The Memoirs of Count Witte

This volume was published in 1921.

Excerpts from the Preface:

Not without hesitancy have I resolved to write a few
lines as a foreword to the memoirs of my late husband.
I cannot be impartial in my estimate of this work, to which
Count Witte attributed so much importance; and the
biased judgment of his wife can hardly be of any interest
to the reader. I confess, however, that I have not been
able to resist the temptation to take advantage of this
occasion to convey to the American public the gratitude
which the late Count Witte felt toward the Government,
press, and people of the United States for the sympathy
they had shown him at the time of the Portsmouth Con-
ference.

My husband wrote his Memoirs only abroad, during the
months of his summer or winter rests at the foreign health
resorts. He was not quite confident that his study on the
Kamenny-Ostrov Prospect in Petrograd was sufficiently se-
cure from the eye and arm of the Secret Service. At any
moment, by searching the house, they could deprive him of
his manuscripts. He knew that too many persons of power
were interested in his work. All the time the manuscripts
were kept in a foreign bank in my name. My husband
feared that in the event of his death the Court and the
Government would seek to take possession of his archives,
and he begged me to insure the safety of the Memoirs in
time. I did so by transferring the manuscripts from Paris .
to Bayonne and depositing them there in another person's
name. The precautions were not in vain. Immediately
upon the death of my husband, in February, 1915, his study
was sealed and all his papers examined and taken away by
the authorities. Shortly afterwards the Chief of the Gen-
eral Staff, a General-Adjutant, came to me in the Emperor's
name and said that His Majesty, having perused the table
of contents of my husband's Memoirs, had become inter-
ested in them and wished to read them. I replied that to
my regret I was unable to present them to His Majesty,
because they were kept abroad. The Emperor's messenger
did not insist, but some time afterwards an attache of the
Russian Embassy in Paris appeared in our villa at Biarritz,
and in the absence of the owners made a very careful
search. He was looking for the Memoirs, which at
that time, as I said before, were quietly lying in a safe of
a bank at Bayon.

The Memoirs do not touch upon the events of the great
war, for they were completed in 1912. For this reason I
shall say a few words about the popular legend which at-
tributes to Count Witte a particular Germanophilism. The
legend is entirely without foundation. Generally speaking,
my husband had no sentimental biases in politics. He was
guided by reason alone. He had no particular love or
hatred for any country or nation. He was only a Russophil,
in the sense that he placed above all else the interests of
his country and people. It is true that he was a most
resolute opponent of wars in general and of this war- in
particular. He said that it would end with a catastrophe
for Russia, and that it would ruin Europe for a century.
Long before the war he stood for a rapprochement between
Germany and France with the energetic assistance of Russia.
When the war began, he was deeply worried by it, and he
expressed himself in favour of the immediate convocation
of a peace conference. "Let the armies fight, since they
have already started that madness, but let the diplomats
immediately begin their work of making peace," he would
say to his friends. This circumstance must have given rise
to the legend of my husband's Germanophll tendencies.
Whether or not he was right In his views of the great war,
I do not know, but I do know that all his thoughts and
feelings were instinct with love for Russia, and that he
wished well-being and order to the whole world.

Countess Witte
Bruxelles, October 1st, 1920