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 islands was impracticable. Germany proposed a partition of the group among the powers. Great Britain, having the assurance from Germany of territorial compensation in other directions, acquiesced in the proposition. The trade of the United States with Samoa was very inconsiderable, and its chief material interest in the group was the use of the harbor of Pago Pago as a naval station. An agreement was finally reached between the three powers that the United States should be given the control of Tutuila and its outlying islets, and that all the other islands should be taken by Germany; and treaties to that effect were signed in November and December, 1899. Malietoa Tanu protested against this disposition of his kingdom, and also addressed a letter to the London "Times," in which he asserted that the civilization which had been introduced by the foreign governments into Polynesia was inferior to that which its inhabitants previously possessed.

The United States had made an honest effort to preserve, as Secretary Bayard expressed it, "almost the last vestige of native autonomy in the islands of the Pacific." It had failed, mainly owing to the perverse obstruction of the German interests in the islands, and the only alternative for the United States seemed to be a withdrawal from the ineffectual and unsatisfactory joint control. More than twenty years previously it had acquired the right to use the commodious harbor