THE ART OF SAVING.

Our hosts were very anxious to show us their Base at Calais, and, the visit being over, we fully realise their reasons. The fact is they have achieved miracles of hard work and organisation, of which they are justly proud.

Dare I say that we had not taken full advantage of the port previous to the war? It is possible that in this matter, as in so many others, the war will have taught us useful lessons.

Why should Germany have consented to make such bloody sacrifices on the Yser if Calais had not been a prize of great value?

A complete study of a base like Calais would require days and days. We had only a few hours, and we only saw a few things, but things of the utmost meaning, as the reader will see.

Everyone knows that the wear and tear of an army in the field is not merely concerned with losses in men. There is a huge combustion of materials which is almost as important. Even when there is no actual offensive there is considerable wastage of material, as also of men.

But just as the commanders of fighting units have taken appropriate measures to spare the human animal, such as sending troops back to rest for a certain time, so the heads of army administration have devised means of saving every article of "war-soiled" material. It is this organisation that we have seen at work in Calais. Nothing could be more instructive.

There exists in each British division at the front a divisional salvage company, whose duty it is to clear up a battlefield and collect somewhere behind the lines all damaged equipment—rifles, uniforms, bayonets, guns, empty cases, machine-guns, helmets, leather waistcoats, boots, etc.

This poor material, dirty, rusty, even blood-stained, is sorted out at the salvage dump and sent down to the base by train. We saw one of these trains arrive at Calais, and we were able to see some of the ingenious devices invented for dealing with this curious hotch-potch. All this takes place in an old sawmill, which has been enlarged to five times its natural size since the beginning of the war. A thousand skilled British workers and two thousand French women are now employed in the workshops. Most of the women are, in normal times, lacemakers in the town.

The men, skilled labourers in uniform, work by time, not by the piece. They earn eighteenpence a day—i.e., 6d. more than the ordinary Tommy in the trenches.

The women, of all ages, are used for light and not very exhausting work, and they earn on the average 3 francs a day (the trades-union price). What miracles take place! In the "snob-shop," the ammunition boots, glorious souvenirs of the front, which come back in a shocking state, are examined and repaired. Twenty thousand pairs a week. The hopeless pairs are made into laces. One woman can make 150 per day.

At the saddlery, harness and leather, covered with mud and blood, are cleaned as good as new. At the forge, wheels and couplings of gun-carriages are repaired. Elsewhere the essential parts of the guns are examined and all missing sections replaced.

In another place the dixies and camp-cookers, all dented and rusty, are cleaned and re-soldered. Old petrol tins are made into trench braziers. Steel helmets recover their form, picks and shovels their handles, and all the iron that cannot be made use of is sent back to the foundry to be melted down for ammunition.

Over the door of this war factory might be inscribed the motto of Lavoisier, with a slight addition:—

"Here nothing new is made, but nothing old is wasted."

The science that is taught and practised is the science, hitherto too little known, of economy.

That is the reason why many men of the world (and others) should, like us, visit this base.