Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/151

 only to be found in the Austrian cafés. We leave it to the reader's imagination to judge how we enjoyed this feast, after two months of "voluntary rationing" in London, Resbrödkort in Sweden, and the horrible black viscosity that they served us in the name of bread at Petrograd.

We found the same abundance later in the other Austrian towns that we visited. If we think for a moment, such a condition is not surprising. That part of Austria which is occupied, a district as large as Belgium, is an entirely rural region; the rare towns and villages that one comes across are only agricultural markets. The soil is fertile. Products of every description are plentiful. The exportation of these products is very difficult, indeed practically impossible, for there is on the one side the barrier of the trenches, and on the other hand the impossibility of using the Russian railway lines for anything besides military transports. The Russian army of occupation furnishes a surplus population just dense enough—save on the immediate front, where the concentration of troops leads to more difficulty in obtaining