or eggs or fuel could be had at the relatively low prices fixed by the
state. The scraps of conversation that reached one's ears were far from
reassuring.

I have met on the same afternoon the international world-regenerators,
smiling, self-complacent, or preoccupied, flitting by in their motors to
the Quai d'Orsay, and also quiet, determined-looking men, trudging along
in the snow and slush, wending their way toward their labor
conventicles, where they, too, were drafting laws for a new and strange
era, and I voluntarily fell to gaging the distance that sundered the two
movements, and asked myself which of the inchoate legislations would
ultimately be accepted by the world. The question since then has been
partially answered. As time passed, the high cost of living was
universally ascribed, as we saw, to the insatiable greed of the
middlemen and the sluggishness of the authorities, whose incapacity to
organize and unwillingness to take responsibility increased and augured
ill of the future of the country unless men of different type should in
the meanwhile take the reins. Practically nothing was done to ameliorate
the carrying power of the railways, to utilize the waterways, to employ
the countless lorries and motor-vans that were lying unused, to
purchase, convey, and distribute the provisions which were at the
disposal of the government. Various ministerial departments would
dispute as to which should take over consignments of meat or vegetables,
and while reports, notes, and replies were being leisurely written and
despatched, weeks or months rolled by, during which the foodstuffs
became unfit for human consumption. In the middle of May, to take but
one typical instance, 2,401 eases of lard and 1,418 cases of salt meat
were left rotting in the docks at Marseilles. In the storage magazines
at Murumas, 6,000 tons of salt meat were spoiled because it was nobody's
business to remove and distribute them. Eighteen refrigerator-cars