The task of creating a stable government demands all the great strength of Russia, healed of the famine, misery, and disease which attend and delay the reconstruction.  The associated powers have solemnly pledged their resources to relieve the stricken regions of Europe.  Their efforts, begun in Belgium and in northern France during the course of the war, now extend to exhausted peoples from Finland to the Dalmatian coast.  Ports long idle are busy again.  Trainloads of food are moved into the interior and there are distributed with an impartial hand.  Industry is awakened, and life is resumed at the point where it was broken off by war.  These measures of relief will be continued until peace is signed and until nations are once more able to provide for their needs through the normal channels of commerce.

It is the earnest desire of the associated peoples similarly to assuage the distress of millions of men and women in Russia and to provide them with such physical conditions as will make life possible and desirable.  Relief can not be effectively rendered, however, except by the employment of all available transportation facilities and the active cooperation of those exercising authority within the country.

These requisites can not be assured while Russia is still at war.

The allied and associated governments, therefore, propose an agreement between themselves and all governments now exercising political authority within the territory of the former Russian Empire, including Finland, together with Poland, Galicia, Roumania, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, and Afghanistan, that hostilities against one another shall cease on all fronts within these territories on April ——­ at noon; that fresh hostilities shall not be begun during the period of this armistice, and that no troops or war material of any kind whatever shall be transferred to or within these territories so long as the armistice shall continue.  The duration of the armistice shall be for two weeks, unless extended by mutual consent.  The allied and associated Governments propose that such of these Governments as are willing to accept the terms of this armistice shall send not more than three representatives each, together with necessary technical experts, to ——­ where they shall meet on April ——­ with representatives of the allied and associated Governments in conference to discuss peace, upon the basis of the following principles: 

(1) All signatory Governments shall remain, as against each other, in full control of the territories which they occupy at the moment when the armistice becomes effective; subject only to such rectifications as may be agreed upon by the conference, or until the peoples inhabiting these territories shall themselves voluntarily determine to change their Government.

(2) The right of free entry, sojourn, circulation, and full security shall be accorded by the several signatories to the citizens of