of Pago Pago, a privilege which had become much more valuable on account of its recent great maritime and territorial expansion in the Pacific. In order to make that privilege effective it became necessary, in the partition, to reserve to itself the control of the small island which contains this harbor. Up to the present the inhabitants of Tutuila have been left to the government of their own chiefs, with such supervision as the commandant of the naval station of Pago Pago finds it necessary to exercise, in order to restrain illicit foreign trade and intercourse.
This experiment of controlling distant territory in coöperation with other foreign powers may be accepted as a warning to the United States to avoid such complications in the future. And yet the very next year after the abandonment of the tripartite control in Samoa the United States was forced into joint action with ten other powers, for the purpose of protecting its interests in China. While the caution which Washington gave his countrymen in his farewell address to avoid entangling alliances has not lost its virtue, the nation has attained such a position among the powers of the earth that it cannot remain a passive spectator of international affairs.
