[Inclosure in No. 79.]
German newspaper comments on the Samoan
treaty.
The German papers do not seem to be very much satisfied with the Samoan
treaty. They think the United States got much the best of it. The
following extracts from the leading papers in each of the three great
parties which divide German political sentiment illustrate the unanimity
of German criticism on the Samoan treaty.
[From the Berlin Kreuz Zeitung. (Extremely
conservative.)]
German influence is not to be allowed predominating force, and in every
particular the German element is to be reduced to the level of other
foreign elements, although two thirds of all foreigners in Samoa are
Germans.
Four-fifths of the entire trade, foreign and domestic, is in German
hands. For these reasons, Germany in 1887, when a conference was first
spoken of, naturally proposed that the control and final decision in
disputes should be conferred upon it.
The Cabinet at Washington, however, refused this proposition, and now the
conference, resumed 2 years later, has gone so far as to determine that
Germany has no paramount claims, notwithstanding its great interests
there.
[From the Berlin Vossische Zeitung. (Moderate.)]
Although the Germans have by far the largest part of the trade in their
hands, they are to have no more rights than the little band of Americans
on the islands.
Certainly, it is wisest to look at the fact that, from the pleasantest
point of view, it is a retreat and to console ourselves with the thought
that it might have been worse.
From the standpoint of German interests, the contents of the Samoan
treaty certainly afford no ground for particular satisfaction. The
circumstance alone that in Samoa the Germans are denied that influence
which they claimed in virtue of their superior possessions and numbers
must be regarded as unfortunate.
It is another of those blows in the face of which a liberal deputy gave
notice when our present colonial policy was inaugurated, and of which we
have had more than enough since.
[From the Frankfurter Zeitung. (Radical.)]
It is strange that even in America, which has achieved in the Samoan
treaty all it could desire, certain papers are now expressing other than
perfect satisfaction with it. As a fact, these are only papers which
disapprove the government of President Harrison and of his Secretary of
State, Mr. Blaine, on principle. One of those papers writes: “The
suspicion has existed some time that in the division of Samoan spoils
between Bismarck and Blaine the former got the oyster, the latter the
shell. This expectation becomes conviction when the text of the Samoan
treaty is read.” We have sought in vain in American papers for any
grounds for these queer utterances, whose only purpose can be a cheap
criticism of the Administration. Such international questions are
judged, on the whole, more impartially in Germany than in America.
