The general strike committee was not discharged when the men returned to work. When it became evident that the government did not intend to ask the under-secretary for his resignation the post-office employees organized a trade union, unauthorized by law. The government refused to meet representatives of this union, on the ground that state employees had organized for one purpose only, namely, to have the right to strike, and the government would not concede that right. On May 12 a second general post-office strike was called. The government immediately dismissed over two hundred of the strikers. The Socialists in the Chamber began a demonstration against the government. One of their number started the "Internationale," the Socialist war-song. After the first blush of indignation had passed, the whole Chamber sprang to its feet, there were shouts of protest, a Republican started the Marseillaise, and the two revolutionary hymns, bourgeois and proletarian, were blended for the first time in a parliamentary chamber. Now the general confederation of labor (C.G.T.) took charge of the strike, and soon plots began to be carried out in various parts of the country. There were indications of violence everywhere. The general committee of the C.G.T. declared a general strike. The situation threatened to become serious, but the soldiers distributed over the affected territory had a tranquilizing effect. Men in other trades were reluctant to follow the orders of the committee. A few electric workers succeeded in cutting some wires in Paris, leaving the city in darkness a few hours. There were desultory acts of _sabotage_, but there was more terror than enthusiasm, and in two days the general strike was over.[13] Here was an attempt to place the 800,000 French state employees into the revolutionary current of the C.G.T. The real question at issue was this: Is striking an act of mutiny? Barthou, a member of the ministry, said in the Chamber of Deputies that "the more solemnly you denounce the strike as a crime against the state, the greater the victory of the Syndicalists." The Syndicalist journal, _Le Voix du Peuple_, the day after the first strike was settled proclaimed "the victory which our comrades of the postal proletariat have won over their employer the state." This, they said, showed that the state conceded the main contention of Syndicalism--that it is not different from a private employer. And the Syndicalists gloried in the fact that the government, instead of treating the strikers as mutineers, parleyed with them and reinstated them.