Newitter, so far as I can tell, was enthusiastic but not exactly a born diplomat, and he kept getting into fights with the British consul over social events, which is probably why he was recalled, possibly to the disappointment of Westerners resident at Kobe who he'd saved from boredom.

I wrote a reply to this comment that ran 2000 characters over LJ's limit, so I'm going to see if I can either reduce it tomorrow or just turn the whole thing into a brief post. Anyway, that's great.