Is it any wonder that by the latter part of May, 1918, the anti-Bolshevist press had been almost entirely exterminated except for the fitful and irregular appearance of papers published surreptitiously, and the few others whose appearance was due to the venality of some Bolshevist officials? Was there ever, in the history of any nation, since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type made newspapers possible, such organized political nepotism? Was there ever, since men organized governments, anything more subversive of freedom and political morality? Yet there is worse to come; as time went on, new devices suggested themselves to these perverters of democracy and corrupters of government. On July 27, 1918, _Izvestia_ published the information that the press department would grant permits for periodical publications, _provided they accepted the Soviet platform_. In carrying out this arrangement, so essentially despotic, the press department reserved to itself the right to determine _whether or not the population was in need of the proposed publication_, whether it was advisable to permit the use of any of the available paper-supply for the purpose, and so forth and so on. Under this arrangement permission was given to publish a paper called the _Mir_. Ostensibly a pacifist paper, the _Mir_ was very cordially welcomed by the Bolshevist papers to the confraternity of privileged journals. That the _Mir_ was subsidized by the German Government for the propaganda of international pacificism (this was in the summer of 1918) seems to have been established.[64] The closing chapter of the history of this paper is told in the following extract from _Izvestia_, October 17, 1918, which is more interesting for its disclosures of Bolshevist mentality than anything else: [64] See Dumas, _op. cit._, p. 80. The suppression of the paper _Mir_ (_Peace_).--In accordance with the decision published in the _Izvestia_ on the 27th July, No. 159, the Press Department granted permits to issue _to periodical publications which accepted the Soviet platform_. When granting permission the Press Department took into consideration the available supplies of paper, _whether the population was in need of the proposed periodical publication_, and also the necessity of providing employment for printers and pressmen. Thus permission was granted to issue the paper _Mir_, especially in view of the publisher’s declaration that the paper was intended to propagate pacifist ideas. At the present moment _the requirements of the population of the Federal Socialist Republic for means of daily information are adequately met by the Soviet publications_; employment for those engaged in journalistic work is secured in the Soviet papers; a paper crisis is approaching. The Press Department, therefore, considers it impossible to permit the further publication of the _Mir_ and has decided to _suppress this paper forever_.