In May 1906, Holstein sent Eulenburg a libelous and very rude letter insulting him, and challenging him to a duel to the death. Eulenburg wrote to Varnbüler soon after saying that: "I had a long, very heated discussion with H.M about Hol[stein] and disagreeable it was for me. He will not forgive me, if he should later hear anything concerning my affairs, that I have said not a word to him about what has taken place". After Eulenburg declined to fight the duel, Holstein decided to destroy Eulenburg by attacking him in his Achilles heel, namely by exposing his homosexuality. To that end, Holstein contacted the crusading journalist Maximilian Harden to inform him that Eulenburg was gay. Holstein had known Eulenburg since June 1886, and had on some point along the line learned of Eulenburg's sexual orientation. After being tipped off by Holstein, Harden started to run a series of articles in his newspaper "Die Zukunft" charging the "Liebenberg Round Table", a clique of homosexuals obsessed with the occult headed by Eulenburg, were dominating the Imperial court. Röhl wrote that Harden used terribly homophobic language in his attacks on Eulenburg, but the essence of his articles alleging the existence of a "Liebenberg Round Table" at the court was indeed correct. In the aftermath of the First Moroccan Crisis which ended with the "Reich" humiliated at the Algeciras Conference, Harden's accusations that German foreign policy was being run by a clique of homosexuals who were too "soft" to make the necessary decisions to go to war had a wide resonance. The belligerent ultra-nationalist Harden believed that Germany should have attacked France in 1905, even if meant war with Britain and possibly the United States as well; in his mind, the only reason why Wilhelm chose to attend the Algeciras conference rather than go to war was because he was being advised by the Liebenberg Round Table. In November 1906, Harden ran an article about an unnamed senior German diplomat being gay who was clearly meant to be Eulenburg whom Harden called "the Harpist", and accused him of having a relationship with an unnamed senior French diplomat, stating the two frequently went on hunting trips together. Raymond Lecomte, the First Secretary at the French embassy in Berlin—who was a close associate of Eulenburg, whom he frequently went hunting with—promptly burned all of his papers relating to Eulenburg after Harden's article.