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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: Mataafa was no sooner set down with the embassy than he was
summoned and ordered on board by two German officers. The step is
one of those triumphs of temper which can only be admired. Mataafa
is entertaining the plenipotentiary of a sovereign power in treaty
with his own king, and the captain of a German corvette orders him
to quit his guests.
But there was worse to come. I gather that Tamasese was at the
time in the sulks. He had doubtless been promised prompt aid and a
prompt success; he had seen himself surreptitiously helped,
privately ordered about, and publicly disowned; and he was still
the king of nothing more than his own province, and already the
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