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Rh opinion in all Russia was on the side of the Soviet. Numerous provincial Soviets, army congresses and conferences of political parties, and the whole of the democratic Press, expressed their approval of the Soviet's foreign policy with great enthusiasm. The Provisional Government could resist no longer. On the 27th of March, thirteen days after the issue of the Manifesto, the Provisional Government issued a declaration on the war to the citizens of Russia. In this document the Government declared that "the aim of free Russia is not to rule over other nations, not to deprive them of their national possessions, not to annex foreign territory by force of arms, but to found a lasting peace on the basis of self-determination of peoples. The Russian people does not endeavour to strengthen its external power at the expense of other peoples; it does not aim at the enslavement or humiliation of any people."

Democratic Russia was exultant. It was a victory: a solemn and mighty victory. The Government of one of the belligerent States—of that very State which had been the most aggressive and the most openly imperialistic of all—began to speak the language of the advanced democracy. Indeed, the dawn had come for Russia. There was some cause for enthusiasm.

But it was an illusory victory. A few weeks later the insincerity of the Provisional Government's declaration led to a terrible "split," to the first serious clash between the Democracy and the propertied classes of new Russia. After this conflict was over we learned from the candid revelations made by Miliukov himself (in a "private" meeting of Duma Members on May 4lh, and in the May Congress of the Cadet Party) how great the insincerity of the Government's conduct had been. It appears from these revelations that Miliukov had intentionally put the Government's declaration in the form of a manifesto to the citizens of Russia instead of giving it the form of a diplomatic act. In other words, Miliukov purposely gave to the declaration, which the masses of Russia interpreted as