A bill indicting Prince Lichnowsky for treason has been introduced into the Reichstag and is still pending at this writing. A dispatch from Geneva on April 21 stated that he was virtually a prisoner in his château in Silesia. According to the Düsseldorfer Tageblatt the Prince was under police surveillance because of the discovery of a plan for his escape to Switzerland.
Comments of German Publicists
Immediately following the sending out by the semi-official Wolff Telegraph Bureau on March 19 of an account of the discussion in the Main Committee of the Reichstag on March 16 of the Lichnowsky memorandum, together with excerpts from that document, the editorial writers of the German newspapers began emptying vials of wrath upon the head of the former Ambassador in London. With the exception of the Socialist and a few Liberal newspapers, the press was practically a unit in condemning the Prince for his "treasonable and indiscreet acts" and in asserting that, although his "revelations" might be welcomed with shouts of joy in the allied countries, they would have no serious effect upon the fighting spirit of the German Nation.
In trying to explain what prompted Prince Lichnowsky to write his memorandum for "the family archives," nearly all the German editors lay great stress upon his alleged personal vanity and his resentment at seeing his efforts toward strengthening the bonds between England and Germany made a grim joke by the outbreak of the world war. The Prince is also called a simple-minded person, completely taken in by the deceptive courtesy of the British diplomats and possessing none of the qualifications necessary to make him a profitable representative of the Kaiser at the Court of St. James's. All through the comments, from extreme Pan-German to socialistic, runs a vein of sarcastic criticism of the peculiar "ability" shown by the German Foreign Office in picking its Ambassadors.
All the Pan-German and annexationist papers take occasion to link up Prince Lichnowsky with Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg, the former Imperial Chancellor, and make the latter responsible for the appointment of the "pacifist" Prince. In doing this they renew all their old charges of weakness and pacifism against the ex-Chancellor, and intimate that he may be the next German formerly occupying a high place in the Government to write memoranda for his family archives. Some of the papers did not wait to write regular editorials about the memorandum, but interlarded their reports of the meeting of the Reichstag Committee with sarcastic comment and explanations. This was notably the case with the Vossische Zeitung, the leading exponent of reconciliation with Russia at the expense of Great Britain.
REVENTLOW FURIOUS
Although it has since been cabled that the Imperial Government was considering taking action against Prince Lichnowsky, and that Captain Beerfelde, a member of the German General Staff, was under arrest for having aided in the distribution of manifolded copies of the memorandum, there was no general demand in the German press for the trial of the Prince on a charge of high treason. The exceptions were a few extreme Pan-German organs, led by Count zu Reventlow's Deutsche Tageszeitung. On the other hand, a few of the Socialist and Liberal papers cautiously remarked that, after all, although what the Prince said about the responsibility for the war was altogether too pro-Entente, it might help the movement in Germany for a negotiated peace.
Count zu Reventlow's article in the Deutsche Tageszeitung read, in part, as follows:
"When a former Ambassador, and an experienced diplomat and official besides, writes an article and gives it to some one else in these times, there is, in our opinion, no excuse. It is a case of high treason and it makes little difference if here one might perhaps admit the view of its being high treason through negligence, because certainly no former diplomat and official ought to allow himself to be so negligent, and furthermore he must have known the great danger of his action, which, as has been said, was exclusively meant to be to his personal interest. Therefore, we cannot very well understand for what reasons the proper steps have not been taken already against Prince Lichnowsky. We use the characterization 'high treason' after due deliberation.