Serious as the grain shortage was, the transportation situation was still more serious. Food for which Petrograd and Moscow would pay almost any money, rotted on the ground, spoiled in the half-loaded freight cars, and wasted in congested way stations for lack of transportation facilities and for lack of labor. In the industrial world things were as bad. The working people, blind to their own peril, had shortened hours of work, had gone slack on their jobs, and had voted themselves wages far in excess of their productive activities. The consequences were rapidly accumulating. Factories were closing down, partly because they could not get coal and partly because of the extortions of labor. Soon there will be gaunt famine in the land. The working people will know what it is to go hungry with their pockets full of money. When these troubles culminate--and in a few weeks at the most, the world will stand aghast at Russia’s state--the orgy of the Bolsheviki, the riot of the dreamers will end. Human nature is the same in Russia as it is elsewhere, the same as it is in New York or in Emporia, Kansas. We all know how, when hard times pinch the country, the Republican party elects its candidates. The people follow their theorizing and dreaming leaders in good times, but when the hard times come they turn to the party of strong business men to set them on their feet again. The full dinner pail argument is going to appeal strongly to the Russian masses this coming winter, and if the constituent assembly is postponed until the autumn of 1918, I am confident that the people will vote in favor, not of a socialistic millennium that will not work, but for a sane, practical democracy that will. What Russia needs above all other things is leaders. What the people of this country must do for Russia is to help her find and develop those leaders. They are there somewhere. Russia has shown that she can produce great men and great women, people whom any nation might be proud to follow. But under czardom the only people permitted to lead were so corrupt, so reactionary and tyrannical that the Russians learned to fear and distrust all leadership. When they overthrew czardom and banished the tyrants and the corruptionists they thought they could get along without any leaders. The world knows now how fatal was their mistake, and very soon the blindest of the blind in Russia will know it.