The clothing situation has been increasingly bad since 1937, and when, particularly in the last year, one came upon a group of people huddled round one of the temporary fruit stands in the dark early Moscow morning, trying to cut the wind, one only had to glance round and see a clothing store near by to know that they were waiting for its opening. The neutral diplomat said that in zero weather at 8 o'clock one evening he counted 75 people in front of a shop which reportedly would have shoes the next day. There is no clothing material to be had, except in odd instances of a few bolts of linen which appear sporadically and are gobbled up by the lucky ones who have been queueing all night.
The petrol shortage does not, of course, affect ihe average Russian citizen, and he has gradually accustomed himself to the clothing problem. The food shortage, however, is a more serious matter. In Moscow, according to the diplomat, this is considered to be due not to a lack of food or possible exports to Germany but to the dislocation of transport: the transport system was stretched to its utmost to supply even normal demands in normal times, and with the extra burden of the war it became ragged, Trucks which had been used for transporting fresh food were commandeered for military Purposes from industries even as far away as the Ural Mountains.
The food shortage in Moscow, this neutral observer said, caused grumbling—and what is more, grumbling in public queues and on the streets, particularly among the women, On top of the lacks in Moscow, which is the best-supplied city in the Soviet Union, reports of the Finnish war, besides those supplied by the government, leaked through to the people. It is possible to conceal a defeat in far-off Monogolia, but the case is different with wounded coming into Leningrad, even though they are scattered afterward in other cities. Reservists who were called up for the Polish campaign and later demobilized. were, including many wounded, recalled for the war in Finland. This has caused some local discontent.
With the inevitable infiltration of news of Soviet defeats from a front so near, an explanation of treachery was advanced—although the British Intelligence is being substituted for the Gestapo of 1937. For the Red Army can do no wrong.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.