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 despotism. The risk, as I have said, was truly stupendous.

But the effect was to give the Government a new programme and a new determined, courageous, clearly defined and clearly thought-out policy. At the same time the decision of the C.W.S.D. gave the Government a support from the mass of the people which the first Provisional Government did not possess.

The programme of the new Provisional Government was based upon two leading ideas: first, a foreign policy that should rest simultaneously upon a strong, revived, and reorganised army and a determined effort for peace; second, a home policy that would pull the country together economically, financially and politically, and defeat the disorganising tendencies in Russian life. I regret that space does not permit me to speak of the domestic policy of the new Government, its programmes of economic and financial reform and social regeneration. All that I need now say—but I must say it with all the emphasis at my command—is that