Nor did private patronage and political "pull" wholly disappear, even in the stringent atmosphere of a national crisis. This was, perhaps, to expect too much of human nature. And so the Minister of Munitions constantly received recommendations for factory employment from persons whose intervention it was hard to resist. On the one hand, the Minister was asked by important deputies to bring back this or that worker from the Front; on the other, he was warned by groups of Republican zealots of the danger to democracy of showing partiality and conniving at the existence of the shirker. In a laudable effort to strike the happy medium, M. Thomas decided to receive no more nominations to the factory, and decreed that only the indispensable man was to be kept in the rear. Even the good workman, if of military age, must become a combatant; his place in the factory would be taken by an older man. But there remained, naturally, a certain rivalry between the trench and the workshop, not unconnected with the fact that assiduous munition-workers also received their _Croix de Guerre_—a decoration that, assuredly, should have been reserved for deeds of gallantry on the battle-field. But these various difficulties, which M. Thomas settled with habitual celerity and _savoir faire_, were, after all, only questions of detail, and in no way affected the broad principle of conscription or the working of the new Act against the _embusqués_. There was no quarrel with compulsion, for each worker recognised the right of the nation to ask him to suspend his individual rights at such a moment. "We are at war; the vital interests of the country are at stake." This was a sufficient argument. And so all energies were directed to increasing the output. In connection with the establishment of factories, the "white coal" or water-falls of the mountains were harnessed to the work, and engineer shops were set up under the falls themselves to employ the power directly. Inventors were given _carte blanche_ to work out their ideas and valuable improvements resulted in the opportunity given to scientific brains to simplify processes, and thus effect economies in manufacture. For the first time France had begun to explore and develop her own scientific estate, which she had left, hitherto, largely to the Germans. For, if the latter were foremost in chemistry, they had learned not a little from the researches of Berthelot and Pasteur. The great bacteriologist’s study of ferments contributed sensibly to the growth of the German brewing industry. Under the direction of scientific soldiers and officials, production rose to immense heights, and it soon reached more than 100,000 shells a day, at a time when, according to Mr. Lloyd George, the English output was scarcely more than 15,000 a day. M. Charles Humbert, Senator for the Meuse and editor of the _Journal_, preached in his columns the need of more guns and shells, and his gospel was enforced by other writers;