Government could procure were represented.

Germany and Hungary had also sent experts, among them being
persons with many years of experience in the Russian grain
business, and had been in the employ of both German and Entente
grain houses (as, for instance, the former representative of the
leading French corn merchants, the house of Louis Dreyfuss).

The official mission arrived at Kieff by the middle of March, and
commenced work at once. A comparatively short time sufficed to
show that the work would present quite extraordinary difficulties.

The Ukrainian Government, which had declared at Brest-Litovsk that
very great quantities, probably about one million tons, of
surplus foodstuffs were ready for export, had in the meantime
been replaced by another Ministry. The Cabinet then in power
evinced no particular inclination, or at any rate no hurry, to
fulfil obligations on this scale, but was more disposed to point
out that it would be altogether impossible, for various reasons,
to do so.

Moreover, the Peace of Brest had provided for a regular exchange
system, bartering load by load of one article against another. But
neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary was even approximately in a
position to furnish the goods (textiles especially were demanded)
required in exchange.

We had then to endeavour to obtain the supplies on credit, and the
Ukrainian Government agreed, after long and far from easy
negotiations, to provide _credit valuta_ (against vouchers for
mark and krone in Berlin and Vienna). The arrangements for this
were finally made, and the two Central Powers drew in all 643
million karbowanez.

The Rouble Syndicate, however, which had been formed under the
leadership of the principal banks in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest,
was during the first few months only able to exert a very slight
activity. Even the formation of this syndicate was a matter of
great difficulty, and in particular a great deal of time was lost;
and even then the apparatus proved very awkward to work with.
Anyhow, it had only procured comparatively small sums of roubles,
so that the purchasing organisation in Ukraine, especially at
first, suffered from a chronic lack of means of payment.

But, in any case, a better arrangement of the money question would
only have improved matters in a few of the best supplied
districts, for the principal obstacle was simply _the la