should end she had to do with what she had, and that the
things she had formerly counted on importing would be
replaced by guns and shells, to be used, as it turned out, in
battering Russian property that happened to be in enemy
hands. She even learned that she had to develop
gun-making and shell-making at home, at the expense of those
other industries which to some small extent might have
helped her to keep going. And, just as in England such a
state of affairs would lead to a cessation of the output of iron
and coal in which England is rich, so in Russia, in spite of
her corn lands, it led to a shortage of food.


The Russian peasant formerly produced food, for which he
was paid in money. With that money, formerly, he was able
to clothe himself, to buy the tools of his labor, and further,
though no doubt he never observed the fact, to pay for the
engines and wagons that took his food to market. A huge
percentage of the clothes and the tools and the engines and
the wagons and the rails came from abroad, and even those
factories in Russia which were capable of producing such
things were, in many essentials, themselves dependent upon
imports. Russian towns began to be hungry in 1915. In
October of that year the Empress reported to the
Emperor that the shrewd Rasputin had seen in a vision that it
was necessary to bring wagons with flour, butter and sugar
from Siberia, and proposed that for three days nothing else
should be done. Then there would be no strikes. "He
blesses you for the arrangement of these trains." In 1916 the
peasants were burying their bread instead of bringing it to