purchaser is found in some well-to-do peasant or nouveau riche speculator.  Again, most people have relations in the country, whom they visit from time to time, bringing back with them great bags of flour.  It is illegal for private persons to bring food into Moscow, and the trains are searched; but, by corruption or cunning, experienced people can elude the search.  The food market is illegal, and is raided occasionally; but as a rule it is winked at.  Thus the attempt to suppress private commerce has resulted in an amount of unprofessional buying and selling which far exceeds what happens in capitalist countries.  It takes up a great deal of time that might be more profitably employed; and, being illegal, it places practically the whole population of Moscow at the mercy of the police.  Moreover, it depends largely upon the stores of goods belonging to those who were formerly rich, and when these are expended the whole system must collapse, unless industry has meanwhile been re-established on a sound basis.

It is clear that the state of affairs is unsatisfactory, but, from the Government’s point of view, it is not easy to see what ought to be done.  The urban and industrial population is mainly concerned in carrying on the work of government and supplying munitions to the army.  These are very necessary tasks, the cost of which ought to be defrayed out of taxation.  A moderate tax in kind on the peasants would easily feed Moscow and Petrograd.  But the peasants take no interest in war or government.  Russia is so vast that invasion of one part does not touch another part; and the peasants are too ignorant to have any national consciousness, such as one takes for granted in England or France or Germany.  The peasants will not willingly part with a portion of their produce merely for purposes of national defence, but only for the goods they need—­clothes, agricultural implements, &c.—­which the Government, owing to the war and the blockade, is not in a position to supply.

When the food shortage was at its worst, the Government antagonized the peasants by forced requisitions, carried out with great harshness by the Red Army.  This method has been modified, but the peasants still part unwillingly with their food, as is natural in view of the uselessness of paper and the enormously higher prices offered by private buyers.

The food problem is the main cause of popular opposition to the Bolsheviks, yet I cannot see how any popular policy could have been adopted.  The Bolsheviks are disliked by the peasants because they take so much food; they are disliked in the towns because they take so little.  What the peasants want is what is called free trade, i.e., de-control of agricultural produce.  If this policy were adopted, the towns would be faced by utter starvation, not merely by hunger and hardship.  It is an entire misconception to suppose that the peasants cherish any hostility to the Entente.  The Daily News of July 13th,