Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/74

 62 the country. And while more and more millions were being printed and distributed amongst the manufacturers, Government contractors, bankers and merchants; food, housing, fuel and clothing became dearer and scarcer every day, and the life of the masses became more difficult, the sacrifices of the workers and peasants more intolerable.

The contrast of profits and sacrifices is not peculiar to Russia, but certainly in no country has it become so hideous as in Russia, nor was this race of millions so mad in any other country as it was in Russia.

But in the series of phenomena which mark the economic ruin of Russia there is one which was typically Russian. I refer to the hoarding of money. In this country we are acquainted with many objectionable forms of hoarding, but there can be not the slightest doubt that the hoarding of money has been, so far, excluded. And the same probably applies to all the other belligerent countries. Apart from the ethical objections to this practice, the hoarding of money, and particularly of gold coin, is bound to have the most terrible effect on the finance and economy of the country. The withdrawal of money from circulation necessitates the issue of further supplies of paper money, and the hoarding of gold diminishes the "gold covering" of the paper money and leads to an even greater depreciation of the currency.

Nothing could reveal the unhealthy state of affairs in Russia during the war more clearly than this hoarding of money. In emphasising the corrupt nature of the Tsarist Government, people are apt to forget that this unhealthy state was not peculiar to the Government. The whole of the country was diseased. And if this phenomenon of hoarding alone had been better realised and understood in this country there would have been less surprise and less miscalculation during the war and after the Revolution.

At the beginning of the war Russia, like all other belligerent countries, withdrew gold coins from circula-