market. In the autumn of 1916 I remember telling certain
most incredulous members of the English Government that
there would be a most serious food shortage in Russia in the
near future. In 1917 came the upheaval of the revolution, in

1918 peace, but for Russia, civil war and the continuance of
the blockade. By July, 1919, the rarity of manufactured
goods was such that it was possible two hundred miles south
of Moscow to obtain ten eggs for a box of matches, and the
rarity of goods requiring distant transport became such that
in November, 1919, in Western Russia, the peasants would
sell me nothing for money, whereas my neighbor in the train
bought all he wanted in exchange for small quantities of salt.


It was not even as if, in vital matters, Russia started the
war in a satisfactory condition. The most vital of all
questions in a country of huge distances must necessarily be
that of transport. It is no exaggerationto say that only by
fantastic efforts was Russian transport able to save its face
and cover its worst deficiencies even before the war began.
The extra strain put upon it by the transport of troops and
the maintenance of the armies exposed its weakness, and
with each succeeding week of war, although in 19l6 and
1917 Russia did receive 775 locomotives from abroad,
Russian transport went from bad to worse, making inevitable
a creeping paralysis of Russian economic life, during the
latter already acute stages of which the revolutionaries
succeeded to the disease that had crippled their precursors.