WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1889.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 91, 17 April 1889, Page 4

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1889.

A German white book on Samoan affairs has been issued,1 bringing up the correspondence on that vexed question to the sth of February of the present

year. The most notable statement it

contains is one which occurs in a despatch from the German Consul at Apia, dated 4th January, from which it appears that on the 19th December Mataafa, ia a humble letter, sough t

to open negotiations with the German Consul, but he would not deliver himself up, although pledges v/ere given that his life should be spared. Subsequently he piornised, in a letter to surrender in the presence of the British and United Scates Consuls, but the German Consul declined to entertain ih.e offer. This is an entirely different version from any we have yet received ot the nature of the negotiations between the German Consul and Mataafa. The attack on the German landing party occurred on December iSth, so that the letter from Mataafa must have been written on the day following the collision, in reply to the notification sent to him by the German Commander that a number of Samoan villages would oe destroyed. It is creditable to the humanity of Mataafa that he desired at any personal sacrifice to save those villages and avoid a war with Germany. His action also shows that the attack made upon the German landing party was unpremeditated, and was only prompted by a conviction on the part of the Samoans —whether justified or not—that the Germans had determined to take the field in support of Tamasese.

Throughout the correspondence there is evidence of pressure being continually brought to bear by German representatives at Samoa to secure the annexation of the islands. In one telegraphic despatch from Herr Knappe, the German Consul at Apia, to Count H. Bismarck, the Consul says : " If annexation were possible, peace, I think, might be restored with the force we now have here at our disposal." To which Count Herbert Bismarck replied, on Bth January:—"Annexation altogether impossible on account of our agreement with America and England. But we must revenge ourselves on the insurgents, who, by their attack on us, have brought about a state of war, and in this sense we have made intimation both in Washington and London.'' Count Bismarck's despatch further stated that the object of the military measures to be undertaken against Mataafa and his partisans was to pnnish the murderers of the German soldiers and to secure German subjects in the possession of their property.

Every true friend of humanity will earnestly pray that the intervention of the storm god in the concerns of those unhappy islands, disastrous though it was, will yet prove to have been a merciful interposition. The military operations indicated by Count Bismarck, if entered upon at all, could not but have resulted in even a more frightful waste of human life and greater suffering than that which has attended the overwhelming of man's puny engines of war by a mightier force. The effect has already been to definitely deier hostile operations for months ; and the feelings of revenge, which were perhaps naturally excited by Mataafa'a attack on the Germans in December last, have been to a great extent obliterated by the grief over a greater calamity. Whatever the result of the Washington Conference, the butchery of the Samoans can never be viewed as a justifiable retribution for the unhappy incident of December last.