VII

REMEDIES

275

many, but amongst them are included the insufficiencyof agricultural implements and accessories and theabsence of incentive to production caused by thelack of commodities in the towns which the peasantscan purchase in exchange for their produce. Finally,there is the decay of the transport system, whichhinders or renders impossible the collection of localsurpluses in the big centres of distribution.

I see no possible means of repairing this loss ofproductivity within any reasonable period of timeexcept through the agency of German enterprise andorganisation. It is impossible geographically andfor many other reasons for Englishmen, Frenchmen,or Americans to undertake it;—we have neither theincentive nor the means for doing the work on asufficient scale. Germany , on the other hand, has theexperience, the incentive, and to a large extent thematerials for furnishing the Russian peasant withthe goods of which he has been starved for the pastfive years, for reorganising the business of transportand collection, and so for bringing into the world'spool, for the common advantage, the supplies fromwhich we are now so disastrously cut off. It is inour interest to hasten the day when German agentsand organisers will be in a position to set in trainin every Russian village the impulses of ordinaryeconomic motive. This is a process quite independentof the governing authority in Russia ; but we maysurely predict with some certainty that, whether