h its usual tolerance the Provisional Government made no attempt to
suppress this act of secession by armed force. The council itself in
Petrograd, representing the whole country, immediately denounced the
Kronstadt proclamation, and sent two deputies to Kronstadt to reason
with Lamanov and his associates. The whole incident seemed to be
largely a matter of paper proclamations, since no violence on either
side ever occurred, and the Kronstadt situation finally faded from
public attention. Nevertheless it caused Kerensky to cut short his
tour of the various fronts and return to Petrograd two days later.

In the public speeches which he then made he spoke very encouragingly
of the situation on the firing lines, but two days later it was
announced that General Alexiev's resignation as commander in chief had
been accepted and that Brussilov had been appointed in his place.

On the 10th President Wilson issued his famous note, prepared in
response to the radical formula of the council, declaring for a peace
"without annexation and without indemnities." In spirit it was in
perfect accord with what the council had demanded: that no people
should be annexed against their will, that democracy should be the
guiding principle, etc. Certainly it was in accord with his previous
declaration made before the war; a "peace without oppressive
victories," a principle quite as radical as anything the Petrograd
radicals had ever formulated. There was then, and has been ever since,
every indication that the Provisional Government and the big majority
of the members of the council accepted this declaration as being in
harmony with their own sentiments. Nevertheless, it became the object
of a very noisy attack by those extreme elements known as the
Maximalists, best represented by Lenine and his type.

CHAPTER LXXXVII

THE AMERICAN COMMISSIONS

To the members of the German Government the Russian revolution
undoubtedly came as a great surprise, placing their faith, as they
did, in the efforts of Protopopoff and his machinations. It is
extremely unlikely that Petrograd was infested with German agents
disguised as radicals in the earlier days after the overthrow of the
autocracy. But by this time, in June, 1917, Germany had had time to
meet the new conditions, and obviously the German agents had arrived
and were busy.

The only fertile ground available was that occupied by the Leninites.
While the genuine Maximalists may have been,