Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/73

Rh It is a curse of the economic conditions of war-time. I consider it very important to emphasise that the difference between Russia and other belligerent countries—Allied or Enemy—in this respect is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind. In this country speculators are called profiteers. In Russia the profiteers are called "marauders in the rear."

The same difference is to be observed in the effects of speculation and profiteering upon the morale of the people in Russia and in other countries. The greater the curse, the more deplorable the moral effect. In Russia the speculations and the profiteering were so open and so mean that the eyes of the broad masses of the people were opened at a comparatively early stage of the war. In other countries profiteering and speculation in the war are milder and the people are still not fully aware of the part played by the profit-making supporters of the war in bringing about their misery.

I have mentioned that the actual want was felt in Russia, in Petrograd and Warsaw and other big towns at any rate, almost literally on the next day after war broke out. This is to be attributed to the activities of the speculators. They at once began to conceal their stocks and to buy and store goods. The broad masses of the town population saw at once that the war had opened two roads—the one leading to misery and destitution and the other to enormous and easy profits. This period was called the "bacchanalia of profits."

There was another vivid expression to characterise an economic phenomenon which, once more, while not peculiar to Russia, grew to the most appalling dimensions in that country. I mean "the mad race of paper millions." Indeed, it would be impossible to describe the situation better. Russia's war finance was thoroughly unhealthy. Never was the country poorer, and never were the very few richer than during this terrible war. It was really a mad race of profits. Fortunes of a legendary character were made actually out of nothing. Millions, thousands of millions flooded