Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/152

 their supplies on the spot—to enable the inhabitants to dispose of the surplus of their produce at prices slightly above the former very low cost of living. Thus we see that, economically, this district, which one might have imagined devastated by three invasions in three years, is a veritable land of plenty, in comparison with any other country, belligerent or neutral.

Let us hasten to add that the rule of the Russians in occupation is very mild. We have already seen an example of this in the presence of the freed prisoners, who walk about in their Austrian uniforms from the frontier of Podolia to the second line of trenches. Generally speaking, the presence of the Russian army does not seem to inspire the civilians of that district with the terror that remains in our land, for instance, at the mention of the Cossacks to the great-grandchildren of those who remember 1815.

In certain cases the Russians of 1914, in Eastern Prussia for instance, may have shown themselves worthy descendants of their ancestors, but in all our journeying in Galicia we did not meet with a single