WORK IN THE ARMY

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reckon with local regulations and ordinances issued by the commissioners
 of the Ministry of Agriculture, who were empowered to impose
 embargoes. But even when the consignment of goods was not
prohibited, there was still the difficulty of obtaining without delay
the necessary rolling stock, a difficulty that was constantly increasing.

Under such conditions the supply department of the Union in
Moscow found it impossible to carry on its operations with the
promptitude that was essential, and was compelled to overlook the
independent and chaotic purchasing operations undertaken by individual
 institutions at the front. It was clearly realized on every hand
that the anarchy in supply would ruin the country; but the paper
schemes devised in Petrograd as a remedy were in any case doomed
to failure, owing to bureaucratic red tape. The purchasing agents
of the Union simply carried on their operations by ignoring completely
 all the barriers and obstacles that were being put in their
way by these interminable ordinances, laws, and regulations. The
following complaints received in November, 1916, from the Union’s
committee of the southwestern front afford an illustration of the
nature of these obstacles.

Every day [reads the report] brings new instances of the endless
>bstacles that are being placed in the way of the purchasing commission
 in its work of buying goods for the institutions of the Zemstvo
Union. These obstacles consist principally in the embargoes in the purchase
 and conveyance of one or another kind of commodity. Lately, it
has frequently happened that goods which had been already purchased
have been requisitioned. Such measures, apart from the direct harm
that they cause, tend to undermine the confidence of the officers of the
Union, since they nullify all their work. Frequently a permit issued by
the commissioners of the Ministry of Agriculture, which could not be
ased immediately for lack of rolling-stock, is revoked without warning.
Orders given and dispositions taken in our favor by the commissioners
of the Ministry are rendered null and void by unexpected orders from
higher authorities. A large number of purchases already concluded
have had to be cancelled on account of failure to obtain permits for
loading and consigning. . . . There are instances when a request supported
 by the military authorities had been rejected by the Special
Council on Food Supply. . . . To these embargoes and requisitions we
have to add the obstacles placed in our way by the railways, as, for
instance, sudden embargoes on consignments in certain directions.