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Social Democrats remained, but began to yell at our comrades. Paul Levi was refused permission to address the house.
In his final address Ledebour, the mover of the interpollation, argued not against the reactionaries, but against us and the Left Independents, earning the praises of the whole bourgeois gang.
We really need not regret what took place. The interpollation and the debate which followed gave all the German workers most instructive matter for consideration. The day after the interpollation was made even the "Vorwarts" of Scheidemann was bound to admit mournfully in its leading article that the persecution directed against Comrade Losovsky and myself could only raise the prestige of Bolshevism. Simons, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, seemed to be against expulsion. Answering a question in the Reichstag, he tried to be polite and showed his correct manners by deploring the fact that owing to the expulsion of Losovsky and myself the relations existing between Germany and Soviet Russia would be somewhat prejudiced. As for my sins, he accused me only of framing my speech in a way that brought it very close to what constitutes a crime against the German laws and is punishable on German territory. The Chief of the Press Department, whom Simons had sent to Halle to report on my speech, gave his opinion that this speech was an open appeal to overthrow the existing government. Koennen in reply to this read a long quotation from my speech on terror, which caused new outbursts of rage on the part of the bourgeoisie.
The persons primarily responsible for our deportation were the Prussian Minister for Home Affairs, Severing, a social democrat, and the Berlin Police President, Richter, also a social democrat. In strict law this was the concern only of the Prussian government, but in fact the question was discussed at a joint sitting of the All-German and Prussian cabinets. Bourgeois organisations handed in special petitions demanding my expulsion. But the initiative was taken, so they say, by Koch, the Minister for Justice, a democrat, and of course by the social democrats, Severing and Richter. In my farewell address to the German workers I expressed my hearty thanks to the social democrats, Severing and Richter, for giving such splendid con-
