Baron Ketteler to Mr. Gresham.
Washington, August 17, 1893.
Mr. Secretary of State: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s note of the 9th instant, expressing the wish of the President of the United States to be informed what further measures the Imperial Government proposes to take with regard to affairs in Samoa, and, especially, what it purposes to do with regard to Mataafa’s future.
I communicated the contents of the said note immediately by telegraph to the Imperial Government, and have now been instructed by the chancellor of the Empire to state that according to the contents of a telegram received from the imperial consul at Apia, Mataafa and eleven of the ringleaders belonging to his party, in accordance with an agreement concluded between the three consuls of the treaty powers and the commanders of the war vessels stationed at Apia, have been deported to the Union Islands.
This step appears to the Imperial Government an expedient one, as it considers it absolutely necessary, in the interests of quiet and order, to keep Mataafa and the leading individuals of his party at a distance from Samoa.
[Page 682]In view of the present state of affairs, the dispatch of the U. S. war ship Philadelphia, at present at Callao, appears to the Imperial Government to be no longer necessary.
In communicating the foregoing to your excellency, in accordance with my instructions,
I avail, etc.,