ell from 14,519 in January to 8,457 in April, after which
the artificially instigated revolt of the Czecho-Slovaks made possible
the fostering of civil war on a large scale, and the number fell swiftly
to 4,679 in December. In 1919 the numbers varied less markedly, but
the decline continued, and in December last year 4,141 engines were
in working order. In January this year the number was 3,969, rising
slightly in February, when the number was 4,019. A calculation was made
before the war that in the best possible conditions the maximum Russian
output of engines could be not more than 1,800 annually. At this rate
in ten years the Russians could restore their collection of engines
to something like adequate numbers. Today, thirty years would be an
inadequate estimate, for some factories, like the Votkinsky, have been
purposely ruined by the Whites, in others the lathes and other machinery
for building and repairing locomotives are worn out, many of the skilled
engineers were killed in the war with Germany, many others in defending
the revolution, and it will be long before it will be possible to
restore to the workmen or to the factories the favorable material
conditions of 1912-13. Thus the main fact in the present crisis is that
Russia possesses one-fifth of the number of locomotives which in
1914 was just sufficient to maintain her railway system in a state of
efficiency which to English observers at that time was a joke. For six
years she has been unable to import the necessary machinery for making
engines or repairing them. Further, coal and oil have been, until
recently, cut off by the civil war. The coal mines are left, after
the civil war, in such a condition that no considerable output may be
expected from them in the near future. Thus, even those engines which
exist have had their efficiency lessened by being adapted in a rough and
ready manner for burning wood fuel instead of that for which they were
designed.

Let us now examine the combined effect of ruined transport and the six
years' blockade on Russian life in town and country. First of all was
cut off the import of manufactured goods from abroad. That has had
a cumulative effect completed, as it were, and rounded off by the
breakdown of transport. By making it impossible to bring food, fuel
and raw material to the factories, the wreck of transport makes it
impossible for Russian industry to produce even that modicum which
it contributed to the general