MURDERED INDUSTRIES OF FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 147, 17 March 1919, Page 5

MURDERED INDUSTRIES OF FRANCE

WHAT THE GERMANS WILL PAY FOR

THE SACKING OF FIVES-LILLE

(By the Special Courespondent. of the

'Morning Post.".)

Upon the eastern side of Lille, outside the walh and. beyond the railway, is the industrial suburb of Fives, famous 'before the war as the seat of the Compagnie Fives-Lille. This company was one of the chief concerns in the heavy engineering industry of France; it employed 5000 workmen, not counting clerks, and built locomotives, bridges, turning tables, girders, machine tools, sugar machinery, tur- , bines, and so forth. It was, in fact, one of the great industrial concerns not only of France but of the world.

But the Boche has been to .Fives,, and there is no longer this groat industry, there is only a ruin. This ruin is not the least of the wonders of the war. Let me try to describe it.

To begin with, it must be said that r U the work of the Boche and the Bochi ilone, and that its ruin had nothing t< do with what u.re called military opera' tions. The Boche was in possession, anc worked his sweet will upon Fives-Lille undisturbed for four yews save for at occasional stray shot from an Alliec aeroplane. The ruin, therefore, may b taken as a pure example of economic wai as it is understood in Germany. Picking and Stealing,. The first sight which met ouir eyes a: we. entered the gates was a ruinous gabl of brick rising to an imposing height and pierced by three gates,- of such gen erous dimensions as. to admit the passagi of the largest locomotive, tho middle om being double the size of the others. A* it stood entirely toy itself, with nothin; behind it, it had the appearance of i sort of industrial Arc de Triomphe partly damaged by dynamite. M. Karia. takis, the Chef <lu Materiel, who yerj kindlv took mo over the place, explainec that 'behind this gable there once stood a great workshop 160 yards in length and over thirty yards in width. This shed large enough for all the varied processes cf locomotive building, had been con structed of steel, and tho Germans liaii taken it down piece by piece, packed it in railway wagons, and sent it to Germany. The front being of brick was'of :io use to them, and had been damaged, not by dynamite, but by the wrenching away of the steel girders which rested upon it. In this way they had stolen no less than nine of the company's newest and best steel-construction workshops, three of them of the largest size. No, I do the Germans an injustice. Of the greatest they only took part. _The pride of Fives-Lille, and one of the wondd"3 of the engineering world, was a shed eome 370 metres long, -14 metres wide, an-1 23 metres high, which contained an enormous iron beam in the roof capable of carrying a load of thirty tons, and unsupported for a. length of 120 metres. This great beam was used for handling steel girders and frames of the largest size, dud was equipped with travelling cranes. It appears to have been too large'even for the pocket of the Boche, so he cut off a piece 90 metres long and took it away, leaving 30 metres behind him. He took, of course, the equivalent part of the shed, with all tho equipment complete, and it ia no doubt doing modest duty now somewhere in democratic Germany. The mutilated remnant is left hanging- in FivesLille as a proof that the Grman takes no more than he wonts. There were also a number of sheds with frameworks of wood, which did not interest the German, and they :are letfc standing. There are nine left in all, but in a stato of ruin which is difficult to describe or to imagine. They took away, as unconsidered tnn.es, 750 electric motors of the latest type. There was one little gas engine left, too only motor now in Fives-Lille. I asked how the Germans had contrived to forget it JI. Karifttakis explained that the German Government had been negotiating for its sale to a Gemian manufacturer. There was-a good deal of-haggling over the bargain, and the negotiations were so protracted that when tho sale was at last complete there was no time to take tho motor away. Besides these 750 motors the Germans took away 1750 machine tools of all kinds. Tlio sheds, therefore, which are left are empty in the main. But there were some machines which were too large and heavy for German transport, and theso nad to be left. t L t . The Art of Destruction. They were left, but they were not left in'sitii. The German is ingenious in destruction. His method in this case was to attach a heavy piece of steel to a travellintr crane. The pieco of steel was then brought to bear on the machinery to be destroyed, and swung like a batteringram thus some of the finest and largest machines in the works were broken in fragments. And the parts that could not be broken thus were wrenched from their foundations by the use. of these same travelling cranes, raised to a great neignt, and then thrown down on the cement °In" this manner the Germans either took away or destroyed every motor, engine lathe, and machine tool in the work* of the Fives-Lille Company. in one of the remaining workshops the floor, which is' of cement, is torn up in the most extraordinary way, as by- a series of small explosions. M. Kanatakw explained that the hall had contained several very large steel tables on which were traced the designs of bridges and other large pieces cf construction work. Tlieee tabies ware wrenched from their cement foundations by means of the travelling crane and taken away bodily. ■Is to the amount of the damage done, I was told that in tools and machinery alone, and reckoning at pre-war prices, the value amounted to 40,000,000 francs. The damage to the workshops had not yet been estimated, but of glass alone there were 18,000 square metres to be replaced. The Germans did not. take everything. In one of the small sheds I saw a pathetic little group of workmen cleaning and arranging a strange assortment of rusty gauges, dies, spanners, and small tools of all sorts. As they cleaned them one by one they put them back carefully into racks along the walls. AT. Kariatakis explained that he had contrived to hido these oddments under heaps of old iron and other rubbish ,in the yards. Almost at the end of their occupation the Germans decided to carry away these heaps of old iron, and this'precious little hoard of gauges and tools was upon the point of being discovered. The approach of the King of the Belgians "on the north forced the Germans to leave the old iron untouched, and thus was saved the remnant of the old and, we may hope, the nucleus of tho new Fivea-Lille.

Gigantic Crime. When the Germans had negotiated the Bale of a machine, and were about to dismount it, they invariably demanded a 6et of the drawings to go with it to Germany. M. Kariatakis no less invadubly refused, and 'burned the drawings rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the enemy. But somo of these invaluable plans and drawings survive. They were hidden away in the cellars of the fine new building which the company had built partly for its offices, and partly as an Institute for its. workpeople. This buildiuff was spared by the German, whether out of respect for (social utility or because he did not think it worth destroying'did not appear. _ To look upon the ruins of Fives-Lille, it is difficult to imagine that these shattered halls and empty spaces were once the busy Rome of a (treat engineering industry. M. Knriatakis showed me pnoto"r'aphs of the works as they were before the war. Here was an empty void where once had stood a bench M metre; Ion.", with batteries'of machines for handling and piercing stsel beams, which were passed along trom end to end There stood wonderful pneumatic and hydraulic steel planing and chiselling machines. There long rows of lathes. That great hall once glowed with the white heat of molten steel an it was poured from great pots and cauldrons into moulds cunningly shaped in blacL sand. Here skilled workmen handled a great masterpiece of the company's conutruction—a turning bridge for Cairo, weighing no less than 1200 tons. Here 5000 engineers aiid labourers applied engineering science to the service of the whole world, whero now a few half-starv-ed, decrepit workmen scrape anioiig the old iron for the hand implements of their Industry,