself, and he gave instances where the local chief had failed, emphasising his contention by showing how other chiefs had greatly succeeded by attention to duty. Par- ticularly did he urge the need for watchfulness when women were child-bearing, and after the children were born. Here, for instance, was a native centre where many healthy children could be found and where the various excuses and untruths of lazy chiefs were exploded by a ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION 169 glance at the facts. No woman was allowed to work until she was in a fit condition to do so. Mothers were com- fortably housed. They were kept dry and were well fed. The chief responsible made it his business to see to these things and to exert his authority by direct inspections. And so the lesson was given to a host of listening Fijians who felt that every word was with power, because the great man speaking had not only the chief's way with him, but the mighty chiefs eye and voice. He was there to be obeyed ; and yet his first appeal was to their common sense and natural instincts. Perhaps the last words were the most impressive. They touched the note of self-help for the Fijian even in medical skill and equipment. Why should not native youths learn something of medicine and surgery ? Indeed, the way had been opened and instruc- tion was being given. The good doctor, now speaking in the Governor's place, expressed regret that he could not himself be the teacher devoting much time to a loved task, and pointing out that he had been called to other duties. The best commentary upon it all is to be found in an interview given by a missionary, just returned from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1918, to a representative of the Sydney Morning Herald. These islands are under British control, and the hospital system installed by the medical branch of the administration was declared to be the most remarkable thing the traveller had seen in the direction of educating the natives. The Rev. W. C. Willoughby, of the London Missionary Society, may speak for himself. He said at the outset that under war con- ditions it was very difficult to deal with the scattered islands of the group when medical help was required, and that communication is so much hampered that patients 170 STEVENSON'S GERMANY cannot be brought to central hospitals. So " native dressers " were stationed at a small hospital on each island, and " native surgeons " at the more important islands ; the natives so employed as dressers are pure Gil- bertese ; but it was the island " surgeons " who made Mr. Willoughby exclaim : " One is a Fijian and two are Ton- gans. They are products of the excellent school systems in vogue in their respective island groups, where many natives, passing through their high schools, assimilate a standard of education that often amazes the casual visitor. The three young men under notice did not go through a regular medical course, or graduate in surgery, or anything of that sort. The medical officers have simply given them a rough idea of surgery and the treatment of the more simple ailments. They can give chloroform, set a broken bone, amputate a limb, prescribe treatment for the com- moner forms of sickness. They cannot, however, make a difficult diagnosis, nor conduct, for instance, an abdominal operation. Difficult cases, wherever possible, are left for attention by the regular doctor." The Fijian surgeon, however, had just successfully performed an operation for the removal of tubercular glands.* Mr. Willoughby said it was an experiment which had proved very successful. He declared that " it promises to solve one of the most difficult problems of the Pacific namely, the provision of medical assistance among hundreds of isolated island com- munities, where there is a good deal of minor sickness, and where a white doctor cannot be permanently stationed." Sir William MacGregor saw it all in those far-off days when he was preoccupied with the Fijian birth and death rates, and when he urged that salvation lay with the * Sydney Morning Herald, July 13th, 1918. ASSETS IN ADMINISTRATION natives themselves. But this has really been the spirit behind British administration everywhere in the Pacific. Mistakes have been made, no doubt, and the official mind has tended everywhere to paralyse enterprise and to stop progress ; but where the officials have dared to think and act for themselves, and have not been afraid to cut red tape and abolish sealing wax, there have been some wonder- ful results. Germany, on the other hand, has essayed to extend her possessions and strengthen her hold upon the natives by keeping them in fetters. She has attempted in the Pacific what she has done in the Cameroons, where science and organisation have been made the handmaids of an iron discipline and where the natives have revolted at the first opportunity. Sir William MacGregor cannot be made an offset to Dr. Solf, in Samoa, and to Dr. Hahl in the Carolines and New Guinea, because the Governments behind them have been as wide as the poles apart. This, therefore, is the conclusion of the argument on one side, and it only needs a reference to Robert Louis Stevenson again to clinch it on the other. CHAPTER XVI Tusitala, the writer of stories. Why give him the lime- light f Germany roused the man in him. His love for and understanding of the Samoans. A missionary after all. He stood for the natives against the aggressive white man. The two spirits in conflict. Mataafa's scorn. The German proclamation. Germany's bludgeon in play. The Road of the Loving Heart. Stevenson's speech to the Samoan chiefs. A lesson for the Germans. MANY a worthy man has worked harder and much longer for the natives in the islands and island groups of the Pacific than Robert Louis Stevenson did, and without getting into the limelight. Why, then, should the latter be brought forward on the stage at this juncture ? He was, after all, Tusitala, the writer of stories. He achieved practically nothing for the Samoans against Germany in his lifetime ; and if it be true that Germany at last did accept his proposals for an amicable understanding with the Samoans, surely the credit must be distributed ? These questions or objections may be met with the reminder that Stevenson loved the Samoans, understood them, and would have died for them, had it been a question of saving his life by denying their claims or betraying them. He did not go to Samoa as a missionary, with his life dedicated to the work of saving their souls, but as a wanderer in search of health with no wish whatever to take part in the devil's dance which at that time centred upon Apia. He was a writer whose name was already inscribed among the STEVENSON'S PLACE AND POWER 173 immortals of English literature but who was destined to engrave it still deeper during his short residence in the group from 1889 to 1894. That he should have been moved to vehement protest against Germany in far-off Samoa, where no European Power could claim supremacy, and where the natives were nominally in possession and control, was in itself a remarkable thing, and it undoubtedly attracted attention at a time when Germany badly wanted to be left alone. But the iniquity of the German claim that might was right, and that nothing mattered when dealing with natives in the Pacific or anywhere else except to be strong enough, roused his fiercest resentment. He discerned then quite clearly the Germany which has since been revealed to us ; and he wrote " A Footnote to History," not because he liked the job, but because he could not help himself. He had to deliver his soul. He was in Samoa, the land of a people so far civilised that he not only felt at home in their midst, but actually became one of them, almost as a chief founding another clan ; and for the Samoans, threatened with German domination, he strug- gled as bravely as any Highland chieftain in days when the southern invader was at the mouth of the glen. But Stevenson was more than a fiery Scot defending a brave people against a foe who was without ruth or chivalry. He scorned Sir John Thurston's threats, implied or direct, because he was assured that a great injustice was being perpetrated, if not by his connivance then through his lack of knowledge and want of sympathy with the Samoans. No missionary as such could stand up as he did against both Germany and Great Britain with the slightest hope of success. Even George Brown, later on, notwithstanding his influence with German administrators, had to seek 174 STEVENSON'S GERMANY cover before turning his guns upon them. Stevenson stayed in the open, and actually aroused the people of Great Britain so far that at last the promise was given in the House of Commons that Sir John Thurston's hand should be stayed if he contemplated deportation or further hostile action. But Stevenson was a missionary, after all, with the same flame in his soul as that shown by James Chalmers, George Brown, and Sir William MacGregor, when the call came for action. He stood for the Samoans for the natives as against the aggressive white man and this in a sentence sums up the history of the Pacific up to 1914. The con- flict has always been between the spirit of oppression and illicit conquest, which Germany represented, and the spirit of justice and fair play, perhaps carried to extremes by Great Britain and the United States, but always finding expression in deeds of unselfish regard for the natives, whether in Fiji and New Guinea or in the further Philip- pines. Again the admission must be made that British Governments failed, that Crown Colony administrators committed blunders and did injury to the natives, by indifference or worse, and that in island protectorates German arrogance could be matched by British folly. But Stevenson represented the clear, earnest, British spirit of fair play. He is a reminder to-day that in spite of failure and foolishness on the part of British Governments, of narrowness and stupidity on the part of British mission- aries, of the callousness of British traders and the cynicism of British critics, there has been in the past an earnest desire to do justice to the native races, and that at the present moment there exists a sympathy for them which may be turned into fruitful deeds almost by a word. STEVENSON'S PLACE AND POWER 175 Stevenson, it must be confessed, did not make his appeal in these terms, because he was only anxious to express himself as an individual and not as a national force. His literary gifts became secondary to the manhood behind them ; and though his actual influence upon British opinion was the result of burning words flung from afar by a man known as an artist rather than as a fighter for the right and the true, the revelation of the crusader and missionary in him was like fire from heaven. At the time the immediate circle of warm-hearted men and women impressed was small in comparison with the world issues involved, but it has been widening fast since he died twenty years before the war broke upon us. For two decades we had been learning to know Germany through him, and not a few journalists made their protests against German guile and mischief long before 1914, because he had led the way. Thus one turns again to " A Footnote to History " and scans its pages with renewed interest. The difference between the German spirit and the British spirit leaps out again in stronger relief ; and, where actual addresses or appeals to the Samoans can be recorded, the words of power, or the lack of it, become like a blow for right or wrong. Take, for instance, the German way of making a king, against the protests of the people most concerned, with the proclamations which governed the situation. The events are recorded by Stevenson early in the book, in the chapter covering the history of Samoa from 1883 to 1887, when Sir John Thurston was inquiring and reporting, and when Dr. MacGregor for a short time was so far Governor of Fiji that his medical brethren in Australia hailed his advent to power with words of warm commendation. Germany, it must be 176 STEVENSON'S GERMANY remembered, was not in possession and had no more right to control the Samoans than Great Britain or the United States. She made certain claims, and was insistent that she was suffering under definite wrongs. Her Consul took large leave upon these points, and the British and American Consuls had to follow hard after or agree, with an ill or a ready grace, when called upon. Germany had declared that Malietoa Laupepa was to be deposed and that Tamasese was to be king. Mataafa, who had the real influence with Samoans, was willing to effect a compromise and told the German authorities so. He went on board the German man- of-war Bismarck, declares Stevenson, and was well received. " Probably," said the commodore, " we shall bring about a reconciliation of all Samoa through you ; " and then asked his visitor if he bore any affection to Malietoa. " Yes," said Mataafa. " And to Tamasese ? " " To him also ; and if you desire the weal of Samoa, you will allow either him or me to bring about a reconciliation." 41 If it were my will," said the commodore, " I would do as you say. But I have no will in the matter. I have instructions from the Kaiser, and I cannot go back again from what I have been sent to do." " I thought you would be commended," said Mataafa, " if I brought about the weal of Samoa." " And I will tell you this," said the commodore. " All shall go quietly. But there is one thing that must be done : Malietoa must be deposed. I will do nothing to him beyond ; he will only be kept on board for a couple of months and be well treated, just as we Germans did to the French chief (Napoleon III.) some time ago, whom we kept awhile and cared for well." STEVENSON'S PLACE AND POWER m This conversation is taken bodily from " A Footnote to History," and those who are interested may read therein the story of Malietoa's exile. Germany deported one chief after another, sending them to the ends of the earth, or afar in the Pacific, and generally playing the cold autocrat as she pleased. To develop the general argument, the end of the controversy may be given in Stevenson's own words. When Mataafa realised that he had failed to make any impression he returned to his own people. " Meanwhile, in the Malietoa provinces, a profound impression was received. People trooped to their fugitive sovereign in the bush. Many natives in Apia brought their treasures, and stored them in the houses of white friends. The Tamasese orators were sometimes ill received. Over in Savaii, they found the village of Satupaitea deserted, save for a few lads at cricket. These they harangued, and were rewarded with ironical applause ; and the proclamation, as soon as they had departed, was torn down. For this offence the village was ultimately burned by German sailors, in a very decent and orderly style, on the 3rd September (1887). This was the dinner bell of the fono on the 15th. The threat conveyed in the terms of the summons ' If any government district does not quickly obey this direction, I will make war on that government district ' was thus commented on and reinforced. And the meeting was in consequence well attended by chiefs of all parties. They found themselves unarmed among the armed warriors of Tamasese and the marines of the German squadron, and under the guns of five strong ships. Brandeis rose ; it was his first open appearance, the German firm signing its revolutionary work. His words were few and uncom- s.or 178 STEVENSON'S GERMANY promising : ' Great are my thanks that the chiefs and heads of families of the whole of Samoa are assembled here this day. It is strictly forbidden that any discussion should take place as to whether it is good or not that Tamasese is King of Samoa, whether at this fono or at any other fono. I place for your signature the following : " We inform all the people of Samoa of what follows : (1) The government of Samoa has been assumed by King Tuiaana Tamasese. (2) By order of the King, it was directed that a fono should take place to-day, composed of the chiefs and heads of families, and we have obeyed the summons. We have signed our names under this, I5th September, 1887." ' Needs must under all these guns ; and the paper was signed, but not without open sullenness. The bearing of Mataafa in particular was long remembered against him by the Germans. ' Do you not see the King ? ' said the commodore reprovingly. 4 His father was no king,' was the bold answer. A bolder still has been printed, but this is Mataafa's own recollection of the passage. On the next day, the chiefs were all ordered back to shake hands with Tamasese. Again they obeyed ; but again their attitude was menacing, and some, it is said, audibly murmured as they gave their hands."* The above quotation has been worth giving, if only to show Germany's bludgeon at work. But it may be con- ceived how the subsequent telling of the story would arouse attention wherever his countrymen foregathered, at a time when Stevenson was more surely taking his place among the princes and potentates of English literature. Germany would be more impressed than ever after Stevenson died. His tomb above Vailima was becoming a place of pilgrim- age ; and Samoa in the years following 1894 was known, * " A Footnote to History,'* pp. 7376. STEVENSON'S PLACE AND POWER 179 not only as Stevenson's resting place, but as the scene of his dispute with Germany. In passing, it should be re- marked that the events recorded in this quotation took place some time before Bismarck's surrender, consequent upon the hurricane at Apia. Stevenson and the hurricane arrived in the same year, and the agreement reached by the three Powers interested was supposed to be a strong warrant for peace. But Stevenson's discovery of the true Germany was not delayed by this appearance of co-opera- tion and a friendly understanding. Tri-partite control was seen to be only another cloak for German intrigue, and " A Footnote to History " was written because war upon the Samoans, and not peace with them, was the German policy. Still, Stevenson had made his mark before he died ; and the manner of his death and the nature of the funeral obsequies aroused more interest abroad than his life as a British citizen, breaking a lance with Germany, had done. Hence it may quite fairly be urged that when Samoa was divided by the Treaty of 1900 and Dr. Solf became first German Governor, the shade of Stevenson was still moving about the group. Vailima became a German Government House, and the tomb on the mountain top was ultimately kept in order by the expenditure of German money. The British spirit had triumphed, and, with the world looking on, Germany felt that she dared not defy opinion by attempting to crush the Samoans. So she governed them in the British way until " the day " drew nearer, and then she cared less. Prussian officials stalked about Apia and frowned down both natives and alien white folk until at last war came and settled everything. ] But it is still interesting to recall the Prussian spirit shown when poor vi 180 STEVENSON'S GERMANY Malietoa Laupepa was deposed and Tamasese was made King in the teeth of Samoan opposition. Nearly seven years afterwards Stevenson received such a wonderful token of Samoan love and appreciation, and made such a ringing speech after the Road of the Loving Heart had been constructed for him, that the Brandeis episode becomes the more remarkable in the continuation it offers to the chapter about the whole business. To read Stevenson's speech through* is to understand at once the charm of the man, but especially the power he exercised upon the Samoan mind and imagination. And yet it was not personal altogether. Stevenson had been the good Sama- ritan, and at other times the great chief, when not ranging himself alongside Samoans in distress. He was to them the embodiment of their own chivalry, but he was also the representative of a nation already noted for wonderful works in New Zealand and Fiji. After the road to Vailima had been made, Stevenson invited the workers who wrought for love of him to a great feast. A notice board had been prepared on which he proposed to set an inscription, but when the chiefs came they had written something of their own that was carefully printed and put in place. Its translation runs : " THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART. " Remembering the great love of his highness, Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug to last for ever. " We are, etc." Some of the Europeans at Apia had been invited to the * Appendix D. STEVENSON'S PLACE AND POWER 181 feast and Stevenson turned to them first. They did not know all the particulars. The chiefs responsible for the new road had been recently liberated by the new adminis- tration. " As soon as they were free men," said Stevenson, " owing no man anything instead of going home to their own places and families, they came to me ; they offered to do this work for me as a free gift, without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at first to refuse their offer. I knew the country to be poor, I knew famine threatening ; I knew their families long disorganised for want of super- vision. Yet I accepted, because I thought the lesson of that road might be more useful to Samoa than a thousand breadfruit trees, and because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure to receive that which was so handsomely offered. It is now done ; you have trod it to-day in coming hither. It has been made for me by chiefs ; some of them old, some sick, all newly delivered from a harassing confinement, and, in spite of weather unusually hot and insalubrious, I have seen these chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon the work, and I have set up over it, now that it is finished, the name of ' The Road of Gratitude ' (the road of loving hearts), and the name of those who built it." Then Stevenson addressed himself to the chiefs, and his speech covers nearly all the ground for the saving of the native races in the new order. He did not, it is true, deal with a decreasing population or the needs for better sani- tation, as Dr. MacGregor had done not very long before when speaking to a council of Fijian chiefs. But he did appeal to the Samoan chiefs to take the large view of their responsibilities. Not war, but peace, and the making of roads and gardens was the path for them. The only way to defend Samoa was to occupy and use it. A rich soil, a 182 STEVENSON'S GERMANY splendid sun, and copious rain represented work already half done to their hand, but the rest remained with them. Then he told them the story of Scotland and Ireland and much beside. The deliverance is worth reading as a characteristic piece of Stevenson's thinking and speaking ; but its essential value lies in the wisdom of its words for Samoan ears, as uttered by one who to his hearers was a great chief. Stevenson spoke with as much authority on that occasion as if he had been Governor of a British Crown Colony, and with the added power of a man who loved and who knew that he was loved in return. Germany, too, was undoubtedly listening and watching. It was as truly a lesson for the Germans as for the Samoans, and later events showed that it had been learnt for a season. At any rate, Germany decided that the Samoans should be treated as reasonable human beings, and not as natives to be flogged or put in irons for doing things forbidden. But it was only for a period in the preparation for war. Had Germany been victorious in the struggle she precipitated in 1914, the Samoans would have been as surely trodden under foot as the rest of the non-German world, and they have only been saved to-day, with the rest of us, by the might of the Allied nations. CHAPTER XVII CONCLUSIONS German efficiency and British mismanagement. Sir William MacGregor's lecture. The argument in a nutshell. The same Germany in Africa and the Pacific. Problems for Australasia. Native populations not increasing. American criticism. Indian labour in Fiji. A rejoinder to attacks upon the system. Conditions in India. Examples from Java and the Philippines. German trade and strategy. German possessions must not be returned. Mr. Watt's speech on the German menace. ONE form of argument in favour of the return of German possessions in the Pacific may be summarised in the word " efficiency." The present writer has heard it noted, even by those whose authority and loyalty could not be chal- lenged, that there was much to be said on both sides. German colonies were so well managed, German adminis- tration was so good, and in fact Germany was " so efficient," that she should be given another chance. On the other hand, it was claimed that Britain's possessions showed so many signs of mismanagement, or at any rate of indifference on the part of officials the official mind was such a barrier to progress that we could not afford to throw stones. The truth about the war, the cold facts of German brutality in Africa and in various parts of the Pacific, and the certainty that Germany had been using her possessions everywhere as points for aggression and final spoliation in the coming war these things were given no place. It was singular, too, that German regulations in the well-managed 184 STEVENSON'S GERMANY colonies of the Pacific were apparently unknown to the objectors. In one instance Sir William MacGregor was cited under this head, and acknowledgment was made that the quotation came as news to this semi-apologist for Germany. The critic knew Polynesia, and had resided in Fiji for some years ; so that, when the wonders of German rule in Samoa and the Bismarck Archipelago were indicated by him, the lecture given by Sir William MacGregor recently before the Scottish Geographical Society made an opportune rejoinder. Under the terms of capitulation German possessions in the Pacific have been administered by Australia and New Zealand as though they were to be returned. German laws and regulations were accepted, and the ownership of German property was safeguarded. But when New Zealand decided that the Chinese in Samoa should be deported as soon as possible, protest was made that they had been introduced with Germany's approval and assistance, and that to interfere in the work of the plantations by emptying the labour reservoir was a breach of international law. This point had not been settled by any definite legal or diplomatic joust, and New Zealand, while continuing to use her own judgment in the matter, held her hand for the moment. In the Bismarck Archipelago German law was recognised at first by allowing drastic treatment of the natives working in plantations. Sir William MacGregor put the matter succinctly : " Shortly after the German possessions passed into the hands of the Commonwealth officers, a mistake that was intrinsically very regrettable was made. A regulation dealing with the recruiting and working of native labourers was issued under which the employer could be authorised to flog, imprison, with or without chains, or with or without light, or fine a CONCLUSIONS 185 labourer. After about a month this regulation was with- drawn, and an amendment was substituted that puts flogging practically under the same restriction as in Aus- tralia ; that it can be imposed only by order of a properly constituted court, and a heavy fine or imprisonment is imposed on any employer who flogs a labourer." * Again German law was reviewed. This compresses the argument into the proverbial nut- shell. The whole spirit of British administration is against what had become a matter of course with German officials. Natives are not chattels or beasts of burden to be flogged at will and treated as less than human. No wonderful efficiency in German colonial administration will compen- sate for the substitution of callous indifference to human suffering for a ready sympathy with and understanding of the native mind and character. The natives are fellow- beings living in a part of the world which, for them, seems turned upside down ; and to flog them simply because they prefer their own way of life to the German or the British is to deny the fundamental principles of Christianity. Sir William MacGregor concluded his paragraph with the note that while it might seem paradoxical to call the mistake above mentioned a fortunate one, it was " one more proof that the Commonwealth Government will insist on the natives under their jurisdiction being fairly and justly treated." He declared also that while the flogging regu- lation may have been in accordance with the laws in force under German rule, it was certainly not in conformity with British administration. A vindication of the spirit of British control in the Pacific is thus made possible, when it is attacked ; but the question of the return of German * Th Seottiih Geographical Magazine, May, 1818, p. 167, 186 STEVENSON'S GERMANY possessions must still be debated round the whole circle. The people of Australasia contend that there is only one Germany. In Africa she is the same Power as in the Pacific, and the Germany of the Belgian atrocities is identical with the Germany responsible for the excesses in the Caroline Islands. To quote Samoa, and to argue that German efficiency elsewhere has made a model for Great Britain to copy, is to look at a lustful, truculent, brutal nation through the shadows of a dark dawning in the Pacific, where for too long Germany worked behind a cloud of her own making. Also to insist that as strong an indict- ment may be drawn against British adventurers, adminis- trators, traders, and companies as against their German congeners is to forget that Great Britain was continually represented, not by obscure individuals, but by her navy and by the procession of great men beginning with Sir George Grey and Bishop Selwyn right through to James Chalmers and Sir William MacGregor. Her failures in the Pacific have been those of a sluggish imagination, not of a hard heart or an anaemic conscience. British pioneers in the Pacific have been hampered, broken, and denied at every turn by their mother country. Great Britain has too often shown herself ignorant, and has assumed know- ledge only to justify a stubborn refusal to advance along paths opened for her by her enterprising sons. But the latter have not denied her will and wish to do the right thing by defenceless natives, or to punish wrong-doers wherever the proof against them has been complete. Germany, on the other hand, has been a constant party to wrong-doing. Since she became an Empire she has been a cynical con- temner of the moral law. She first broke France upon the wheel of war, and throughout the Pacific, for the best part CONCLUSIONS 187 of halt' a century, she laid her plans to smash the British Empire, to dispossess the natives and to enslave them. She was preparing for the great day when Australia and New Zealand should become part of the world-conquering Teuton's domain, and when no other nation was to say her nay. Germany in the Pacific, therefore, has been no different from the Germany revealed in the horrors of an African administration or in the wreckage of Belgium and Northern France. Australasia has demanded in conse- quence that in the one great sphere of interest she shall not be trusted any further than in the other. Before summing up the argument on the side of trade and strategy, it must be confessed that a difficulty arises when the people of Australia and New Zealand are asked what they propose to do to secure a better order in the Pacific. The native races are not increasing as they should, and some difficult problems have been set by the very desire of Great Britain to serve and save the people already entrusted to her care. If the cost of this war is to be met, the tropics must be developed ; yet in the Pacific nothing seems to be settled. Fijians and Samoans will not work to develop their groups on any large scale, and to force their labour, or to tax them for public works which they cannot at present appreciate, is repugnant to all ideas of British justice. That the people of the United States are watching this with interest may be seen in some of the writing on the subject. In one of the American magazines which deals with scientific subjects there has recently appeared a series of articles by Dr. Alfred Goldsborough Mayer, of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, who visited the Pacific and lived there for a time making investigations. Some of his statements and conclusions 188 STEVENSON'S GERMANY may, no doubt, be challenged, and his reference to the black labour traffic shows that he could not have studied existing conditions. Kanakas are no longer employed in Queensland, and for some years before they were re- patriated the regulations governing their employment were stringently applied. The Government of Queensland took every possible precaution to safeguard their interests, and abuses were carefully watched and punished. Dr. Mayer makes it appear as if the shadow were still heavy over the British part of the Pacific. Then he regrets that British New Guinea was handed over to Australia, as though he had never heard of her bargain with Great Britain or of Sir William MacGregor's wonderful administration, prac- tically under Australian control. But this is by the way. The conclusions reached in other directions are sound, and one paragraph may be quoted to show how far the ground has been studied on its ethical and economic side. He says : " In 1874 the British undertook the task of civilis- ing, without exploiting, a barbarous and degraded race which was drifting hopelessly into ruin. They began the solution of this complex problem by arresting the entire race and immuring them within the protecting walls of a system which recognised as its cardinal principle that the natives were unfit to think or act for themselves. For a generation the Fijians have been in a prison wherein they have become the happiest and best-behaved captives upon earth. During this time they have become reconciled to a life of peace, and have forgotten the taste of human flesh ; and while they cherish no love for the white man, they feel the might of his law and know that his decrees are as finalities of fate. All are serving life sentences to the white man's will, and the fire of their old ambition has cooled into CONCLUSIONS 189 the dull embers of resignation and then died into the apathy of contentment with things that are. . . . No real progress has been made by the Fijians ; they have received much from their teachers, but have given nothing in return. They are in the position of a youth whose schooling has just been finished ; life and action lie before him ; will he awaken to his responsibility, develop his latent talent, character, and power, and recompense his teacher by achievement, or will he sink into the apathy of a vile content ? " * This may, no doubt, be challenged on several counts, and especially by missionaries in Fiji who know what the Fijians have done for themselves and for other groups in the Pacific by lives laid down in heroic self-sacrifice. Both Dr. Fison and Dr. Brown, if alive, could give Dr. Mayer chapter and verse to show that Fijians as a people have neither been in prison nor were they arrested in the first instance. They offered their group to Britain willingly and without constraint. They have been free to do many things, and have done some of them remarkably well, as witness their fighting in the great war, their beginnings in medical study, and their success as " surgeons " in the Carolines. But these great missionaries would have been prompt to recognise the broad truth behind Dr. Mayer's generalisation, though he appears to sympathise little with mission work as a whole, even while giving due credit to the astonishing success of individual missionaries against tremendous odds. Throughout the Pacific a stage has undoubtedly been reached at which the natives may now be more rapidly pushed forward in some directions ; for the alternative seems to be stagnation and death. Cer- * The Scientific Monthly, New York, October, 1916, pp. 3334. 190 STEVENSON'S GERMANY tainly Great Britain and Australasia are determined that Germany's way with the natives shall cease. The latter must be educated for the new order, and this is where opinion is beginning to concentrate in hearty agreement. Education on conventional lines has been continued until in Fiji most of the children now can read and write. The Methodist and Roman Catholic Churches, not the Govern- ment of Fiji, have been responsible for this amount of pro- gress. But manual training and training in agriculture have been too long delayed. Something, no doubt, is being attempted with satisfactory results, but there must be a large, comprehensive programme with the Government behind it, and with wise discretion in extending operations wherever the way is open. Missionary effort is already bearing fruit in this direction in New Guinea and the Solomons ; and in Fiji accelerated progress should be possible in the near future. But though they see its necessity, it is too large a responsibility for the missionaries. So full of promise is the whole thing that, once native ambition and enthusiasm are aroused, it should be like putting a light to a bonfire. Dr. Mayer deplores Fiji's utter lack of purpose. He says that " a cardinal difficulty is the unfortunate fact that the natives desire no change " ; but he fails to realise that they are being roused and that once fully awake they will go far. In Samoa in the past the natives have been hard to hold when started on new paths, and their absorption in a game like cricket has turned the English idea of it into farce. So earnest and absorbed did they get in some of their native games at one time that the missionaries were afraid of them, and at last put them under an interdict. The steam can be raised anywhere in the Pacific if the right means are adopted, but it must be CONCLUSIONS 191 regulated and controlled, and, if Germany is to be elimi- nated, Great Britain and her Dominions, in co-operation with the United States, must prove that the natives have made substantial gain. There is a side to British control and initiative in the Pacific which must be faced here, because Germany herself and her apologists of British blood will certainly obtrude it, and indeed magnify its difficulties and injustices. It should be understood, however, that it is British freedom which has given these folk such plenty of missiles from British admissions, publications, attacks and counter- attacks as between Government officials, missionaries, traders, travellers, and so forth. In Fiji, for instance, only in 1916 did the Government see its way to embark upon any system of education for the natives. When the war began, two years before, less than four thousand pounds had been spent upon Fijian and Indian children, and there were but two public schools assisted from the revenues of the colony, with an average attendance of both sexes of 365 . Education left to the Methodist and Roman Catholic Missions has not failed, and the former mission has upwards of a dozen schools for Indian children with some- thing like 600 pupils. These are boys because their parents will not send the girls. The Roman Catholic Mission has one school for Indian children in Suva with considerably over a hundred pupils. But now a beginning has been made, and in 1916 the Fijian Legislative Council actually appointed a Board of Education to establish Government schools and to grant aid to denominational and other private schools. But behind all this has been much pressure, resulting in friction and misunderstanding. As far as the Indian population is concerned there have 192 STEVENSON'S GERMANY been charges of indifference, and the whole system of indentured labour has been attacked both from within and without. The last attack has come from women in Aus- tralia who have recently endorsed a report by Miss Garnham, a lady with actual experience of conditions in India. Her report on Fiji, though written temperately and with a dispassionate judgment which is particularly helpful, is nevertheless full of condemnation. If, therefore, all that has been given to the world in this way were left without counter- criticism, there would be substantial grounds for any future challenge by Germany to Great Britain when comparisons were offered between their respective methods of dealing with the native races in the Pacific. The Indians in Fiji have been imported, and they were British subjects before they left India. Moreover, the " lines " or compounds in which they have been living were part of the provision insisted upon by the Indian Govern- ment itself. The same Indian Government, no doubt, has abolished the indenture system, throwing the sugar in- dustry of Fiji into confusion thereby ; though it must be admitted that, had the system been continued, the lack of tonnage on account of Germany's submarine campaign would have made the transport of Indian labour exceed- ingly difficult, if not altogether impossible. Still, all this does not meet the charges of immorality among the Indians in Fiji, where it has been alleged that on one occasion a newly arrived married labourer was met by three un- married Indians who forthwith demanded, and secured, a share in his wife. Now Miss Garnham's report deals with an important question, and her conclusions cannot very well be assailed, upon the facts as she presents them. Thus she declares, after investigation, that " a very high per- CONCLUSIONS 193 centage of men and women have left wives or husbands, and children, in India." She says also that she found very few women who had come out with their husbands, and that a big tragedy lay behind that fact. To summarise the report under this general head is impossible in the space now available, but it may suffice to say that special emphasis is laid upon the peculiar disabilities suffered by Indian women in Fiji. As only forty women have been recruited with each hundred men, it will be seen that a great deal of force must lie behind any broad indictment of a system originally intended to develop the sugar plan- tations of Fiji, and not designed in any way to educate the children or develop the manhood and womanhood of the Indian labourers so directly concerned. But again the reminder is due that the Indian Government prescribed or ratified the conditions of employment, and that in India itself the employment of labourers has been constant under practically identical conditions. Certainly the " lines " have not been peculiar to Fiji. Again, of course, it will be retorted that two wrongs do not make a right, and if in India and in British colonies other than Fiji great evils have been allowed the Governments responsible must be charged with indifference or incompetence. The immediate point here is that, not Germans, but the British themselves have been the sternest critics of wrong or injustice to the native races. It does not matter whether the challenge has been hurled at Governments or companies by lay champions of natives in the Pacific, or by missionary advocates defending Indian labourers in Fijian plantations, the initiative has been invariably British ; and Germany will take her best stones to break enemy windows from the hands of that enemy. Logically, too, she will insist that s.o, o 194 STEVENSON'S GERMANY as British writers, missionary and other, have themselves pilloried British Governments or Government officials, there is little left for her to say. Has it not been insisted that Great Britain has always stood for liberty and fair play ? What, then, has she to reply to the charges made against the employment of Indians in Fiji ? If it were necessary for Downing Street to quote unofficial documents in this connection, one of the best series of rejoinders could be found in the Fiji Times for August and September, 191 8. The writer can hardly have been retained by the employers of Indian labour in Fiji, for he does not write as an advo- cate. He deals broadly and fairly with the whole question ; and the personality of the writer is forgotten in his presen- tation of the salient facts of Indian life at home and in Fiji. The problems of India, and of Asiatic labour in the Pacific, are presented forcibly in reply to those who would urge the evils of a system from one side only. The writer, it should be premised, does not meet the challenge that Indians have left their homes under unfair representations, that they have found Fiji vastly different from their fair imaginings of the group, and that they have lost hope in many cases because the old home life with its communal safeguards has become for ever a thing of the past ; but the charges of practical slavery, of abominable immorality, and of a people broken and in despair are fairly met with certain established facts. The shortage of women in proportion to men is discussed in comparison with the same shortage elsewhere. " We are denounced," says the writer in the Fiji Times, " because there is a 4 shortage of women.' \ Well, this is a state of things to be regretted, and remedied if possible. And it is righting itself among the Indians more quickly than one thinks. But what are the facts CONCLUSIONS 195 about the matter ? The facts are that the proportion of women to men in Fiji is higher than amongst any other people who have immigrated to this colony. The only really reliable figures are those of the official census. Look up the last census report and you will find that the Indians have 54*55 females to every 100 males ; Europeans have 54-37 females to every 100 males ; Chinese have 20-05 females to every 100 males ; Melanesians have 13*54 females to every 100 males. Other races have a greater grievance than the Indians in the shortage of women, and that shortage, though it may be a contributing cause, cannot be the only cause of the undoubtedly prevalent sexual evil among the Indian population." * It must be remembered that not more than one-thirteenth of the Indians in Fiji are living in " lines " at the present moment. When their indentures are completed they have the option of staying in the group or of returning to India, and the greater number elect to stay. Hence a large proportion are free to live their own life, and many still work on the plantations for white people or obtain land to work for themselves. In Miss Garnham's report, which has been published by a Sydney committee representing many organisations, principally women's, in Australia and New Zealand, it is pointed out that there are now 61,000 Indians in Fiji, and that only 4,700 are at present under indenture. A summary of the report runs : " By November, 1921, there will be no Indians working under indenture, but the evils arising from the system are not likely to be eradicated for many years, and only then if some special means are taken to accomplish reform in the social, moral, and religious life of the people. Miss Garnham quotes statistics * Fiji Times, August 24th, 1918. o2 196 STEVENSON'S GERMANY to show that the suicide rate is abnormally high amongst the Indian community in Fiji, and attributes this in a large measure to what she describes as the abnormal sex dis- proportion provided for under the indenture system." * The question of the " lines " is answered by the writer in the Fiji Times with the reminder that these are disappear- ing by a process of evolution, and that they " have been ordered by the Indian Government, not only in Fiji, but wherever East Indians have been permitted to labour under Government regulation." In many parts of India, even to-day, it is urged, " lines," and " not such good and healthy ones as those in Fiji, are to be found." The whole difficulty of immorality must be faced in the home conditions of millions of Indians before they emigrate. This is broadly the reply to those who place Fiji in the pillory, and Abbe" Dubois's standard work, " Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies," may be quoted with considerable effect. Juvenile precocity in vice is just as remarkable in India as in Fiji, and while this cannot be used as an argu- ment for condoning conditions which must stimulate and not correct the mischief, it would evidently be unfair to bear too heavily upon the environment, as against the inherited tendencies of Indian children. Early marriages are the Indian reply to it all. As to Indian marriages in Fiji not being legal, the complications of custom are so great that the Indian Government has again placed its veto upon the proposal to include them in a general law intended to remove whatever difficulties may exist. The attack made upon Fiji in connection with the death-rate among Indians is met with the rejoinder that it is only one -third of the death-rate in India. Thus the Fijian Medical * Sydney Morning Herald, November 16th, 1918. CONCLUSIONS 197 Department seems to be doing its duty. Among the Indian population living in " lines " the birth-rate is higher than among the " free " Indians. The writer to the Fiji Times continues : " Considering that in India the males outnumber the females in the proportion of 100 to 95-4, while in Fiji amongst Indians the proportion is only 100 to 54-5, the fact that our birth-rate is almost equal to that of India is a most hopeful feature in itself. And, moreover, as Messrs. McNeill and Chimman Lai point out (p. 320), the 'proportion of females steadily rises in the resident population.' " * Much of this will, perhaps, be refused by objectors as so much generalisation, and generalisations have been declared to be the most dangerous form of truth, because liable to become hopeless untruths. It is stated in Miss Garnham's report : " Europeans seemed to be under the impression that the Indian immigrant had but brought an immoral mode of life with him into the colony. As a matter of fact the home life of the village people in the United Provinces, the district from which most of the Indian people are recruited, is the purest in the whole world." This is a generalisation, and one does not chal- lenge it here as a half-truth. But, after reading both sides in this interesting and important controversy, one feels that more remains to be said, in which the Government of India will again be involved, and in which statements by earnest people, concerned to see fair play given to Indians in Fiji, may be countered by facts offered by equally earnest people anxious that fair play shall prevail all round. It becomes a question of trying to get the whole problem stated before arguing from one side or the other. Again, it is really the problem of India, but most emphatically it * Fiji Times, September, 1918. 198 STEVENSON'S GERMANY is also the problem of how best to reconcile the need of labour in the Pacific with justice to white men and to natives. The former must have help to develop the marvellous potentialities of the tropics ; and the latter only ask to be given a chance of working in the Pacific at higher wages and under better conditions than they have been used to in India. In the new order old racial weak- nesses and vices seem to gather momentum, and yet a rising level of health and of physical comfort are evidently the outcome of Indian activity in Fiji. Against that is the breaking down of the safeguards of communal life as left behind in India ; and there is a growth of disorder which the white man finds it difficult to control. But the Briton is genuinely concerned to remedy existing or growing evils, while the German only thinks of using the native of any caste or colour to suit himself. Morals, missionary enter- prise, and civilisation as such, have not troubled him at all. In offering this summary, the object is to show how seriously British people in the Pacific, as well as natives in and out of India, are discussing a complicated problem. There is a genuine desire among principals to do what is right and reasonable, and this applies as much to the largest employers of Indian labour in Fiji as to the mission- aries themselves, who have taken up the burden of voicing Indian unrest. Germany cannot say that there is any failure in the honest intention to do the best for the Indians, but she may scornfully note that there has been invincible ignorance, with a plentiful lack of the German thoroughness and organisation which have worked such wonders in Africa and the Pacific though she may not now cynically admit that they were backed up by the lash and emphasised CONCLUSIONS 199 with rifle shots. Thus we come back to the spirit behind British administration, which has shown a sincere regard for the well-being of the natives as human beings and a genuine determination to help them up the ladder of civilisation. This must be the test of Germany's claims to be left in possession of her colonies. But here it should be urged that the great problem of developing the resources of the various islands and island groups will never be solved merely by warm-hearted and soft-handed ways with the natives of the Pacific. They cannot be left to themselves ; and in Fiji and Samoa especially, they must be roused effectively to occupy and develop their lands. Yet during the process of building them up, so that their numbers shall increase and in order that they shall be equipped with crafts and agricultural knowledge, large estates held by white men must be kept going. Recruiting for labour in the Solomons and New Guinea is under strict regulation ; but even there it is not easy to see how the demands for help are to be met in any large future for European enter- prise. The difficulties which surround the employment of Indians in Fiji are already paralleled in other groups and islands. Pacific Island natives, with every care taken, find themselves in uncongenial surroundings and with work to do for which they never really contracted. They are often adventurous. They wish to see the world and to get into the white man's wonderful domain of new things, and they assent to every proposition as natives will. So they are recruited. But they cannot go in company with their women in the majority of cases, and they have no con- ception at first of a life under contract with the daily round and common task of plantation work. " Lines," with their apparent confinement, lack of feminine companionship 200 STEVENSON'S GERMANY and allurement, sickness following loneliness, disease, perhaps as the result of new and uncongenial conditions, have all provided material for adverse reports. The employment of native labour in the Pacific is full of per- plexity and despair, although the object in view seems to be so easily attainable and is so genuinely worth reaching. It is to the interest of everybody, white man and brown alike, that plantations should be cultivated and should prosper ; and yet the average planter has too often a heart full of bitterness against the Government, the Government official, or the missionary ; while the latter in turn can draw a case against the other three, frequently at a moment's notice. But Asia must reinforce Australasia in the Pacific, and so serve Europe along lines corrected by the disappoint- ments and difficulties here outlined. Dr. Mayer quotes Dutch administration in Java as showing what may be done for Fiji ; but in Java, Chinese and Arabs are not treated as aliens and immiscible, but as friends, and finally as good citizens. In other ways also the Dutch have undoubtedly set an excellent example in their treatment of the Javanese, and success may well follow British enterprise in the same direction. British administration in the Malay States is proving itself capable of the same foresight, energy, and sound discretion. All that is needed is an extension of the same principles through the Pacific by appointing the most capable men to take charge and by giving them full confidence and a free hand. The United States is doing this in the Philippines, and while it may be objected that this great group and the whole of Malaysia are in a position of advantage with regard to Asia, both naturally and because of a large population inured to work, the reply is CONCLUSIONS 201 fairly obvious. Proximity to Asia has not been all help for Holland and America, but rather the reverse ; and a large native population has not meant continued peace in the past, but intermittent warfare. The fine examples which the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies offer are evidence of great obstacles overcome and of a steady determination that the natives shall not fall back through any failure to understand them. Yet it remains true that the wide waters of the Pacific, with scattered populations upon many island groups and on innumerable single islands, are a heavy handicap as well as a broad highway ; and no great development of these tropical resources will be possible unless Asia can be drawn in without prejudicing the present liberties or the future livelihood of peoples already in possession. Through the Indian Ocean before the war there was a constant stream of vessels carrying Indian labourers and their families to and from plantations at various points, and no indenture system was needed. The demand for labour was constant and the remuneration was good. Consequently the work of providing a sufficient supply of labour became profitable. It was just the experience of Great Britain and Ireland or of Italy or South America, when labourers crossed the sea for harvest time or to obtain work for a term and then went home again. Why should not the problems of labour in the Pacific be solved in the same way, the native races to be used as they show capacity and ambition ? The spirit of British and American regard for human life and human rights would assuredly be sufficient for these things, while that of Germany would as certainly prove to be their undoing. Finally, the argument against Germany may be com- 202 STEVENSON'S GERMANY pleted in the assurance that her thought of the Pacific has always been one of strategic possession. She occupied point after point with the determination to grasp the real prizes of the ocean, as she regarded them, in the rich islands of Malaysia and the lands of Australasia. The thought of developing them was the last thing on the list. To be given afresh her points d'appui would only revive the old ambition and provide once more the means to gratify it. It would lead her again into temptation. This is the conviction of Australia and New Zealand, and it is profound and ineradicable. They have been too long under the shadow not to have felt the reality of a great aggressor close at hand. They feel that Germany has been studying the Pacific from the viewpoint of war for more than a generation ; and they cannot see how she is to recover a humble mind and a sane outlook simply by being disappointed and broken. Her conversion to ways of peace may be real enough, though that has to be proved ; but her ability to use her possessions for peaceful trade in co-operation with the British, the French, and the Ameri- cans is more than doubtful. The whole theory of possession will have to be destroyed ; and " German " values may only be restored by militant thought and action, not by honest commercial and industrial development. It may, however, be asked : Why not give Germany a chance ? Her Pacific possessions are well worth developing, and she will soon find it pay to be peacefully industrious when raw materials must be found for her factories. These questions may be effectively answered by an appeal to the past and not by expressing hopes of wise conduct in the future. Australia and New Zealand have paid for safety (as part of a great Empire) with their best life's CONCLUSIONS 203 blood ; and they did not count the cost when Belgium was invaded. They put the integrity of a small nation before their own immediate interests, for they realised that a great principle was at stake. Their own integrity was involved in that of Belgium's, but essentially because the same great, hungry, ruthless Power had threatened both. Australia and New Zealand were challenged in the Pacific, and were to be conquered from that ocean when the time came. Therefore, as Belgium is to be put out of danger from future attack, so Australasia feels that her safety demands the sacrifice of German possessions. How they shall be disposed of is not a matter for discussion here ; but, at any rate, Germany cannot ever again be accepted by Britons as a neighbour in the Pacific. Perhaps the last word may be given with advantage in the speech of the acting Prime Minister of Australia in the House of Representatives just after the signing of the terms of armistice between the Allied Powers and Germany. Mr. Watt said that naval opinion on the question tended only in one direction. " From a naval and defensive point of view Australia had an outlying frontier, of which a large part was made up of Papua, the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, and the Fijian group. Beyond that frontier there were look-out posts which it was important that Australia should understand, and, if possible, govern. The late German possessions in New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and Bougainville in the Solomons, formed an important part of that frontier, and perhaps the most important part. The naval advisers to the Government stated that from a strictly naval point of view the Bismarck Archipelago was the strategic centre of the whole of the Pacific. They further advised that in order to obtain the 204 STEVENSON'S GERMANY same degree of defence as the possession of those islands would mean this country would be involved in the annual expenditure of several million pounds. In a part of those possessions was one of the finest outlines for a naval base in the southern hemisphere. There were several first-rate harbours within reasonable distance of one another. There was also a magnificent river, navigable for 300 or 400 miles from its mouth, with no bar at its entrance, and equipment such as probably no harbour in Australia had. In the same group there were indications of oil supplies, and therefore they would be a valuable asset. It was beyond the hurricane belt, and from the naval point of view immensely important. It was further said by the advisers of the Government that if they were to allow the enemy to dribble back to the Pacific Islands it would be a menace so imminent that an attack could be made within the limits of one day on the coast by aeroplane, and two or three days by ordinary naval craft. An attack such as would be possible from the north could be made not only on our ports, but on all our trade routes. If submarine warfare was to be a feature of the future, such a danger spot might practically cut Australia off from the rest of the world as far as shipping and cable communication were concerned, and Instead of the great immunity which the Australians had enjoyed during the past four critical years, thanks to the British Navy, they might have no possibility of exchanging products or men oversea. Instead of prosperity and immunity they would have isolation such as they could not bear to think of." * This speech was made in support of a resolution that has since been endorsed by and carried through both Houses * Sydney Morning Herald, November 15th, 1918. CONCLUSIONS 205 of the Australian Parliament. Mr. Watt's conclusions, therefore, must be accepted as authoritative and repre- sentative. He declared that he had no hesitation in saying that any proposition to restore German possessions would be exceedingly dangerous. " From an Australian point of view restoration would be equivalent to a German victory. New Zealand stood foursquare with Australia on that matter, and the utterances of her leaders, irrespective of party, had been similar to the utterances by the Australian Government, straight against restoration, because the interests of the two Dominions were absolutely identical. If for no other reason than the cruelty Germany had shown to the natives of her various possessions, humanity would be justified in expelling her. In no island country over which the German flag had flown during the last 80 years was there anything in the native heart but hatred for German masters." * Nothing could be more decisive as an appeal from the British Dominions under the Southern Cross ; and in the new day that is breaking they are looking forward to strenuous progress under the flag of Empire, but freed from an incubus which has proved increasingly heavy during the last three decades. * Sydney Morning Herald, November 15th, 1918. APPENDIX A IN 1886 there was first of all an exchange of notes, and subsequently a declaration between the Governments of Great Britain and Germany demarcating their spheres of influence in the Western Pacific. Then there was a further declaration the text of which is given below. It will be seen from Appendix B., which contains the text of a Convention and Declaration between Great Britain and Germany for the settlement of Samoan and other questions in 1900, that a statement is made regarding the German rights of recruiting in the British Solomons. It may be assumed that it had been the practice of the Germans to recruit in the British Solomons, but not the practice of the British to recruit in the German Solomons. At that time it will be remembered that there were not many British planta- tions in the Solomons at all, but the right which was conferred by the Declaration of 1886 was hardly affected by the fact that no specific mention was made of the rights of the British to recruit in the German islands. DECLARATION between the Governments of Great Britain and the German Empire : relating to the Reciprocal Freedom of Trade and Commerce in the British and German Posses- sions and Protectorates in the Western Pacific. Signed at Berlin, April 10, 1886.