Headquarters of Commander-in-Chief at Kovno
levies of horses and cattle. The local administrative authorities often drew my attention to this fact, but there was nothing for it but to insist on these deliveries. The area governed by us was not more severely taxed than any other. The home country also suffered from the measures we were forced to adopt.
A great deal of the discontent that was apparent later was traceable to these inevitable military requisitions. Severities that occurred from time to time may have increased this ill-feeling ; they certainly did harm. The political democratic agitators made it their business to add fuel to the flames.
It would have been an absurdity to spare the area administered by the Commander-in-Chief in the East, from false humanitarian reasons at the cost of our own country.
Owing to the intensive cultivation in Germany, any action prejudicial to the agricultural industry must be far more harmful than decreased productivity in the area of the Commander-in-Chief in the East.
The provision of raw material was a specially important undertaking for which we also paid cash. The Jew was, in this instance, indispensable as middleman. We supplied the home War Department with skins and hides, copper and brass, rags and scrap iron, and further relieved it by taking over and managing the factories in Libau, Kovno and Bialystok. What became a very extensive Trade Department was gradually established, under the control of Geheimrat Major Eilsberger, a man of extraordinary foresight and energy, who later became Ministerial Director in the Imperial Treasury.
Great importance was attached to the manufacture of barbed wire. This, and the management of other factories, was efficiently undertaken by Captain Markau who in peace had been with the General Electric Company, and during the war with the Chief of the Field Telegraphs on the Eastern Front. In this way everything was put to the fullest possible use, each after its kind.
Amongst other things a large railway workshop was established at Libau by the military railway directorate.
With the provision of raw materials there was a slight improve-
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