  The revelations by Prince Lichnowsky, German Ambassador in London at the outbreak of the war, which were printed in the May number of Current History Magazine, produced a profound impression throughout the world, disclosing as they did the part played by the German Imperial Government in starting the war. German officialdom at once attacked Lichnowsky, compelling him to resign his rank and threatening him with trial for treason. On April 27, 1918, the Prussian upper house decided to grant the request of the First State Attorney of District Court No. 1 of Berlin for authorization to undertake criminal proceedings against Prince Lichnowsky. The State Attorney held that Prince Lichnowsky, in communicating to third parties documents or their contents officially intrusted to him by his superiors had infringed the secrecy incumbent on him. In referring to the prosecution of the Prince, Maximilian Harden, in a May issue of the Zukunft, said: "I will swear that there are dozens of men sitting there in these dark war hours who have written and said similar things in sharper and more bitter words." Herr Harden asked whether these would meet the same fate if their papers were stolen and exposed in German shop windows. "Many a trusted wife," he said, "must cry out in fear: 'But, you know, Ernst, Adolf, and Klaus have spoken more desperately.'" The chief theme of Lichnowsky's memorandum, the editor of Die Zukunft asserts, was the danger to Germany of a too-close alliance with Vienna and Budapest, of the flirtation with Poland, and his insistence upon the necessity of friendly relations with a strong Russia. The German outcry against Lichnowsky, however, gave foreign countries the impression that the Prince had made fearfully damaging disclosures of Berlin's guilt. The question of blame, he says, "reflected almost an identical interpretation to that of our White Book, and a cool head would not have made a world sensation out of it." Harden concludes by saying that an ostracized Lichnowsky would become a power; but the Prussian Diet has no sense of humor. In the May Current History Magazine an abridged version of the first reply of former Foreign Secretary von Jagow to Prince Lichnowsky was printed, but the document is of such importance that a translation in its entirety is herewith given.[4] |
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