It seems, indeed, so
obvious, and sure, and easy, that men look about with amazement and
suspicion, seeking some hidden motive why it should not be adopted.
To Laupepa's opposition, as shown in the case of the Lauati scheme, no
dweller in Samoa will give weight, for they know him to be as putty in
the hands of his advisers. It may be right, it may be wrong, but we are
many of us driven to the conclusion that the stumbling-block is Fangalii,
and that the memorial of that affair shadows appropriately the house of a
king who reigns in right of it. If this be all, it should not trouble us
long. Germany has shown she can be generous; it now remains for her only
to forget a natural but certainly ill-grounded prejudice, and allow to
him, who was sole king before the plenipotentiaries assembled, and who
would be sole king to-morrow if the Berlin Act could be rescinded, a
fitting share of rule. The future of Samoa should lie thus in the hands
of a single man, on whom the eyes of Europe are already fixed. Great
concerns press on his attention; the Samoan group, in his view, is but as
a grain of dust; and the country where he reigns has bled on too many
august scenes of victory to remember for ever a blundering skirmish in
the plantation of Vailele.
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