nearly enough, and her armies
were slaughtered like sheep in consequence. Then there were no boots
for the soldiers, who were forced to wear thin canvas leggings with
leather soles. And scores of waggon-loads of incapacitated men were
taken to Petrograd and other cities whose feet had been frozen for
lack of shoe-leather. One of the urgent wants of the Tsardom are
railways, which the late Count Witte was so eager to construct. When
hostilities opened, the insufficiency of communications became one of
the decisive factors in Russia's disasters. And it was heightened by
the conduct of, shall we say, the prussianized officials,[123] who are
reported to have disposed of waggons for large sums to greedy
merchants, who used to raise the prices of the merchandise and batten
on the misery of their fellows.

[123] It is but fair to say that venality is not one of the
characteristics of the German bureaucracy. Their sense of
duty towards the State is the nearest approach to morality of
which they now seem capable.

Trains, needed to supply the fighting men at the front with food and
the wounded at the rear with medicaments, were kept back to suit the
schemes of these greedy cormorants. Gratuities, it is openly affirmed,
had to be paid by Red Cross and other officers to those subordinate
railway servants who had it in their power to send on a train or shunt
it off for days on a side-track. Bribery is working havoc in the
Tsardom. In January 1916 the Moscow municipality discussed the
advisability of voting a certain sum of money and putting it at the
disposal of the chief officer of the city, to be discreetly employed
in transactions with complacent railway officials, in order to further
the work of reducing prices on necessaries of life. The motive adduced
for this homoeopathic way of treating a social distemper were the
conditions of life in Russia and the necessity of complying with them.
But as the Statute Book does not recognize these conditions and
condemns bribery absolutely, a vote on the subject was not taken.[124]

[124] The German press gave great prominence to this item of
news. Cf. _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January 8, 1916.

Acting on instructions issued by the Finance Minister, a Member of the
Council of the Finance Ministry, D. I. Zassiadko, visited the
Kharkoff circuit for the purpose of studying the bribery problem on
the spot. M. Zassiadko acquired the conviction "on the spot" that the
ra