When Briand deserted the Left Wing, modified his views for the sake of office, and finally became Premier of France, Jaurès, who had taunted him as a renegade, put into operation against him the weapon he had helped to forge. A general strike was declared.
There were astonishing scenes in Paris. The machinery of social life came to a dead stop. No railway trains arrived or departed, and I had a sensational journey from Calais to Paris in the last train through, driven by an amateur who had not mastered the mystery of the brakes, so that the few passengers, with the last supply of milk for Paris, were bumped and jolted with terrifying shocks.
Food from the rural districts was held up on wayside stations, and Paris was like a besieged city, living on rapidly diminishing stocks. The “Metro” ceased work, and armies of clerks, shopgirls, and business men had to walk to their work from suburbs or distant quarters. They made a joke of it, and laughed and sang on their way, as though it was the greatest jest in the world. But it became beyond a jest after the first day or two, especially at night, when Paris was plunged into abysmal darkness because the electricians had joined the railway men and all other branches of labor.
The restaurants and cafés along the great boulevards were dimly lighted by candles stuck into wine and beer bottles, and bands of students from the Latin Quarter paraded with paper lanterns, singing the Funeral March and other doleful ditties, not without a sense of romance and adventure in that city of darkness. The _apaches_, who love not the light, came out of their lairs, beyond Clichy, and fell upon wanderers in the gloom, robbing them of their watches and ready money, and clubbing them if they put up any resistance. No milk could be had for love or money, no butter, eggs, fish, or fresh meat, except by the rich hotels which cornered the markets with their small supplies brought in by farm carts, hand carts, or babies’ perambulators.
On the whole there was very little violence, for, in spite of their excitability, Parisian crowds are good-natured and law-abiding. But there was one section which gave trouble. It was the union of _terrassiers_ or day laborers. They knocked off work and strolled down toward the center of Paris in strong bodies, looking dangerous and picturesque in their great loose breeches tucked into their boots, short jackets, and flat bonnets pulled over the right eye. Most of them carried knives or cheap pistols, and they had ancient, traditional grudges against the _agents de police_.