COUNT WITTE REAPPEARS.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2210, 24 July 1914, Page 4

COUNT WITTE REAPPEARS.

Count Witto's early return to offict is freoly predicted in Russia. He is President of a Financo Committee, whioh, since M. Bark came to the Treasury, has considerably increased in importance; and, though the Tsar is said to distrust him, it is thought that ho will be invited to negotiate the now commercial treaty with Germany, which will supersede the present treaty on its expiry or denunciation at tho end d 1915. His advent is viewed with ipprehension in Russia for several ressons. and in Paris likewise. Ho is distrusted by tho ultra-Protectionists— which, taken by itself, is entirely to his credit; but ho is regarded as the partisan of a llusso-Gcrinan alliance, of which France would nominally be a member, though without real power in it, and as being ready to purchase the goodwill of Germany by the sacrifice of Russian industry and of tho profits ol tho French capital which supports it. And' it is predicted that,. if he negotiates the commercial treaties, bis claim to be restored to office will bo irresistible. Moreover, though he carried through tho concessions which established the present approach to popular gov. eminent in Russia, lie did so only because they were inevitable, and he ttas eliminated just before tho opening of the first Duma because he wished to impose fresh checks on its power. In the coming struggle between the reactionaries and the mass of the Duma be would hardly support the latter.