To understand the feelings of self-reproach and bitterness with which Sewall took the field, the reader must see Laupepa’s letter of farewell to the consuls of England and America.  It is singular that this far from brilliant or dignified monarch, writing in the forest, in heaviness of spirit and under pressure for time, should have left behind him not only one, but two remarkable and most effective documents.  The farewell to his people was touching; the farewell to the consuls, for a man of the character of Sewall, must have cut like a whip.  “When the chief Tamasese and others first moved the present troubles,” he wrote, “it was my wish to punish them and put an end to the rebellion; but I yielded to the advice of the British and American consuls.  Assistance and protection was repeatedly promised to me and my government, if I abstained from bringing war upon my country.  Relying upon these promises, I did not put down the rebellion.  Now I find that war has been made upon me by the Emperor of Germany, and Tamasese has been proclaimed king of Samoa.  I desire to remind you of the promises so frequently made by your government, and trust that you will so far redeem them as to cause the lives and liberties of my chiefs and people to be respected.”

Sewall’s immediate adversary was, of course, Becker.  I have formed an opinion of this gentleman, largely from his printed despatches, which I am at a loss to put in words.  Astute, ingenious, capable, at moments almost witty with a kind of glacial wit in action, he displayed in the course of this affair every description of capacity but that which is alone useful and which springs from a knowledge of men’s natures.  It chanced that one of Sewall’s early moves played into his hands, and he was swift to seize and to improve the advantage.  The neutral territory and the tripartite municipality of Apia were eyesores to the German consulate and Brandeis.  By landing Tamasese’s two or three hundred warriors at Mulinuu, as Becker himself owns, they had infringed the treaties, and Sewall entered protest twice.  There were two ways of escaping this dilemma:  one was to withdraw the warriors; the other, by some hocus-pocus, to abrogate the neutrality.  And the second had subsidiary advantages:  it would restore the taxes of the richest district in the islands to the Samoan king; and it would enable them to substitute over the royal seat the flag of Germany for the new flag of Tamasese.  It is true (and it was the subject of much remark) that these two could hardly be distinguished by the naked eye; but their effects were different.  To seat the puppet king on German land and under German colours, so that any rebellion was constructive war on Germany, was a trick apparently invented by Becker, and which we shall find was repeated and persevered in till the end.