[4] In the case of Gaa Paa, its socialist views came under scrutiny in the World War I period and it changed its name in 1918 in an effort to avoid a ban from the US Mail, taking the name Folkets Røst (People's Voice).

In 1903, Julius A. Wayland, publisher of the national weekly Appeal to Reason, decided to launch a Norwegian-language socialist newspaper from his base of operations at Girard, Kansas, a small town located in the southeastern part of the state.

Wayland had met Emil Mengshoel — the editor of the radical Minnesota Populist newspaper Nye Normanden (New Norseman) — though his prior contributions to the Appeal to Reason, making him a logical choice for the editorial desk.

[11] The organization of the disparate groups helped Gaa Paa's position as the only Dano-Norwegian (Bokmål) socialist weekly, but in 1911, the paper soon was challenged when the Scandinavian Federation launched its own publication, Social-Demokraten (The Social Democrat).

[14] Rather than holding to an apocalyptic view of attaining socialism through armed revolution, editor Mengshoel was influenced by the ideas of writers Laurence Gronlund and Edward Bellamy, emphasizing the functional superiority of the economic form of state ownership and the implication that evolution to socialist production and distribution would be a protracted, inevitable, evolutionary process.

[8] Gaa Paa had a national readership and published work by writers from Norway to North Dakota well as from enclaves of Norwegian-American radicalism located in Seattle and Astoria, Oregon.

[16] In 1914, Andrew Devold, (Helle Mengshoel's son from her first marriage) threw his hat into the political ring on the Socialist Party ticket and won election to the Minnesota state legislature.

[19] While taking a position of "undiscriminating hate" of "German junkerdom, English aristocracy, and American money power," primary editor Emil Mengshoel expressed sympathy for Minneapolis socialists who dared to resist conscription.

[19] The paper never was so bold as to explicitly advocate resistance to registration and the draft,[19] instead attempting to toe the fine line of legality while remaining true to the anti-militarist St. Louis proclamation of the Socialist Party of America.

As with other non-English publications, Gaa Paa was also faced with the burdensome task of supplying English translations of all political articles and editorial comments during the wartime years.

[20] Efforts to soften tone and comply with statutory regulations in order to appease federal authorities proved inadequate for Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, however, and in 1918 Gaa Paa was denied access to the United States mails.

[19] In an effort to keep the publishing operation alive, the Mengshoels resorted to an artifice widely used to beat European censorships, relaunching their publication with a new name, Folkets Røst (People's Voice) — a name regarded as one less militant than Gaa Paa.

[21] Gaa Paa moved away from the Socialist Party slightly in the spring of 1918, when it began printing columns written by Sigvald Rødvick, top Norwegian-language official in the national office of the Non-Partisan League (NPL), a rival organization.