RUSSIA'S GREAT fOOD ARTERY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3192, 17 September 1917, Page 5

RUSSIA'S GREAT fOOD ARTERY

fr —,- . THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY "GRAFT" ANO : SLOTH .- "I havo, paid- 4J1200 graft to get a freight car sent from Vladivostok, to Petrbgradi'' 1 have sold the merchandise 1 put inside for ,£20,000. That is- good business, oven during a war." Thus" spoko a Jewish shopkeeper from Riga, whei sa-t opposite mo in tho dining-car <)f the Trans-Siberian express (writes the New York "Evening Post's" corres-' pondont in, Russia).. The Trans-Siberian railroad—Russia's, single lino of communication with, tho munitions works and equipment, [factories!, of tho United States—is probably the most mismanaged and dishonestly- operated public, institution in any- of the belligerent countries, says the. writer. Siberia is only now awakening to the meaning of the revolution. The officials of. the Trans-Siberian ■railroad and especially the Elinor -offi-cials-hare not yot realised that dishonesty in railroad administration cannot Ka tolerated during a war, and cannot I>e tolerated in the sort of democracy Russia proposes to devise. Vhat is one of the lessons that the American Rail, road Commission mnst teaoh, and it is a lesson that can be taught lo tho average Russian in his present mood only by the exo r cise of tact, decision, and subtle hints of force. / War Supplies Rot in Port. Vladivostok, piled high with rotting war supplies awaiting transportation, is tho centre of a.gang of dishouest persons who. have Russia by tho throat. The Imperial Government 1 made one or two attempts to eradicate them, and the Provisional Government has declared emphatically that dishonesty in public affairs must end. , As tho Trans-Siberian express dawdled along through the steppo-Bka. districts east of Irkutsk one afternoon in May, wo came upon another train standing on the westbound track, with an, engineer leaning from the engine cab.. three oars of mj train ire afire, ho shouted. "They are loaded; with hay for the'horses at the front A spark ignited them. We've uncoupled and_ arc going on toward Petrogradl I don't think you'll be ablo.to. get psst ( until they burn out." It had hot occurred to that engineer or to his train crew to attempt to drown tho, blaze. The passengers on tho : vladivostok express got out, and-under American direction—fetched buckets and pails from the- engine and .dining-car.-' A i-tasant girt showed them a water-filled ditch in the neighbourhood, and *or three hours we" passed buckets, up to the embankment and cooled down the learning rails before our locomotive. When dusk tell the rails were'bot but straight, and our train,passed slowly over them. ■_. _ "That was a. striking, scene," rt Russian, officer said to me. "Everyone working so hard in that hideous yellow glare, mid a sinister night sweeping up from Mongolia to engulf us." Ho saw only the picturesque aspects of the destruction of that hay, hauled at enormous cost from Manchuria tb'Galicia. We left-.'two telephone operators—armed with an emergency field' apparatus—squatting on the prairie beside the smouldering, rum of several thousand rubles. "Hollo! Yes, three carloads of hay or something. The west-bound line is al> solutely out of commission. The rails aro twisted by the intense heat-bent into circles and squares and things. Send a wrecking crew,with new sleepers and rails. Oh, yes. A good two day" work— absolutelv out of commission." , . He hung up the receiver and sat down on the embankment to wait for help. I argued the point that niffht in ! he. din-ing-car w.ith a Russian colonel of artil"Think'wlmt that means," I said. One of your most important lines o£ comjivnnioition intercepted for two or three days." . .-' . "■'■•, ,' . 'Tos," he said. "Weren't we lucky to get past ourselves ?" ■ Siberia was once famous for. -three things: the railroad, tho exiles, and the peasant?. The-exiles have departed for. home, the railroad is in the an American commission, but the-Siberian neasant-who forms, with others of his kind elsewhere. 70. per cent, of the Russian population—remains.

The Food Supply. The Siberian peasant wonders why tne •revolution has not helped him. He continues to live on soup, black bread, milk, and eggs, and to sleep—if he is lucky— on the ton of the stove, "ffnen the inhabitants of the Don Cossack province began to grab land in April and May, the Provisional Goverwnent-who seen many Tsars instead of oner-forbade such outrageous practices, saying that Eussia was a, democracy and that landowners must be protected., The bibenan peasant is bewildered, and so long as he is bewildered he' will not plant crops, except for himself. . ; "One of the gravest problems of the Provisional Government is the attitude of the Kussian peasant toward the tood supply," said Priuce Lyoc, the then Prime Minister, to me,, ''They refused foodstuffs to the old regime, and while the northern ■- wheat-growing ■ provinces are now offering their entire wheat supplies to the new Government, we must settle the land question as soon as possible in order that even the most simpleminded Kussian farmer will know that what ho plants is his, and no one s else. The all-important first weeks of-spring found -the agricultural districts disorganised owing to the' revolution. Many Email landed proprietors abandoned their estates, fearing personal harm, and the peasants broke many of the contracts by which they held their' allotments, These conditions are especially accentuated in Siberia, where means of communication lire scanty and the feverish enthusiasm of Petrograd never penetrates. White tread is, nevertheless,- one of the most conspicuous things in Siberia, beeauso lack of white bread started the revolution. 'White bread has become a fivmbol to the people of Petrograd. ''When there's plenty of white bread, wo know that the new Government is getting along nicely," they say. "When white bread is scarce, the Government is in. trouble." Wherefore Kerensky, who knows that an empty stomach is moro dangerous than a full head, has ■ a" graph of tho bread supply of Petrograd laid on his desk every morning by tho Ministry of Agriculture. He knows that the Siberian governments of-Tobolsk, Tomsk, Gouthern Yeniseisk, .and southern Irkutsk should have an annual surplus of from 30 to 40 per cent, of the total crops wherewith to supply the food deficiency in European Russia, livery time that there is a fire on the- .Trans-Siberian Bailroad, such as I havo described, or a derailment, or a collision, the graph on Korensky's desk' shows a depression. Ho must have had some bad morningsi during April and May, for disorganisation nlomr the food routes caused a shortage: in Petrograd alone, between April i and April 13, of 406 cars of wheat flour and °!>* cars of Tye Hour, nnd of halt the reqnisito quantity of "butter and eggs. The total shortage of foodstufls was about 2800 oars. Siberia, meanwhile, is well supplied with bread and flour, with butter and eggs, at cheap prices, tho Trans-Siberian. Eailroad cannot put thosft supplies at points where they will do the Provisional Government the most good, for a mostly single-track road can l>ive/Potroarad only a. single-track food supply. Tho Government would bo pTeased to move to Moscow or r«ishmNovgorod, away from the nervous miscellanv of race, opinion, and architecture that the guide-books call Petrograd..