If Mr. Hard or any of the numerous journalistic apologists of the Bolsheviki in this country will look the matter up he or they will find that this decree copied the forms usually used by the Czar’s government. It is noteworthy that the restoration of freedom of the press was already made dependent upon that czaristic instrument, the _ukase_. On the 16th of November the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets adopted a resolution which read: The closure of the bourgeois papers was caused not only by the purely fighting requirements in the period of the rising and the suppression of counter-revolutionary attempts, but likewise as a necessary temporary measure for the establishment of a new régime in the sphere of the press, under which the capital proprietors of printing-works and paper would not be able to become autocratic beguilers of public opinion.... The re-establishment of the so-called freedom of the press, _viz._, the simple return of printing-offices and paper to capitalists, poisoners of the people’s conscience, would be an unpermissible surrender to the will of capital--_i.e._, a counter-revolutionary measure. At the meeting when this resolution was adopted, and speaking in its support, Trotsky made a speech remarkable for its cynical dishonesty and its sinister menace. He said, according to the report in _Pravda_ two days later: _Those measures which are employed to frighten individuals must be applied to the press also...._ All the resources of the press must be handed over to the Soviet Power. You say that formerly we demanded freedom of the press for the _Pravda_? But then we were in a position to demand a minimum program; now we insist on the maximum program. _When the power was in the hands of the bourgeoisie we demanded juridical freedom of the press._ When the power is held by the workmen and peasants--we must create conditions for the freedom of the press.