The strikes called by the revolutionary organizations whose aim was the
subversion of the regime under which those monstrosities flourished at
last produced an effect on the parliament. One day in July the French
Chamber left the Cabinet in a minority by proposing the following
resolution: "The Chamber, noting that the cost of living in Belgium has
diminished by a half and in England by a fourth since the armistice,
while it has continually increased in France since that date, judges the
government's economic policy by the results obtained and passes to the
order of the day."[34]

Shortly afterward the same Chamber recanted and gave the Cabinet a
majority. In Great Britain, too, the House of Commons put pressure on
the government, which at last was forced to act.

On the other hand, extravagance was systematically encouraged everywhere
by the shortsighted measures which the authorities adopted and
maintained as well as by the wanton waste promoted or tolerated by the
incapacity of their representatives. In France the moratorium and
immunity from taxation gave a fillip to recklessness. People who had
hoarded their earnings before the war, now that they were dispensed from
paying rent and relieved of fair taxes, paid out money ungrudgingly for
luxuries and then struck for higher salaries and wages.

Even the Deputies of the Chamber, which did nothing to mitigate the evil
complained of, manifested a desire to have their own salaries--six
hundred pounds a year--augmented proportionately to the increased cost
of living; but in view of the headstrong current of popular opinion
against parliamentarism the government deemed it impolitic to raise the
point at that conjuncture.