Democratic Party (SPD) called Ludendorff a "genial gambler". The latter then countered in an open letter with a demand for the establishment of a criminal court to examine the accusations against him. On 12 March 1919, Justice Minister Otto Landsberg of the SPD submitted a bill for the establishment of a criminal court to the Weimar National Assembly, the interim parliament also charged with writing a new constitution for Germany. Although Ludendorff, retired General Erich von Falkenhayn and others had called for such a court, the conservative parties in the National Assembly spoke out against it. The governing Weimar Coalition made up of the SPD, the Catholic Centre Party and the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) also felt pushed into a more defensive role and in the end no longer considered the approach opportune. It was argued that it was more important to establish the facts than to prosecute, and that sound public opinion would then "weed out the reactionary lie". In November 1918, the new revolutionary leaders, especially those of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) – a more leftist and strongly anti-war breakaway from the originally united SPD – had sought to place the blame for the war on the German side in order to demonstrate to Germany and the world that they had broken completely with militarism. As time went on, however, the leaders of the Majority Social Democrats (MSPD) saw primarily the disadvantages of such a viewpoint for the upcoming peace negotiations. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, changed the discussion by establishing the so-called war guilt article as the basis for the reparations that the treaty imposed. Without using the word "guilt", Article 231 stated:The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.In an attempt to evade the burdens and challenge the treaty, the German government portrayed the article as factually incorrect. It led to "state promotion and high-level institutionalization" of propaganda regarding Germany's responsibility for the war and also for the possibility of a revision of the treaty. The Foreign Office founded and financed the Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War and the