M. De Witte.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7946, 9 October 1905, Page 4

M. De Witte.

a jiiiTKonio uakkiok. It is said that if M. de Witte bad ton in office in Itussia eighteen nionlhs ago there would have been no war. The great administrator, who represented Ids country at the Portsmouth Peace Conference, is a man of the people. Some forty-live years ago he was an obscure enginary engagement as imilcr-stationmas-ter at Kiev during an employee's absence. He was then as he is now, a big, burly man of a morose nature, which rcllectesl itself in his powerful though gloomy countenance. I'ooi ami precarious though his position was, he had some years previously married a beautiful young Jewess, and either owing to the hostility against the Hebrew race, which serins to be one of the fixed trait* in the Russian character, or to the fact that M. de Witte's taciturnity inspired fear among his own townspeople, his house was universally avoided by the inhabitants of Kiev. It must have been a hard fight for the young engineer, but he held on in spite of discouragements, and his opportunity came at length. There were great movements of troops in the south, and finding that the official arrangements were leading to almost certain disaster, M. de Witte took it upon himself to stop a troop train at Kiev and to suspend the uallic until the lines were tolerably clear. Kiev looked on in horror, and th-' stationmaster's audacity was punisliid by imprisonment. We ale toltl he was kept in gaol Tor months awaiting trial. A persona! innuirv from the Czar, however, led to lib, release, and he was given a more important post in St. Petersburg. M. de Witte began to make his wav up the official ladder in the capital"just twenty-live years ago, but once' he ;.iined the commence of the Czar he ha.l only the social and military eleniiMts «if',- Uic Court . to contend