QUOTE : Messimy wanted to follow the example of the other European armies and put the men into uniforms that would make them difficult to see on the battlefield. The right seized on this as a threat to France’s glorious military traditions. The new uniforms, said the right-wing press, were appalling and against French taste. The caps looked like something jockeys would wear and the officers were to be dressed like stable boys. It was an attempt, said the conservative Écho de Paris, to destroy the authority of the officers over their men and the Masonic lodges that had plotted it would no doubt be pleased.