Hotel prices in Paris, beginning from December, 1918, were prohibitive to all but the wealthy.  Yet they were raised several times during the Conference.  Again, despite the high level they had reached by the beginning of July, they were actually quintupled in some hotels and doubled in many for about a week at the time of the peace celebrations.  Rents for flats and houses soared proportionately.

One explanation of the fantastic rise in rents is characteristic.  During the war and the armistice, the government—­and not only the French government—­proclaimed a moratorium, and no rents at all were paid, in consequence of which many house-owners were impoverished and others actually beggared.  And it was with a view to recoup themselves for these losses that they fleeced their tenants, French and foreign, as soon as the opportunity presented itself.  An amusing incident arising out of the moratorium came to light in the course of a lawsuit.  An ingenious tenant, smitten with the passion of greed, not content with occupying his flat without paying rent, sublet it at a high figure to a man who paid him well and in advance, but by mischance set fire to the place and died.  Thereupon the tenant demanded and received a considerable sum from the insurance company in which the defunct occupant had had to insure the flat and its contents.  He then entered an action at law against the proprietor of the house for the value of the damage caused by the fire, and he won his case.  The unfortunate owner was condemned to pay the sum claimed, and also the costs of the action.[26] But he could not recover his rent.

Disorganization throughout France, and particularly in Paris, verged on the border of chaos.  Every one felt its effects, but none so severely as the men who had won the war.  The work of demobilization, which began soon after the armistice, but was early interrupted, proceeded at snail-pace.  The homecoming soldiers sent hundreds of letters to the newspapers, complaining of the wearisome delays on the journey and the sharp privations which they were needlessly forced to endure.  Thus, whereas they took but twenty-eight hours to travel from Hanover to Cologne—­the lines being German, and therefore relatively well 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