in such careless, reckless fashion, that they had soon
to shut down their mines and close their works. Even solid undertakings
suffered. The shares of the Briansk works, for example, which had given
dividends as high as 30 per cent., fell from 500 to 230. The Mamontof
companies--supposed to be one of the strongest financial groups in the
country--had to suspend payment, and numerous other failures occurred.
Nearly all the commercial banks, having directly participated in the
industrial concerns, were rudely shaken. M. Witte, who had been for a
time the idol of a certain section of the financial world, became very
unpopular, and was accused of misleading the investing public. Among the
accusations brought against him some at least could easily be refuted.
He may have made mistakes in his policy, and may have been himself
over-sanguine, but surely, as he subsequently replied to his accusers,
it was no part of his duty to warn company promoters and directors that
they should refrain from over-production, and that their enterprises
might not be as remunerative as they expected. As to whether there
is any truth in the assertion that he held out prospects of larger
Government orders than he actually gave, I cannot say. That he cut
down prices, and showed himself a hard man to deal with, there seems no
doubt.

The reader may naturally be inclined to jump to the conclusion that the
commercial crisis just referred to was the cause of M. Witte's fall.
Such a conclusion would be entirely erroneous. The crisis happened in
the winter of 1899-1900, and M. Witte remained Finance Minister until
the autumn of 1903. His fall was the result of causes of a totally
different kind, and these I propose now to explain, because the
explanation will throw light on certain very curious and characteristic
conceptions at present current in the Russian educated classes.

Of course there were certain causes of a purely personal kind, but
I shall dismiss them in a very few words. I remember once asking
a well-informed friend of M. Witte's what he thought of him as an
administrator and a statesman. The friend replied: "Imagine a negro of
the Gold Coast let loose in modern European civilisation!" This reply,
like most epigrammatic remarks, is a piece of gross exaggeration, but
it has a modicum of truth in it. In the eyes of well-trained Russian
officials M. Witte was a titanic, reckless character, capable at any
moment of playing the part of the bull i