NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13049, 14 December 1905, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A RUSSIAN OPINION ON COUNT WITTE.

M. Roano vitch , the manager of the Tribune Russe, lias declared to a representative of tho Paris Matin that the revolutionary movement would bo maintained. The present condition of affairs was but a short stage in the course of events. . "No doubt the railway strike will cease. The approach of winter, the destitution' and women's tears, as well as the apparent concessions made to the pppulai demands, will cause the workmen to return to their dens. But this lull will hardly last long, and the coming revival will probably be provoked by a peasant movement. The Socialist, Revolutionary, and Democratic parties feel no confidence. Count Witte's policy is an artful one.. 'He would like to bring about a split in tho Opposition camp, and to convince the Moderates that the Socialists, whom ho treats as Anarchists, are their enemies. The intestine struggle by which the Liberal forces would thus be exhausted— the Moderates against the Democrats and Revolutionaries —would enable Count Witte to restore order, and, at least partially, to destroy tho revolutionary organisation, while reducing the pretensions of the Radicals." Count Witte is one of that series of statesmen pursuing two objects who are called to power in Russia at critical moments. When it becomes. necessary to grant certain liberties the Tsars, from, Nicholas I. downwards, have' employed either men with/Liberal ideas —soft-spoken men who make promises, but do not keep them, and who are as cunning as foxes, like Svia-topolk-Mirski—or energetic men ready to resort to repression and terrible as wolves, like Plehve or Ignatieff. Witte combines those two qualities. He resembles at the same time the fox arid the wolf. His present dictatorship recalls the dictature de cceur of Loris Melikoff, " who v.'as summoned to power in 1831 by Alexander in., after the assassination of the Emperor Alexander 11. Witte is more dangerous than Trepoff for the Russian Socialists and Russian Liberal ideas."