Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/282

262 The first sign we had that a "superman" was being evolved contained little portent of danger to the continent we guard so jealously. But it aroused in America a sudden realization of an important event—the arrival of a new and particularly disgusting character on the international stage. It was the début in Washington of the Prussian bully. He was discovered swaggering insolently down the shores of the Pacific, twirling his mustachios and kicking the pedestrians in the selfsame manner so familiar on the sidewalks of Potsdam.

It happened in Samoa. The Samoans were a picturesque, comely and gentle people, whose sole faults were a childish irresponsibility in regard to their neighbours' cocoanuts and an inherent inability to determine who should be king. A short time previously the consuls of England, the United States and Germany had settled a difference of opinion by making one rival claimant, Malietoa Laupepa, king, and another, Tamasese, vice-king. Thus as Stevenson says: "in addition to