Scene: Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior. The Minister, M. Clemenceau, at work at his desk and dictating to his secretary. Everything going on quite nicely. No sign of more than ordinary pressure. Electric light functioning as usual for the benefit of the Radical leader as well as for Parisians of every degree. Hey presto! Darkness falls upon the bureau of the Minister. Very provoking. What is the matter? Corridors and other bureaux suffering the like eclipse. Evidently something wrong at the main. Candles obtained, lamps got out from dusty cupboards, oil hunted up. Ancient forms of illumination applied. Darkness thus made visible. Telephones set going. All Paris obscured. A city of two or three millions of inhabitants suddenly deprived of light. What has happened? The entire electrical service disorganised until to-morrow by the sudden and unexpected strike of the whole of the skilled men in the electrical supply department. Lovers of darkness because their deeds are evil likely to have a good time. Business arrested, fathers and mothers of families perturbed. Dangers of every sort threatened. Apaches and other cut-throats preparing for action in the to them providential enactment of endless gloom. Such is the baleful news borne over the telephone wires to the much troubled Minister of the Interior, with his wax tapers and old-world lamps glimmering around him. How preserve his Paris, his _ville lumière_, from the depredations of the miscreants engendered by the social system of the day, when light fails to disclose their approach? How protect the savings of the conscientious bourgeois and the diamonds of the high-placed _horizontale_ from removal and conveyance under cover of the night? To surrender to the strikers is to admit their right as a few to blackmail the many. It is to sanctify the action of the despoiling minority above by giving way to the organised minority below. Immediate decision is essential. Night is upon us, when no man can work, save the man who communises movable property to his own use. Light is a necessary of security for property, nay, even for life. The State must come in to fulfil the functions which the Creator neglected to provide for when He divided the night from the day. The sapper is the man to supplement the deficiencies of Providence and to mitigate the social revolution by electrical engineers. _Rien n'est sacré pour un sapeur!_ No sooner thought of but acted upon. M. Clemenceau, as Minister of the Interior and trustee for the well-being of the citizens of Paris, calls upon the State engineers under military control to light up Paris afresh. The thing is done. Paris sees more clearly and breathes more freely. Society itself has the right to live.