put on England if the German submarine campaign had succeeded in
putting an end to our imports of food from the Americas. From the moment
of the Declaration of War, Russia was in the position of one "holding
out," of a city standing a siege without a water supply, for her imports
were so necessary to her economy that they may justly be considered as
essential irrigation. There could be no question for her of improvement,
of strengthening. She was faced with the fact until the war should end
she had to do with what she had, and that the things she had formerly
counted on importing would be replaced by guns and shells, to be used,
as it turned out, in battering