54
After a couple of days the session of the German Reichstag was opened. The Right Independents made an interpellation concerning the expulsion of myself and Comrade Losovsky. The faction of the Left Independents and the Communists was not able to do this owing to the fact that they could not gather the required number of signatures. The Right Independents, seeing that they had gone too far in their persecution, decided to make up for it by making a pious protest, in the form of an interpolation in the Reichstag.
The question was asked and became the topic of a most interesting political discussion, which portrayed very accurately the features of each of the parties. The discussion of this question lasted a whole day. For two days all the papers were full of reports of parliamentary debates, nicknamed "Bolshevist debates." The interpellation of the Right Independents was made by Rosenfeld and Ledebour, the former from the juridical, the latter from the political standpoint. It is in this speech that Ledebour uttered his disgraceful words about the alleged Central Commission of the German Communists for the "organisation of murder."
The speech by the Scheidemannist was also of interest. The parliamentary faction of the Social Democrats appointed Edward Bernstein as their spokesman on this matter. The old opportunist sinner took on himself this dirty work. Bernstein spoke against the Right Independents, i.e., against, their proposal to interpolate the government. He said: we want to see Germany a free Republic, we are in favour of the right of asylum to foreigners, but … this right of asylum should be given to the oppressed, not to the oppressors. And since the representative of the Communist International is an oppressor, he should be expelled from Germany. But his case should be distinguished from that of Martov, who is a representative of the persecuted.
All the White Guards fully endorsed that point of view, as expressed by Bernstein the Social Democrat. Both the representatives of the Black Hundred "Orgesch," who were present in the German Reichstag, and the reactionary Nationalist deputy, Wulle, who shouted that I must be hanged on the lamppost, immediately adopted the standpoint advocated by Bernstein. All the bankers, landowners, and reactionary generals,
