To make it more plain, the document goes on with a kind of bilious irony: "The two German war-ships now in Samoa are here for the protection of German property alone; and when the _Olga_ shall have arrived" [she arrived on the morrow] "the German war-ships will continue to do against the insurgents precisely as little as they have done heretofore." Plant flags, in fact.
Here was Knappe's opportunity, could he have stooped to seize it.

I find it difficult to blame him that he could not.

Far from being so inglorious as the treachery once contemplated by Becker, the acceptance of this ultimatum would have been still in the nature of a disgrace.
Brandeis's letter, written by a German, was hard to swallow.

It would have been hard to accept that solution which Knappe had so recently and so peremptorily refused to his brother consuls.

And he was tempted, on the other hand, by recent changes.