Socialist Revolutionaries,had proclaimed the famous Russian
peace-conditions. They had demanded that the Allies hold a
conference to discuss war-aims. This conference had been promised
for August; then postponed until September; then until October; and
now it was fixed for November 10th.

The Provisional Government suggested two representatives-General
Alexeyev, reactionary military man, and Terestchenko, Minister of
Foreign Affairs. The Soviets chose Skobeliev to speak for them and
drew up a manifesto, the famous _nakaz_- (See App. II, Sect. 5)
instructions. The Provisional Government objected to Skobeliev and
his _nakaz;_ the Allied ambassadors protested and finally Bonar Law
in the British House of Commons, in answer to a question, responded
coldly, "As far as I know the Paris Conference will not discuss the
aims of the war at all, but only the methods of conducting it...."

At this the conservative Russian press was jubilant, and the
Bolsheviki cried, "See where the compromising tactics of the
Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries have led them!"

Along a thousand miles of front the millions of men in Russia's
armies stirred like the sea rising, pouring into the capital their
hundreds upon hundreds of delegations, crying "Peace! Peace!"

I went across the river to the Cirque Moderne, to one of the great
popular meetings which occurred all over the city, more numerous
night after night. The bare, gloomy amphitheatre, lit by five tiny
lights hanging from a thin wire, was packed from the ring up the
steep sweep of grimy benches to the very roof-soldiers, sailors,
workmen, women, all listening as if their lives depended upon it. A