ensued. By the end of the 19th century, the failure of the arrangement was freely admitted by the governments of the three powers, since the principal protagonists in Samoa acted directly for their own respective interests, frequently overruling the officials of the condominium. The Tripartite Convention of 1899 The German government "had never made a secret of their belief that international control of Samoa was visionary and impractical ... and they began a series of diplomatic moves intended to eliminate it altogether." In April the British government agreed to the formation of a joint commission of Germany, the US, Great Britain, and the UK on the matter. The Joint Commission on Samoa was given authority to supersede local authorities and settle matters. Their arrival in May effectively ended hostilities. By July the commission had decided that the islands must be partitioned, as continued joint rule was infeasible. The American commissioner Bartlett Tripp endorsed the view of President McKinley and others that the United States should retain Tutuila and its harbor of Pago Pago. With partitioning of Samoa by then the prevailing understanding, the United States expressed no objections to Britain and Germany coming to a preliminary agreement. The United Kingdom was then embroiled in the Second Boer War and therefore viewed as in a weakened bargaining position; however, the German desire to rapidly conclude the negotiations and bring the western Samoan islands into their colonial empire had a balancing effect that was clearly evidenced in the agreement as signed. Kaiser Wilhelm II had accepted an invitation to visit England in November 1899 and his government insisted that an agreement on Samoa should be concluded before his departure for Britain. A settlement was reached at London by 9 November and signed on 14 November. It was therefore this Anglo-German agreement on Samoa in tandem with the informal understanding with the United States that partitioned Samoa. It only remained for the three powers to negotiate a tripartite convention in order to secure the approval of the United States to the whole agreement. The Tripartite Convention of 1899 was duly constituted and documents were signed at Washington on 2 December 1899 by the U.S. Secretary of State John Hay, Baron Theodor von Holleben, German ambassador to the United States, and Sir Julian Pauncefote, British ambassador to the United States, with ratifications exchanged on 16 February 1900. Positions resulting from the Tripartite Convention of