RUSSIA'S GREAT FOOD ARTERY

Otago Witness, Issue 3315, 26 September 1917, Page 21

RUSSIA'S GREAT FOOD ARTERY

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY.

"GRAFT" AND SLOTH

"I have paid £I2OO graft to get a freight car sent from Vladivostock to Petrograd. I have sold the merchandise I put inside for £20,000. That is good business, even during a war." Thus spoke a Jewish shopkeeper from Riga, who sat opposite me in the dlining car of the Trans-Siberian express (writes the New York Evening Post's correspondent in Russia.). _ The TransSiberian railroad —Russia's single line of communication with the munitions works and equipment factories of the United States—is probably tho most mismanaged and dishonestly operated public, institution in any of the belligerent countries, says tho writer. Siberia is only now awakening to the meaning of tho revolution. The officials of the Trans-Siberian railroad, and especially tho minor officials, have not yet realised that dishonesty in railroad 1 administration cannot be tolerated during the war, and cannot be tolerated in the sort of! democracy Russia proposes to devise. That is one of the lessons that the American Railroad Commission must teach, and it is a lesson that can be taught to the average Russian in his present mood only by the exercise of tact, decision, and subtle hints of force. WAR SUPPLIES ROT IN PORT. Vladivostock, piled high with rotting war supplies awaiting transportation, is the centre of a gang Of dishonest persons who have Russia by the throat. The Imperial Government made one or two attempts to eradicate- them, and the Provisional Government has declared emphatically that dishonesty in public affairs must end. As the Trans-Siberian express dawdled along through the steppe-like districts east of Irkutsk one afternoon in May, we came upon, another train standing on tho- westbound track, with an engineer leaning from the engine cab. "The last three cars of my train are afire," he shouted. "They are loaded with hay for the horses at the front. A spark ignited them. We've uncoupled and are going on toward Petrograd. I don't think you'll be able to get past until they burn out." It had not occurred to that engineer or to his train crew to attempt to drown the blaze. The passengers on the Vladivostok express got out, and —under American direction —fetched buckets and pails from the engine and dining car. A peasant girl ishowed them a water-filled ditch in the neighbourhood, and for three hours we passed buckets up to the embankment and cooled down the steaming rails before our locomotive. When dusk fell the rails were hot but straight, and our train passed slowly over them. "That was a striking scene," a Russian officer said to me. "Everyone working so hard in that hideous yellow glare, and a sinister night . sweeping up from Mongolia to engulf us." He saw only the picturesque aspects of the destruction of that hay, hauled at enormous cost from Manchuria to Galicia. We left two telephone operators —armed with an emergency field apparatus —squatting on the prairie beside the smouldering ruin of several thousand roubles. "Hello! Yes, three carloads of hay or something. The west-bound line is obsolutefy out of commission. The rails are 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 days' work—absolutely out of commission." He hung up the receiver and sat down on the embankment to wait for help. I argued tho point that night in tho din-ing-car with a Russian colonel of artillery. "Think what that means," I said. "One of your most important lines of communication intercepted for two or three days." "Yes," he said. "Weren't we lucky to get past ourselves?" Siberia was onoe famous for three things: the railroad, the exiles, and the peasants. The exiles have departed for home, the railroad is in the hands of an American commission, but 'the Siberian peasant—who forms, with others of his kind elsewhere, 70 per cent, of the Russian population—remains. THE FOOD SUPPLY. The Siberian peasant wonders why the 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 top of the stove. When the inhabitants of the Don Cossack province began to grab land in April and May, the Provisional Government —who seem many Czars instead of one —forbade such outrageous practices, saying that Russia was a democracy, and that landowners must be protected. The Siberian, 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 Russian peasant toward the food supply," said Prince Dyoc,' the then Prime Minister, to me. "They refused foodstuffs to the old regime, and while the northern wheatgrowing provinces are now offering their entiro wheat supplies to the new Otovernment, we must settle the land question as soon as possible in order that even the most simple-minded Russian farmer will know that what he 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 small 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 are scanty and the feverish enthusiasm of Petrograd never penetrates. White bread is, nevertheless, one of the most conspicuous things in Siberia, because lack of white bread started the revolution. White bread has become a symbol to the people of Petrograd. " When there's plenty of white bread we 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 huad, has a graph of the bread supply of Petrograd laid on his desk every morning by the Ministry of Agriculture. He knows that the Siberian Governments of Tobolsk, Tomsk, Southern 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. Every timo that there is a fire on the TransSiberian Railroad, such as I have described, or a derailment or a collision, the graph on Kerensky's desk shows a depression. He must have had some bad mornings during April and May, for disorganisation along the food routes caused a shortage in Petrograd alone, between April 4 and April 13, of 406 cars of wheat flour and 292 cars of rye flour, and of half tho requisite quantity of butter and eggs. Tho total shortage of foodstuffs was about 2800 cars. Siberia, meanwhile, is well supplied with broad and flour, with butter and eggs, at cheap prices. The Trans-Siberian Railnoad oa.nnot put these supplies at points where they will do the Provisional Government tho most good, for a mostly single-track road can Petrograd only a single-track food supply. Tho Government would be pleased to move to Moscow or Nishni-Novgorod, away from the nervous miscellany of race, opinion, and architecture that the guido-books call Petrograd.