who was in the confidence of Dr. Knappe: "Was it not a pity," I asked,
"that Knappe did not stick to Becker's policy of supporting Mataafa?"
"You are quite wrong there; that was not Knappe's doing," was the reply.
"Becker had changed his mind before Knappe came." Why, then, had he
changed it? This excellent, if ignominious, idea once entertained, why
was it let drop? It is to be remembered there was another German in the
field, Brandeis, who had a respect, or rather, perhaps, an affection, for
Tamasese, and who thought his own honour and that of his country engaged
in the support of that government which they had provoked and founded.
Becker described the captain to Laupepa as "a quiet, sensible gentleman."
If any word came to his ears of the intended manoeuvre, Brandeis would
certainly show himself very sensible of the affront; but Becker might
have been tempted to withdraw his former epithet of quiet. Some such
passage, some such threatened change of front at the consulate, opposed
with outcry, would explain what seems otherwise inexplicable, the bitter,
indignant, almost hostile tone of a subsequent letter from Brandeis to
Knappe--"Brandeis's inflammatory letter," Bismarck calls it--the
proximate cause of the German landing and reverse at Fangalii.

But whether the advances of Becker were sincere or not--whether he
meditated treachery against the old king or was practising treachery upon
the new, and the choice is between one or other--no doubt but he
contrived to gain his points with Mataafa, prevailing on him to change
his camp for the better protection of the German plantations, and
persuading him (long before he could persuade his brother consuls) to
accept that miraculous new neutral territory of his, with a piece cut out
for the immediate needs of Tamasese.

During the rest of September, Tamasese continued to decline. On the 19th
one village and half of another deserted him; on the 22nd two more. On