If liquor might not poison the minds of the people, there was the press. The lie-factories ground out their daily grist of papers and posters telling of the imminent fall of the Bolsheviks; of Lenin's flight to Finland with thirty millions of gold and platinum stolen from the State Bank; of the massacres of women and children by the Reds; of German officers in command at Smolny.
The Bolsheviks replied to this by the suspension of all organs "appealing to open revolt or inciting to crime."
"The wealthy classes," they declared, "holding the lion's share of the public press seek to befuddle the brains and consciences of the people with a stream of slander and lies. . . . If the first Revolution, which overthrew the monarchy, had the right to suppress the monarchist press, then this Revolution, which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, has the right to suppress the bourgeois press."
The opposition press, however, was not wholly suppressed. Papers suspended one day came out the next under a new name. Speech became Free Speech. The Day appeared as Night, then In The Dark Night, Midnight, Two A.M. and so on. In picture and verse Satire went on merrily and mercilessly lampooning the Bolsheviks. The American Committee on Public Information carried on its propaganda unhindered, publishing the words of Samuel Gompers under the headline "Socialists Sup-
