combined to make of the French capital a vast fleecing-machine. The sums
of money expended by foreigners in France during all that time and a
much longer period is said to have exceeded the revenue from foreign
trade. There was hardly any coal, and even the wood fuel gave out now
and again. Butter was unknown. Wine was bad and terribly dear. A public
conveyance could not be obtained unless one paid "double, treble, and
quintuple fares and a gratuity." The demand was great and the supply
sometimes abundant, but the authorities contrived to keep the two apart
systematically.

THE COST OF LIVING

In no European country did the cost of living attain the height it
reached in France in the year 1919. Not only luxuries and comforts, but
some of life's necessaries, were beyond the reach of home-coming
soldiers, and this was currently ascribed to the greed of merchants, the
disorganization of transports, the strikes of workmen, and the
supineness of the authorities, whose main care was to keep the nation
tranquil by suppressing one kind of news, spreading another, and giving
way to demands which could no longer be denied. There was another and
more effectual cause: the war had deprived the world of twelve million
workmen and a thousand milliard francs' worth of goods. But of this
people took no account. The demobilized soldiers who for years had been
well fed and relieved of solicitude for the morrow returned home,
flushed with victory, proud of the commanding position which they had
won in the state, and eager to reap the rewards of their sacrifices. But
they were bitterly disillusioned. They expected a country fit for heroes
to live in, and what awaited them was a condition of things to which
only a defeated people could be asked to resign itself. The food to
which the poilu had, for nearly five years, been accustomed at the front