ding that the procuring of grain
should be entrusted to Austro-Hungarian army units in the
districts occupied by them. To carry out this plan a general, who
had up to that time been occupied in Roumania, was dispatched to
Odessa, and now commenced independent military proceedings from
there. For payment kronen were used, drawn from Vienna. The War
Grain Transactions department was empowered, by Imperial
instructions to the Government, to place 100 million kronen at the
disposal of the War Ministry, and this amount was actually set
aside by the finance section of that department.

This military action and its execution very seriously affected the
civil action during its establishment, and also greatly impaired
the value of our credit in the Ukraine by offering kronen notes to
such an extent at the time. Moreover, the kronen notes thus set in
circulation in Ukraine were smuggled into Sweden, and coming thus
into the Scandinavian and Dutch markets undoubtedly contributed to
the well-known fall in the value of the krone which took place
there some months later.

The Austro-Hungarian military action was received with great
disapproval by the _Germans_, and when in a time of the greatest
scarcity among ourselves (mid-May) we were obliged to ask Germany
for temporary assistance, this was granted only on condition that
independent military action on the part of Austria-Hungary should
be suppressed and the whole leadership in Ukraine be entrusted to
Germany.

It was then hoped that increased supplies might be procured,
especially from Bessarabia, where the Germans have established a
collecting organisation, to the demand of which the Roumanian
Government had agreed. This hope, however, also proved vain, and
in June and July the Ukraine was still further engaged. The
country was, in fact, almost devoid of any considerable supplies,
and in addition to this the collecting system never really worked
properly at all, as the arrangement for maximum prices was
frequently upset by overbidding on the part of our own military
section.

Meantime everything had been made ready for getting in the harvest
of 1918. The collecting organisation had become more firmly
established and extended, the necessary personal requirements were
fully complied with, and _it would doubtless have been possible to
bring great quantities out of the country_. But first of all the