The Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, in a report on the whole subject, characterized the section of Telegraphic Control as “an organ of confusion and disorder which has engendered extraordinary abuses, and risked compromising the government seriously."[32] It did not merely risk, it actually went far to compromise the government and the entire governing class as well.

It looked as though the rulers of France were still unconsciously guided by the maxim of Richelieu, who wrote in his testament, “If the peoples were too comfortable there would be no keeping them to the rules of duty.”  The more urgent the need of resourcefulness and guidance, the greater were the listlessness and confusion.  “There is neither unity of conduct,” wrote a press organ of the masses, “nor co-ordination of the Departments of War, Public Works, Revictualing, Transports.  All these services commingle, overlap, clash, and paralyze one another.  There is no method.  Thus, whereas France has coffee enough to last her a twelvemonth, she has not sufficient fuel for a week.  Scruples, too, are wanting, as are punishments; everywhere there is a speculator who offers his purse, and an official, a station-master, or a subaltern to stretch out his hand....  Shortsightedness, disorder, waste, the frittering away of public moneys and irresponsibility:  that is the balance...."[33]

That the spectacle of the country sinking in this administrative quagmire was not conducive to the maintenance of confidence in its ruling classes can well be imagined.  On all sides voices were uplifted, not merely against the Cabinet, whose members were assumed to be actuated by patriotic motives and guided by their own lights, but against the whole class from which they sprang, and not in France only, but throughout Europe.  Nothing, it was argued, could be worse than what these leaders had brought upon the country, and a change from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat could not well be inaugurated at a more favorable conjuncture.

In truth the bourgeoisie were often as impatient of the restraints and abuses as the homecoming poilu.  The middle class during the armistice was subjected to some of the most galling restraints that only the war could justify.  They were practically bereft of communications.  To use the telegraph, the post, the cable, or the telephone was for the most part an exhibition of childish faith, which generally ended in the loss of time and money.

This state of affairs called for an immediate and drastic remedy, for, so long as it persisted, it irritated those whom it condemned to avoidable hardship, and their name was legion.  It was also part of an almost imperceptible revolutionary process similar to that which was going on in several other countries for transferring wealth and competency from one class to another and for goading into rebellion those who had nothing to lose by “violent change in the politico-social ordering.”  The government,