Germania, speaking for the so-called moderate section of the Centre
Party, called the Lichnowsky case "one of the most disturbing political
events that we have experienced in the course of the war," and hoped
that the courts would still have a chance to decide as to the Prince's
guilt. The newspaper comment was in general spiced with much sarcastic
comparison of the Lichnowsky case with the cases of Dr. Karl Liebknecht
and Deputy Wilhelm Dittmann, and many remarks were passed regarding the
difference between the treatment accorded to a member of the Prussian
nobility and that suffered by commoners and representatives of the
German working class. The Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, in ending its comment
as to the paeans of joy with which the enemy press would be sure to
welcome the publication of the Lichnowsky indictment, added the
following item of news:
"We learn on good authority, in the matter of the distribution of the
Lichnowsky pamphlet, that in the beginning of February the police
succeeded in seizing 2,000 copies of this pamphlet which the Neues
Vaterland Society had had sent to it from South Germany through its
business manager, Else Bruck. She, together with Henke, a bookseller,
was placed under charges, but was acquitted by the court-martial,
presumably because the court was not able to foresee the far-reaching
result of the document."
Under the heading "The Blind Argus" the Bremer Nachrichten opined that
the man who should have been using a thousand eyes in London in the
interest of Germany was blind, and it referred to the Lichnowsky case as
"the most gloomy chapter in the history of German diplomacy."