I

Part I of this book begins at the arrival of the first ship, and ends with Samoa semi-civilized—as understood by Europeans. Trade has been established. The power of the white man is known and feared. There have been punitive expeditions. The Gospel of Christ has been preached and apparently accepted. The three "r's" are being taught. Fire-arms have been introduced. This portrayal will suffice entirely as regards the natives for the remainder of the nineteenth century. In 1899 the archipelago was divided up between Germany and America. It is necessary perhaps to outline as briefly as possible the events leading up to that disruption.

Tamalelangi (Son of the Skies) who had greeted John Williams on his arrival at the Island of Savaii—died in 1859, and the year following there arose two claimants to his name of Malietoa. From 1860 onwards Samoa, becoming of commercial value, attracted the attention of three great Powers: Britain, America, and Germany. From 1869 to the end of the century there was almost unceasing petty warfare between the holders of the names of Malietoa, Mataafa, and Tamasese to the over-lordship of the islands. In these squabbles, through the medium of their warships and Consuls, the three Powers backed various parties respectively; Britain and America being usually combined, and always in opposition to the Germans.

The Samoan Wars, the preparations for which began in 1867, were taken advantage of by Theodor Weber,¹ the local head of the German business house of Johann Caesar Goddefroy and Sohn, to increase the holdings of his firm. He has been page 78described as a cave-man Hamburger. During this period, when large numbers of natives were under arms, huge tracts of land began to pass from native possession into that of Europeans, being bartered for food and ammunition. Johann Caesar Goddefroy having gone bankrupt as a result of speculation, his most valuable asset was found to be in the Pacific, and his property there was developed eventually by a company trading under the name of the Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft für Sud-See Insulen zu Hamburg and known usually as the German Firm. The areas of land acquired by Weber—by somewhat questionable process incidentally—from the natives in Upolu were planted up as coco-nut plantations. The plantation at Mulifanua, at the extreme west of the island, was supposed to be the largest coco-nut plantation south of the Equator. It was Weber who substituted, in the Navigators, copra for coco-nut oil. Copra is the kernel of the coco-nut, dried, either in sun or kiln.

In 1873, copra being now an important item, the United States sent a Colonel Steinberger as special envoy to Samoa to report upon the archipelago. And two years later he was again landed from an American warship, this time with some pieces of artillery, to "assist the Samoans towards good and stable government." Steinberger promptly set up a dictatorship, which marked the start of European domination, and also sold himself to Weber; but falling foul of his own Consul the diplomat arranged for a British gunboat to deport him to Fiji, from whence he did not return, preferring to obtain compensation from the British Government. For this the American Consul was recalled, and the naval captain severely reprimanded. In 1878, however, the Americans secured control of Pango-Pango Harbour—the best in the whole group—in return for a promise that a benevolent interest in Samoa would always be maintained, and, when necessary, the good offices of America exerted on her behalf. This followed a request by the natives for annexation, such as had been rejected by Britain the previous year. It is doubtful if the chief who negotiated the treaty in Washington had any authority to do so. It marked the first violation of the Monro Doctrine. Rather similar treaties followed with Germany and Britain, in respect page 79of course to other harbours. The three Powers could make up their minds neither to leave the islands alone nor take them up.

The year following, the British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific came up from Fiji to investigate the case of the lynching of a seaman on the Apia Beach after his trial, as a result of a stabbing affray, in one of the consular courts. While there the High Commissioner defined the boundaries for a municipality to the town, to be controlled by a Board consisting of the three Consuls. All within the area was considered neutral territory in time of native war, and taxes were levied by the Consular Board. Outside the Municipal Area the Samoan chiefs continued to deal with their people as from time immemorial. A native Government, controlled more or less by the King for the time being, still continued to sit at Mulinuu.

New Zealand's connection with Samoa dates, somewhat amusingly, from the early 'eighties. In 1883 there arrived in Samoa a man from New Zealand, who says the British Consul Churchward, having failed to make a capture of the natives in a land-grabbing venture, turned his attention to annexation to New Zealand. Soon there began to appear in New Zealand newspapers outrageously misleading statements, making it appear that the Samoans were most anxious—"in fact quite mad"—for colonial attachment. It was stated that they fully understood the New Zealand system of government as it had been explained to them, and were marvellously attracted by the native branch of the legislation, more especially that part which treated of the vote and the dispensation of moneys for native education. By these specious productions, declares the Consul, and schemes continually working both in Samoa and Auckland, the general public were led to believe that the Samoans were dying for annexation to New Zealand, which, he adds, was most certainly not the case at any time.

The New Zealand Government thereupon applied to the Imperial authorities for permission to despatch their steamer to Apia and hoist their flag, and even had steam up ready to leave. But permission was not granted, and Samoa remained, as before, an independent kingdom.

The native squabbles and the consular intriguing reached page 80their first crisis in March 1889, when a German and an American naval squadron, having ignored a falling barometer—being almost at the point of opening fire upon one another—were, without a single exception, hurled to destruction amid the reefs of Apia Harbour. There the skeleton of the Adler still remains. Only the solitary British warship in port managed to steam out to open sea in the teeth of the gale.

The so-called hurricane put Samoa definitely on the map so far as the publics of Europe and America were concerned, and resulted also in the Berlin Act of June 1889, by which it was declared that the islands of Samoa were neutral territory in which the subjects of the three Signatory Powers had equal rights of residence, trade, and personal protection. The three Powers recognized the independence of the Samoan Government, and the free right of the natives to elect their Chief or King, and choose their form of government according to their laws and customs. A European Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Samoa was appointed, and a President of the Municipality of Apia. Under the new arrangement a start was made upon the construction of roads. Malietoa was returned from Jaluit, whither he had been exiled by the Germans in 1887.

In the same year, 1889, Robert Louis Stevenson arrived upon the scene and built himself a house at Vailima. He constituted himself from the first a strong partisan of Mataafa, his book, A Footnote to History, being practically a pamphlet in Mataafa's favour. On December 3, 1894, Stevenson died, and was buried on the solitary woody mountain beside his famous residence. In 1893, Mataafa had been deported to Jaluit by the British and Americans.

The native wars ceased in 1894, in which year New Zealand proposed for the third time that she should assume control of Samoa, but the Consuls continued to intrigue and interfere. There came a climax in 1899, when a ruling of the Chief Justice, in accordance strangely enough with the Berlin Act, that the young Malietoa should be King in succession to his father, who had died a few months previously, was ignored. Mataafa, who had just been returned from Jaluit, declared himself for the kingship and drove the small Malietoa party, supported by the Tamaseses, together with Mr. Gurr, the page 81advocate for the natives mentioned in A Footnote to History, to the protection of the British warship Porpoise, in Apia Harbour. The Porpoise was at this time commanded by Captain Sturdee—afterwards the victor of the Falkland Islands Battle, when the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sunk.

The Germans secretly backed the Mataafas, to whom they had hitherto been opposed. The British and Americans combined, for the first time in their history, in fighting a common foe: the rebel Mataafa. Sailors of both nations were killed; even as were Germans in 1888. British and American warships bombarded deserted Mataafan villages; and the New Zealand Government, worried perhaps at the possibility of a potential enemy becoming established fifteen hundred miles to their north, sent their steamer to Samoa and made an offer of volunteer troops, which was not accepted.

A Joint Commission from the Powers was now hurriedly despatched to Samoa with instructions that all hostilities must cease pending their arrival. It had been resolved to partition up the group.

Britain was at this time (1899) involved in the Boer War and anxious to placate Germany; but apart from this the interests of Germany and America, it has been seen, were paramount. Britain therefore, being compensated nominally by territory in the Solomon Islands, agreed to withdraw, leaving America and Germany to divide up the archipelago between them. America took the commercially unimportant islands of Eastern Samoa—Tutuila, Manua, etc.—and developed the strategically important Pango-Pango Harbour as a naval coaling-station. Germany assumed a protectorate over the commercially important islands of Western Samoa—Upolu and Savaii—together with Manono and Apolima. To all of this the consent of the Samoan people was neither sought nor given. Two or three times in the course of their history they had petitioned Great Britain to annex them, and once they had petitioned America to that effect, but they certainly had no desire for German domination or for partition between two different Powers.

"If your telegram is here rightly understood, I cannot call your conduct good," is the euphonious but cryptic termination page 82to an historic despatch from Bismarck to an erring German Consul in Samoa; and it might furnish a sufficiently pertinent comment on European policy throughout in the archipelago during the nineteenth century.

II

The first German Governor of Western Samoa was Dr. Solf, who prior to 1900 had been President of the Municipality in Apia; and so, under the terms of the Berlin Act, had already been in a position of considerable authority. He went first to Fiji, where he made a study of British administrative methods, and came back and modelled his administration accordingly. The arms of the warring native parties were called in, and paid for, and the country settled down to an era of peace.

With the twentieth century, I should explain, Eastern Samoa—Tutuila, Manua, etc.—must pass from my purview. The Stars and Stripes still fly there. Its history has been mainly uneventful. Its administration has been that of American naval officers. The natives voluntarily ceded their islands to the United States not long since, so apparently they are well satisfied.

Dr. Solf took over a country where there were practically no public buildings, and but few roads, and which recently had been riven with civil war. The office of King had already been abolished by the Joint Commission. He appointed Mataafa Alii Sili, or principal chief; but on the death of Mataafa in 1912 that office also was abolished.

The German Governor acted as his own Secretary of Native Affairs. He collected a small staff of white officials around him. As Deputy Administrator (Resident Commissioner) of Savaii he appointed an Irishman—Dick Williams—who controlled the island single-handed. Indeed, the whole administration of Western Samoa was patriarchal. There were, of course, such officials as Collector of Customs, Harbour Master, and Chief of Police, with for the most part half-caste and native subordinates.

Under German rule, the European residents maintain, they lived like "one happy family." In fact the British profess that page 83they were even better treated by the Government than were the Germans. There was about this Administration, unlikely though it would have seemed, a sort of wisdom and joviality which might almost be termed Olympian. An interesting side-light is thrown by a story which tells that Dr. Solf, home on leave and present at the Reichstag, was accused by political opponents, among other things, of going around in Samoa with flowers in his hair. "Flowers in my hair, gentlemen!" said the Governor, a big man, rising and bowing—disclosing a perfectly bald head.

Every New Year's Day the German Governor met the residents at the Court House, where they all received a hearty welcome. New Year's congratulations were exchanged. The Governor drank the health of the people, and the people drank the health of the Governor and the Executive of the Administration. "And best of all, the healths were drunk in sparkling champagne. On such occasions everybody, irrespective of rank or nationality, attended the Governor's social function, and all received the same gracious hospitality." A special reception was arranged for the chiefs.

It was in Sili, Savaii, that the old obscene dances and games were staged by the Deputy Administrator, for the information of the Governor; probably for the last time.

The first year of the German administration showed a gross revenue of about £14,000; with an expenditure of some ten thousand pounds more, which was largely for reconstruction. Imperial donations started in the first year, 1901, and ceased in 1908. The largest, in 1903, amounted to £13,000.

The revenue increased, until by 1911 it had reached the sum total of £41,350; and surpluses were already being shown since 1903. These figures I believe are substantially correct. In 1910, Samoa began to contribute to the expenses of the Samoa branch of the German Colonial Office.

During this time roads were made, bridges built, and public buildings erected. The administration appears to have been a model of quiet and easy-going efficiency. A local disorder arose among the Samoans in 1908, when the orator Lauati led a party of warriors from Savaii, apparently because an American had perturbed them about the national finances. Dr. Solf went page 84out alone from Apia to meet the war-party, and shortly after Lauati was arrested and deported to the Ladrone Islands; otherwise nothing seems to have ruffled the fourteen years' calm, nor was there aught else that partook of the rigorous.

Dr. Solf was succeeded in 1910 by Dr. Schultz, who had been Chief Justice. Dr. Solf became Secretary for the Colonies.

III

In 1913, Western Samoa was visited by Rupert Brooke.

"… The white population of Heaven [wrote the poet in an essay published in the New Statesman, soon after the out-break of world-war, a year later], as one would expect, is very small; but, as one wouldn't expect, it is composed of Americans, English, and Germans. About half Germans, for it has been a German colony for some fourteen years. But it is one of the few white 'possessions,' I suppose, where a decent white needn't feel ashamed of himself. For, though it's proper to deny that Germans can colonise, they have certainly ruled Samoa very well. In some part, no doubt, the luck has been with them—with the world—in this success. Samoa was one of their later and wiser attempts in colonising. The first governor was Herr Solf, the present Secretary for the Colonies, who is reputed to have started the administration of Samoa after a careful examination of our method of ruling Fiji, and with a due, but not complete, regard for the advice of the chief English and American settlers in Samoa. Certainly he started it very ably and wisely. By luck and good management those various forces which might destroy the beauty of Samoa are almost ineffectual. The fact that the missionaries are nearly all English puts a slight sufficient chasm between the spiritual and civil powers, and avoids that worst peril of these places—hierocracy. The trade of the islands is largely a monopoly of the 'German Firm,' a big affair which pays a few people in Hamburg fabulous percentages. So smaller traders aren't encouraged to flourish unduly; and the German Firm itself is too well fed to bother about extending. The Samoans, therefore, aren't exploited, spiritually or commercially, as much as they might be. By such slight chances beauty keeps a foothold in the world. The missionary's peace of mind may require that the Samoan should wear trousers, or the trader's pocket page 85that he should drink gin and live under corrugated iron. But the Government has discovered that these things are not good for the health of the Polynesian, so the Samoan wears his lava-lava and drinks his kava, and lives in his cool and lovely thatched hut, and is happy. And—final test of administration—the population is no longer decreasing."

IV

I incline to the opinion that the Germans set themselves deliberately to offset certain influences of the Protestant missions. Dr. Schultz, I have been told by old residents of Samoa, was himself tattooed in native style, as were certain of his officials, including the Collector of Customs. It is reasonable to suppose that this judge, administrator, and collator of Samoan proverbs at least had some ulterior and altruistic purpose in view in undergoing a very painful operation. And it is satisfactory then to record that, despite the attempted prohibitions of the missions, tattooing is again practically universal; the native pastors being almost the sole exception.

A Samoan who is not tattooed—it extends almost solid from the hips to the knees—it has been remarked, appears naked beside one who is; and in no way can the custom be considered disfiguring. Indeed, it enhances the appearance of a Samoan. The missionaries—with the exception of the Catholics—hated it, and still hate it, as a relic of "heathenism." It matters nothing apparently to them that, while the custom stands, it militates against immature mating; and that it is the one test in these islands, where life is so easy, that the youth has to go through. That the native still lived in his "cool and lovely thatched hut" we have to thank his own good sense. As I have shown, the London Mission tried to convert him to plaster houses. Trousers seem never in Samoa, for all the efforts of the Mission, to have caught on; and tattooing fortunately contends against the wearing of that particular article of clothing. Certain obscene pastimes, it is true, were abolished by the missions, which was no doubt beneficial. But so also were a number of those that were harmless interdicted. According to the Earl of Pembroke, writing in 1873, pigeon-catching—the sport of page 86the chiefs—had recently been forbidden: because "smell-fungus" thought it undesirable to have Strephon and Chloe wander together in the woods. (Tamed birds, as mentioned by La Pèrouse, are in consequence no longer to be found among the Samoans.) It would seem that a nasty outlook on sex, the spirit of spying and pimping, and a hatred of beauty and joie-de-vivre, underlay the majority of the Protestant missionary prohibitions.

V

"Samoa [continued Rupert Brooke] has been well governed. The people have been forbidden a few perils of civilisation, and for the rest are left pretty well to themselves. Go up from Apia across the mountains, or round the coast, or take a boat over to the other big island of Savaii, and you will find them living their old life, fishing and bathing and singing, and never a sign of a white man. They are guaranteed possession of their land. They'll sometimes complain faintly of 'taxation'—a small head-tax the government exacts, which compels the individual to some four or five days' work a year. The English inhabitants themselves have had no grumble against the Germans except that they incline to be 'too kind to the natives'—an admirable testimonial. And traders in the Pacific say they always get far better treatment from the customs and harbour authorities at Apia than at the British Suva, in Fiji.

"And yet the Samoans do not like the Germans. When I was there, nearly a year ago, I was often asked, 'When will Peritania (Britain) fight Germany, and send her away from Samoa?' They have no complaint against the Germans. They have merely a sentimental and highly flattering preference for the English. On a recent visit of an English gunboat to Apia, the officers were entertained at a Samoan dinner-party, with music and dances, by an eminent and very charming young princess. The princess is a famous beauty, with the keen intelligence Samoans have if they care, a wonderful dancer, possessed of a glorious singing voice and a perfect knowledge of English. The party was a great success. The princess led her guests afterwards to the flagstaff. Before anyone could stop her, she leapt on to the pole and raced up the sixty feet of it. That also is among the accomplishments of a Samoan princess. She page break

Samoan Tattooing (2)

page 87seized the German flag, tore it to pieces, brought it down, and danced on it. So the tale is; and it is probably true. In the villages where I stayed it was amusing how swiftly and completely the children forgot the few words of German the Government sometimes had taught them; while one or two common phrases, 'Morgen,' 'gut,' etc., were retained as extremely good jokes by the boys and girls, occasions of inextinguishable laughter, through the absurdity of their sound and the very ridiculous Germanness of them….

"I wish I were there again. It is a country, and a life, that bind the heart….

"And now Samoa is ours. A New Zealand Expeditionary Force took it. Well, I know a princess who will have had the day of her life. Did they see Stevenson's tomb gleaming high up on the hill, as they made for that passage in the reef? Did Vasa, with his heavy-lidded eyes, and that infinitely adorable lady Fafaia, wander down to the beach to watch them land? They must have landed from boats; and at noon, I see. How hot they got! I know that Apia noon. Didn't they rush to the Tivoli bar—but I forget, New Zealanders are teetotallers. So, perhaps, the Samoans gave them the coolest of all drinks, kava; and they scored. And what dances in their honour, that night!—but, again, I'm afraid the houla-houla would shock a New Zealander. I suppose they left a garrison, and went away. I can very vividly see them steaming out in the evening; and the crowd on shore would be singing them that sweetest and best-known of South Sea songs, which begins, 'Good-bye, my Flenni' ('Friend,' you'd pronounce it), and goes on in Samoan, a very beautiful tongue. I hope they'll rule Samoa well."

VI

It is necessary, before proceeding further, to indicate the line of development of the missions. The London Mission states that, having given the Samoans a written language and a "literature," the educational problem which confronted their early missionaries was how most effectually to reach the great body of the Samoan people, scattered as they are in many small villages along the coast-line, with the means of inter-communication poor and limited. They decided that the only effectual means would be to train a native ministry, to lead the page 88village life, and to give these men an education fitted to make them not only evangelists, but also teachers in the schools. They therefore founded the training institute of Malua. Thus every village was given its trained native pastor; and it was claimed in 1920—the other missions having followed suit—that not one per cent. of the Samoans were unable to read or write; while the whole population had for long professed Christianity.

"A syllabus for the year [we are told by the London Mission, in continuation of its thesis] is printed and circulated through-out Samoa; the Pastors' schools are examined at the end of the school year, and it is expected that every child shall secure a minimum of 50 per cent. of marks in each subject in which it is taught. The examination is held by the English Missionary in charge of each particular district, and the results are carefully tabulated, and announced at a public meeting of villagers in each examination centre. There is keen rivalry between the villages, and the Pastor who fails to maintain the standard of the school is a marked man."

This village—and also individual and district—rivalry is a thing carefully fostered by the two Protestant missions. The main point of competition cultivated is to see who will give most to their periodic cash collections. Individual is played off against individual. Village against village. District against district. And finally, to a lesser degree, island against island.

That being so, the time prior to the collections is an anxious one for the traders; for it is then that the natives strip their trees of the immature coco-nuts for the purpose of making all the copra they can, with the object of obtaining additional money to give to the missions. The product of the immature nuts is known as niu-sami; and, for buying it, the trader is liable these days to a heavy fine; but he has little alternative in the matter, for trade competition is keen. Someone else would take the risk of buying it, and he himself would offend a customer. So he purchases the stuff, mixes it up well among the good copra in his shed, and trusts to luck. Up to 1927, when a trader wrote to a local newspaper calling attention to the attitude of the missions in this matter, nothing had been done by them to alleviate the situation. So far as I know, nothing page 89has been done since; nor is it likely; the missions apparently being anything but dissatisfied with the position.

The trader's troubles do not end here. He is pestered also from morning to night at this period with requests for cash loans, for the purpose of giving still further to the missions. These the natives promise to repay so soon as they have copra available. And again it is difficult to refuse. I have known a small village—that of Sagone, in Savaii—to borrow collectively sums running into hundreds of pounds to give to the Wesleyan Mission. And there were two villages in the east of Palauli, not far away, which had debts of this nature dragging on for years.

Whatever its truth, it is a byword in Apia, and of interest for that single reason, that the only time one may see native women plying for prostitution on the street is immediately prior to the Protestant mission collections.

The collections are taken up somewhat in this manner. There arrive in the village first some native pastors to put in the tala-gota, or "talk of the lips." Then later appear on the scene the white missionaries, who in due course take their seats at the top of the church, facing the congregation. Then an individual and likely member of the congregation is called upon by name. He comes up the church and ostentatiously "throws" (missionary term) his contribution into the peleke (plate)—which in this case is a tray. The amount—invariably in silver—is counted and its magnitude announced. This is the signal for vociferous applause—led by the white missionaries, who cry "Malia!" ("Well done!")—with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The excitement is said to be terrific, and the howls of the congregation, as is apparent to anyone in the village, at times are deafening. Such is the spirit of emulation created that it is by no means uncommon for a native to burst from the church and rush to the trader with some treasured fine mat to sell or pawn, in a last-moment endeavour to surpass a rival who has given more than was anticipated. And, when living among the Samoans, I have more than once had girls beg me to make them a gratuitous present of money on the ground that they might not be humiliated before the others when it came to making their presentation in the church.

The total sum given by the village is announced there, and also in the next village, where the performance is then repeated. It is said that sometimes a flag is hoisted which the natives are invited to qualify to pull down. As stated, there is keen rivalry between the villages. District is then played off similarly against district; and a point of ultimate interest is that of the Island of Savaii versus Upolu.

At the conclusion of the Wesleyan collections (it may be so also with the London Mission) a feast of enormous magnitude lasting for days is held at some particular village, at which the church members congregate. Pigs are killed by the hundred, and kegs of beef and tins of biscuit are provided to the same extent. (I instance Salailua, about the end of 1925.) At the conclusion of this orgy the place smells like a cess-pit; and the village which has done the entertaining has accumulated a mass of debts which will be a mill-stone round its neck for a very long time to come. The finale shows that the missionaries will conform fast enough to native custom where they consider it in their interest to do so: this being the sugar that sweetens what might otherwise be regarded as a pill, and affording an opportunity for still further ostentation to those who have given freely to the mission.

A large proportion of the money that was collected by the London Mission was sent away from Samoa over a long period of years. My friend, Captain Pundt, now deceased, who was Harbour Master of Apia during the greater part of the German regime, has told me of his being required to pilot the London Mission steamer John Williams from Apia to Malua, on the occasions of her periodic visits to Samoa. Having arrived off Malua they would anchor and wait for night-fall. The missionaries, he said, would then try to get him out of the way. "Why don't you go down to cabin, Captain? There's a bottle of whisky on the table." To this Captain Pundt, who was a humorist in a cross-grained fashion, would reply gruffly—"No thank you! I'm a teetotaller!" (This was notoriously untrue.) "I'm Pilot, and my place is on deck!" In due course, he said, would come off a whale-boat from the shore bringing canvas bags that furnished each a fair burden for two lusty natives. As they passed him, having struggled up the gangway, the captain—in page 91appearance much like Bismarck in Tenniel's cartoon Dropping The Pilot—with the intention of causing annoyance, would prod the bags of coin with his thumb and remark upon the excellence of the haul. (There are no coppers in Samoa.) Dr. Solf, the Harbour Master told me, was not too well pleased at this, duly reported, financial drain upon the country; and it is believed that shortly before the outbreak of war the Germans were contemplating legislation to check the process.

The Wesleyan Mission makes the assertion that it sends no money out of Samoa; but it is salting down the cash into real estate—acquiring plantations and so forth. It is somewhat difficult to understand the presence of the Wesleyan Mission in Samoa, since they once vacated the group on condition that the London Mission abandoned in their favour certain other fertile fields. The Wesleyans, however—having established themselves in the pastures new—returned; and so appear to have performed the supposedly impossible operation known as "eating one's cake and having it." The point is rather a sore one with the London Mission.

VII

The first New Zealand Administrator of Western Samoa (1914) was Colonel Logan, who had been in command of the Expeditionary Force. He retained Dick Williams as Deputy Administrator of Savaii; appointed Charlie Roberts—to whom I have referred in the Prologue—Chief Justice; and Loibl became Treasurer. Many of the other offices were filled by men under his command. In this way, with a leavening of local people, he built up an efficient Administration.

Prior to the landing of the military forces the German Governor, Dr. Schultz, had called the natives together and told them that the quarrel was not of theirs, but between Germany and Britain, and that they were to take no part. Some of them had suggested opposing the occupation. All of the public servants were given a year's pay in advance. There was no resistance offered by the Germans. The Germans in the Pacific seem from the first to have realized the hopeless nature of the position. A tale is told that the Collector of page 92Customs was in the bar of the Central Hotel upon the Apia Beach when the news came through that England had declared war upon Germany. "Gentlemen," he is reputed to have said, "that is the end of Germany!" and, having placed his glass untasted upon the counter, to have walked out.

Shortly after the New Zealand occupation, the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appeared off Apia and trained their guns upon the town. A column of New Zealand troops, owing to bad leadership, marched across the Vaisingano Bridge immediately beneath them. The Germans did not open fire. Asked afterwards why he had not decimated the column, Von Spee replied indignantly that he was not a butcher. He proved himself a worthy foe, is believed to have grieved at the death of so many brave men in Admiral Craddock's squadron which he sunk at Coronel, and before finally his ship took its last plunge at the Falklands is said to have called his sons to him upon the quarter-deck and stood with them saluting the German flag as they sank.

Of the New Zealand military occupation of Samoa during the war one hears but little; so I should imagine that in the main it was well conducted. In 1915, however, British residents—consisting of planters, merchants, and others—forwarded to the Colonial Office in London a petition requesting that in the event of Samoa remaining under the British flag after the termination of the war, it might come under the direct control of Downing Street and not New Zealand. That, being under the control of Great Britain, the territory would have the advantages of Britain's great experience of administration in tropical climes and government of native races; while New Zealand was inexperienced, and had no island experience other than her administration of the Cook Group, which was not considered satisfactory. To this irrelevant document small attention would seem to have been given.

Towards the end of 1918 there appeared some old-style sailing-gods off Upolu, and Western Samoa was visited by the world epidemic of pneumonic influenza, from which more than a fifth of the native population died. Their relations in Eastern Samoa—sixty miles away—escaped entirely, owing to the maintenance of a strict quarantine: a precaution entirely lacking in page 93these western islands, which had not been advised from New Zealand of any danger. It is worthy now of note that the ship which brought the disease from Auckland was quarantined on her way to Samoa both at Suva and Levuka in the British Crown colony of Fiji. And although she was given a clean bill of health before leaving New Zealand, she had already had the 'flu aboard. And influenza in New Zealand was now a notifiable disease. No temperatures were taken at Apia.

Within a few days' time the epidemic was raging in Western Samoa, and the natives were dying like flies. On November 20th the United States Governor of Eastern Samoa radiographed from Pango-Pango offering medical assistance. Pango-Pango is only a few hours' steam from Apia, and has a highly equipped naval hospital with numerous staff. But the offer was not accepted. Not merely was this so, but the Administrator of Western Samoa closed down all wireless communication with Pango-Pango, and allowed no call subsequently to be put through.

During the visitation individual members of the Protestant missions seem to have lived up to the (Samoan) traditions of their respective orders. At the very beginning of the epidemic a missionary of the London Mission was working the villages of the north coast of Upolu towards Mulifanua, his purpose being to take up one of the periodic cash collections to which the natives are privileged to contribute. As he went with his party, coming from the direction of Apia, he is credited with carrying with him the 'flu; and those of his party who fell sick were left at various wayside villages.

The missionary, having completed his itinerary, set out on his return by the same route along which he had come, his carriers being now heavily laden. The 'flu was already in full blast in all these villages he had recently traversed. And in many, it is alleged, the people, too sick to get to their plantations for food, came out and begged for a return of a portion of the money they recently had given, to enable them to buy rice from the stores: to be met only with a blank refusal. The missionary, it is declared, continued on his way, his carriers laden with the pieces of silver; and such of them as fell sick were replaced by other Samoans recruited from among those page 94villagers who had not yet succumbed to the epidemic. The natives, it should be remembered, as a result of the mission collections, were probably already up to their necks in debt with the stores.

Later in the epidemic, it is well attested, when there were white men—soldiers and others—digging graves in Apia Cemetery, a missionary went to Colonel Logan, the Administrator, regarding them and protested that they were drinking intoxicants on holy ground. He demanded that it be stopped forthwith. Logan, who was himself giving a lead in relief work, and clearly in no mood for flummery, commandeered the gentleman's services on the spot, and sent him straightway under escort to the cemetery to labour there with pick and shovel burying putrefying corpses under the tropical sun. Before the morning was out the missionary had caved in, and begged for and been given a drink of whisky: whether from design, weakness, or some sense of decency on his part one can only speculate.

Some time after the epidemic, when Colonel Logan had gone on leave, a native petition, supposed to have been instigated by the Protestant missions, was handed to the Acting-Administrator, and worded as follows: "Our hearts are sore with New Zealand. We have lost brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives, in fact many of our brethren are dead. We pray to God that Great Britain will take over the control of Samoa from New Zealand, and that New Zealand and those responsible …" Upon Colonel Tate, the Acting-Administrator, promising that a Royal Commission of Inquiry would be appointed, the natives agreed to withdraw the petition. A Royal Commission was appointed; and Logan, who when he left Samoa was a sick man, was not permitted to return at the end of his furlough, thereby it would seem being made the scapegoat. He appears to have been a good enough Administrator, but is said to have had an antipathy to Americans, which under stress of circumstances was perhaps to be regretted.