Then came a change.  Competition and over-production led naturally to a fall in prices, and at the same time the demand decreased, because the railway-building activity of the Government slackened.  Alarmed at this state of things, the banks which had helped to start and foster the huge and costly enterprises contracted their credits.  By the end of 1899 the disenchantment was general and widespread.  Some of the companies were so weighted by the preliminary financial obligations, and had conducted their affairs 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