les was essential to the economic
prosperity of Russia. Either he underestimated the strength of the
Socialist elements, or he did not understand their point of view, for
here he proclaimed a principle to which even the mildest Socialist
would be opposed: the holding of territory occupied by people of one
nationality by a nation whose people are of another nationality.

There was a rising storm of protest, in which even Kerensky joined
against his associate in the ministry. The result was that the
Provisional Government was compelled to issue the famous statement of
its aims in the war, in which it renounced all indemnities and the
desire to conquer any foreign territories, at the same time
enunciating the rights of all small nationalities to decide their own
separate destinies. President Wilson had expressed a very similar
formula before the entrance of the United States into the war in the
words "peace without victory." Unfortunately this general statement of
Socialistic principle lacked the detail necessary to make it
applicable to the war situation; nor have the radical forces ever been
unanimous enough in their opinions since then to supply these details.
There remained, and there still remains, the question as to whether
liberating Alsace and Lorraine from the Germans would be the conquest
of foreign territory, or whether reparation on the part of Germany for
the damage done in Belgium would constitute an indemnity. Must the
Armenians remain forever under Turkey, or must armed force be employed
to take Armenia away from Turkey, that the Armenians might settle
their own destiny? Either course might be interpreted as against or in
accordance with the principle enunciated.

Nevertheless, this manifesto had a powerful influence in the Allied
countries, and the justice of the principles in question have been,
broadly speaking, generally recognized.

The Germans made the most of the proclamation and suggested a separate
peace through countless agencies, in which Russia should not lose any
territory inhabited by Russians and need not pay any indemnities. At
this bait the Leninites and dupes of the numerous agitators in German
pay, which undoubtedly began infesting Petrograd, bit readily. But
here the Provisional Government responded by a clever stroke of
diplomacy, and in this it had the support of the council; if the
German and Austrian Socialists were really in sympathy with the
Russian ideals of democracy and wishe