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Show Slandering King Oscar. j HUMAN NATURE is alike the world ! 'over. In events of grave importance, impor-tance, no less than in trivial affairs, af-fairs, men are controlled by passion and prejudice rather than by sober rea- son. The tramp sentenced to jail as a vagrant lays it all to the prejudice of the judge. Litigants are never satisfied satis-fied with court decisions against them. The judge is either friendly to the other side or he is ignorant of law. We are forever right, the other fellow is eternally eter-nally wrong. Not long ago the international court of arbitration at The. Hague decided for the United States and against Mexico Mex-ico in the suit brought to recover the , Pious Fund. A portion of the Mexican press bitterly assailed the tribunal and the methods adopted to arrive at a judicial decision. It is the result of prejudice against the weaker republic, j they said, and a willingness to curry favor with the nation that is strong. Almost the same argument the tramp uses against the judge who consigns him to prison. Elated over our victory, j we laughed the Mexican press to .scorn. Not long after this decision was rendered ren-dered at The Hague, news came from the caiiitaj, of Sweden about another decision submitted for arbitration. King Oscar decided against the United I States and England and in favor of Germany. Lo! and behold, the vials of our wrath were turned upon King Oscar. Os-car. A king is not fit to pass upon questions in which a republic is concerned. con-cerned. A king always sides with other oth-er kings. If he decided against Germany, Ger-many, he would make an enemy of a neighbor, and the United States is in another hemisphere. The long and short of it is, King Oscar is prejudiced. The same old argument of the tramp. Substantially the same argument used by the Salt Lake Tribune in discussing the matter of the Samoan award. Let us first examine the arbitrator with the knowledge derived of his character. char-acter. Who is King Oscar? This Swedish Swed-ish king readily passes as "the most enlightened monarch of Europe, a person per-son given to deep study and philosophy philoso-phy rather than to court trumpery a man of literature, a poet and author. He is of the Protestant faith, and Protestant Prot-estant Sweden is more intolerant than Catholic Peru. We mention this because be-cause of a religious feature in the Samoan Sa-moan controversy. King Oscar, if not a secret enemy of Germany, has not forgotten Germany's loot of Schleswig-Holsteiu Schleswig-Holsteiu in the war with Denmark, Sweden's Scandinavian ally. We mention men-tion this, also, because Germany reaps the fruit of the Samoan award decided by King Oscar. In the face of such facts, what foundation has the Tribune Trib-une for its charge of prejudice? The king of Sweden, as arbitrator, has decided that we are indebted to the people of Samoa in the sum of $1,000,000 for the acts of Admiral Kautz in shelling some Samoan villages in 1S89. All this has been brought about by that lunatic from Indiana, Judge Chambers, whose wife hoodwinked him into complying with the demands of the London mission people, 'and whose foolish decision in favor of a Protestant pretender was the ground of the bombardment bom-bardment now declared unnecessary, unlawful and inhuman. These missionaries mis-sionaries have put us into a very ugly mess. Father Phelan, in the Western Watchman, calls attention to an article arti-cle appearing in that paper thirteen years ago on the subject of the troubles trou-bles in Samoa. He quoted from a letter let-ter written by a German Protestant resident, Kaust, to the New York Sun: i "At the bottom of the whole trouble is the religious issue. Mataafa is a good Catholic, " and - ilalietoa was brought up In the Protestant mission. He is only a boyof 15 or 16, though a handsome young fellow. The Protestant Protest-ant mission is carried on by a London society. The wife of the British consul con-sul Is much interested in it. Through her the British colony and many of the American colony are interested in it. Chief Justice Chambers, through social affairs, . is possibly influenced in the same way.". To this the Sun added: "It is almost the unanimous opinion of passengers on the Alameda from Apia, American and British as well, that Mataafa commands the alliegance of a large majority of Samoans, and that an attempt by the treaty powers lo put Malietoa on the throne will prove disastrous to the peace of the islands. They all speak in the highest terms of Mataafa." Robert Stevenson declared Mataafa not only a gentleman, but the only man fit to be king on the islands. When the great hurricane in 1SS9 destroyed three German and three American vessels ves-sels in Apia harbor, Mataafa led his people to the rescue and at the risk of their own lives they saved 150 drowning, drown-ing, marines, while they so guarded the shore that not a pennyworth of the wreckage was looted. His heroic services then won the public thanks of our congress. Mataafa's claims to the throne were irrefragable and could not be impeached im-peached on any ground whatever. He was the representative of the island's ancient royal race, and he was the free choice of four-fifths of the people. His rival's father, himself, too, the protege and puppet of the London mission, mis-sion, was called by the people "Lan-pepa" "Lan-pepa" ("blank paper"). The United States had specially insisted in-sisted on the clause in the Berlin conference con-ference of 1SS9, according to which the king should be chosen "according to the laws and customs of the people of Samoa." Lloyd Osbourne is a stepson of Mr. Stevenson and was once our vice consul in Samoa. He writes of this and tells of the infamous plot hatched by the London Mission society to dethrone Samoa's lawful king, because he was a Catholic, and place the crown on the head of the little puppet, Malietoa. Mr. Chambers, the American chief justice, debarred Mataafa by a quibble, in spite of his own written words to Mr. H. J. Moor, yielding to the importunities impor-tunities and sectarian intolerance of his friends, the Protestant missionaries. A provisional government was organized, which, pending a reference of the whole matter to. the powers, was recognized by the English, American and German consular representatives. Then ' Admiral Kautz arrived, a would-be Devey, who precipitately canceled can-celed the existing modus vivendi. Mataafa Ma-taafa must be put in the wrong, and that quickly, otherwise (in view of the German Consul General Rose's assurance assur-ance about the protocols) the powers would be certain, to maintain him as king. Kautz thereupon ordered Mataafa Ma-taafa to ' leave Merlanu, the seat of government, and installed Tanu "in his place. . Hostilities again began between the two parties, and Kautz, well satisfied, immediately shelled the Mataafa people peo-ple wherever found. His generalship was on a par with his humanity; he contrived to get us badly beaten at the battle of Vailele, and has blundered away precious American lives. His only successful engagement has been the bombardment of villages full of women and children. One might think him avenging some terrible wrong. Ad-mirar Ad-mirar Kautz and Mr. Wii'iam M. Chambers on ,the heads of these two must the guilt be. But on us all the money damages. These should set us all a-wishing out representatives were less open to entangling alliances," and our carriers of the. gospel to the heathen heath-en less eager to lean on the "arm of the flesh." |