er cent. of
the electrical works and 70 per cent. of gas production were German.
And of the capital invested in private railways no less than
628,000,000 roubles belongs to Germans. Even Russian municipalities
were wont to apply to Germany for their loans, and of the first issues
of thirty-five Russian municipal loans no less than twenty-two were
raised in the Fatherland.

[41] Virginio Gayda.

The necessity of waging war against this potent enemy within the gates
intensified Russia's initial difficulties to an extent that can hardly
be realized abroad, and was a constant source of unexpected and
disconcerting obstacles. Some time before the opening of the war, a
feeling of restiveness, an impulse to throw off the German yoke, had
been gradually displaying itself in the Press, in commercial circles,
and in the Duma. These aspirations and strivings were focussed in the
firm resolve of the Russian Government, under M. Kokofftseff, to
refuse to renew the Treaty of Commerce which was enabling Germany to
flood the Empire with her manufactures and to extort a ruinous tribute
from the Russian nation. Two years more and the negotiations on this
burning topic would have been inaugurated, and there is little doubt
in my mind--there was none in the mind of the late Count Witte--that
the upshot of these conversations would have been a Russo-German war.
For there was no other less drastic way of freeing the people from the
domination of German technical industries and capital, and the
consequent absorption of native enterprise.

When diplomatic relations were broken off, and war was finally
declared, Germany was already the unavowed protectress of Russia. And
when people point, as they frequently do, to the war as the greatest
blunder ever committed by the Wilhelmstrasse since the Fatherland
became one and indivisible, I feel unable to see with them eye to eye.
Seemingly it was indeed an egregious mistake, but so obvious were the
probable consequences which made it appear so that even a German of
the Jingo type would have gladly avoided it had there not been another
and less obvious side to the problem. We are not to forget that in
Berlin it was perfectly well known that Russia was determined to
withdraw from her Teutonic neighbour the series of one-sided
privileges accorded to her by the then existing Treaty of Commerce,
and that this determination would have been persisted in, even at the
risk of war. And for war the year