He had served with
credit in war; but soon wearied of garrison life, resigned his battery,
came to the States, found employment as a civil engineer, visited Cuba,
took a sub-contract on the Panama canal, caught the fever, and came (for
the sake of the sea voyage) to Australia. He had that natural love for
the tropics which lies so often latent in persons of a northern birth;
difficulty and danger attracted him; and when he was picked out for
secret duty, to be the hand of Germany in Samoa, there is no doubt but he
accepted the post with exhilaration. It is doubtful if a better choice
could have been made. He had courage, integrity, ideas of his own, and
loved the employment, the people, and the place. Yet there was a fly in
the ointment. The double error of unnecessary stealth and of the
immixture of a trading company in political affairs, has vitiated, and in
the end defeated, much German policy. And Brandeis was introduced to the
islands as a clerk, and sent down to Leulumoenga (where he was soon
drilling the troops and fortifying the position of the rebel king) as an
agent of the German firm. What this mystification cost in the end I
shall tell in another place; and even in the beginning, it deceived no
one.
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