This hope, however, also proved vain, and in June and July the Ukraine was still further engaged.

The country was, in fact, almost devoid of any considerable supplies, and in addition to this the collecting system never really worked properly at all, as the arrangement for maximum prices was frequently upset by overbidding on the part of our own military section.
Meantime everything had been made ready for getting in the harvest of 1918.

The collecting organisation had become more firmly established and extended, the necessary personal requirements were fully complied with, and _it would doubtless have been possible to bring great quantities out of the country_.

But first of all the demands of the Ukrainian cities had to be met, and there was in many cases a state of real famine there; then came the Ukrainian and finally the very considerable contingents of German and Austro-Hungarian armies of occupation.

Not until supplies for these groups had been assured would the Ukrainian Government allow any export of grain, and to this we were forced to agree.
It was at once evident that the degree of cultivation throughout the whole country had seriously declined--owing to the entire uncertainty of property and rights after the agrarian revolution.
The local authorities, affected by this state of things, were little inclined to agree to export, and it actually came to local embargoes, one district prohibiting the transfer of its stocks to any other, exactly as we had experienced with ourselves.
In particular, however, the agitation of the Entente agents (which had been frequently perceptible before), under the impression of the German military defeats, was most seriously felt.