That is true.

But it is no less true that despite the fact of our having obtained far less from Ukraine than we had hoped, we should, without these supplies, have been unable to carry on at all until the new harvest.
Statistics show that during the spring and summer of 1918 42,000 wagon-loads were received from the Ukraine.

It would have been impossible to procure these supplies from anywhere else.

Millions of human beings were thus saved from death by starvation--and let those who sit in judgment on the peace terms bear this in mind.
It is also beyond doubt that with the great stocks available in Ukraine, an incomparably greater quantity could have been brought into Austria if the collecting and transport apparatus had worked differently.
The Secretary of State for Food Supplies has, at my request, in May, 1919, furnished me with the following statistical data for publication: Brief survey of the organisation of corn imports from Ukraine (on terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace) and the results of same: When, after great efforts, a suitable agreement had been arrived at with Germany as to the apportionment of the Ukrainian supplies, a mission was dispatched to Kieff, in which not only Government officials but also the best qualified and most experienced experts which the Government could procure were represented.
Germany and Hungary had also sent experts, among them being persons with many years of experience in the Russian grain business, and had been in the employ of both German and Entente grain houses (as, for instance, the former representative of the leading French corn merchants, the house of Louis Dreyfuss).
The official mission arrived at Kieff by the middle of March, and commenced work at once.

A comparatively short time sufficed to show that the work would present quite extraordinary difficulties.
The Ukrainian Government, which had declared at Brest-Litovsk that very great quantities, probably about one million tons, of surplus foodstuffs were ready for export, had in the meantime been replaced by another Ministry.