Leary announced he should report the affair to his government "as a gross violation of the principles of international law,and as a breach of the neutrality.""I positively decline the protest,"replied Fritze,"and cannot fail to express my astonishment at the tone of your last letter."This was trenchant.It may be said,however,that Leary was already out of court;that,after the night signals and the Scanlon incident,and so many other acts of practical if humorous hostility,his position as a neutral was no better than a doubtful jest.The case with Pelly was entirely different;and with Pelly,Fritze was less well inspired.In his first note,he was on the old guard;announced that he had acted on the requisition of his consul,who was alone responsible on "the legal side";and declined accordingly to discuss "whether the lives of British subjects were in danger,and to what extent armed intervention was necessary."Pelly replied judiciously that he had nothing to do with political matters,being only responsible for the safety of Her Majesty's ships under his command and for the lives and property of British subjects;that he had considered his protest a purely naval one;and as the matter stood could only report the case to the admiral on the station."I have the honour,"replied Fritze,"to refuse to entertain the protest concerning the safety of Her Britannic Majesty's ship LIZARD as being a naval matter.The safety of Her Majesty's ship LIZARD was never in the least endangered.This was guaranteed by the disciplined fire of a few shots under the direction of two officers."This offensive note,in view of Fritze's careful and honest bearing among so many other complications,may be attributed to some misunderstanding.His small knowledge of English perhaps failed him.But I cannot pass it by without remarking how far too much it is the custom of German officials to fall into this style.
It may be witty,I am sure it is not wise.It may be sometimes necessary to offend for a definite object,it can never be diplomatic to offend gratuitously.
Becker was more explicit,although scarce less curt.And his defence may be divided into two statements:first,that the TAUMUALUA was proceeding to land with a hostile purpose on Mulinuu;second,that the shots complained of were fired by the Samoans.
The second may be dismissed with a laugh.Human nature has laws.
And no men hitherto discovered,on being suddenly challenged from the sea,would have turned their backs upon the challenger and poured volleys on the friendly shore.The first is not extremely credible,but merits examination.The story of the recovered gun seems straightforward;it is supported by much testimony,the diving operations on the reef seem to have been watched from shore with curiosity;it is hard to suppose that it does not roughly represent the fact.And yet if any part of it be true,the whole of Becker's explanation falls to the ground.A boat which had skirted the whole eastern coast of Mulinuu,and was already opposite a wharf in Matafele,and still going west,might have been guilty on a thousand points -there was one on which she was necessarily innocent;she was necessarily innocent of proceeding on Mulinuu.Or suppose the diving operations,and the native testimony,and Pelly's chart of the boat's course,and the boat itself,to be all stages of some epidemic hallucination or steps in a conspiracy -suppose even a second TAUMUALUA to have entered Apia bay after nightfall,and to have been fired upon from Grevsmuhl's wharf in the full career of hostilities against Mulinuu -suppose all this,and Becker is not helped.At the time of the first fire,the boat was off Grevsmuhl's wharf.At the time of the second (and that is the one complained of)she was off Carruthers's wharf in Matautu.Was she still proceeding on Mulinuu?I trow not.The danger to German property was no longer imminent,the shots had been fired upon a very trifling provocation,the spirit implied was that of designed disregard to the neutrality.Such was the impression here on the spot;such in plain terms the statement of Count Hatzfeldt to Lord Salisbury at home:that the neutrality of Apia was only "to prevent the natives from fighting,"not the Germans;and that whatever Becker might have promised at the conference,he could not "restrict German war-vessels in their ******* of action."There was nothing to surprise in this discovery;and had events been guided at the same time with a steady and discreet hand,it might have passed with less observation.But the policy of Becker was felt to be not only reckless,it was felt to be absurd also.
Sudden nocturnal onfalls upon native boats could lead,it was felt,to no good end whether of peace or war;they could but exasperate;they might prove,in a moment,and when least expected,ruinous.
To those who knew how nearly it had come to fighting,and who considered the probable result,the future looked ominous.And fear was mingled with annoyance in the minds of the Anglo-Saxon colony.On the 24th,a public meeting appealed to the British and American consuls.At half-past seven in the evening guards were landed at the consulates.On the morrow they were each fortified with sand-bags;and the subjects informed by proclamation that these asylums stood open to them on any alarm,and at any hour of the day or night.The social bond in Apia was dissolved.The consuls,like barons of old,dwelt each in his armed citadel.The rank and file of the white nationalities dared each other,and sometimes fell to on the street like rival clansmen.And the little town,not by any fault of the inhabitants,rather by the act of Becker,had fallen back in civilisation about a thousand years.