an international statement, a form which, as it were, made it non-existent as a diplomatic statement of Russia's policy.
Miliukov by no means stood alone in his fight against the democratic policy. On the very day when the Provisional Government decided to make its concession to the Democracy, the party of the Cadets held its first Congress since the Revolution. The deliberations of the Cadet Party are the more significant, in that they really represented the spirit of the Provisional Government, though the latter was of course not formally identified with the party. The speeches made at this Congress now appear simply fantastic. Reading over these speeches at the present time, one cannot help feeling that the party was suffering from a kind of imperialistic madness. All that is difficult to understand in the conduct of Miliukov as the first revolutionary Foreign Minister becomes comprehensible when we realise that he was at the same time the head of the Cadet Party. In the Cadet Congress F. Rodichev, a member of the Provisional Government, proposed the resolution on the question of the war. According to the newspaper reports[1] he made his speech with an emphasis and power which only Rodichev could achieve. (Rodichev is one of the best orators in Russia. He is the author of the famous epigram about "Stolypin's tie.") He made an enormous impression: his speech was interrupted by unanimous outbursts of approval and acclamation. Rodichev began his speech by emphatically repudiating the suggestion that they were cherishing any annexationist aims. He went on to enumerate the various territorial changes in question. They were out for a free and united Poland. That was the reverse of annexation. …" Where, then, is our second annexation—the annexation of Galicia? I do not know who suggested this, but I know that the new conception of right will not tolerate the disposal of
- ↑ I quote from the account in the Petrograd Den of March 28th.
