the savings of
the Russian peasant, merchant, landowner, and official, which finally
mounted up to several hundreds of millions. With this money they were
enabled to control the markets and constrain Russian institutions and
individuals to bow to their will.

[38] Cf. _Contemporary Review_, February 1911.

Contracts in Russia were appropriately drafted in the German language,
being directed to the promotion of German interests. Incipient and
even long-established Russian firms were either killed by unfair
competition or compelled to enter the syndicates and forego their
national character. Inventions and new appliances were tested,
plagiarized, and employed in the service of the Fatherland. And while
preparing for the war which was to set Germany above the
nations--_Deutschland ueber Alles_--these syndicates followed the
policy dictated from Berlin, sowed discord between Russian firms and
various State departments, organized strikes and paid the strikers in
competing establishments, and thus deprived the Russian State of
industrial organs on which it would necessarily have to rely in
war-time. To give but one example of this cleverly devised attack, the
cotton industry of the Tsardom was in the hands of the Germans when
war was declared. Another of the most important groups of Russian
industries is that of naphtha. When this precious liquid is dear, many
of the lesser works have to close; when it is cheap, even small
industrial enterprises are able to go on working. By way of obtaining
complete control of this vital element of Russia's industrial life,
the Deutsche Bank went to work to form a syndicate, had a number of
private wells bought up, united them in one, acquired numerous shares
in Russian oil companies, and had the manager of another German
bank--the well-known Disconto Gesellschaft--made a member of the Board
of the Russian Nobel Company.

One of the results of this ingenious deal was a sharp rise in the
prices of all the products and some of the by-products of naphtha. The
increase continued at an alarming rate, filling the pockets of the
German shareholders, whose syndicates received the oil at cost price
for their own consumption, while Russian firms were forced to acquire
it at the market value or to shut down their works. Amongst the worst
sufferers from these anti-Russian tactics were the steam-navigation
companies of the Volga, which had jealously warded off all attempts to
germanize them.

I