White Pill Islands

​“God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” These words were spoken by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, a man with good cause to know. As he spent his life toiling to cobble together an empire from the ashes of a “Concert of Europe” that he was obliged to burn down himself, in the face of relentless resistance from each of its component parts (including his own king), he at the same time witnessed the rise of another phoenix from another conflagration across the sea. But while his project prospered mainly on account of his efforts and his genius, that other, American project was born aloft on wings even mightier than the virtues of its people could furnish, and on winds too strong — and yet too gentle — to be mere fortuity. And at the end of his career, Bismarck became an unhappy participant in the drama of America’s rise to empire.

​This article will be published on February 20, 2023. That date marks the end of a story which illustrates Bismarck’s special providence. In the 1880s, both Germany and the United States were making their first forays into the game of overseas colonies. All the best lands had mostly been gobbled up by then, by the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and, most of all, the British. This fact left both upstart powers all the more desperate for the scraps. The islands of Samoa constituted such a scrap.

​“The Samoan Archipelago consists of four principal islands and quite a number of smaller ones, the intermost [sic] is Savaii the largest of all, then east of it is Upolu the most-important one commercially and politically,” wrote American Rear Admiral L.A. Kimberly, who was stationed in Samoa in those days. Kimberly continued:

The Samoans are physically a fine race of good height, and present almost perfect forms, accompanied by free active movements giving one an idea of how the ancient Greeks might have appeared in the days of Homer. Their character, as compared with Europeans, is childlike. The climate is agreeable. Rains are evenly distributed throughout the year, but in January, February, and March heavy rainstorms prevail. Destructive storms are rare, occurring at intervals of several or more years.

​Americans, British, and Germans established a presence on the islands beginning in 1878, and by 1889 they had stirred up no end of trouble, setting up puppet kings and stoking strife among the natives. The British took a rather blasé attitude toward this, having much larger irons in the fire, but the Germans and the Americans both had something to prove. They took the Samoan situation unfolding thousands of miles from either of their shores deadly seriously. As Admiral Kimberly had it:

The prime incentive for these bickerings, especially among the foreigners, was commercial gain, and political preponderance, consequently, the result, as it always has been, and always will be between two races, was the relegation of the native and weaker one, to the grinding surface between the mill-stones. The Nationality most prominently engaged in this pitiable business were the Germans. They were aggressive and energetic in actively furthering their interests in trade and politics. This state of affairs was daily growing worse and more critical.

​War seemed a certainty. And in response, both nations, neither being serious naval powers at the time, dispatched the best of their fleets to ensure that it would be they who got the spoils (coral and guano, mostly). Worse, neither managed to steal a march on the other, and both fleets came steaming into the harbor at Pago Pago at almost the same time. The fleets squared up, the guns were run out and “soon, destruction, death and untold misery and suffering were to hold sway.” And then the storm broke. But not a metaphorical storm or a euphemism for man’s inhumanity to man; a real storm stole suddenly upon the ships. And such a storm. Wrote Admiral Kimberly:

​No man who has not experienced the force of winds and seas in one of these meteors can appreciate their terrific power, but once experienced is never forgotten. There are only two other natural forces that can approach it, and they are an earthquake and tornado. Sometimes both these awful visitations occur at the same time, when this happens, description fails… [T]here is much difference in being involved in a cyclone on shore and at sea. In one case you have only the wind and rain to combat, in the other you have not only these but a quivering ship and unstable deck to work your salvation on.

Thus assailed, the men of the opposing fleets forgot all about their enmity and bent their efforts toward mutual survival. But nature can be cruel as a child, and like a child playing with his bathtub toys, the elements picked up the ships and forced them to engage in a life and death pantomime of battle whether they would or no:

The German ship Olga heads the list in this particular. She knocked the smoke-stack out of Nipsic, carried away several of her boats, her rail, main chains, and sprung her mainmast. She struck Trenton twice, taking a quarter gallery off at each blow, at the same time carrying away the starboard quarter davits with their boats. She also damaged Vandalia. She gave much trouble to Calliope. In turn of course she sustained much damage herself. She was however the only German ship saved.

Neither nation prevailed that day. “[T]he storm was master and worked its will on the ships as easily as if they had been so many chips. What men could do, was done, but after the elements were unchained, human efforts were unvailing [sic].”

When the seas calmed and the winds died down, neither fleet was in any shape to resume the contest. And so the long-suffering Bismarck, who never even wanted the blasted islands in the first place, sent his son to Washington. Against all odds, sanity prevailed, and the two nations agreed to split them down the middle. And so, on February 20, 1929, Congress, diligent then as now, formally accepted the cession of American Samoa, a mere forty years after the issue was decided. And if the empire with whom the compact had been concluded no longer even existed at that point, so what? We’re America.

What, then, does this episode show us about the special providence that God shares out between ourselves, drunks, and fools? When Thomas Jefferson reflected on Providence, he mused that it “has in fact so established the order of things as that most evils are the means of producing some good.” The human catastrophe of the hurricane forestalled a worse one in the form of a pointless war. But that is obvious, and the lesson here is not that God will send hurricanes to solve our problems. Instead, we must consider what consideration does a drunk merit from God? A fool? An American? None, of course. How much do they need, though? And so it is clear that the special providence is poured down upon us not in proportion to our merit, but in proportion to our need. Because we are His. Thus, as the storm clouds gather, as the battle lines are drawn and none can guess from which direction catastrophe will come, remember only to be His; and be sure that whatever befalls you, it will because it is best. For fools. For drunks. For Americans.