oes not aim at the domination of other nations,
or at depriving them of their national patrimony, or at occupying
by force foreign territories, but that its object is to establish
a durable peace on the basis of the rights of nations to decide
their own destiny.

"The Russian nation does not lust after the strengthening of its
power abroad at the expense of other nations. Its aim is not to
subjugate or humiliate any one. In the name of the higher
principles of equity, the Russian people have broken the chains
which fettered the Polish nation, but it will not suffer that its
own country shall emerge from the great struggle humiliated or
weakened in its vital forces.

"In referring to the 'penalties and guarantees' essential to a
durable peace, the Provisional Government had in view the
reduction of armaments, the establishment of international
tribunals, etc.

"This explanation will be communicated by the Minister of Foreign
Affairs to the Ambassadors of the Allied Powers."

This assurance satisfied a majority of the delegates to the Soviet meeting
held on the evening of May 4th, and a resolution of confidence in the
Provisional Government was carried, after a very stormy debate. The
majority, however, was a very small one, thirty-five in a total vote of
about twenty-five hundred. It was clearly evident that the political
government and the Soviet, which was increasingly inclined to assume the
functions of government, were nearing a serious breach. With each day the
Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, as the organized expression
of the great mass of wage-workers in Petrograd, grew in power over the
Provisional Government and its influence throughout the whole of Russia. On
May 13th Guchkov resigned, and three days later Miliukov followed his
example. The party of the Constitutional Democrats had come to be
identified in the minds of the revolutionary proletariat with imperialism
and secret diplomacy, and was utterly discredited. The crisis developed an
intensification of the distrust of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat.

IV

The crisis was not due solely to the diplomacy of the Provisional
Government. Indeed, that was a minor cause. Behind all the discussions and
disputes over Miliukov's conduct of the affairs of the Foreign Office there
was the far more serious issue created by the agitation of the Bolsheviki.
Under the leadership o