had succeeded in putting
an end to our imports of food from the Americas. From the moment of the
Declaration of War, Russia was in the position of one "holding out," of
a city standing a siege without a water supply, for her imports were so
necessary to her economy that they may justly be considered as essential
irrigation. There could be no question for her of improvement, of
strengthening. She was faced with the fact until the war 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 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