f the national trade and
industry. That is to say, these were allowed to subsist and thrive up
to, but not beyond, the point at which they were useful as adjuncts of
German enterprise. And the regulators were principally two: the Treaty
of Commerce extorted from the Tsar's Government during the
embarrassments caused by the Manchurian campaign, and the German
banks, which in the empire paraded as Russian, just as in Italy they
were decked as Italian. Many of those financial institutions were but
branches of German houses, and their methods were identical with those
of the Banca Commerciale: long credits and easy modes of repayment
offered to all those who agreed to deal with German firms, while
discredit, ostracism, and ruin threatened the recalcitrant. And as
Italian money and Italian institutions were employed as instruments of
German interpenetration in foreign countries,[45] so Russian funds and
banks were used as helps to German interpenetration in Belgium and
other lands.

[45] For example, the Banca Franco-Italiana in Brazil.

A noteworthy instance of the ingenuity with which this intricate
mechanism was worked came to light shortly before the outbreak of the
war. In Brussels there was a branch of the Petrograd International
Bank which purported to be a purely Russian concern. But once the
Kaiser had sent his ultimatum to the Tsar's Government, the Russian
mask was doffed by the Brussels agency, which forthwith appeared in
its true colours as a potent instrument of germanization in Belgium.
There was found to be almost nothing Russian about the bank but the
name. The staff, the language spoken, the methods of business, the
political sympathies, the aims of the operations were all German. Out
of the forty-three permanent members of the staff, thirty were German
subjects, six Austrians, two German-Swiss, two Belgians, one was a
Dutchman, one Turk, and there was a solitary Russian. The moment Count
Berchtold presented his ultimatum to Serbia this "Russian" bank
refused to change any Russian banknotes on any terms and let it be
understood that they were valueless. A panic on the Belgian market was
the immediate consequence. Russian travellers had to deposit their
jewellery in pawn and pay exorbitant rates of interest on loans. The
bank itself practised a kind of usury, and advanced only sixty per
cent. of the face value of notes issued by the Imperial Bank of
Russia. When the Belgian Government, after the declar