The action taken by the Workingmen's and Soldiers' Council, itself so often denounced as being under pro-German influence, and even in German pay, by the press of the Allied countries, was extremely significant. It immediately placarded the city with appeals to the soldiers and workingmen to ignore the call of the Maximalists. All that night until daybreak not only Kerensky himself, but N. C. Tcheidze, the president of the council, and his associates, spent in making the rounds of the barracks, addressing the soldiers, appealing to them against participating in the demonstration. Their efforts were a complete success; on the following day there was no demonstration. And apparently in the last hour the Maximalist leaders themselves realized that foreign influences were at work, for when their organ, "Pravda," appeared, its front page was covered with an appeal to their followers not to demonstrate. On June 16, 1917, a convention of newly elected deputies to the Workingmen's and Soldiers' Council, representing all Russia, convened in Petrograd. One of its first acts was to pass a resolution of approval of the Provisional Government's expulsion of Grimm, the Swiss Socialist, who had attempted pro-German activities in the capital, the vote being 640 against 121. In the middle of the month the two American commissions, one under Root and the other under Stevens, arrived in Russia, and it was notable that the reported utterances of their members were sharply in contrast to the press dispatches in their optimism. The conclusion must be obvious that German influences were at work with our sources of news. The Stevens Commission, whose mission was of a technical nature, expressed surprise and pleasure over the progress which had been made in straightening out the transportation tangle and the good condition in which they found railroad facilities, the only handicaps being lack of locomotives and rolling stock. Meanwhile, during June, 1917, a special council of sixty members was at work drafting new legislation for the civil government of the country. One law prepared by this body, as an illustration, was making the judges of petty courts subject to the election of the people on the American principle. This council was also intrusted with the task of formulating the groundwork for the new constitution for the Russian democracy, to be approved by the General Assembly when elected. During the first half of July, 1917, the sudden offensive of the Russian armies, so brilliantly begun, seemed to engross every element of Russian society. Kerensky himself had gone to the front and was said to be leading the advancing troops himself. But even his magnetic personality and stupendous vitality proved insufficient to accomplish a task evidently begun too prematurely.