organized--they were no less than a fortnight on the way between Cologne
and Marseilles.[27] During the German section of the journey they were
kept warm, supplied with hot soup and coffee twice daily; but during the
second half, which lasted fourteen days, they received no beverage, hot
or cold. "The men were cared for much less than horses." That these
poilus turned against the government and the class responsible for this
gross neglect was hardly surprising. One of them wrote: "They [the
authorities] are frightened of Bolshevism. But we who have not got home,
we all await its coming. I don't, of course, mean the real Bolshevism,
but even that kind which they paint in such repellent hues."[28] The
conditions of telegraphic and postal communications were on a par with
everything else. There was no guarantee that a message paid for would
even be sent by the telegraph-operators, or, if withheld, that the
sender would be apprised of its suppression. The war arrangements were
retained during the armistice. And they were superlatively bad. A
committee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies to inquire into the
matter officially, reported that,[29] at the Paris Telegraph Bureau
alone, 40,000 despatches were held back every day--40,000 a day, or
58,400,000 in four years! And from the capital alone. The majority of
them were never delivered, and the others were distributed after great
delay. The despatches which were retained were, in the main, thrown into
a basket, and, when the accumulation had become too great, were
destroyed. The Control Section never made any inquiry, and neither the
senders nor those to whom the despatches were addressed were ever
informed.[30] Even important messages of neutral ambassadors in Rome and
London fell under the ban. The recklessness of these censors, who ceased
even to read what they destroyed, was such that they held up and made
away with state orders transmitted by the great munitions factories, and
one of these was constrained to close down because it was unable to
obtain certain materials in time.