Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/287

Rh over the whole works, including the neutral territory. He seized the harmless old King of Samoa and shipped him off a prisoner to Germany. The poor fellow appealed in vain to the justice of heaven and the protection of the consuls.

But in Washington the affair was not so lightly regarded. It constituted a breach of faith almost inconceivable to them and the pretext was as stupid as it was brazen. To begin with, that the Kaiser was such a holy idol that any disturbance upon his birthday in any part of the earth was sacrilege and lèse majesté was a novel and startling discovery. That the King of Samoa lying under the palms fifty miles away could be responsible for a tavern brawl in a neutral seaport, distinctly outside his jurisdiction, and distinctly inside of that of the three consuls—a neutrality which the Samoans scrupulously observed even in the midst of war—was too much for the world to swallow.

The American and British consuls refused to recognize the new king, or the German