A confidential Memorandum from M. Kokovtsoff, the Russian Minister of
Finance, to M. Stolypin, the Premier, was printed in the Temps last week, and reproduced in the Times of Friday week. An official dementi followed, but M. Kokovtsoff has since confirmed the authenticity of the docu- ment, which he says was stolen from the Ministry of Finance, while demurring to the construction which has been put upon it by public opinion. M. Kokovtsoff's confidential Report amounted to an appeal to the Premier to control extra- Budgetary expenditure by resisting the fresh demands of the spending Departments ; otherwise a deficit of £15,000,000 would have to be faced. The Imperial Russian Financial Agency issued a statement, published in Monday's Times, with a view of reassuring British holders of Russian securi- ties. According to this statement, the gold reserve is now much larger than it was at the beginning of the year, while the Revenue Returns are already one hundred millions of roubles better than the Estimates. The real point is, Do Russian official balance-sheets reveal the full extent of their financial difficulties ? In any case, it is hard to reconcile the optimism of the Imperial Russian Financial Agency with M. Kokovtsoff's admission that the financial situation is "unquestionably serious."
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