ck of
supplies_. The fact that Kieff and Odessa were themselves
continually in danger of a food crisis is the best indication as
to the state of things.

In the Ukraine, the effects of four years of war, with the
resulting confusion, and of the destruction wrought by the
Bolsheviks (November, 1917, to March, 1918) were conspicuously
apparent; cultivation and harvesting had suffered everywhere, but
where supplies had existed they had been partly destroyed, partly
carried off by the Bolsheviks on their way northward. Still, the
harvest had given certain stocks available in the country, though
these were not extensive, and the organisation of a purchasing
system was now commenced. The free buying in Ukraine which we and
Germany had originally contemplated could not be carried out in
fact, since the Ukrainian Government declared that it would itself
set up this organisation, and maintained this intention with the
greatest stubbornness. But the authority in the country had been
destroyed by the Revolution, and then by the Bolshevist invasion;
the peasantry turned Radical, and the estates were occupied by
revolutionaries and cut up. The power of the Government, then, in
respect of collecting supplies of grain, was altogether
inadequate; on the other hand, however, it was still sufficient
(as some actual instances proved) to place serious, indeed
insuperable, obstacles in our way. It was necessary, therefore, to
co-operate with the Government--that is, to come to a compromise
with it. After weeks of negotiation this was at last achieved, by
strong diplomatic pressure, and, accordingly, the agreement of
April 23, 1918, was signed.

This provided for the establishment of a German-Austro-Hungarian
Economical Central Commission; practically speaking, a great firm
of corn merchants, in which the Central Powers appointed a number
of their most experienced men, familiar, through years of activity
in the business, with Russian grain affairs.

But while this establishment was still in progress the people in
Vienna (influenced by the occurrences on the Emperor's journey to
North Bohemia) had lost patience; military leaders thought it no
longer advisable to continue watching the operations of a _civil_
commercial undertaking in Ukraine while that country was occupied
by the military, and so finally the General Staff elicited a
decree from the Emperor provi