There was a rising storm of protest, in which even Kerensky joined against his associate in the ministry. The result was that the Provisional Government was compelled to issue the famous statement of its aims in the war, in which it renounced all indemnities and the desire to conquer any foreign territories, at the same time enunciating the rights of all small nationalities to decide their own separate destinies. President Wilson had expressed a very similar formula before the entrance of the United States into the war in the words "peace without victory." Unfortunately this general statement of Socialistic principle lacked the detail necessary to make it applicable to the war situation; nor have the radical forces ever been unanimous enough in their opinions since then to supply these details. There remained, and there still remains, the question as to whether liberating Alsace and Lorraine from the Germans would be the conquest of foreign territory, or whether reparation on the part of Germany for the damage done in Belgium would constitute an indemnity. Must the Armenians remain forever under Turkey, or must armed force be employed to take Armenia away from Turkey, that the Armenians might settle their own destiny? Either course might be interpreted as against or in accordance with the principle enunciated. Nevertheless, this manifesto had a powerful influence in the Allied countries, and the justice of the principles in question have been, broadly speaking, generally recognized. The Germans made the most of the proclamation and suggested a separate peace through countless agencies, in which Russia should not lose any territory inhabited by Russians and need not pay any indemnities. At this bait the Leninites and dupes of the numerous agitators in German pay, which undoubtedly began infesting Petrograd, bit readily. But here the Provisional Government responded by a clever stroke of diplomacy, and in this it had the support of the council; if the German and Austrian Socialists were really in sympathy with the Russian ideals of democracy and wished to make peace with them, let them then also overturn their autocracies. If they would do this, then they might expect peace with Russia and undoubtedly with the other Allies, for France, Great Britain, and the United States had each declared that it was fighting the Teutonic autocracies and not the people they ruled. The German Socialist is entirely a different type from the Russian Socialist. He believes in iron discipline. He believes in strong centralization. The German autocracy in many of its features approaches something not far from the ideal of the German Socialist, especially in its care of the working classes through state insurance, workingmen's compensation legislation, and its many state and municipal enterprises. In this lies the strength of the German autocracy; with all its imperialistic features, it has cared for the welfare of the working classes.