Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/26

2 the error of relying mainly upon the application of force in the treatment of those populations. The English had frequently committed this error, we had sometimes in our intercourse with the Indians, and the Germans seemed to repeat it in Africa as well as in Samoa. This policy frequently led to acts of injustice, was always costly as well as cruel, but by no means always successful in the way desired. In this case it had produced situations irritating to others more or less concerned.

Count Arco observed that, while, according to reliable information received at Berlin, the hostility of the Samoans to the Germans was largely, if not entirely, owing to constant instigation on the part of Americans, officials as well as private persons, in Samoa, the Government of the United States had made little, if any, complaint in the diplomatic way of the conduct of German officials in Samoa. The whole controversy, if there was any, seemed to be carried on by the subordinate officials among themselves and by the newspapers, but was, perhaps, for this reason all the more exciting [to] the public mind.

I interrupted, saying that I remembered an elaborate despatch or instruction addressed by Mr. Bayard to Mr. Pendleton explicitly stating the things complained of by this Government, and that in the official correspondence I found plenty of criticism of the conduct of the Germans in Samoa by the American officials, but no evidence of their having incited a refractory spirit among the natives. However, these were questions of fact which, thousands of miles away, we might not at present be able to answer.

The conversation then turned upon the more important question what was now best to be done to avoid further difficulty. Count Arco repeatedly assured me that the German Government was most peaceably disposed, and I said, that as I knew the character of the American people and the traditions of the Government, the