Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

first important conflict of American interests and rights
with the ruthless German programme of aggressive penetration that reached the world over and was checked
only thirty years later. It was practically to maintain our
interests in Samoa that the Trenton, Vandalia, and
Nipsic were at Apia, observing the German ships that
were practically there to contest those interests when
the great hurricane wrecked or dispersed all alike.
Consul-General Sewall resigned his office and left his
party because the Democratic Administration at Washington, lukewarm in Samoa as afterward in Hawaii,
failed in support of his efforts. When Harrison came
into office he sent the young diplomat back to Samoa,
and one result was the acquisition of Pago-Pago Bay.
In 1896 Sewall voted against his father for Vice-President, with full paternal acquiescence and approval.
McKinley made him Minister to Hawaii.
Another friend whose career in the Pacific strengthened
personal interest in the "sons of the missionaries," as
Mr. E. L. Godkin of The Nation and of the New York
Evening Post was accustomed somewhat superciliously
to style the Americans in Hawaii, was Francis M. Hatch.
He had been a sophomore at Bowdoin College when I was
a senior there. Hatch went out to Honolulu after his
graduation and became an international lawyer and a
diplomat of merit. He was a pioneer of Hawaiian emancipation from monarchy, Minister of Foreign Affairs in
President Dole's administration, minister and envoy of
that transitional republic to Washington, one of the
signers of the treaty of annexation, and justice of the
insular Supreme Court by President Roosevelt's appointment. He died recently. Those who are curiously in

clined about the early aspects of judicial eminence may
discover in John Clair Minot's "Tales of Bowdoin" a
picture of Justice Hatch in sophomore's war paint, seated
alongside his classmate Chief Justice Andrew Peters