But the Revolution had at least succeeded in giving the Constitution a good start towards centralisation by having a draft prepared, by a Committee under Dr. Preuss, then Secretary of State for the Interior in the provisional Government. This first draft--a shapeless makeshift affair--nevertheless established certain principles of national unity which eventually survived all attacks on them. And a tactical success was scored at once by publishing this draft simultaneously with the decision of the Constituent Assembly, on the 21st of January. But that was as far as the matter could be carried without calling the States into consultation, and a conference of their representatives met in Berlin on January 24th. At this Conference, or rather in the special train on the way to it, the particularist opposition declared itself. And this, not only where it might have been expected, in the clerical, liberal and conservative parties, but among socialists themselves. This opposition of southern socialists followed the line of an old factious schism in the Social Democratic party that had declared itself at the Nürnberg Conference, and was headed by Kurt Eisner, the leading revolutionary and real ruler of Bavaria. Kurt Eisner was not only opposed to Prussia on political but on personal grounds, having shaken the dust of Berlin off his feet some years before. Under his leadership the centralised Republic of Preuss was gradually remodelled into a decentralised Federation of Republics. And it looked, at one time, as though the failure of the Paulskirche Assembly was to be repeated, and a movement towards German unity and social liberty was to relapse and recoil into reaction. Fortunately there has been to-day no Bismarck to profit by the opportunity given by the Southern particularists.[K]