At sunrise on the morning of the 15th,the three ships,each loaded with its consul,put to sea.It is hard to exaggerate the peril of the forenoon that followed,as they lay off Laulii.Nobody desired a collision,save perhaps the reckless Leary;but peace and war trembled in the balance;and when the ADLER,at one period,lowered her gun ports,war appeared to preponderate.It proved,however,to be a last -and therefore surely an unwise -extremity.Knappe contented himself with visiting the rival kings,and the three ships returned to Apia before noon.Beyond a doubt,coming after Knappe's decisive letter of the day before,this impotent conclusion shook the credit of Germany among the natives of both sides;the Tamaseses fearing they were deserted,the Mataafas (with secret delight)hoping they were feared.And it gave an impetus to that ridiculous business which might have earned for the whole episode the name of the war of flags.British and American flags had been planted the night before,and were seen that morning flying over what they claimed about Laulii.British and American passengers,on the way up and down,pointed out from the decks of the warships,with generous vagueness,the boundaries of problematical estates.Ten days later,the beach of Saluafata bay fluttered (as I have told in the last chapter)with the flag of Germany.The Americans riposted with a claim to Tamasese's camp,some small part of which (says Knappe)did really belong to "an American nigger."The disease spread,the flags were multiplied,the operations of war became an egg-dance among miniature neutral territories;and though all men took a hand in these proceedings,all men in turn were struck with their absurdity.Mullan,Leary's successor,warned Knappe,in an emphatic despatch,not to squander and discredit the solemnity of that emblem which was all he had to be a defence to his own consulate.And Knappe himself,in his despatch of March 21st,1889,castigates the practice with much sense.But this was after the tragicomic culmination had been reached,and the burnt rags of one of these too-frequently mendacious signals gone on a progress to Washington,like Caesar's body,arousing indignation where it came.To such results are nations conducted by the patent artifices of a Becker.
The discussion of the morning,the silent menace and defiance of the voyage to Laulii,might have set the best-natured by the ears.
But Knappe and de Coetlogon took their difference in excellent part.On the morrow,November 16th,they sat down together with Blacklock in conference.The English consul introduced his colleagues,who shook hands.If Knappe were dead-weighted with the inheritance of Becker,Blacklock was handicapped by reminiscences of Leary;it is the more to the credit of this inexperienced man that he should have maintained in the future so excellent an attitude of firmness and moderation,and that when the crash came,Knappe and de Coetlogon,not Knappe and Blacklock,were found to be the protagonists of the drama.The conference was futile.The English and American consuls admitted but one cure of the evils of the time:that the farce of the Tamasese monarchy should cease.
It was one which the German refused to consider.And the agents separated without reaching any result,save that diplomatic relations had been restored between the States and Germany,and that all three were convinced of their fundamental differences.