Liebknecht, in April of 1916, made matters lively at the Reichstag sessions. During the Chancellor's speech, Liebknecht interrupted him and said that the Germans were not free; next he denied that the Germans had not wished war; and, another time, he called attention to the attempts of the Germans to induce the Mohammedan and Irish prisoners of war to desert to the German side. Liebknecht finally enraged the government supporters by calling out that the subscription to the loan was a swindle.
After the Sussex settlement I think that the Germans wished to inaugurate an era of better feeling between Germany and the United States. At any rate, and in answer to many anonymous attacks made against me, the North German Gazette, the official newspaper, published a sort of certificate from the government to the effect that I was a good boy and that the rumours of my bitter hostility to Germany were unfounded.
In May, 1916, Wertheim, head of the great department store in Berlin, told me that they had more business than in peace times.
Early in June 1 had two long talks with Prince von Buelow. He speaks English well and is suspected by his enemies of having been polishing it up lately in order to make ready for possible peace conferences. He is a man of a more active brain than the present Chancellor, and is very restless and anxious in some way to break into the present political situation.
In June, the anonymous attacks on the Chancellor by pamphlet and otherwise, incensed him to such a degree that he made an open answer in the Reichstag and had rather the best of the situation. Many anonymous lies and rumours were flying about Berlin at this period, and even Helfferich had to deny publicly the anonymous charges that he had been anonymously attacking the Chancellor.