He returned (November 1889) to a changed world. The
Tupua party was reduced to sue for peace, Brandeis was withdrawn,
Tamasese was dying obscurely of a broken heart; the German flag no longer
waved over the capital; and over all the islands one figure stood
supreme. During Laupepa's absence this man had succeeded him in all his
honours and titles, in tenfold more than all his power and popularity. He
was the idol of the whole nation but the rump of the Tamaseses, and of
these he was already the secret admiration. In his position there was
but one weak point,--that he had even been tacitly excluded by the
Germans. Becker, indeed, once coquetted with the thought of patronising
him; but the project had no sequel, and it stands alone. In every other
juncture of history the German attitude has been the same. Choose whom
you will to be king; when he has failed, choose whom you please to
succeed him; when the second fails also, replace the first: upon the one
condition, that Mataafa be excluded. "_Pourvu qu'il sache signer_!"--an
official is said to have thus summed up the qualifications necessary in a
Samoan king. And it was perhaps feared that Mataafa could do no more and
might not always do so much.
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