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Chinese, could have stood such a war and such misgovernmentfor so long. Economically Russia was notexhausted by 1917, but her virtual isolation from theWest through the closing of the Baltic and the Black Seahad crippling effects, economic, military, and psychological;the transport system was in chaos; and theextreme inefficiency of distribution added acutely to thehardships of the rear.The Revolution began when it did, in March 1917,because the government had failed so disastrously inthe war that the old traditional binding ties to authoritywere sapped or snapped, with the result that strikes andbread riots in the capital, where there was an enormousundisciplined garrison, could lead to mutinies and precipitatethe avalanche. In the army men were saying:"The government want us all killed so that our wivesand children may be starved by the landowners." "Wehave had many Allies, but it is all no good. TheGermans are people like ourselves, we want liberty."In the villages the police reported: "All are waitingand impatiently demanding: when will this cursed warend? Political resolutions are being talked about everywhereand resolutions adopted directed against thelandlords and merchants."It has already been said that tsarism had operatedthrough the landowning class, the army and police, thebureaucracy, and the church. By the time of the warthe last was but a hollow prop (see pp. 194-195), thefirst was as such a spent force. The army was not theold army, but the peasantry mobilized; having sufferedgreat defeats; at the front already much demoralized,in the swollen rear quite unreliable, with a great weaknessin officers, without any leader who had the halo ofvictories or the personal magnetism to galvanize themass. And now for the first time millions of illiteratepeasants and workers had arms in their hands. Actualrevolutionary propaganda was not important at thefront before 1917, but it had an ideal field for action,and in the six months after March it reduced the bulkof the army to a mob intent only on getting back totheir villages and sharing in the land.71