WORK OF THE UNION
Committees of the Front.

3G

With the number of the zemstvo institutions in the armies increasing
 rapidly, there arose the need of combining them for purposes
 of more efficient supply and leadership. In November, 1914,
the front representatives of the Zemstvo Union met at Warsaw and
adopted certain recommendations for the creation of a front committee
 to take charge of all zemstvo institutions in the war zone.
The Central Committee approved the proposal and appointed one
of its members as head of the new organization. Soon, however, it
became clear that the Warsaw committee would not be able to direct
efficiently the zemstvo institutions in Galicia. The remoteness and
peculiar conditions of that theater of war demanded an independent
organization on the spot. The result was that in J anuary, 1915, a
special committee of the Union was organized in the city of Lvov,
and was known as the southwestern committee, as distinguished from
the northwestern, which continued to function at Warsaw. Later,
when the northwestern front was divided into a northern and western
 front, a similar division was established in the Warsaw committee.
 There were thus formed three zemstvo committees of the
front: the western, at Minsk ; the northern, at Pskov; and the southwestern,
 at Lvov (transferred later on to Kiev). When Turkey began
 hostilities a similar front committee was organized at Tiflis, and
when Rumania joined the Allies, one was also established at the
Rumanian front.
Within the larger committees of the western front this process of
differentiation continued as their activities and the number of their
institutions kept expanding. In the latter half of 1915 & special
commissioner of the Zemstvo Union, with a limited regional administrative
 staff, was attached to the headquarters of each army at the
front. On the western front, there were five such commissioners and
four on the southwestern. In this way the Zemstvo Union was enabled
 to keep in close touch with the actual needs of each of the
principal subdivisions of the army and, thanks to its permanent
contact with headquarters, it was in a position also to satisfy more
efficiently the needs of the various units within each army. The
committees of the front were confronted with the following three
principal problems: (1) how to satisfy the immediate needs of the
army ; (2) how to satisfy the needs of the laborers employed in dig-