THE RUSSIAN COMMISSARIAT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5243, 12 January 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE RUSSIAN COMMISSARIAT.

A correspondent of the Times, writing from :St. Petersburg on 17th October, says;—l mean to give you to-day some interesting facts the commissariat arrangements in I the army of the Danube. Of late much has been said and written on this subject, but 1 have hitherto refrained from speaking about it, because my information was doubtful and incomplete. Now, however, I have no longer such reasons for reticence. The first fact which my recent investigations in this field have brought out very clearly is that the Russian Government had not finally decided !on war until a very short time before the declaration of hostilities. Had it been more than half resolved to undertake a campaign it ■ would have commissioned merchants to buy in Koumania during the winter large quantities of grain, which might, in case of peace, have been re-sold at a very small loss. Nothing of this sort was actually done, and it was not till the end of March; or the beginning of April, that serious measures were taken. When it became evident that war was inevitable the question arose, how is the army to be fed ? The old system was to leave the* task entirely to the Commissariat department, but when the authorities remembered what gigantic abuses existed in the department! during the Crimean war,' they determined'to try a new system, and suddenly a private .company appeared on the scene under the firm of Gregar, Horwitz, and Ooganj proposing to furnish the army with any amount of provisions which might be required. A contract was drawn up and duly signed on 28th April,, according to which the 1 company should, during tho whole course of the war, act as the Government’s commission agents and receive 10 per cent, commission on all pur- - According to this contract the procedure is as follows ;—-Thu military authorities give orders' that a certain quantity of provisions should be delivered at a given point on a

fixed day. The commissariat officers to whoa they are delivered give a receipt to the agent* and seven days after this receipt has been presented and verified at head-quarters the money is paid to the company. For the purpose of control the company is obliged to present, not only vouchers, but also formal declarations by the local authorities, stating the current price of the articles at the time of purchase. As security for fulfilment of the contx-act, the company had to lodge a deposit of half a million roubles. How, then, has the company fulfilled its engagements? That is a question which it is not easy to answer. Many people openly assert that an enormous quantity of the provisions supplied was totally unfit for human food ; that the prices were ridiculously exox-bitant ; that the supplies were rarely delivered at the proper time ; and much more of the same kind. In support of these statement many facts were adduced. It is said, for instance, that in Roumania forty-four different storehouses were examined, and only fourteen were found to contain the required amount of provisions. On the other hand, the company declares that all these assertions are baseless calumnies, partly arising from ignorance, and partly invented by disappointed foreign adventurers, who flocked to Roumania from- all corners of Europe with the hope of making fortunes. In order to rebut those calumnies it has printed for private circulation an interesting document, in. which it is stated that the army was always regularly supplied with all requisite provisions; that all purchases were made at prices “incomparably less than those paid by the other branches of the Administration that all the material advantages fell to the lot of the Treasury, while the members of the firm, subjected to constant moral torture from unjust accusations, received almost no recompense for their labors; that the establishment of the company helped to keep up the price of the paper rouble iu Roumania, and that every honest Russian patriot must i-ecognise the enormous service which. the company has rendered to the Russian finances. The , Roumanian , officials, the newly-constituted Bulgarian authorities, the Russian stx-ategists, and the weather, seem all, to have been in league to prevent the com‘pany from fulfilling its engagements. 'But the company’s agents were indomitable., , They are represented as making bricks, building ovens, and baking bi'ead, in a country, where it is impossible to find within a radius of several miles a bucket of pure water. They search for the troops in the wilds of Roumania pretty much as people are supposed to search for a needle in a haystack, and “execute by superhuman efforts a complicated and difficult commissariat operation such as had never before been executed by any one in time of war.” At the same time they build hospitals for hundreds and thousands of invalids in localities where for many miles not a single dwelling-house is to be seen, and supply them so well (that “better provision cannot exist in the model hospitals of great towns in time of peace.” This curious document is by no means satisfactory. Its allusions to honest patriots, foreign adventurers, and the like, and the highly moral, semi-pathetic tone in which it is written, are calculated to excite suspicion rather than confidence, and when we examine it closely we find tlxe suspicion confirmed. When the writer speaks, for instance, of the company rendering great service to Russian finances by bringing gold from St. Petersburg and Berlin, he trusts a little too implicitly to the ignorance and credulity of his readers. The real explanation of the incident is this:—According to the contx-act the company buys with gold and accepts from the Government paper money at the rate current in the nearest commercial town. As'the Russian paper is always much lower .in Roumania than in Russia, they buy gold, not in Bucharest, but in St. Petersburg. In this it is difficult to discover the supposed patriotism. The thing is simply a commercial operation, by which the company makes a very considerable profit, Here, as in many other parts of the document, the company’s apologist, with all his sharpness, has made a mistake. He has endeavored to prove too much. The company had unquestionably, as I learn from independent sources, enormous difficulties to encounter. In the course of a few days it had to organise a great administration at many points far distant from each other. The only agents it could find were Roumanian and Austrian Jews, who do not enjoy a very good reputation- even in ordinary peaceful times, when there are no special temptations to dishonesty. Such meu could not fail to come at once into contact with the Roumanian authorities. Accustomed to derive a considerable part of their revenues from smuggling and other methods of defrauding the Government, they no doubt used tbeir position as agents of the company to do a little business on their own account. Then there,were the difficulties of transport. The Roumanian railways were insufficient to transport even the troops, and the provisions had to-be transported in peasants’ cartsi For some time after the army crossed the frontier unusually heavy rains made the soft roads quite impx-aotioable ; and when the fine weather came the majority of the peasants went home for the harvest, taking their carts and horses with them. In Bulgaria the difficulties increased. The strategists often changed their plans at very short notice, and the company sometimes received orders which it was physically impossible to execute. As the sphere of operations extended, the delays in receiving payment from the Government increased. During the first five mouths the firm expended twentyfive millions of roubles and received only sixteen xnillions in payment, because ho money was paid till the receipts and other documents were verified by the central Commissariat Bureau. This delay naturally produced financial distress, and tlxe company was compelled to employ a large number of smaller companies, composed of , not very respectable Jewish traders. These little companies unquestionably swindled to a considerable extent ; but whether they did so for their own benefit, or for the big company, or for both, I know not. ’ At the same time, the company met with a formidable obstacle in another quarter. Many of the commissariat officers systematically refused to accept the provisions offered until a certain percentage had been paid to them for their own private use. So, at least, I have heard from many independent sources, and I have little difficulty in believing it, because, even in time of peace, these gentlemen do not enjoy a good reputation. Unless they are very grossly maligned, they have a regular tariff whiolx all army furnishers must pay, and which is, of course, eventually paid by the Treasury. The 10 per cent, commission received by the company was, of course, insufficient to meet this illegal demand, and consequently an extra legal profit had to be obtained. Thus it was almost impossible for the company to be honest, however much it had wished to be. Under the old system, in which there was practically no control, all this would have remained officially unknown; but now the General Control Administration examines the accounts of the commissariat. Very soon the -controllers found that great abuses were being practised, and reported the ■ facts to their 'superiors. A violent conflict thus arose between the Control and the Commissariat, and the Controller-General, Mr. ; Greig, has xxow gone to the Danube, to examine the matter on the spot. As yet nothing is known here about the result of his investigations. Meanwhile, several rich landed proprietors have undertaken, from patriotic motives, to furnish large quantities of grain and biscuits at prices much below what is paid to the company, and already, I am told, two trains are despatched daily, one by Bessarabia and Ungheni, and the other by Radzivilof and Galicia. It is only fair to add that the company cannot use all the means of defence at its disposal, because if it did it might implicate its friends in the commissariat.