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.
Most of the working-men's demands in France as in Britain were granted, but the relief they promised was illusory, for prices still went up, leaving the recipients of the relief no better off. And as the wages payable for labor are limited, whereas prices may ascend to any height, the embittered laborer fancied he could better his lot by an appeal to the force which his organization wielded. The only complete solution of the problem, he was assured, was to be found in the supersession of the governing classes and the complete reconstruction of the social fabric on wholly new foundations.[35] And some of the leaders rashly declared that they were unable to discern the elements of any other.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cf. The Daily Mail (Paris edition), March 12,1919.
[2] On December 18, 1918.
[3] "With what little wisdom the world is governed."
[4] "Mr. Bernard Richards, Secretary of the delegation from the American Jewish Congress to the Peace Conference, expressed much satisfaction with the work done in Paris for the protection of Jewish rights and the furtherance of the interests of other minorities involved in the peace settlement." (The New York Herald, July 20, 1919.) How successful was the influence of the Jewish community at the Peace Conference may be inferred from the following: "Mr. Henry H. Rosenfelt, Director of the American Jewish Relief Committee, announces that all New York agencies engaged in Jewish relief work will join in a united drive in New York in December to raise $7,500,000 (£1,500,000) to provide clothing, food, and medicines for the six million Jews throughout Eastern Europe as well as to make possible a comprehensive programme for their complete rehabilitation.—American Radio News Service." Cf. The Daily Mail, August 19, 1919.
[5] Countess Lulu von Thurheim, My Life, 1788-1852. German edition, Munich, 1913-14.
[6] The New York Herald (Paris edition), February 23, 1919.